For the first time, heavy fighting between Sudanese rebel groups and the government of Sudan has spilled across the border from the embattled Darfur region into eastern Chad, aid workers said on Monday. Previously, such clashes had involved the Chadian army in pursuit of rebels seeking to oust Chadian President Idriss Deby.

West African leaders discussing Cote d’Ivoire’s future have decided to present their recommendations to the African Union and the United Nations to help determine a way forward for the divided country. Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) reaffirmed their support for UN Resolution 1633, which laid out a peace plan for Cote d’Ivoire, but announced no decision on the country’s future beyond the end of President Laurent Gbagbo’s term at the end of the month.

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls much of southern and central Somalia, has warned of imminent war between it and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which reportedly took Buur Hakaba, a town close to its headquarters in Baidoa on Monday, a senior UIC official told IRIN. Buur Hakaba, some 180 km from Mogadishu, was in the hands of a local militia sympathetic to the UIC, according to a local resident, until around 7.30am, when the militia left. The resident said TFG and Ethiopian troops had since entered the town.

Good rainfall in recent months has boosted harvests in arid Niger and reduced the risk of more hunger for a population that has long been vulnerable to food shortages, local authorities said. Niger, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, topped international news headlines last year when failed rains and a locust invasion combined with high market prices for staple foods to create the country's worst food shortages in recent years.

Police are defying a magistrate's order to produce a detailed report on the alleged assault and torture while in custody of more than a dozen Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) members after a protest was foiled by the security forces. On Tuesday magistrate William Bhila dismissed a police report written by the arresting officers, which said there was no substance to the torture allegations, and ordered the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to take over the enquiry, as it was improper for the police "to investigate themselves".

Open-Of-Course is a multilingual portal offering free online courses and tutorials. The goal is to create a multilingual platform for free quality educational information.

Computer labs are a necessity to enhance effective mathematics and science learning but in many South African schools they don't exist or are sparsely resourced. This last week, however, three Dinaledi schools in the North-West province were supplied computer laboratories through a partnership between Inkululeko Technologies, the Shuttleworth Foundation, Sahara Systems, and the North West Department of Education.

Nigeria’s airtime resellers are commonly referred to as business centres, or “umbrella operators,” a moniker that comes from their typical set-up: a table, some chairs, one or more handsets, and an umbrella. In a market in which affordability has remained an issue, umbrella operators have filled a gap, allowing MNOs to maximize the opportunity by empowering umbrella operators to provide incremental traffic.

Scientists have developed a new compound that they say could be used to treat the symptoms of severe malaria, potentially saving many lives. The researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden published their findings in PLoS Pathogens on 29 September. The most dangerous form of malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which kills two million people each year. Previously people with this type of malaria were treated with an anti-clotting agent called heparin, together with drugs to kill the parasites.

The authorities in Libya have ordered protesters at a jail in Tripoli to return to their cells by the end of the day after violence erupted. A sit-in protest began at Abu Salim prison last week over trial delays. Amnesty International say security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at the prisoners, leaving one dead. Hundreds were reportedly shot dead by guards during a protest over conditions in the same prison in 1996. The authorities are refusing to comment.

Twenty migrants have drowned while trying to reach the Canary Islands, survivors of a boat sinking have told Spanish police. The survivors - seven adults and four children - said they were picked up by a merchant ship after their boat broke up on the high seas before dawn. They said they were then brought to a port on the Gran Canaria. Some 25,000 migrants, mostly from west Africa, have arrived in the Canary Islands this year. Up to 3,000 people are said to have died during the trip.

Victims of Kenya's independence war with Britain 50 years ago are to start proceedings to claim compensation from the British government. Veterans of the Mau Mau - who fought a guerrilla war with their colonial masters - are demanding an apology and an out-of-court financial settlement. Tens of thousands of Mau Mau fighters were killed or imprisoned in camps. "Many are in their 70s and 80s and would like to see reparations before they die," lawyer Martyn Day said. Mr Day added: "We recognise the pain, suffering and torment that these freedom fighters have gone through - many of them are still suffering from the after effects today.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of the Open Society Institute (OSI), joins with Central European University (CEU) to announce the Justice Initiative Fellows Program for 2007-2009. The aim of the program is to support and expand a network of lawyers and activists working internationally on human rights-related issues. Established in 1996, the Justice Initiative Fellows Program has graduated 155 fellows from more than 20 countries. The Justice Initiative Fellows Program is a two-year program of study and practical work experience. In 2007, a maximum of ten applicants will be selected to participate in the program. Applicants from the following regions are eligible: Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, East- and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central/South America.

Deep in the tunnel of the Collum mine, coal dust swirls thickly, and it's stifling for workers such as Chengo Nguni. He describes his $2-a-day job with a sigh: His supervisor yells incomprehensibly in Chinese. His rubber boots leak. The buttons to control the flow of ore out of the mine often deliver an electric shock. But the worst thing about life in the Chinese-owned mine in southern Zambia is that there is no such thing as a day off. Ever.

President Mogae of Botswana is due in New York tomorrow to promote his country’s diamonds, amid increasing concern over the eviction of the Bushmen from the Central Kalahari. The president’s visit comes only weeks after the Bushmen wrote to Leonardo DiCaprio, star of the forthcoming film ‘The Blood Diamond’, asking for his help in their struggle to return to their land.

West African leaders began talks in the Nigerian capital on Friday aimed at breaking a political deadlock in Cote d'Ivoire that threatens to further destabilise the country. A key issue to be resolved is the status of President Laurent Gbagbo. A United Nations-backed peace plan extended his term in office by one year until the end of this month.

Three political parties are engaged in a secret fight to have President Kibaki as their candidate in next year's General Election.The Democratic Party, of which the President is the official chairman, the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) and government-leaning Narc Kenya want the President to state categorically the party on whose ticket he will seek re-election.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced last week that he plans to appoint Nigeria’s Shola Omoregie as his new representative in Guinea-Bissau and as head of the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office to the West African country (UNOGBIS). Mr. Omoregie, 59, a veteran UN official, replaces Joao Bernardo Honwana of Mozambique, who left the post in mid-September to return to UN Headquarters.

As the crisis in Darfur continues to deepen, Africa Action stands with the people of Darfur and with African leaders from across the continent who are calling for an international peacekeeping force that can stop the violence and protect civilians in western Sudan.

The Regional Network for Equity in Health in east and southern Africa (EQUINET) promotes policies for equity in health and supports research, training, analysis and dialogue to strengthen knowledge and to support policy engagement on the implementation of comprehensive, universal, national health systems in the region, centred on the role of the people and of the public sector.

Eating disorders seem to be a rarity in the issues raised by contemporary African writers. That’s most likely why Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 classic “Nervous Conditions” became an immediate modern African classic. It was a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about the affects of patriarchy and colonialism on a female protagonist, Tambudzai. Nyasha, Tambudzai’s cousin, suffers from an acute case of bulimia. In many respects, she attempts to regurgitate centuries of societal repression of African women’s bodies, livelihoods, and intellectual capacities.

Like Nyasha, Dangarembga has been regurgitating historical tyranny with creative genius. She is a Zimbabwean playwright, novelist, and filmmaker who tackles head-on the oppression wrought by patriarchy and colonialism on African women. Her most recent novel, “The Book of Not,” is a sequel to “Nervous Conditions.”

Dangarembga could be called a feminist, but she shies away from the loaded term, opting for something more holistic, humanist. The Informer interviewed Dangarembga recently about writing, African women’s empowerment, and continental development.

Robtel Neajai Pailey (RP): Your large body of work shows that in the grand scheme of things, gender matters to you. How did you become so interested in the convergence of gender, oppression, and Africa?

Tsitsi Dangarembga (TD): Gender matters to me because I am a woman and experience firsthand the oppressive consequences of gender discrimination. I spend a lot of my considerable energy fighting that, and I think, why do I have to waste so much on this fight? I am sure most women all over the world ask themselves that question daily. Think how much energy is dissipated in this useless manner. It is energy that could be harnessed for the good of all people in a world free of gender oppression. I experience similar oppression as an African person. Naturally, I see similarities, but then again, also differences in these two systems of oppression. I spend a lot more time and energy trying to tease out which oppression fits so I can combat it appropriately, win and move on. I think that kind of intellectual work can be a legacy for others, hopefully shortening and easing their struggles.

RP: “The condition of the native is a nervous condition” seems to be the hallmark of your 1988 novel, “Nervous Conditions.” Was this one line in “Nervous Conditions” some type of tribute to Frantz Fanon and his book “Wretched of the Earth?”

TD: It was not a tribute in the sense that I wanted to draw attention to the greatness of “Wretched of the Earth.” It is, however, a tribute in the sense that that quotation affirms the truth that Fanon wrote, whose essence was captured so aptly and so succinctly by [Jean-Paul] Sartre in his introduction to Fanon’s work.*

RP: How are African women and girls today still victims of White supremacy and patriarchy?

TD: My new novel “The Book of Not” deals with this theme. The relationships are too complex to reduce to a few sentences, I think. When we do that, we miss essentials that need to be looked at. So I have taken many years to work this out to my satisfaction and also depict it to my satisfaction in “The Book of Not.” Personally, I feel both systems still work to victimize me. I think it is not an accident at all that most strong African women find they can only move forward in the company of other strong African women. Thank goodness for the sisterhood! Having said that, of course I do not want to portray the rest of the world as a homogenous monstrous lot! Neither could I as an African woman manage without the support from allies who have institutional access to institutionalized power and resources. Such people have kept me and my work—both my personal work and the work that I do as part of the African women’s movement—alive.

RP: I understand that you studied medicine and psychology at Cambridge University in England. Can you describe the psychological manifestations of patriarchy and neo-colonialism on African women and girls (besides eating disorders)?

TD: Low self-esteem; under performance; anti-social behavior; role modeling on anti-social hitherto traditionally masculine behaviors; negative energy; learned helplessness; rage; addiction; alienation; psychological disturbances from neuroses to psychoses; lethargy; dysfunctional attitudes; suicide; self immolation…to name a few.

RP: You’ve become increasingly aware of the difficult conditions and oppressive attitudes endured by Black women in Zimbabwe. I dare say you’ve been increasingly aware of the difficulty endured by African women all over the continent. What are some of the contemporary challenges African women face? What do you believe are some solutions to these challenges?

TD: Economic conditions in our global capitalist world are the main challenge. This translates practically into challenges of food security, health, shelter, education…again, the list goes on. There is also the challenge of how to make sure your voice is heard to voice these issues, both by those who want to hear you and by those who do not. This also at the end of the day translates into a challenge of financial resources. Few African women have the financial security to write the novels they want to write, make the films they want to in order to be heard, make the radio programs they see as crucial to their development and well being. We do not have the resources to ensure that these programs are aired even if we are able to make them. We often do not have the time to write the newspaper article we want to because they often will not be published in our newspapers and so we will not be paid, or if the articles are published often again a male chauvinist spin is put on them. Nor do we have our own newspapers. Again, it is not a monolithic African woman-hating world out there, but the opportunities are too few to sustain us at the level we have reached, let alone sustain our continued well-being and development in the face of our challenges.

RP: Please comment on how the tenuous political and economic conditions in Zimbabwe have affected women in the country.

TD: The political situation has affected most women badly in every sense. As in all crises situations there are some who exploit the suffering of others to benefit from it, and some of these exploiters who benefit are women. However, on the whole, women have seen the gains they made since independence in 1980 whittled away over the last few years. There is less food security. Girl children are less likely to be educated. Shortages of basic commodities make a mother’s life a nightmare. Biologically, women are challenged again. How are women to afford to buy the sanitary wear they need to soak up menstrual blood? As men are affected by the difficult conditions, they take out their frustrations on the often physically weaker sex. Sexual crimes and other violent crimes against women and children are accelerating at an unspeakable rate. The HIV pandemic multiplies the horrific implications of this situation a million times. Because of international sanctions, amongst other things, there are no medicines, little food, and what is there is hardly healthy. Only vestigial sanitation in most areas, almost no clean water in others. Even the cities go for days without water, to say nothing of fuel. I do not understand the logic that believes Zimbabweans will suffer these deprivations and become better, more democratic peoples. In my reading of history, a democratic nation has never been a hungry, suffering nation. Democracy seems to me to have been positively correlated with comfort. I do not think I am the only person who has read history, and so I wonder about the diverse agendas that are destroying my country in the name of democracy and human rights. There may as well be other factors at play which are destroying Zimbabwe, such as avarice, corruption and lack of accountability, but I do not think we must study all the factors and their impacts if we truly desire a solution, and not be selective about which truths we will face and which we will not.

RP: Over 15 African countries have ratified the Protocol on the Rights of the African Woman, which stipulates a series of recommendations for women’s rights on the continent to be adopted by the African Union. Are you familiar with this Protocol? If not, what recommendations would you include?

TD: Over the years there have been so many protocols and statements on human rights and women’s rights that I have lost track. I have not seen that these do a great deal to benefit the lives of women and the people close to women on the ground, beyond the NGOs and others involved in the drafting, funding, and implementation. Again, that is not to say that these actions have achieved zero impact, but I do not think that isolating women’s rights without addressing the larger picture of Africa and globalization will yield positive results. At the end of the day, African women and men have to live together in peace and harmony. This will not be achieved by looking only at the needs of one group.

RP: What would you say are some of the major contributions women in the developing world have contributed? What have African women contributed?

TD: I think African women who have made their mark in the world have shown what degrees of human strength are possible. They have shown us how to persevere, never give up, and simply never ever take NO for an answer, if the answer should be YES.

RP: Perhaps African American women writers such as bell hooks, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston are your counterparts in terms of writing from a particular ethnic and gender lens. Have these women at all influenced your work?

TD: Absolutely! All of them have. I remember being so impressed by Angela Davis’ Afro and the fact that she had been in jail! I thought, how can a woman in America have to go to jail? Then I read and found out why. It was good to realize that what I was beginning to notice going on around me was not my own little secret shame because I was not good enough at a personal level. I love bell hooks for writing about the rage that makes you want to kill, but then having to not kill and do something else instead that is life affirming, and, I imagine, infinitely more rewarding even if it seems at first to be infinitely more difficult than murder! Zora Neale Hurston simply stunned me by saying out, just like that, what she had to say. As for Toni Morrison, she is my ultimate literary role model. I remember telling my publisher how at first I was perplexed that each of Morrison’s novels were in a different voice. As a reader who had enjoyed one of her works, I craved a continuation in the next one. But then as I continued to read, I found that that was one of the marks of genius.

RP: In tandem with African women writers such as Buchi Emecheta, Ama Atta Aidoo, and Mariama Ba, you’ve managed to reconstruct the experiences of African women through the literary medium. What do you see as the role of African women writers today?

TD: Well, I write to tell a story. I think people like stories because they serve such a variety of purposes ranging from entertainment to information, to role modeling to catharsis.

RP: What is your latest novel about? How has publishing abroad been a challenge and a boon simultaneously?

TD: “The Book of Not” continues the story of Tambudzai Siguake, the narrator of “Nervous Conditions,” and her quest towards becoming herself. This journey almost comes to a premature end at the Catholic Convent School she attends in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]. I like to think, however, that she survives. Publishing abroad is useful because you reach a wider audience. Books published first in Zimbabwe are not automatically picked up by international publishers. I am still looking for a Zimbabwean publisher, though. I love touching the people around me, and stirring them to something.

RP: What would you say are your greatest accomplishments?

TD: Staying alive, healthy and happy. Loving my family and finding compassion.

*The title of “Nervous Conditions” is borrowed from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Franz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth.” The ‘nervous condition’ of the native is, according to Sartre, a function of mutually reinforcing attitudes between colonizer and colonized that condemn the colonized to what amounts to a psychological disorder.

•This article first appeared in The Washington Informer and is reproduced here with permission. Robtel Neajai Pailey is the Washington Informer Assistant Editor.
•Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Top quality training on human rights is now available for free online, thanks to a partnership between Fahamu and the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Through the partnership, the Oxford University accredited course 'An Introduction to Human Rights' has been made available on the Fahamu website. The course is designed to provide users with a comprehensive definition of human rights and how these rights are monitored and enforced.

About two million people have been driven from their homes in three years of fighting in Darfur. Aaron Tesfaye argues that the situation in Darfur is a grim reminder “of the after-effects of colonialism and hastily cobbled, post-colonial states in Africa that cannot deliver political and economic goods to their people.”

The Darfur tragedy refuses to leave our consciousness, even when newer atrocities in the world present themselves. As the genocide unfolds - more viciously now that the Peace Agreements have collapsed - the world is aware of the failures of the African Union to resolve the conflict between the central government of Sudan led by Omar el-Bashir, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) faction led by Mr. Abdul Wahid el-Nur, and its close ally the Justice Equality Movement (JEM) led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim.

Today the Bush administration seems to have opted for merely providing humanitarian assistance, making lots of "noise" at the UN, and a policy of benign neglect of the people of Darfur. It has refused to use its political and economic might to persuade Sudan to either cut a genuine deal with the rebels or invite the UN peacekeeping forces to safeguard the lives of innocent civilians. The current US stance is an indication of the closeness between Washington and Khartoum in the complex politics of oil and the War on Terror and seems to say, as in the Rwandan case, that African lives don't matter because Darfur is not Kosovo -- a European enclave.

Roots of the Conflict

The Darfur insurrection is connected to the conflict between state and society in southern Sudan. The insurrection and genocide has its roots in the complex milieu of inter-ethnic relations where ecological niches of the Fur, Zagawa, Massalit farmers, and Baqqara pastoralists were stressed due to famine and competition over space and water. But this connection between scarce resources and conflict must be understood through a glimpse of the past.

Modern Sudan is the creation of two imperialisms: Egyptian and British. Darfur was an important independent kingdom that was tacked onto Sudan by the British in 1916. Eventually, neglect by the Nile riverine elite of Khartoum led to the emergence of political protest in the 1960s and eventually to the current conflict. But two important factors added fuel to the fire. First was the venture of Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi into Chad in the 1980s with the resultant conflict over the Aouzou strip, rich in gas and other resources, and the mobilizing and arming of an "Islamic Legion" of the Sahelian "Arabs" and Turegs in his expansionist ambitions.[1]

Second was the 1986 decision of the prime minister of Sudan, Sadiq al-Mahdi, an important leader of the Umma Party, to launch an offensive to crush the secessionist Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south led by the late Dr. John Garang. This decision exacerbated the situation in the west because the Sudanese state armed with modern weapons the Baqqara and Ben Habla Fursan, "Arabs" (Janjaweed) including mercenaries from former Libyan Islamic Legionnaires of the failed Libyan expansionist war. As noted by an astute observer of Sudanese politics, it was "counterinsurgency on the cheap."[2]

These groups - along with the regular Sudanese Army - caused considerable destruction and spread terror amongst the Dinka and others in Bahr–El-Ghazal in the south. Eventually, the Baqqara and the Fursan used state-sponsorship to turn their full fury against their old neighbors in Darfur, with whom they had past conflicts. The consequence of such repression in the west was the formation of a self-defense force, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), in the Jabal Marra Mountains of Darfur in 2003, which was later joined by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The ensuing conflict has resulted in immense suffering, killing, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Darfurians, raising deep concerns in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

On April 8, 2004, due to the mediation of the African Union (AU), the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), and the Sudanese government signed a ceasefire agreement in N'djamena, Chad. This was followed by a signed protocol in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 9, 2004, by which the parties agreed to avoid a humanitarian crisis by seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict.[3] The leaders in these agreements were Minni Arkou Minnawi for the SLM/A, Ahmed Mohammed Tougod Lissan for JEM, and Magzoub El-Khalifa for the government of the Sudan. In October 2004, substantive discussions and a framework for addressing the contentious issues of power and wealth sharing were fleshed out, leading to the deployment of some African Union military personnel from Nigeria and Rwanda.[4]

The African Union presence was strengthened when the parties to the conflict convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in May 2004 to cut a deal on conditions towards a political settlement, which culminated in the signing of an agreement on a ceasefire and the deployment of observers in Darfur. This was to be followed by the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in Nigeria in May 2006, after enabling the leading members of the SLM/A and JEM to express their support for and adherence to the provisions. But the Darfur political leaders Abdul Wahid el-Nur and Dr. Khalil Ibrahim of the SLM/A and JEM respectively, failed to show up for the signing. As a result, the agreement was signed by Minni Arkou Minnawi, a leader of the majority faction of the SLM/A, who are mostly Zagawa. This set the stage for internecine conflict.

Failure of the Darfur Peace Agreement

What were the reasons for the Darfur leaders and the government of the Sudan not signing the agreement? And what were its highlights? The answers are to be found in the practical calculations of the Sudanese state, the confluence of ethnic politics, as well as the demands of the SLM/A and the JEM. At first glance, it would seem that the Sudanese government had made substantive concessions towards peace in terms of political and wealth sharing.[5] However, in practical terms the government dragged its feet on key demands. The JEM and SLM/A leadership had a joint stand and had several demands. First, that their grievances be given full national coverage; that is, national access and dissemination of information about past atrocities via the media similar in spirit to what took place in South Africa under the "Truth and Reconciliation Committee." Second, that Khartoum provide a timetable and process by which displaced Darfurians would be able to immediately return to their homeland, be integrated, and be compensated. Third, that the supremacist Janjaweed be disarmed and demobilized.

In making these demands, the Darfur liberation movements did not represent a solid united political front, but were rife with past quarrels and mistrusts. They had different origins and varying connections with state leaders of Sudanese politics. The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and its armed wing, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), which was founded in 1989, did not acquire its present nome de guerre until 2003 when its founder, Abdul Wahid El-Nur, emerged from his exile and base in Eritrea. The SLA is not a separatist movement. Its political declaration clearly states "Sudan's unity must be anchored on a new basis that is predicated on full acknowledgement of [its] ethnic, cultural, social and political diversity . . . [and will] work with all political forces that ascribe to this view."[6] But such a platform does not preclude self-determination if the economic and political disparities continue to grow between Darfur and the riverine elite who commanded the state's resources. The SLA's position regarding the role of the mosque and state is also very clear. Its manifesto states: "Religion and politics belongs to two different domains . . . with religion belonging to the personal domain and the state in the public domain."[7]

On the other hand, the other main rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) has a different origin because it was established under the sponsorship of the National Islamic front (NIF) in the late 1980s. It is heavily influenced by and very close to the prominent Muslim scholar and Sorbonne-educated Ph.D. Dr. Sheik Hassan Al-Turabi and his Islamist supporters. Like the SLA, the JEM is not separatist, but it shares the objectives of the SPL/A and pursues the creation of a just society. But whereas the SPL/A's views on the role of religion and the state are clearly stated in its manifesto, the JEM's views are very ambiguous. Also, the JEM envisions a federal political structure for the Sudan similar to the one proposed by the National Islamic Front (NIF), allowing perhaps non-Muslim regions to opt out of Sharia law.

In any case, despite the solidarity between the SLM/A and the JEM, the astute brokers of the Sudanese state observed political and, above all, age-old competition and differences between the mostly Zagawa SPL/A and the Fur (JEM) and decided to exploit the differences. Thus as time passed and per the modalities of the agreement, Khartoum hesitated and then decided not to disarm the Janjaweed. Instead, sensing a weakened SLM/A and with the tacit indifference if not direct approval of the Minni Arkou Minnawi faction, the government decided on a military solution, attacking also the mostly Fur JEM led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim. As for the stance of the JEM, it may have opted out of the peace agreement, in part, because it did not get a green light from one of its most influential spiritual and political leaders, Hassan Al-Turabi. The regime in Khartoum also may have been motivated to scuttle the agreement because it wanted to destroy the support of the SLM/A and the JEM, particularly of the Umma Party, by creating support institutions for Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party. In such conflict, the troops of the African Union, numbering some 7000, were unable to defend civilians in the vast hinterland of Darfur because they were caught in spiralling violence between the armed might of the Sudanese state and its plural societies. The failure of the AU has emboldened the Sudanese state, which has launched a major offensive, committing tens of thousands of troops including bombers and helicopter gun ships to the region.

Failures of the UN and US: Rwanda and Darfur

On Sept. 1, 2006, the U.S. and Britain helped pass a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for over 20,000 UN troops to be sent to Sudan to take over from the AU forces. But Sudan is rejecting such a move, insisting on its sovereignty. For its part, the AU had threatened to pull its troops out by September 30 2006, unless Sudan acquiesced to the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. On September 11, 2006, Sudan made a counter threat that the AU force could remain in the country only if they accepted Arab League and Sudanese funding.[9] The US has been quick to point out that the unfolding disaster needs a well-funded, well-staffed, and well-equipped force for peacekeeping purposes. Sudan has so far been firm in its demands. It is able to remain firm because it has powerful allies on the UN Security Council, namely China and Russia as well as the oil-producing nation of Qatar.[10] There are economic and political considerations behind the support of Russia and China, who insist on Sudanese sovereignty. Russia is now a major arms supplier to Sudan and indirectly responsible also for the tragedy in Darfur.[11] As far as China is concerned, it is a major investor in oil field exploration and development in the Sudan, and its increasing presence in Africa has to do with its insatiable demand for resources.[12]

The UN Secretary General not only clearly stated that the wholesale genocide of civilians is illegal under international law, but also expressed his fear that Darfur could be a Rwanda in the making.[13] But the Secretary General’s pronouncements rang hollow as the UN, the US, and the world were silent while 800,000 Africans were massacred in Rwanda in 1994. In fact, the US under the Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations seemed to have a consistent policy in terms of responding to genocide in Africa. In 1994, after the plane of Rwandan President Habyarimana was shot down, sowing the seeds of the crisis, the Clinton administration evacuated American citizens and left extremist Hutus to carry out their genocide of the Tutsis. The administration sat still while the bloodbath took place, with its state department spokesperson quibbling over the precise language regarding whether the killings constituted "genocide."[14]

It is widely believed that the reluctance of the US to intervene in Rwanda was the result of the shock experienced at the American causalities in Somalia in 1993, which led to a humiliating withdrawal. But Africa has no public lobbyists or public activists in the US. As a result, Rwanda was easy for the Clinton administration to ignore. Thus, while Washington insisted on a ceasefire in Rwanda and later crafted an arms embargo against the Hutu-dominated government, for all practical purposes it left the Tutsis to their fate, feigning ignorance until the genocide was over. In 1998, during a state visit to Africa, President Clinton did a mea culpa, apologizing for US inaction. The apology has been criticized as insincere as it cost nothing and Rwanda was regarded as some far-away country in Africa.

The UN was also impotent, doing nothing to stop the tragedy in Rwanda. Although the UN had peacekeeping troops in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded, its mandate was strictly limited to monitoring ceasefire violations. In fact, its force was reduced because the US feared increases in UN peacekeeping would eventually require some US troop commitment. In time, the US actively supported a UN peacekeeper withdrawal from Rwanda as the genocide was underway.[15]

The Bush Jr. administration's response in the Sudan has been no better. Although in 2004, then Secretary of State General Collin Powell acknowledged that what was happening in Darfur was genocide, no action was taken by the government. Subsequently, in an address to the UN General Assembly, President George Bush Jr. explained the US position on the genocide but had not suggested any new plans on how to stop the violence, more than a year later. In several instances between 2005 and 2006, US officials ranging from Vice President Dick Cheney to Assistant Secretary of African Affairs Jendayzi Frazer have made statements that seemed to show concern over the Darfur tragedy, but the concern has been all talk. On the other hand, the US has contributed close to $1 billion dollars in humanitarian efforts since the conflict began in the 1980s and has facilitated the Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria. However, the US has not taken "steps to directly address the worsening security situation or to protect civilians and humanitarian operations on the ground."[16]

The US response to the Darfur crisis is conditioned by its national interest in a rapprochement between Washington and Khartoum that began soon after September 11, 2001. The US ended its isolation of Sudan, which began in the 1990s due to the latter's role in hosting Al Qaeda, and the Sudan is now sharing intelligence in the Bush administration's War on Terror. The US position was given expression in July 2006, when President Bush, asked about the immediacy of Darfur, replied that the US strategy was to help "African Union forces to be complemented and blue-helmeted."[17] That is, the UN should be invited in.

But so far the Bush administration has not been willing to commit its substantial diplomatic and political muscle - essential to securing an invitation for UN deployment by Sudan. A main reason for the soft-peddling by the US may be that Sudan is a member of the conservative Arab League and usually acquiesces to its policy. The US may not want to exacerbate already strained relations in the Muslim world by forcing an Islamic state to do its bidding. In a recent "compromise," the el-Bashir government, after referring to the proposed presence of UN troops in Darfur as a "Zionist" plot to weaken states in the region, indicated its willingness to allow AU troops to stay as peacekeepers with "non-African advisers." [18]Whether the UN and the AU accept such a racist fig leaf will determine the lives of millions in Darfur.

Meanwhile Darfur has also generated internal cleavages in the el-Bashir government among "African" members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, (SPLM) of the late Dr. John Garang, who support the plan to bring the UN to Darfur. But the SPLM is also preoccupied with other serious matters in South Sudan. The Machako Agreement between Khartoum and the SPLM of South Sudan also seems to be faltering. For example, the agreement on wealth sharing, essential for the re-settlement of some 3 million southerners who live in the north, has not as yet been fully implemented, leading to some grumbling by southern leaders. The government that has been set up in Juba, the capital, under the terms of the agreement is fragile, underfunded, and at times looking towards the World Bank and donors to underwrite some projects. Finally, there has been no movement or discernable preparations, such as voter registrations, towards the national elections that are to take place in July 2007.[19]

Conclusion

The Darfur insurrection, crisis, and genocide are grim reminders of the after-effects of colonialism and hastily cobbled, post-colonial states in Africa that cannot deliver political and economic goods to their people. In this kind of struggle between the modern African state and its plural societies over the command of power and resources, Darfur is not alone. In the east in 2005, centered in Port Sudan, capital of the Red Sea State, the Beja Congress recently went on strike, demanding more power and wealth sharing. In the south, while the Machako Agreement between the state and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) seems to be holding - with the South having significant autonomy - for all practical purposes the peace is tenuous, dependent partially on the politics of the region, especially of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda. As for Darfur, as the historian R.S. O'Fahay has noted, "I believe Darfur's future lies with the Sudan - I prefer with rather than in - but it has to be with Sudan that is ruled very differently than the present Sudan."[20] How differently Sudan is ruled and how to constitutionally engineer and above all implement a new arrangement, including wealth sharing, that will augur peace and development is a challenge to all Sudanese and their friends in Africa and the world. Such a challenge begins with the acceptance of UN peacekeeping forces that will put a stop to the slaughter of the innocents.

•Aaron Tesfaye, is author of Political Power and Ethnic Federalism: the Struggle for Democracy in Ethiopia, (Lanham: MD: 2002).
•Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Notes

1.Alex de Waal, "Counter-insurgency on the Cheap," London Review of Books, August 2004, p. 2. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n15/waal01_.html
2.De Waal, 2004, op. cit.

3."Protocol between the Government of the Sudan (GoS), the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice Equality Movement (JEM) on the Enhancement of the Security Situation In Darfur In Accordance with the N’Djamena Agreement Abuja, Nigeria. November 9, 2004.

5. See highlights of the Darfur Peace Agreement.

Mouhamadou Tidiane KASSE argues that the implementation of neo-liberal policies and strategies in Africa, which have culminated today in globalisation, resulted in the feminisation of poverty on the continent. “Liberalisation began by hitting social services. Women were to suffer the most from the effects, due to tradition and their social position.”

Today, two concepts stand together. They work in parallel, but also together, since, inevitably, the two situations they encompass feed off one another. Since the beginning of the 1980s and the implementation of neo-liberal policies and strategies in Africa, which culminated today in globalisation, the feminisation of poverty has become an irreversible, downward spiral. Among other consequences of this situation, the 1990s saw the spread of Aids in Africa begin to take on a feminine character.

Just as poverty becomes more feminine, Aids also takes hold of it. In the first decade after its appearance, the disease was mainly rife among men, but now it has seen its distribution reversed to the detriment of women. Of the 25 million people living with HIV in Africa (out of 37.8 million globally), 58% are women. The proportions are the same for the 9,000 people who contract the virus every day in Africa.

The feminisation of poverty and its effects on women’s health are preventable. Neo-liberal policies paved the way for this when they began taking control in Africa from the 1980s onwards. The Economic and Financial Recovery Plan (EFRP) of the 1970s was followed by Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in the 1980s, and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in the 1990s. This semantic shift shows the successive failures of these policies that were set up by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which both locked Africa in an endless spiral of poverty. All these policies have today resulted in globalisation, which has moved the continent’s fragility up one level, with the same disastrous effects. What previously happened merely at a local level, within States, now takes place on a global scale, transcending borders and state sovereignty.

The template for today’s tragedy was drawn in the 1980s. Liberalisation began by hitting social services. Women were to suffer the most from the effects, due to tradition and their social position. The decision to make access to education more and more expensive led to girls falling behind. Twenty years later, millions had to be invested to provide them with an education to make up for the effects of this disaster. At the same time, mortality rates among mothers and children went well beyond being scandalous and the reduction of these rates is today one of the development goals of the new millennium. All this is happening in such a way that it looks like one is emptying a barrel in order to refill it again. And this is serious when human lives are at stake.

Survival strategies

The findings of a study entitled “Les familles dakaroises face à la crise” (“Families in Dakar confronting the crisis”) were worrying for the years following the implementation of liberal policies: “It is in fact wage earners in the private sector who are most acutely affected by the crisis of the 1980s. Among men, the unemployed make up 13.7% of industry. In construction, the figure is 14.3%, it is 4.6% in the private service sector and production and 9.1% in business. The agricultural and fishing industries have been hit the hardest by unemployment (18.8%).

“But the situation is all the more tragic for women, whose level of unemployment is 21.6% in industry, 15.0% in the service sector and production and 19.2% in business. The higher levels of unemployment among women are so acute that many have had to state that they are housewives after looking for work in vain. The figures given for women are therefore low estimates for female unemployment.” (Cf. Les familles dakaroises face à la crise – Ifan, Orstom, Ceped - 1995)

The continued process of world trade liberalisation has created a context of economic and social disintegration, with women suffering the most in Africa. In the two-tier societies that are being set up, the effects are piling up at the end of the line. Here, women are the final – and weakest – link. Girls are being deprived of an education, ruining their futures through teenage pregnancy, and wives are experiencing all manner of marital violence (latent or visible, codified or not by society), which is exacerbated by poverty and the absence of life’s basic necessities.

The survival strategies women have employed, through becoming involved as workers in production or industry, do not stand up to new deprotection laws. Factories close or streamline their staff and imports kill off whole sections of production they invest in. Today, female traders in Africa have to go ever further to compete with Asian products that are flooding into markets. As one Senegalese woman put it, “In the 1980s, I used to go to Gambia. When the 1990s came, I had to go as far as Nouakchott and Las Palmas to develop my business. Today, you have to go to Dubai, Taiwan and Hong Kong to compete with the markets that have been established where we are. Especially with the Chinese. Investment is more expensive, journeys are longer and difficulties are greater when it comes to reconciling our role as pillars of the family and our economic functions. In the group of women with whom I organise alternate trips and shared purchasing, we spend hundreds of millions of francs on business each year. But because we work informally, because we do not offer the guarantees deemed necessary, the State will not support us and banks will no longer offer us credit.”

So, laws do not work in women’s favour and the social environment even less so. Natalie Domeisen, of the ITC International Trade Forum, is quoted as saying: “Do women encounter added difficulties when trying to expand their trade through exports because they are women? This is precisely the fundamental question societies should be asking themselves and should be agreeing upon in order to speed up change. For small businesses, access to finances, market information and training is essential. Women who are involved in exports have, however, fewer opportunities to access the support networks that a good number of their male counterparts have. The type of assistance they need is also different. Most businesses belonging to women are part of the service industry, and the main way of developing these businesses is by setting up networks with a view to creating a client base.”

Life and health

The great majority of women, however, are far from these concerns of market dominance. Instead, daily concerns revolve around health and survival strategies. One major concern today is that millions of women do not have access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth that could save their lives. For example, only 53% of births in developing countries take place with the assistance of a qualified person (a doctor, midwife or nurse). With the poor nutritional condition of women before pregnancy, due to healthcare that is inadequate, inaccessible or too expensive, not to mention the lack of hygiene and care during labour, there has been a huge increase in dangerous pregnancies.

Beyond the failures of national policies, globalisation has turned healthcare into a market area, and drugs into a market good. The debate and conflict between countries in the South and the North in relation to the Agreements on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), under the framework of the World Trade Organisation, have been instructive in this regard. Supported by the patents they hold, drug multinationals have been opposed to certain products being made in countries in the South, where local industry could do this job in order to reduce accessibility costs and improve the health of populations. The issue made the headlines in 2000, when thirty-nine drugs companies undertook legal proceedings against South Africa for allowing its population access to low-cost drugs, particularly anti-retrovirals. In April 2001, they withdrew their action when African States raised their shields by sticking to safeguards. The agreement on TRIPS requires WTO member governments to ensure, over a period of twenty years, copyright and patent protection for various new products, including pharmaceutical products. Without the consent of the inventor, no one can use, make or sell a particular product during this period. In the meantime, Aids is killing people – and particularly more and more women. The 2005 UNAIDS data for sub-Saharan Africa shows that 58% of infected adults are women.

To end this pandemic and slow down its effects, anti-retroviral treatment required, at one point, 600,000 CFA francs per month (around 1,000 dollars; the costs have been reduced since then and the drugs are even free in certain countries thanks to public spending). Yet it would have been possible to produce generic drugs locally, thus reducing costs. In India, a pharmaceutical group set the price of ARV’s at 600 dollars (per person, per year) for African governments. However, between the rights of patent holders and the right to life for millions and millions of people, it was necessary to reach a contentious legal decision. Brazil had to face attacks from America for adopting a law that authorised local production of anti-retroviral drugs such as AZT, which helps to prevent transmission from mother to child.

With the mobilisation of countries in the South, ethics took precedence over profit. And after threatening South Africa with sanctions at a point when the country was wrestling with American pharmaceutical companies, President Bill Clinton signed a decree to change American intellectual property laws applying to the distribution of drugs to counter HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa. This decree forbade anyone from lodging a complaint to the WTO in order to block the wishes of sub-Saharan African countries to produce or obtain drugs to fight Aids.

The market logic that is taking hold of healthcare relates to the fact that this sector is an enormous source of revenue, in terms of drugs, the provision of healthcare, laboratory materials, etc. And up until now under the WTO, the precedence of the right to healthcare over patent rights has not yet become a reality. Even if small gains have been made, the United States remains tied to the idea that a wider agreement on property rights could tomorrow be extended to the diseases that generate much higher profits for laboratories.

In effect, even if the debate has focused on diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and Aids, medical research on these three most deadly pandemics comes to less than 5% of the total budget for research at the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But to make concessions in this domain is seen as a threat to making a tidy profit. A case in point is the sale of drugs that are threatened by the arrival of generic drugs between now and 2007, which is valued at 50 billion dollars – 17.8 billion of which go to the American companies Merck and Pfizer.

This is how some people’s billions are the source of other people’s misfortune. According to the current logic of globalisation, world trade rules control national policy. We are witnessing the loss of sovereignty and international agreements are directly influencing public policy. In social services such as healthcare and education, finance ministers determine what is invested and what is undertaken according to the standards of international financial markets. The wild logic of economic gain thus takes precedence over the necessities of social well-being.

In Mali, for example, the fight against malaria has at its disposal neither the necessary financial means nor an adequate institutional policy. The national programme is only one of the areas of the Prevention Division of the National Health Directorate, and has a budget of 1.5 billion CFA francs per year. And to put to work even the slightest of action, many steps need to be taken to move it along (cf. Panos News, forthcoming). Yet, according to the United Nations’ 2005 report on the Millennium Development Goals, malaria destroys a million lives each year, mainly women and young children – consequently slowing down economic growth by 1.3% per year. And 90% of these deaths take place in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 2,000 children are lost to this disease every day. Mali is among those countries where this disease is still endemic, and requires prevention and constant funding.

Since the 1980s, African countries have done nothing but put up with this. But do they have the means to resist? The partial failure of the last WTO ministerial summit in Hong Kong in December 2005, which was supposed to close the Doha Round after the Cancun stage in September 2003 (which also failed), was due to the mobilisation of countries in the South against a process that places them in an endless trap. But the resistance over cotton, where the reserves of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, on top of other issues, are not enough to stop the machine called globalisation. The WTO is but one structural framework to have ended in failure. Meanwhile, the process continues according to its own dynamics, led by multinationals.

Resistance from civil society, through the mobilisation of the anti-globalisation movement, remains a very weak obstacle, whose consequences have struggled to take root in wider society. And in this movement, the proportion of women remains very slight. In the demonstrations of the African Social Forum, the female component is still very marginal. It is less a vehicle for reflection on resistance and alternatives to globalisation than an appendix to the changes that a being sought. We continue to debate what we put up with (physical violence, mental violence and so on) rather than the solutions women hold and the tools to give them impetus to act.

In the current climate of the feminisation of poverty and the feminisation of disease, the vicious circle is growing and affecting more and more women, and at the same time is closing in them as part of a continued process that is making precariousness more widespread. Page (2000) writes: “The subordination of women in African society, in the face of the HIV/Aids pandemic, is leading to premature deaths and the break-up of millions of families across the whole of the [African] continent. The fact that this in turn is creating a generation of rootless and traumatised children will have grave consequences for the future stability of many countries in Africa. While we concentrate solely on preventing infection and caring for those who are dying, we are neglecting the opportunity to prolong the healthy and productive lives of Africans who are HIV-positive, particularly mothers with children of a young age.” The logic of globalisation does not want this process to end.

•Mouhamadou Tidiane Kasse is Coordinator of Flamme d’Afrique, a daily newspaper published by IPAO and ENDA on occasions of meetings of social movements.
•Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Fahamu is seeking a Policy Analyst / Editor to work with its AU-Monitor project. The main purpose of the post is to strengthen the ability of African CSOs to engage constructively with the AU and its organs in the interest of promoting justice, equity and accountability.

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Do you want to reach a whole new audience with your original music? Would you like us to help promote your music? We're looking for artists to share their work with Pambazuka News to use in our new Podcasts - and we'll credit your work. Your work will be exposed to the 100,000 people who read Pambazuka News every week... Whether you're an up and coming musicians or an established artist, get in touch with our multimedia coordinator Heidi Bachram at [email][email protected]

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'Outside the Lines' is a radio drama about gay and lesbian lives in South Africa. The radio drama is available for broadcast. The drama may be used in its entirety, or in part as a segment in a programme about LGBTI issues or as a lead in to a call in show.

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