Pambazuka News 225: Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and the struggle for justice in Nigeria
Pambazuka News 225: Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and the struggle for justice in Nigeria
In 1991, the Somaliland region decided to unilaterally secede from its parent country Somalia after that country disintegrated into a stateless state ruled by competing warlords and their armies. Since then Somaliland, in the north-west, has held three elections, the latest being on September 29, when 800,000 of Somaliland's estimated 3.5-million people went to the polls. The international community has refused Somaliland's quest for recognition up until now. Election observer Peter Hurst asks if a clearly demonstrated desire for democracy will change the attitude of the international community.
The first notable feature of Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, is the vast number of blue plastic bags littering the fields outside the airport. They are the by-product of the Somalis’ pastime of chewing qat, a mild stimulant plant. Roadside vendors sell bunches for $1.50 a bag and customers then discard the packaging. It is one of the smaller problems Somaliland has to deal with on its way to becoming a functioning state.
The drive into Hargeisa town centre reveals slightly larger ones. The three sets of traffic lights, looking out of place beside the ragged roads, don’t work even in the long afternoon rush hour, as there is no electricity.
Somaliland, an autonomous region to the north of Somalia, proclaimed itself independent in 1991 after three years of civil war to the south had resulted in the collapse of any functioning state. It has since built institutions and tried to deal with crime and unemployment – all without regressing into dictatorship or anarchy.
Somaliland can now claim to have another feature of a functioning and democratic state, in sharp contrast to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu: on 29 September 2005 it held parliamentary elections, the first in Somalia since before the 1969 coup that brought the dictator Siad Barre to power. Around 800,000 voters went to the country’s 985 polling stations to elect 82 members of parliament from the 246 candidates on offer. It was the culmination of a gradual process: after a 2001 constitutional referendum, 2002 municipal elections, a 2003 presidential election, Somaliland will now have a legislature to balance the leadership of the president, Dahir Riyale Kahin.
There is a two-week delay between the vote and the announcement of the results. The outcome could be a surprise. The president’s Democratic United National Party (Udub) is facing a serious challenge from its main rival KULMIYE. If KULMIYE (Solidarity) fails to win outright, it may form a majority coalition with the Justice & Welfare Party (Ucid). The first reported results, based on a counting of 105 ballot-boxes in Hargeisa, indicate its likelihood: KULMIYE won 40.71% of the votes, Ucid 29%, and Udub 30.25%. An opposition coalition would make Somaliland one of the few African countries where representatives of different parties lead the executive and legislature.
At the same time, all parties are new to the political field and the differences between them are not readily apparent. Most Somalilanders who are asked say they will vote for the president’s party to ensure stability, or for a particular candidate because of clan allegiance. No one mentions policies.
The world’s blind eye
Somaliland’s limited resources are evident in the election’s rudimentary facilities. It is equally striking - although the point is contested by analysts alleging a “rigged” election -that poverty has not destroyed quality of engagement. The main anomaly has been the lack of a voter registering. Somaliland’s investment in its institutions of state has not stretched to a census, any form of citizen registration, or the issuing of passports.
One result is that a Somalilander can vote in any polling station in the country, whether or not he or she lives in or has visited the area. The consequences include a large incidence of attempted multiple voting, though the citizens whose previously inked finger shows up under the ultra-violet light monitor do not look too upset. The good spirits extend to the many disappointed underage voters (wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the logos 2 Pac, 50 Cents and Falluja) who are turned away from polling-places.
In the region of Odweyne, to the east of Hargeisa, ballots and electoral material were not distributed until early evening on the day before the election. Soon after, heavy rain turned the dirt road to mud and left election officials stuck. In some case, material did not reach its destination until election day itself, restricting the time available for voting.
Another major issue has been the lack of a secret ballot. High levels of illiteracy have meant that many voters cannot read the ballot-paper and are not confident using pens to mark their “X”. Their only option is to announce their choice to the local chairperson, who marks the paper, folds it up and hands it to the voter to place in the ballot-box.
Despite these problems, the overriding impression to this observer was that Somaliland’s electoral process has been transparent, with little fraudulent intent, and full of a great enthusiasm for democracy. In an Odweyne polling-station, the first person in the queue was a 70-year-old man who had walked to the station by foot and had been waiting outside since 7pm the previous evening. Everywhere the queues were long and the voters appeared happy.
The problems surrounding the election must be seen in light of the fact that Somaliland has not received anything like the financial or logistical support given to the elections in Afghanistan or Iraq; neither does it have the same levels of disruption through violence. The international community has been of little help in Somaliland’s reconstruction: it still denies Somaliland international recognition, and instead supports a peace process for Somalia which has survived repeated setbacks but is yet to achieve definitive results.
True, the US issued a statement welcoming the election and praising its conduct, and the possibility of some recognition of Somaliland’s existence and integrity cannot be discounted. But it would take only a small fraction of the money invested in Afghanistan and Iraq to improve Somaliland’s democratic record. This small east African land has, after all, succeeded through its own efforts in cultivating the very democratic spirit that the US and its partners have struggled to induce in the Middle East. Will they now pay attention to Somaliland?
* This article first appeared on the web site of http://www.opendemocracy.net, which aims to pioneer a new type of independent media based on exchange and participation. Peter Hurst works as a public policy researcher in London. He was monitoring the elections in Somaliland with the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR) and has previously monitored elections with the OSCE in the Balkans and Eurasia. The election monitoring team was facilitated jointly by Dr Steve Kibble and Dr Adan Abokor of CIIR.
* Please send comments to [email protected]
Carole Chehade explores genocide - “the crime that has no name" - in the DRC and what it means for our common global humanity. The reason why the suffering in the DRC has been ignored, she writes, is because it “takes more African genocides to equal one atrocity visited on a non-African nation”. Genocide in the DRC then is a result of the world’s corruption, greed and bigotry, which unless dealt with will destroy humanity.
If numbers really drove the genocide ratings, then one would think 3.4 million dead and 2.25 million displaced would be numbers that shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, the conflict in the DRC is viewed as another “tribal” clash in Africa, rather than what it really is: an international battle with many governments and multi-national companies contributing heavily to genocide, without ever getting their own fingerprints on the crime scene.
The area that is experiencing the most conflict is in the Kivu province, located on the Eastern side of the country. Like many African nations, the DRC is an ethnically rich and diverse melting pot. This ethnic diversity is not the primary reason for the war, simply because ethnic and racial conflict has never been powerful enough alone to drive genocide. The genocide in the DRC has roots in corrupt domestic and international leaders, greedy business interests, the DRC’s rich natural resources, conflict in neighboring countries and the artificial nip and tuck of colonialism.
The DRC’s history is largely shaped by genocidal forces. The precursor to the current genocide in the DRC is trumped by an even bigger one spread by Belgium’s King Leopold II. Leopold’s murderous reign wiped out over half the population of what was ironically known as the Congo Free State. Like most oppressors, Leopold fabricated the positive reputation of being dubbed the King Builder because he constructed so many buildings in Belgium. The bigger the genocide, the wealthier the nation becomes that perpetuated the transgression from the shadows. The Belgians eventually left, relinquishing their political rights to the people whose bones were sucked to the marrow by the vacuumed mouth of colonialism.
When the DRC gained independence in 1960, the west competed against the Soviets to shape the DRC into western political ideals. The US helped overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960 because they feared he’d align himself with the Soviets. Instead, they backed Mobuto Sese Seko who helped CIA operatives dispose of Lumumba. When the Cold War ended, the west left many African nations, whose loyalties they bought for their own ends, with leaders who sold out their countries in exchange for perceived rewards.
During Mobutu’s era, anti-government alliances spread through the Kivu province. With growing anti-government rebellion, an influx of Rwandan refugees came into the DRC whom, in turn, were followed by hunters who were fresh from the Rwandan genocide. These hunters were known as the Hutus, who quickly created their own militia, known as the Interahamwe.
The DRC also had animosity against another Tutsi population, known as the Banyamulenge, who immigrated into the DRC hundreds of years ago. The Banyamulenge have a reputation as being successful citizens of the DRC who supported Mobutu. Because the Banyamulenge were a wealthy enclave, Mobutu returned the support but later relinquished the citizenship of all of the Banyamulenge, leaving them without protection. Mobutu’s shifting loyalties also drove him to openly support the Rwandan Hutus during the height of their extermination of Tutsis.
The brutal Mobuto regime outgrew the control of its American sponsors and, as a result, Mobuto was overthrown and replaced by Laurent Kabila in 1997. The honeymoon between Kabila and the US was short lived as the DRC fell deeper into the brewing conflict that exploded into a civil war that has cost millions of lives. Kabila quickly learned the limits of playing too many sides when he was assassinated in 2001. After the assassination, he was replaced by his son Joseph Kabila.
The unnatural deaths of the Congolese are inadvertently made possible by natural resources such as coltan. It is not oil that makes the DRC wealthy, but its diverse reserves which include a resource we use everyday in our technology-based society. Upon processing, coltan becomes a material which stores electrical charge. This hard to find commodity is found in the eastern region, which is coincidentally the heart of the conflict. Ironically we use coltan to help drive our information age, yet are clueless as to what human sacrifices help us get that information. This means the computers and cell phones we use are powered by the blood of genocide.
Incidents of rape in the DRC are amongst the most grotesque in the world. One of the most disturbing cases, which I have ever heard of, was the forcing of young men to rape their own mothers. The psychological chain of events that follows something this horrendous damages the sanctity of family, which in turn destroys a nation. I can enumerate even more brutalities, but are we so numb that the only way we feel for the victims of genocide is if they stand naked on the auction blocks of the world desperately trying to convince us of which atrocity is gory enough for us to finally act? The sophisticated wealthy class of internationals would be horrified if their wives, mothers and daughters were visited by armies of men waiting to rip apart the womb of one of their women.
The DRC’s genocide is a prime example of how many players it takes for a crime against humanity to occur. Wealthy businessmen from all corners of the world have all taken their turn in raping the voluptuous natural resources of the DRC until genocide screams out that there is nothing more left to ravage.
Although some of the world’s worst events are visiting the African continent with a vengeance, let us not conceit ourselves into allowing our subconscious racism to equate barbaric acts of genocide with African nations. My concern is not to argue whether Africans are more or less incorruptible; my argument is more concerned with where we, as a world community, place our concern.
Exterminating Africans has been the status quo for centuries. All African countries combined still are not enough to compete for world attention as one nation is in the Gulf. The US Constitution once called African Americans 3/5 of a person. Evidentially, that belief was never removed from our human constitution because it takes more African genocides to equal one atrocity visited on a non-African nation.
If we are to judge the worldwide exploitation by the powerful, then sadly the DRC is a logical result of our world’s corruption, greed, and bigotry, which blatantly takes without replacing. As a result, the most discriminated people on earth are reminding us that cause and effect is paid by those who have nothing to give but their lives.
Before the term genocide was coined in 1944 by scholar Raphael Lemkin, the Holocaust was recognized as "a crime that has no name." Part of the challenge of being able to do battle against any enemy is to call it forth by name. After the Holocaust, the world community rallied around the phrase, “Never again.” Yet “never again” has happened again and again.
Because genocide’s aim is to kill humanity, even the perpetuator will die. The seamless border of genocide means that this African World War will touch us across oceans and continents. Our interconnectedness means that since Africa was the cradle of humanity, then it will also become the death of humanity if we do not rise in its defense, which really means in our defense.
* Carol Chehade is a writer and filmmaker who runs a non-profit organization. She can be reached at www.onenewearth.com
* Please send comments to [email protected]
In September, while the World Bank and International Monetary Fund prepared for meetings in Washington, 500 people marched in Maseru, Lesotho to protest the effect of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) on their livelihoods. One of the World Bank’s biggest projects in Africa, the LHWP pipes scarce water to South Africa and has been touted as a major development boost for the tiny mountain kingdom. But while South Africa benefits from the water, the project has been dogged by controversy, including the displacement of thousands of people. Now there is the possibility that new phases of the dam development could cause further hardship. Pambazuka News interviewed Jacob Lenka of the Lesotho NGO Transformation Resource Centre, which works with affected communities to enable them to express their needs and monitors the resettlement process.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What exactly is the plight of those people who have been displaced by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP)? How many people are involved?
JACOB LENKA: The plight of the Lesotho communities affected by LHWP is that they were not sufficiently consulted when the Project began. Of critical importance is that the communities were not compensated with land for land, they only received cash compensation. These communities are used to production from the soil. They were not again told about their rights vis-a-vis the Project; their right to water and development. The phase 1A has affected about 27,000 people while phase1B has displaced about 370 households, excluding those other people who have been affected in different ways than by displacement.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Apparently part of the development treaty was that people displaced by the project should be taken care of and that "the standard of living of all people affected by the implementation of Phase 1B should not be compromised and where possible improved'”. Why hasn't this been met? Who is responsible for the failure?
JACOB LENKA: Yes, the following articles within the Treaty talk about the improved standard of life for the affected: article 7(para.18); article 15 and LHDA order of 1986, section 44(2). Yes, the communities have been compensated for the property lost to the project, but as said above compensation was not sufficient. The have not been compensated with land, and they do not have rights to water and development, at least, these communities have not been made aware of these rights. After resettlement they can no longer send their children to school; they cannot feed and send their children to clinics; they were able to do these things before resettlement. This is real poverty and disempowerment. They also have not been trained and provided with sustainable training that would help them beyond compensation. The compensation that comes to them often comes late.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What is public sentiment in Lesotho about the LHWP? How do people feel about water being sold to South Africa while they suffer from drought and food shortages? And what is the level of awareness about those who have been displaced and their plight?
JACOB LENKA: Many people here are farmers. They will certainly want to have water for food production as well as water for drinking. Studies show that Lesotho will be water stressed in the next 25 years. Communities want water for irrigation. They want phase 2 to include component of development through water on the Lesotho side.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: More dams are going to be built as part of the project. What is the anticipated effect of any new dams on resident communities?
JACOB LENKA: The level of awareness amongst the affected communities is high. They have already formed their own civic organization; it is called Survivors of Lesotho Dams (SOLD). However, this level of consciousness does not translate into stoppage of the building of more them in Lesotho. The advice of the communities already affected to those who would be affected by phase 2 is that the latter should demand all compensation and resettlement packages before work starts, because once the work has started, the many promises are lost; the authorities often renege on these promises.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What lessons does the Lesotho Highlands Water Project hold for the rest of Africa?
JACOB LENKA: TRC is working on a booklet with partners. The booklet will reflect the experiences of TRC field workers as they were monitoring the Project. These experiences will be lessons for affected communities world-wide, the dam financiers and the NGOs. One lesson that Lesotho has stolen the show about is the prosecution of international companies that were involved in corruption in the Lesotho dams. Perhaps this will be a lesson for Africa in terms of what a small state can do to the giants.
* Interview conducted by email. Please send comments to [email protected]
Referendums are the indulgence of governments who are confident that they will not loose. Such was the July referendum in Uganda, writes Ronald Elly Wanda, who says that the vote served as notice of President Yoweri Museveni’s candidacy for the impending 2006 elections. Wanda expresses concern at the undemocratic nature of Ugandan politics.
Since the dawn of political thought the question “who should rule?” has been a recurrent issue of argument and debate. More recently in East Africa, the referendum held on 28th of July in Uganda rekindles this interest. In the referendum the Ugandan electorate were asked to choose whether the state adopts a multiparty political system or continues with the existing mono (movement) arrangement. The result, as expected by the government was an overwhelming yes. According to the Electoral Commission chairman Dr Badru Kiggundu, 92.5% balloted yes whilst only 7.5% objected to altering the system. Understandably, without more ado, the opposition camp fittingly cited that the outcome was partly due to the fact that a large number of the 8.5 million electors stayed away from the 17000 polling stations.
As far as referendums are concerned, it is fair to say that governments tend to utilize them only when they are confident that they are in a strong position to win them. For instance in Britain, Tony Blair indefinitely postponed a planed referendum on the EU constitution, fearing defeat after it was clear that the French and Dutch nationals had rejected it. Five years ago Museveni, unlike Blair, knew that he would win when he petitioned Ugandans with the first referendum. As expected voters at that time again “overwhelmingly” rejected multi-party politics in favour of continuing with the President’s "no-party" system, the electoral commission then reported that 91% of voters favoured retaining the National Resistance Movement as the country's political system.
The purposes of the referendum for movementism in 2000 were as much the same as the now concluded referendum on multipartism. Only the ranks have been changed and the referendum question reversed. Thus they were a mere quantitative and not qualitative exercise; their real intentions designed to systematically marketise the “Kisanja project” (Museveni’s third term campaign) in time for the March 2006 presidential elections. Although the National Resistance Movement-Organisation (NRM-O) government would have Ugandans believe that the referendums were a result of yielding democracy, the reality is that external factors played a far more significant role. Furthermore, neither referendum had anything to do with enhancing the democratic franchise, in spite of the fact that the methodology employed (referendum) and the apparatus used (ballot vote) replicated a commotion in a liberal democratic system.
Democracy
Today only a few people in Uganda would admit to thinking that democracy is a bad thing. Nonetheless, the emergence of more than one recognised political grouping and the appearance of multi-party politics, as is the case now in Uganda, is not necessarily the same as democracy. There is thus a hazardous tendency to call a system ‘democratic’ simply because the incumbent government (in this case, NRM-O) says that it is.
A quick perusal of the history of democracy illustrates that it is a procedure that takes time. It also took time for a mature liberal democratic state such as England to realise democracy’s fruition. During the 17th century prior to the so called first democratic revolution, elite groups in England, regarded democracy as a threat to be overcome, and not a prospect to be encouraged. Indeed not so long ago in the 1940s the unrepentant imperialist Sir Winston Churchill when about to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire went on to confess that: “democracy was the least efficient form of government but that every other form was worse”.
In Uganda, as has been the case in almost all corners of Sub Sahara Africa, the process of democratisation has been unfairly pushed by international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO as well as the donor community) in order to fulfil their own agenda of “opening up Africa” to the global economy.
The result is best summed up by a key Nigerian political scientist Professor Claude Oke in 1993 when he said: “What is being fostered in Africa is a version of liberal democracy reduced to the crude simplicity of multiparty elections. This type of democracy in the least emancipatory especially in African conditions because it offers people rights they cannot exercise, voting that never amounts to choosing, freedom which is patently spurious, and political equality which disguises highly unequal power relations.” This is exactly what President Museveni is doing by reengineering the constitution to permit his third term candidacy and secondly by holding a meaningless referendum.
In order for democracy to be realised in Uganda, it must firstly be allowed to naturally evolve and secondly the law must be respected by all (including the President himself) as it is a key essential aspiration for democratic ideals. Decisions ought to be taken by the people. This means that:
- The mass of the people should have some say in what they are going to be, and not just told what they are as the July referendum did;
- This say should be genuinely theirs and also not manipulated by propaganda, misinformation and irrational fears; and that
- It should to some extent reflect their considered opinion and aspirations, as against ill informed and knee-jerk prejudice. Democracy being an evolutionary process, a democratic political culture ought to be encouraged and militarism discouraged.
Political culture
In Uganda since political independence in 1962 one finds that domestic socio-economic and political problems have been responsible in attracting military elements into usurping national political power. Indeed in the country’s last coup de tat in January of 1986, the incumbent president was seen as a political saviour whose NRM machination delivered Ugandans from a corrupt, and inept Dr Milton Obote’s UPC (Uganda People’s Congress) government. Resultantly, militarism has and continues to play a significant role in Uganda’s post –independence political culture. For instance the defence budget was $44m in 1991. It went up to $88m in 1996 and rose again to $155m in 2003. It was estimated at between $193 to $203m last year alone. According to tangible sources the cost of defence amounted to around 23% of the public administration to 20-23% of total expenditure. This is money that should have been better spent elsewhere, eradicating poverty and providing education and other rural developments.
Constitutionalism
Thus the process of democratisation in Uganda will continue being severely hindered unless the political culture of militarism is dismantled and the rule of law respected. NRM-O’s deliberate incapacitation of Article 105(2) of the 1995 Uganda constitution - that limits presidential terms to a maximum two five years, thus precluding Mr Museveni (who has been a continuous tenant of Nakasero State House since 1986) from contesting the March 2006 general elections - should serve as an indication of the President’s candidacy for the impending 2006 elections.
The Musevenisation of the Ugandan constitution should be condemned by all not only because it is undemocratic but also on the grounds that it is insincere. The long-term ramifications for Ugandans are that any future president might use this same clause to personalise constitutions to suit their individual needs- at the expense of the Ugandan mwanainchi (citizen). This is selfish and dangerous for it is the law that defines our responsibilities to the state and vice versa. Therefore it is also the law that provides for and defines the good of society. By contrast, the democratic justification of political power is essentially legalistic, being based on the legal idea of a contract.
Mr Museveni and his strategists have revised the terms of the contract (constitution) in the absence of the Uganda electorate, subsequently infringing the state/citizen contract. President Museveni’s has to a degree served Ugandans well but his quest for an extension is undemocratic and as such the preservation of the status quo sadly means that inhabitants of the “Pearl of Africa” may sadly never experience the pleasure of seeing an incumbent relinquishing political office voluntarily, thus rendering a coup inevitable.
* Ronald Elly Wanda is a political scientist based in London, United Kingdom.
* Please send comments to [email protected]
Leading up to the December 2005 World Trade Organization's (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, Pambazuka News will examine some of the issues regarding the WTO as it affects Africa. In the first of this series, we examine the background to the current round of WTO summits, with a specific focus on Cancun.
Mobilization around the WTO meeting has been strong, and will continue up until December. The mobilization supports examination of and action against the potentially dangerous policies set to be discussed at the WTO meeting.
Some background on previous WTO summits may prove useful. One of the key conferences in the WTO's history, in the view of civil society organizations, was the 2003 Ministerial Conference that took place in Cancun. In 2001, WTO members assembled in Doha, Qatar, where they agreed on the Doha Development Agenda, which laid out a plan to open world markets to agricultural and manufactured goods. 2003's Cancun assembly was meant to solidify the Doha rounds, which, WTO members claimed, would provide fairer agreements to developing countries. The four main areas of their talks included agriculture, industrial goods, trade in services and a new customs code. Cancun talks collapsed, as rich countries (mainly the US and EU) could not reach agreement with poor countries (India, Brazil, China and South Africa played predominantly in this move, but were supported by the G20, an emerging coalition of countries not represented in the G8). This alliance refused to sign a proposed document, which, they felt, favored the richer WTO member nations.
PoliticsOnline and the 6th Worldwide Forum on Electronic Democracy are proud to announce the results of the annual world-wide survey recognizing the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies that are impacting the world of Internet and politics. Pambazuka News made it into the top 10 after a selection process that began in July, when PoliticsOnline asked its subscribers and visitors from around the world, to nominate people, organizations and companies that are changing the world of Internet and politics.
"Civil society in Niger imposed itself as a key actor, henceforth unavoidable within the dialogue with the government," says the national GCAP Coordinator. Follow the link for a Q & A with the GCAP Coordinator in Niger, who argues that the role of GCAP is important not only to raise awareness, but because it also puts pressure on government leaders, the political community at large and the United Nations.
EDITORIAL: Nearly ten years after the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa the guns and intimidation of the Nigerian authorities still can’t kill his ideas, says Nigerian writer Ike Okonta
COMMENT&ANALYSIS
- Writer and filmmaker Carol Chehade explores genocide in the DRC and what it means for our common humanity
- Pambazuka News Q&A article: Jacob Lenka of the Transformation Resource Centre in Lesotho talks about displacement as a result of a World Bank water project
- Election observer Peter Hurst finds the democratic spirit alive and well in Somaliland
- Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is on track for his next term, writes Ronald Elly Wanda
LETTERS: How does one get beyond intellectual analysis and practically move Africa forward?
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: The Khartoum Hilton isn’t the same place it was 11 years ago, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem discovered on a recent visit
BLOGGING AFRICA: Egyptian blogger, Baheyya, tells Mubarak his time is up
BOOKS AND ARTS: Pambazuka News reviews ‘Composing a new song: Stories of empowerment from Africa’
GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION AGAINST POVERTY: The road to Hong Kong Pambazuka News feature series; 40 million set to watch GCAP Standing Tall Against Poverty concerts across Africa
CONFLICT&EMERGENCIES: Economic reform is needed in rich countries if famine is to end in Africa, says a new paper
HUMAN RIGHTS: Who cares about human rights abuses in Kenya’s Export Processing Zones?
REFUGEES&FORCED MIGRATION: As long as Europe refuses to address the causes of poverty, African refugees will continue to storm Ceuta and Melilla, Thabo Mbeki stated in his latest ANC Today column
ELECTIONS&GOVERNANCE: Ex-footballer George Weah in the lead as Liberian poll results trickle in
WOMEN AND GENDER: What the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa says on trafficking in women and children; French version of closing statement of women’s rights conference
DEVELOPMENT: Trade unions from across Africa call for action on China textiles crisis
HEALTH&HIV/AIDS: Mental health and the MDGs; Nigeria Aids orphans crisis and South African anger over vitamin salesman
EDUCATION: No school fees for kids in Burundi, but what happens to quality?
ENVIRONMENT: There should be full public participation in the GM debate, says a PANOS report
INTERNET&TECHNOLOGY: There’s talk of a $100 computer for the developing world, but blog site www.knowprose.com says its complete hype
JOBS: Pambazuka News seeks East Africa regional correspondent. Visit http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29827 for full details.
Pambazuka News wins awards!
* PoliticsOnline and the 6th Worldwide Forum on Electronic Democracy
Pambazuka News was recognized as on of the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies 'who are changing the world of Internet and politics.' Visit http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29839 for more information.
* Pambazuka News wins Highway Africa non-profit category
Pambazuka News has won the non-profit category of the sixth annual Highway Africa awards for the innovative use of new media. The awards are given annually at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown, South Africa, to recognize and promote the creative, innovative and appropriate use of new media technology in Africa. The judges had this to say about Pambazuka News: "This site was exceptional and clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the entrants and is world-class in terms of its rich content and excellent design."
Plus de 40 représentants de la Commission de l’Union Africaine , des gouvernements africains et du mouvement des femmes africaines se sont rassemblés à Addis-Abeba, Ethiopie, du 27 au 29 septembre 2005 en vue de discuter sur les stratégies de faire entrer en vigueur le Protocole à la Charte Africaine des Droits Humains et des Peuples relatif aux Droits des Femmes, sur la ratification universelle du Protocole, son appropriation et sa mise en ?uvre. Nous affirmons que le Protocole est en effet le fondement du véritable panafricanisme dans lequel les gens se retrouvent et de la réforme constitutionnelle et judiciaire au niveau national au bénéfice de la concrétisation des droits des femmes africaines.
As part of an experienced team, you will develop and implement INTERIGHTS' programme of work in Africa, assess new opportunities for the legal protection of human rights in the region and internationally, and identify potential partner organisations in the region for collaborative work. You will provide legal advice to partners, draft legal briefs in cases in which INTERIGHTS intervenes and design and implement regional projects on key human rights themes.
Four Corners, an Australian investigative TV programme, has revealed that an Australian mining company has been implicated in a massacre of at least 100 people. According to eyewitness accounts and investigation reports obtained by Four Corners, dozens of people, mostly innocent civilians, were summarily executed by soldiers with the logistical assistance of the Australian company. The bloodbath happened in the remote south-eastern corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It was with rude shock that I read of the untimely and needless death of my brother Chima Ubani. I have known Chima by reputation as the president of the students union of the University of Nigeria in 1985/86 sessions. Chima was an intelligent, committed and fearless leader. His sheer dexterity, eloquence and intelligence confounded many. Chima devoted almost all his adult life to fight for the poor and the voiceless. He was their voice and their true representative. I recall how in 1996 at the height of General Sani Abacha misrule when I went to Ikoyi prison for my normal routine of interviewing and filling applications for the release of awaiting trial prisoners who had been in prolonged detention without trial, I was surprised to see Chima who had just been brought to Ikoyi prison from one of the secret detention centers that the Abacha acolytes scattered all over Nigeria. I was delighted to take back the news to other comrades in the Civil Liberties Organisation.
As the Coordinator of the Centre for Democracy and Development, I have worked closely with Chima on other initiatives especially the CDD driven Citizens Forum for Constitutional Reform. In any initiative Chima undertook under the different fora that we collaborated, he displayed unimaginably commitment, drive and energy, which is rare to find among his peers. That Chima is no more is hard to take but we are all mere mortals and shall all meet our creator one day. Before I left Nigeria late in August I met Chima a couple of times mostly at meetings in Abuja. How could I have known that the last meeting in early August would be the last with the icon?
Like the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress said last week, I hold the Obasanjo government solely responsible for the untimely demise of Chima. The present administration has in the last six and half years of its mal-administration inflicted Nigerians with the most insensitive policies that have further impoverished the citizenry. Obasanjo and his cohorts have turned out to be uncaring despots, extremely autocratic and intolerant of other views or public opinion.
The untimely death of Chima should instead of making us weak should instead give us strength. What better legacy can we leave for the name of Chima other than to continue from where he stopped? We should use all democratic means to fight for the ideals for which he lived and died for. We should also not forget his dear wife, children and dependants. Chima was their breadwinner and now that he is gone, the civil society and all people of good will should remember to assist his family one way or the other. I will call on comrades at CLO to take the lead on this.
Adieu my brother Chima. We will never forget you.
A ground-breaking gender equality training course for local government officials has wrapped up in South Africa's financial capital, Johannesburg. "The course was the first of its kind in South Africa and the region involving gender and local government," said Colleen Lowe Morna, director of Gender Links: the non-governmental organisation headquartered in Johannesburg which organised the training. The programme was held amidst preparations for local government elections in South Africa, scheduled to be held within the next few months.
The conference seeks to gather further data on the implications and impacts of applying a rights-based approach in practice, and feed this experience into policy and donor debates and communities.
Developing countries have expressed strong dissatisfaction with their current "under-representation" at the World Bank and the IMF, warning that they are losing their significance. "We have a situation that a small number of countries are controlling these institutions," said Ariel Buira, director of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty Four (G24) on International Monetary Affairs and Development Secretariat in Washington.
The fifth annual MIT Technology Review Emerging Technology Conference kicked off with a presentation from Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. Negroponte discussed his $100 laptop initiative, in which he is working to produce a low-cost laptop for mass distribution. But www.knowprose.com says the initiative is complete hype: "We wouldn't want to shake things up at all with open hardware. Oh no, that would shift power structures. That's what's been holding back the Simputer and similar initiatives."
ICTs for Civil Society: 2nd Annual Conference and Exhibition Southern African NGO Network (SANGONet)
This conference will focus specifically on a wide range of new and practical information, communication and technology (ICT) services, solutions and applications relevant to the work of civil society organisations in Southern Africa.
Who should have control of the Internet? www.theregister.co.uk has released two podcasts
that deal with the power struggle over who should have control of the internet. Part one covers the shock announcement by the EU for a new body to run the Internet. Part two reflects on why others want US control removed.
Open source software is locally relevant, globally competitive and can make good business sense. That was the message from some of South Africa's top open source pioneers at the African Computing & Telecommunications Summit in Johannesburg on October 4, reports www.tectonic.co.za. Head of the CSIR Open Source Centre, Nhlanhla Mabaso said projects such as the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), the East African Centre for Open Source Software, Africa Source and LinuxChix Africa, were advancing the development of open source in Africa.
Last weekend, a petition signed and formulated over SMS and Email was presented to over 40 representatives from the African Union Commission, African governments and the African women’s movement, which convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Conference On The Protocol On the Rights of Women. The petition was in support of a campaign that urges African governments to ratify the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. The petition has over 3,615 signatures, 468 of which where submitted using SMS. 15 countries need to ratify the treaty in order for it to take effect. To date only 13 have signed. The organization behind the SMS petition is Fahamu (which means understanding or consciousness Swahili), an English & South African based organization that promotes the use of information communication technology to support the struggle for social justice in Africa.
The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) - Tanzania chapter is concerned about the suspension of local NGO HakiElimu for allegedly "disparaging the image of our education system and the teaching profession of our country through his media promotion of self created caricatures masquerading as teachers and pupils and has repeatedly failed to conform with directives given to him by the Ministry of Education and Culture both in writing and verbally".
Like many African countries in the 1990s, Zambia experienced drastic political, social and economic changes. In response to these changes, Zambia embarked on a market driven economy that has seen the privatisation of most state enterprises. These changes have proliferated in the media industry as well. However, instead of privatising state media, the government liberalised the airwaves, allowing new players to enter the media terrain. This resulted in the mushrooming of many community-based radio broadcasting stations.
"Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they're tremendous tools of freedom of expression. Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest." Reporters without Borders has released a handbook for Bloggers and cyber-dissidents, which is available from the link provided.
After visiting Rwanda from 30 September to 6 October and meeting with detained Belgian priest Guy Theunis, the former editor of the Rwandan magazine Dialogue, Reporters Without Borders insisted the charges against him were politically motivated and baseless and reiterated its call for his immediate release. The press freedom organisation also reported that Father Theunis was cheerful and in good health, and the conditions in which he was being held in Kigali's main prison were acceptable.
The former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma has appeared in a Durban court facing corruption charges. Mr Zuma, who was dismissed from his government post in June, maintains he is innocent. Hundreds of supporters waved banners and blew horns outside. No details of the charges were read out and the case was adjourned until 12 November for further investigations.
On 4 October 2005, Q-FM radio reporter Wamunyima Walubita was forced to erase material from his tape recorder which documented his mistreatment by police in order to secure his release from detention. Walubita told the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zambia on 6 October that he was picked up by police while covering a riot by students from Evelyn Hone College, who were protesting against declining education standards at the institution.
This paper from the journal PloS Medicine notes that mental health is absent from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, it cites evidence which indicates that mental health-related conditions, including depressive and anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and schizophrenia, contribute significantly both to the number of years lived with disability and lost due to disability in developing countries. It highlights further research which shows that poor mental health is closely linked to social determinants, notably poverty and disadvantage, as well as to HIV and AIDS and poor maternal and child health.
Health authorities launched an emergency yellow fever immunisation drive in one of the most under developed regions of Senegal after officials confirmed the killer virus had claimed one life raising fears of more deaths to follow. The confirmation of a single case of yellow fever in Tambacounda last month, some 500 km east of the capital Dakar, is officially an epidemic according to World Health Organisation (WHO) classifications.
Five year-old Fati could barely hold back her tears. This little girl who loves going to school had just been sent home. Like the other three kids turned away at the gates on the first day of classes, Fati is HIV-positive and has been orphaned by AIDS. Her head low, her uniform not quite hiding a stomach swollen from the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs she's been taking for a year, Fati, which is not her real name, clung to Cathryn Barrera, director of Mother's Welfare Group (MWG).
HIV/AIDS is robbing subsistence farmers of the ability to grow enough food, according to a new survey conducted in northern Namibia. Out of 144 HIV-affected households in the Oshana, Oshikoto and Okavango Regions, 86 percent did not produce enough mahangu (pearl millet) and maize to meet their calorie requirements, said a report this week by the Namibia Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU).
Renewed calls for Government to take action against the controversial Dr Rath Health Foundation have come from a large group of health professionals working in the Western Cape's internationally acclaimed antiretroviral programme. In a strongly worded letter to the province's health minister Pierre Uys the 199 health professionals warned that the activities of Dr Rath Health Foundation were "the largest challenges our health services have ever been confronted with". Rath and his foundation, which includes agents from the South African National Civics Organisation, has since the beginning of the year been promoting high doses of multi-vitamins as an alternative to anti-retroviral drugs which they describe as toxic.
Corruption is costing Africa's oil industry billions of dollars annually, says Peter Eigen, founder and chairperson of Transparency International (TI) - a non-governmental group based in Berlin that monitors and fights graft. Oil-rich Angola, Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan all fared poorly on TI's corruption perceptions index for last year. This annual rating ranks various states according on the extent to which graft is viewed as having taken hold there.
With just six weeks to go before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, a number of key issues remain unresolved, including the highly debated questions of Internet governance and civil society participation. The future of the Internet will now supposedly be decided at a meeting to be held in the Tunisian capital immediately prior to the Summit itself, which is taking place Nov. 16-18. Other matters also left pending will be addressed in coming weeks at meetings held in this same Swiss city, ahead of the gathering in Tunis.
The arrest of David Ochami, a Kenyan journalist, by more than 10 policemen at the premises of Kenya Times Newspaper because of an opinion article he published in the paper was significant in two ways. It was the second major arrest of a journalist since Narc took power while it also confirmed that President Mwai Kibaki is on a downward spiral towards authoritarian dictatorship that his predecessor Daniel arap Moi spent 24 years perfecting.
The World Bank says it may withhold financial aid to crisis-torn Zimbabwe to "set an example" saying allocating money to President Robert Mugabe's government would be a "terrible waste of funds." World Bank boss Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday the financial institution would be allocating funds "very, very carefully, and in the case of Zimbabwe perhaps not at all. My Africa experts say that with the kind of misgovernment that is taking place in Zimbabwe, it is not clear that development is possible at all.”
"Ceuta and Melilla have however communicated the unequivocal message that in addition to Kananaskis, Gleneagles and Washington, Europe and the developed world rely for their welfare and the defence of their self-interest on yet another response to the appeals of the poor of Africa and the world. That response is made up of the fortress walls in Ceuta and Melilla that are being further strengthened to repel and exclude the poor of the South, the majority of humanity, from the Northern world of the European nations, which are part of the global prosperous minority. These are the countries of the North which have the wherewithal, but lack sufficient will, to end the poverty that drives thousands of Africans to walk from as far south as the Democratic Republic of Congo, across many African countries and the Sahara Desert, to reach Fortress Europe, symbolised by Ceuta and Melilla. Because the prosperous of Europe refuse, still, properly to listen to the poor of Africa, the wretched of the earth died and were injured as they battled to breach the walls of Fortress Europe at Ceuta and Melilla." - Thabo Mbeki, South African president, writing in his weekly column ANC Today.
Trade union representatives from the clothing, textiles, footwear and leather sector from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa met in Cape Town on the 10th and 11th of October to discuss the effects of the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) phase out and its effect on the future of the African textiles, clothing and leather industries. The meeting was facilitated by the International Textile Garment & Leather Workers' Federation's Africa Region (ITGLWF-Africa). The representatives concluded that the African continent has lost more than 250 000 jobs over the past few years, resulting in more than a million African family-members having lost the stable source of their livelihood.
Thousands of civilians began arriving in the town of Walungu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday following attacks on four nearby villages, in which at least 24 civilians were hacked to death. "Most of the displaced are small children and old women," Donatien Nakalonge, a local community leader in the town of Walungu in South Kivu Province, told IRIN on Tuesday. They walked 15 km from their villages of Tchindudi, Mungombe, Kanyola and Rudundu, in a valley 60 km south of the provincial capital, Bukavu.
The security situation in Sudan's war-affected western region of Darfur is getting worse and more must be done to protect civilians, the UN Secretary-General's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Juan Mendez, said on Monday. More also needed to be done to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and bring those responsible for atrocities before the International Criminal Court (ICC), he added.
Uganda's army commander says his troops have been given unlimited access to fight Ugandan rebels based in Sudan. The move follows last week's indictment of five Lord's Resistance Army rebels by the International Criminal Court. Until now the army could not go beyond a so-called "red line", about 100km (62 miles) into Sudanese territory. The Khartoum government backed the LRA until the end of Sudan's civil war, but the rebels remain active - their latest attack was reportedly on Friday.
African Union troops in Sudan's troubled Darfur region are in danger of being dragged into the conflict after rebels abducted and killed AU soldiers in a series of attacks targeting the neutral force. Five AU soldiers and civilian personnel were killed when rebels ambushed a convoy on Saturday, the force's first losses in more than a year working in remote Darfur.
Zimbabwean civic action group, Sokwanele - (http://www.sokwanele.com/) reminds us that the “crisis” facing Zimbabwe today is not one single issue but many. There is a severe crisis in the economy for instance, as in manufacturing, as in agriculture, in education, health care and so on. In fact just about every sector of the national life is plunged into deep crisis right now.
Health is of particular concern and while the main focus here has been on AIDS, there are in fact other health issues that have been neglected such as Sleeping Sickness spread by the tsetse fly.
This is a slow, wasting illness characterized by fever and inflammation of the lymph nodes, leading to profound lethargy that frequently ends in death; in other words, a most unpleasant way to die. However it is not just a case of “sleeping sickness as sleeping is the sickness”.
Egyptian blogger, Baheyya – Baheyya (http://baheyya.blogspot.com/) has a last word on the re-election of Mubarak - YOU ARE NOT WANTED – YOUR TIME IS UP.
“A decrepit regime faces off with a society in movement. Egyptian society is debating, organising, learning, mobilising, demanding, manoeuvring, grumbling, watching, transforming, and of course, sulking”.
Jewels in the Jungle - Jewels in the Jungle (http://jewelsnthejungle.blogspot.com) reports on diamond mining in the DRC via a photo essay in this months Foreign Policy magazine.
“A Trail of Diamonds” by photographer Kadir van Lohuizen who followed the trail of the diamond trade around the world. This trail is dirty, oft-times violent and bloody, and littered with the destroyed lives of marginalized and victimized children, young people, and adults from Africa to India who work as underpaid labourers and unpaid slaves in the mining, cutting, and polishing of billions of dollars ($$$) worth of diamonds every year.
Telegraphic Congolais - Telegraphic Congolais (http://kivu.blogspot.com/) is the only blog I know reporting from the DRC (periodically at least). Unfortunately it has not been regularly updated so its not clear who the author is (journalist, activist or both or neither). In his latest post he mentions the Goma film project which is producing a documentary “Heal My People”.
The film “documents the lives of rape survivors in the Congo as they work with medical staff and counsellors to regain their health and dignity. Documentaries like this require extreme sensitivity and one hopes that the voices of the women are presented without distortion and from an Afrocentric perspective.
Finally Mzansi Afrika - Mzanis Afrika (http://mzansiafrika.typepad.com/mzansi_afrika/) has a report on how AIDS is causing a dramatic increase in school dropouts.
“According to the report (HRW) millions of children in southern and eastern Africa are dropping out of school as a direct result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. “Other experts on this issue have made the obvious observation that the effect of Aids in the classroom will have long term consequences by dampening economic growth across the continent. One of the solutions that springs to mind would be for government to provide special grants to orphaned children who can't afford uniforms and school fees”.
About 90,000 refugees live in Kalam camp, in Sudan`s western Darfur region, reeling under armed conflict between two rebel groups and Sudan government forces, according to a recent census released by World Vision International. It promised to continue a census of refugees in camps located in southern Darfur in order to ensure the effectiveness of its action. "The enumeration of occupants of camps is central to the evaluation of their needs for the improvement of humanitarian assistance, mainly in food and basic needs," noted a press release.
European Union countries are increasingly abandoning their responsibilities to protect refugees in an effort to combat "illegal immigration", as the recent tragic events near the Spanish enclaves in North Africa show, Amnesty International has said. "Shamefully, EU Member States are shifting the burden of refugee protection to other countries which may be ill-equipped to deal with the ever increasing numbers of displaced people. In the process, international commitments to humane treatment and the principle of 'non-refoulement' are being violated. The overall effect is not only to strain the EU's own credibility, but to threaten the very integrity of the international refugee protection system, " said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty International's EU Office.
As a part of the coalition supporting the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, Pambazuka News will profile various aspects of the protocol over the next six weeks. This week we will take a look at trafficking in women as it relates to the African continent. This is what the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa states:
“Article 4 – The Right to Life, Integrity and Security of the Person
2. State parties shall take appropriate and effective measures to:
g) prevent and condemn trafficking in women, prosecute the perpetrators of such trafficking and protect those women most at risk;”
Togo has seen larger numbers of traffickers selling children across the borders to Cote d`Ivoire and Nigeria, as it lies in the middle of a trucking highway, making it easy to transport people. The fact that border officials are paid little makes them more susceptible to accepting bribes, and for a small fee one can easily get a child across the border with no documentation. Many parents, desperate to earn some money or even to provide their child with a promised better-off situation, will allow their child to be taken away, and they then end up working as domestic servants or agricultural laborers.
As defined in the United Nations’ Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, trafficking is defined as “ . . . the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons . . . by improper means, such as force, abduction, fraud or coercion, for an improper purpose, like forced or coerced labor, servitude, slavery or sexual exploitation” (UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, 2000).
The trafficking of women in Africa takes a number of different forms. Women are sold and kidnapped for the purposes of sexual slavery and prostitution, domestic or commercial labor and forced soldiering. Women from around Africa are being sold not only to other African countries, but are also being sent as far away as Europe, the Middle East and North America. Once enslaved in these situations, some girls and women are forced to pay off a debt – the cost of their acquisition, their accommodation, meals, medicine, etc. Generally, conditions are unsanitary, the girls and women face violence, have no access to health care or adequate nutrition and have no options to leave. The number of women and children who have been trafficked are hard to define for a number of reasons - this is an underground industry, and also a very transient one.
Many African countries are currently not meeting the standards that are upheld by the US Department of State’s Anti-Trafficking requirements, the most in-depth report on the effort of governments worldwide to prevent and prosecute traffickers and protect survivors. Some countries do not even have laws that criminalize trafficking, while many that do are not acting strongly enough to uphold them. Lack of enforcement, failure to actually punish traffickers, corruption and, in the case of forced soldiering, compliance with paramilitary governments, are all affecting the rights of women and children in relation to their safety against being trafficked. For those women and children who have survived and escaped traffickers, government protection is often weak. Some governments offer skeleton services – shelter, rehabilitation services, demobilization - but others rely solely on non-governmental organizations to provide the assistance that is their responsibility. In addition, prevention activities, such as awareness-raising sessions and anti-trafficking training are lacking, meaning that the number of women and children who are at risk of being trafficked can only grow.
That the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa has taken the step to include anti-trafficking measures is truly commendable. Governments will have to work diligently to ensure that this most basic human right is upheld.
* Written by Karoline Kemp, Commonwealth of Learning Young Professionals Intern, Fahamu
Voicing concern over the situation of migrants trying to cross from Morocco into Spain’s enclaves on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, a senior United Nations official in West Africa warned that what is happening there now with African youth is nothing compared with what might occur within a few years. Tens of millions of youths in West Africa lack proper employment, and their realization that their prospects are so limited in their home countries is driving ever more of them to undertake the desperate measures necessary to emigrate clandestinely to Europe or North America.
The conference on reducing firearm related mortality and morbidity has a specific focus on data collection and linkage, policy development, and practice of researchers and practitioners in the field for reducing and preventing firearm related death and injury.
AfriMAP (Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project) was established by the Open Society Institute (www.soros.org), in order to monitor and promote compliance by African states with the requirements of good governance, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. To foster new thinking and dynamic debate on good governance, AfriMAP is inviting papers on the theme of political participation in Africa.
You can now listen to the MSP radio spots, featuring critical discussions on pressing South African municipal issues. When originally aired, these spots – available in five languages – reached an audience of 2.2 million people in South Africa, on both commercial and community radio. You can download them for your computer or MP3 player (a podcast) or you can stream these low-bandwidth files online. They can be found at: http://www.research-matters.net/en/ev-87793-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
In August and September 2005, a GEH-funded project investigating corruption in the Senegalese health care system had its findings published in a number of Senegalese daily newspapers, creating a storm of activity, debate, resignations and firings. Research findings revealed widespread corruption in the Senegalese health sector, and were presented to and discussed before the country's Council for Economic and Social Affairs. For the articles and preliminary analysis, visit the URL provided.
The Community Voice Initiative, a project led by the Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre (Tanzania) has developed several tools to facilitate the incorporation of community voice and preferences in district planning processes. A policy manual, success stories and challenges, pictures as well as a video documenting the project, are now available on-line through the URL provided.
This book presents a collection of writings from the broad field of communication for development and from closely related areas of research and practice. The editors' aim is to present "an integral reflection upon where the still-emerging field of communication for development is coming from and, particularly, where we believe it should be heading." This book aims "to integrate reflection on epistemology, theory, methodology and successful case studies in order to move the field towards a new phase, enabling media and communication practitioners to respond better to the realities of a glocalized world."
The second 2006 issue of the Agenda journal will focus on Women and Culture. It is intended that in placing a gendered lens on culture, contributions to the issue will concern a rethinking and reclaiming of what culture means to women.
On World Habitat Day, 2005, Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) launched a new interactive and participatory feature on its website. It is an initiative by HLRN officers and members to build a simple database that will host basic information on the world’s most common housing and land rights violations.
One thing Kenya is certainly not short of is good weather. In one of Nairobi's poorest neighbourhoods, people have started working to make the best of the free energy potential of the sun. Orders are already beginning to flood into the Kibera Community Youth Project (KCYP) for solar panels built in a small workshop in the heart of one of Africa's biggest slums.
Refugees and civil society groups have reacted cautiously to statements by a high-ranking South African official condemning the treatment of refugees by police. In a meeting with refugee representatives held in the commercial hub of Johannesburg, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula acknowledged that police were harassing and soliciting bribes from refugees.
However, groups which deal with refugees are waiting so see whether Mapisa-Nqakula's comments will result in real improvement of South African attitudes towards refugees, who are often the targets of abuse and exploitation.
While Tuesday's election is a hopeful development for the 1.3 million Liberians expected to vote, reintegration remains a considerable challenge. Liberia's economy collapsed during the years of civil war, and refugees and displaced people alike face a dire situation upon return. Despite the work of the international community and of the people of Liberia to rebuild the war-torn country, it will probably take years to restore Liberia's economy. Nearly 85 per cent of Monrovians are jobless. Usually, it is women who engage in small trading activities, walking the streets of Monrovia with plates on their heads selling a few items to feed their families.
Edited by: Hope Chigudu
Published by Weaver Press Ltd, 2002
Distributed by African Books Collective Ltd.
‘Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa’ sets out to tell the stories of five African non-governmental organizations (NGO) and the processes by which they have been able to successfully empower those communities which they serve. The focus of each organization differs, but all have in common the fact that they work within communities often neglected by mainstream development. These five organizations are using tactics or methods which differ from the conventional – they are taking African principles and values and making them work for those people who need help. They are also very self-aware organizations – each taking into account not only the issues around which their work surrounds, but also the processes by which they endeavour to meet their goals. These organizations have been incredibly reflective, and offer here a view into the realm of NGOs and their management which one does not often get.
The word ‘empowerment’ represents an excellent idea and goal for development - to give power back to the people so that they may control their own development and gain access to their rights. But in many ways it is a term that has been co-opted by large donor agencies and has been tossed around as a guarantee of funding and method of right practice. Taken back into the hands of small, local organizations, some that even shun funding for fear that it may corrupt their work, empowerment can succeed, and as ‘Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa’ demonstrates, the principle does indeed exist in Africa.
Dr Olaseinde Arigbede of Nigeria, founder of the Coalition for Popular Development Initiatives in Nigeria (CODOPIN), writes eloquently of his personal and professional search for an organization unrestrained by the limitations imposed by donors. He also provides an interesting insight into how empowerment can really work with the methodology employed by CODOPIN, premised around the idea that people working for development must not simply be `infallible bringers of uncommon wisdom,’ but both teachers and learners.
Tomson Dube works for Zimbabwe’s Organization of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP), and is Academic Director of Zenzele College (an institution within ORAP). His essay is an in-depth examination of the processes by which ORAP works. The organization is different from others in that it takes the concept of empowerment extremely seriously, placing in the hands of all members the responsibility to analyse their own particular situations and challenges in order to jointly make plans to meet their needs. This is then undertaken via the philosophy of ORAP, which relies on African principles found in the Ndebele language. Primarily, this is the idea of ‘zenzele,’ which means “do it yourself,” and translates into people standing on their own.
Patrick Kiirya, Director of Uganda’s Literacy and Adult Basic Education Organization (LABE), is the only Ugandan NGO to work on issues surrounding literacy. As an organization meant to support other NGOs and community based organizations (CBO), LABE works within all of the realms necessary for them to further their goals - they collaborate with government on issues surrounding policy, offer consultancy and support services for smaller organizations in the same field, and offer participatory courses to those who wish to learn how to read. They take their objectives further in linking literacy to development. They do this practically in the courses they offer, making sure that the course material is not only relevant to the lives of those studying, but also connects the process of teaching people to read to the very issues surrounding development in their community.
Emily Sikazwe is Executive Director of Zambia’s Women for Change (WFC), an organization dedicated to meeting the needs of rural women. Through their belief that one cannot know the needs of a community without living in it, WFC has animators living in the communities in which they work for 2-3 weeks out of every month. The organization has provided a number of income generating opportunities for their communities, and in addition, utilizes the knowledge of those women whom it has trained to subsequently teach other community members. Putting this power back into the hands of the women has instigated them to make further demands, not only on WFC, but on local and national government, demonstrating that with a little assistance, empowering a community to gain the skills and confidence necessary to make positive changes is indeed possible.
Leila Sheikh, Executive Director of the Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA), represents an organization that has seen incredible shifts in its concentration. Beginning as an organization meant to use the media to sensitize communities on gender issues, and also lobby government for women’s rights, TAMWA, without losing their focus on awareness raising, has also created a Crisis Centre, in order to provide legal aid and counseling services to women and children who have survived violence. Evolving from a small collective that focused on media, the organization transformed into a larger association that works for women’s rights on all levels.
“Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa” is an important book for several reasons. Not only does it document the evolution of these five successful African organizations, it provides potential frameworks for other organizations looking to solidify their roles as organizations that truly wish to empower the communities in which they work. This collection of essays can thus be regarded as a tool for others in the field of African development, sharing many first hand experiences and lessons.
* Reviewed by: Karoline Kemp, Commonwealth of Learning Young Professionals Intern, Fahamu
Prof. Issa Shivji's write up on the above topic (Pambazuka News 224) is intellectually sound but beyond intellectualism, where do we go from here?
Is it possible for Africans to look beyond the woes of the past and think practically about prospects for moving forward? Is it possible for Africans to understand that there is obviously no morality in international relations and in the politics of international sovereignty and dominance? Can Africans also understand that there is a high price to pay for both national and regional integrity as well as for power control and economic sovereignty? Can Africans see and understand that nations do not voluntarily surrender power and territorial dominace over other nations?
Perhaps these questions and the reality of the issues raised by these questions could help the African people refocus. Until then, I doubt if intellectual positions which have the effect of making us heap all the blame on the controlling nations, can practically move Africa forward.
Pambazuka News 224: The Changing Development Discourse in Africa
Pambazuka News 224: The Changing Development Discourse in Africa
The recent spate of attacks on civilians in northern and eastern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has raised fears that the brutal 19-year old conflict is "not yet over", a top religious leader in the region said. "We have in the past been hoodwinked that rebel activities were on the wane, only [for such activities] to resurface with renewed vigour and brutality. Widespread attacks in many areas are not the signs of a group weakened," Archbishop John Baptist Odama said on Wednesday.
"The past two or three years have witnessed a number of optimistic developments in West Africa: the destructive war in Sierra Leone ended in 2002, a UN-backed War Crimes tribunal was set up in Freetown, intervention by thousands of UN troops have succeeded in disarming Liberia's neurotic militias, and other countries conducted successful elections. Ivory Coast, alas, has now become the new the festering sour on the region. This must not be allowed to continue," writes Lansana Gberie in a commentary for the website http://www.zmag.org
Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential election, a response to U.S. pressure, was a false start for reform, says the International Crisis Group. "Formal pluralism has never seriously limited the dominance of President Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP); extension to the presidential level is a token so long as the opposition is too weak to produce plausible candidates. If the further reforms Mubarak has promised are to be meaningful, they should be aimed at recasting state/NDP relations and, above all, enhancing parliament's powers."
The government of Tanzania has banned a local NGO from undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding schools claiming it had been disparaging the country's education system and teaching profession, officials said on Wednesday. The Ministry of Education and Culture issued a circular on Tuesday prohibiting the NGO, Hakielimu, from "undertaking studies and publishing any articles regarding Tanzanian schools".
Sitting in a classroom and wearing a shirt, tie and perfectly polished shoes, Lamine, a computer science student in Senegal's capital city, admits he has no idea whether or not he is HIV-positive. "I've never been tested and I don't think I'll do it anytime soon," said the 25 year-old Dakar resident. "I'd rather not know. I want to live happily and not have to worry about getting AIDS."
Bridges of Hope is a global award winning package of powerful, practical and fun participatory training materials, activities and behaviour change techniques. These empower people to address their issues around HIV prevention, support, treatment and positive living, linked to achieving their life goals and dreams. Get the complete package of materials and learn to use them most effectively on this 3-day workshop programme.
This forum will bring together representatives of the global malaria community to review progress in malaria control and prevention. The forum will also be an opportunity to chart the future course of action for all who are committed to halve the malaria burden by 2015.
The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU) has called an emergency meeting to discuss the worsening security situation in Sudan's western region of Darfur where rampant ceasefire violations have resulted in dozens of deaths and further displacement. The session of the council, expected to take place on Wednesday, follows a scathing criticism by the head of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), Baba Gana Kingibe, of both the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) for perpetrating recent incidents of violence.
October 31 2005 marks the fifth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325. PeaceWomen has developed an October events calendar - follow the link to view events.
OpenDemocracy– the online magazine of politics and culture - launches a major debate this October to mark the fifth anniversary of UN Resolution 1325. How does it affect us? Has it made any difference and what difference could it make?
Resource Alliance's 12th East Africa Fundraising Workshop will be held 6th - 9th December 2005 in Mombasa, Kenya. The workshop will be held in partnership with Kenyan Association of Professional Fundraisers (KAPF).
The late Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) was a political and environmental activist, a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, television and film producer, entrepreneur, public servant and publisher. He is best known as the founding member and leading figure of Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and for his role in the historic Ogoni struggles against the Nigerian federal government and what he termed the oil companies 'ecological war'. To coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and in association with the Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa coalition, African Books Collective is reissuing some of his best known works. Visit the ABC website to browse the titles.
Africa has been through a particularly ambivalent experience of modernity. Previous research has tended to emphasize its alien nature in Africa and how it has been resisted. This book seeks to show how this tension and the impulse to modernity have contributed to changing African society over the past one hundred years. The contributors look at how Africans negotiated the terms of modernity during the colonial period and are dealing with it in the post-colonial period. They argue that the African experience of modernity is unique and relevant for wider social theory, offering valuable analytical insights. The cases presented cover labour, land rights, religious conversion, internal migration, emigration and the African diaspora.
Combining reportage and analysis, Justin Pearce shows the human face of Angola at a critical juncture in its history. Working as the BBC correspondent based in Luanda, Justin Pearce was the only English–speaking journalist based in Angola in 2001 and 2002. He travelled extensively in Angola, hearing the testimonies of those whose lives were shaped by political divisions and war.
Your publication is very good, especially for me working on resource exploitation and its associated human rights abuses as a journalist. It gives a broader view of the African situation.
J.S.Datuama Cammue,
Liberia
In Argentina Greenpeace is providing indiginous people with mobile phones so that they can text for help when their lands are under attack from developers. As well as sending help, Greenpeace also used SMS to call up protesters for an instant demonstration in Buenos Aires to urge the president to spare forests.
Regular contributor Issa Shivji tackles the history of the development discourse in Africa, discussing its changing meanings from the colonial period to post-independence rule and the onset of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s – Africa’s lost decade. The new development discourse of neo-liberalism (otherwise known as globalization) continues historical forms of dispossession, Shivji notes, but there is also hope in the fact that Africa’s history is not only of slavery, exploitation and colonialism. It is also a story of struggle, as Julius Nyerere wrote, against these evils, and of battles won after many setbacks and much suffering.
Introduction
‘From development to poverty reduction,’ sums up the trajectory of the development discourse in Africa over the last four decades since independence. This development marks significant shifts, not only in economic approaches and policies, but also in academic theories and political ideologies underpinning the discourse. In this article, my aim is to reflect on broad trends in the changing discourse unencumbered by details and empirical data.
I will organise my reflections around four aspects of the discourse: first the institutional and social agency of development; second, its ideological rationalization or justification; third, the theories underlying the discourse and, fourth, its politics. The contextual theme running through the discourse is Africa’s place and role in the global political economy and its relationship with the developed North, or, more correctly, the imperial factor.
Although my subject is not really the history of the development discourse, some periodisation is necessary to highlight the breaks and continuities in the ideas on development. The first two decades after independence, roughly the 1960s and 1970s, may be called the ‘age of developmentalism’. The next decade, that is the 1980s, has been characterised as Africa’s lost decade. This is the period which spawned various structural adjustment programmes or SAPs under the tutelage of the IMF and the World Bank. SAPs prepared the ground for and dovetailed into the next, or the current period, which may be characterised as the ‘age of globalisation’.
The Age of Developmentalism
The struggle for independence in Africa was first and foremost an assertion of the humanness of the African people after five centuries of domination and humiliation of the slave trade and colonialism. In the words of Tom Mboya, the struggle for independence was the ‘rediscovery of Africa by Africans’ while Amilcar Cabral described it as the ‘re-Africanisation of minds’ or ‘rebecoming Africans’. National development became the passion of politicians and the ‘great expectation’ of the people. In the vision of the more articulate nationalist leaders like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, the independent state had a double task, that of building the nation and developing the economy. The state in Africa, Nyerere argued, preceded the nation, rather than the other way round. Thus the national project was from the start, top-down, and statist.
The colonial economy and society were anything but national. In the scramble for Africa, the colonial powers had divided the continent into mini-countries where boundaries cut through cultural, ethnic and economic affinities. This was made worse by the policy of divide and rule, leaving behind uneven development in an extreme form. Some regions were more developed than others. Some ethnic groups were labelled martial, providing a recruiting ground for soldiers; others were turned into labour reservoirs; some were characterised as “intelligent” and moderately entrepreneurial as opposed to the rest who were inherently indolent and lazy. All were of course uncivilized, uncultured, undisciplined pagans whose souls needed to be saved and whose skins needed to be thrashed.
The colonial economy was typically disarticulated, almost tailor-made, for exploitation by colonial capital, linked to the metropolitan trade and capital circuits. Extractive industries like mining predominated. Plantation agriculture existed side by side with subsistence peasant cultivation, all concentrating on one or a couple of crops for export according to the needs of the metropolitan economy.
Different colonial powers left behind different forms and traditions of public administration, culture, cuisine, dance and education, elementary as it was, all concentrated in towns. The urban and the rural were literally two countries within one; one alien, modern, a metropolitan transplant barred to the native – while the other stagnating and frozen in the so-called tradition or custom. But neither the modern nor the traditional were organically so. Both were colonial constructs.
No other continent suffered as much destruction of its social fabric through foreign imperial domination as did Africa.
I have traced these initial conditions on the eve of independence for two reasons. Firstly, to underline the fact that the nationalist project faced a formidable task on the morrow of independence. Secondly, to highlight an even more formidable reality, which was that the state that was supposed to carry out the twin tasks of nation-building and economic development was itself a colonial heritage. The colonial state was a despotic state, a metropolitan police and military outpost, in which powers were concentrated and centralized and where law was an unmediated instrument of force and where administrative fiat was more a rule, than the rule of law.
The nationalist vision thus called for a revolutionary transformation not only of the economy and society but also the state. A few nationalist visionaries attempted, but none succeeded. The post-independence international context was no more propitious than the colonial. Independence found Africa in the midst of Cold War and the rising imperial power, the United States, for whom any assertion of national self-determination was “communism”, to be hounded and destroyed, by force if necessary, by manipulation and deception, if possible. The early story of the gruesome assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, and the continuing story of military coups, assassinations, and resistance to national liberation wars and civil strife in Africa, in most of which imperialism had a hand, bear testimony to what the former colonial powers and the rising imperial power could do to retain their collective global hegemony.
These where then the initial conditions, so to speak, within which African nationalists had to realise their dream of nation-building and economic development and to answer their people’s ‘great expectations’. Invariably, the agency of change was the state since there was virtually no social class which could shoulder the task of national development.
Nor was foreign capital obliging in spite of various protective laws and incentive schemes put in place by the African governments. Invariably, nationalist politicians turned to the state. African governments of all ideological hues – from capitalist Kenyans through socialist Tanzanians to Marxists of various inclinations– all resorted to the state for their economic programmes. The post-independence economic programmes, contrary to the current propaganda from the West, were designed by the erstwhile World Bank. In effect it involved intensification of the monoculture agriculture for export; some enclaves of import-substitution industrialization and throwing open of the extractive and resource based industries to transnational corporations.
The state had to be manned. The colonial bureaucracy was almost exclusively White at the top and immigrant in the middle. The education and health infrastructure had to be expanded, both for pragmatic as well as political reasons. Africanisation of the civil service could not be resisted nor could the basic welfare demands of the population. Provision of basic services by the state as a matter of fact also served to legitimise the otherwise authoritarian rule of the political elite. The state bureaucracy grew by leaps and bounds.
Nationalism thus resolved itself into various ideologies of developmentalism. ‘We should run while others walk’, politicians declared. The academia was dominated from the North. Post-independence economies were typically dual economies. There was the traditional sector, rural, unproductive, backward, lacking entrepreneurial spirit and governed by ascription or the ‘economy of affection’. Development consisted in modernizing the traditional society.
The dominance of modernization paradigm was challenged by young academics coming out of post-independence universities. Where there was relatively a freer space, as in Tanzania of the 60s and 70s, intense debates raged between modernizers and radical nationalists calling themselves African socialists or Ujamaaists or Marxists. African progressives placed history of the development of underdevelopment and the role of imperialism as the process of worldwide accumulation, at the centre of their analysis and understanding. The traditional, they argued, was not quite traditional, nor the modern quite modern; rather both belonged to the system of international capitalism which reproduced development in the metropoles and underdevelopment in the peripheries. Development therefore was not a process of changing ‘pattern variables’ or looking for modernizing elites but rather a process of class struggle.
Meanwhile, the state became both the site of power struggles as well as accumulation. Radical nationalists, who showed any vision of transforming their societies, were routed through military coups or assassinations. A few who survived compromised themselves and became compradors or tolerated imperial arrogance for pragmatic reasons. Everywhere, politics became authoritarian, whether in the form of one-party states or outright military dictatorships. Liberal constitutional orders imposed by the departing colonial states did not survive as the underlying logic of the colonial despotic state reasserted itself.
State positions opened up opportunities for seeking rents. Conspicuous consumption at home, a little investment in unproductive activities to make quick profits and a lot of stashing of funds in foreign bank accounts was, and perhaps still is, the typical characteristic of this class. Thus very little serious domestic private accumulation took place. Whatever investment that did take place was public, by the state.
During the first one-and-half decade of independence the African economies showed modest growth rates; modest in comparison to other continents but impressive given the initial conditions at the time of independence. Investment and savings ranged between 15 to 20 per cent of the GDP. Primary and secondary school enrolment was expanded. Tertiary education, which in many countries literally did not exist during colonial times, was introduced. Medical and health statistics also showed improvement. But this growth and development was unsustainable. It was predicated on the reinforcement of colonial foundations.
Growth in agriculture production was based on extensive cultivation rather than a rise in productivity through chemicalization, mechanization and irrigation. It depended heavily on exports of a few primary commodities traded on a hostile and adverse international market. The growth in the manufacturing industry was heavily of the import-substitution type with little internal linkages and dependent on import of intermediary inputs. Investment was largely public while domestic private capital was stashed away in foreign countries. One estimate has it that by 1990, 37 per cent of Africa’s wealth had flown outside the continent. (Mkandawire & Soludo 1999:11) To top it all, foreign capital concentrated in extractive industries which simply hemorrhaged the economy rather than contribute to its development.
During this period, the developmental state also borrowed heavily whether for productive or prestigious projects. Petro-dollars accumulated by international banks during the 1973 oil crisis were off-loaded in the form of cheap loans to developing countries. By the end of 1970s, cheap loans turned into heavy debt burdens. By this time, the limits of the early growth were also reached and the economic shocks of the late seventies plunged African economies into deep crisis. Numbers fell, growth rates became negative, debt repayments became unsustainable, fiscal imbalances went out of control, and so did inflation. Social services declined, infrastructure deteriorated and one after another African governments found themselves at the door of IMF and the Paris Club pleading for mercy.
1980s, described by economists as Africa’s ‘lost decade’, was also the transition decade which marked the beginning of the decline of developmentalism and the rise of neo-liberalism, euphemistically called, globalisation.
The crisis, the lost decade and the specter of marginalisation
In 1981 the World Bank published its notorious report, ‘Accelerated development for Africa: an Agenda for Africa’. It was certainly an agenda for Africa set by the erstwhile Bretton Woods institutions with the backing of Western countries but it had little to do with development, accelerated or otherwise. The report and the subsequent structural adjustment programmes concentrated on stabilization measures: getting rid of budget deficits, bringing down rates of inflation, getting prices right, unleashing the market and liberalising trade. According to the World Bank, the villain of the declining economic performance in Africa was the state, it was corrupt and dictatorial, it had no capacity to manage the economy and allocate resources rationally, it was bloated with bureaucracy, and nepotism was its mode of operation. The BWIs would not bail out the crisis ridden economies unless the governments adopted structural adjustment programmes to get stabilization fundamentals right.
Balancing budgets involved cutting out subsidies to agriculture and spending on social programmes, including education and health. Unleashing the market meant doing away with protection of infant industries and rolling back the state from economic activity. The results of SAPs were devastating as many studies by researchers have shown. Social indicators like education, medical care, health, nutrition, rates of literacy and life expectancy all declined. Deindustrialization set in. Redundancies followed. In short, even some of the modest achievements of the nationalist or developmentalist period were lost or undermined.
As the international situation changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western imperialist powers regained their ideological initiative. The neo-liberal package of marketisation, privatisation and liberalisation now became the policy for, but not of the African states. Good performers would be praised and rewarded with more aid while the insubordinate and recalcitrant would be parodied and left to its own wit. While aid had always come with strings, now there was no attempt to disguise it. Political conditionalities were added to economic conditionalities. Policy making slipped out of the hands of the African state as Western financed policy consultants in their thousands jetted all over the continent with blue prints of policy on Poverty Reduction Strategies and manuals on good governance on their computers, gobbling up some 4 billion dollars annually. In 1985, to give just one example, foreign experts resident in Equatorial Guinea were paid an amount three times the total government wage bill of the public sector.[Mkandawire & Soludo ibid.:137]
National liberation ideologies have been rubbished and national self-determination itself has been declared passé. Africa is told, it has only one choice: either to get integrated fully into the globalised world or be marginalised.
African leaders are left with little options: ‘you are either with globalisation or doomed!’ They have fallen in line one after another even if it means disowning their own past. Blair’s Commission for Africa report, which consisted of prominent Africans including one president and one prime minister, castigates the whole of the last three decades, which virtually means the whole of post-independence period, as “lost decades”. The primary responsibility is placed on the African state for bad governance and lack of accountability, totally ignoring the role of imperialism in both the exploitation of African resources and supporting of non-democratic states when it suited their interests. Africans are told they have no capacity to think and African states are told they have no capacity to make correct policies.
The age of globalisation and the Pan-Africanist resistance
Globalisation expresses itself in Africa as neo-liberalism. These are a set of policies around stabilization of monetary and fiscal fundamentals on the one hand, and marketisation, liberalisation and privatisation of the economy, on the other. The failures of earlier SAPs and their unrelenting critique by African intellectuals saw some modification of the programmes in the 1990s.
In short, the underlying thrust of the neo-liberal and globalised development “discourse”, which centres on policy-making, is deeper integration of African economies into the global capital and market circuits without fundamental transformation. It is predicated on private capital, which in Africa translates into foreign private capital, as the ‘engine of growth’. It centres on economic growth without asking whether growth necessarily translates into development. It banishes the issues of equality and equity to the realm of rights, not development. ‘Human-centered and people-driven’ development which were the kingpin of African alternatives, such as the Lagos Plan of Action, are pooh-poohed into non-existence as the African people are reduced to ‘the chronically poor’ who are the subject matter of papers on strategies for poverty reduction rather than the authors and drivers of development. It villainises African states and demonizes African bureaucracies as corrupt, incapable and unable to learn. They need globalised foreign advisors and consultants, who are now termed development practitioners, to monitor and oversee them.
In this “discourse” the developmental role of the state is declared dead and buried. Instead, it is assigned the role of a “chief” to supervise the globalisation project under the tutelage of imperialism, now called, development partners. The irony of the recent Commission for Africa was that it was convened, constituted and chaired by a British Prime Minister, while an African president and a prime minister sat on it as members. This symbolizes the nature of the so-called “new partnership”. The message is clear: African “co-partners” in African development are neither equal nor in the driver’s seat.
But the neo-liberal project in Africa has not been without resistance. As Nyerere observed in his Preface to a book by African scholars significantly sub-titled, ‘Beyond Dispossession and dependence”:
Africa’s history is not only one of slavery, exploitation and colonialism’ it is also a story of struggle against these evils, and of battles won after many setbacks and much suffering. (Adedeji ed. 1993:xv)
There have been struggles against SAPs and globalisation in the streets and in lecture halls of Africa. I will only confine myself to intellectual resistance. African scholars have severely critiqued structural adjustment programmes and indicated alternatives. Even African states and bureaucracies have not surrendered without some fight. There have been attempts to provide alternative frameworks and plans and programmes such as the Lagos Plan of Action, (1980); The African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programme for Socio-economic Recovery and Transformation (1989) and the African Charter for Popular Participation and Development (1990).
These alternative frameworks have underlined the need for a holistic approach to Africa’s development; called for a continental programme of regional integration and collective self-reliance; cajoled African states not to surrender their developmental role, and sovereignty in policy-making; and have attempted to develop a vision of a human-centered and people-driven development for the future of the continent. These African initiatives have been invariably dismissed by the erstwhile Bretton Woods institutions and the so-called “development partners”. Wielding the threat of marginalisation and dangling the carrot of aid, the so-called development partners have, persistently and dogmatically, pushed through their own agendas, which invariably prioritize the geo-political and strategic needs of the global hegemons and the voracious appetites of corporate capital for resources and profits.
The African ‘state of art’ on development
I will quickly summarize the new development perspectives that are emerging in the debates of African scholars and intellectuals.
Firstly, African scholars are agreed that there is a clear need to go beyond stabilization fundamentals to developmental fundamentals. While stabilization policies and measures may be necessary, they are not sufficient. They have to be conceived within the larger context of building a self-sustaining economy rather than as short-term shock therapies.
Secondly, approaches and concerns of political economy on state and society have to be brought back in the discourse on development. A critical assessment and appreciation of the developmental discourses of the nationalist period is essential.
Thirdly, the state must reassert its developmental role, not so much as an executive or a regulatory agency, but as an organised force with a vision and an operational programme. It must both protect nascent sources of domestic capital, as well as take account of, and provide for, the basic needs of the population as a whole. The role of the South-East Asian states in this regard, particularly in the development of human capital, is often cited in support.
In sum, the state must play a lead role in the long-term planning so as to place the economy on the developmental path towards an integrated economy.
But, fourthly, the state itself has to be reformed and restructured. The despotic colonial and the authoritarian post-colonial state cannot play a popular developmental role. Its limits have been reached. The reformed state must have its roots in the people and must seek legitimacy from the people. It must seek a new social consensus and build its legitimacy not only on the economic terrain – development – but also on the political and legal terrain of popular participation, freedoms, rights and stable constitutional orders.
Some African intellectuals, not without evidence, have questioned the suitability and viability of the liberal democratic model for Africa. They have forcefully argued that Africa has to go beyond liberal to social democracy which would address not only the question of formal equality but that of social justice and equity as well.
Formal democracy with multiparty and five-year elections too has come under scrutiny. The experience of the liberalisation of the state over the last couple of decades does not inspire confidence or hope. Popular democracy, grassroots democracy, local democracy, new democracy, etc. are the new concepts being discussed and debated.
Fifthly, African scholars are revisiting the nationalist period and the aborted national project. There is renewed interest in the Pan-Africanist vision. There is no way, it is argued, Africa can truly develop in the face of the threat of marginalisation by the new imperialist assault called globalisation, unless it unites. This time around, Africa has to go beyond regional integration and free trade agreements and work towards political unity, a Federation of African States. The nationalism and national liberation of the globalisation age is Pan-Africanism, it is asserted.
In this respect African intellectuals have severely criticized and exposed the limits of the apparent “African” initiative, the New Economic Partnership for African Development or NEPAD. NEPAD is another form of donor-dependent program seeking more aid and assistance and predicated on further integration in the unequal global structures. Calling it a ‘feudo-imperial partnership’ Adebayo Adedeji says, the objective of NEPAD is ‘for the African canoe to be firmly tied to the North’s neo-liberal ship on the waters of globalisation’ (Nyong’o et. al. eds, 2002:36).
Sixthly, the debate on the vexed question of agency continues unabated. Is there an African national bourgeoisie capable of leading a genuine capitalist development or do we just have comprador bourgeoisies serving the needs of foreign capital? Is state-centred socialist development, based on popular forces, the only alternative? In any case, is a socialist alternative feasible in the light of the unipolar hegemony of imperialism? Or is it even desirable in the light of the experience of the former Soviet-bloc countries? Or, shall we develop a transitional ‘model’, called ‘new democracy’, based on what Samir Amin calls ‘national popular forces’?
Whatever be the case, progressive and concerned African intellectuals seem to agree that a ‘national or a new democratic revolution’ on a Pan-African scale is on the agenda, both as a form of resistance and as an alternative framework for ‘reconstruction’.
All in all, the development discourse in Africa among African intellectuals is alive, kicking, mentally refreshing and intellectually formidable, notwithstanding declarations of World Bank technicians, called consultants, proclaiming ‘the end of development’.
Africans are reclaiming their right to think for themselves.
* Issa G. Shivji is Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania ([email protected])
* Please send comments to
Selected references
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Amin, S. 1994, ‘The Issue of Democracy in the Contemporary Third World, in Himmelstrand, U. et. al. eds. Op. cit.
Bond, P., ed. 2002, Fanon’s Warning: a Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, New Jersey: Africa World Press.
Cabral, A., 1980, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings, London: Heinemann.
Chole, E. & Jibrin Ibrahim, eds. 1995, Democratisation Processes in Africa: Problems and Prospects, Dakar: CODESRIA.
Fanon, F., 1963, The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin.
Furedi, F., 1994, The New Ideology of Imperialism, London: Pluto.
Campbell, H., & H. Stein, eds., 1991, The IMF and Tanzania, Harare: SAPES.
Himmelstrand, U. et. al. eds., 1994, African Perspectives on Development, London: James Currey.
Hyden, G., 1980, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry, Berkely & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Landsberg, C. & F. Kornegey, 1998, ‘The African Renaissance: a quest for Pax Africana and Pan-Africanism’, in Foundation for Global Dialogue, South Africa and Africa: Reflections on the African Renaissance, FGD Occasional paper No. 17.
Legum, L., 1965, Pan-Africanism: A short political guide, (Revised edition) London: Pall Mall Press.
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Mafeje, A., 2002, ‘Democratic governance and new democracy in Africa: Agenda for the Future, in Nyong’o, Ghirmazion & Lamba, eds.
Mahjoub, A. (ed.) 1990, Adjustment or De-linking? (London: Zed/UNU).
Mahmood, M., 1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Pinceton: Princeton.
Mboya, T., Freedom and After, 1963, London: Andre Deutsch.
Mkandawire, T. & C. C. Soludo, eds., 1999, Our Continent, Our Future”: African perspectives on structural adjustment, Dakar: CODESRIA.
Nkrumah, K. 1965, Neo-colonialism: the last stage of Imperialism, London: Heinemann.
Nyerere, J. K. 1963b, ‘The Second Scramble’, reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967.
Nyerere, J. K. 1968, Freedom and Socialism, London: OUP.
Nyerere, J. K., 1967, Freedom and Unity: a selection from writings and speeches, Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.
Nyerere, J. K, 1963a, ‘A United States of Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies, January 1963, Cambridge reprinted in Nyerere op. cit. 1967..
Nyerere, J.K. 1966, ‘’The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist,’ in J. K. Nyerere, op. cit. 1968.
Nyerere, J.K. 1997, ‘Africa Must Unite’, edited excerpts from a public lecture delivered in Accra to mark Ghana’s fortieth Independence Day anniversary celebrations, United New Africa Global Network website: http://www.unitednewafrica.com/Africa%20Unite.htm
Nyongo, P.A. ed., 1989, La Politica Africana Y La Crisis del Desarrallo, Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico.
Nyong’o, Ghirmazion & Lamba, eds. 2002, New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD: A New Path? Nairobi: Heinrich Boll Foundation.
Rodney, W. 1972, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publsihing House.
Semboja, J., Juma, Mwapachu & Eduard Jansen eds., 2002. Local Perspectives on Globalisation: The African Case, Dar es Salaam: REPOA &Mkuki na Nyota.
Shivji, I. G., ed. 1991 State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy, Harare: SAPES.
Shivji, I. G. 2000, Critical Elements of a New Democratic Consensus in Africa" in Haroub Othman (ed.) Reflections on Leadership in Africa: Essays in Honour of Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, (Belgium: VUB University Press).
Shivji, I. G. 2005, ‘The Rise, the Fall and the Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa’, in Felicia Arudo Yieke ed. op.cit.
South Commission, the, 1990, The Challenge to the South: The Report of the South Commission, London: Oxford University Press.
Tandon, Y., 1982, University of Dar es Salaam: debate on class, state & imperialism, Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.
Toussaint, E. 1999, Your Money or Your Life!, the tyranny of global finance, London: Pluto Press.
Yieke, F. A. ed. 2005, East Africa: In Search of National and Regional Renewal, Dakar: CODESRIA.
The Remember Saro-Wiwa Season is launching in two weeks time, and the link below contains information about two events happening in London on 21 October to remember the life of the Nigerian activist.
Over 40 representatives from the African Union Commission, African governments and the African women’s movement gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from September 27-29, 2005 to discuss strategies for the entry into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women, its domestication and implementation. The representatives affirmed that the Protocol is indeed the basis for meaningful people driven pan-Africanism and national level constitutional and legal reform in favour of realising African women’s rights.
* Closing Statement from the Conference on Ratification and Domestication of
The African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on Rights of Women in Africa Co-convened by the African Union Commission and the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR)
Final version 30th September 2005
The speed with which member states have ratified the Protocol is without precedent in the history of similar instruments. To date, 13 African states have ratified the Protocol. Only two more ratifications are required for the Protocol to enter into force. We are confident that the required number will ratify the Protocol by the end of the year. We shall maintain our focused pressure to ensure that the Protocol is ratified by all 53-member states of the African Union at the earliest opportunity. Below is a summary of the strategies and recommendations in five thematic areas
A. Ratification
Even though the entry into force of the Protocol is imminent, the campaign must continue in order to ensure universal ratification. Following are the strategies identified:-
? Mobilization for country wide advocacy
? Translation of the Protocol into local languages
? Reform national legislation consistent with the Protocol
? Sensitization of all the arms of government
? Forging alliances between the various stakeholders
? Inclusion of the Protocol in the law reform processes
? Use of community based awareness creation initiatives
? Engagement of the AU and its specialised organs to support the campaign
B. The Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, July 2004
We note that supplementary accountability mechanisms are found within the Solemn Declaration on Gender in Africa. The Solemn Declaration relates to the Protocol in a manner comparable to the relationship of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA) to the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
We laud the AU Commission for developing a draft monitoring and evaluation framework as well as a draft reporting framework (with targets and indicators), spelling out the role of the African women’s movement, to be approved by a meeting of Ministers of Gender and Women’s Affairs to take place in Dakar, Senegal from October 12-16, 2005. The proposal is that African states will prepare two kinds of reports: a full narrative report every three years; and a comparative report annually in the form of a matrix responding to the targets and indicators selected. The African women’s movement will know the reporting dates for their respective states and also be able to access and respond to their state’s reports from the AU website as well as to forward general and specific recommendations. The African Women’s movement will also be able to participate through the annual African women’s fora around the AU summits, which are being institutionalised.
We propose the following strategies to enhance accountability under the Solemn Declaration:
? Liaising across the relevant AU commission and relevant organs of the AU
? Engaging with the meeting of Ministers of Gender/Women’s Affairs re: the Solemn Declaration to take place in Dakar, Senegal from October 12-16, 2005
? Reviewing and using the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms developed by the AU’s Directorate on Women, Gender and Development
? Developing the capacity within national gender machineries to monitor implementation (including resourcing for implementation)
? Inform the terms of reference for mandate and appointments to the AU Women’s committee
? Establishing working links between the AUWC and the gender sectoral cluster of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC)
? Convening the annual African women’s Consultation at an appropriate point prior to each Summit
C. Domestication of the Protocol
We reiterate the fact that much remains to be done to ensure universal ratification of the Protocol, as well as its domestication in African states that have already ratified it and, ultimately, its relevance and use to assure African women’s rights at the national level. We have examined the different legal systems that exist in Africa and note that African states must take the initiative for domesticating the Protocol although nothing impedes the African women’s movement from doing so either.
Regardless of whether or not domestication has occurred, African states which have ratified the Protocol will be obliged to submit regular reports to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights every two years on implementation, which then can prepare observations, including recommendations, which African states will report on in another two years.
We have therefore identified the following strategies to advance domestication and accountability:
? Working with national parliaments as well as those of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on domestication and harmonisation, especially under African common law systems
? Strategic utilisation of international events to reach the decision making organs of states and governments
? Forming regional networks for exchange of ideas and best practices in the campaign
? Encouraging member states to include the Protocol in their law reform processes and particularly in Constitutional review processes
? Encourage the Addis based Ambassadors to advise national capitals on the necessity for urgent ratification and initiate discussion on the steps required for domestication of the protocol.
D. Popularisation of the Protocol
It is critical to ensure that African women everywhere are aware of the Protocol and its provisions so as to avail themselves of the opportunities provided by it. We suggest a number of strategies for the African Union and African states to assist in this process of conscientisation including:
? Convene high-level events around the Protocol to be covered by the African and international media
? Encourage high-level government officials to speak in favour of the Protocol
For the African women’s movement, we need to:
? Convene regional and national meetings of the African women’s movement around the Protocol
? Create alliances between women parliamentarians and parliamentary groupings—regionally, sub-regionally and nationally.
? Develop clear targets and indicators for the Protocol and conducting/disseminating research showing the gap between these targets and indicators and the reality on the ground
? Conduct and disseminate research around coverage of the Protocol and its provisions in the African media and engaging with the African media on the basis of that research
? Engage with African women’s media organisations, particularly sub-regional ones, including through sharing information on the Protocol and training on how to cover it and its provisions
? Campaign in the African media through both the strategic placement of self-generated content as well as pro-active use of other opportunities (for example, invitations to speak during interviews) and lobbying for those opportunities with the African media
? Ensure coverage by the African media of key meetings (for example, AU summits) through cyber dialogues, press releases, press conferences during these meetings and involvement of appropriate staff from the African media in all meetings (relevant media persons, analysts, commentators, feature writers)
? Ensure engagement with diverse media, particularly community media (for example, community radio) so as to reach the broadest base possible of African women
? Feed into other campaigns (for example, the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender based Violence, 25th November to December 10th) and engagement with key campaign organisations around the issues covered by the Protocol
E. Mobilizing Resources for the Protocol’s Implementation
It will be particularly important to ensure that adequate resources are available for the Protocol’s implementation at the national level. We thus propose the following strategies around resource mobilization for the Protocol’s implementation:
? Identify non-monetary actions that can be taken by Governments to implement the Protocol including the removal of all discriminatory laws
? All states to support the establishment of a Special Rapporteur on Laws that discriminate against women by the UN Commission of Status of Women (UN Resolution 49/3) by March 2006
? Identify easy ‘quick wins’ for initial budgetary allocations for African states
? Identify core costing obligations arising from the Protocol’s provisions through partnerships with Gender Budget Initiatives at the national level
? Develop facts and arguments for the budgetary demands
? Building alliances among relevant civil society constituencies as well as with appropriate entry points in national executives and parliaments
? Promote public debate on budgetary demands (for example, taxation and expenditure reviews)
F. Litigation and Negotiation around the Protocol
The Protocol is a legal instrument for the protection of African women’s rights. But it is a legal skeleton, requiring court action to give it blood and flesh. For it to become relevant and useful at the national level, participants discussed legal strategies to fast-track its implementation including strategic litigation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
Strategic litigation includes constitutional test cases to determine and address legal barriers to the Protocol’s realisation so as to fast-track the law reform process required under domestication and harmonisation. Participants here noted new ways of asserting/pleading constitutional human rights provisions under international human rights law, namely though: the theory of legitimate expectation; the Bangalore principle; and the interpretive principle.
We identified the following strategies:
? Supporting African women’s organisations offering strategic litigation
? Carrying out strategic litigation around the Protocol and sharing jurisprudence continentally
? Supporting any court case impacting on women’s rights including amicus curiae brief preparation
? Using ADR to advance the Protocol where appropriate
? Carrying out judicial training on the Protocol
? Engaging with law schools and bar associations on the Protocol
? Advocating around the appointments to the African Court
? States to sign declaration enabling individuals and civil society to file cases at the African Court
? Partnering with the Coalition on the African Court on the establishment and the appointment of judges to it that are competent in African women’s rights
? Increase the number of nominations to the African Court by November 30, 2005 — of the 14 nominations received only four are from women so far.
Maintaining Momentum on the Protocol
Many challenges clearly persist with respect to realising the Protocol. While the Protocol is not a ‘gift’ but concerns African women’s rights, its realisation will require commitment and creativity. It will require ‘building power’ nationally and regionally which entails expanding constituencies, being well-structured and informing ourselves about the opportunities for its advancement that already exist. It will also require consistent, strategic and sustained pressure on African states for its entry into force, its universal ratification, its domestication and implementation. We hereby promise our continued engagement in these processes and urge the engagement of all else concerned.
* Present during the conference were the following
Women, Gender and Development Directorate, African Union Commission, Commission of Political Affairs, African Union Commission, Office of the Legal Counsel, African Union Commission, African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, Federal Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Government of Nigeria, Ministere charge de la Promotion de la Femme et des Affaires Sociales, Government of Dijbouti, Government of Malawi, Office of the Vice President and Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs, Government of The Gambia, Embassy of the Republic of Angola, Embassy of the Democratic Republic of The Congo, Embassy of the Republic of Gabon, Ministry of Gender Equality, Government of Namibia, African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA), Association des Femmes Juristes du Mali, Cellule de coordination sur les practiques traditionelle affectant la sante des femmes et des enfants (CPTAFE)-Guine, Child Rights Advisory, Documentation and Legal centre (CRADLE) – Kenya, Coalition on Violence against Women (COVAW) – Kenya, CREDO for the Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights, Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Equality Now – Africa Regional Office, Reseau Inter-Africain Des Femmes, Medias, Genre et Developpement (FAMDEV)- Regional, Federation of Women Lawyers – Kenya, Federation of Women Lawyers – Uganda, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), Forum Mulher – Mozambique, Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practises (IAC), Media Watch organisation-Mauritius, Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), Pro-poor advocacy Group - The Gambia, Sister Namibia,
Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP), Urgent Action Fund Africa, Voix des Femmes –Burkina Faso, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), Women’s Legal Centre – South Africa, Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA) – Nigeria, ActionAid International and Oxfam
The effectiveness of the law as a tool for realizing women’s rights has been, by some, called into question. Because of Africa’s complicated history with inequality between men and women, and the feminisation of poverty, using judicial institutions in order to apply rights on paper into realizable rights is contentious. Sibongile Ndashe asks: What can be done differently to make governments accountable in terms of this protocol in a manner that makes a different to women’s lives? She argues that litigation does play a role in the domestication of the Protocol, but that it can be used amongst other tools.
Strategic litigation (also known as test case litigation, public interest litigation, impact litigation or precedent setting litigation) is used to challenge laws that are in violation of human rights standards and norms, and can be useful because in the event that a case is won against a discriminatory law, that law or policy may be declared invalid. This means that at the same time as successfully winning a case, broader law reform can be made. Litigation has not been widely used in the fight for women’s rights, as it marks a radical departure from traditional methods of legal practice and is indeed, a large task for gender activists, as it involves working not only on women’s rights, but on the building of courts.
Currently there are a number of ways that constitutions have permitted laws to act against women: the claw back clause exempts certain laws from being subject to the right to non-discrimination provided for by the constitution; the provision of rights to be equally applicable can sometimes be turned over in the event of a tension, in favor of the strongest right, and finally; some constitutions pre-empt inconsistency and therefore give preference to some rights over others. In addition, in some cases, in what is known as legal dualism, it is impossible to use international instruments if they have not yet been domesticated, but have been ratified, by that particular country. The Bangalore Principles come into use here – if an uncertainty, ambiguity or obscurity arises in a case, a judge may seek guidance in the general principles of international law, or those accepted by the community of nations.
Strategic litigation can be a powerful tool, but key to its use in the case of the Protocol is a women’s rights responsive judiciary – one who understands women’s inequality in all of its complexities. In addition, a strict separation of the governmental powers of judiciary, legislature and executive is important, in order that each area may fulfill their constitutional obligations. It is necessary not only to engage government, including state departments, but in order to be truly successful litigation must also reach out to research institutions, community based organizations and feminist scholars.
In her conclusion, Ndashe argues that the implementation of the Protocol through strategic litigation depends on various parties, not simply lawyers. There is a need to co-ordinate efforts so that the many complex and varied aspects of women’s rights are represented.
* This is a summarised version of a paper presented at a conference on the Ratification and Domestication of The African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on Rights of Women in Africa. The conference, held between 27-30 September in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was co-convened by the African Union Commission and the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR). The full length versions of all papers presented at the conference will be released in book form in January 2006.
* Summarized by Karoline Kemp, Commonwealth of Learning Young Professionals Intern, Fahamu
* Please send comments to
The ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa is simply the first step in the right direction for African countries. Its domestication comes next, and will be a long and laborious task for governments and the many organizations that will assist them in this undertaking. Many strategies have been suggested as potential approaches to the domestication of the Protocol. Anne Atieno Amada advocates for negotiation to be implemented in the process.
As Deputy Executive Director of Kenya’s Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDO), Atieno Amada argues that litigation, perhaps a natural choice for the domestication of the Protocol, is not the best solution. Litigation involves going to court and having the judge or magistrate preside over the particular case in order to make a decision on the dispute. Atieno Amada’s experiences with FIDO have shown that litigation has several limitations. These include the principle of “Stare Decisis,” that commands similar cases must be decided in the same way. Litigation is time consuming and expensive; involves difficulties in implementation, enforcement and compliance; and the public nature of proceedings often diverts attention from the issue. Finally, the dominance of men in the judicial system is a problem, and may be detrimental to domesticating the Protocol should a particular judge not align himself with the views of women’s rights.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) encompasses a variety of process by which conflict can be resolved without litigation. It presents a number of options that cater to the particular situation or conflict. The implementation of the Protocol can be seen as conflict in that it puts women, as claim holders, on one hand and the government, as bearers of duty, on the other. Conflict can be described as a disagreement or competition of interests, and the women’s movement may indeed be perceived as a threat to African governments in these ways. Conflict may be seen in terms of data disputes, which revolve around information; value disputes, which arise as a result of a clash of ideas; relationship disputes, which include marital and commercial disagreements; behavioral disputes caused by clashes in habits, customs and culture, and; structural disputes that take place in institutions and bureaucracies. In implementing the Protocol, and indeed the realization of any women’s rights, all elements of conflict are present. In responding to, and dealing with conflict there are a number of options available. Avoidance, toleration, mediation, litigation, self-help and negotiation are all methods of dealing with conflict that may be potentially employed.
Negotiation involves a formal discussion between people and groups attempting to reach an agreement. The main goal of such an exercise is to meet certain interests or needs in a manner that is collaborative and peaceful, without being apologetic or giving in. In order to be successful, negotiation must separate people from the problem, focus on interests and not positions, involve a variety of possible solutions, and have a result based on some objective standard or practice.
In her conclusion, Atieno Amada states that the Protocol, which, as she adds, is a right of women to equality, non-discrimination, elimination of harmful practices, access to justice and equal protection under the law, cannot be negotiated away by governments. Negotiation, and the process of negotiation, may indeed be a strategy, not only to implement the protocol, but to remind governments of their duty to protect the rights of all citizens.
* * This is a summarised version of a paper presented at a conference on the Ratification and Domestication of The African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on Rights of Women in Africa. The conference, held between 27-30 September in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was co-convened by the African Union Commission and the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR). The full length versions of all papers presented at the conference will be released in book form in January 2006.
* Summarized by Karoline Kemp, Commonwealth of Learning Young Professionals Intern, Fahamu.
* Please send comments to
EDITORIAL: Issa Shivji on development discourse from colonial to neo-liberal times
COMMENT&ANALYSIS:
- Protocol on the Rights of Women conference builds power for women’s rights
- Using the law to realise women’s rights
- Negotiation as a tool for implementing the rights of women
LETTERS: Discussing forest pirates
BLOGGING AFRICA: Christianity in Nigeria, the aid industry, democracy in Kenya and referendums in Algeria
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: News from DRC, Sudan and Uganda
HUMAN RIGHTS: NGO forum in Zimbabwe releases political violence report
REFUGEES: UNHCR agrees to assume global responsibility for IDP protection
ELECTIONS: Countdown to October 11 poll in Liberia
WOMEN AND GENDER: Perceptions of the Darfur community on the effects of the conflict on women and girls
DEVELOPMENT: Social forums continue to build opposition to neo-liberalism
RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA: Racism in South African schools
ENVIRONMENT: Corporate control over food chain deepens
AND…Links and resources on the Media, Internet, Fundraising, Courses, Jobs and Books.
The Communication Initiative has introduced its revamped database of global media coverage on human rights issues. This feature is part of the Communication Initiative’s Human Rights Window. It allows for a one-stop search related to media coverage for each individual article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Articles from over 200 developing country newspapers and 10 leading global newspapers are featured in the database.
The Ugandan military and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army continue to kill, rape and uproot civilians in northern Uganda with brazen impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released in September. A brutal rebel group responsible for countless atrocities, the Lord's Resistance Army continues to wage war against the Ugandan government, whose undisciplined army has committed crimes against civilians, the very people they are supposed to protect, with near-total impunity.
"Reports in the month of July were considerably fewer due to the continuation of Operation Murambatsvina as most NGOs are involved in relief work for the victims of the Operation. As the Operation continued, perennial victims, Porta Farm residents, were again targeted for eviction. Reports are that the residents were evicted and asked to go where they wanted to, but many of them had nowhere to go. Others were reportedly taken to Hopley Farm but before they could settle down, the Minister of Local Government, Dr Ignatius Chombo is said to have told them that there were no longer any available stands at the Farm so all the other people had to move on elsewhere. The Human Rights Forum condemns the manner in which the evictions at Porta Farm continue to be executed and notes that it is the duty of the Government to provide housing for its citizens." The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has released its political violence report for July. Contact [email protected] for a full copy of the report.
The October issue of the newsletter of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation is now available at www.cjr.nl. It includes:
* Update about the Manual for African Faith-Based Community Leaders
* Highlights from the International Criminal Court
* More information on CJRs new staff members
The dual mechanism to establish crimes and responsibilities in Burundi will take longer to put into place than first announced, the International Justice Tribune reports (IJT). IJT has learnt that on 30 September, Kofi Annan will not be submitting his report to the UN Security Council on the creation of the special chamber to try those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and in parallel, a truth commission.
Belgium's world-renowned chocolate could be linked to the murky world of child labour and slavery, according to a leading consumer watchdog. Belgium's Test-Achats warned that it was often unclear where chocolate-makers got their cocoa beans from and whether their suppliers treated their workers ethically.
A Belgian judge has issued an international arrest warrant charging Chad’s exiled former president, Hissène Habré, with human rights crimes committed during his 1982-1990 rule. Habré lives in exile in Senegal, where he was indicted over five years ago before courts ruled that he could not be tried there. The Belgian warrant marks a turning point in the long effort to bring Habré to justice, and should lead to his extradition from Senegal to Belgium to stand trial.
"The essence of conflicts and killings is the emphasis of "otherness," enabling us to consider others as "different" from us, or inferior to us. Thus in Rwanda, the Tutsi were so often and publicly called "inyenzi" or cockroaches that killing them was like killing bugs and easy to do." Kenya National Commission on Human Rights chairman Maina Kiai recounts his experience in Rwanda, where he traveled with a group of Kenyan MPs to see first hand the effects of the 1994 genocide which left more than a million people dead.
For Tony Blair, Africa needs saving - nowhere more so than Sierra Leone, limping out of civil war. But China sees Africa as a proving ground for its "go global" policy, sending burgeoning private companies across the world to create new multinational corporations. Nearly 700 Chinese companies operate in 49 African countries. Chinese trade with Africa will reach $30bn next year - triple the level five years ago.
The UN Security Council has expressed its concern over the presence of foreign armed groups in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, deplored the failure of the Forces démocratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) to proceed with the disarmament and repatriation of their combatants and exhorted them to do so without further delay, in accordance with the declaration they signed in Rome on 31 March.
Sierra Leone faces a spectrum of challenges, from explosive youth unemployment to taking legitimate control of its rich mineral resources, as the United Nations peacekeeping mission winds down and the next phase of the West African country's development begins, the mission chief has said. "We were there to keep the peace. We've kept it. So we want the peace-builders to come now and work with the people on such challenges as 70 per cent of the 5 million population living on less than $1 a day and 70 per cent illiteracy," the Secretary-General's Special Representative and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), Daudi Mwakawago, told a news conference at UN Headquarters.
After two weeks of peace talks and amid signs that world patience is running thin, rival parties in Sudan's Darfur conflict finally entered face-to-face negotiations this week on the key issues that need to be resolved before reaching a deal. African Union (AU) chief mediator Salim Ahmed Salim brought delegates representing the Sudan government and Darfur's two main rebel groups together on Monday, saying continued violations of truce agreements in Sudan's western Darfur region were unacceptable at a time when peace seemed within reach.
In Malawi's drought-hit southern district of Bangwe, people begin queuing as early as 3.00 a.m. outside the depot of the state grain marketer Admarc for subsidised maize-meal. The demand is such, after the worst harvest in a decade, ADMARC has been forced to introduce rationing. "We are aware that ADMARC, depending on the maize supply in its depots, has been forced to ration sales to between five to 25 kg per person," said Evance Chavasuka of the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network.
West African leaders are urging quick international assistance for Guinea-Bissau, whose new president Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira was sworn in this weekend facing a massive cholera epidemic and fears of continuing political instability. "Donors must help Bissau now, and without conditions," Senegal's Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio told reporters on Monday.
Liberians go to the polls next week for their country's first general elections since civil war was brought to a halt in the West African state in 2003. An estimated 1.3 million registered voters (out of a population of 3.5 million) will queue on Oct. 11 to choose a president from 22 candidates, including soccer great George Weah. More than 500 candidates are vying for 64 parliamentary seats, and about 200 for 30 senate seats.
Three Nigerians have died in clashes in Lagos as soldiers fought running battles with police.
The dead were civilians caught in the crossfire of a battle that began when a soldier and policeman argued over who had the right to a free ride on a bus. The police officer hit out at the soldier, who raised the alarm at a nearby barracks, sparking violence.
Africa's adoption of the social forum movement continues to deepen with the upcoming second edition of the Southern African Social Forum (SASF) to be held from 13-15 October in Harare, Zimbabwe. This year's theme 'People's Resistance to Neo-Liberalism' will bring together thousands from community-based groups, social movements and civil society organisations. The gathering acts as a preparation event for the African Social Forum to be held later this year and the World Social Forum (WSF) to be held early next year. For the first time, Africa is slated to host the WSF in 2007, Nairobi, Kenya. The Southern African Social Forum (SASF) is a continuation of the Africa Social Forum, (ASF) that takes place annually, since Bamako (2002), as a prelude to the WSF that was initiated in Port Alegre (Brazil) in 2001. The WSF annual event is deliberately organized to coincide with the World Economic Forum (Davos). The timing is meant to signify civil society opposition voices to the high-level one-sided pro globalization and neo liberalism deliberations between the world leaders and international financial institutions.
1. Five years after the first international South-North consultation on debt was held in Dakar, Senegal, representatives from 51 countries convened the second, 'Resistance and Alternatives to Debt Domination', from 28 to 30 September 2005 in Havana, Cuba. We marked the 20th anniversary of the historic Havana meetings that focused the world's attention on the true nature of the debt crisis and strengthened the resistance to the payment of enslaving debt.
2. We, Southern and Northern people's movements and organizations, agree to work together to promote international recognition of the peoples and countries of the South as social, ecological, cultural and financial creditors of the North. We demand that Northern governments recognize these debts, caused by policies of plunder in violation of human rights, including the right to sovereignty and self-determination.
We are looking for a highly motivated and resourceful individual with a genuine commitment to development and advocacy, seeking to work in a cutting edge development agency. The postholder will be responsible for managing the programme in Zimbabwe, en- suring the delivery of programme plans. S/he will have pivotal role in defining development policy and priority areas for CIIR's work in the country, working together with partners, de- velopment workers and other stakeholders.