Pambazuka News 550: Wangari Maathai: The tree that became a forest
Pambazuka News 550: Wangari Maathai: The tree that became a forest
The Justice and Reconciliation in Africa programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation has recently released four new policy briefs, together with the Justice and Reconciliation Project. The briefs focus on Northern Uganda, as the region tries to recover after more than two decades of war.
A general hospital in a port city in Ghana has driven away patients, including pregnant women, due to a shortage of doctors since last Sunday. A notice posted on the walls of the general hospital in Tema asked clients seeking medical attention to visit other hospitals for their own safety as a result of the shortage of doctors in the hospital, especially at the maternity ward.
During the Gender Festival Week in Dar es Salaam recently, activists expressed their concern about the impact of selling or leasing large arable land to foreign multinational companies and governments will derail efforts to empower women and promote gender equality, reports Tanzania Daily News. 'As the country strives to empower women, it's obvious that the issue of land grabbing will impact heavily on women's well-being particularly girl child as usually at the end there will be winners and losers. In this case, women and their girl children are likely to lose.'
Zambians have started life under newly elected President Michael Sata who was inaugurated on 23 September 23, three days after the elections which ended 20 years of rule by the MMD government. Netizens on various social network platforms have expressed different views on the inauguration and the new presidency, reports Global Voices. Commenting on Rupiah Banda’s concession speech in which he said past presidents should be treated with respect and humility, Kasololo Chisenga, posted on Zambian Peoples Pact Facebook group: 'Do you agree that if wrong things happened in RB government we should just forget about them or should we make sure wrong things are exposed and corrected?'
In the run-up to parliamentary elections, due to be held in December, at least three protesters were killed in the Guinean capital, Conakry, when security forces broke up an opposition demonstration. Police used tear gas and batons against the stone-throwing protesters. Dozens of police vehicles and paramilitary forces prevented opposition activists from reaching a stadium.
Google has updated its maps to include the newly independent nation of South Sudan. The move follows a campaign by a South Sudanese journalist, who posted an online petition calling for the new nation to be marked on web maps. He said his country was still missing from websites including Microsoft, Yahoo! and National Geographic.
Côte d'Ivoire is due to swear in its Truth, Reconciliation and Dialogue Commission, aimed at forging unity after deadly violence that followed last year's disputed elections. About 3,000 people were killed and 500,000 displaced in the unrest. The commission is headed by former Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny.
'Every quarter, more than a hundred women with fistulas - including many younger than 20 years old - are admitted for surgery in Maniema province,' says nurse Julie Mawazo. 'The number of affected women who don't have the means or awareness to come in must be far greater.' Each year, sexual violence, early marriage and complications in childbirth lead to some 12,000 recorded cases of vaginal fistulas - in which a hole develops between either the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina - according to the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ministry of Public Health.
In September 2001, President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea ordered the detention of 21 senior government members and journalists who criticised him and his government. Since then, he has closed all independent media outlets and turned Eritrea into a country where arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance, and death are rife and where it is almost impossible to leave. This Human Rights Watch paper, 'Eritrea: 10 Long Years, A Briefing on Eritrea’s Missing Political Prisoners', outlines what is known about the political prisoners, none of whom has been seen by outsiders since being detained.
Battles between backyarders and informal settlement residents over the allocation of houses at Makhaza’s Ithemba Labantu housing project in Cape Town flared up again last week, resulting in shots fired by a backyarder believed to be defending himself against attackers. According to residents of Khayelitsha K-Section informal settlement, which is in Makhaza and where the 163-unit project is being built, backyarder Thembalani Mpambaniso was attacked by residents of the informal settlement while he was visiting his girlfriend, who lives in the settlement.
New research accuses the World Bank Group's policies of facilitating land grabs in Africa and favouring the interests of financial markets over food security and environmental protection. Agriculture and the food crisis were a high-profile agenda topic at the recent World Bank annual meetings, and critical voices are growing on the Bank's approach to food price volatility. Recent in-depth research by the US-based Oakland Institute raises further difficult questions on agriculture policy for Bank officials.
The Sierra Club and Bank Information Center are releasing a new report describing the daily realities of coal impacted communities from Cirebon, Indonesia, the Konkan coast and Kutch India, Inner Mongolia China, Appalachia USA, New South Wales Australia, and Limpopo South Africa. These stories paint an illuminating picture of an industry that brings toxic pollution, corruption, intimidation, poverty, and destruction to local societies.
Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi is set to meet justice ministry officials to rectify what his office terms 'contradictions' in the Sexual Offences Act of 2007 and the Children's Act of 2005. One law makes it legal for children of 12 and older to access contraceptives, and the other criminalises sex for youngsters of that age. Recently, children's rights activists were outraged when it emerged that National Prosecution Authority head Menzi Simelane had used the Act to authorise the prosecution of at least two groups of children between the ages of 12 and 16 for having consensual sex.
Four ZANU PF youths were convicted and sentenced to 18 years in jail over the 2009 murder of MDC-T activist Moses Chokuda. Farai Machaya, the son of Midlands Provincial Governor Jason Machaya, together with his co-accused Abel Maphosa and brothers Edmore and Bothwell Gana, were all found guilty during a week-long trial at the High Court. Tawengwa Chokuda, the victims father said: 'The way he (Moses) was killed was ruthless. He was beaten to death, tied with ropes and dragged like an animal.'
Egypt's parliamentary election will start on 28 November, a military source said, launching the process of handing back power to civilian rule nine months after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising. The source, who declined to be identified, said the military council has issued a decree inviting candidates to start registration for the elections for the upper and lower houses of parliament starting on 12 October.
Over six million Moroccan children set off to schools a few days ago. This year, the beginning of the school term was accompanied with lively debates over the future of the kingdom's state education system. Moroccans have voiced little confidence in state education and are critical of both teachers and the government's strategy in this sector.
With their eyes firmly on the money making potential of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) global food market, profit-seeking corporates punt food security through the enhancement of the global food value chain. But, writes Carol Thompson, this avoids distinguishing who is ‘valued’ and who is ‘chained’.
Monday, 12 September marked 34 years since the assassination of South African black consciousness leader Steve Biko. Imrann Moosa remembers his legacy.
Wangari Maathai was ‘an amazing person’, writes Thandika Mkandawire, relating a story about how Maathai defied the Kenyan government’s attempt to prevent her from attending a ‘subversive conference’ in Uganda.
Nigerian environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey remembers the life of Wangari Maathai, the internationally recognised founder of the Green Belt Movement, who died on 25 September.
If you would like to write a tribute or read and share tributes to Wangari Maathai, this site was setup by the Greenbelt Movement in her honour.
Wangari Maathai ‘achieved more in one short lifetime than most people can even contemplate,’ writes Margaretta wa Gacheru, founding ‘one of the most important environmental movements in the world’ and highlighting ‘the capacity of African rural women to problem-solve for the planet’.
Cyril Ritchie pays tribute to Wangari Maathai, her ‘contagious enthusiasm’ and ‘calming stoicism’, after 36 years of friendship with ‘an outstanding woman’.
The Conference of Energy Ministers in Africa – a two-year old institution recognised by the African Union and donors as the official voice of Africa's energy future – recently met for the second time and released a new declaration that can fairly be called double-speak, according to International Rivers.'The first half of the declaration is so great, it could have been written by a Nelson Mandela of energy. It outlines the brutal reality of Africa's energy poverty and the goals for universal access to sustainable energy across Africa by 2030. So why are the energy ministers calling for projects set to benefit one of the world's wealthiest corporations rather than the continent's own citizens? At the top of the plan's $19 billion list of 14 “Priority Projects” is Inga 3, a hydropower mega-project that would power a massive aluminum smelter to be built by BHP Billiton.'
‘For students and practitioners of hands-on development efforts, this handsomely designed and clearly written book merits attention as an illustration of what is possible, indeed what may be better done, outside the foreign aid system and its exhausted orthodoxies,’ writes David Sogge.
The fears that former UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld expressed 50 years ago about the negative impact that the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee would have on the UN and the African continent have turned out to be prescient, writes John Y. Jones.
The presidency has dismissed reports of the imminent suspension of police commissioner Bheki Cele. The Sunday Times reported that the president was about to send a final letter of suspension to Cele, seen as a once trusted political ally now fighting for his job, despite success in reducing crime rates. According to the newspaper he would be barred from office while a board of inquiry investigated his role in the police's R1.7 billion lease deals for new headquarters, which the public protector had deemed unlawful.
Desmond Tutu has accused the government of dragging its feet over the visa application of the Dalai Lama, who has been invited to attend the former archbishop's 80th birthday party. Tutu invited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate to give a lecture as part of his 80th birthday celebrations next month but officials have so far failed to react to the visa application. In 2009, Tutu criticised a decision to bar the Dalai Lama from attending a peace conference in Johannesburg, with the government saying that it did not want to jeopardise relations with key trade partner China.
Political tensions are rising in Angola, where a small but increasingly vocal group of protesters are rattling the cage of the ruling party ahead of elections planned for next year. The main driver behind the protests is unhappiness that, despite Angola's enormous oil wealth and post-war economic boom, two thirds of people still struggle in grinding poverty, many without running water and electricity, reports the BBC.
Botswana labour unions have asked a court to force the government to reinstate about 2 600 public service workers fired during the country's first national strike in April. 'Our comrades were participating in a legal strike and the government has no right to dismiss them, hence the decision to seek court's intervention,' said Andrew Motsamai, president of Botswana Public Employees Union. The workers, including doctors and nurses, were fired after the state won a court order forcing them to return to work, after they embarked on the nationwide mass action over wages.
Leading local women activists have filed an urgent application with the High Court seeking the closure of police holdings cells at the Harare Central Police Station they deem inhuman and inhabitable. The Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), which has won several international human rights awards, want the court to order responsible authorities to ensure that the police holding cells at Harare Central Police Station have clean and salubrious flushing toilets with toilet paper and a washing bowl. The application was filed by WOZA leaders Jenny Williams, her deputy Magondonga Mahlangu, Clara Majengwa and Celina Madukani.
Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa has vowed to crush any possible revolt against President Robert Mugabe’s continued rule. He dismissed as wishful thinking suggestions that Zimbabweans could stage an uprising similar to those that rocked North Africa recently. He said Zimbabwe’s all-weather friends, China and Russia, stood ready to aid the ZDF to crush its enemies.
'For the past several months, Congolese newspapers, chat rooms and listservs have resonated with discussions about the divided opposition,' writes Mvemba Dizolele on 'Starting in February, when only Etienne Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe had declared their intents to run, Congolese have expected the opposition to come together and fight incumbent Joseph Kabila as a united front. Now that more contenders have joined the fray, the need for a united opposition is more pressing, as no party can win alone.'
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has strongly condemned the ongoing deterioration of freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt. This follows news that Dr.Tarek Zidan, head of the 'Egypt Revolution Party' has proceeded with a criminal lawsuit no. 13846 for the year 2011 against Asmaa Mahfouz, accusing her of insulting and defaming him via her twitter account by posting false news about him.
After losing its application challenging the admissibility of the post election violence cases at the International Criminal Court, Kenya must now submit itself fully to the jurisdiction of the court at The Hague, says this East African article. 'However, questions are arising on whether the ongoing confirmation hearings at The Hague are enough to stop election-related chaos that have been experienced intermittently since 1992.'
Blog Africa is a Country explores how the debate about Karl Marx's economic theories is entering the mainstream. 'The mainstream (media, experts, free market boosters, etcetera) and rightwingers who usually operate in delusional essentialisms (capitalism eventually works for all of us; if you’re poor, or fail, it’s your own fault; the world’s resources will never run out; trade unions hold people back, etcetera), are second-guessing themselves. In a strange twist, they've taken to reading Karl Marx’s critiques of capitalism to make sense of the global economic meltdown.'
Senegalese families are spacing their children, having fewer, and as a result are increasingly searching for long-term family planning solutions, said Fatou Seck, a midwife at the hospital. While in 1990 the average woman in Senegal had 6.7 children in her reproductive cycle; in 2009 when the latest statistics were made available, they had 4.8, according to the Health Ministry.
A surge in new leprosy cases in a remote region of Madagascar could not have come at a worse time. Once a prosperous vanilla-exporting town, Antalaha has suffered the economic consequences of two years of political instability that began with the March 2009 coup in which Andry Rajoelina, with the support of the military, deposed President Marc Ravalomanana. Numerous foreign aid and trade benefits on which the country was heavily reliant, particularly for the funding of social sectors, have since been suspended.
Already struggling with the realities of being displaced, Ivorian refugees in Ghana are now faced with another problem: That of ex-combatants living amongst them and said to be fomenting discontent, including through holding secret meetings. Two mysterious deaths have already been linked to the former fighters, although Ghanaian police say they are investigating the circumstances under which they died.
The Opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) has condemned a police ban on political activities in the country, threatening to paralyse operations of the parliament if the police fail to withdraw it. The opposition argues that the police have no legal authority to take such decisions.
Thousands of Egyptian women fought in the 18-day uprising that unseated longtime President Hosni Mubarak. At least 15 women died in the uprising, according to official figures. Hundreds were wounded. And still, complain prominent Egyptian feminists, women are being sidelined from post-Mubarak politics: their names ignored for government posts, and their divorce and custody rights threatened by a powerful new Islamist lobby.
African economies face considerable risks from a renewed global economic downturn, African finance ministers told a Washington news briefing. They added that the continent’s economies are still on the recovery path from the previous global crisis and are in the process of restoring critical economic buffers. The ministers also stressed that Africa was bracing for adverse effects from the economic problems in the euro zone, with export receipts and remittances particularly vulnerable. They noted that, as a new global downturn threatened, African countries were more interconnected than ever before with their neighbors and with their principal markets.
'Africa wants an outcome based on science that is fair and honours the promises all countries have made in the UN Climate Convention and its Kyoto Protocol. We need to agree to global reductions for 2050 that limit warming to well below the predicted 1.5 degrees Celsius in Africa.' This is according to Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, who will lead the negotiations on behalf of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN) at the United Nations climate change conference later this year. He was interviewed by IPS.
Sometime in the next two months, activists and survivors of horrific violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo will find out if Callixte Mbarushimana will stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mbarushimana is the executive secretary of the FDLR - the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – a rebel movement which has operated in the eastern part of the DRC since 2005. The prosecution alleges that he directed FDLR fighters to murder, torture and rape civilians in the provinces of North and South Kivu in 2009, as a strategy to strengthen the rebel movement's hand in negotiations with the Rwandan government. Judges will confirm or reject each of eleven charges before the end of November.
This year Fatimata Koama and her associates received more than half a million CFA francs as a reward for planting - and looking after - 1,200 trees in their small corner of Burkina Faso. Magoulé's payout – equivalent to about 1,200 dollars – is just part of more than 100,000 dollars disbursed over the past two years as a strategy to strengthen reforestation efforts, according to environmental group SOS Sahel and the Burkina Ministry of the Environment.
A Sweden-based journalist was publicly threatened in connection with her reporting on the case of Dawit Isaac, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist who has been imprisoned in Eritrea for a decade without charge, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. A day earlier in New York, bodyguards for the Eritrean leader Isaias Afewerki pushed and threatened two Swedish journalists seeking to speak to the president about the Isaac case, the journalists said.
Zambia's Banda lets the side down...
Looking for a role model? Take your pick.
Please join Amnesty International and War on Want to hear about the remarkable work of Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘people of the shacks’), a movement campaigning for the rights of many thousands of South Africans living without access to adequate housing and at risk of forced evictions.
The evening includes a a screening of the 20 minute short version of the film, Dear Mandela, the story of the emergence of Abahlali, its courageous response to the numerous challenges it has faced and its campaign against forced evictions, which led to the constitutional court victory in 2009.
VENUE: Human Rights Action Centre, 17 - 25 New Inn Yard, EC2A 3EA
DATE AND TIME: Friday 7 October 2011 at 6:30 p.m.
CONTACT: Caroline Elliot, War on Want
Attn Africa Programme, Amnesty International, amnestyis[at]amnesty.org
PRICE: FREE
BOOKING: book your space
Following the City of Cape Town’s demolition of over 100 structures at Kraalfontein that had been erected by backyarders on an unused piece of land, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign has issued a statement calling on the City to support rather than condemn the poor.
‘Just before the stars sing, just before the childish wave wanes/You will plant another seed in the distance, another tree, another universe gained.’ Bayo Akomolafe remembers Wangari Maathai.
Pambazuka News 549: Special Issue: Tributes to a fallen fighter: Wambui Otieno
Pambazuka News 549: Special Issue: Tributes to a fallen fighter: Wambui Otieno
Heavily armed anti-Gaddafi fighters tightened their siege of the ousted Libyan leader's hometown of Sirte on Monday as hundreds of terrified civilians poured out of the Mediterranean coastal city. Fleeing residents spoke of dwindling supplies of food and water and said Gaddafi forces had attempted to stop people leaving, while doctors warned of a growing humanitarian crisis.
As human rights activists and ordinary citizens risk their lives across the Arab world, a new report argues that we have not yet done enough to empower and protect those who attempt to expose injustices through video. Video, a powerful tool for change, is enabling the public to become human rights activists on an unprecedented scale. The 'Cameras Everywhere' report from WITNESS calls on technology companies, investors, policymakers and civil society to work together in strengthening the practical and policy environments, as well as the information and communication technologies, used to defend human rights.
This statement dates from 1961, but 50 years later it is being reposted here for its historical and contemporary relevance. The statement notes that, 'neo-Colonialism manifests itself through economic and political intervention, intimidation and blackmail in order to prevent African states from directing their political, social and economic programmes towards the exploitation of their natural wealth for the benefit of their peoples.'
In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...
Dan Rather devotes his program, 'Dan Rather Reports on HD Net' on Tuesday 27 September to exploring the complex issues involved with modern-day land appropriation in developing countries. The program profiles Oakland Institute's ground breaking work on land grabs in Africa involving over 30 land deals in seven countries. Rather interviews Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute and looks at the role of American investors and US universities in this trend that threatens millions of lives, the future for Sub-Saharan Africa, and examines why this is happening at this time.
A new report by the British charity Oxfam suggests that over 22,000 Ugandans have been forced out of their homes since 2004. Oxfam claims many of them have been left homeless after being evicted in so-called land-grabs, to clear the way for timber plantations. One eviction case involves the British company New Forest Company, who have denied the accusations.
Discover the ins and outs of Sodom and Gomorrah slum in this documentary. Close to 80,000 people live in Sodom and Gomorrah, a slum on the edge of the polluted Korle Lagoon. The processing of electronic waste near the lagoon leaches toxic substances like lead into the soil. The place sprang up in the 1980s when thousands of people fleeing bloody ethnic clashes between the Kokomba and Nanumba in the north poured into the capital.
Political Promises reveals how promises given the electorate end up unfulfilled. It is a special documentary on Obom, a village a few miles away from the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Many of the residents are suffering from Buruli ulcer. Children still carry desks to school, and sit in classrooms with leaking roofs. Joy FM reporter Seth Kwame Boateng tells the story of how the health, education and economic needs of the locals have yet to be fulfilled.
Woes of the Borstal Child delves into the poor conditions in which children are held in Ghana’s remand homes for children. Hundreds of the children under the age of 18 are held in these institutions under shocking conditions. Most of the facilities were built decades ago and have seen little or no renovation since they were built. But why would the courts be keen on sending children to these poorly-resourced facilities built decades ago? There is also concern that many of these children were unfairly convicted and sent to these facilities. Fiifi Koomson of Joy FM in Accra has been following the issue.
A year ago, human rights activists thought they had squashed a proposed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO) prize in the life sciences that would honor Teodoro Obiang, the longtime dictator of Equatorial Guinea. But that celebration may have been premature. The controversial award is back on the agenda of UNESCO's Executive Board, which will meet in Paris -and this time, Obiang has the backing of the entire African Union.
Survivors of last week’s fire that killed more than 100 people in a Nairobi slum say they are lucky to be alive. As the government works to help and compensate those affected, the explosion ignites fresh debate about the safety of slums.
'It is surprising and humiliating to certify that "Haiti is a threat to world peace and security", as the UN Security Council does, year after year, in order to ratify the presence there of a military-police mission said to be for the purposes of stabilization: the MINUSTAH. It is a statement that hides the impunity of the major powers and the hypocrisy that allows them to intervene militarily, politically, and economically in Haiti, drawing as well on the services of others. The real threat is that intervention itself, a laboratory as well for new forms of domination and popular control.'
ETC Group is seeking a staff member, based in Africa, to share in carrying out the overall programme of the organization, and to give specific attention to strengthening our work on the continent during the period leading to the UN’s Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.
This issue includes:
- Self reliance then and now by Dharam Ghai
- Self reliance in the age of globalisation by Firoze Manji
- Sankare by Demba Moussa Dembele
- Re-learning seld reliance for engagement by Sakhi Nitin-Anita and Manish Jain
- Creating self reliance mechanisms to manage conflict by Alice Nderitu
- Self reliance in the art world by Kofi Osei
- Damned if you do and damned if you don't by Sunny Bindra
- Say little, work hard and be young forever by Fiona Mati
- Organising the working poor by Dharam Ghai
ALTERNATIVE ANGLE: Who are 'we' by John Sibi-Okumu
The Mutunga cultural stud by Ali M. Mazrui and Al-Amin M. Mazrui
Indian South Africans by Mohamed Keshavjee
London calling: reminiscences, reflections by Ramnik Shah
CONFERENCE REVIEW: Constitutions and constitution-making by the British Institute of East Africa
RABINDRANATH TAGORE: 150th year celebration of a life
BOOK REVIEWS:
- Strings of pearls bleeding light by Sheniz Janmohamed, reviewed by Stephen Partington
- Crackdown by Njuguna Mutonya; reviewed by Awaaz
- Hearts and souls by Leopoldo Paradela, reviewed by Stephen Partington
- Men of dynamite: edited by Rashid Seedat and Razia Saleh: reviewed by Meg Samuelson
- The politics of betrayal by Joe Khamisi: reviewed by John Sibi-Okumu
- Wizard of the crow by Ngugi Wa Thiongo: reviewed by Marjorie Oludhe
FOOTSTEPS:
- CYNTHIA SALVADORI
- KADER ASMAL
- MANUBHAI MADHVANI
- DEKHA IBRAHIM
FUNDED BY:
ADVERTISING SUPPORT:
Giro Commercial Bank, Agility Logistics Ltd, Franklin Management Consultants Ltd, AdScreen Print Ltd, Concorde Car Hire Ltd, Colour Print Ltd, Reef Hotel Msa
INDIVIDUAL SUPPORTERS AND SPONSORS:
Mohez Karmali, Hindpal Jabbal, H S Mangat, Chandaria and Premchandbhai Foundation, Rattansi Educational Trust, Fatma Alloo, Shehin Hirani, Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell Ghai:
Main Outlets:
Monty’s Wines and Spirits – Sarit Centre, Westlands, Text Book Centre - Sarit Centre, La baquette – Shell Petrol Station, Westlands, Book Stop – Yaya Centre, Hurlingham, Book Point – Moi Avenue
‘With her death on 30 August 2011, Wambui Otieno-Mbugua joins the pantheon of African women activists who devoted their lives to struggles against colonial and post-independence political regimes and against systems that favoured and still do favour men over women,’ writes Elsie Cloete.
Wambui Otieno, a 'solitary woman who fought against patriarchal values', may have 'struggled against oppression, but her story is simply a struggle for love and dignity,' writes Wandia Njoya.
If they must sing about Wambui Otieno, ‘may our children’s songs be a robust tribute to the courageous spirit of a woman who said “sikubali!” to the chauvinist currents of her time,’ writes Grace A. Musila.
Awino Okech examines Kenyan public memory, 24 years after the SM Otieno case and in the wake of Wambui Otieno’s death.
‘In this special issue of Pambazuka News we seek to bring to the fore the layered nature of Wambui’s life and the opportunities it in turn offers to understanding the social, political and economic factors that are contested, influence and shape Kenya … Through these pieces we gain some insight into how the brazen defiance of one woman captured the imagination of a nation, writes Awino Okech. ‘Love or hate her, you could not ignore her.’
If I sing you a song whose words
You have heard in the west
You will forget that I come from the East
You will tell me that I am a confused Afrikan woman
Who has learned from the west to sting with venom
deriding cultures and speaking in borrowed tongues
Failing to stem Lawino’s tide for all that sharpness
Relying on papers instead of oral wit...
Daughter of Kenya, Wambui,
I weep with you.
Why has your nation left you alone?
In the moment of pain...
Dave Zirin, writing in The Nation, asks a series of questions about the US execution. 'Can Troy Davis, who fought to his last breath, actually be dead this morning? If we felt tortured with fear and hope for the four hours that the Supreme Court deliberated on Troy’s case, how did the Davis family feel? Why does this hurt so much?'
Wambui Otieno-Mbugua fought valiantly for freedom and women’s rights, writes Anne Njogu who describes the fallen Kenyan heroine as robustly nationalist, progressive and feminist.
'Election Day was generally peaceful, however incidents of violence were reported at Lilanda, Kanyama and Nakatindi polling stations owing to the delay in opening of polling stations and the delivery of Ballot boxes. It is important to note that when notified of these issues, the Electoral Commission of Zambia was quick to rectify some of the problems identified.'
Mshai Mwangola writes that while not everyone would agree with the choices Wambui Otieno made, it is impossible to ignore her. ‘Her very life functioned as a battleground in the struggle to assert her understanding of what it meant to be a human being’.
The Mau Mau uprising
Found you and left you
You fought with the white man
Like a man
And won
Wambui our warrior...
Wambui’s tensions, dilemmas and challenges represent the realities of colonial and post-colonial Kenya, writes Njoki Wamai, who also points out that she has left Kenya a rich legacy of courageous struggle for personal and national freedom.
‘Whether we are aware of it or not, in our daily negotiations with modernity and tradition, with selfhood and community, with partnership, family, society and state, we swim in waters changed forever by the battles she fought, writes Shailja Patel.
In your struggle
you exposed traditional chauvinism
Seen through the mirror of self
In your struggle,
There was a sense of weaving a nation
A true nation of humanity and unity...
In a male-dominated society where many customs oppress women, Wambui Otieno stood out for resisting the status quo, says Patrick Maina. Her life offers the lesson that women’s equality to men in rights and dignity cannot be realised without a fight.
This is a startling and disturbing statistic. The reality is: these 130 people were originally found guilty based on eyewitness testimony. Once physical DNA evidence surfaced, it turned out that the eyewitnesses, who testified against them, were wrong. There is no DNA evidence in the case of Troy Anthony Davis.
'Two bus operators have died after having been shot by police in Swaziland,' Morten Nielsen from Danish NGO Africa Contact reports from the small kingdom. The shootings come in the wake of widespread police violence throughout the country during recent weeks, as well as in April, where thousands of Swazis marched for democracy and socio-economic justice.
Pambazuka News 548: Africa, Palestine and World Conference against Racism
Pambazuka News 548: Africa, Palestine and World Conference against Racism
We could speculate until the camels come home...
Are the 23 candidates in Cameroon’s October 9 presidential elections only in it for the money? Without a unifying opposition figure what hope for change is there? These are among the questions raised in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Dibussi Tande, which also takes a look at elections in Zambia and Liberia.
‘Social justice and transformation in Africa and Palestine are inextricably linked,' writes Horace Campbell. The 'demilitarisation of the region can only be secured by uniting the peace and justice forces in all parts of the world.'
A decade after the historic World Conference against Racism, the issues raised remain relevant and urgent despite western opposition, writes Pierre Sane. The whole world must confront racism, which continues to reinvent its justification and modes of expression.
According to Alemayehu G. Mariam, Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi has no qualms about backstabbing his professed friend, President Omar Bashir of Sudan, which is nothing strange. Dictators are in power for themselves and their cronies.
Kenya is under national and international obligation to guarantee the right to food, but the current famine and inadequate response point to government failure, writes Joseph Kibugu, who calls for effective measures to end the cycle of famines.
Nii Akuetteh wonders why his fellow Pan-Africanists and anti-imperialists are in a rage over the six-month imperialist intervention in Libya but not over the ten years Gaddafi was an imperialist stooge exiling, kidnapping, torturing and killing Africans, anti-imperialists and democrats.
A lesbian member of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) was physically assaulted and beaten on 2 September. The attack comes after continued reports of harassment and threats towards LGBT people in the area by known individuals.
Following the marriage of two lesbians of African descent in New York earlier this year, Nick Mwaluko asks whether their historic act will help change perceptions towards same-sex relationships in Africa, not just in the US.
The fire at the Israeli embassy in Cairo on 8 September probably won’t ‘turn into a bushfire’, writes Gabriele Habashi, but it does give the Egyptian military an excuse for clamping down on protests by ordinary people in the eyes of the international community.
There is growing evidence that the financial markets have discovered the huge opportunities presented by agricultural commodities, writes Norman Girvan. The consequences are devastating, as speculators drive up food prices and plunge millions of people into poverty.
Gabriele Habashi gives a gripping account of her experience during the early days of the protests that would eventually force President Hosni Mubarak out of power in Egypt. She debunks some myths about how the revolution actually unfolded.
Sign up to a document with challenges and proposals for Rio+20 and agriculture, in the run-up to follow-up conference to the 1992 Earth Summit.
On the World Day against Monoculture Tree Plantations, The No REDD Platform, a coalition of climate justice groups and Indigenous peoples organizations, seeks support for the letter attached.
Fahamu Refugee Programme has mounted a campaign to oppose States and UNHCR withdrawing the protection of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees from tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees currently in exile. ‘These are not people escaping retribution from the 1994 genocide,’ said Director Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE. ‘They are those who have been fleeing Rwanda since, some quite recently, including large numbers of genocide survivors, who were never refugees before, as well as government officials and army officers, because of instability, ethnic strife, arbitrary judicial procedures, indiscriminate retaliation, political violence, intolerance of dissent, impunity, and lack of accountability.’
'Tonight the State of Georgia killed an innocent man,' writes the NAACP, following the death of Troy Davis on 21 September. 'Troy's execution, the exceptional unfairness of it, will only hasten the end of the death penalty in the United States. The world will remember the name of Troy Anthony Davis. In death he will live on as a symbol of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.'