Pambazuka News 304: Zimbabwe: Challenges for solidarity
Pambazuka News 304: Zimbabwe: Challenges for solidarity
Zimbabwe born singer song writer Thabani and The Thabani band are releasing their song 'Right 2 demonstrate' on Ditto Music featuring Henry Olonga, former cricketer and political activist who famously wore a black armband demonstrating the death of Zimbabwe.
The musicians have teamed up with UK based Zimbabwean Charity Wezimbabwe to help raise funds for Human Rights Defenders working with women activists, students movements and children's rights.
'Right 2 demonstrate' is an emotive song which demands the right for people to speak their minds in a free democratic society, striking at the heart of Robert Mugabe's violent government which has been stopping people peacefully demonstrating by issuing savage beatings before a disbelieving world.
Pre-order the single today and help the single break into the official UK top 40!! Our goal is to reach 7500 downloads in order to raise £10,000.
The release date is 3 June. But by pre-ordering you raise the profile of the record and its charitable cause and help to get it into the charts. Every penny from the sale will go to organisations who work with groups in Zimbabwe to help rebuild their lives. Please help us today by downloading today.
Pambazuka News invites submissions of poetry, and literature, film and music reviews for our Culture and Arts section. Please send submissions to: [email][email protected] with the subject 'SUBMISSSION' in capitals.
The African Union (AU) and donors, including the G8 countries, have agreed to set up a fund to support underfunded peacekeeping missions on the continent, officials said. To be funded as part of the AU’s Complementary Peace Facility, it is expected to augment the existing European Union-Africa Peace Facility (EU-APF) and increase resources available for Africa-led peace support operations.
Daniel Wegwa, elder in the village of Mbodo Aluu says: You ask me what we’ve gotten from all the oil here in Aluu? I tell you: nothing. We know that the pumping station that the oil company has on our land, which they call Agbada 1, pumps 30,000 barrels a day. But the oil company uses our land and gives us nothing for it; and the government gives us nothing either.
Human rights violations, including executions by armed bandits and sexual violence against women and children, have continued in Burundi despite an improvement in the political landscape, a national watchdog has said. At the launch of its annual report, Jean-Marie Vianey Kavumbagu, head of the Burundi human rights group, ITEKA [Ligue Burundaise des Droits de l'Homme], said the inauguration of the government in 2005 should have helped to improve the situation.
The indigenous forest people of central Africa have been largely isolated from the rest of the world, but as they become more integrated into mainstream society the risk of sexual exploitation and HIV/AIDS is a growing threat. Central Africa's pygmy populations, numbering a total of 300,000 to 500,000 people, have lived as hunter-gatherers in the forests of Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Republic of Congo (ROC) since time immemorial.
Thousands of children who fled across the border to Zimbabwe during Mozambique's 17-year civil war are stranded in a stateless existence, without access to identity documents and social services in their adopted country. Most Mozambican nationals have settled in northeastern Zimbabwe's Mashonaland Central Province along the border with Mozambique, where they have set up their own homesteads or were adopted by local families.
Barely two months before legislative elections in the Republic of Congo, a row is raging between the government and opposition over the composition of the electoral commission that will oversee the polls. The national assembly, dominated by members of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso's party, in April adopted a motion stipulating that members of the independent electoral commission be nominated by presidential decree.
Despite the victory against apartheid in South Africa in 1994, millions of people still live in shacks in the townships in South Africa. The Freedom Charter which called for decent housing has been unimplemented. The award winning film "Breyani and The Councillor" made last year shows the struggle for decent housing and jobs in a township in Durban. The residents begin to struggle for justice and are met with repression.
The legalisation of same-sex marriages in South Africa in 2006 was expected to speed up the liberation of gays and lesbians in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe and Namibia, where homosexuality is still illegal, but international and local experts believe the battle for recognition in Africa is far from over.
Like his neighbours in the southern Ethiopian district of Yirgacheffe, Birhanu Gizamu is a smallholder coffee farmer. Unlike the rest of the community, however, he has no hesitation in whipping out a crumpled blue card from the clinic which proclaims his HIV status. "I tested negative," the 42-year-old proudly noted, handing over the card for verification. "I went for [an HIV] test in 2005 after my wife pushed me, so we went together; I'd been in the military before becoming a coffee farmer, so I knew I was at risk."
Although the move to normalise the legislative environment for the media in Somalia is welcome, ARTICLE 19 is concerned that the Draft Law strays into areas of regulation and registration that will seriously hinder freedom of expression. Furthermore, ARTICLE 19 believes the proposed law goes well over the top "with strict obligations of accuracy to be enforced through imposition of harsh criminal penalties."
Hrinfo has expressed dismay that Egypt's Judge Abdel Fatah Murad has asked the Administrative Judiciary Court to block 29 websites, in addition to the 21 he had previously requested be made inaccessible. The judge amended his original list of websites following a 5 May 2007 investigation of the case by the court, resulting in a total of 50 websites presently vulnerable to closure as a result of the judge's request.
FEATURES: Ronald Wesso on the challenges for solidarity with Zimbabwe activists
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Book reviews and commentary on child soldiers by Lansana Gberie
- SMS election monitoring report from Nigeria
- Kavaljit Singh discusses Southern transnationals
- Pastor Barry Wuganaale says no to Shell in Ogoniland
LETTERS: Mordecai Mahlangu on being assaulted by Mugabe
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul Raheem on Wolfowitz, the World Bank and the hypocrisy of the West
BLOGGING AFRICA: A round up of the African blogosphere
BOOKS AND ARTS: Raising funds for Zimbabwean activists
WOMEN AND GENDER: Is violence against women on the HIV/Aids donor agenda?
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Bomb kills four peacekeepers in Somalia
HUMAN RIGHTS: 20,000 poor Angolans evicted from capital
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Nigerian lawyers boycott courts
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Coast guard saves 35 illegal immigrants
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Controversy ahead of Congo elections
AFRICA AND CHINA: Calls for wider Sino-African cooperation
CORRUPTION: Wolfowitz resigns
DEVELOPMENT: Making a case for debt relief with no strings attached
HEALTH AND HIV/Aids: Nevirapine price-cut for developing world
EDUCATION: Zimbabwe’s teachers go AWOL
LGBTI: Frontline grants for human rights defenders at risk
ENVIRONMENT: Continent pays price for climate change
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Agrarian reform in South Africa comes down to earth
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Kenya’s FoI bill tabled in parliament
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Very British coup for African francophone
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: New laws to regulate Ghana’s ICT industry
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*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 European Union (EU) has donated Sh24 million for the conservation and management of Mau forest, Lake Nakuru’s main catchment area. The money was given to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the communities living near the forest as part of KSh430million EU has set aside for development projects across the country.
This might sound unpalatable, even harsh, but it is a fact. Ever since Nina Bang (Danish Minister of Education 1924-26) became the world’s first female Cabinet minister, democracy has been hostile to women with ambition for higher political office.Instead, the best ally for such women has been dictatorship, bloodshed and conflict! This is the message driven powerfully home once more by the recent presidential elections in France.
Rising temperatures in Africa are blamed for droughts, floods and storms while the continent's fabled wildlife is struggling to adapt to shifting ecosystems that could lead to mass extinctions. Scientists say Africa -- the world's poorest continent -- is already paying a high price for global climate change and must now figure out what it can do itself to slow the transformation.
The urgency of addressing the vulnerability of young women and adolescent girls of all backgrounds, but particularly the poor, cannot be over stated. Innovative, far-reaching and rapid responses are needed to impact whole generations so that the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty can be within reach. This new UNFPA/IPPF report sets out to explore the relationship between economic independence, vulnerability to HIV infection, the level of sexual and reproductive health among women and adolescent girls, and gender-based violence.
Aid-for-Trade (A4T) initiative is a new concept introduced as part of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)'s package to make the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) truly development oriented. Specifically, A4T is aimed at promoting development in low-income countries, especially the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) weak and vulnerable economies, given that these economies cannot profit from increased market access and trade liberalisation without supply-side capacity support in terms of production of goods, improved infrastructure, and enhanced human and institutional capacity.
Amidst calls from all corners of the political divide to return to the drawing board on the land reform issue, the Namibia Farm Workers Union recently concluded its land conference, entitled ‘Give the Land Back to the People’. This was possibly the first broad-based platform that has dealt exclusively with the land issue since the seminal National Land Conference in 1991 that resulted in the development of policies and legislation to direct the land reform programme adopted by the Government of Namibia.
The South African government has a dilemma: it is constitutionally and morally compelled to redress the past injustices of land ownership, but, by its own determination, its agrarian reform programme will fail if it does not also achieve economic success. For that reason, agrarian reform in SA was more than the transfer of land, Deputy Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Dirk du Toit told a media briefing at the start of a tour of land-reform projects near Bloemfontein at the weekend. “We have to ask: Did we contribute to poverty reduction?” he said.
This letter comes from the children of a small nation called Zimbabwe. We are not as old as you are nor are we as wise as you are. We are only children, poor children for that matter. This we say because we believe we do not have the right to be addressing you, rather it would be more than a privilege if this letter passes through your hands, let alone enter your incoming-mail baskets.
Children can grow up without ever holding, let alone owning, a colourful illustrated children's book. Years ago Botswana embraced the idea of a "Book Flood" to primary schools through trunks of books and trying to start school libraries. This has helped, but it has not yet turned the tide. The availability of books for pupils to read is only one step in the process of transformation. Molefe, Pansiri and Weeks address availability of reading materials in rural Africa.
The Open Society Institute, the headquarters of a network of foundations working throughout Africa and the world, seeks outstanding candidates for a new position, Director of African Union Advocacy. The position will be based at the offices of the Open Society Institute for East Africa in Nairobi, with eventual relocation to Addis Ababa. The Deadline for Applications is May 25, 2007.
The Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) are pleased to announce the Africa/Asia/Latin America Scholarly Collaborative initiative encompassing joint research, training, publishing and dissemination activities by researchers drawn from across the global South, and to call for applications to participate in the third South-South Summer Institute they are organizing within the framework of the initiative.
This World Health Organization page provides detailed information on country health profiles.
When a headhunter phoned Tidjane Thiam, then working in Paris, to discuss a job with Britain's biggest insurer, Aviva, he laid down a condition. "I said, 'well, I am very happy to interview. But frankly, you need to tell them that you found someone who is black, African, Francophone and 6ft 4'," he laughs, his mouth shut tightly and his broad shoulders shaking at the recollection.
Responding to Conflict is offering a course on Strengthening Policy and Practice. This is a one week workshop run twice a year. the aims of the workshop are to increase participants awareness of the link between policies which are made and what actually happens in practice; and to assist participants in finding constructive methods for engaging with unpredictable and changing circumstances. The course will run from 16 - 20 July 2007 and 19 - 23 November 2007.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41480.jpgPastor Wuganaale, of the Ogoni Solidarity Front in Nigeria maintains that the Ogoni people wish to be free of 'indigenous colonisaton' and will not make a deal with Shell.
Barely 48 hours after the 'spiritual cleansing' service that was held in Ogoniland, the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Cape Town hosted Rev. Fr. Mathew Hassan Kukah for a public talk entitled 'Nigerian Election: Is the country no Longer at Ease?'
The news of his visit to Cape Town, ostensibly to polish the image of the Obasanjo government and create a platform of acceptability for the incoming government, filtered into the office of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum about 24 hours before the programme.
Rev. Fr. Kukah summarily said that the Nigerian election is acceptable, considering the history of Nigeria and within the context of its politics, because there had been no credible election in the past. He emphasised that the George Bush election was as much fraud as the Nigerian election. 'But because it is America, things are still moving on' he said.
Kukah said the criticism of Nigeria’s own electoral charade is like describing the poor as thief. The Nigerian election is painted as fraudulent because it is Nigeria. This done to justify the mindset, perception and public opinion held of the country.
He argued that if the elections were as bad as the international observers claimed, 'why is it that there is calm in the country; the military should have taken over by now'.
Kukah went as far as to say that a fraudulent election is not the problem of the average Nigerians: 'what the people are looking for service delivery, no matter who is in power or how such person came to power'.
Kukah contradicted himself, even though he reaffirmed some of the things that are known facts.
For instance, he stated that the National Constitution Reformation Conference was aimed at elongating the period of Obasanjo in power. When it failed Obasanjo has to seek means of remaining relevant by becoming the power behind the power.
He also said that Shehu Musa Yar’Adua is not as clean as he has been portrayed. Stating that it is not practically possible for anybody to contest the position of the presidency in Nigerian without spending as much as 100,000,000 dollars he asked: 'who paid for all the planes that were used for the campaigns of Yar’Adua?'
His extensive presentation ended with the call that the Nigerian incoming government should be accepted, while at the same time he described Olusegun Obasanjo as the main disease that has bedeviled the country.
To his shock, the first person that intervened was an Ogoni, the project coordinator of Ogoni Solidarity Forum, Pastor Barry Wuganaale. He asked Kukah, 'if you know this much of Obasanjo and the fact that he runs a highly centralized state that masquerade as democracy, why have you been working with him to force the Ogoni people back into the failed state you describe Nigeria to be?'
The chairperson of the Anti-War Coalition of Western Cape followed with another question: 'Why is your committee aligning with the imperial force – Shell, that is behind the suffering of the people?'
The hall was dominated by the pro-Ogoni struggle activists. It turned the discussion to focus on Ogoni. Kukah flared in demonstration of his enragement and consequently made a lot of revelations. He was obviously stirred with the number of placards carried up from that moment till the end of the programme.
Some of the placards read:
'Rev. Fr. Kukah, what is your interest in Ogoni oil?'
'Kukah, what happened to the Oputa Panel?'
'If oil was in Kaduna would you allow it to be stolen?'
'Your Committee didn’t respond to the petition of the refugees in Benin!'
'Ogoniland does not need spiritual cleansing” “Ogoniland need environmental cleansing.'
'Don’t force Ogoni people to negotiate with HELL.'
'Kukah! Shell means HELL, what kind of clergy advocate for HELL for a people?'
'Ogonis are not ‘Nigerians.’
'Ogonis want to be free from indigenous colonization.'
'Ogonis are not your slaves.'
'Kukah; the time of slavery is over.'
'If you have no deal with Shell, hands off Ogoniland.'
In responding to the questions on Ogoni, which took over the whole discussion, Kukah said, it was Ledum Mitee that actually initiated the invitation of the United Nation Environmental Programme (UNEP) and that he has never been to Nairobi to have discussion with the UNEP.
On this matter, there seem to be a kernel of truth in Kukah’s statement. During the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Pastor Barry who was in Nairobi narrowly missed Ledum Mitee who left on the day of the opening of the WSF. Legborsi Pyagbara confirmed to Barry that Ledum was in Nairobi solely for a meeting with UNEP. After the WSF, Legborsi stayed behind for almost two weeks to follow up with meetings with the UNEP.
Kukah told the audience under suppressed anger that 'money had been given to your president, Ledum, on several occasion by the governor of Rivers state and he did not utilize them'.
Kukah made a staggering revelation that when Ledum Mitee was asked to say what should be given to the families of the eight other Ogonis that were hanged with Ken, that he 'suggested five hundred thousand or at most one million naira to each family'.
Kukah stated that the 5,000,000 naira that was given to each of the families of the deceased were out of the magnanimity of Peter Odili. From that point, the heat was turned to Mitee, he asserted that if MOSOP is fighting for democracy, why is it that Ledum Mitee has ruled MOSOP for ten years without an election and set outside the constitution of the organisation?
Kukah reiterated that the problem of the Ogoni people is the prominent Ogoni people that collect contract from the back door from Shell and the government, that countless number of opportunities had been given to the Ogoni through their elites but they were squandered by their representatives in government and the MOSOP.
Kukah went on to openly say that even Mitee does not believe that Shell should be driven out of Ogoniland because 'as your president, Ledum, puts it, Shell is not a chicken that can just be driven away like that.'
The most important revelation that Kukah made to the audience is that the Ogoni people are already being antagonised, because, 'other tribes are worried that the Ogoni is cheating them for not allowing Shell to drill from their land, so whose oil would be used to develop your own land?'
Kukah implied that the Ogoni people must allow themselves to be part of the corrupt Nigerian system because the time of carrying placards over. Communism he said is death. 'Placards or guns had never enabled any people to form a government in the world, you have to join to the government because no matter how good your voice is, you can never sing anywhere except in the choir.'
He explained in no uncertain terms that the several Ogonis had been begging for appointment and departing from the Ogoni Bill of Rights. In apparently referring to struggle for resource control by the Ogoni people, he said:
'No ethnic group has ever had control over oil, it is the right of the federal government to mine and control oil and your people cannot achieve that.'
Mathew Kukah concluded by saying that the prayer and dedication of Ogoniland that was organised on 14 May was initiated by the Christian leaders of Ogoniland. 'If the Ogoni people say they want to pray and cleanse their land, l am not an Ogoni man and l cannot oppose it.'
* Pastor Barry Wuganaale is from the Ogoni Solidarity Front, Cape Town, South Africa.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
We continue to receive excellent articles for publication in Pambazuka News. If you wish to submit articles for consideration, please make sure that you place the word 'SUBMISSION' in the subject line and send the article to . This will help us make sure that your submissions don't get lost in the thousands of other mails that comes to that address.
The Editors
Run in partnership with the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University, this course aims to provide a greater conceptual understanding of conflict, violence and peace and the forces of conflict dynamics. It provides a range of practical skills-based training in the handling of conflict situations, including conflict analysis, communication, negotiation, active listening, strategy building and evaluation. The course runs from 2 - 14 September 2007.
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is disappointed by the refusal of Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo to sign into Law the Freedom of Information Bill sent to him for assent by the National Assembly last March. We view the President's action as a major set back for West Africa region in the struggle to ensure popular participation in democratic processes.
Militant groups in the Niger Delta have stepped up attacks on oil installations following last month's election. Since the beginning of May, pipelines have been sabotaged and at least 29 foreign oil workers have been kidnapped. A spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) warned that attacks would continued until the government opened a dialogue about restoring the oil wealth to the people in the region.
The Bank Information Center (BIC) is seeking to fill the position of Executive Director. BIC partners with civil society in developing and transition countries to influence the World Bank and other international financial institutions (IFIs) to promote social and economic justice and ecological sustainability. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, beginning on June 25. The job will stay open until filled.
AJWS is seeking to recruit a Senior Program Officer. The Senior Program Officer for Africa will be based in New York and responsible for shaping and implementing the strategic direction of AJWS’ grant making in Africa and directly managing grants in Southern Africa. S/he will represent AJWS’ Africa program at international forums as well as AJWS Board and donor meetings.
With funding from the US Institute for Peace, AMERA (Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance), organized a conference in Nairobi in January this year to promote legal aid for refugees in the global south. At the conference, the participants revised the Charter for membership for a network of such NGOs and law clinics and a professional code of ethics for those representing refugees, the 'Nairobi Code'.
Kenyan 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement is one of the most prominent women’s civil society organizations, based in Kenya, advocating for human rights and supporting good governance and peaceful democratic change through the protection of the environment.
The World Bank has made the entire report of this ad hoc group of its Executive Board available online. The report concludes that Mr. Wolfowitz violated World Bank rules and had a de facto conflict of interest when he directed that a salary increase be made to Ms. Riza in excess of those allowed by World Bank organizational policies.
African leaders will meet in Ghana in July to discuss the idea of creating a united government for the continent. This would be a legacy of the dreams of pioneering post-colonial leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah, and would see current states surrender certain powers to the superior entity.
Deputies and experts attending the Pan African Parliament on Monday called for Western countries to help reverse the environmental damage to the continent that they had helped create. "This problem is generated by countries in the West," said the African Union Commission's rural development and agriculture commission director Babagana Ahmadu.
The United Nations human rights chief has said recent air raids by Sudanese forces on at least five Darfur villages appeared to be "indiscriminate and disproportionate", and violated international law. The attacks between April 19 and 29 have already been condemned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, although Khartoum says they never took place.
The African Development Bank (ADB) on Thursday concluded its two-day annual board meetings in Shanghai, boosting Africa-China ties in the process. ADB President Donald Kaberuka hailed the meetings as "a success". He said the discussions on a wide range of issues were constructive and the organization flawless. Around 2,000 people attended the meetings, including Rwandan President Paul Kagame, President of Cape Verde Pedro Pires and Madagascar President Marc Ravalomanana.
Besieged World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating an agreement with the bank board to resign, World Bank sources said on Wednesday. The sources said Wolfowitz, former U.S. deputy defense secretary, insisted that he will resign voluntarily and the bank should share some responsibility for his pay-and-promotion package for Shaha Riza.
Angelique Kidjo, the Afro-pop singer and UN goodwill ambassador, has launched a foundation to pay for girls' education to give them a chance to escape poverty, according to a report by Al-Jazeera. Kidjo, who is from the impoverished nation of Benin, said the Batonga Foundation would grant scholarships to nearly 400 girls completing primary school in five countries
The Chinese premier has rejected accusations that his country is taking resources from Africa without considering the development of the continent's own industries. Speaking in Shanghai at the opening session of the African Development Bank's annual meeting, Wen Jiabao said China was "sincere" about its commitment to Africa.
Call for poetry for the journal Agenda's 20th anniversary edition Poetry about women, their lives, successes, struggles and rights in all sectors of society is welcomed.
Length of poetry contributions:
Poems to fit a full page of the Agenda journal (19cm x 24cm)
Deadline: 27 May 2007
Submission requirements:
All submissions must be emailed to [email][email protected]
Armed conflicts, in their various forms, remain rampant in today's world. Old wars and new wars, including the 'war on terror', continue to be fought, and armed violence from Iraq to Darfur impacts on the lives of civilians. Does law offer protection in armed conflicts? The course will be held from 17 September-16 December 2007).
The Social Inclusion Specialist will join a motivated, results-orientated, multicultural team. S/he will work in a complex and demanding environment and will work closely with the Aga Khan University Institute of Muslim Civilisations, The Global Centre of Pluralism in Canada, the AKDN units in Canada, Portugal and USA and draw on experience and expertise from other organisations in Europe, including those of the European Union. Application deadline is 10 June 2007.
This is a call for poetry reflecting on experiences in Zimbabwe, past and present. Poets must also reflect on the spirit of this country's people through words that survive and vibrate.
For further information: write to Tinashe Mushakavanhu: [email][email protected]
The International Journal of Transitional Justice invites submissions for an upcoming thematic issue on 'Gender and Transitional Justice'. This issue will be jointly co-edited by Justice Navi Pillay of the International Criminal Court and will be published in November 2007. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2007.
This is an exciting opportunity to become involved in a global programme to increase the effectiveness of microfinance in reducing poverty. The Imp-Act Consortium has launched a three-year programme to scale up social performance management (SPM) in the microfinance industry. Deadline for applications is June 5 2007.
To those of you who care about human rights, the rule of law and human decency:
I was one of the lawyers assaulted by Mugabe's thugs in Harare on 8 May 2007.
Our crime: we sought to present to the minister of justice and commissioner of police a petition by Zimbabwe lawyers protesting the unlawful arrest and detention of two of our colleagues, and the defiance by the police of court orders requiring their release and declaring their arrest and detention unlawful.
We assembled outside our high court. Before we could exercise our constitutional right, we were ordered by a senior police officer to disperse - or else. We sought to comply. As we were trooping away some of the police thugs in plain clothes said we were moving too slowly and in the wrong direction.
In actual fact we were going to our offices. They then set upon us with rubber truncheons and baton sticks. I tried to assist one of the female lawyers as she was close to being hit. For my chivalry, I was singled out.
I was hit twice on the head and back, and four times on my arms by a female who seemed to relish assaulting an unarmed defenceless lawyer. I ended up with a swollen head and badly bruised and marked arms and back.
Other of my legal colleagues were hit in varying degrees. The president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe Mrs Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested with three others, driven away in an open truck, and assaulted severely. She needed medical attention. By comparison, I probably got off lightly though I am still in pain.
None of us were charged with any offence, for we committed none. All we wanted was to assert the rule of law and persuade the Mugabe regime to respect laws and the rights of citizens.
For our efforts we were violated and humiliated. But we cannot give up on our country. We cannot yield to a despot or succumb to this lawlessness. While we do not plan to be martyrs, we will nevertheless stand for what is right.
For all its brutality, the government of Mugabe and its instruments of oppression have lost the battle of ideas and values. They rely on brute force to assert themselves. In the long term this is not sustainable, as history amply demonstrates.
Some of you may ask: how can we help? Well I have no great ideas in this regard. The least you can do is pray for the people of this land and for good to triumph over evil. You may also also document these atrocities so that those responsible may know that they will one day be required to account for their misdeeds. You may assure us you care about our battles.
I suspect that I might get into trouble for this email. But others in my country have made greater sacrifices than any I have so far contemplated.
Regards and many thanks for reading this.
The IGF Community Site has been built and designed to get the most possible out the Internet during its first-ever worldwide meeting. The Internet Governance Forum, or IGF, is a remarkable experiment in knowledge and experience sharing across the Internet by all the people that use it, including business, governments, organisations and you, the individual.
The directory of development organizations, listing 51.500 development organizations, has been prepared to facilitate international cooperation and knowledge sharing in development work, both among civil society organizations, research institutions, governments and the private sector.
Pambazuka News is pleased to be bringing to you selected new title information from James Currey Publishers, the leading Oxford-based publishers of academic books on Africa.
James Currey Publishers works closely on co-publication with African publishers as well as university and academic presses in the US.
Each week, we shall bring you information from the African Issues series; books on subjects such as literary criticism, film, theatre and slavery. Further details of most titles and contacts can be found on their website:
Fifty years after Ghana's independence, it is now clear that Kwame Nkrumah was 'a black star'. Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah seized opportunities to lead the countries of sub-Saharan Africa away from from colonialism. In 1957, he became the first Prime Minister of Ghana. By the time, he was overthrown in a coup in 1966 most African countries, outside the settler-dominated South, had also achieved independence.
ISBN: 9781847010100, 236pp. publ. June 2007, £14.95
The Kenyan Internet market is set for a big change as the players transform their strategies to take advantage of new opportunities. With legal VoIP, they are now no longer looking at just offering Internet access. Once the long-delayed interconnect agreements are sorted out, these newcomers will start making inroads into the voice market. With the arrival of cheaper, plentiful international bandwidth in 2008, those who will flourish in a competitive market will no longer primarily sell bandwidth.
Boehringer-Ingelheim is to cut the price of its antiretroviral drug nevirapine (Viramune) by 50% in low-income countries, the company’s chairman said today. However, the concessionary price offered by Boehringer will still be four times higher than the price offered by Indian generic manufacturers through the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative’s purchasing consortium.
Justice Africa offers an internship programme for young professionals and those studying at, or recently graduated from University. The aims of the internships are to develop the next cohort of policy researchers and activists, and to equip them with the research and professional skills necessary to develop their careers.
Pregnancy or breastfeeding do not place women at an increased risk of HIV-1 infection, according to the findings of a prospective study published in the May edition of AIDS. The study recommends that antenatal and postnatal programs must continue to emphasise condom use to protect both mother and baby from HIV infection. A team of US investigators addressed this issue by re-examining the data of a prospective study of hormonal contraception and HIV-1 acquisition in Ugandan and Zimbabwean women.
Magharebia news reports that a Tunisian coastguard boat rescued 35 illegal African migrants trying to reach Italy from Libya. The rescue operation took place near the coast of Sfax on Friday, when a broken motor caused a small boat carrying sub-Saharan immigrants from Libya towards the Italian island of Lampedusa to drift off course.
One week after the Association of Tunisian Journalists (AJT) released a report calling for increased access for all media to the nation’s news sources, the Ministry of Communications responded by promising improvements in the media sector.
The curtain has come down on a two-week election campaign in Algeria, during which candidates in the country’s upcoming legislative elections announced their programmes and attempted to win over voters.
Zambia will seize funds and properties belonging to ex-president Frederick Chiluba and his associates if they fail to pay back $46 million siphoned from the Treasury, a minister said on Wednesday. Chiluba said last week that a British judge's order that he personally return $41 million stolen while he was in office "bordered on racism". Chiluba has denied the charges.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_01_zeleza.gifPius Adesanmi of writes an open letter to France’s new president, Sarkozy with particular reference to the commonalities i.e. both share 'common roots in immigration'. However unlike Pius, Sarkozy goes to 'inhuman lengths to deny his origin'.
'These differences in our attitudes to our mutual roots in the third world notwithstanding, I am saying that we understand each other not because as Minister of the Interior, you rampaged and hounded Arab and Black African immigrants with unequaled inhumanity; not because you abused them from the roof tops; not because you are one of the most hated “westerners” in the communities of dregs from the global south who litter the beautiful metropoles you are trying to keep spick and span; we understand each other because you are one of us! We understand each other because, every time you see your Dad or your brothers and sisters, the mirror shows you the immigrants you just hounded off the streets of Paris for the day. Your visceral hatred of the very conditions of your own emergence is not something we should discuss here.'
Pius goes on to warn Sarkozy not to get ahead of himself over the congratulatory messages from various right wing leaders and politicians around the world and end up a poodle of George Bush. Because unlike Sarkozy’s France – in the US you cannot go around calling
'predominantly hopeless Arab and Black African youths “racaille” (scum), no problem! Since race, racism, and discrimination are not allowed to exist in the République, no one can be injured! Call Azouz Begag, novelist, public intellectual of Algerian origin, and until recently your fellow minister, a “sale connard” (stupid idiot), no problem! There is no discrimination in the République. Call Africans moving to France “toute la misere du monde” (all the world’s misery), no problem. There can be no injury. Call gays and lesbians names that my North American context of political correctness won’t allow me to repeat here, no problem. There can be no harm done on account of things that do not exist. Call Arabs dirty people who keep “moutons dans la baignoire” (sheep in the bath tub), no problem. Again there can be no injury.'
Cairo Freeze posts a cartoon showing Sarkozy’s support for Israel.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_02_africamedia.gifAfrica Media reports on a study that says African women are portrayed more positively in the magazine Marie Claire. However AM writes:
'Despite certain positive images, the study confirms that the magazine does include some stereotypical portraits of suffering of African women. In addition, the magazine also infrequently includes coverage of visits to the continent by movie stars such as Drew Barrymore who sobs over the horrors of Africa. (What, she couldn't find a baby to take home as a souvenir?)'
The full report will be published later this month but it sounds more of the same sobs over the horrors of Africa.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_03_timbuktu.gifTimbuktu Chronicles has report on the construction of a wind pump in rural Kenya made from “old bicycle parts and roofing materials” which is being used to power the water supply from wells.
'Evidence suggests that in rural development, initiatives often take a stronger root when they have been “discovered” locally, rather than introduced from elsewhere. That shouldn’t mean an end to the propagation of sustainable technologies, but it does perhaps suggest that stimulating people to solve their own problems may lead to more lasting solutions.'
It also shows what can be done with a creative mind and using recyclable materials, one more thing that the West can learn from Africa.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_04_kubatana.gifhttp://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_06_jontyfisher.gifThe Fishbowl comments on the latest addition to the list of potential ANC presidents in 'The big men roll in'.
'As we near the ANC AGM, the big guns are starting to roll into town. Tokyo Sexwale has officially "announced" his arrival on the presidential nominations board...expect more to follow...Cyril Ramaphosa, paging Cyril Ramaphosa.'
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_07_ekbensahinghana.gifTrials and Tribulations of a Freshly-Arrived Denizen..of Ghana asks why 'Ecowas officals lost their lives' on the Trans West African Highway which is fast becoming the Trans West African road to death.
'In effect, the so-called Trans-West African Highway Network has been comprehensively completed since last week, prompting joys that the ECOWAS link-up is becoming more of a reality.
Sadly, it's coming at a cost, as exemplified by last Thursday's eerie accident that involved two articulators travelling at top speed in opposite directions; the helping of Ghanaian motorists of passengers of an overturned bus (comprising West Africans from Cote d' Ivoire, Liberia, Benin, Nigeria and Togo) resulting in their deaths as the second articulator hit them at top speed (after having lost control). Altogether, seven vehicles were involved in the very sad loss of lives that claimed 40 people.'
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_08_blackstar.gifBlack Star Journal is one of the few bloggers to consistently report on the conflict in Guinea (Conakry)
'Disaffected soldiers in Guinea have erupted in an orgy of rioting and looting in recent weeks…Soldiers claim that wages have been withheld since 1996, when an army mutiny-cum-attempted coup costs hundreds of lives, and wants the re-integration of troops who were sacked after those events…Over the weekend, soldiers went on the rampage in Conakry, causing panic in the capital…The head of state, Gen. Lansana Conté, conceded to the demands of the mutineers by sacking the army chief and the defense minister. But troops continued to run amock.'
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_09_sokwanele.gifhttp://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_10_sudanreeves.gifSudan Reeves writes an open letter to Darfur activists and advocates on China and the 2008 olympic games.
'The full-scale launch of a large, organized campaign to highlight China's complicity in the Darfur genocide appears likely to begin soon. But it's past time to start thinking about how to tap the creative power of students and other Darfur advocates in this critical initiative. Enough of selling green bracelets and writing letters to those who are content with posturing or avoiding the central challenge of the moment: changing the international diplomatic dynamic in ways that will result in deployment of an international peace-support operation to Darfur, one that can provide adequate protection to civilians and humanitarians.
It's time, now, to begin shaming China-demanding that if the Beijing government is going to host the premier international event, the Summer Olympic Games of 2008, they must be responsible international partners. China's slogan for these Olympic Games- 'One world, one dream'-is a ghastly irony, given Beijing's complicity in the Darfur genocide (see the website for China's hosting of the Olympic Games at http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/blogs_11_naijaman.gifIjebuman's Diary More excellent satire from ID. This week it’s 'Naija DemoCrazy for DUMMIES'.
'A friend wanted to know about naija's democracy, so i've decided to do a dummies style tongue-in-cheek explanation of democracy naija style.
According to the 1999 constitution (which is sometimes used as a "guide" and is probably used as a door stopper in the presidential villa) Nigeria is a "democracy" and operates a presidential system of government where there's a true separation of powers (i.e Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary)...'
* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News and author of Black Looks blog (on a recess).
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41422.jpgRonald Wesso argues that international solidarity with Zimbawean activists, particularly from South Africa, is crucial.
The Zimbabwean situation raises the importance of international solidarity to extraordinary levels.
Many stomachs fell through the floor when people heard President Mbeki and his Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state after their recent summit in Dar es Salaam.
The most these presidents and prime ministers are willing to do are express concern and encourage dialogue.
It is not even clear whether they are concerned for President Mugabe and his violent, power hungry, oppressive regime; or for the victims of the violence, power and oppression.
They are just concerned. So much so that they want sanctions directed against the Zimbabwe government to be softened or lifted.
It is also not clear how Mugabe’s victims are supposed to dialogue with him, while his regime is starving, demonising, beating, raping, jailing and killing them.
Two things are however abundantly clear. President Mbeki and his SADC counterparts will not act against the Mugabe regime in defence of the Zimbabwean people.
They are hoping for an ‘elite transition’ similar to the ones in South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where those with the power and wealth, or who at least have the backing of the rich and powerful, work out amongst themselves how to divide up power and money.
The popular masses are excluded from the process. Inevitably the resulting system leaves them at the mercy of the oppressors and exploiters, trapped in poverty and social crisis. For the vast majority therefore, the SADC solution is no solution.
Zanu-PF is momentarily even dead set against this ‘solution’. Their social base seems to have shrunk to a very tiny business elite and the security apparatus of the state.
Their electoral base among the rural population is shrinking fast. They are not at all confident that any semblance of greater democracy will allow them to satisfy their power hunger.
As for the MDC, both factions want the same transition that the SADC leaders think will emerge from dialogue. They just want more of it and they want it more urgently.
The same could be said of a number of civil society formations such as the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights.
Of course these groups are not as vile in their betrayal of the Zimbabwean masses as the men who run SADC, but they are politically orientated to work with these men for an ‘elite transition’.
Therefore despite their obvious bravery, courage and dignity that contrast so sharply with the cowardice and selfishness of the region’s rulers, these groups do not really point to a solution for the majority.
So what about other activist forces?
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has led a number of strikes and protests for higher wages and workers’ rights. But politically they are a support for the MDC not an alternative to it.
Civil society formations such as the Women of Zimbabwe Arise, the Zimbabwe Social Forum, the Combined Harare Residents Association and the Feminist Political Education Project have organised campaigns and actions to demand social services that meet the basic needs of the masses. They have initiated and taken part in discussions aimed at envisioning and facilitating a political alternative based on freedom and justice for the currently oppressed.
These groups face enormous odds. Even the strongest among them, the ZCTU, operate as a trade union in a situation where 80 per cent and more of people are unemployed. It is easy to understand how this undermines their bargaining power.
Then there is repression. Just recently the ZCTU had to cancel four rallies they were planning to celebrate Workers’ Day because government supporters (agents) threatened to attack and kill unionists if they go ahead.
All of the activists in these civil society groups have had to face similar arrests, violence, threats and insults. Being an activist in Zimbabwe requires levels of bravery and commitment that few are able to muster right now. It is no criticism of these heroines to say that on their own they will not be able to significantly shift the balance of power from the Mugabe regime, and from the SADC/MDC type of elite transition.
This is where international solidarity becomes so important. From South Africa’s history we know that international solidarity is helpful and necessary.
We also know that there are certain periods when it becomes decisive. After the repression of the Sharpeville era in the early 1960s, the struggle went through a long period where international solidarity was one of its most important mainstays.
Zimbabwe is in a similar period now. International solidarity, particularly from people in South Africa, can play a decisive role in this period and opening up the way for future mass movements in favour of emancipation from patriarchy, state power and capitalism.
Activists in South Africa have been taking up the challenge in various ways. COSATU has been openly critical of both the Mugabe and Mbeki governments and have also organised protests at the border.
Among other things the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) went on solidarity visits to groups in Zimbabwe and have hosted such groups on visits to South Africa.
Abahlali base Mjondolo (Abahlali) has also expressed solidarity and shown a willingness to take up issues, as has the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and some other groups such as the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
In Cape Town, the Building Women’s Activism Forum led a public demonstration in solidarity with sisters in Zimbabwe dealing with state and male violence.
This demonstration, as well as others like those initiated by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, attracted relatively small number of people, though not significantly smaller numbers than many demonstrations about ‘South African’ issues such as water cut-offs and the housing crisis.
Clearly, despite widespread xenophobia, and despite numerous grinding social crises in South Africa itself, a number of people are willing to act in solidarity with the oppressed and exploited masses of Zimbabwe. The challenge is to find ways making solidarity actions stronger and more effective.
Broadly it would seem we need to move from protests that express our outrage to direct support.
Take the Building Women’s Activism Forum for example. These are worthy sisters that did a great thing. They had an effective public demonstration against gender violence in Zimbabwe that attracted significant support, including from men. But what next? More demonstrations? Bigger, more militant ones?
Yes, of course. However it would certainly be helpful if the sisters could identify women’s groups in Zimbabwe to support politically, educationally and financially. Such support could mean the difference between surviving or not for women’s groups in Zimbabwe trying to live a feminist agenda.
It is certainly within the capability of activists in South Africa to support their Zimbabwean counterparts with political and educational materials as well as with money. Not only are we better funded and face less repression, the exchange rate means that money we raise can sustain activities in Zimbabwe.
In order to do this kind of work, activists in South Africa will have to identify specific individuals and groups in Zimbabwe to work with.
Generalised, abstract declarations of solidarity will not do the job. High levels of trust will be required as some of the activities will be illegal in Zimbabwe and will be frowned upon by the quiet diplomats of the South African government.
This would need the development of a shared political orientation. It does not mean having the same ideology or even the same strategy. But it needs broad agreement on the major issue whether to seek forms of struggle that create the possibility of going beyond the horrors of today as well as avoiding the pains of an elite transition to slightly different forms of patriarchy, state power and capitalism.
In fact if we take the case of COSATU, we can argue that it is their refusal to take a political position that has constrained their activism on Zimbabwe. They have been careful to avoid the question of who represents the possibility of a Zimbabwe free of state oppression, male domination and capitalism.
When they have been pressed, their closeness to the ZCTU has brought them to a seemingly pro-MDC position. But they have never really acted on supporting the development of an emancipatory political movement in Zimbabwe.
If the TACs and the Abahlalis and the SMIs do not engage in this kind of direct political solidarity with activists in Zimbabwe, they will similarly miss opportunities to contribute to the making of an emancipatory movement and a liberated society.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41423.jpgThe Election Monitoring Report compiled by the Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) on the Nigerian presidential elections held on 21 April 2007.
Introduction
The idea of using mobile phones to monitor elections was developed by NMEM. We are proud to announce to the world that is was extremely successful. We also recommend that other organisations and countries study our project, and plan to use it in their own future elections.
The primary goal of the project was to use technology to give the ordinary citizen an opportunity to tell the world what really happened in their area on election day.
The spread and reach of mobile telephony in Nigeria is mind boggling: in the last four years more than 30,000,000 Nigerians have become mobile phone users.
Traditionally Eeection observers and monitors deemed credible are often foreign diplomats, bureaucrats and professionals who are sent to visit as many polling stations as they can and inform the world of their impression of the polls.
Their effectiveness is limited to the number of places they can visit in a just one day: in a country as vast as Nigeria with a land mass of 925,000 square kilometres and a population of 140,000,000; without maps or road signs to use in navigation, these foreign observers often limit their activities to Abuja, the capital, Lagos and a few major state capitals. Places like the Niger Delta with its reputation for violence and kidnapping of foreigners are no-go areas.
Most election observers especially in Africa are very conspicuous with their UN or EU branded 4-wheel drive jeeps, 'branded' t-shirts with 'observers' boldly printed on it and large ID tags around their necks.
This is often necessary for security reasons which allows them to move around freely on election day where movement is often restricted. This, however, reduces their effectiveness as people are prone to act properly when they know they are being watched, especially by foreigners.
This is why we decided to use ordinary citizens of Nigeria, all voters themselves to report back to our SMS hub on what really happened on election day from their own polling stations.
The use of ordinary Nigerians to observe and report on the election, we believe, encourages participation by people that would be apathetic as well as provide timely, accurate and impartial information on the conduct of the elections.
It is ultimately the same ordinary citizens who validate the credibility and legitimacy of the eventual electoral outcome. Our monitoring is peculiar because people knew that if they try to rig the election there could be someone behind them that may send a text message reporting the incident.
The network, and how it works
The Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) is organised by the Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) Foundation. With the assistance of Professionals for Humanity (PROFOH), another Nigerian NGO, the network started out with 54 associates resident in each of the 36 states of the country, and Abuja.
These associates were trained to recruit volunteers from their states and instruct them to forward our SMS text invitation to as many people as possible to create a nationwide spread.
Technology
The technology behind this project was made possible using a SMS hub called FrontlineSMS, developed by kiwanja.net, to keep track of all of the texts.
The system allows mass-messaging to mobile phones and crucially the ability for recipients to reply to a central computer.
Thanks to the system we could acknowledge receipt of the text (SMS) and even make specific enquiry to individual volunteers and associates in any area to confirm the authenticity of reports received.
The software also was able to alert us when a report came in from our associates or hitherto unknown volunteer allowing us to rank the accuracy of the information received.
Although the software performed brilliantly we would have loved it to have the ability to make allowance for multimedia service (MMS) as a few of our associates took pictures on camera phones and could only forward them to us via the internet.
Election Day
Election day started out for the technical support staff at 8:30am. Our first task was to send a reminder SMS alert to our associates urging them to personally go to their designated polling stations and to file their report by 12 noon.
The first SMS (text) report to come through the network was on the eve of the presidential election at 11:06pm, alerting NMEM of skirmishes between soldiers of the Nigerian army and unknown militants around government house Yenengoa, Bayelsa state.
The first positive reports started to arrive at 2pm with reports of calm and orderliness in Ibiono Ibom L.G.A in Akwa Ibom State, and also from Kano GRA, Kano state.
From then on, we were flooded with reports from Nigerians who reported as events unfold during the election.The observations below represent a mix of text messages sent in by respondent:
Calm and orderliness; Late arrival of polling materials; Absence of names of registered voters on official voter lists; Early arrival INEC officials and members of the Civil Defense Corp; Voting without proper documents and identification; Extension of voting hours to augment for late opening; Absence of polling booths for voters confidentiality; Stuffing of ballot boxes; Casting away of voting materials; Poor voter turnout; Harassment and intimidation of voters; Ill-equipped security personnel.
Our analysis indicates that extensive fraud and rigging were perpetrated by participating political parties in their areas of control. In total over 10,000 messages were received into the SMS hub.
Observer feedback
The need to readily communicate with the Nigerian electorate was the prime motivation in choosing text messaging as the communications method for our work.
Following the announcement of the presidential election result on Monday the 23 April 2007, text messages were sent out to our respondent asking for their reaction on the acceptability of the result and the president-elect.
While about a fifth of our respondents wanted the results cancelled, the majority, about 80 per cent, reacted that Nigeria could not afford cancellation and re-run. Rather Nigerians want those who are aggrieved to seek peaceful redress at the election tribunals.
Curiously, some of the respondents that reported electoral fraud in their locations believe that the President-elect should be given a chance. One message, which was typical of a number we received, indicated:
'Gov.Yar Adua is generally acceptable as President mainly because of his lack of military antecedence, relative record of transparency as Governor of Katina State and the calibre of opposition he had.'
It is our belief that with adequate funding we can educate and inform the public to take part in exit polls at future elections. Due to inadequate funding we were unable to have our associates follow up at the ward collation center, or Local Government Areas and INEC state offices, where the tallies were added up. Most of our observations were limited to the polling stations.
Sample text messages - below are a few selected messages received from our observers:
'At ward 4 and 5 of Calabar Municipality materials arrived at about 9:45am. Voting started by 10am prompt. All the security agencies and party representatives were all present and voting was conducted orderly though the electorate turn out was low.'
'Almost all result sheets diverted by PDP stalwarts and INEC ad-hoc staff on the way to wards polling stations in Nsukka Enugu State.'
'EVERYWHERE IS CALM VOTING IS ON. MOVEMENT IS RESTRICTED FOR EFFECTIVENESS OF THE ELECTION PROCESS.'
'I want to commend the efforts of INEC and for making this election come to pass in the face of every challenge.'
'Dear Mobile Election Monitor team I am sending this text from UK. There is a huge irregularity of voting at Gwande Karfa ward. In Bokkos LGC. TAKE NOTE. NAPHTALI.
Conclusions
The just concluded election and subsequent handing over of power on 29 May will mark the first time in Nigerian history that power has been transfer from one elected president to another.
Our report indicates fraud and other irregularities in the elections, and this has been collaborated by report of foreign and other domestic observers.
However, there were pockets of hope in places where elections where orderly, free and fairly conducted as earlier mentioned in this report. These area needs to be commended for their vigilance and commitment to their civic responsibilities.
We however believe that the wish of the people was honoured and the most popular candidate returned. Though the election was flawed, many Nigerians shared their views with us, and we believe that this practice will greatly assist in determining the legitimacy of this and future elections in this country. We are very happy we helped give the people a voice via text messaging.
Recommendations
The government must make every effort not to be overly partisan in the electoral process. INEC must be made totally autonomous as regards its finances, appointment of its managerial personnel and its powers, and all aspects of the electoral process must be well articulated.
The political parties must be provided with irrevocable standards and timeline to present to their candidates. The judiciary must be sacrosanct about the laws of the land and be sensitive to the integrity of candidates before clearances to run in the elections. The legislator must be pro-active in its monitoring of the electoral process, and the election commission.
The Nigerian people require more sensitization on their civic responsibility, which should not be restricted to election period only Post-election NMEM project NMEM is convinced that elections and good governance are fundamental and sacrosanct in the democratic process. As such the monitoring and evaluation of an elected government by the governed becomes essential to the process.
In developing countries like Nigeria the challenges of the lack of institutionalised agencies to monitor and ensure good governance or its access and optimal engagement by the ordinary citizens is of great concern due to the almost malignancy of the abuse of office by the political elites. Intervention in the democratic process should therefore not wane after elections but become more resolute in the delivery of democratic dividends to the citizenry.
NMEM has started a process which aims to provide Nigerians a platform to express their aspirations, monitor and evaluate the performances of the elected government and the public office holders in the bid to ensuring good governance. NMEM has created templates of enquiry regarding Nigerians aspirations and expectations of the newly elected government and public officers.
Good Governance Monitoring Project
This phase of the NMEM project has two sub-divisions and is being developed to provide Nigerians with the channels to express aspirations and expectation of the incoming government, and engage directly in the assessment of the government and the performance of the public office holders.
The essence of this phase is to check the abuse of public trust
by political office holders. Firstly, NMEM will reach out to Nigerians via the mass media for Nigerians to articulate their aspirations/expectations through SMS to NMEM computer hub. Messages will be catalogued and presented to the political office holders of respective constituencies.
NMEM hopes this will strengthen the already established covenant between the representatives and their constituencies as already contained in their manifestos.
Although NMEM is challenged by the enormity of the project, the project hopes to identify partners who would share in this commendable intervention - to ensure good governance in Nigeria as a model of true democracy to other developing nations of the world.
For further information on the Good Governance Monitoring Project please contact:
Human Emancipation Lead Project
210 Olusegun Obasanjo Way Uyo Akwa Ibom State Nigeria Telephone: +234-8777-8051 Email: [email][email protected] Acknowledgements We are thankful most especially to Ken Banks of kiwanja.net for providing the technology backbone of our system, and technical assistance, free of charge.
USEFUL LINKS
1. BBC News: http://www.kiwanja.net
3. FrontlineSMS: http://www.frontlinesms.com
4. NMEM: http://www.mobilemonitors.org
5. BBC Digital Planet:
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* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
The vast majority of cluster bomb casualties occur while victims are carrying out their daily livelihood activities, according to Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities. This groundbreaking report by Handicap International documents the lasting economic and social harm these weapons bring upon communities, adversely impacting families for decades to come.
People displaced by the recent fighting in Mogadishu are trickling back to areas of the Somali capital that were unaffected by the clashes, but UNHCR local staff said the city remains tense. Civilians from areas affected by the fighting, and now reportedly patrolled by Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces and Ethiopian troops, are too scared to go home because they fear being caught in crossfire if fresh clashes erupt.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41426.jpgSince the 1990s there has been an emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the developing world. Kavaljit Singh assesses the economic and environmental impact on the both the host countries and the outflows between the South-South multinationals.
The mid-1990s witnessed the dramatic emergence of transnational corporations from the developing world.
Although much of the investment by these corporations is concentrated in other developing countries, South-South, they are increasingly investing heavily in developed countries, South-North, as well.
The South-South and South-North FDI (foreign direct investment) flows are growing much faster than the traditional North-South FDI flows.
However, 87 per cent of the total outward FDI flows in 2004 originated from just ten developing countries.
In terms of foreign assets, the majority of top 50 Southern TNCs are headquartered in Asia (32), followed by Latin America (11) and Africa (7, all of them in South Africa).
What is interesting to note is that the increase in FDI outflows is concentrated in many of the same countries that receive the bulk of FDI inflows to developing countries such as China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Mexico. Outward FDI from China increased from a meagre $400 million in 1980 to $38 billion by the end of 2004.
China is also the second largest investor in Africa, after the US. In the case of India, there were 136 outward investment deals valued at $4.3 billion in 2005. The value of outward foreign investment by Indian firms almost nears the level of inward foreign investment.
With the lifting of international sanctions and the relaxation of capital controls, South African TNCs such as the Anglo American Corporation, De Beers, and SABMiller have become dominant players in the African region. In the words of Graham Mackay, CEO of SABMiller, 'If there was any more of Africa, we would be investing in it. The return on investments here (Africa) has been fantastic.' [1]
The motivations behind cross-border investments by Southern TNCs are not different from others. To a large extent, competition pressures arising from globalisation processes (such as liberalisation of imports and inward FDI) drive Southern corporations to invest abroad.
Like their Northern counterparts, the Southern TNCs are investing abroad to gain access to natural resources, markets, skills, and technology. In some recent cases, acquiring brand names (such as the acquisition of IBM’s personal computer division by China’s Lenovo) seems to be the prime motive.
To a large extent, the expansion of South-South and South-North investment flows reflects the increasing integration of developing countries into the world economy. A number of important factors including regional integration through trade and investment agreements, trade and financial liberalisation, increasing wealth as well as limited market size and resource base at home have encouraged Southern TNCs to invest abroad.
Instead of investing in greenfield projects, however, Southern transnationals are increasingly undertaking investments through acquisitions. Recently announced buyout deals (such as Beijing-based Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s PC business and the acquisition by Mexican company Cemex of the UK’s RMC) suggest that Southern TNCs are more actively engaged in M&A deals.
The bulk of India’s outward FDI is in the form of mergers and acquisitions, mainly in telecommunications, energy and pharmaceuticals. Even though most of the buyouts by Southern TNCs may still be under the billion dollar range, they portray an increasing outward orientation of big business in the developing world.
According to Joseph Battat and Dilek Aykut of the World Bank, South-South FDI increased from $15 billion in 1995 to $46 billion in 2003, accounting for some 35 per cent of total FDI flows in developing countries [2]. Despite their small size, South-South FDI flows are significant to many poor countries such as Lesotho, Mongolia, and Nepal. As far as South-North FDI flows are concerned, OECD countries received $16 billion of FDI in 2001, up from a mere $1 billion in 1995.
The bulk of South-South FDI flows are regional. For instance, nearly two-thirds of FDI into China originates in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Similarly, transnational corporations from Chile, Brazil, and Argentina operate largely in the Latin American region. Russian investments abroad have primarily been in the countries of the former Soviet Union while South African investments are almost completely located in Southern Africa.
In addition, the majority of South-South FDI flows are concentrated in the infrastructure and extractive sectors such as oil and gas. It is mainly state-owned corporations that dominate investments in these sectors. State-owned oil companies from China and India are rapidly acquiring oil and gas fields in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America. For instance, almost half of China’s outward FDI went to acquire natural resource projects in Latin America in 2004. Similarly, India’s state-owned firm, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, invested heavily in oil and gas fields in the Russian Federation and Angola.
Given that state-owned corporations are a significant source of South-South FDI flows (particularly in extractive industries and infrastructure), such investments may be driven not only by economic but also by political, strategic and diplomatic factors. The billions of dollars worth of investment by China in Africa is a case in point. The Chinese companies are involved in the building of oil refineries, dams, roads, and big infrastructure projects in several African countries including Sudan, Liberia, Angola, Chad, and Central African Republic.
However, China’s investments in Africa are not purely driven by economic factors. To some extent, such big investments also help China in earning international goodwill and securing political support for its own agenda, particularly to isolate Taiwan diplomatically (out of total 26 countries that have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, seven belong to Africa).
It is interesting to note that outward investments by Southern TNCs are also supported by their respective governments through removal of capital controls, fiscal incentives, and investment protection measures. China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore have created special mechanisms to provide preferential treatment and insurance against risks through credit guarantees schemes.
For instance, the Chinese government adopted a policy ('Go Global') in 2000 to encourage its firms to invest abroad. China’s Export-Import Bank provides loans to firms for outward investments in resource development and infrastructure.
If the investment is undertaken in an aid-recipient country, Chinese firms also receive preferential loans. Fiscal incentives are also provided to firms which bring machinery, plant, and equipment to their overseas ventures.
Some regional arrangements, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), also provide various incentives (including lower tax and tariff rates) for outward investment within the regions. Apart from fiscal and financial support, bilateral investment treaties and double taxation treaties between developing countries are growing.
To secure access to strategic assets, some Southern TNCs have also invested in developed countries such as Australia and Canada. In addition to the extractive and infrastructure sectors, there are also a few cases of large-scale South-North investments involving M&As (mergers & acquisitions). In particular, Chinese corporations have been active in acquiring several well-known consumer brand names, such as Thompson, RCA, and IBM.
Interestingly, tax havens are favorite destinations for many Southern TNCs as they are for Northern TNCs. The Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Cyprus are the main destinations for Brazilian, Indian, and Russian outward FDI. Hong Kong plays an important role for the overseas expansion of Chinese corporations.
However, it needs to be emphasised here that some South-North investment deals have been subjected to intense political backlash in Northern countries. Several recent cross-border investment bids by Southern TNCs (for instance, the proposal by a Chinese company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to take over US oil company, Unocal) reflect growing unease among policy makers in the North.
Given the fact that most developing countries are usually capital importers, the rise of Southern TNCs poses new policy dilemmas. The policy makers in the developing world are increasingly finding it difficult to strike a balance between the country’s interest as a host country and its newly-found interests as a home country.
How should the new and growing phenomenon of outward FDI from the South be assessed? Are South-South FDI flows favorable to the host economy? Are the strategies and behaviors of Southern TNCs different from their Northern counterparts? Do Southern TNCs maintain better transparency, environmental, and labor standards than their Northern counterparts? What are the developmental impacts of investments by Southern TNCs? Who benefits from South-South investments? Who loses? Should South-South investment be promoted as an alternative to North-South investment flows?
Unfortunately, the answers to such pertinent questions are hampered by the lack of in-depth studies and reliable data on South-South and South-North FDI flows. Despite such information gaps, one thing is certain: this new and growing phenomenon is going to play an important role in the global economy in the coming years.
Notes:
1. Remarks made by Graham Mackay at Africa Economic Summit 2005, Cape Town, June 1-3, 2005.
2. Joseph Battat and Dilek Aykut, “Southern Multinationals: A Growing Phenomenon,” note prepared for the conference, Southern Multinationals: A Rising Force in the World Economy, Mumbai, November 9-10, 2005.
* Kavaljit Singh is Director of Public Interest Research Centre, a policy research institute, based in New Delhi. He is the author of widely published books, Questioning Globalization (Zed Books, 2005), Taming Global Financial Flows (Zed Books, 2000), and The Globalization of Finance: A Citizen's Guide (Zed Books, 1998). His previous publications on foreign investment include The Reality of Foreign Investments (Madhyam Books, 1997) and TNCs and India (with Jed Greer, PIRG, 1995).
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
The Botswana government has announced that access to the country for the top UN human rights spokesman for indigenous peoples will be restricted. In an astonishing move, the government has invoked a special clause of the country’s constitution to slam visa restrictions on the UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, Mexican Rodolfo Stavenhagen.
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41428.jpgLansana Gberie reviews two books on child soldiers: Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourama and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which is now being sold in Starbucks coffee shops across America.
The most difficult ones to deal with, the earnest UN official told me, are the 'teenage ruffians'. I was talking to him in Monrovia, capital of Liberia in 2004.
A large UN force, 15,000 strong, was desperately trying to disarm the mostly deranged combatants who ravaged the place for over a decade. Many people had thought that the disarmament would be fairly easy because a large number of the Liberian militias have gone through such a process before, some of them twice.
There had been the incomplete process, supervised by ECOMOG (the West African intervention force) just before the shambolic 1997 elections. Some of the Liberian fighters had actually been disarmed as fighters in Sierra Leone during that country’s (earlier) UN-supervised disarmament process.
But the first attempted demobilisation turned chaotic after the militias, desperate for the small cash incentive to hand in their weapons before Christmas, stormed Monrovia. At least eight people were killed in the ensuing violence. In the event, the UN paid 12,000 soldiers but received only 8,000 weapons.
The UN official calmly told me about a two-hour long meeting he had had with '48 Generals'. 'Most of them were children, of course', he added. 'And the trouble is that these bush Generals are absolutely jealous of their ranks! It makes the word ‘feral’ meaningless.'
The official suggested that I go with him to Gbarnga to see for myself. With some reluctance I agreed. Gbarnga was once the headquarters of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), which started Liberia’s war. It had become an immense ruin. The pathos of its decrepitude was that it had now edged itself, once again, towards the centre of Liberia’s woes: the militias encamped there had become frighteningly restive and violent.
By the time we got there, a long line of them had formed at the cantonment site to hand in old AK 47 rifles and collect their money. Things seemed to be going well when suddenly a scrawny teenage fighter with a bandana around his head jumped ahead of the queue, raised his old rifle and started shouting abuses at the UN officers. 'Mother fucker. Give us our money now or we’ll go to Sierra Leone, to Guinea, to Ivory Coast, and start fighting all over again.' I sneaked quietly away.
I was reminded of this chilly incident recently when I started reading Ahmadou Kourama’s haunting novel Allah is Not Obliged. Its obscenely loquacious central character, Birihima, an ex-child fighter who has seen service in the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, happily describes himself as 'rude as a goat’s beard', and given to swearing 'like a bastard'.
He continues: 'I don’t give two fucks about village custom any more, 'cos I’ve been in Liberia and killed lots of guys with an AK-47 (we called it a ‘kalash’) and got fucked-up on kanif [cannabis] and lots of hard drugs.' He is now, he says, stalked by 'the ghosts of many innocent people I killed'. This is not 'an edifying spectacle'.
The novel was first published in France in 2000. Its Ivorian author died three years later. It was a huge success in France, but its English edition, published by William Heinemann last year got a few respectable mentions and then was quickly forgotten.
The novel’s liberal and somewhat foolish use of the word ‘nigger’ was probably too off-putting. Doubtless it makes the story – a powerful psychological exploration of the terrible phenomenon of child soldiery – less exalted for a reader of the English translation than it actually is.
The narrator says at the outset in the novel that 'the full, final and completely complete title of my bullshit story is Allah is not obliged to be fair about all things he does on earth.' It is an insight of sort, capturing the kind of cynicism that has, until recently, surrounded the phenomenon of child soldiery.
The use of children in armed combat is probably as old as warfare itself. It has never been limited to irregular armies. Even Clauswitz, the great theoretician of conventional warfare, joined the Prussian army at age 13. There were hundreds of thousands of children in all the major armies that fought the two world wars.
After much foot-dragging, in 1989 193 countries signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets 15 years as the minimum age for recruitment into armed forces.
Incidentally the US (and Somalia, no doubt because it didn’t have a government) signed, but refused to ratify the convention. The convention was largely ignored even by those who signed it There was no legal instrument to enforce it.
In the 1980s Renamo, a uniquely brutal (and mercenary) rebel group in Mozambique, which anticipated Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the use of amputations as a war tactic, had made widespread recruitment of children into its militia (also anticipating the RUF) a core part of its insurgency.
Other African rebel groups, also markedly mercenary, followed this pattern. The spectacle of drug-addled children armed with AK 47 rifles and gamely inflicting terror against defenceless civilians became a ubiquitous part of African warfare: a metaphor for the continent’s underdevelopment and mindless brutality.
After an intense campaign – led by Graca Machel, the Mozambican wife of Nelson Mandela, with the active support of then Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy – against this appalling new reality, the UN Security Council in 2000 passed the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which made no distinction between formal militaries and non-state militias, and which defined the recruitment of children under 18 (instead of 15) years of age as a war crime.
Since then, UN-sponsored war crimes trials, like the one in Sierra Leone, have included recruitment of children into armed groups as a crime against humanity.
As I write, however, it is estimated that 300,000 children are serving in various armies or militia groups around the world. During Sierra Leone’s war, the RUF would have its child recruits branded with red-hot bayonets: the figures R-U-F were literally carved on their body, making defection – because RUF fighters caught by government troops and sometimes by civilians were often summarily executed – almost impossible. These children – hysterical, flagellant, and immensely lethal – would then roam the countryside, destroying every living thing they encounter.
Shortly before the Optional Protocol was issued, I attended a conference about child soldiers, organised by Axworthy in the Canadian city of Winnipeg in 2000.
In one of the sessions, I attempted to make a distinction between children kidnapped and inducted into militias (like the RUF did) and those who, orphaned and left homeless by the terror campaigns of insurgents voluntarily join armies or pro-government forces, finding for themselves a home and some kind of security.
The Liberian activist/politician Conmany Wesseh, who was actively engaged with the problem in West Africa, took me aside and remarked: 'This issue does not admit of such a fine distinction. Recruitment of children into any armed group is bad, full stop. You provide a loophole for all kinds of opportunists by fudging: what moral and professional difference is there between some armies and all these rebel groups?' His point was unanswerable, and I kept quiet about the issue henceforth.
Ishmael Beah’s phenomenally successful A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007) makes this same point in another way. Though his pained but fluent account does not exactly resolve the central dilemma.
Beah served as a child soldier in the Sierra Leone army during the country’s decade-long war. His book, which recounts his traumatic experiences during the period, has been on the top of the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks now, and it is being offered by Starbucks in its thousands of coffee shops in North America. It has been a sensation.
While reading my copy on the plane during the short flight from Chicago to New York City recently, a handsome teenage girl leaned over my seat. Giggling, she asked me whether I found it interesting. 'I heard him [Beah] speak yesterday and I bought a copy there and then', she said. 'I am so excited about it!'
It was the most unalloyed compliment that can be made of a recently-released book, pure in its curiosity and innocence. It almost made me – someone who has also written about the war of which Beah’s memoir is concerned – green with envy. I found Beah’s astonishing story both unsettling and hugely satisfying: the author, who is now 27, emerges as a highly intelligent young man with remarkable literary flair. But his account has obvious flaws.
Beah was just ten when the war in Sierra Leone started. He was attending school in a village in southern Sierra Leone, which became one of the key theatres of the bloody conflict. At that age, he had already read Shakespeare. He could quote passages from Julius Caesar from memory. He had also become interested in American hip hop.
The book is a sustained study in such contrasts: high culture versus low, a Shakespeare-loving teenager committing barbarous atrocities, frightened civilians versus red-eyed murderers, a friendly people versus brutal politics, demented cruelty versus pure kindness, poverty-stricken Sierra Leone versus affluent New York.
It is soon clear that the book is aimed, first and last, at an American readership. No problem with that: for Beah tells us early on that he intends to address the curiosity of his former schoolmates who had always suspected that he was not telling them all about his past.
This past, therefore, comes to include his memory of some 'nice summer days' in Sierra Leone – the torrential rains in the country, which should surely form one of the most vivid of experiences for a barefoot straggler in the bush there, is barely mentioned (and when mentioned only perfunctorily).
Hip Hop is evoked throughout – and why not? It can be readily associated with gun violence and drugs in America, core aspects of Beah’s experience as a boy soldier. One should not quibble too much here, even when Beah calls Yele 'a big village with more than ten houses' – it is actually a small town with over a hundred houses.
The area that Beah lived in, somewhere in Moyamba District in southern Sierra Leone, was largely unaffected by the war in its early stages. But then rebels – aided by rogue government troops – attacked the Sierra Leone Rutile Mines, where Beah’s father worked, in 1994.
They killed some of the people, apparently including Beah’s parents, and kidnapped some European ex-patriate workers and Sierra Leonean senior staff.
Beah was then living in a village not far away, and soon his village was also attacked. He fled with a few friends. Then he began a traumatic trek through the bush to virtually nowhere.
Beah devotes a lot of space to this depressing bush trek – the night spent in the forest living bare, grim encounters with the rebels in some places, the death and destruction they encountered along the way, the occasional kindness he and his friends got along the way, the more general fear that people they met had for child stragglers who could well have been rebels, the debilitating hunger and near-collapse into insanity – about three times more space, in fact, than for his actual experience as a child fighter.
The intention is plain. Without this background, without knowledge of the hopelessness of Beah’s situation, one would be far less prepared for this:
'My face, my hands, my shirt and gun were covered with blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy.'
Beah is describing his first real battle with the rebels after his recruitment into a contingent of Sierra Leone Army by an officer who, like Beah, would quote Shakespeare for fun. The recruitment, unlike those into the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), was not coerced. But it was not voluntary either.
It was also ad hoc: the new recruits were not registered as government soldiers, and were not paid. They accounted only to the officer, acting on his own whim, who had recruited them.
After the months trekking in the bush, the starving young boys having completely run down to seeds, Beah and his friends really had no choice when, after spending some days in the village where the army had occupied in some comfort, they along with everyone else in the village were asked to help defend the village from the rebels who had started mounting attacks against it. Two of Beah’s very young friends were killed at the first encounter with the rebels. A line had been crossed. Beah becomes a killing machine. He tells us:
'I grabbed [a] man’s head and slit his throat in one fluid motion. His Adam’s apple made way for the sharp knife, and I turned the bayonet on its zigzag edge as I brought it out.'
All this may be true, but what one remembers about one’s past is always a choice – a choice partly conditioned by what one feels one’s audience expects. It is hard not to feel, on reading this, that Beah is keen on playing to all those voyeurs after adolescent terror and mindless African violence.
This may be a curious judgment, but one thinks that Beah is perhaps guilty of a chilling excess of candour. Killing people becomes a way of life, an obligation: in war you have to kill to remain alive. The lieutenant who recruited Beah tells him: 'Visualise the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you.'
He would add: '...[the rebels] have lost everything that makes them human. They do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them…It is the highest service you can perform for your country.'
Beah takes the message to heart – so much so in fact that he is made an officer, having command over his own troop of child fighters. W.H Auden’s famous poem, 'September 1, 1939', about that 'low dishonest decade' of 'darkened lands of the earth' comes readily to mind:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return
It was terribly traumatic for Beah, all the same. For months after his rescue from this murderous life by the UN and an NGO dedicated to rehabilitating ex-child soldiers, he suffered from nightmares and frequent bouts of migraine (the side effects of the heavy drugs they fed on daily).
The rehabilitation turns out to be far more difficult than his induction into the army, and there were moments of extreme violence – fights broke out between child soldiers who had served with the Sierra Leone and those who had fought with the RUF, leading to loss of lives.
On arriving at the camp, Beah encounters another ex-child soldier who looked to him like a RUF rebel. Beah, who had hidden a grenade in his pocket, took it, and the boy pulled out a bayonet. Beah asked who the boy was. 'We are from Kono district', the boy replied. 'Ah, the diamond district!', Alhaji, Beah’s friend, responds.
Finally the boy says: 'I fought for the army. The rebels burned my village and killed my parents, and you look like one of them'. A deadly fight was averted. It is a telling moment, but quickly Beah relates another encounter which seems to make another, more profound point. He and his other friend, Mambu, accost another ex-child soldier who looks different in appearance. 'What kind of army person wears civilian clothes?' Mambu asks of the boy. The boy responds: 'We fought for the RUF; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village.' A nasty fight breaks out immediately, and several people are killed.
It does not really matter, in other words, on what side one fought during the war: all sides had reasonable claims to have been wronged: all the armed groups in the country committed atrocities, and all should be held to account on the same level. There is no difference, this incident seems to suggest, in the methodology of recruitment and induction into the various fighting forces. The problem is that this is not true, and it is clear from Beah’s account overall that this point is absurd: it looks like a sop to the campaigners against child soldiery.
It is a noble campaign, but as I said at the Winnipeg conference, there was a marked difference in how the RUF recruited its child fighters and how the army and the Civil Defence Force (CDF) did. The end result may have been pretty much the same, but I doubt whether any official – UN or NGO – could have ventured in a RUF camp (as they did to many army and CDF camps, including Beah’s) to take away child soldiers for rehabilitation camps. The RUF fighters in the rehabilitation camps were, before the war ended, very few, and they certainly were not handed over by their commanders.
Beah’s book does not provide a history of the war or the background to the conflict. Its singular value is that it gives an insight into the thinking of the child soldiers, and it shows – in the subsequent career of Beah – that rehabilitation is eminently possible.
Beah left Sierra Leone after a bloody in 1997 coup. He had earlier acted as a spokesman at a UN conference in New York on child soldiery. He returned to New York and was adopted by an American woman he had met during his first visit. There he attends college, earns a degree, and has now provided us this valuable memoir. For this reason alone, the book deserves the recognition it has been accorded.
* Lansana Gberie is a writer and journalist from Sierra Leone. He is the author of A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone (Indiana University Press 2006).
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
The Angolan government forcibly evicted 20,000 poor people, including small-scale farmers, and destroyed 3,000 homes between 2002 and 2006 in the capital, Luanda, "to facilitate development and 'beautification' in the public interest". Human Rights Watch, an international lobby group, and SOS Habitat, an Angolan non-governmental organisation that focuses on housing, have published these findings in a report released Tuesday titled '"They pushed down the houses" - Forced evictions and insecure land tenure for Luanda's poor'.
What compromises do activists, organizers, and those actively pursuing social justice make when traveling internationally? How does the experience of living in a global super power, either "legally" or "not", affect our reception in countries that make up the global south?
This work presents a theoretically rich and ethnographically vivid account of the way that song, dance and musical sensitivity weave into the lives of an aboriginal community of Australia. It focuses upon the song and associated emotional experience of women, and the way in which children are socialized into the musical and imaginative discourses and practices of the adult world. It makes a distinctive contribution to the tradition of anthropological analysis which focuses on the located nature of human sensual experience.
ISBN: 978-0-85255-992-5, 288pp, publ. May 2007, £17.95, paperback
ISBN: 978-0-85255-993-2, £50.00, cased
The Gender Based Violence (GBV) Coordinator will be responsible for the design, implementation and management of the GBV Program in CAR working in collaboration with the Field Coordinator, Operations Coordinator, and Finance Controller. The GBV Coordinator will be based in Kaga Bandoro, with limited travel to Bangui for coordination purposes. Closing Date: 6/21/2007
African people were written out of the landscape in many parts of colonial Zimbabwe. The uses, perceptions and experiences of this landscape by African people have been ignored. Land reform has failed to take account of the way the landscape is bound up with identity through its embodiment of ancestral spirits and function as a repository of social memories.
ISBN: 978-0-85255-436-4, 320pp. publ. 2007 £17.95
Located in either Tanzania, Nigeria or Kenya and reporting to the International Head of Education, and also accountable to the Country Director of the host country, the Education Project Manager will be expected to manage a 5 year Comic Relief funded project on Transforming Education for Girls that will be implemented in Tanzania and Nigeria. Application deadline is May 24 2007.
Pambazuka News 303: Somalia and the hidden war for oil
Pambazuka News 303: Somalia and the hidden war for oil
South African ambassador to China Ndumiso Ndima Ntshinga has said that South Africa hopes Chinese companies could invest in the country's infrastructure construction. South Africa welcomes investment from Chinese companies and hopes to expand economic and trade ties with China, Ntshinga told reporters before a reception held to celebrate the 13th Freedom Day of South Africa.
LA Times reports that shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have decisively rejected a proposal that would have required the company to sell its $3.3-billion stake in PetroChina Co., a subsidiary of a Chinese government firm that is the largest player in Sudan's oil industry. Berkshire Chairman Warren E. Buffett, who owns about one-third of his company's shares, advised against the proposal, which received less than 2% of votes cast here at Berkshire's annual meeting.
The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) is looking to recruit a representative in Rwanda DIHR works primarily with The Legal Aid Forum: a membership based structure encompassing national and international NGOs, international organizations, professional bodies (the Rwandan Bar Association and the Corps of Judicial Defenders) and university and faith based initiatives. The closing date for applications is 15 May 2007l.
Are you interested in Africa and have you written your Masters thesis on an African-related subject? The African Studies Centre (ASC), the Netherlands institute for Southern Africa (NiZA) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) are offering you the chance to win €4000 in The Africa Thesis Award. This year’s deadline for the submission of theses is 15 June 2007.
The Africa Governance Institute (AGI) is a pan-African centre of excellence designed to generate innovative and serious thinking on the governance challenges facing the African continent and the solutions that African regional and sub-regional organizations, states, civil society and the private sector should develop in response to these challenges. The AGI is looking to recruit an Executive Director. the deadline for applications is 25 May 2007.
The Digital Bridge Project, which aims to close the digital divide in Liberian universities, made its public debut on Friday, April 27th at the main campus of the University of Liberia when President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf inaugurated the state-of-the-art SocketWorks Limited (SocketWorks) computer laboratory.
For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar to us in a way nobody else has.
This paper was written by Adam Weiner and Diego Rumiany and it was recently published in the African Technology Development Forum (ATDF) Journal. It is a continuation of "The Logic of Reducing the Global Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa" highlighted in the ICT4D dgCommunity in December 2006.
China defended its approach to the strife-riven Darfur region on Thursday, while pointedly avoiding a war of words with U.S. lawmakers who warned of an Olympics backlash if Beijing did not add to pressure on Sudan. Human rights groups have condemned China over its policies about Sudan's Darfur, where state-linked militia have been fighting rebels, causing widespread bloodshed.
Gunmen kidnapped one British and one Kenyan aid worker in northern Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region, officials have said. CARE International said the Briton, who is from Northern Ireland, and his colleague had been missing in the Horn of Africa nation since at least Wednesday. A diplomatic source said the incident did not appear to be terrorism-related.
Reporters Without Borders has condemned the imprisonment for the second time this year of journalist Houssein Ahmed Farah, a contributor to the opposition weekly Le Renouveau and brother of its managing editor, Daher Ahmed Farah. The state prosecutor yesterday ordered him detained in the capital’s Gabode prison.
East African scientists have united in a bid to protect the region's ecology and biodiversity from changing climatic conditions, the invasion of pests, and unsustainable development. The newly formed Ecological Society of East Africa (ESEA) involves 200 of the region's scientists, who will lead scientific investigations and provide policy advice on these threats.
Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS) has an UNPAID internship position in its International Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. FAS aims to create strengthen and promote the leading role of women in the prevention, management and
resolution of conflicts on the African continent. The candidate should be interested in actively participating in gender based conflict resolution and peace building in Africa.
WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change. The Development Department works to generate funding for the organization’s programs via foundation proposals, outreach to individual donors and benefit events. Please send applications by May 15.
Human Rights Activist Network Provides a link to Internships, Employment, Volunteering and Travel Opportunities in Human Rights and Development on their website.
DVV international is cooperating world-wide with numerous partners in the field of adult education. Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association regional office in Conakry / Guinea coordinates the activities of dvv international in Francophone West Africa. Here, the position of a Project Director has to be filled from November 2007 until end of 2010. Closing date: 25 May 2007.
In the late 1950s, the Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe were subject to forced removal on a massive scale, to make way for the construction of a huge hydro-electric dam across the Zambezi River in Southern Africa. The Kariba Dam was the largest man-made dam in the world at that time. It was a powerful symbol for technological achievement and international cooperation. However, little attention was paid to the implications for the 57,000 Tonga who had to leave behind their homes and fertile land along the banks of the Zambezi, according to this Panos report.
The Boran, Gabra and Orma pastoralist communities share a common ancestry, having gradually moved from southern Ethiopia to Kenya’s Eastern and Coast provinces. In this report, Panos finds that over the last few decades, many of these pastoralists have experienced resettlement and a change of lifestyle. The causes are varied but irrigation schemes and other development projects, as well as conflict and drought, are the primary reasons.
Lesotho’s billion-dollar Highlands Water Project involves the construction of a series of massive tunnels and dams to take water from the Senqu/Orange River to South Africa’s industrial heartland, Gauteng province. Lesotho receives annual royalties from the sale of its water, and some hydro-electric power. The first testimonies from a highland community due to be submerged under the waters of one of the dams were gathered in 1998 as part of Panos' mountains project
Marie-Therese Nlandu, a citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo has escaped death by firing squad. She was also freed from going to jail for 50 years, which was an option to the firing squad. Mrs Nlandu returned to Congo in 2006 to participate in the Presidential polls won by Joseph Kabila. Her arrest resulted in November after she had protested the results at the court last November.
At least 109 Tanzanians have become victims of the rift valley fever since the outbreak of the disease in January this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed. The contagious viral disease is spread by the aedes mosquito. The mosquito infects animal blood and organs thus transmitting the virus to the milk.
Zimbabwean lawyers have tasted the cruelty of their country’s baton-welding security officers. After breaking their organised march, the police beat up several lawyers outside the High Court in the capital Harare. The police had earlier unleashed similar attacks on opposition activists, including the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, for holding a prayer meeting in Harare.