Pambazuka News 308: Taylor - Even warlords deserve a fair trial
Pambazuka News 308: Taylor - Even warlords deserve a fair trial
Nigeria's anti-graft agency has given 15 ex-governors wanted for corruption until the end of Friday to turn themselves in or face arrest. Five of the former governors have already been quizzed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), an official has told the BBC.
Thousands of girls in Guinea are facing abuse as domestic workers, a new report has concluded. The report by Human Rights Watch says many girls are forced to work up to 18 hours a day for no pay and are physically abused by employers. The girls often live in conditions akin to slavery and many are victims of people trafficking, it says.
Kenya and Uganda have banned the use of thin plastic bags in an effort to curb environmental damage. Ugandan Finance Minister Ezra Suruma banned the importation and use of the thinnest bags and imposed a 120% tax on thicker ones in his new budget. The Kenyan finance minister imposed similar restrictions in his budget, following Rwanda and Tanzania.
World Bank presidential nominee Robert Zoellick would try to get China to listen to western concerns that it was exploiting investment opportunities in Africa while ignoring corruption in the region, he said yesterday. China has used its economic weight to invest in Africa, but has drawn criticism from western aid groups that it fosters misrule by failing to demand accountability.
In a move that may cut abductions in the volatile Niger Delta, a Nigerian high court yesterday freed on bail a former militia leader considered one of the country’s most dangerous men. The court freed treason accused and former Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) leader Mujahid Dokubu Asari on health grounds, meeting a key demand of the group.
A section of the world heritage site the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, Africa's largest estuary, has been returned to its rightful owners, who have in turn undertaken to manage the land in accordance with the country's environmental laws. The park, situated in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province adjacent to the Indian Ocean, was proclaimed in 1999 as a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
‘‘Today we are here to say never again shall our people lose their land rights because they are black,'' said Lulama Xingwana, South Africa's minister of agriculture and land affairs. She was speaking at the handover of a section of land in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park about one hour's drive from the mining and industrial town of Richards Bay. Richards Bay is about eight hours by car from South Africa's commercial hub of Johannesburg.
As someone who believes in ‘African solution to African problems’ I should be excited as everyone seem to be about the so called break through between the African Union and the UN on the one hand and the Government of Sudan on the other, on ending the genocidal war in Darfur. But I am not excited at all. I am not excited because we have been down this road several times before.
Khartoum has been taking everyone for a ride for so long that we take every sign of compromise as a breakthrough even if it will lead to yet another road bloc.
Khartoum has perfected the art of talking while continuing to kill its own citizens either directly or indirectly through its Janjaweed militia.
The timing of this latest breakthrough is very significant. An African Union summit is only three weeks away. The UN human Rights Council is sitting in Geneva and the Bush Administration has recently announced a raft of ineffectual sanctions.
Khartoum has played the Pan Africanist card very well, insisting on an ‘African only’ troops which satisfies our Pan Africanist instincts but knowing fully well that logistical, political and other technical challenges may make it ineffectual. It believes that an African force is more amenable to its delay tactics than a force that included other armies and with a UN command. It has exploited the understandable anti–American sentiments across the world and in Africa especially to hoodwink people into believing that any UN involvement will mean a proxy American war in yet another ‘Muslim’ , ‘Arab’ or ‘poor Third world’ country. It needs the shield Africa and the AU in order for it continue to fend off a more effective international involvement. It can also count on other shields in the Arab League and Muslim countries and in diplomacy with other Third world countries.
In proclaiming African solutions Khartoum has been counting on African incapacities as evidenced from the various challenges that the AU Force has been facing since its deployment. It has a very restricted mandate that limits it to ‘protecting civilians’ many of whom it can only reach after the Janjaweed and Khartoum forces have done their worst. Even on occasions when it had had early warning about impending attacks on innocent civilians it had been slow in responding or unable to do so.
The situation has not been helped by many of the rebels who seem to be more interested in their own egos and exaggerated political importance than the suffering of their own people. Their clamor for ‘international’ force (which in their colonial mindset means US or other western intervention) has consistently played into the hands of Khartoum. It helps Khartoum’s image laundering as an African country standing up for African solutions and sovereignty portraying the rebels as ‘agents’ of extra continental powers. The rebels have not learnt from the bitter lessons of the MDC in Zimbabwe whose struggles have been made difficult among many Africans because of the West’s support for them.
Just check your diary and see how many times Khartoum has looked very reasonable before an AU summit and only to return to its belligerency soon after. I am not sure this is not yet another of such deliberate rising of false hopes of a peaceful settlement.
Khartoum has been talking to any body that cares to talk about Darfur. That is why it has been involved concurrently in half a dozen of peace initiatives!
The problem with these talks is that they do not stop Khartoum and its allied killers in Darfur from continuing their violence against the people of Darfur but they hold those involved in the talks in check. You cannot be advocating tougher measures against a government that you are negotiating with. In the face of a fractious and faction –ridden opposition and rebel movements the government become reasonable and many peace brokers become more sympathetic to it as their frustration against the rebels grow.
However there is a wider issue relating to the mandate of the peace keeping force itself on which the Khartoum government has been giving the whole world a merry-go round. AU forces on the ground are not delivering not just for technical and logistical reasons or lack of numbers alone. There is no peace to keep since neither the government Janjaweed and the rebel factions have in practice committed themselves to ceasefire for any length of time.
You can increase the numbers of troops but without enlarging the mandate the butchering of Darfurians will continue. What everyone is now calling a breakthrough has been on the cards right from the start. Even the limited AU mandate envisaged an African leadership but did not exclude collaboration with the UN and contribution of troops from outside Africa. But Khartoum bogged everyone down in logistical issues for several months. Everyone is feeling so guilty at the horrible pictures from Darfur that we become desperate for any sign, no matter how vague that Khartoum is about to relent. Hence we are now supposed to jump that the government of Omar Al Bashir has agreed to a ‘hybrid force’. What is inherently good in a hybrid force? What is so new about it anyway? Any Peace keeping force is by definition ‘hybrid’. The people of Darfur have been under the attack of a hybrid of Sudan’s regular forces and their Janjaweed killers. Africa and the UN must really stand up to Khartoum and say : enough is enough, we will do everything possible to stop you from further killing your own citizens. It is peace making, peace enforcement before talking of peace keeping.
* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Four people were killed and at least 10 wounded when police dispersed residents in north Sudan protesting a dam project which they say will destroy their community, local press reported on Thursday.
The steering committee for the Kenya Telecentre Network (KTN) held its first meeting at Ugunja Community Resource Centre (UCRC), a telecentre located in the western part of Kenya. The main aim of the UCRC meeting was to review both the Uganda and Benin deliberations and chart a way forward on how to strengthen the Kenya Telecentre Network with a view to bridging the digital divide between rural and urban communities in Kenya and most importantly, managing and sustaining telecentres in rural areas.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites the urgent attention of the membership of the Council, the wider African and global social research community, all believers in the democratic ideal, and all persons of good will to the serious developments in Ethiopia bearing on the lives of 38 persons, all citizens of Ethiopia, who had been arrested in the aftermath of the street protests that greeted the manipulation by the authorities of the results of the 2005 general elections. The 38 are part of a total of 111 persons – including 25 persons who had already been forced into exile – initially charged with an assortment of offences arising from the elections.
The lower house of Zimbabwe's parliament passed a bill on Wednesday allowing the government to monitor phones, mail and the Internet to protect national security. While conceding the country needed to protect itself against terrorism, opposition members said they feared the bill would pave the way for President Robert Mugabe's government to curtail freedom of speech and breach privacy.
Somali insurgents shot dead a local official on Thursday and attacked Ethiopian troops overnight just hours after a second attempt to start a peace conference was postponed, residents said. Islamist-led insurgents have been fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies since the New Year when they were ousted from Mogadishu in a two-week offensive.
Rich countries' pledges of more aid to Africa are undermined by the lack of a delivery timetable which prevents the world's poorest nations from planning development, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, director of the IMF's Africa department, welcomed the $60 billion pledged last week in Germany by leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Sudan's agreement on a large force for Darfur "a milestone" on Wednesday but U.N. envoys acknowledged challenges on command structures and finding enough troops. "It was a milestone development," Ban said. "Even though slow, we have been making steady progress ... and we are now moving toward the right direction." Sudan accepted the agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Tuesday.
Egypt's ruling party won 69 out of 88 seats outright in Monday's parliamentary election while the opposition Muslim Brotherhood got none, a government statement said on Wednesday. The Brotherhood, rights groups and journalists reported many voting irregularities, including multiple voting and ballot stuffing. In some places where the Islamists hold a strong popular base, police denied voters access to polling stations.
Security forces in southern Sudan are in desperate need for training and funding to protect civilians against attacks by Ugandan rebels, aid agency World Vision said in a report on Wednesday. Civilians and officials in Western Equatoria state, where Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels had been staying under a Sudanese-brokered truce with the government in Kampala, have blamed the guerrillas for looting, raping, killing and abducting children in the area.
Ugandan Minister of State and Gender Rukia Nakadama on Friday at the opening of a forum on gender and preventive technologies in the country's capital, Kampala, called on leaders to strengthen efforts and increase resources to prevent the spread of HIV among women. "New and long-term [HIV] prevention methods are needed, particularly methods that are within the realm of women's control," Nakadama said.
US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell and Zimbabwe Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa in a joint announcement on Thursday said that the U.S. will provide the country with $18 million (about R130-million) over three years for antiretroviral drugs and rapid HIV testing kits.
The first formal publication of two early plays by Soyinka, with a foreword by Abiola Irele. Widely regarded as Soyinka's first play, The Invention (1959) reflects the obsession with race that marked the apartheid regime, and prophetically depicts the beginnings of the crumbling of the apartheid system in the futuristic setting of Johannesburg in 1976. It expresses the concern of the African diapsora with apartheid, which was felt to be an affront to the entire race. The Detainee (1965) is a radio play. The plot foreshadows the writer's own imprisonment and his now familiar concerns about the vagaries of African politics.
'...these plays take us back to the first manifestation of a creative genius that was soon to flourish.' - Abiola Irele
ISBN: 978-1-86888-329-5 94pp. UNISA Press 2005
$19.95/£14.95
Orders:
Africa - UNISA Press -
North America - Michigan State Univ. Press - www.africanbookscollective.com
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/charles-taylor.jpg Robtel Neajai Pailey questions the legitimacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the international criminal justice system, which, she states: 'serves as a band-aid imprint of appeasement from the West, which is just as complicit in Africa’s civil wars as the warlords who have been indicted, Taylor included'.
The long awaited trial of fast-talking, charismatic warlord-turned-Liberian president Charles Ghankay Taylor was a dramatic tour de force in the complexities of international justice. Though Taylor is being tried on 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international law committed during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war, the defendant himself was nowhere in sight for the first day of the trial, causing heads to turn, brows to furrow, and feathers to be ruffled. Taylor’s lawyer read a letter to the court in which his client called the trial a charade, riddled with deficiencies in representation for the defence team and inadequate resources. Taylor said the court has proven itself incapable of delivering justice because of blatant infringements on his rights, as evidenced by 'the insidious presence of a camera in conference facilities in the Detention Unit, overseeing meetings between lawyer and client that are supposed to be privileged and confidential'. The camera issue persisted for several months, without any safeguards from the Special Court administration, which has shown its inefficiency in performing the basic functions of legal proceedings. The obvious result was Taylor’s indignant absence: 'I choose not to be the figleaf of legitimacy for this process...', he wrote defiantly in his letter.
As I sat in the public gallery and media news room at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on June 4, I could not help reminding myself that the events unfolding were not a melodramatic farce, but rather a foreshadowing of months to come in the complicated web of accusations and counter-attacks in the case of one of Africa’s most notorious warlords.
While some believe Taylor’s rebuff of the court de-legitimised the prosecution’s evidence against him, others, like Human Rights Watch, believe that the case sends a strong message that impunity will no longer be tolerated in Africa, or elsewhere.
Whatever your perspective, Taylor’s absence from the prosecution’s opening statements is symptomatic of broader issues of restorative justice, the power of representation, and an international system structured in dominance. Is Taylor a scapegoat for the international criminal (in) justice system, which still has a strong Western influence and funding channel? Who really bears the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone? What about the crimes committed in Liberia? Why was the trial relocated to the Hague, when the crimes were allegedly committed in Sierra Leone? These and many more questions need to be explored adequately for a holistic picture to be drawn.
Background to the case
The Sierra Leone civil war began in 1991, initiated by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by corporal Foday Sankoh, who exploited the country’s diamonds to fund his push against government forces. Civilians were targeted in an act of irrational retribution, in which tens of millions of thousands died, rapes and mutilations were rampant, and more than 2,000,000 people were displaced because of the 11-year conflict.
The UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone was mandated in 2002 to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for the war that destabilised much of West Africa and stunted economic/political activity. Taylor’s indictment materialised in 2003 before he was granted political asylum by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. It is alleged that in exchange for diamonds, Taylor provided the RUF with much needed arms and ammunition, manpower, military training, security and a safe haven in Liberia, as well as strategic and tactical advice, enhancing the junta’s ability to continue the war. The prosecution’s opening statements proposed to lay out the foundation of their case, stating that witnesses and documents will eventually present damning evidence that Taylor was responsible for the development and execution of a 'common plan' that led to death and destruction in Sierra Leone. 'The plan, formulated by the Accused [Taylor] and others, was to take over political and physical control of Sierra Leone in order to exploit its abundant natural resources and to establish a friendly or subordinate government there to facilitate this exploitation', said chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp, as he gazed pointedly at an empty seat that Taylor would have inhabited.
Some believe that Taylor should have remained in West Africa to face the victims of his alleged campaign of carnage. Others, however, believe that Taylor’s international network of contacts could have posed a threat to the stability of the region if his trial had remained in Sierra Leone. These concerns are legitimate, considering Taylor’s Houdini antics throughout the years. He 'mysteriously' escaped from a Boston jail in the mid-1980s and ended up in military training in Libya. In 2005, he 'disappeared' from his asylum residence in Calabar, Nigeria only to be found at the Nigeria-Cameroon border, before facing arrest in late March 2005. Supported by those who fear Taylor’s stronghold in the region, a swift overhaul of the trial to the Hague has proved problematic anyway, even though the Special Court for Sierra Leone requested the move. Whether on West African soil or within European jurisdiction, this case is complicated and sensitive.
Leading to the trial: A complex web of manoeuvres and counter-maneouvres
The capture of Taylor ricocheted a message across Africa that impunity will no longer be tolerated. After nearly two years of asylum in Nigeria, Taylor — handcuffed and scowling — was transported by UN military police to Sierra Leone at the end of March 2005. He appeared at the UN Special Court for the first time on April 3 to face charges for supporting Sierra Leone’s civil war. As I watched Taylor on screen after his capture at the Nigeria-Cameroon border, I could not help noticing that the warmonger looked visibly pissed, like he had been duped by a humiliating practical joke gone awry.
Except no one was there to say 'Just kidding, Chucky!' All of his playmates had disappeared, leaving the indicted prisoner in UN custody alone and crestfallen. Flashback to the summer of 2003, and a different vignette materialises altogether. Taylor stood draped all in white like a king on the tarmac of Liberia’s Roberts International Airport, waving and promising to return someday 'by God’s grace'. He was headed for political asylum in Calabar, Nigeria after being forced into exile by international condemnation and rebel factions campaigning for his departure.
The fact that Taylor briefly landed on Liberian soil three years later only to be transported to a UN military jet for an oh-so-eventful journey to Sierra Leone, and then the Netherlands to face war crimes charges, is one of the most twisted ironies of our time. In fact, the past two decades of Taylor’s life would be an intriguing epic. In a recent discussion with my cousin Edward Dillon, we managed to concoct a skeletal memoir filled with twists and turns that could land Taylor on somebody’s bestseller list. We figured that such a book would more importantly hold the key to his misadventures. It would serve as an exposé of sorts, explaining the extent of his ties to some of the big wigs of African politics and non-Africans alike. Taylor has been connected to Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Campaore, Cote d'Ivoire’s late president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, former Ghanaian head-of-state Jerry Rawlings, and even US evangelist Pat Robertson, who signed a deal to mine an area in southeastern Liberia in exchange for Taylor’s 10 per cent share in the company. Taylor was armed with charisma, a West African entourage of cohorts and international connections to boot.
The indictments of Taylor’s West African networks were many. Sankoh died in prison from a heart attack and failing health while he was awaiting trial. Johnny Paul Koroma, who wielded control of the Sierra Leoneon Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) that overthrew president Tejan Kabbah in a coup in 1997, is still at large. Notorious RUF field commander Sam Bockarie, who was killed in Liberia allegedly by Taylor’s command for fear of reprisal, was also indicted. Samuel Hinga Norman, former Sierra Leone Minister of Interior and head of the Civil Defence Force, was months away from a verdict, when he mysteriously died in prison. Though Kabbah eventually testified in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone, some argue that he was equally complicit in committing atrocities as Norman. Why was he not indicted? Similarly, Gaddafi of Libya has ingratiated himself into the favour of the US once again. Like most African leaders whose records are dubious in activist circles, he continues to receive the golden shield of impunity. Why was he not indicted for participating in the 'common plan'? It seems as if Taylor is the last man standing, and must be made an example of. But was he the most culpable? Enquiring minds want to know.
What about Liberia?
An ironic turn of events proves that it was the international criminal (in)justice system that enabled Taylor to commit crimes in both Liberia and Sierra Leone in the first place. Hurling a surprise critique at the UN for its mismanagement of the Taylor debacle early on, Liberian attorney Philip A. Banks said that 'if not for the UN, Mr. Taylor would have seen the jailhouse in 1992' for orchestrating the notorious 'Carter Camp Massacre' in which children and defenceless bystanders were killed in Liberia. Personally heading the investigation, Banks reported his findings to the UN in the early 1990s, after which the international body ruled that Taylor was not responsible. 'Under our law [Liberian law], Taylor would have been tried and brought to justice' long before he became president of Liberia in 1997, said Banks, who served as a lead drafter of the current Liberian constitution.
A conflict resolution arbiter during Liberia’s conflicts from 1990-1996, Banks censured the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone for its limited mandate. 'The authority granted to the court is circumscribed only to the crimes in Sierra Leone', he said in April 2006 at a press conference in Washington DC. According to Banks, the crimes that Taylor committed during his rebel war in Liberia from 1989-1996 were more extensively grotesque. 'Liberia is not getting out of the international intervention what it deserves', said Banks. He added that there needs to be a tribunal set up for Liberia to prosecute Taylor and his cronies, many of whom hold positions in the current Liberian government headed by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Activists argue that Taylor’s case is part and parcel of Liberia’s future post-conflict reconstruction development, especially if his accumulated stolen wealth - estimated at over US$2.5 billion - is returned to the country’s treasury.
More than meets the eye
Most coverage of the Taylor trial is devoid of critical engagement with the complex questions that bedevil the Special Court for Sierra Leone in particular, and the international criminal justice system, in general. Are truth and reconciliation commissions a Western conception of restorative justice? What about the gachacha courts in Rwanda, which serve as local mechanisms for prosecuting crimes? Just as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, another UN-backed court system, is riddled with deficiencies, so too is the Special Court for Sierra Leone illegitimate in the eyes of many because it does not spring from the bowels of Africans themselves. Instead, it serves as a band-aid imprint of appeasement from the West, which is just as complicit in Africa’s civil wars as the warlords who have been indicted, Taylor included. After all, the same arms that were used to destabilise both Liberia and Sierra Leone can be traced to international networks in the US, Russia, and elsewhere.
Taylor’s fall from grace is reminiscent of a pantheon of notorious strongmen who have had to face the international criminal (in)justice system, among whom have been Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. What these three men have in common is one self-perpetuating node: an imprint of Western metaphysical guilt and disapproval. Once an enemy of the West, always an enemy of its court superstructure. Yes, Taylor’s trial serves as a precedent in its own right in Africa. But it should not be manipulated to serve the needs of legitimising an internationally funded and controlled criminal court thousands of miles away from the continent of Africa itself. Even African warlords-turned-presidents-turned-defendants deserve a fair trial.
* Liberian native Robtel Neajai Pailey is a graduate student at the University of Oxford, and a multi-media producer for Fahamu/Pambazuka News.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
It is now forty years since the beginning of the genocide of the Igbo people, a holocaust of unprecedented proportions in recent African history. According to the author of this study it was the ‘foundational genocide of post-conquest, European-occupied Africa’. This text demonstrates that the Biafran War, 1967-1970, was the second phase of the Igbo genocide, following the initial massacre of 100,000 Igbo across the principal towns and cities of northern Nigeria.
ISBN: 978-0-9552050-0-2 183pp. 2006 African Renaissance
$29.95/£19.95
Orders
North America - Michigan State Univ. Press,
Elsewhere - African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com
REDRESS, the international NGO working to obtain justice and reparation for torture survivors, has released the long-awaited Guide “Accountability and Justice for International Crimes in Sudan - A Guide on the Role of the International Criminal Court.”
A history of African historiography from an African perspective, attempting to answer questions concerning the practice of history from the civilizations of ancient Egypt, through the varied cultures and regions of the continent, to contemporary times. The book presents the philosophy of the oral tradition as co-existent with the written traditions of ancient Egypt, the Islamic tradition, and the western European historiographical traditions.
ISBN: 978-97837314-7-9 312pp. 2006 Onyoma Research Publications
$29.95/£19.95
Orders
North America - Michigan State Univ. Press,
Elsewhere - African Books Collective, www.africanbookscollective.com
In this article, Zine Magubane explores the complex range of issues raised by Oprah’s philanthropy. Chief among them are the power relations that inform charitable acts; the racial politics and history that structure Oprah’s relationship to her viewers; the images of Africa in contemporary culture and how they help to frame her acts of charity; and the significance of Oprah as a trans-racial, trans-cultural, and trans-national cultural icon.
PLATFORM is looking for a Project Co-ordinator for the Remember Saro-Wiwa project, working to drive forward this unique initiative that combines the arts, human rights and the environment. Deadline for applications is 6pm Thursday 21st June 2007.
South Africa has crossed a Rubicon in the past few months in relation to HIV and the ball is now in civil society’s court to achieve progress, Mark Heywood of the AIDS Law Project told the closing session of the Third South African AIDS Conference in Durban on June 8.
Oppah Muchinguri, the Zimbabwean Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development has challenged SADC journalists to give women fair and adequate media coverage and thus contribute to the achievement of gender commitments in the region. She urged that, where progress has been made, this should be highlighted in the media to “motivate those who are working hard to make a change in people’s lives.”
Some 300 people took part in a march through the Chad capital, N'Djamena, on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country's almost half-a-million refugees and internally displaced persons. The UNHCR-organized event was one of many activities planned by UNHCR around the country to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.
The UN refugee agency and sister organizations are rushing supplies to 2,650 newly arrived Sudanese refugees living under desperate conditions in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR). As part of a convoy of UN humanitarian aid that left the CAR capital of Bangui on Sunday, UNHCR sent shelter materials – including 600 pieces of plastic sheeting, clothes, soap and 600 jerry cans – to help the refugees in Sam Ouandja located near the border with Sudan.
For a while it appeared as if Madiambal Diagne might have found a way around the Senegalese government's apparent determination to keep him away from the airwaves. The well-known journalist and head of "Avenir communications" (Future Communications) had tried since 2003 to start a radio station, only to be told that frequencies were at saturation point -- this as pro-government persons succeeded in setting up stations, Diagne told IPS.
The United Nations is saddled with the arduous task of raising a 17,000 to 20,000-strong peacekeeping force for the politically troubled Darfur region in Sudan following a long-awaited agreement for the creation of a joint U.N.-African Union (AU) mission for that country.
Does electronic learning (eLearning) threaten to displace the teacher? This question emerged at an international conference held in Nairobi last week, attended by 1,400 people from 88 countries. The latest in information communication technology (ICT) with a focus on education, training and development was showcased.
When European campaigners suggest that a free trade deal could harm the poor, they typically encounter a frosty reaction from civil servants in Brussels. Still, no one tries to muzzle them. Yet when a Namibian trade analyst insinuated that the European Union was trying to browbeat southern African governments into signing an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) before they had a chance to analyse its consequences, he found himself out of a job.
FEATURES: Robtel Pailey questions the legitimacy of the special court for Sierra Leone and the trial of Charles Taylor
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
-Wazir Mohammed reflects on the legacy of Walter Rodney
-Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa
-Doreen Lwanga on DeBeers and blood-free diamonds
LETTERS:
- Takwa Suifon on Ochieng's article critically analysing poverty
- Matarr Njie on last week's Pan African Postcard 'Death of Nkrumah’s widow'
OBITUARY: Farewell, Sembene Ousmane
BLOGGING AFRICA: Review of East African blogs
BOOKS & ARTS: Poem by Annie Quarcoopome 'Unfinished Business'
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: response to the G8; interview with Bougouma Diagne
PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen says Khartoum is fooling the world - again
WOMEN AND GENDER: Women activists arrested in Zimbabwe
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Ethiopian troops attacked in Somalia
HUMAN RIGHTS: Focus on child labour in agriculture
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Nigerian court frees Delta dissident
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Cost of conflict in Western Sahara
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Comorian island hold elections
AFRICA AND CHINA: Zoellick wants Beijing to heed the West
CORRUPTION: Deadline looms for Nigeria’s ex-governors
DEVELOPMENT: IMF calls for clearer Africa aid timetable
HEALTH AND HIV/Aids: New microbicide trials in South Africa
EDUCATION: Will e-learning make teachers redundant?
LGBTI: Namibia’s Gay Week set to attract straight community
ENVIRONMENT: East Africa bans plastic bags
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Land returned in World Heritage site
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Leading Congolese journalist gunned down
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Barring Winnie Mandela form Canada
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Zimbabwe’s exiles turn to the Web
PLUS: e-newsletters and mailings lists; courses, seminars and workshops, jobs and books and publications
*Pambazuka News now has a Del.icio.us page, where you can view the various websites that we visit to keep our fingers on the pulse of Africa! Visit
The Group of Eight industrialised countries (G8) agreed to allocate 60 billion dollars in new aid to Africa in "the coming years", to beef up the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and to improve primary education across the continent. But the summit of the heads of government of the G8 failed to satisfy its own commitment, made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, of doubling aid to Africa by 2010.
Debate on the prospects for continent-wide government in Africa is heating up ahead of the African Union (AU) summit that is scheduled to begin on 25 June in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. The gathering will focus on plotting a course towards full political and economic integration on the continent, a central goal of the AU. The dream of a 'United States of Africa' also underpinned the creation in 1963 of the union's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity.
This year's World Day Against Child Labour on 12 June is to focus on the elimination of child labour in agriculture, which accounts for a staggering percentage of the world's working children and is one of the most dangerous forms of work for children and adults like.
Mobile GSM operators in Sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly covering most populated areas with telephone services. A new report by SIDA makes an inventory of existing transmission backbones in 18 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and discusses issues related to solutions for improved utilization of such networks.
In South Africa, black people are much more likely to migrate for work and to send remittances home than any other group. This paper published by the California Center for Population Research studies the effect of those remittances on black children’s schooling, using data from household and labour force surveys.
Straight talk with straight friends’ is The Rainbow Project’s (trp) LGBTI Week’s theme this year with the event taking place between 27 and 30 June. The Namibian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisation – trp – endevours to raise awareness and educate the public about diversity.
Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran and an internationally-respected scholar, social scientist, and urban planner, was arrested and imprisoned in Iran on May 11, 2007. Along with several other Iranian-American scholars, Dr. Tajbakhsh has been charged with acting against national security and espionage.
A prominent activist in empowerment organisations, Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) is concerned with the intimate portrayal of the lives of black lesbian women in South Africa. Of this new body of colour and black-and-white work, she writes, "Being is an exploration of both our existence and our resistance as lesbians/women loving women, as black women living our intersecting identities in a country that claims equality for all within the LGBTI community, and beyond."
Government security agencies in Uganda will start tapping phones freely should the Bill seeking to legalise interception of information get approval from Parliament. The Regulation of Interception of Communication Bill 2007, which has passed the Cabinet, was tabled before the NRM caucus late in May by Security Minister Amama Mbabazi.
A new World Bank report on HIV/AIDS launched in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, says the mobilization of empowered 'grassroots' communities, along with delivering condoms and life-saving treatments, are beginning to slow the pace of the continent's epidemic, which last year killed more than 2 million African adults and children, and left another 24.7 million Africans struggling to live with its deadly effects.
The Comorian island of Anjouan has held elections for its presidency, defying a national one-week delay and putting fresh strain on the archipelago's national union, according to a Al-Jazeera report. The government had ordered the delay over security fears after police shot three people during protests on Tuesday against the national president, Ahmed Abdullah Mohamed Sambi.
The new president of impoverished Mauritania and his cabinet have taken 25 per cent pay cuts because of a drop in oil production. Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi took power in landmark democratic elections in March after power was handed to the civilian government after more than a year of military rule.
Journalist Serge Maheshe, who was news editor of the Bukavu office of UN-backed Radio Okapi, was shot by gunmen as he was about to get into his UN-marked car in a residential neighbourhood. “A great journalist, who did honour to his profession in a country that has suffered terribly, has been the victim of a targeted murder by determined men who were waiting to kill him,” Reporters Without Borders said.
Somalia's transitional federal government has decided to allow three privately-owned radio stations - HornAfrik, Shabelle and Quran Kariim (Holy Koran) - to resume broadcasting, four days after it ordered them to suspend operations. "This decision was to be expected, as the high-handed fashion in which the stations were closed was both abusive and counter-productive," Reporters Without Borders said.
From the very start, the recent Nigerian elections, which saw Olusegun Obasanjo placing his hand picked successor, Umaru Yar’ Adua, into the Presidential palace, were mired in controversy. The ballot papers for the election, which were printed in South Africa, contained no counter foils or serial numbers – features which would have made vote rigging difficult.
Researchers have begun recruiting women in South Africa for the first trials worldwide of a vaginal gel containing an antiretroviral drug, which they hope will protect women from HIV infection. The trials of the microbicide — a gel containing the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, a proven anti-HIV drug in its oral form — are being conducted in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.
The Gambia has announced the creation of its first science academy, which will address the shortage of scientists in the country. The academy will prepare students at primary and secondary level for university-level science, technology and mathematics courses.
Despite being a signatory to the United Nations Protocol against trafficking in persons, Lesotho is still seen as a fertile ground for human traffickers, migration bodies hold. All the countries in the southern Africa region except Angola, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, had ratified the protocol.
Abortion could be soon legal in predominantly Catholic Mozambique if the Maputo parliament endorses a new bill recently approved by the Council of Ministers. If passed into law, this bill will be "a landmark victory for women, as they will have legal backing to terminate unwanted pregnancies," gender activists hold.
George Adhanja is based in Kenya and works for the Kenya National Council of NGOs. In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed him on the upcoming Grand Debate on the Continental Government during the next African Union Summit, June – July 2007. This interview is one of several interviews with African citizens and CSO leaders on the AU proposal for Continental Government. Emily Mghanga of Pan Africa Programme Oxfam edited this interview.
Salomon Kebede: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current proposal?
George Adhanja: If the heads of states continue to meet and work together in one spirit then this strengthens the proposal. However, the relationship that still exists between countries across this continent is challenged by dishonesty and mistrust. This may weaken this proposal and in the end, hamper the success of a Continental Union.
Salomon Kebede: Should it be adopted in Accra in July 2007, what would you like to see the African Union Commission achieve within the first phase (2007-2009)?
George Adhanja: The AU Commission should bring an end to civil wars in Africa.
Salomon Kebede: And why would this form of continental Union be important to African citizens & particular the poor and marginalized?
George Adhanja: African citizens will enjoy free movement and free trade across the continent that will be of great benefit to the poor and marginalized in particular. We need to see a unity that will uphold and respect citizen rights.
Salomon Kebede: How could states and non-states ensure that continental Union efforts are transparent, participatory and driven by an appreciation of political and economic rights?
George Adhanja: Let the member states become the engine that will run the continental Government devoid of western influence. The only way we will move forward in a Union Government, is by focusing entirely in doing what is right for the African people.
Salomon Kebede: What obstacles must the AU overcome for the continental Union to be successful?
George Adhanja: We must be financially independent in order to be self –reliant and stop depending on the west.
Salomon Kebede: In what policy area, would you like to see greater convergence and unity across Africa and why?
George Adhanja: I strongly would advocate for free trade and free movement. Without these, there is no need for Africans to unite.
Salomon Kebede: Do you have anything that you would like to add?
George Adhanja: Yes. Let us have a Union that respects civil society. It is fundamental for the civil society to be given more room to engage without discrimination as seen in some countries.
The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. George Adhanja can be reached at Email: admin at ngocouncil.org
Bougouma Diagne is based in Senegal and works for the Cultural Association for Social and Educational Self-Promotion . In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed him on the upcoming Grand Debate on the Continental Government during the next African Union Summit, June – July 2007. This interview is one of several interviews with African citizens and CSO leaders on the AU proposal for Continental Government. Emily Mghanga of Pan Africa Programme Oxfam edited this interview.
Salomon Kebede: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current proposal?
Bougouma Diagne: The current essence of the proposal is that if we unite, we become stronger and will realise the same objectives and goals. A weak point to note is that many African countries are dependant and in-directly controlled by stronger economies in Asia, North America and Europe.
Salomon Kebede: Should it be adopted in Accra in July 2007, what would you like to see the African Union Commission achieve within the first phase (2007-2009)?
Bougouma Diagne: The African Union Commission should first popularize that decision across the continent in order to involve all citizens in the process.
Salomon Kebede: Why would this form of continental union be important to African citizens & particular the poor and marginalized?
Bougouma Diagne: The AU Commission has to create ways of African citizens to participate. It is most acceptable to have organs that ignore or unaccountable to public opinion.
Salomon Kebede: How could states and non-states ensure that continental union efforts are transparent, participatory and driven by an appreciation of political and economic rights?
Bougouma Diagne: The main objective should be to implement the AU charter and particularly sections that safeguard the rights of people. This will ensure citizen involvement in the AU agenda. That way we can be sure that people will have an interest in continental union.
Salomon Kebede: What obstacles must the AU overcome for the continental union to be successful?
Bougouma Diagne: The AU has to take cultural diversity into consideration and plan so that we are all accommodated. This will bring harmony and acceptance from all citizens in the continent.
Salomon Kebede: In what policy area, would you like to see greater convergence and unity across Africa and why?
Bougouma Diagne: Education is the main problem in Africa, because an illiterate society is undermined in many ways.
The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. Bougouma Diagne can be reached by email: capes at sentoo.sn/acapes at acapes.org
Participants at an interactive session on the AU Grand Debate on the Continental Union Government have called for the adoption of the Union Government proposal to be tabled at the African Union’s July Summit in Accra, Ghana. Under the theme “Informing Ghana’s Position on the AU Grand Debate”, the forum organized by the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) and the Ghana AU Civil Society Coalition with support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD had three main objectives: (a) to find out Ghana’s official position, if any, on the Grand Debate; (b) collect and collate civil society’s views on the matter; and (c) to provide a platform for civil society-Government engagement on the issue, aiming to impact the formulation of Ghana’s official position on the Debate.
Join the delegation of African veteran leaders, intellectuals, activists, faith leaders, entrepreneurs, dignitaries and students in the 2007 Pan Afrikan Movement (PAM) Summit at the University of the West Indies, Kingston Jamaica on July 11-18, 2007. The theme of the 2007 Summit is “Political Determination for Cultural and Economic Rebirth”. Some of the key goals are to (1) Build a political structure for an African Diaspora Union (ADU) as part of establishing a (6th) sixth region of a unified African continent; (2) organize cultural campaigns and institutions for African people to promote African values, heritage, history and spirituality; and (3) promote economic initiatives for businesses, trade and commerce amongst Africans in the Diaspora and Africa.
We the undersigned Africans and friends of Africa hereby petition the African Union (AU) at its historic Summit, in Accra, Ghana, July 2007 to take all necessary steps in collaboration with the United Nations to bring to an immediate end to the genocide ravaging Darfur.
The rape of women and girls, the burning and destruction of villages and settlements, and the consequent mass displacement of millions and murder of tens of thousands, including women and children, in Darfur constitute an affront to humanity and an indictment of leadership on the continent. The people of Darfur have a right to life, peace and security. The AU must act decisively and deploy adequate troops with effective military ware to protect the people of Darfur from the murderous forces supported by the Sudanese government. In today’s global world, it is impermissible for the AU to look on helpless as the genocide in Darfur continues.
The people of Darfur have an inalienable right to life, security, peace and development.
Join the campaign to end the genocide in Darfur! Send your name, address, email address and institutional affiliation (if any) Citizens for New Ghana at citizensghana at yahoo.com, to add your name to the petition.
The draft programme for the African Citizens Directorate (CIDO) Pre-Summit Civil Society Forum in Accra, Ghana on the 19th -21st June 2007 is now available at
It was a fitting tribute to Ghana’s first president and pioneer of the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, forbear of the African Union, that on the day the mortal remains of his wife Fathia were interred beside him, Ghanaians from all walks of life gathered at the Teachers” Hall, Accra, for a non-partisan debate on the goal of achieving Africa’s integration by 2025.
11 June 2007, Cape Town - Leaders of the G8 countries met in Heiligendamm, Germany between the 6th and 8th June 2007 to deliberate on the worlds’ problems. Chancellor Merkel’s efforts to ensure that Africa is central to the agenda of this summit is appreciated. Furthermore, the efforts to strengthen the partnership with Africa by ensuring that the G8 supports activities that have been targeted and prioritized by the African governments is a progressive step. Despite this however, the outcomes of this summit have been disappointing.
Please visit the civil society and AU Summit calendar.
All civil society and African Union meetings and events will be regularly updated before and during the Accra Heads of States. Details of each event will appear on your screen as you click the title of the event. Please refer to the AU-Monitor Countdown Calendar throughout the summit.
To add events or meetings to the calendar, please email hakima at fahamu.org.
The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) is a worldwide alliance of trade unions, community groups, faith groups, youth and campaigners working together across more than 100 national platforms. GCAP is calling for action from the world’s leaders to meet their promises to end poverty and inequality. In particular, GCAP demands solutions that address the issues of public accountability, just governance and the fulfilment of human rights as well as trade justice, aid quality and quantity, debt cancellation and gender equality. In Africa, 34 national coalitions are active and participate in GCAP mobilisations and events. For details of actions planned in 2007 go to
Experts from the 53-member African Union met in Addis Ababa Monday to work on precisely marking out Africa’s borders by 2012, officials said. “The time has come to properly and accurately delineate borders in Africa,” the bloc’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) Commissioner Said Djinnit told AFP. “A precise and proper demarcation of the borders will be the cement of integration in Africa.” African borders drawn by colonialists often split ethnic groups between countries, as well as sparking conflict over access to resources and other feuds. The two-day talks were to be followed by a ministerial meeting on Thursday.
Ghanaian civil society groups have proposed the setting up of a legislating African Parliament directly elected by universal suffrage based on proportional representation as one of the means of establishing and consolidating United States of Africa.
The convener of Ghana- African Union Civil Society Coalition, Emmanuel Akwetey, on behalf of the coalition, also proposed the expansion of the Executive Council of the African Union to include chairpersons of the ministerial conferences.
Various civil society groups in Nigeria have raised the need to look critically at available infrastructure in the African continent before a consensus is reached on the formation of an African Union Government or a United States of Africa.
This was raised at a recent one-day roundtable organised by ActionAid, Nigeria in Abuja. Participants at the roundtable, who were drawn from the civil society organisations, media, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Labour Movement, the academia, ECOWAS, the private sector and other stakeholders, noted that the United States of Africa is a desirable vision.
It is with an angry sadness that we learned of this giant's death over the weekend. If there was one book that I could name that had such a profound effect on my thinking, it was God's Bits of Woods. We named our son after Sembene Ousmane. We have long wanted to interview Sembene Ousmane in these pages, but somehow didn't manage to work up the courage to speak with such a giant. His contribution to our understanding of the struggle for emancipation in Africa is unmeasurable. His memory lives on in his films and his writing. It is for us to make certain that future generations in Africa will study his works, and by studying them, find the pathway to freedom.
The following select list may help those less familiar with his work:
Selected filmography:
Borom Sarret (1963)
Niaye (1964)
La Noire de...(1966)
Mandabi (1968)
Xala (1974)
Ceddo (1977)
Camp de Thiaroye (1988)
Guelwaar (1992)
Faat Kiné (2000)
Moolaadé (2004)
Books:
Le docker noir, 1956, Paris: Debresse, novel, new edition: Présence
Africaine, Paris, 2002,
- engl. The Black Docker, London: Heinemann, 1987.
O pays, mon beau peuple! 1957.
Les bouts de bois de Dieu, 1962.
- engl. God's Bits of Wood, London: Heinemann, 1995.
Voltaïque, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962, short stories.
L'Harmattan, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1964, novel.
Le mandat, précédé de Vehi-Ciosane, Paris: Presence Africaine, 1966,
- engl. The money-order: with, White genesis, London: Heinemann, 1987
Xala, Paris: Présence africaine, 1973.
Le dernier de l'Empire, L'Harmattan 1981, - 'a key to Senegalese
politics', Werner Glinga, engl. The last of the Empire: A Senegalese
Novel, London: Heinemann, 1983.
Niiwam, Paris: Presence Africaine, 1987, engl. Niiwam and Taaw: Two
Novellas, Oxford and Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann, 1992.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_01_tumwine.gif blogs primarily about the tobacco industry. An excellent resource as she monitors and reports on tobacco related issues from across the continent. In this piece she reports on the plight of tobacco farmers in Uganda’s West Nile region
'It reiterates Uganda’s Vice President’s recent plea for alternative crops to tobacco and highlights the fact that tobacco is labour intensive, environmentally destructive and impoverishes the tobacco farmer.'
One noteworthy mention is that the 'WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC),” supports the development of alternatives for tobacco farmers and the report will be ready in July 2007 so check back on Jackie’s blog for more news.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_02_countryboyi.gifCountry Boyi tells us why Idi Amin is his hero. Growing up he was repulsed by an Idi Amin presented as a wicked, torturing, human flesh eating dictator. Boyi takes issue with these stories of Amin and finds justification for making him a hero because he encouraged Ugandans to work with determination and there were more women managers in the country than elsewhere in Africa.
'He wanted Africa for Africans...He sent a telegram to Julius Nyerere that said, 'I want to assure you that I love you very much, that if you were a woman I would have considered marrying you'. Long after his death (2003), Uganda continues to reap big from his friendship with Libyan leader Muammad Gaddafi.
Further, he gave full economic independence to the people of Uganda after expelling 80.000 Asians. His attempted Islamisation of the country was aimed at uniting a citizenry that are known to tear each other on religious grounds.'
I think you need to find another hero Boyi!
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_03_afromusing.gifAfro Musing was one of the African bloggers present at the recent TED-Africa held in Arusha, Tanzania.
'How to help Africa? Do business there TED Global felt like a seminal moment in Africa. I may have said this already but i will say it again. It was unlike any conference i have ever attended. Stupendous, challenging, interesting, eye-opening, heart-opening literally with Dr. Seyi Olesola and figuratively with Binyavanga Wainaina, Chris Abani and the music of Vusi Mahlasela. It was not uncommon to see people quietly wiping away tears during some of the talks. I would be curious as to the psychology behind the organization of the conference, it literally does something to your brain, sort of like neuron shock-therapy. By this i mean the speed, content, superb production, entertaining ‘mental breaks’ and the mix of amazing people. Its like being given knowledge speed in an engaging syringe with extra tablets of wonderful food.'
Sounds pretty grim, like a revival meeting of entrepreneurial evangelists using sleek media and marketing presentation – Who is the 'God' here? I just hope its not catching via cyberspace. For sure it is the talk of the African blogosphere everyone that attended has nothing but praise – my only regret is missing Vusi Mahlasela who would bring tears to my eyes!
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_04_mental.gifMental Acrobatics raises an interesting set of questions around the responsibilities of bloggers in reporting news events. In reporting the bombing in Nairobi this week he like other bloggers is full of qualifiers as the news is updated by the hour via Reuters and other news sources. Mental argues that this is an example of why blogs are an important news source
'I would argue that it is stories like this that rather than showing the danger of blogs, HIGHLIGHT the importance of blogs and other citizen media. While the MSM was stuck in its procedures, bloggers wrote about what they had heard, seen or were told. There is nothing wrong with quoting primary sources. The historians amongst us can confirm the importance with which primary sources are regarded on any historical event. The eyewitness account, the man on the street as it were. If you wanted to know what Kenyans were thinking and feeling at the time the blogs were a very good place to start...As for waiting for an official police statement before commenting on this blast, to that I would ask: where is the lengthy police statement on the Mungiki crisis? Where is the lengthy police statement on the Mount Elgon clashes? Both were major incidents in the past month which claimed more lives that the blast this morning, yet we haven’t seen the same coordinated response to dishing out information as we have on this blast. Are we to await the official statement on those events as well before stepping in with our take on events? How long are you prepared to wait?'
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_05_mettyz.gifMetty'z Reflections - Tanzania in Focus comments on Tanzania and globalisation and refuses to attribute blame for Tanzania’s debt or lack of development to globalisation. His post is in response to comments on globalisation and that 'industrial countries impose barriers on agricultural products from Africa' and he concludes he is not 'willing to jump on the ‘we are not developing because of the West’ bandwagon'. Much easier to blame Tanzania’s and Africa’s 'bad attitude' whatever that is.
'With regards to ballooning of the African debt, we can’t simply run and attribute that to globalization. First of all, how that does globalization, which is pretty much a free market concept, cause African countries to acquire more debt? I would seriously need more education on that. As far as I know, the expansion of debt is an outcome of strategies, vision and policies. Case in point: the United States’ debt , which has grown over time, but has increased or decreased based on whether Democrats of Republicans are in power. All that happens when the country is a capitalist country. So why would one tell us the African debt has grown because of globalization?'
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/blogs_06_bl.gifBlack Looks writes on World Walls – apartheid walls of segregation built to keep out the unwanted and protect the wanted internally and externally.
'Insiders, outsiders anyone from a different world or who is trying to make a different world. Will you be inside the wall living as a caged animal or outside, excluded and destitute? The G8 wall has shown that WALL BUILDERS are capable of constructing internal walls - walls that criminalise the poor, migrants, unwanted people and to keep them away from the the acceptable amongst their nations. The walls are symbols of a concrete and metal apartheid as nation after nation seeks to divide those who are legal and those who are illegal; those who are the right religion, colour, class, gender, have the right sexual preference. For the preferred insiders there is the superiority of knowing you are inside looking out. You have what THEY, the other, want as in Castillo’s diagram. The newer walls include sophisticated surveillance technology that can sense people approaching the fence/wall and prepare for attack. One wonders if the Spanish walls in Ceuta and Melilla will be able to pick up the colour of the approaching people and trigger some sort of automated reaction of bullets to shoot would be wall jumpers.'
The triumph of ending political apartheid in South Africa is at the doorstep of the Rt. Honourable Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. When the racist and murderous apartheid regimes in South Africa and Namibia forced many freedom fighters into exile, and/or otherwise silenced them, they could not succeed in getting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to compromise her principles, even in the face of death threats, bullying and coercion.
We are the results of letters unfinished
When someone immortalized an idea, etchings on paper
Hands cuffed in mid-word
We were born to only half the story
Blaming someone else for telling our history
And we go to fight once in a while
But we stop and think maybe we should sing instead of our stinking present and the blinging future we would like to have
For the worst words we could have heard were the truncated hand-me-downs of leaders cut down in their prime
Once proud baobabs over whom the woodcutter stands, axe in hand, black mask on white face and past and present and no future and emergence of us
The generation whose senses have been lulled by shiny things and skinny people
We are the results of books unread
Because anything that does not bring immediate gratification is not worth our quick-time texting apple-software instant-messaging quicker-than-fast-food moments
We are the children who were not taught to pause
Writhing-crawling-walking-running
Never stopping
And now we will not fight because we have not used that pause to think things over
Our tongues run over words quicker than you thought we could say them
We will leave you the hearer of words unsaid
We are after all the results of wisdom unheard
Comforters of tears unshed
Fighters in a war
That will not fight itself
Murderers of the silence that only wanted to scream
STOPWAIT
Pause
Bloody knife in hand
Heart racing faster than I have been running all my life
You are dead
And I am your child, the survivor
Of patience unfulfilled
Demons not exorcised
Angerhatefrustration
Rage
I am the result of that letter you did not finish
© A Quarcoopome
Two months ago, Mombasa was given a rare treat to Eric Wainana live at the Little Theatre Club in a bid to revive and restore this jaded cultural monument. In addition to Eric’s dynamic performance, the crowd were elated to see and hear the captivating voice of a rather unique talent in Kenya. Barefooted and hair-plaited, the young man walked on stage with his guitar and was welcomed by a frenzied crowd. His ability to reach every musical pitch coupled with the smooth simplicity of his songs had me mesmerised. I claimed ignorance and asked who it was:'“Harry Kimani of course!'
A month later, we were surprised to find out that Harry would be playing at the Bamburi Forest Trails over the Easter weekend. We immediately postponed our travel plans and made our way to the venue. Despite the rather unfortunate turn out, Harry was not dissuaded in the least. Dressed in a full 3-piece tuxedo, he stood firm and gave us a virtually private showing with all his heart and voice. There is something nostalgic about his music that leaves you beckoning to relive a special moment in your life. There is no clatter or distraction which leaves a lot to be admired, for he has to live up to his talent to make it a successful performance. But it is his version of the National Anthem that really triggers my emotions, leaving me with a tearful pride in being a Kenyan.
Weeks later, he reappeared at the Little Theatre Club but this time there was no evidence of a big star playing in our town. Harry Kimani is undoubtedly one of Kenya’s most popular upcoming musicians who in addition to having record sales amongst the top five in the country, has also performed in several countries around the globe. Yet, he retains his modesty everywhere he goes just like the first time I saw him playing barefoot. I asked him what’s keeping him at the Coast: 'I’m trying to teach music and put a CD together with the children from Wema Centre so I will be around for a while and I love this place.' Through his work with Wema, Harry was so inspired that he is now establishing a foundation to teach music to less privileged children. I was sold. Not many Nairobi residents can stand our relaxed sea pace beyond their beach holiday and dedicate their time to something as meaningful as this.
Once again he performed to a much smaller regular crowd giving it all his soul. Under the dim coloured bulbs, we sat on the ageing couches and listened to his magical voice. He has become a regular face at the Theatre Club and is always willing to pick up his guitar and play a song or two. There is unquestionably a lot of talent in this country and plenty from within Mombasa. It is only a question of seeking it out and opening up our minds to what is truly Kenyan.
One of Africa’s most respected and famous filmmakers Ousmane Sembene, also known as the Father of African Cinema, passed away on 9 June. Messages of condolence have been pouring into the office of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), an institution that Sembene co-founded in 1969.
He did not spare African rulers. He remained critical of post-colonial Africa for failing to meet many of her peoples’ expectations, where injustice continues to prevail. Sembene Ousmane is recognised as the Father of African cinema and has received countless awards and distinctions. As with his books, he used the medium of film as a critical and an educational tool, without compromising on aesthetics and the artistic impulse. His work promoted freedom and social justice, and aspired to restoring pride and dignity to the African people. He was a founder member of FAPACI (Pan African Federation of Film Makers) 1969-1970. South Africa joins the rest of Africa and the world in paying our deepest respects to a great revolutionary artist, Sembene Ousmane.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/katemost-blackedup_41974.jp..., 'the continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as "nothing" and corpulent darkness'. Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa.
You are a celebrity humanitarian and guest-editor of a well-circulated glossy. The territory is Africa. The topic is staving its demise. In the 1980s this would have been a famine. Today it is poverty and HIV/Aids. Readers will judge your cause by the cover, so select the visuals with care. What will you choose: an outline of an uninhibited continent, an abandoned toddler or a panic-eyed, skeletal mother clutching her dying baby? Do not feel limited by this empty outline of the place and its people, the abandoned children and wilting women. They are quite interchangeable, even mix'n matchable. Just this morning, I read about Bob Geldof’s recent guest-editorial of the German magazine Bild. Online, I found an image of the cover: a skeletal creature that looks more alien than human, crying out, in a silent Munch-like scream, for help. A white outline of the continent frames the child - just in case the reader is at a loss of the child’s origin. Here is the innocent victim, says the ‘chalk’ outline. This is the latest tragic embodiment of Africa’s lack. As I listened to this tale of human woe, I heard the name recur with frightening frequency.
Africa! Africa! Africa! (Thabo Mbeki). Lack has been Africa’s crime for centuries. The continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as ‘nothing’ and corpulent darkness. What is of particular interest is the visual representations of this mythology of lack. During the colonial project, Africa's nothingness was the absence of Christianity, science, education, medicine and civility. Today, indeed for the last 30 or 40 years, nothingness is the darkness of disease, civil war, disorganisation, corruption and an inevitable decline into apocalyptic demise. (Africa has been in this state of demise for the last 400 years or thereabouts.)
Visual historian Deborah Kaspin suggests, like many who have studied representations of the continent, that the pervading standardised images of Africa are not fundamentally of Africa at all. Rather they 'arise from a Western bourgeois mythology of any and all wilderness, inhabited by creatures who are, alternatively, innocent and savage, naked and hairy, dark-skinned and ghostlike. The mythology is ubiquitous'.
Consider the child of Geldof's cover. Innocent in its form of child, yet savage as the embodiment of a ravaging disease mixed with poverty. Vulnerable in nakedness, but strangely inhuman. The child is dark-skinned, but also vanishes ghostlike into its own skeleton. Captured for posterity in a photograph, it is saved from its own terra incognito African wilderness to become the poster child of Geldof's cause. 'Postcolonial imagery presents the Third World as spectacle', writes image scholar Jan Nederveen Pieterse.
The Bild magazine cover is an example of a genealogy of the spectacle of Africa, which extends as far back as ethnographic and anthropological photography, as well as the trade and progress exhibitions of the 19th century, such as the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London. Professor Annie Coombes writes in Reinventing Africa, the live subjects were set up in tableaux with 'authentic' huts, clothes (or lack thereof) and, at set times, performed 'authentic' activities, such as hunting. The German word Bild, means picture, and has an added meaning from theatre, scene. Uncanny that the image is also a scene. The spectacle of Africa is photograph and production still from the tableau of 'authentic' Africa and Africans readying themselves to be played out.
Granted, in this continent of 53 countries there are problems which cannot just be waved away as false naming. Even thinking of the image staves my typing. How dare I write in the sight and deafening appeal of another human being? Problems are the dilemma of our world, not just of Africa. Yet, it is curious that Western myths about their potency and power over Africa's primitive incompetence persist in 2007. Is Africa, the place and the people, concealed by the suggested false delineation?
Perhaps it is helpful to think of false in connection with the word's origin falsus, as related to 'fail'. Africa (I still want to question this blanket geographic label 'Africa' and its use for everything from place to people) is left with a deceitful or unfaithful cartography, portraiture and name. Why? Most of the colonial empires made fat on these myths collapsed, we believe, more than 30 years ago. Much post-colonial theory suggests the condition of Other-ing. Historians, psychologists, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists suggest that to assert self, one must stand in opposition to an Other.
For white, bourgeois, educated European males of late 18th through to the 20th century, this was the black, uneducated African woman who, by virtue of her primitivism, existed in some ahistorical moment, most definitely not that contemporary moment in time. 'The image formation of outsiders is determined primarily by the dynamics of one’s own circle' (Pieterse). Of colonial project representations of Africa and Africans, he observes, '[w]hat was really at stake in all these perspectives on "the savage" was European positions and programmes'.
In 2007, an age filtered by the lenses of post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism and the general questioning of white, bourgeois, educated European male supremacy, it is interesting that those who embody their Otherness are once again on all sorts of pages. From women selling chocolate in fair trade advertisements to Aids orphans abandoned in fields, what do these images potentially reveal about European positions and programmes?
Lack, ahistoricity, references in setting an arcadia rendered anarchic hint at a world so different to the wealthy, 21st century, urban world of those on the other side of this paper-thin reality. At the end of his study Pieterse concludes, 'The images of aid to the Third World are variations on this formula; fundamentally patronising, they are ahistorical, preoccupied with symptoms and oblivious to causes, and, not for all their global scope, parochial'. Why is post-independence Africa still newsworthy and cause-worthy to European humanitarian crusaders?
Paula Treichler offers Aids in the Africa (the Third World) as the 'latest incarnation of the "darkly unknowable"'. This is neo-colonialism with intrepid explorers. However instead of searching for the source of the Nile, they seek to bring the universals of health and material justice. For 'Europe is the light of the world, and the ark of knowledge: upon the welfare of Europe hangs the destiny of the most remote and savage (sic) people'. Let us replace 'savage' with words that have more currency in 2007; words like uneducated, oppressed or suffering. The words from the Edinburgh Review seem to belong not in the early 1800s, but could be on Bild page today. Geldof's partner in making poverty history is U2's Bono. He is to guest-edit the July edition of the magazine Vanity Fair (the US edition). It will be interesting to see the 'Africa in 2007' that he covers. It may include articles about cellphone entrepeneurs, print media franchises, tertiary research, but I suspect it is more likely to be yet another programme for the ever continuing show: Africa: the lacking continent.
References
Kaspin, Deborah, 2002, Conclusion: Signifying Power in Africa. In Landau, P.S. And Kaspin, D.D.
Images and Empire: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Mbeki, Thabo., 2002, Africa: Define Yourself. Cape Town, Tafelberg.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 1992, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. London, Yale University Press.
Treichler, P.A., 1999, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicle of AIDS and HIV Infection in the Third World. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press.
Links:
http://www.africacentre.org.uk/+ve-ve.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2d9qkc
* Annwen Bates is a research student at the University of Western Cape.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/Doreen-Lwanga.jpgDoreen Lwanga visits the DeBeers Venetia mine complex in South Africa and comes away impressed by their social programmes for employees.
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of visiting DeBeers Venetia Mine in the Limpopo province at the invitation of a colleague Mr Khathutshelo ('K2') Mapasa, the Ore-Processing Manager at Venetia Mines. K2 and I met in 2005 when we were graduate students in Boston, where he was pursuing the Executive Development Program at Harvard Business School. Since then, we have stayed in touch and exchanged views on the behaviour of corporate entities and corporate social investment/responsibility. Since I was going to South Africa on vacation, K2 proposed that I visit Venetia Mine to get a visual tour of diamond mining, understand DeBeers’ corporate working world and its contribution to the communities where Venetia Mine is located in Musina, and Blouberg, which is also a major labour-sending area to the mine. This visit was a timely follow-up to my previous response to Del Hornbuckle’s review of the film Blood Diamonds in Pambazuka News () which I actually watched on my British Airways flight into Johannesburg.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/famous_tiffany_41975.jpgComing from a social activist/scholarly research background, I must say that the visit to Venetia Mine was an eye opener. I had the opportunity of interacting with K2’s colleagues at Venetia in the Financial Management department, the Public and Corporate Affairs (PCA) and the HIV/Aids programme. I spent most of the day with two ladies, Tebogo Rametse and Nicolette Willemse of the PCA Department at Venetia Mine who took me on a whole day trip into the mine, and to Mapungubwe National Park that DeBeers supports to preserve.
We toured the open–pit mining operations at Venetia Mine, observed the process of extracting kimberlite from the ground, and the entire treatment plant complex where machines crush, re-crush, refine and liberate the diamonds from the kimberlite. Mapungubwe National Park has a wide variety of game including varieties of flora useful to the local inhabitants for medicinal purposes. Within Mapungubwe Park sits the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape and the Mapungubwe World Heritage Site discovered in 1933, and the royal tombs of the K2 People (no relationship to K2 Mapasa) preserved by the South Africa Department of Arts and Culture.
Apparently, three different groups are claiming rights to the Mapungubwe Archaeological site, including the land on which Venetia Mine is located, allegedly because each of them lived in the area at the same time. The Mapungubwe collection consists of a variety of materials, including the famous golden rhino, gold sceptre, gold bowl, other gold ornaments, copper, iron, ivory, trade glass beads, Chinese celadon and ceramic ware is on permanent exhibit at the Mapungubwe Museum at the main campus of the University of Pretoria. North of Mapungubwe Park is the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers where the southern most tip of Botswana and Zimbabwe meet the North of South Africa at the Limpopo River. Here, many Zimbabwean migrants, afraid of being intercepted by the South African border police, swim across the Limpopo River braving the crocodiles, and traverse Mapungubwe National Park at the risk of being eaten by lions, to enter South Africa.
After our tour of the mines and the National Park, I chatted with Kefilwe Mokgoko, in-charge of the HIV/Aids programme at Venetia Mine to learn about DeBeers HIV/Aids policy, in light of my professional work on HIV/Aids and higher education in African universities. DeBeers has an impressive HIV/Aids and ARV programme, which is perhaps the only comprehensive programme established by any corporate entity for employees and their spouses/life partners. DeBeers began its engagement with HIV/Aids as a 'morally right' thing to do. The programme has since evolved into an economic investment in its employees’ welfare given the impact of consistent sickness and absence from work on mining operations. In 2005, Venetia Mine started its HIV/Aids Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) programme, and 95 per cent of the workforce has since benefitted. All employees that are tested HIV positive including their spouses and life partners are offered free ARV treatment and counselling. The challenges are to monitor adherence to treatment for HIV positive employees and their spouses/life partners, ensure that HIV negative employees remain so, and fight stigma, myths and negative beliefs surrounding HIV/Aids. Steps have been taken to train HIV/Aids peer-educators who then conduct HIV/Aids education sessions during working hours. Ultimately, the team at Venetia Mines plans to roll out the counselling and testing programme as part of the usual medical procedure all Venetia Mine employees undergo.
There is also high emphasis on safety and security of employees, particularly in the operations of the mine, not only because every accident hurts the productivity of the mine but also because it hurts the family fabric that Venetia Mine sees itself. The management team endeavours to plough back financial rewards for high performance with the team instead of banking all of it into shareholders’ pockets. K2 explained to me that in February 2006, the company declared a gainshare or bonus of 94 per cent of annual benefit value income for all employees due to outstanding performance of Venetia Mine in 2005.
Employees testified that there were able to meet those needs they had put off for a long time, and some were able to build or complete their houses. Besides participating in research and preservation of Mapungubwe National Park, Venetia Mine also supports education programs, teacher training and retention in local schools, skills development and community health and welfare. For instance, the company provides matching grants to strengthen learning at Early Childhood Learning Centres in Musina and Blouberg municipalities. There is a concerted effort of recruiting labour from surrounding communities, unlike most mining operations that create 'mining towns' and import labour from far. As one management staff explained to me, not only do most employees come from within the Musina and Blouberg towns, but also for the first time a member of the Venetia Mine Management Executive - the Ore-processing Manager Mr. Mapasa originates from the surrounding region of Venda.
At the end of my trip, I suggested to the Venetia Mine PCA team to increasingly engage the public and social activists with information on DeBeers’ social investments/response. This is particularly important for the diamond industry where we hear less about the 'unbloody' diamonds mining and mostly about the cruel mining conditions, conflict diamonds and corporate greed. To date, DeBeers has kept an internal communication strategy and shied away from making public statements about their social engagements to avoid being seen as bragging about their social investments. Fortunately, this attitude is changing within the company and PCA team is designing more strategies to bring its 'corporate social facts’ to the public. To its credit, Venetia Mine won the National Productivity Award in 2006 from South Africa’s National Productivity Institute. It is ranked the biggest diamond producer in South Africa and the third producer for DeBeers globally after Orapa and Jwaneng in Botswana. As for the intersection of diamonds with my professional work on higher education in Africa, the Oppenheimer Foundation, in partnership with Ford Foundation office in Southern Africa, has ploughed some profits from DeBeers diamonds to create an Endowment Chair for the Centre for Human Origins at the University of Witwatersrand.
* Doreen Lwanga’s writings focus on the intersection of African political, human and economic security and pan-Africanism.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/Rodney_41976.jpgWazir Mohammed reflects on Walter Rodney’s continuing relevance in Guyana and the Caribbean, 27 years after his assassination in Guyana on June 13, 1980.
The stalled Rodney inquiry and the racial dimension of Guyana
It is necessary that the questions are asked: What happened to Walter Rodney, why was he assassinated, and who was responsible? After years of stops, starts, and inaction on this issue, in 2005 it seems as though an international inquiry into Rodney’s assassination was finally on the cards. The Guyanese parliament on June 29, 2005 passed a unanimous resolution authorising the creation of a commission of inquiry, whose terms of reference were to be ironed out among representatives of the government, the Rodney family and others. This year, as we mark 27 years since his passing, we ask, what has happened to this decision for the inquiry?
It is now 27 years since Walter Rodney, 'the prophet of self-emancipation', was murdered in a dark corner, at a dark moment of Guyana’s history. That day in June 1980 is arguably the saddest of modern Guyana. I was 22 years old at that time, but my life was already enmeshed in the struggle, which Walter Rodney defined in terms of a battle for 'people's power – no dictator'. Dictatorial rule was the hallmark of the Burnham presidency which ruled Guyana for more than two decades. Yet, for many years until his death in 1985, Burnham was revered in the corridors of power in the region, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and all the Eastern bloc countries.
My own observations are derived from my political history with Guyana’s working people and the experience of the Walter Rodney period in Guyana. I grew up in the period of anti-colonial nationalist ferment. While still in school, I became an active member of the Progressive Youth Organization (PYO-Youth arm of the ruling party) and later a member of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP). However, at the end of 1979, I left the PPP to join forces with Walter Rodney and the Working Peoples’ Alliance (WPA), and became one of the young full-time activists in the civil rebellion movement.
The inquiry into his assassination, in my view, cannot skirt around the root of Guyana’s problems – the deep seated racial division in Guyanese society, which Walter identified as the main barrier to forward movement and progress. In his view, Guyana could not embark on any true development unless the issue of ethnic and racial insecurity was resolved. Today, racial healing and multiracial unity remain the prerequisite for democracy and development in Guyana.
Walter did not equate liberation and development with the mere replacement of expatriate rulers with local versions. His determination as a scholar-activist propelled him to argue that transformation and true human development can only be achieved through the common struggle of all peoples to recognise the necessity for a single humanity. In this stead, at the time of his death, he was deeply involved in mobilising to unite the six racial/ethnic groups in Guyana who constitute the Guyanese working people, a period now popularly known as the 'civil rebellion of the 1970s'.
This was a moment of mass mobilisation in a struggle to replace and reshape the neo-colonial state, under the control of Forbes Burnham and his minority PNC government. He was convinced that the racial conflict between African workers (former slaves) and Indian workers (former indentured labourers) was part of a political strategy of divide and rule. Being first contrived by the colonial planter-class and later on by Britain and America to derail the progressive anti-colonial movement headed by the PPP. According to George Lamming, in the foreword to Walter’s History of the Guyanese Working People, 'it was Walter Rodney’s tireless opposition to this betrayal of a people which finally cost him his life'.
While Walter’s assassination may have deep seated implications for the struggles for freedoms everywhere. Its significance must, first and foremost, be understood in the context of the struggle to unify the working people of Guyana. His work with colleagues in the WPA and in the wider Guyanese society between his return to the country in 1974 up until the time of his death was dedicated to nurturing a new political culture, and establishing common grounds for joint action of the people.
While Rodney’s assassination on June 13, 1980 dampened and in many ways silenced the mass movement for people’s power in Guyana. It removed an important voice for a new grassroots politics in the region. This was only a temporary setback in the struggle for people’s power. As current experience shows, similar ideas are now taking root and springing up all over Latin America.
What made Rodney special?
Walter Rodney’s way of life stands as an exceptional example to the international movement. His drive to combine original historical scholarship with involvement in the day-to-day struggles of the oppressed serves as a model to academics and activists the world over. Thus he could switch from researching and writing about the devastation wrought by outside forces on African societies in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, through intervening in the pan-African movement in Tanzania, to discussing with Rastafarians in Jamaica in Grounding With My Brothers.
But Rodney’s later political work in his home country of Guyana was of equal or possibly greater significance. His rejection of racial politics in favour of struggling for unity of all the oppressed was in the finest traditions of Malcolm X. It came not from some abstract theory – Walter was not a prisoner of political orthodoxy - but from the concrete reality in Guyana, where racial politics had been used by the colonialists and imperialists to split the progressive movement and prevent the people from securing their rightful shares. Walter was neither interested in the corruption readily available from the Afro-Guyanese PNC government, nor in joining the Indo-Guyanese embrace of the PPP. Instead, he called for a new kind of politics based on the grassroots, or the 'street force', as he used to call it.
People’s power in Latin America is Walter Rodney’s legacy
Walter anticipated the movements that are now flowering all over Latin America: the fusion of the struggles for collective land rights with the struggle for women’s equality and human rights – represented by the horizontal and unemployed workers' movement in Argentina; the struggles of indigenous and black people, landless workers and trade union movements in Brazil; the indigenous Amerindian and water justice movements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru; the Zapatistas of Mexico; and, of course, Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. These movements, like Rodney’s, are a rejection of traditional party politics, which have failed the peoples of the region. Instead, people are moving to take power into their own hands.
Walter Rodney’s slogan of 'People’s Power' was at the core of his vision for a new Guyana. If he were here today, he would smile to see what is happening across Latin America. Especially in Venezuela where Hugo Chavez is championing the idea of popular power and campaigning for its implementation, not only there, but throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Time for the Caribbean to join the party
So far, the rising tide of democratic action in Latin America has found few echoes in the Caribbean (with the obvious exception of Cuba). No doubt, language and cultural differences are a barrier. But greatly reinforcing this have been the hostility and distortions in the Caribbean media, which is largely a servant of imperial US and European interests, and their multinational news agencies.
This is a disservice to what is happening in our region. The initiatives for continental cooperation that are being announced on a weekly basis are specifically aimed at Latin America and the Caribbean. But a significant number of our countries are not responding in kind.
We in Guyana, have special reasons for developing cooperation with our revolutionary neighbours. For instance, there has never been a better time to make progress on our border dispute with Venezuela. If we Guyanese were to stretch our hands across the border, it is more than likely that we would receive a warm welcome on the Venezuelan side. In this context, we could work towards an amicable understanding about the Guyanese Essequibo region, which is claimed by Venezuela. We could also explore the possibilities for joint development of the region - perhaps Venezuela could provide investment that we do not have towards the environmentally safe development of the rich resources of the area. So too, on the issue of electrification we should be working with our neighbours to link the grid and bring an end to our energy problems, the high cost of which continues to bedevil Guyanese life and industry.
On a wider scale, developing regional programmes for energy integration, industrial and agricultural cooperation, low interest finance, technology transfer and sharing of resources offer us a great chance to finally get out from under the yoke of American and European economic domination. This is our opportunity to leave behind the curse of neoliberal economics and get back on track towards our original hopes of a progressive regional federation so strongly held by C.L.R. James (the self-made working class intellectual and revolutionary from the Caribbean) and others in the anti-colonial movement.
People's power is on the march in our continent and we must get on the wagon without delay. We cannot wait for our governments to start the ball rolling. As C.L.R. always argued, change must start at the grassroots. We could imitate our Latin cousins and develop more grassroots movements like the 'Red Thread' women’s organisation in Guyana, whose leading members include Andaiye, formerly a leader of the WPA.
I conclude with the ever relevant words of Walter Rodney: 'Only the people can make a revolution. And the day has come when the real revolution will begin - the revolution in the economy, the revolution in the society, the revolution to bring us back to a level where we can hold our heads up high. And it is that day that we need the participation of people.'
The above is the first of a two part piece. Part two will be published at a later date.
* Wazir Mohamed is former Co-Leader of the Working Peoples’ Alliance of Guyana, now PhD Candidate in Sociology-Binghamton University, New York.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Ochieng's critical analysis of poverty and the way we perceive it have ignited some deep thoughts in me. Africans must take this debate everywhere and must start reversing the false trend we have institutionalised in the name of poverty alleviation. Just see how we have condemned ourselves to perpetual enslavement even by accepting the fact that what we should do is just alleviate poverty! As Ochieng says, eradication (a word strongly opposed by the beneficiaries of our poverty) would deliberately be geared at eradicating the poor.
The capitalist version of development is becoming a zero-sum game (it has so been everywhere) and thus a developed Africa would entail 'large holes of poverty' in the developed world. I once argued that if there were a way to secure a patent right for air, Africa would be suffocated in a twinkle of an eye. With the millions of plant and tree species that are being tested in Western pharmaceutical laboratories, no single African country has a patent right. Let this generation of Africans rise up and claim what is theirs before it is too late.
* Takwa Suifon is an 'Africanist' and Conflict and Peace Analyst from Cameroon
Dear Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: What can I add to your well-written article? Not much since you said it all. My heart was full of sadness after reading the article. I wish to congratulate you. Keep it coming!
Pambazuka News 307: Ethiopia: Democracy still in jail
Pambazuka News 307: Ethiopia: Democracy still in jail
The widow of Kwame Nkrumah, Madam Fatiha, passed away last week in Cairo, her home town, where she had been living for most of the years since Nkrumah’s over throw in February 1966.
As to be expected all kinds of tributes have been pouring out from all kinds of corners including people and institutions who have never really cared what became of her and her three children (Gamal, Sekou and Samia) since Nkrumah died. Many of these conspicuous mourners did not even realize that Madam Fatiha was still alive all these years.
The worst of these hypocrites is always government. Those in power have the power, if the will was there to have honoured Madam Fatima, recognized her and provided for her and her family. But shamelessly successive Ghanaian governments, at best pursued a policy of benign neglect or even outright hostility or opportunistic association and gestures towards the family. This is not because Madam Fatiha has lived outside of Ghana because the same treatment was experienced by the oldest of the children,, Dr Francis Nkrumah (the first son of Nkrumah , from his Ghanaian first wife) or Sekou (Fatiha’s second son) who both live in Accra. This shameful conduct included governments and regimes that claim to be political heirs of Nkrumah.
The government of Ghana immediately announced that it will provide a state funeral befitting a former first lady of Ghana (indeed the very first!) but of what benefit is this post humus honour when she was neglected while she was alive? It is part of that African hypocrisy that suddenly transforms a dead person into the friend of everyone around with no body willing to say anything negative about the departed. Some of this is actually due to guilt. We tend to over compensate by making all kinds of commitments and all manner of gestures immediately after the death of someone close or public figures. However the guilt soon subsides and life continues very much as before with the loved ones left behind to pick up the pieces, as they must. Tears of some of the politically correct mourners go dry as soon as the TV cameras are turned off.
The way we treat the family of our national and Pan Africanist heroes cannot inspire commitment and confidence that devotion to Africa meant anything. As with all committed, genuinely committed (not the convenient foot lose opportunists that are so common these days), their families suffer: absent fathers and husbands. The children grow up feeling victimized by ‘struggle’ and after the hero have gone or is no longer in power the family might as well have been dead.
Nkrumah, even his worst critics, will agree, was completely devoted to the cause of liberating Africa. It was not for him building of personal mansions or having secret accounts all over the world. The struggle was everything. Madam Fatiha was much younger than the Osagyefo when he married her in a matrimonial union that typified Nkrumah’s refusal to accept the Saharan divide of Africa. The three children they had together were all toddlers when Nkrumah was overthrown, and they were only young teenagers when Nkrumah passed away in 1972. Fatiha herself was barely in her mid 30s. No husband, no father and no state provisions the family had to survive on good will sometimes of kind strangers who never met Nkrumah but treasured his contribution to our liberation. They could not leave in Ghana but thanks to President Gamal Abdul Nasser (after whom Fatiha’s first son, Gamal Gorkeh, was named) the family had been given a befitting home by the banks of the Nile. That house progressively became damaged due to lack of maintenance support since the family could not afford to maintain such a modest stately building.
The Ghana for which Nkrumah laboured and the Africa he toiled for simply ignored his family.
It is an insult to now be shedding crocodile tears at the passing of his widow. It is an insult to the family to be offering state funeral to a person that was largely ignored in her life by the same state that is now leading the mourning. The same Ghanaian state showed similar hypocrisy when Nkrumah passed way in exile in Conakry and demanded and later brought Nkrumah’s body to Ghana for State reburial! The embalmed body was for many years left to deteriorate in his village of Nkroful before shame and political expediency and influence of Nkrumahists in his administration forced Rawlings to accept a Mausoleum for Nkrumah in central Accra. Even then most of the money came from Gaddafi!
The spirit of Nkrumah continues to wonder and I hope it continues to haunt all the opportunists, ideological parasites and political saprophytes who continue to use Nkrumah’s name in vain. It should shame us into honouring our heroes and heroines both in life and in death especially the widow and children they leave behind. Ask yourself how many more widows like Madam Fatiha are abandoned to penury across Africa? This bitter experience is even making many of our corrupt leaders to believe that whatever the volume of our assets they are looting now is a kind of insurance for their family against an uncertain future.
In this fiftieth year of Ghana’s independence and the inspiration for the independence of the rest of Africa we should assuage Nkrumah’s wondering spirit by doing right by his family, not by state burial to his widow but by Ghana’s government first repaying back all the entitlements die to them by way of gratuity to their father, refurbishing and handing over their family home in Accra and setting up a proper trustee body to look after, maintain and supervise the Nkrumah Musoleum in Accra. Then the rest of us can honour Nkrumah the best way we can. But Ghana has to lead in atoning for these wrongs.
* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Amnesty International has warned that the internet "could change beyond all recognition" unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights. The "virus of internet repression" has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group. Amnesty accused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of being complicit in the problem.
Various civil society groups in Nigeria have raised the need to look critically at available infrastructure in the African continent before a consensus is reached on the formation of an African Union Government or a United States of Africa.
This was raised at a recent one-day round table organized by ActionAid, Nigeria in Abuja.
A London high court has frozen the assets of Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba after he was convicted last month of stealing $46-million in state funds, according to court documents obtained by AFP on Tuesday. The Zambian government obtained an injunction to freeze Chiluba's assets in London in order to prevent the ailing Chiluba and 18 of his cohorts from disposing of their properties, according to the court order.
Malawian farmers have had a good year, enjoying their best maize harvest in 12 years or more. So why, in a year of "historic plenty", is Malawi yet again on the receiving end of food aid, asks Alex Renton in Britain's Observer newspaper. Malawi suffered food crises in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Last year it produced a 250,000-tonne surplus of maize, yet still received over 40,000 tonnes of food aid from the United States.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. She beat five other contenders for the £30,000 women-only award, including Kiran Desai, shortlisted for her Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss. Adichie's novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is her second work and set during the Biafran War of the 1960s.
A vital bridge linking Sierra Leone with Liberia - both recovering from civil wars - has officially re-opened. Relations between the countries have been strained as Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor was accused of fuelling Sierra Leone's brutal conflict. It is hoped the Mano River bridge will increase trade and unite families living on the two sides of the border.
The New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition is delighted by the passage of a strong anti-trafficking law in New York. The Human Trafficking Law, signed into force by Governor Spitzer, is the strongest state anti-trafficking legislation in the country. The Coalition, an alliance of over 80 state-wide organizations, strongly endorses this anti-trafficking law, which has all the elements considered essential to a strong law.
In daily newspapers across the world, stories are filed from foreign correspondents on assignment in war-torn Darfur in Western Sudan while London or New York analysts propose solutions to a conflict they'll never see. But on the ground, from Khartoum to Kordufan to the center of Darfur in El Fasher, local female journalists are telling the story to their own people.
When the world's wealthiest nations meet at the G-8 summit in Germany this week, aid workers plan to remind them that education pledges they made to children--the majority of them girls--are not being met in the world's worst conflict zones.
The University of Ghana is forging a gender advocacy trail in West Africa by setting up a sex-assault crisis center, forming a policy on harassment and improving the campus culture for women.
Amnesty International is using satellite cameras to monitor highly vulnerable villages in war-torn Darfur, Sudan. The human rights organization is inviting ordinary people worldwide to monitor 12 villages by visiting the Eyes on Darfur project website and put the Sudanese Government on notice that these and other areas in the region are being watched around the clock.
Two years ago, the association Yam Pukri began to sell second-hand cellular telephones as part of its policy of disseminating ICT in Burkina Faso. Yam Pukri buys the phones in Switzerland through its partner, the NGO Terre des Hommes Suisse (Geneva branch), and resells them in Burkina Faso at very low prices (from 7,500 to 45,000 CFA francs).
The United Nations and the African Union were close to a deal on Wednesday on fielding 23,000 peacekeepers in Sudan's violent Darfur region, but full deployment is not expected until next year at the earliest. The so-called "hybrid" U.N.-A.U. force is the culmination of two earlier stages allowing the United Nations to bolster 7,000 beleaguered African Union troops.
Ethiopian soldiers fired at a would-be suicide bomber who was speeding towards their base in the Somali capital blowing up the car and killing the bomber and a civilian who was standing nearby, officials have told Al Jazeera. Monday's attack came one day after a suicide car bomber drove through a roadblock guarding the compound of the Mogadishu home of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the interim prime minister, and rammed the vehicle into a wall, killing seven people but missing Gedi.
The International Women’s Media Foundation will launch a new project to enhance coverage of agriculture, rural development and women in African media with a $2.5 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The goals of the project are to increase and enhance reporting on agriculture and rural development, incorporate women’s roles in the coverage of agriculture and rural economics into reporting on those topics, and create more gender equality in newsrooms.
Mazonde and Thomas (eds): Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Intellectual Property in the 21st Century
This volume discusses the contested nature of intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in the context of southern Africa, including the protection of folklore, IKS in a digital era, the valuation and safeguard of heritage sites, the need for appropriate IKS legislation, community-based control of natural resources, and the role played by traditional music in the maintenance of community.
This empirical grounded collection of papers is a unique and distinctive contribution to the literature on IKS. The specific IKS-related issues raised and dealt with in this volume are generic in the sense that the very same issues are being contested in different parts of the world.
ISBN: 978-2-86978-194-8, 138pp, publ. 2007
Africa: 20.00 USD; CFA 10,000; elsewhere: US$24.95/GBP16.95
Orders:
Africa -
North America - www.africanbookscollective.com
This is the second of a two-volume work taking stock of the study of Africa in the 21st century: its status, research agenda and approaches, and place. The volume is divided into two parts, the first entitled Globalisation Studies and African Studies, and the second, African Studies in Regional Contexts.
Topics considered include: African and area studies in France, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden; anti-colonialism and Russian/soviet African studies; African studies in the Caribbean in historical perspective; the teaching of African history and the history of Africa in Brazil; African studies in India; African studies and historiography in China in the 21st century; and African studies and contemporary scholarship in Japan.
'This two-volume collection…establishes entirely new parameters for Africanist scholarship…[it is] interested in answering the question: What is Africa's place in the world today'– Ato Quayson, professor of English and director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.
ISBN: 978-2-86978-198-6, 416pp., publ. 2007
Africa: 35.00 USD; CFA 17,000; elsewhere: US$49.95/GBP39.95
Orders:
Africa -
North America - www.africanbookscollective.com
Since 1963, corruption has begat corruption in the successive governments of Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki, as a silent majority watched hoping against hope that they would not be affected. Pastor Martin Niemöller described this phenomenon - the assumption of the ostrich position by collectively burying our heads in the sand as the fruit of inaction ripens.
International agency Oxfam today warned that failure among G8 countries to provide a clear steer on climate change would leave confusion in its wake and cause an unacceptable delay as poor countries bore the biggest burden of global warming. According to this year's IPCC report, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change.
South African Cobus de Swardt, 44, Director of Global Programmes at Transparency International (TI), the global coalition against corruption, has been appointed Managing Director of TI’s Berlin-based Secretariat. De Swardt has served as Global Programmes Director since May 2004, leading the work on TI's global priorities, and heads the International Group of four regional departments. Since 30 April 2007, he has also served as Acting Managing Director.
The Hadzabe indigenous people of northern Tanzania are facing "a direct and serious threat to the survival" as their hunting and gathering grounds are falling prey to powerful safari organisers. Royals from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their UAE Safari Ltd count on Tanzanian government support to drive out the Hadzabe, also called "Bushmen".