The People's Health Movement, a global network of civil society groups, researchers, activists and teachers involved in health, proposes the launch of a global campaign on the Right to Health. PHM would like to invite civil society organizations, interested individuals and groups to participate in discussing the possibility of hosting such a campaign in South Africa. It would also contribute to building civil society for the Third People's Health Assembly, planned for 2010 at an African venue (to be determined). This edition of Critical Health Perspectives sketches the background to the campaign and some of the thinking behind it.

Since July 2005, hundreds of families have been made homeless after being forcibly evicted from their homes in several neighbourhoods in Luanda, the capital. Their homes were demolished and other property was either destroyed or stolen by the police and municipal fiscal agents that carried out the forced evictions. Most of the forced evictions were carried out violently. Forced evictions - those which are not carried out in accordance with the law – are human rights violations clearly prohibited by international law. They almost invariably affect the poor and most vulnerable members of society; they increase social inequality and poverty and frequently give rise to social conflict. Yet, the Angolan government continues to forcibly evict people from their homes.

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70 percent female, handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption 'God Sleeps in Rwanda' captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefining women’s roles in Rwandan society and bringing hope to a wounded nation.

Since 1976, Tides Foundation has worked with donors committed to positive social change, putting resources and people together to strengthen community-based nonprofit organizations and the progressive movement through innovative grantmaking.

The Ugandan elections are in the news and a number of African bloggers provide commentary on the subject.

Ethan of My Heart’s in Accra - http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=380 - reports on the ongoing pre-election violence and most worrying of all the deployment of 12,000 soldiers by Museveni to “prevent poll violence”.

“…opposition supporters see this as clear intimidation, a sign that Museveni will use the army to retain power even if he’s unsuccessful at the ballot box.”

There is also the situation in war torn Northern Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army have been fighting what Ethan describes as a “incomprehensible war” for the past 10 years. There has also been reports that the army has threatened voters in the region that they will pull out if people do not vote for Museveni. Despite all this it seems many Ugandans do not know there is an election on Thursday.

“According to their survey, only 53% of Ugandans polled knew the election was taking place on Thursday. This may reflect an attempt to dampen voter turnout by Museveni, or the complications of advertising an election in a poor nation… but it seems surprising that a pivotal election would be so poorly known about.”

Kenyan Pundit - http://www.kenyanpundit.com/?p=131 - posts a speech by Prof. Joe Oloka-Onyango who provides some context behind the elections. Kenyan Pundit writes:

“The upcoming elections in Uganda will have implications on the future of democracy in the region as a whole…perhaps the ‘African Big Man’ syndrome is not about to vanish after all.”

Uganda-CAN - http://www.ugandacan.org/item/944 - focuses on Northern Uganda and the plight of child soldiers who even when they are rescued and returned to their homes continue to suffer – this time from friends and family.

“Uganda's former child soldiers, haunted by exposure to violence at a young age, often find little solace when reintegrated into their home communities. Abducted as youth into the throes of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), children are forced to commit acts of violence against the country's northern population until they escape or are captured by the Ugandan military. But when they return home, the nightmare continues, as they face stigmatization from their family and peers.”

Ethiopian blog, written by journalist Andrew Havens, Meskel Square - http://www.meskelsquare.com/archives/2006/02/two_scenes_from.html - has been reporting on the drought faced by Ethiopians in the southern Moyale zone of the country.

“Moyale is at the heart of a devastating drought that has left an estimated 737,000 Ethiopians struggling to survive without access to clean water. Beyond Ethiopia, the drought has spread out to affect more than 8.3 million people, including 1.2 million children aged under five, across the Horn of Africa.”

Meskel Square personalises his report by focusing on the driver of the only water truck, Tafesech Sahele, a 45-year-old mother-of two from Addis Ababa, who delivers water after filling up from the only three boreholes in the area.

Kenyan Blogger – Gukira - http://gukira.blogspot.com/2006/02/cartoons.html - discusses the recent Danish cartoons by placing them in an historical context of Euro/America race relations.

“To trace a history of cartoons in Euro-America is to trace a history of race relations…At the turn of the 20th C., Sambo art was in vogue. If one could not own a nigger, one could own a mug, a picture, a doll, an object that featured coal-black skin, bright red lips, and milk-white teeth.”

As the West defends freedom of speech, Gukira writes that people of colour have to ask “freedom for whom” and asks us to remember that lynchings were social occasions.

“Families assembled, complete with their cherubic children. Eager women rushed to take pieces of nigger clothing or skin or hair as souvenirs.”

Black Looks - http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2006/02/dorothy_akenova.html - comments on a BBC programme called IChallenge which interviews an amazingly progressive Nigerian activist who has set up an organisation called INCREASE. “The organisation seeks to promote sexual health in the traditional Northern Sharia state of Niger.” INCREASE (International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights) is based in Niger State in the North of Nigeria and was started by Dorothy Aken’Ova, who writes:

“I believe in equal rights. I challenge the injustices, the discriminatory practices, all forms of inequalities that exist in Nigerian society, especially those that are fuelled by differences in gender and sexuality and especially sexual orientation.”

In addition to INCREASE, Ms Aken’Ova started a group for young gays, lesbians and transgenders in Abuja called IConnect which provides users with a supportive environment and opportunities to network with each other.

As soon as Moussa Diouf saw the bird lying sick on the ground, the young man from a village on the edges of Senegal’s giant Djoudj bird reserve, dropped it in a plastic bag and dashed off post-haste to the main rangers’ office. Diouf was worried the bird might be carrying “the new sickness”. But the head ranger smiled on opening the bag. “It’s a common sparrow which is moulting and has become vulnerable because it can’t fly very far,” said Major Ibrahima Diop, who heads a squad of 43 rangers working in the Djoudj reserve, a national showcase of 16,000 hectares of low-lying mangrove swamp.

Free software developers and advocates from across the African continent will be heading for Nairobi in Kenya this week as they gather for the second Fossfa African Conference on the Digital Commons. The Idlelo2 conference will run from Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 February. Key issues that will be hammered out during the conference include free and open source software in government, health services, education and entrepreneurship.

This programme seeks to build a new generation of social justice leaders worldwide. Ford Foundation International Fellows come from groups and communities that have traditionally lacked access to higher education and are selected on the strength of their academic achievement, leadership skills and social commitment. These include groups such as women, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other marginalised classes, the physically disadvantaged and those with other kinds of socio-economic deprivation.

Southern African International Film and Television Festival and Market (Sithengi) may have been started in 1996 by a group of Zimbabweans and South Africans, but the initiative is now fanning out to the rest of Africa. During the official opening of 10th Sithengi in November 2005, the board of directors was expanded, bringing in Nigeria and Francophone Africa. Making the announcement, outgoing chairman, Eddie Mbalo, said this was necessary to make Sithengi a truly African continental film organisation. Nigeria is represented by Afolabi Adesanya, the managing director of Nigerian Film Corporation while Mauritanian filmmaker, Abderrhamane Cissako, represents French-speaking Africa. Other members will be drawn from the South African film industry and organisations giving money to Sithengi.

Human rights activists are appealing to judicial authorities for a retrial of former opposition MP Ayman Nour due to “irregularities” in the initial investigation and trial. “A retrial should be carried out as quickly as possible,” said Bahieddine Hassan, head of the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies, “in order to address the serious legal breaches made in his first trial”. Nour, a leading opposition figure and head of the nascent Al-Ghad Party, was tried along with six others and convicted in December of having forged signatures on party documents. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

ABA/Africa is looking for a Country Director to handle a Four Year Anti-Trafficking Program in Nigeria. The ideal candidate for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Advisor is a senior legal professional with demonstrated success in the area of criminal prosecution, including sex crimes and domestic violence, as well as rule of law programming and management in Africa.

By highlighting the positive power of sport, The Homeless World Cup seeks to inspire and address homeless people and people in poverty around the world through in-person sporting events, a website, and mass media coverage. An annual street soccer (football) tournament unites teams of homeless people around the world; the goal is to raise awareness about their experiences, generate a sense of community strength, and foster a new social impact for a marginalised group. The 2006 competition (Sept. 21-30, Cape Town, South Africa) is expected to involve 45 teams with players from 35 countries, at least 50,000 spectators, and global media coverage.

Why has the UN managed to carry out successful elections in Liberia but failed in neighboring Ivory Coast? A diplomat based in Abidjan explains that unlike Liberia - whose state structures had collapsed when the peacekeeping forces stepped in - the rebels and the government in Ivory Coast, who "make money" from the civil war, show little desire to resolve the conflict. The head of the UN mission in Liberia also points out that the UN presence in Ivory Coast is relatively small compared to Liberia and the disarmament program, much weaker.

On Friday 3rd February 2006, Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) spearheaded the launch of the Women's Manifesto 2006 at Hotel Africana, Kampala. The document seeks to give women a common platform for addressing crucial concerns of women in Uganda through helping more of them to take up leadership positions in politics, especially Parliament. UWONET's main mission is to promote networking and attain collective vision and action among different actors working towards development and the transformation of the unequal gender relations in society.

Zambia has revised upwards planned spending on new power stations and upgrades to meet increasing electricity demand at its vast copper mines, a senior industry official said. State power utility Zesco required $1.2 billion - up from an initial target of $720 million budget last year - and was in talks with Iran's Farab International and China's Sinohydro on construction of the 750 megawatt Kafue Gorge Lower project and the 120 MW Itezhi-Tezhi power project, the official said, reports Reuters.

While the White House has long denied funding to overseas groups that help women obtain abortions, U.S. President George W. Bush's new budget proposal looks to reduce funding to international family planning groups the administration previously had lauded as effective in preventing abortions. The proposed 18% cut is drawing the ire of nonprofit groups and Democrats on Capitol Hill. "It's ironic that an administration outwardly committed to reducing the incidence of abortion would take away valuable tools for preventing unwanted pregnancies," one Democratic congresswoman said, reports the New York
Times.

This article, from the e-zine "At Issue", examines Botswana's progress in the education sector from 1965 (independence from Britain) to 2005. It argues that due to revenue from diamonds, Botswana has been able to invest heavily in its education system, thus making it a model for other African countries. The article states that Botswana is two percent short of achieving universal access to primary school as envisaged by the Millennium Development Goals. This compares favourably with most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which have very low primary completion rates, many less than 50 percent.

This policy brief explores the reform needed of social institutions and cultural practices to enhance qender equality. The paper argues that gender equality is good for growth, economic development and poverty reduction. The paper recommends that donor interventions should be designed to tackle potential male resistance from the outset and that donors should assist in changing social attitudes vis-a-vis women.

The UN is studying the feasibility of appointing a special rapporteur - a human rights expert - who will focus specifically on national laws that discriminate against women in their home countries. "The goal of eliminating all sex discriminatory laws has so far not been achieved," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan confesses in a new report.

The Association of Women in Development interviews Stephen Barris from the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) - an organisation that was recently denied consultative status at the UN. Barris says the following: "We are well aware that a UN decision in favour of the human rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people is not going to radically change the life of millions of persons in the world. Change needs to happen locally. The ECOSOC decision is important because the UN should be a common house for all - and its Commission on Human Rights should be the biggest institution defending the rights of all in this world. The first speech ever given in the United Nations was given in ILGA's name in 1992 when we still had observer status at the UN. Since we lost it in 1994, ILGA has never ceased to be present at the UN."

Haiti can return as a member of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) after its elections, says Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. Mr. Patterson made the announcement during a press conference in Trinidad following his final chairing of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Negotiations, during which Haiti's readmission was discussed. The conference was telecast to journalists assembled at the Office of the Prime Minister's press centre in St. Andrew. With the presence of CARICOM monitors, and other such organisations on the ground, including 9,000 United Nations troops, he said he was satisfied the elections were free and fair.

African nations would benefit from stronger, more influential science academies, whose expertise could be brought to bear on the continent's pressing issues. Africa's existing academies may be small and limited in expertise, but this editorial in Nature says one of the main reasons they are not more influential is that they lack the skills needed to communicate effectively with policymakers or the media. It cites a ten-year project undertaken by the US National Academy of Sciences to strengthen science academies in Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.

The Communication Initiative is operating a new discussion forum on health communication for the Health Communication Partnership, called 'Why invest in health communication? The forum will focus on the following questions: Do you have an opinion on investment in health communication? Is it enough? Are there discernable trends? How do we measure them? What would you like to see and why? Who should we be lobbying and how?

Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday (February 18) adopted a new constitution aimed at bringing an end to decades of dictatorship, war and chaos in the vast country, and paving the way for elections by mid-2006. Thousands of people, including regional presidents, gathered in the gardens of the presidential palace in the capital Kinshasa, cheering and waving paper replicas of the country's new flag as President Joseph Kabila signed into law the new constitution.

As Washington's dependence on African oil intensifies, some analysts predict the region will increasingly play host to confrontations between US forces deployed there and various insurgent groups, predominantly Islamic extremists. Last year, the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was allocated just 16 million dollars - pocket change compared to other U.S. military incursions across the globe. But funding for the exercises, described as enhancing regional security and stability, is expected to grow steadily in coming years.

Colin Bruce, the World Bank country director for Eritrea, told Reuters that the decision to pursue the border issue meant that the Horn of Africa country was spending a lot on defence at the expense of other areas. The unresolved border issue with Ethiopia is weighing on Eritrea's economy and casting doubt on its ability to pay its debts, a senior World bank official said on Wednesday. Eritrea blames the international community, and the United Nations, in particular, for not forcing Ethiopia to demarcate the Ethiopian-Eritrean border under the terms of a peace deal to end their 1998-2000 border war which killed 70,000 people.

Medical experts from Africa's Great Lakes region are meeting in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, to plan ways of countering epidemics in the region. Outbreaks of malaria, cholera, meningitis, dysentery and, lately, the avian influenza are some of the epidemics under discussion in the four-day workshop that began on Monday. Experts representing Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania are in attendance.

One of the greatest challenges in the aftermath of any violent conflict is the issue of accountability for serious human rights violations, begins this report from the Zimbabwe NGO Human Rights Forum. "Although impunity continues to characterise many post-conflict situations, since the end of World War 2 there has been perceptible progress in efforts towards securing justice and accountability and in undertakings to build polities based on fundamental rights and freedoms and respect for the rule of law." The report says that "policies of amnesia and avoidance" are on the wane while the trend to do nothing is becoming increasingly unpopular. Write to [email protected] for a copy of the report.

On January 23rd the UN Committee on Non-governmental Organizations decided not to recommend consultative status with ECOSOC for International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians. The decision was criticized by the representative of Germany, who named it an act of discrimination and stressed that it was a signal sent to the world that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was acceptable. The Danish representative talking in support of Danish NGO emphasized that it worked in a professional manner and produced valuable work. Voices against recommending both NGOs for consultative status came from: Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, US, and Zimbabwe. Voices in favor came from: Chile, France, Germany, Peru and Romania. Colombia, India and Turkey abstained. Cote d'Ivoire was absent.

The racist abuse of African and South American players featuring in Croatia's league has been condemned by the country's prime Minister. “We are living in a century in which tolerance should be cultivated. We have to stop racist acts," Ivo Sanader told the Sportske Novosti newspaper. Cameroonian Mathias Chago and Brazilians Eduardo da Silva and Oeliton Araujo dos Santos Etto, who play for Dinamo Zagreb, were taunted with monkey chants during Sunday's match against arch-rivals Hadjuk Split. Sportske Novosti condemned the "shameful eruption of racism" during the match, which was also interrupted on several occasions when flares were thrown onto the pitch.

Women constitute 52 per cent of the world’s population yet make up only 21 per cent of people featured in the news. Women are most underrepresented in radio where they are only 17 per cent of news subjects compared with 22 per cent on television and 21 per cent in newspapers. This was revealed in global research on gender issues in the news media conducted by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC).

"People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) is disappointed but not surprised by today’s (February 14) postponement of the rape trial involving former deputy president Jacob Zuma. Applying for recusals of judges and postponements are common delay tactics employed by defence teams during rape trials. POWA is cognisant of the fact that the State did not oppose the application for a postponement and hopes that this postponement serves the interests of the state’s case. From POWA’s experience in dealing with other rape cases, we know that delays to the court process often have a negative impact on survivors’ emotional well-being. Some survivors will interpret the postponements and delays as a sign of the criminal justice system favouring the accused."

* Related Link:
South Africa: Zuma rape case in High Court
http://www.agenda.org.za/index.php?option=com _content&task=view&id=1123&Itemid=147

Three people were killed and several others injured when a soldier opened fire into a crowd that was waiting for opposition leader Kizza Besigye at Bulange, Mengo. Police confirmed two people were killed and four injured, but eyewitnesses said a third person had died on the way to hospital.

The Durban High Court on Wednesday ordered the Scorpions to return certain documents seized from former deputy president Jacob Zuma and his lawyer, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio news reported. The documents were seized during raids on Zuma's homes in Johannesburg and his KwaZulu-Natal homestead, and the Durban office of his lawyer, Michael Hulley, in August 2005. They relate to the investigation into Zuma's "generally corrupt" relationship with Durban businessman Schabir Shaik.

Onyango Oloo, a Kenyan political activist and ex political prisoner, argues that there is a deepening crisis of legitimacy for the Kenyan government. The implication of key government officials in grand corruption has struck yet another nail in the coffin of the shattered and battered National Rainbow Coalition. Oloo sees corruption as driven by two factors; internally by a lack of democratic institutions, structures and culture and externally as one of the by-products of the disastrous neo-liberal policies imposed by the West and its institutions.

As I write these lines, Kenya is being rocked hard by the ramifications of the dossier unleashed from the United Kingdom by John Githongo, the country’s former anti-corruption czar. Githongo has since fled the country after uncovering the deep involvement of key Kibaki insiders in one of Kenya’s most notorious scandals - the Anglo-Leasing Affair.

Earlier in the week, the President appeared on live television to inform his compatriots that Kiraitu Murungi, the Energy minister and Prof. George Saitoti, the Education minister had “stepped aside” to allow for unimpeded investigations of the twin graft scandals of Anglo-Leasing and Goldenberg.

Some observers believe that this dramatic announcement may have been a desperate, even deft move to stave off, pre-empt or undercut the looming mass actions announced by a consortium of 76 civil society organizations and to scuttle a planned meeting of parliamentarians ratcheting up the pressure for the re opening of the National Assembly to allow members of Parliament to debate the corruption scandals.

Whatever the case, these latest resignations - coming hot on the heels of the firing of State House official and Kibaki right hand man Alfred Getonga, the resignation of long-time Presidential confidant and former Finance minister David Mwiraria and the dropping of former cabinet minister Dr. Chris Murungaru in the post-referendum reshuffle last year -have if anything deepened the crisis of legitimacy for the Kenyan government and struck another nail into the coffin of the shattered and battered National Rainbow Coalition which rode to power on a landslide victory, with a mandate to fight graft and deliver a new democratic constitution.

Many have hailed John Githongo as Kenya’s knight in shining armor and have lauded the critical, sometimes strident opinion pieces of former British envoy Sir Edward Clay. The Kenyan media, especially the Nation Media Group, has been giving itself a pat on the back, preening in self-congratulation about their role in publicizing and exposing the scandal.

Indeed, the feistiness of the Kenyan press is ironically one key indicator of how much democratic space has opened up since the ascendancy of the Kibaki-led NARC regime. Truth be said, the courage of the Kenyan media and the almost unfettered expressions of critical views by ordinary Kenyans has happened in spite of, rather than because of the NARC government. Indeed, many are the times when demonstrators have been shot dead in cold blood, clubbed senseless, tear gassed, arrested and vilified by leading politicians allied to the ruling elite. The freedom of the press in Kenya is a direct by product of the burgeoning democratic struggles within the country over the last fifteen years or so.

In as much as the ongoing campaign against corruption in Kenya has highlighted the need for clean, transparent and accountable governance, it also throws up several convenient smokescreens when it comes to unraveling the enabling environment for grand graft in Kenya.

Many Nairobi-based pundits and observers have focused on the personal greed, moral foibles and even psychological make up of the leading villains. A few have probed the links to the need for the NAK faction to have a war chest to perpetuate itself in power come the next presidential elections in 2007.

Laudable as these insights are, I am of the opinion that they do gloss over two fundamental factors - one internal and the other external that seem to fuel the waves of corruption scandals that have bedeviled Kenya for decades.

The internal factor has to do with the refusal of successive ruling cliques to take the lead in democratizing the structures of power - especially in the economic sphere. In the particular case of the Kibaki regime, there is a justifiable national ire at the NARC government because it is the one formation that rode to power with a pledge and a popular mandate to deliver a new democratic constitution within its first one hundred days in power.

The fact that a national constitutional conference concluded its deliberations by ratifying and proclaiming a new draft constitution that was effectively trashed, thrashed and shelved sent strong signals that the parvenu rulers - especially in the NAK faction fronted by the President himself - having tasted what KANU had enjoyed for 39 years were quite reluctant to forego the perks of power - like the latitude given for ministers and government insiders to circumvent procurement and conflict of interest policies for self-enrichment. Therefore the adamant refusal by the ruling clique to acquiesce to the national demand for a new constitutional dispensation was a direct factor that led to the rot of institutional safeguards against corrupt practices. Indeed the injection of political agendas directly propelled the Anglo-Leasing scandal - with disclosures that one of the motivating factors that drove key Kibaki insiders to loot state coffers in collusion with shady hoodlum business types was to stuff a war chest full of loot that NAK would use to fight its electoral rivals in 2007.

The external factor is best described in the following excerpt from Sue Hawley in a July 2000 publication by the Corner House titled “Exporting Corruption: Privatization, Multinationals and Bribery”:

“The growth of corruption across the globe is largely the result of rapid privatization of public enterprises, along with reforms to downsize and undervalue civil services, pushed on developing countries by the World Bank, the IMF and western governments supporting their transnational corporations…” (http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/launder/general/2001/0705sng.htm)

If we accept the argument that I am advancing - namely that corruption is driven internally by lack of democratic institutions, structures and a culture that militates and acts as a check on abuse of power by political barons and other state-connected thieves and that it is one of the by-products of the disastrous neo-liberal policies imposed by the West and her institutions like the IMF on ‘Third World’ countries like Kenya, then it follows that corruption is a fundamentally political problem rooted firmly within certain local and global ideological constructs and parameters.

To put it more colloquially, graft is a manifestation of a rotten neo-colonial regime gutting the country at the behest of the imperialist powers. This means that at an ideological level, a consistent fight against corruption in societies like Kenya has to be embedded in a broader struggle for national democracy and against imperialist neo-liberal policies and machinations.

That is why I find it bizarre to see so many of my Kenyan compatriots look to places like the UK and individuals like Sir Edward Clay for mentorship and support in the war on corruption.

It is surreal to find the sleaze engulfed states like the United States and the United Kingdom - with their ENRONs, Haliburtons and so on - presume to act as the 21st Century champions against graft and other economic crimes and go further not only to lecture and harangue, but to sanction and punish states and governments that they consider “corrupt”. These mark you, are the very states which consciously assisted pariah governments in Africa like Ian Smith’s illegal regime in the so called “Rhodesia” and the racist cabal in the apartheid South Africa circumvent international censure and sanctions for their repressive and corrupt practices in years gone by. These are the same governments which turn a blind eye to the erection of the apartheid wall in Israel and the series of scandals implicating the now ailing Ariel Sharon.

We must therefore openly question the motivations and ideological intentions of these imperialist powers when they jump into the fray in battling corruption in places like Kenya and so on.

This is not to say that we have swallowed the demagogic populist appeals of discredited Kenyan ministers caught in a web of deceit who suddenly discover their mythical anti-imperialist credentials only when they are caught with their pants down. It is so easy to pierce through their threadbare rhetorical flourishes - especially when these ministers are confronted with compromising facts and startling admissions on tape - even when these surreptitious recordings are executed in less than ethical fashion.

By interrogating the motives of the Western powers in “fighting” graft in countries like Kenya, we are also putting a question mark on the local actors who, like the embedded journalists during the Iraqi invasion seem to be snuggling in bed with the Sir Edward Clays of this world.

One litmus test that would indicate whether these actors are driven by purely patriotic motives rather than being proxies and conduits for nefarious imperialist - even regime change agendas - can be gleaned by the extent that these local players participate in national democratic struggles and oppose neo-liberal imperialist policies.

We are aware that the anti-corruption campaign the world over has provided a convenient platform for many a would be imperialist friendly Presidential aspirant in this or that neo-colonial outpost. Of course, the surest testing ground is the arena of mass struggles where progressive and democratic forces meet to know each other more, struggling for unity and clarity while pursuing concrete pro-people goals.

* Onyango Oloo is a Nairobi-based political activist and former political prisoner who is currently the National Co-coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum. He returned to Kenya in late October 2005 after an 18-year stint in exile where he lived in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. The views expressed are his personal opinions and do not in any way reflect the positions of the Kenya Social Forum - which in the spirit of the World Social Forum process, does not in fact hold or express any political or ideological viewpoints as an entity.

* Please send comments to

Is the global row over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad the beginning of a “clash of civilizations”? Author and scholar Paul Tiyambe Zeleza argues not, locating the controversy firmly in the realm of politics. In this context, Muslims are challenged to find ways of defending their faith in a way that advances human freedom and decency. Those in the West, he argues, must not support aggression that hides behind freedom of speech.

Over the past couple of weeks an international crisis has erupted fueled by cartoons caricaturing and condemning the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist figure first published in a Danish newspaper last September and subsequently reprinted with indignant insensitivity in some western countries. There have been mass demonstrations in several countries around the world, trade boycotts, withdrawals of ambassadors, travel advisories, dismissals and resignations of journalists, and sporadic outbreaks of violence that have resulted in several deaths, the burning of Danish flags and embassies, and soured the already strained communal relations within Europe and between the West and the Muslim world more generally.

To some this is a harbinger of the much-trumpeted clash of civilizations, a sign of the deep chasm between the West and Islam, between a tolerant modernity and a fanatical medievalism, or between a malicious secular culture and a maligned spiritual community. The outrage and controversy over the cartoons do point to widespread anger and anguish in the Muslim world and intolerance and indifference in the western world. But the conflict is not a clash of civilizations, rather the calculated incitement behind the publication of the inflammatory cartoons and the isolated violent overreactions in some quarters represent a clash of fundamentalisms over contemporary politics, not universal principles.

The religious dimensions of the conflict have encouraged many to see it as a contestation of implacably opposed values, a battle of rights - the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of religion, the right to offend and the right to be offended - and the moral equivalences of provocations and responses. This forced discourse of binaries is false. Publishers of the notorious, and to Muslims sacrilegious, cartoons and their rightwing defenders invoke freedom of speech as their unassailable defense, as an absolute value, the bedrock of western democracy under threat from ‘radical Islamists’ and other purveyors of the backward and bankrupt ideologies of political correctness. Even some of their liberal and leftwing critics concede the sanctity of this value, and only blame the publishers for their poor judgment, for bad taste. In reality, the issue is neither about freedom of speech nor indiscretion. It is about political provocation, the assertion of the supremacy of white Europe at home and abroad, the attempt to put Europe’s numerous ‘others’ in their place, especially Muslims historically so close to Europe and now so intimately a part of Europe, whose growing presence challenges European fantasies of cultural purity and whose ancestral lands continue to be ravaged by Euro-American imperialism that mock claims of civilizational superiority.

Freedom of speech is an important value, but in this crisis its value is largely ideological, deliberately deployed as a weapon of cultural aggression. There can be little question that by attacking the Prophet Muhammad the cartoons were intended to inflict the most egregious offense to Muslims, to inflame not to inform. Claims that caricatures of the sacred are normal and even healthy in a secular society not only flout against Islamic prohibition of iconic representations, but ignores the fact that there are secular taboos against which journalists in the western mainstream media dare not cross at the risk of breaching the law or popular conventions. Indeed, we are told the Danish newspaper that published the scurrilous anti-Islamic cartoons turned down cartoons lampooning Jesus Christ because readers would find them offensive. And the embattled editor of the paper was reprimanded and sent on indefinite leave when he announced his intention, in an act of misplaced bravado, to republish anti-Holocaust cartoons promised by a rightwing Iranian newspaper, Hamshari, in a gratuitous effort to test western commitment to freedom of speech.

In many cases the discourse of rights tends to suspend the rights concerned from the historical, material and institutional contexts through which they are expressed, enacted, and enjoyed. No less important to remember is the fact that the western mainstream media is a business—a huge business—subject more to the imperatives profit-making than advancing informed public discourse, more attuned to the interests of the powerful and pandering to popular prejudices than to the voices of the disenfranchised and disaffected who tend to be concentrated among racial, ethnic or religious minorities and the poor. Freedom of expression in the West would indeed be a good thing if it actually existed for all regardless of corporate status, class position, national location, ethnic or racial identity, and ideological orientation.

Nowhere in the western world is the right to the freedom of expression absolute in principle, let alone in practice. It is a relative right contingent on other rights, circumscribed by context. Rights entail responsibilities: the two are interwoven in threads of mutuality that are neither eternal nor universal but constantly negotiated in ongoing and often painful conversations within and between societies. The mainstream western media routinely avoids publishing or showing overtly racist, anti-Semitic, or pornographic materials. In fact, in many of these countries there are laws against hate speech, anti-Semitism, and child pornography, as well as libel and defamation. The laws and conventions that seek to protect groups are reactions to the sordid past of racism and genocide, the barbarities of slavery, colonization, and the holocaust that are as much a part of the western heritage as all the stylized positive values the West claims exclusively for itself, and which still cast ominous shadows over the western world.

Given these realities, the publication of these obnoxious Orientalist cartoons appears to most Muslims as hypocritical. It is a reflection of the rising tide of racism and xenophobia in Europe. It is the face of a new anti-Semitism, this time directed not against Jews, but against Muslims, who in the European imaginary are often racialized as Arabs. The cartoons draw on a long and hideous history of anti-Jewish cartoons that facilitated the dehumanization of Jews that preceded the Holocaust. The connections between the old and new breed of European anti-Semitism is usually not drawn by the defenders of the Danish paper’s right to publish the Islamophobic cartoons. Nor do those who seek to respond by recycling fascist cartoons against Jews and the Holocaust seem to appreciate their collusion with a new form of European anti-Semitism that targets them. There can be little doubt that the publication and republication of the cartoons has occurred in a context of growing anti-Muslim religious and racial bigotry in Denmark and across Europe.

It started as a localized crisis in a country becoming increasingly unsure of its national identity and intolerant of its minorities that cruelly exposed the national myth of Nordic tolerance and egalitarianism. The decision by the rightwing paper, Jyllands-Posten, to publish the cartoons resonated with the increasingly conservative political climate in which a strongly anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic party, the Danish People’s Party, is part of the parliamentary coalition of the center-right government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen that has passed draconian laws relating to the marriage, citizenship, religious and language rights of immigrants. The initial reaction in Denmark is quite revealing. The Prime Minister refused to meet the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet representing 27 Danish Muslim organizations and a group of diplomats from 11 Islamic countries protesting the publication of the cartoons, and many Danes expressed incomprehension at what the fuss was all about as Danish Muslims took to the streets. It is only when the furor of protests broke out in the Middle East and elsewhere that the gravity of the crisis hit the Danish government. Suddenly, Denmark was faced with its worst postwar crisis, its image in the Muslim world in tatters. The Prime Minister and the newspaper offered belated apologies for causing offense but not for the original decision to publish.

By then, the cartoons had been published in several mostly rightwing papers in various European countries ostensibly in solidarity with the Danish paper and the Danish people in their justifiable efforts to protect freedom of expression and European values that were ostensibly under assault from ‘Islamic radicalism’. Interestingly, the mainstream British media largely refrained from joining the jingoist chorus, so did the mainstream American media, another intriguing expression of the special relationship, perhaps reflecting their greater multicultural sensitivities, so some commentators claimed, or the fear of bearing the brunt of Arab and Muslim fury already inflamed by their wanton invasion of Iraq. Underlying this apparent cultural solidarity over the cartoons is the rising tide of anti-Islamic prejudice in many European countries, especially those enamored by the myths of national racial homogeneity or republican universalism.

Solidarity in the escalating crisis cut both ways. Many Muslims in Europe and in other parts of the world found common cause: the cartoons seemed to reinforce the collective vilification of their religion so central to their identity that had been escalating since the end of the Cold War and particularly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, DC. In effect, the cartoon controversy brought together two crises: the profound feelings of fear and insecurity among marginalized European Muslims and the simmering sense of anger and vulnerability among Muslims in the Middle East who had witnessed the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter under blatantly false pretenses, and were hearing ominous threats against Iran. In fact, the memories of western aggression in the Middle East went much deeper to the humiliation of the colonial invasion, occupation and pillage, and in recent decades the enduring tragedy of the Palestinians. It is not surprising, therefore, that the epicenter of Muslim outrage over the abusive cartoons has been in the Middle East, which has historically been at the receiving end of western terror.

The circuits and networks of transnational communication, both old and new, facilitated the fusion of the two crises. It was after the representatives of the Danish Muslim groups were refused audience by the Danish Prime Minister that the former began lobbying, first among diplomats from Arab governments, then after the latter too were snubbed, directly to governments and organizations in the Muslim world. They made the rounds of North African and Middle Eastern capitals with a 43-page dossier of the cartoons and other documents, and before long the outrage began to build steam, fanned by the region’s new spirited media, and sanctified by key bodies such as the fifty seven-member Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The turning point came when Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador from Denmark, a move that was soon followed by Libya and Iran.

The besieged Muslim diaspora in Denmark and Europe was reaching out to the Islamic homelands seeking support and solace. This is of course not new—diasporas have always sought the protective mantle of homelands. But historically it is the European diasporas that could rely on their homelands to send gunboats to protect them from the restive natives. In fact, the annals of colonization in Asia and Africa are replete with wars of salvation for beleaguered settlers, although they were often characterized as crusades to save benighted ‘primitive’ souls, to spread civilization. Now, diasporas from the global South can more easily summon their homelands for support, although the structure of global power is still such that conventional military options are inconceivable. Clearly, the revolution in telecommunications and travel, which has compressed the spatial and temporal distances between home and abroad, offers these diasporas unprecedented opportunities to be transnational, to connect with each other across countries and continents, to retain ties with their old and new homelands in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. This is what accounts for the rapidity and intensity of many global protests today, including the outbreak of the demonstrations over the cartoons. Cyberspace is the new medium of mass mobilization, a powerful mechanism to organize and express protest. The waves of demonstrations over the cartoons were driven as much by emails, blogs, cell phones and text messages as they were by satellite television, radio, coffeehouse talk, and street rumors.

As in all such conflicts, the manipulative machinations of governments are not hard to find. All governments whose populations are involved have sought to cynically exploit the conflict to their own immediate advantage, to appear resolute in the face of foreign agitation, to defend the values that their societies supposedly cherish. Authoritarian and unpopular Middle Eastern governments have sought to burnish their Islamic credentials and to contain the spread of political Islam and democratization pressures, both poignantly captured by the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections. Militarist and hypocritical western governments have tried to use the crisis to reinforce the case for the ‘war on terror’ and isolate the radical Islamic states and movements in the region that have put up the most resistance to their imperial project. This suggests that the forces most invested in the conflict over the cartoons are militants on both sides, the unrepentant ideologues of western imperialism and political Islam, who should be seen as political fundamentalists, and are committed to the clash of civilizations that the vast majority of westerners, many of whom are Muslim, and Muslims, many of whom are westerners, are fundamentally opposed to.

In so far as Islam and the West are not bounded mutually exclusive cultural and historical geographies, but social spaces where various peoples and cultures are mixed together, the conflict over the cartoons cannot be seen in grand civilizational or purely religious terms. Even if protagonists on both sides might prefer to talk in the calcified language of ancient hatreds, this is a quintessentially contemporary protest over specifically current conditions—the challenges of forging common citizenship and fostering cosmopolitan values in an increasingly globalized or transnational world. It is about how European Muslims and non-Muslims can live together in peace and equality, and by extension how the western world and the Muslim world can co-exist amicably. The two worlds have more ties that bind than separate them, going all the way back to their very foundations. Modern Europe is inconceivable without the contributions of Islam, and the modern Muslim world is inconceivable without the West, for better or worse. The webs of mutuality are so deep that even the fundamentalisms on both sides reproduce each other. Lest we forget contemporary political Islam is an utterly modern phenomenon, created out of forces constituted and reproduced through the historic and ongoing intersections of the mixed worlds of the West and Islam. Western imperialism bred political Islam, and political Islam provides a convenient scapegoat for contemporary western imperialism. In short, the histories of the two phenomena are tragically interconnected.

It is encouraging that the vast majority of Muslim leaders and organizations have encouraged peaceful and dignified protests, although the Western media ever so selective, sensational, and stereotypical has focused on the few incidents of violence in order to justify the fact that their denunciation of the violence has been louder than over the initial publication of the cartoons themselves that provoked the protests in the first place. The challenge for Muslims when confronted with the cultural assaults represented by the cartoons is to find ways of defending their religious faith and their political rights both in the West and in the Muslim world that advance the cause of human freedom and decency as well as open-ended inter-cultural and inter-religious conversation and civility based on the fact that ultimately we all share a common humanity in all our splendid diversities. For people in the West committed to similar values they must resist the easy temptation to support arrogance and aggression in their own countries and elsewhere hiding behind the veils of freedom of speech.

* Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is Professor of African Studies and History, Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of more than twenty books and winner of the 1994 Noma Award and the 1998 Special Commendation of the Noma Award for two of the books. This article appeared on his blog, which can be read at

* Please send comments to [email protected]

It has been four years of peace in Angola since the end of a decades-long civil war, but for the majority of Angolans the absence of fighting is the only benefit they enjoy, writes human rights activist Rafael Marques. Scheduled elections have been endlessly postponed, allowing the ruling elite to remain unaccountable to the population of the country while they maintain international legitimacy through corrupt use of Angola’s vast oil wealth.

For more than a decade, while the ruling class has focused on its own transformation into a bourgeois class by plundering the country’s riches, the majority of Angolans have been reviving their hopes for the future on empty promises in a vacuum.

Those in power are managing such a vacuum and selling it as a kind of stability pact. It is a pact similar to that established between a robber who points a gun at a citizen in broad daylight and in public, strips the victim of his belongings and then, civilly, requests the understanding, silence and quietness of the victim. The robbed person, in turn, thanks the perpetrator for the common sense shown in sparing his life. It is in this sense that Angolans are grateful for peace.

Four years have passed since the achievement of peace in 2002 after decades of civil war. Another legislative mandate has come to an end, since the first and last elections of 1992, without people casting their ballot – and, therefore, without the opportunity for them to hold to account and choose their political leaders as well as legitimize the rule of power.

Once again, the President of the Republic, in his much awaited state of the union address, disappointed people’s hopes for elections in 2006. Showing his normal political expediency, he now suggests voting might take place in 2007. In 2000 he announced the possibility of elections for 2001, whether the war stopped or not, and that he would retire. However, he has been pushing the prospect further into the future ever since.

Apart from the question of elections, the speech by President Dos Santos to the nation had two more key points, the setting up of the Bank for the Development of Angola (BDA) and the construction of housing for those in need.

For the President, the bank will be the catalyst for the reconstruction of the country. However, it is little more than another expedient for the redistribution of windfall profits from oil among the ruling families and their particular interests. Similar initiatives in the past, particularly the now defunct Caixa Agro-Pecuária (CAP), have suggested the final end of government-funded commercial banks. Once the ruling families and their associates borrow all the funds at a bank’s disposal, it is declared bankrupt, dismantled and privatized. As for the money lent, the trick is to write it off as bad loans and let the matter rest for good. The oil funds in question stem from rocketing prices in the international markets. This has generated a windfall, over and above the budgeted oil income, of a magnitude of which Angolans have no idea. Due to a lack of transparency and to the creative accounting practices in the Angolan public sector, the real sums the government has amassed are, at this point, anybody’s guess (The Angolan Ambassador to Brazil, General Alberto Neto, reaffirmed in an interview to the daily O Globo (21.11.2005) that “the country’s oil income does not pass through the Angolan financial institutions”, and such a procedure makes it even more difficult to track the real sums derived from the oil revenues, which officially account for more than 80% of the country’s income.)

Secondly, as far as building houses is concerned, the government should promote job creation, ensure the payment of real salaries and introduce policies for housing development that provide the incentives for the private sector to take up the task and for citizens to afford access to credit and to be able to pay for their accommodation out of their own salaries. Angolans need decent wages for decent jobs, not permanent government or international charity.

Electoral patriotism

As for the need for people to legitimize the exercise of power, society has been taking notice of the electoral mobilization the ruling Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has set in motion even though it remains silent on the setting of a date for elections. People have also been ready for elections to be called at three months’ notice (within the legal deadline). Nevertheless, Angolans still need to be registered to vote and there is no hint of when this will happen, along with other essential tasks to ensure a free and fair electoral process. These tactics could make it impossible for the opposition and public opinion to make any impression on the regime’s hold on power.

However, one fundamental question arises from this scenario of doubt and deceitfulness. What’s behind the regime’s postponement of elections for as long as it can? It has absolute control over the country’s riches, the media with a national outreach and the public administration. Furthermore, it uses the army and the national police as it pleases and as a means to achieve whatever ends it may pursue. It has support from the Western powerhouses in exchange for a large chunk of Angolan natural resources (oil and diamonds). There is also a Chinese bid for another slice of the country’s lucrative market with expensive loans, billions worth of construction contracts and so forth.

The factors mentioned above have been conspiring to eliminate the people as a fundamental factor for pressure and change. So the regime is afraid to hold elections because it is not sure whether it can control the emotions, anger and frustrations of the people. It is afraid of people’s reactions during an election campaign amid increased publicity.

Another element to take into account is the MPLA’s ideological problem or, more precisely, the lack of it. The end of socialism, or of the Marxism-Leninism it used to profess, led the MPLA to import, for its own survival, Western consumerism to provide a set of values required to regulate the dynamics of society.

Hence, the President’s appeal in his speech to patriotism is a mockery for he himself provides no example of it. Patriotism must be the sharing of a set of moral and national values which unite the citizens in the defence of their common interests, the country, and the dignity and the equality it reserves to each one of its children.

For its part, the government is hooked on corruption. It is unable to come up with a set of polices and the right course of action to effectively improve people’s lives and to develop the country. It is a regime with neither an ideology nor a nation-building project.

Corruption in Angola has taken on a life of its own. It serves the regime well to annihilate any signs of opposition, dissenting voices or alternative leaderships as well as to sabotage any action by the regime to deliver welfare to the people.

The absence of morals in the conduct of government officials and the gradual deletion of references to the people in public statements provides the necessary peace of mind for the very same government officials to pocket as they please the public funds assigned to them. The current Minister of Finances, Jose Pedro de Morais, and the Governor of the Central Bank, Amadeu Mauricio, are just the latest officials to present the country in recent months with financial scandals of an international dimension. The Brazilian daily O Globo (13.11.2005), in its coverage of a national corruption scandal (O Mensalao) that has shaken the presidency of Lula da Silva, exposed the Angolan connexion. A Brazilian businessman, Marcos V. de Souse, wire transferred around US$ 2.7 million to the personal bank accounts of the abovementioned Angolan officials. Days later, the newspaper, as a follow up to the same case, unearthed other remittances worth US$ 1,6 million to the personal account of the President of the Angolan Central Bank. In their defence, the Angolan ambassador to Brazil, Alberto Neto, told O Globo (21.11.2005), that “every man has a price, what matters is to know how much” The spokesperson for the Angolan Ministry of Finances stated that it was a duty for government officials to take 15% in commissions for the deals they close.

The Chinese Godfather

Once again the government, in its bid to re-legitimize itself, has turned abroad to seek credit and political protection. This time its port of call is China, after earlier docking at the White House (and its satellite Western allies) and, before that, mooring for a long time at the Kremlin and in Havana. In essence the government knows how to cuddle up to the permanent members of the UN Security Council, those with the power of veto.

The Dos Santos regime needs international legitimacy to keep in check its own people, its internal critics and its adversaries. The consequences of this extreme dependency upon foreign forces for the legitimization of power may be accounted for in terms of years of war, the slaughter of many Angolans and the never ending onslaught upon the country’s wealth. No less serious is the people’s feeling of a loss of dignity and self respect in its own household, humiliated and despised by the government’s friends of the hour. The example of the diamond rich territory of the Lundas is a point in case. The report ‘Lundas: The Stones of Death’ provides a detailed account of the complicity between the government, international diamond mining companies and dealers in spreading terror, destitution and misery in the region. The report is available at

For a long time shrewd foreigners have explored for their own benefit the political, economic, social and intellectual shortcomings of the ruling class and the vanity of its desire to mutate into an assimilated bourgeoisie – the elite. As a consequence, the MPLA is adrift. Its government has no influence over the Presidency. The President rules alone, under the influence of foreign interests. This tightens his grip on power, as well as being his major weakness, his Achilles, in his dealings with the society. Thus, in today’s Angola, the American lobbies, some Portuguese interests, the Chinese, and so on hold more true and meaningful power over the government than that collegial body holds itself, not to mention its forlorn individual members.

There is a power vacuum. The government, and especially the President, are held hostage by interests foreign to Angolan society. Individual members of the ruling class generally ponder that they are getting richer by the day and busy themselves with shopping sprees.

The Western government partners in these ransacking ventures settle their accounts among themselves. They only make a pretence of demanding some measure of respect for human rights, transparency and democracy whenever specific business projects with the government turn sour, or periodically, when their code of honour among thieves is violated. Only then do these Western governments choose to denounce the Angolan regime in international corridors as corrupt, incompetent and despicable. At the same time, their own countries welcome without any reservations the bank deposits, investments and profits from the looting of Angola.

The regime, represented by the MPLA, should reduce its propaganda efforts and goodwill-bolstering operations, like building dubious, cheap and short-lived housing projects. It must opt for a policy based on being near to the people and their problems. It must replace propaganda by respect for freedom of expression in the state media, which are the only ones with nationwide coverage. This would allow public debate to flourish and produce solutions as well as establishing a culture of checks and balances.

Freedom of expression and of the press is fundamental to curb corruption and create a public mindset to generate enough pressure on the government to punish corrupt officials. Corruption is the institution holding the government together. Reassuring initiatives to fight it might enable the authorities to postpone the holding of elections without causing public anger. By taking on corruption, President Dos Santos could find the peace and rest that he wants and the MPLA could find its way back to being a popular movement.

As for the patriotism called for by Dos Santos, his regime must be capable of defending Angolans from many an international partner which finds in Angola a land of promise in which to sow discord under official patronage and treat Angolans as replaceable, unserviceable, undignified and undeserving objects. The logic is simple: if the government does not treat its own citizens with respect and in a dignified way, who else will?

By preserving the interests, dignity and respect of the Angolan people, Angola could evolve towards an open market, a safe haven for foreign investment, a hospitable destiny for tourists from all over the world and a second home for those who may choose it in their quest for sun and prosperity. Otherwise, direct confrontation between the people and power (in the sense of a privileged minority aided and abetted by foreign interests) will only be a matter of time. In the showdown of what will be a class struggle between the very rich and the totally destitute, due to the lack of intermediate social structures, all will end up as losers. The MPLA’s battle cry used to be “Hail the People’s Power”. Many still recall this power and keep it inside themselves, for the benefit of the majority.

* Rafael Marques is an Angolan Human Rights Activist ([email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

In accordance with one of the aims of UPEACE to develop and increase capacity in the teaching of conflict and peace studies in Africa, we would like to invite your university/department/centre to nominate one or two staff members to participate in a short course on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution. The course is due to be held in Pretoria from 3 to 7 April 2006 and will be presented by the Africa Programme of the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace. Only proposals submitted by people who have been nominated by their institutions or organizations will be considered.

A new report on the transfer of biological resources and traditional knowledge worth billions of dollars from across Africa shows that Kenya is the biggest loser among the three East African countries. Entitled "Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit Sharing", it says that Kenya's biological resources have been illegally acquired by giant pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms from the West and a University in Israel in an ongoing international operation that blatantly disregards the provisions of the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Personal attacks among election candidates have relegated bread-and-butter issues to the backseat days before Ugandans vote in the country's first multiparty election in 26 years. With 38 per cent of the population living in abject poverty, 1.6 million people displaced from their homes by the war in the north of the country, biting unemployment in the urban areas, industries bleeding over power blackouts and international concerns over democracy and the rule of law, there are enough issues to define the February 23 Ugandan election.

Two weeks ago at the Joe Slovo informal settlement, bulldozers came in and destroyed the house of an outspoken member of the community. He had invited a journalist to the settlement to talk about corruption in the housing allocation process at Joe Slovo, accusing the local community leader of giving preferential treatment to family members, and of excluding Xhosa residents from new housing.

Internet companies facing hearings before angry US legislators say they cannot on their own resist China's effort to censor the web, according to a report on Business Day's website, as posted on www.journalism.co.za But industry analysts say that even if Washington tried to enforce free-speech standards, it is likely to have little effect.

On 14 February 2006, the state dismissed the charge of "defamation of the president" against "The Post" newspaper editor Fred M'membe. M'membe was originally charged in November 2005 and his trial was set to begin on 14 February. However, he was informed by the presiding magistrate, John Ndeketeya, that he was a free man because the state had decided not to proceed with the prosecution.

WOUGNET in Uganda was one of the organisers of a conference in mid-December, on a post-World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) consolidation for Uganda. Held on December 14, 2005, the conference was co-organised by the Uganda Communication Commission, I-network, Collegium for Development Studies and Uppsala University of Sweden. Overall, the Uganda conference aimed at strengthening what happened at WSIS and finding a concrete way forward to meet the WSIS targets at the national level. Specially, by way of establishing national priorities and benchmarks.

Where ICT makes available critical information, financial services, and reduces the maze of bureaucracy, people benefit in terms of reduced time and resources that need to be expended. Where ICT facilitates access to information about new economic opportunities and helps avail of them, small and medium sized enterprises and cooperatives demonstrate interest. But it is not just a question of facilitating economic and social development, community radio and related technologies are, for example, also proving useful in facilitating participation and strengthening the voice of communities.

The volume of foreign aid has increased during the last four decades, albeit with interruptions in certain years. Over time, the major recipients have changed: while the share of aid to Asia has diminished since the 1980s, that destined for sub-Saharan Africa has grown. There is some evidence that, since the late 1990s, debt relief has assumed a larger share of the increased aid flows to sub-Saharan Africa. The share of technical cooperation—a component of aid that is viewed as being driven by donors—has risen.

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), already wracked by internal division, is finding itself more isolated in the region and at home. "I think opposition politics is going into a hiatus now, it will be a very dark and slow period in terms of opposition politics. I think civic movements are also in the process of reorganising right now, they are very much pushed on the defensive. On the whole, even though Mugabe has problems internationally, at home the opposition presents him with few difficulties," analyst Brian Raftopoulos concluded.

The current period of UN reform offers an opportune time to strengthen the international response to situations of internal displacement and develop a more reliable and predictable international system to protect people uprooted in their own countries. This article calls for reinforcement of the legal framework for the protection of IDPs; the enlargement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to encompass IDPs; robust international protection measures — including expanded international police and military capacity; and more attention to political solutions to resolve the conflicts at the heart of displacement.