THE LATEST:

Nearly 160 000 people have been killed by the Tsunami that hit Asia and parts of Africa on December 26. In Africa, up to 300 people are believed to have died, with northeastern Somalia the worst hit. Up to 1,500 buildings and 40 villages in northeastern Somalia were damaged by the tsunami and The United Nations is assisting 12 000 people.

THE CONCERNS:

HIV/AIDS advocates are worried that the massive outpouring of concern for Tsunami victims will suck funds away from much-needed HIV/AIDS relief efforts in Africa. They argue that the outpouring of money for the Tsunami shows that the cash has always been there but that the international political will to solve one of Africa’s most acute problems is lacking.

Apart from HIV/AIDS, there are also worries that the global attention received by the Tsunami will upstage what was supposed to be a focus on Africa in the year 2005 and take away from an urgent need to focus on the development challenges facing the continent.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that 2005 will be a year of action for Africa as the UK assumes presidency of the European Union and G8. Now the fear is that Africa will be pushed into the wings by the Tsunami disaster.

THE CONTRADICTIONS:

This week the Paris Club of creditor states approved a moratorium on the debt payments of the countries worst hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, to free up money for reconstruction. Together the countries owe $272bn and pay about $23bn a year in servicing these debts. “That part of it is ugly," Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa is reported to have said. The argument is that Africa has long been lobbying for the cancellation of its debts which take money away from much needed spending on areas like HIV/AIDS, health and education, the neglect of which claim more lives in the long term than the Tsunami disaster. Requests for debt cancellation – despite some initiatives like the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative – have largely been ignored. Now, however, within a matter of weeks, the G8 countries have shown that it is possible to solve the debt crisis.

Critics also question why the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the DRC, where the International Rescue Committee reported late last year that nearly four million people had died as a result of conflict since 1998, have not received the same kind of attention from the international community.

ESSENTIAL READING: EDITORS CHOICE

“The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry,” writes John Pilger. “Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable.” Read ‘The other, man made disaster’ at http://pilger.carlton.com/print

LINKS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4148397.stm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c1285c9d886d539b477e05f9cd...
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hiv.cfm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04357797.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1389369,00.html
http://www.halifaxlive.com/artman/publish/sudan_011005_563539.shtml
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=167

* Editorial: The international approach to the DRC has always been to treat the country as a sick person that needs to be kept alive but cannot be allowed to recover. Recovery would make control difficult, says Ernest Wamba dia Wamba.
* Comment and Analysis: Christina Clark visits a forgotten world in Western Uganda to examine child rights and conflict-induced displacement
- Emerging issues for Africa in the post-Tsunami world
* Letters: The slaves are clinging to the door posts in their attempt to stay in the masters house, say some of our readers in response to last week’s editorial on the African Social Forum
* Pan-African Postcard: UK finance head Gordon Brown’s Marshall Plan for Africa is likely to be thwarted by his own leadership battle with Tony Blair during an election year, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
* Conflicts and Emergencies: The chance to find out more about the underworld of coup plots in Africa is lost as Mark Thatcher does a deal
- The latest Justice Africa briefing looks at Sudan’s prospects for peace in the post-Naivasha phase
* Human Rights: Human rights organization in Rwanda shuts down
* Women and Gender: Benin moves closer to ratifying the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa
* Development: East Africa threatened by new trade negotiations
* Health and HIV/AIDS: Africa Focus asks: Will 2005 be a year of action for Africa?
* Environment: An interview With Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai gets to the heart of the matter

>>>>>

Dear Reader,

We have made some small adjustments to the newsletter this week. The Health section has been amalgamated with the HIV/AIDS section and we have closed down the Social Welfare section since much of the content can easily be reassigned to other categories.

The Land and Land Rights, Racism and Xenophobia and News from the Diaspora sections will from now on be included in the newsletter in the first edition of each month. The principle reason for doing this is that we currently lack resources to cover these subjects in depth every week. If you would like to help research information for inclusion in these sections, please get in touch with us ([email protected]).

The Editors

A hunting boom driven by wealthy tourists is pushing black South Africans off the land to make way for game, generating anger that, a decade after apartheid, whites still own most of the countryside. Hundreds of commercial farms have evicted their labourers and converted into game parks, turning swaths of arable land into fenced wilderness for trophy animals such as lions and antelopes.

The UK government is coming under heavy pressure from business leaders to reject plans by the United Nations to make multinational groups legally liable for human rights, including abuses by their suppliers and customers. The UN proposals, due to be discussed by member states on March 15, come amid widespread evidence that transnational corporations are more powerful than sovereign nations, and allegations they have misused that power.

Despite promises that developing countries should "own" IMF and World Bank policies, parliaments continue to be sidelined or undermined by these institutions. Parliamentarians and campaigners have started an International Parliamentarians' Petition (IPP) signed by legislators from both developed and developing countries, and backed by civil society groups worldwide. The IPP is a practical way to assert support for the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and to call for parliaments to be fully involved in the development and scrutiny of IMF and World Bank policies.

From 20 to 24 December 2004, a group of 11 journalists from various Kinshasa-based, privately-owned newspapers carried out a mission to Goma, capital of North-Kivu province, to report on the armed conflict that rages in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The group also requested and was granted interviews with Rwandan authorities, including Foreign Minister Charles Morigande and President Paul Kagame. On their return to Kinshasa, however, the journalists, along with their editors, were summoned by the media regulation authority (Haute autorité des médias, HAM). (Report available in French and English)

Delphin Manesa and Jean Kambamba, journalists with Radio Arc-en-ciel, broadcasting out of Kamako, were arrested on 28 December 2004 by a group of police officers acting under the orders of Mutombo Tshisala, the municipality's deputy chief of police. Kamako is located approximately 180 kilometres from Tshikapa, the second largest city in West Kasaï province, central Democratic Republic of Congo. (French and English version available)

Since March 2003, La Benevolencija Rwanda has carried out a program based on the work of Professor Ervin Staub and Doctor Laurie Pearlman focusing on activities linked to reconciliation in Rwanda. Since the beginning of the program, Rwanda Reconciliation Radio (RRR) is implementing a unique combination of academic research methodologies, highly efficient communication techniques and down-to-earth grassroots activities. Visit their website for more information or use the email below to subscribe to their newsletter.

YouthNet, a program of Family Health International, is pleased to announce Youth InfoNet No. 11, a one-stop source for new publications and information on youth reproductive health and HIV prevention. You can read the newsletter online.

The Program Officer will be responsible for the program in Governance and Civil Society in the Middle East and North Africa region. Under the direction of the Representative in Cairo, the Program Officer will design, implement, monitor and evaluate a portfolio of initiatives and grants addressing a variety of governance and civil society issues.

The National Agency for Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Nigerian's food and drug production and consumption regulatory agency, has begun investigations into the administration of some suspended anti-retroviral drugs on some people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Abubakar Jimoh, national public relations officer of the NAFDAC,was quoted as saying that some drugs de-listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) are being distributed under the national program for the treatment of the PLWHA.

"As a Nigerian who has lived and grown up in Britain, the way the developing world has been portrayed has always been a source of bafflement and great sadness. It seemed as if the press were obsessed with learning only about the war, the famine and the corruption. It was in this frame of mind that I happened across a magazine entitled Ovation, a celebrity magazine dedicated entirely to Nigerian endeavour and success both in Nigeria and in the diaspora."

The Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment in Disasters Workshop is to be held from 2nd to 4th February 2005 in Karen-Nairobi, Kenya. The Nairobi location for the workshop is intended to facilitate participation by NGO/IO/Donor staff based on East Africa, including staff working in southern Sudan. The three day workshop will prepare participants to use the REA in disaster and crisis situations. The workshop will include discussions on the use of the REA for disasters commonly encountered in Africa. Participants will also receive a CD with an eLearning program on the REA as well as a wealth of other reference materials. The cost of the workshop will be from £260 GBP per person, with partial scholarships available. For further information or an application form please contact RedR on: email: [email protected] or phone: +44 (0) 207 233 3116.

The fourth CODESRIA/SEPHIS Extended Workshop on New Theories and Methods in Social History will be held from 5th to 25th September, 2005. The theme for the 2005 session is Gender, Ethnicity and Culture. The Workshop will be organised around the comparative experiences of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean.

The International Women's Media Foundation has called for applications to the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, a new program that supports women journalists who report on human rights and social justice. The fellowship combines research opportunities at MIT's Center for International Studies and other Boston area universities with reporting opportunities at The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Computer Aid International, a British registered not-for-profit officially launched an innovative new partnership with local not-for-profit, E-ICT, on November 29 in Kigali. By providing an affordable solution to high cost computers, the partnership aims to increase access to ICT for schools and not-for-profits.

No doubt, information and communication technologies (ICT) have dramatically changed the way individuals, organisations and enterprises interact. But are they a priority for development cooperation, empowerment and poverty reduction? In a new book, jointly published by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), key innovators, government leaders, development experts, grass-roots practitioners and leading CEOs offer new and often unexpected answers to this and other questions.

In common with Algeria and the dominant African giant Egypt, Tunisia has displayed a remarkable tenacity to forge ahead without any significant policy of political reform. In ensuring that its security from so-called 'terrorist threats' is provided by the West, the regime of Zeyn al-Abideen Bin Ali has thwarted efforts by human-rights activists keen to secure fundamental freedoms. Harsh repressive measures to keep its population in check are characteristic of the Bin Ali government.

Scientists and the biotechnology industry have been crucial in determining biotechnology policies and laws. They have emphasised the protection of individual interests - both human and corporate - through tight property laws, global trade rules and narrow regulatory regimes. Within this framework, the only 'acceptable' restriction on biotechnology development is safety. Regulation focuses on containing risks through science-based assessments. Little attention has been given to broader social, cultural or development concerns or, critically, to rights. A rights based approach is key to developing biotechnology policies.

Southern Africa has experienced severe food shortages over the past few years. These have been caused by several factors, including climate change and variability, problems with governance (including poor risk-management, and inadequate early warning systems) and wider structural issues (such as globalisation). Many parts of the region are also vulnerable to the impacts of large-scale environmental change, including land degradation and biodiversity loss.

Sheltered inside the confines of the Beijing International Convention Center, hundreds of hydropower advocates and a smattering of damaffected people and their allies gathered on a crisp October morning for a three-day United Nations Symposium on Hydropower and Sustainable Development. The organizers – the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), China’s National Development and Reform Commission, and the World Bank – claimed to want to facilitate a discussion among a wide range of participants on the role and future of hydropower in sustainable development. However, the conference was so biased toward hydropower proponents that the meeting was more like an industry workshop than a true exchange of ideas as promoted by the World Commission on Dams. Perspectives critical of hydropower were virtually excluded and the participation of NGOs and dam-affected people was marginalized, reports the World Rivers Review, published by the International Rivers Network.

Human growth is a sensitive measure of social change. In a recent study conducted by Loughborough University, UK, that looked at data from more than 3000 children born in Soweto and Johannesburg in 1990, nearly one in five of the children in the study were found to be stunted – a sign of persistent poor health and nutrition during infancy.

In the crowded wards of African hospitals, coughs and bony bodies tell the story of a deadly return. Tuberculosis (TB), supposedly defeated 40 years ago, is back, riding on the AIDS epidemic, and the world is ill-prepared, says the relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). In its study 'Running out of Breath? TB Care in the 21st Century', MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines urges a radical rethink of the global approach to the disease. TB kills two million people every year, nearly all in developing countries. Yet TB, if detected early and treated, is curable.

An upbeat New Year's message by Prime Minister Themba Dlamini has been rebutted by Swaziland's pro-democracy groups, with labour unions calling for a general strike in January to protest lavish royal spending and a controversial draft constitution. "Poverty has been a great enemy for both social and economic development in our country. His majesty's government has put measures in place, and I hope this will go a long way to addressing this challenge," said Dlamini in his New Year's address, without offering specifics.

As a result of falling antiretroviral (ARV) prices, new sources of international funding and growing political commitment, providing treatment for Africa's HIV-positive citizens is, for the first time, an achievable goal. In sub-Saharan 3.8 million people need treatment now, but as of June 2004, only 150,000 were on ARVs - less than four percent of that total. The remaining 96 percent - those parents, workers, lovers and children denied access to the life-prolonging drugs will, unless there is urgent intervention, inevitably join the other 30 million people worldwide that the pandemic has claimed.

Is the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) administration walking the talk or simply talking the talk? To its credit, the government has done a great deal in its attempt to lay the foundation for a successful war against graft.But the indicators on the ground are such that there is no blood flowing as a result of old corruption and new corruption seems to be bustling and sizzling within the very heart of the Narc administration, notes this opinion piece from the East African Standard.

Billy Okello, a Kenyan Rapper known by his artist name of “Billy Boy” has been jailed for eight months by a Swedish court after being found guilty of five separate charges namely: mishandling a Swedish woman, threatening the woman, damage to property, driving without a license and driving while under the influence of alcohol. Billy will also pay the woman a total of 28,700 Swedish crowns in compensation for damages to the woman’s property, causing her pain, violating her integrity and causing her physical and psychological trauma.

In Zambia, the battle for equality between men and women is being waged on many fronts - not least concerning the sentences handed down by courts. The trial of Chrystal Denn is a case in point. In the course of her turbulent five-year marriage to Trevor, a professional football player, Chrystal suffered extensive spousal abuse. Her husband beat her up, both at home and in full view of others. After a failed suicide attempt, Chrystal finally killed her spouse in the course of an argument, in 1999. A judge sentenced her to life imprisonment for murder.

Critics of free primary education should try their business elsewhere, Education minister Prof George Saitoti has said. "This is an era of free primary education; it is here to stay since our commitment is firm. No one should allude that Government will turn back on this policy," Prof Saitoti said.

This article, published in Social Science and Medicine, reports on progress towards the goal of health for all, with specific reference to international development commitments made by the G7/G8 nations at the 1999, 2000 and 2001 summits. It argues that the limited progress toward achieving health for all derives largely from the failure of G8 nations to fulfil their development commitments. In particular, efforts to reduce poverty and economic security have been insufficient; and national governments have not been enabled to make basic investments in health systems, education and nutrition.

When Dr Keith Bolton treated children in the 1990s, the death of a patient was still relatively infrequent. As head of child health at South Africa's Coronation Hospital in Johannesburg, Bolton saw an average of one child die each week. Now, Bolton and his colleagues see one child die every day. "In the past, death was an uncommon event in children, especially after the newborn period," said Bolton. "Now we've seen a complete reversal of the gains we made in the 1960s, '70s and '80s."

A new publication, Pathway to Gender Equality, outlines how CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action can be used as a lens to understand and address the gender equality dimensions of the MDGs, which in turn can help to ensure that the pursuit of the MDGs is based on principled conviction and results in effective development. This publication offers three ways to enhance the synergy between CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, and the MDGs.

"For our countries, climate change is more catastrophic than terrorism." This was how the delegate from Tanzania summed up the stance of the world's 48 least developed countries at the 10th Conference of Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10). The Tanzanian delegation's sentiments were echoed throughout the opening session of the conference. Almost all of the countries whose representatives took the floor expressed their satisfaction over the imminent entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol.

Cooperation between nations of the South will eventually trigger growth and development in some of the world's poorest countries, according to the United Nations, which marked the first U.N. Day for South-South Cooperation' in December. The world body has launched an aggressive campaign to strengthen economic and trade relations among the world's 132 developing nations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank recently celebrated their 60th Anniversaries. To the two institutions, writes Douglas Ngwenya in this commentary on the Afrodad website, this was a sign that they are maturing, but to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), it was a sign that the Bretton Woods Institutions are growing too "old, devious and irrelevant". "Their mandate to provide a mechanism for the transfer of financial resources from the rich nations to the poor nations and to promote reconstruction and development is visibly vanishing into thin air. The ageing of these institutions has been at increasing misery for the world’s poorest nations." Read the full commentary by visiting Afrodad's website.

It is almost two weeks since the Boxing Day tragedy of theTsunami Earth Quake that devastated countries of South Asia and to a lesser extent the two African countries of Kenya and Somalia. We are used to and have become more cynical of the media and humanitarian agencies describing every natural and unnatural disaster as 'the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen' or 'a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions', suspecting they are hyping it up in order to raise the bank balances of the agencies' accounts and extort compassion from an increasingly compassion-fatigued world.

But the huge scale of the Tsumani tragedy has blown away all cynicism and suspicions about humanitarian publicists and compassion entrepreneurs. Words can neither describe nor express the full impact of this disaster that immediately became a tragedy right in front of our eyes and most of us powerless to do anything about it once it started. Despite all the available technology, information and knowledge, nature still struck in a most menacing way humbling human beings and our historical and evolutionary arrogance that we are supreme in the universe and all that abounds in it.

The symbolic period of Christmas (and all the consumerism that has expunged most religious or spiritual meaning out of it) in which the tragedy unfolded unified many people's anxiety about God and nature.

Religious people look up to God for explanation, comfort and deliverance, but even the most religious person must ask what kind of God inflicts such catastrophe on his creation and for what sins? The non-religious and agnostics also look on helplessly and take out their frustration on God by asserting that the indiscriminate way in which the disaster struck was proof to them that God could not have been existing and not avert such huge tragedy.

The tragedy also showed the limits of science despite all the undeniable advances over several centuries: there is still plenty more to be unravelled and known in nature. We are yet to be full masters of our environment. The positive side for science though is the belief that all things are knowable, but we are limited by available knowledge and technology whereas metaphysical people believe that some things are not knowable. The ultimate truth must belong to scientific progress because its truth is accumulative through the years such that what our forefathers could not explain we now can just as what is baffling us today may not ruffle our children or their children after them.

While the scientist and the religious people wrestle with their explanations or non explanations one of the most encouraging things that has come out of the tragedy is the outpouring of genuine human solidarity, reaching out to the victims from across the world. In the midst of all these pains the unequal power relations in the world manifests itself both openly and subliminally. Would there have been such massive concern if a considerable number of Westerners were not involved? Can we recall similar outpouring of grief exactly a year ago when a similar earth quake devastated Iran killing more than 40, 000 people?

Do not get me wrong about the huge scale of the South East Asian eathquake and the untold suffering for all the victims. I cannot help feeling that were westerners not involved on such a huge scale it would not have been treated as yet another disaster that happens to hapless peoples especially in Africa.

Look at your screens and see the hands of friendship, humanitarian support and solidarity of people in the richer countries of the world mainly Europe and the USA that we see constantly. Yet solidarity is being shown even if in small but symbolic ways in virtually every country of the world. The BBC or the CNN may not broadcast them but compassion is not the monopoly of the richer countries.

In times like these it is the totality of our humanity that counts not one country or class of peoples. The popular response to the disaster has exposed how insensitive and narrow-minded governments can be not just in poorer countries but also in the richer, supposedly more democratic and enlightened of the West. The President of the World and self-proclaimed God's son, George Bush, took three days before he could make any statement. His loyal British poodle, Tony Blair, despite public clamour in Britain, remained on his holiday resort in Egypt. However the public in both countries led the way in providing support of all kinds. Now both governments are playing catch up with popular momentum and promising to match the public contributions. Bush has even recalled his father and Clinton from retirement to help him galvanise public support.

In a number of African countries there has been the usual official statements but also public concern. However, many do not have the infrastructure to convert the genuine concerns into concrete solidarity. We need to look into this because no matter how bad our situation may be there may always be some other people somewhere on this planet whose conditions may be worse off from ours. We cannot be constantly playing victims and be complacent about our and other people's suffering. We must fight against the disaster fatigue that may make us appear insensitive or inured to the suffering of others because of our own suffering. We need to build people to people solidarity between ourselves and between us and other peoples of the world. Every little bit counts towards building genuine bridges of human understanding.

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tragedy there is a growing debate about where Africa's case in 2005 will be given the immediacy of the situation and the genuine popular opinion in the West.

There is talk of debt write off, cancellation and full scale restructuring of the affected South East Asian countries. This is right and necessary but it needs not be a case of either / or because as Ghandi used to say: 'There is enough in the world to satisfy our need but not enough to satisfy our greed'.

Africa does not have to be devastated by earth quakes before its debt is written off, it is suffering devastation in many other forms that may claim more lives this year than the final total of those perishing as a result of the Tsumani. Powerful countries in the world should not play the poor against each other and we should not also engage in competition for compassion. Global justice should be our aim whether in the north or the south of our shared hemisphere.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African
Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to

The Global Greengrants Fund supports grassroots groups working for environmental justice and sustainability around the world. The Greengrants model for grantmaking is founded on a set of advisory boards made up of environmental and social justice leaders. All grants are made on the recommendation of these advisory board volunteers. We are hiring a part time Coordinator to facilitate the work of two of these boards, one in East Africa and another in Southern Africa.

Continuing atrocities in the western region of Darfur and impunity for war crimes in the south jeopardize prospects for peace in Sudan, Human Rights Watch has warned ahead of the January 9 signing of a peace agreement to end the 21-year conflict in the south. The final peace accords-known as the Naivasha Protocols for the Kenyan city where negotiations took place since June 2002-are scheduled to be signed in Nairobi by the Sudanese government and the main southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). The peace agreement lacks any provision for a truth commission, prosecutions or other forms of accountability for past abuses in the southern conflict.

The declaration, in Kenya, of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in October 2004 was heralded as a breakthrough in Somalia's protracted crisis of statelessness and civil strife. But the peace process has gone largely downhill since then. The Transitional Federal Parliament's choice for interim president, Colonel Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed, is divisive and controversial. To many Somalis, his election represents not a step toward peace but continuation of the war by other means. Yusuf and his partners need to use their political advantage to form a genuine government of national unity and the international community needs to make clear that only if this happens will the TFG get the recognition and support it desperately seeks, said the International Crisis Group in a report released late in 2004.

The Angolan army arbitrarily detained and tortured civilians with impunity in Cabinda, and continues to restrict their freedom of movement despite an apparent end to the decades-long separatist conflict in the oil-rich enclave, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released in December. In the past year, the Angolan army has subjected civilians to extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other mistreatment, as well as sexual violence. The Angolan army also denies civilians their freedom of movement. Human Rights Watch found little evidence of recent abuses committed by rebel factions against civilians, probably because of the rebels’ weakened capacity.

How can we address the issue of the information and knowledge society without first dealing with the fact that almost a sixth of the world's population remains illiterate, and thus excluded from the possibility of effectively participating in a knowledge-driven society? What good are the advantages afforded by the new ICTs for the more than 860 million who cannot read and write? asks this feature on the website of Choike, a portal on civil society.

Trade Unions have suspended the first general strike in Sierra Leone to be held since the civil war ended three years ago. On Tuesday the country was brought to a standstill, but shops and offices have begun reopening says the BBC's Lansana Fofana from the capital, Freetown.

Two Nigerian admirals have been sacked for oil smuggling after they were found guilty of being involved in the disappearance of an oil tanker. The tanker was seized by a naval patrol two years ago as it was carrying 10,000 tonnes of crude oil alleged to have been stolen from the Delta region.

The story of the poor goes round and round. But what about the story of the rich? The story not being told is that of the beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism. The story of exploitation that put us into this dispensation, commodified our own life for profit. They divided and ruled. Can we unite and live? Can we unite for the world that will be our world? Let us rise up and begin to tell this story… of why they continue to be rich, continue to plunder.

- Wahu Kaara, Kenyan feminist activist speaking at the ASF opening plenary

Introduction

At the opening plenary of the Africa Social Forum in Lusaka, Zambia (10-14 December, 2004), delegates from across the continent gave varied testimonies that coalesced around a single truth: recolonisation is worse than slavery.

Activists noted Africa’s history of injustices and oppression through colonialism, slavery and apartheid, but swiftly moved on to the injustices of present-day, post-colonial Africa: privatisation and cost-recovery, wars fought over Africa’s natural resources, heavy debt burdens and conditionalities, unfair trade and disease. Contrary to dominant accounts of the continent as an almost biblically ‘cursed’ ‘basket case’ and Africans as helpless victims, delegate after delegate emphasised that Africa’s poverty, wars and disease pandemics are causally related to a global economic system that is predicated on the poverty of the many.

“The world, it would seem, friends, is at the end of its imagination”, Corinne Kumar of Tunisia and Indonesia told the assembled plenary. How much further can the tired mechanisms of domination and exploitation be stretched? Though they are continuously re-disguised, masquerading as World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) or Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) or Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), the instruments of oppression remain just as blatant for those attempting to access basic services like water, land, education and healthcare – with increasing difficulty.

Colonialism is a very old game, and is thus forced to maintain itself through substitutions – substitutions that activists are perpetually contesting. Substitutions of NEPAD for economic liberation, of incessant white tutelage for black independent praxis, of “efficiency” that benefits the few rather than the many, of a blameless past for a counter-hegemonic history, of the language of the powerful for localised terminology and stories, of dignity for the flat notion of “equality”. Kumar’s assertions were echoed by many activists throughout the Forum: it is up to the South – and Africa in particular – to champion notions of democracy that are not intrinsically tied to the market economy; to find new notions of power that facilitate, transform, and enhance; to redefine Africa through a discourse of dissent – one that decentres, disrupts and interrupts all that is dominant.

At the ASF we observed that while African civil society is not uniformly strong across all regions, trade unionists, students, women and young people are increasingly resisting neoliberalism on the continent – against the current of their politicians. At a session on NEPAD, a Zimbabwean delegate argued that African leaders, by attending G8 meetings and producing a policy document endorsed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), are revealing that they “fear freedom, as former slaves who walk back to their masters, not yet ready to leave the master’s house”.

Along with their critiques of neo-colonialism and the lack of democracy in international policy-making, African activists were increasingly outraged at the lack of democracy within the Forum structure. The ASF often replicated prevailing socio-economic, cultural and political inequalities. In particular, despite the feminist tribunal at the beginning of the Forum, women were often not given sufficient space to participate and raise feminist issues throughout the conference. Plenary sessions and panel discussions were largely devoid of meaningful dialogue and debate. The sole exception, which will be discussed later as a promising alternative, was the Feminist Dialogue, where women arranged their chairs in a large circle to form the only space in the entire forum set up for the horizontal movement of knowledge in many directions.

Why the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon predicted the exhaustion of third world nationalism as espoused by many African leaders (1965). Indeed, without civil society resistance Africa’s bourgeoisie and its nationalist leaders may end up becoming the ‘cheap jack’ to Western capitalism and imperialism. As one delegate argued, “the master’s tools [neo-liberal policies] will never destroy the master’s house [rich countries’ economic domination of Africa]”. Patrick Bond poses the question even more directly: will Africa aim to ‘fix’ the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO) and IMF or ‘nix’ them (Bond, 2000)? Or, in terms of the central problematic posed in our report, will Africa merely substitute structural adjustments for ‘homegrown’ structural adjustments such as GEAR and NEPAD? Are the foreign overseers such as the Bank and the IMF increasingly confident that they can count on local overseers to carry out their work? Has the logic of ‘fiscal discipline’ become so normalised that Africa’s ruling class has yoked itself with fiscal self-discipline?

The social consequences of structural adjustment programmes have been evident in Africa for over two decades. The very real, human costs were evident as we walked through downtown Lusaka, where crumbling infrastructure includes the broken storm drains, clogged with garbage, that periodically become breeding grounds for cholera. The Lusaka-based Namibian human rights lawyer who showed us around mentioned that as a result of cutbacks espoused in structural adjustments and a high proportion of the country’s budget going toward debt servicing, patients attending the country’s public hospitals must provide their own drips, medicine, bedding and food.

Indeed, IFI-advocated cost recovery is alive and well in Zambia: advertisements on Zambian television announced that cut-offs of electricity were immanent for defaulters over the festive season and that electricity company employees who assisted them to reconnect would be liable for prosecution. Jubilee Zambia informed us that this year just shy of a third of Zambia’s budget will go toward servicing odious debt. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that Zambia’s life expectancy has been reduced by AIDS and other preventable and treatable infectious diseases to a mere 35 years of age. The choices facing Africa’s leaders are as stark as the slogans on t-shirts worn by activists from the African Friends Service Committee: “LIFE” or “DEBT”.

The very real impacts of neo-liberal policies on ordinary African people’s lives brought debates on how African politicians and civil society organisations should relate to IFIs into sharp relief. African politicians are already engaging with IFIs and G8 countries and it was clear to many delegates that NEPAD can be viewed as the product of such engagements. In this context, an important item on the agenda was African civil society’s engagement with IFIs such as the World Bank and Bank-supported programmes like NEPAD.

On the second day, a session was held on views of “Civil Society Engagement with the World Bank” chaired by Kumi Naidoo of CIVICUS (an international umbrella body of NGOs). Naidoo outlined how CIVICUS’s board had for an eighteen-month period “…embarked on a process of canvassing and documenting civil society views on engagement with the Bank”. Naidoo described this as a “painful process” for which CIVICUS had received a great deal of criticism. Nevertheless, according to Naidoo, CIVICUS was powering ahead to hosting a “Global Policy Forum” in April 2005 bringing together the Bank and civil society, which would mark “the end” of its engagement with the Bank.

When the floor was opened, Console Tleane from the Freedom of Expression Institute of South Africa argued that CIVICUS was unfairly seeking legitimation for its engagement with the Bank at the Africa Social Forum. Tleane pointed out that the conversation seemed awkwardly placed in the agenda of the Forum – rather than scanning civil society views on working with the Bank, delegates were ready to strategize how to bring about the end of the bank by April 2005. Kenyan activist Njoke Njehu of 50 Years is Enough, a Washington DC-based NGO, argued that there have been three major civil society attempts to engage with the Bank, including the World Commission on Dams and the Extractive Industry Review – and they had all failed. The Bank’s primary objective in trying to engage with civil society is to boost its public relations (PR) and lend a veneer of legitimacy and transparency to its opaque and undemocratic operations. Indeed, Njehu stated that the Bank has a PR budget in excess of US$20 million per annum and seventy staff devoted to improving its image. She went on to question who actually funded CIVICUS’s engagement with the Bank and in fact whether the organisation was truly independent of the Bank and those who support its agendas.

A Senegalese trade unionist in the Higher Education sector argued that the World Bank’s policies had destroyed African Universities through dramatic budgetary cutbacks and cost recovery. Similarly, a Nigerian activist explained that she had attended a meeting with the Bank on PRSPs as recently as a month before and gained the impression the Bank had already decided on what policies should be adopted in the country and was merely “going through the motions” of holding a meeting with civil society activists. Year in, year out this NGO representative had been to meetings with the Bank and had seen virtually no implementation of progressive civil society organisation’s suggestions, expect at the most cosmetic level.

Veteran South African anti-apartheid and social justice activist Dennis Brutus argued that CIVICUS was still actively engaged with the Bank and so it was disingenuous to argue that it was ‘disengaging’ with the Bank, but only after a big meeting in April 2005. Njehu went on to argue that the IMF and World Bank divided NGOs into pliant ‘good’ NGOs like CIVICUS that it could ‘deal with’ and critical ‘bad’ NGOs like 50 Years that it refused to have anything to do with. If the Bank was serious about hearing civil society perspectives it would be prepared to hear very critical perspectives – even those arguing for it to be boycotted by ethical investors on the Bonds market and ultimately closed down.

Tleane argued for activists who did not agree with such engagement to protest at such meetings in a way similar to the “Not in My Name” campaign launched by left-wing South African Jews opposed to Israeli President Ariel Sharon’s policies in relation to Palestinians. One of the authors of this paper argued for 50 Years to demonstrate outside the meeting to show that not all civil society actors are in agreement with engagement with the Bank. South African Anti-Privatisation Forum activist Virginia Setshedi then led participating delegates in a protest song against collaborating with neo-colonial forces. Indeed, in an article entitled “No to World Bank-Civil Society Relations”, the African Flame, the daily ASF newspaper, reported on the session as follows:

Without a single dissenting voice, participants rejected any dealings with the Bank. The Bank’s bad record on the continent and the tonnes of evidence that indict it for the continued poverty of the African people were cited as the main reasons why any engagement will not be meaningful. The message was clear: there…[was] no way that the ASF would entertain any dealings with the Bank.

Activists in the NEPAD session came to the same conclusions on the potential of neo-liberal institutions and policies. Senegalese economist Demba Dembele’s rejection of NEPAD is based on two fundamental assumptions: that the West will never develop Africa and that most African leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens. Pointing to the fact that NEPAD is premised on the extraction and export of Africa’s prime resources and the opening of the continent to exploitative foreign direct investment (FDI), a Zimbabwean economist characterised NEPAD as “creating a Bill of Rights for trans-national corporations”. Thus, he concluded: “our engagement will mean nothing”.

Finding our own tools: Feminist Dialogue

In breaking with the structure of other Forum sessions in which two or three panellists (usually male) addressed an audience for roughly two hours and finished by fielding a handful of questions, the feminist dialogue was constructed as an actual conversation – open to dissent and debate and allowing ideas to build off each other. Chairs were arranged in a large circle and, by the end of the session, nearly every woman and man present had spoken their mind. Unfortunately, discussion revolved around gender and feminism in our societies (of women in power having become ‘patriarchs’ and of the need for better, context-specific understandings of gender and feminism in order to avoid negative labelling, for example), but did not touch on feminism and the role of women within our own movements. The participatory form of the conversation embodied a dissent against the structuring of the ASF, and yet the critique must go further.

We know that women fuel our movements (and more isolated moments of resistance) across Africa, but they were in the minority at the Africa Social Forum because the leadership of organizations and movements (i.e. those likely to represent organisations at international forums) are men. We know that we will go back to our meetings and some women may not feel free to speak up. Essentially, we know that patriarchy and other forms of dominance are being re-inscribed within our movements for resistance.

As Shallo Skaba, an Ethiopian coffee worker stated at the Africa Court of Women, “No one is looking for women’s problems. No one considers all that women are doing”. If movements go on as they are, women’s problems will not be looked for, much less effectively organized around. One woman suggested in the dialogue that feminism is a political consciousness around power and power inequalities. Let us, then, apply that critical consciousness to the society we resist against and to the vehicles of resistance that are propelled by our energy, our sacrifices, our limited resources, our courage – but too often not by our decisions and the wisdom of our experiences as women.

Again out of character with much of the Forum, several action items were decided upon. These included gathering and sharing feminist literature from across the continent over an email discussion list and in existing publications such as Feminist Africa, the Centre for Civil Society website and research reports, and WeWrite. Feminist dialogue must be wrestled back from the (mostly Northern) academic spaces which have co-opted and subsequently come to define (and confine) debate.

Those present also strategised ways to hold women who are elected into office accountable. This is gravely needed, as demonstrated in South Africa, where Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has consistently pushed forward policies that have worsened – and ultimately taken – the lives of poor, black, HIV-positive women. In Tanzania, Fatima Alloo explained, women activists meet with each female politician upon assuming office. From the very beginning of her term – and often beforehand, during her campaigning – women activists attempt to become these politicians’ primary network and base. Since women so often identify with a system that will “protect” them, the moment that they say ‘No’, they are persecuted. Women activists can thus form alternative forms of protection, and women in high office can draw their power not from the prevailing system of patriarchal control, but from those who understand power’s underbelly.

Finally, activists called for further strategising on helping to make women economically independent. As one activist from the Gambia remarked, we must make it possible for women to get a divorce if necessary, to have some measure of financial independence. In a global economy where women produce over 80% of resources, and yet own less than 20% of them, the battle for economic sovereignty for women will be long and difficult. However, we will work to assure that women are not further exploited by our own movements, and that we create means for economic independence as we can.

Are our tools sharp enough?

Across several sessions, a number of participants asked similar questions: what are we doing to take the debates here back to the grassroots in our own countries? People are dying of AIDS in my country, aggressive cost recovery means that water and electricity are being disconnected, trade negotiations are taking place which may ruin livelihoods, how will this Forum take our struggles forward?

When we asked different delegates how the ASF meetings were organised, they could only answer with even more questions. How, for instance, were the meetings financed? How was the organising council constituted?

Activists from South Africa’s Social Movements Indaba (SMI) questioned the structure of the ASF (an un-elected, self-appointed, ‘unrepresentative’ council) and its ‘lack of political direction’. The SMI activists said they viewed the council and the ASF as biased toward NGOs, as membership of the council did not entail representivity and members of the council had to pay their own way to council meetings. A statement issued and circulated by the SMI expanded this critique:

The underrepresentation of social movements in relation to NGOs is reflected in the political content of the forum. It manifests in the persistence of the notion that the Africa Social Forum is nothing other than a space, in contrast to the perspective that it should have a programme to advance our struggle against neoliberalism (1).

The SMI then went on to argue for a plenary to allow for collective decision-making on the structure and functioning of the ASF and develop a declaration and a programme of action.

These problems are not unique to the ASF. Other social forums have been critiqued for not culminating in sufficiently concrete political outcomes that would advance the struggles of social movements. For instance, in discussing the Boston Social Forum, Peter Marcuse recently argued that there was insufficient participation of ‘grassroots activists’ (activists who were very poor, on welfare, etc.) (Marcuse, 2005 forthcoming). In general, there was an expressed need to link the BSF and other Social Forums to “action” with “concrete results” (ibid, 3). As Marcuse argues, while such forums might offer the future “nucleus” of a global social movement it is too early to speak of a global social movement focused on limited objectives and dealing with broader issues of power and social justice (ibid).

Similarly, an activist writing for schnews.org.uk on the 2004 European Social Forum held in London argued that: “[Activists] came to see if ‘another world is possible’, yet as expected [the ESF] was hijacked by people whose vision seems seriously at odds with many people involved in grassroots politics”. Many ESF activists questioned the wisdom of replacing one set of unaccountable political cronies for another.

Building our own house: From ‘space’ to action?

In order for the Social Forums to continue to have legitimacy with social movement activists they will have to move beyond merely being ‘spaces’ or ‘forums’ for debate about ‘other possibilities’ for the world and towards being forums for debating strategies and tactics and common campaigns. In essence, there seems to be a struggle for the soul of the Social Forums: will they be ‘talk shops’ or ‘think tanks’ or ‘arenas for planning action’, ‘campaign launch pads’ or ‘strategy and tactics seminars’? As the feminist session of the ASF showed, making sessions more participatory and inclusive could be an important step in allowing legitimate critiques of the Social Forums and their constituent movements to emerge. In turn, this could allow for more focussed political discussions and outcomes at the Forums.

The stakes are high in this debate. As Setshedi argued: “people are being disconnected at home, what am I doing here if it doesn’t advance their struggle?”. Or as an HIV-positive feminist activist from Zimbabwe argued, “people are dying of AIDS at home, we need to think of a common platform to campaign to improve their access to treatment”. Such activists argued that it takes precious time and resources to attend Social Forums and that they must have something to show for attending such forums.

ASF delegates rejected engagement with the Bank and NEPAD, however, it should not be forgotten that indirect approaches urging such engagement were made through civil society intermediaries. This shows that capturing Social Forums and blunting their impact is a tantalising outcome for the Bank and ‘third-way’ politicians, which only adds a further sense of urgency to debates about the political direction and future of the Social Forums in advancing the aims of social movements for socio-economic justice. It is clear that social movement activists around the world increasingly wish to ‘jealously guard’ (SMI, 2) the Social Forums against de-politicisation and an inching towards irrelevant abstraction, merely providing ‘space for debate’. Such activists recognise that if they exhaust themselves debating in ‘space’ they will not seriously threaten the agendas of the Bank or the other IFIs. And the blunter the tools of the Social Forums get, the greater the chance activists will simply dispense with them entirely.

*Amanda Alexander is a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
*Mandisa Mbali is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

* Please send comments to

References

- Bond, Patrick (2003). Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance. London: ZED Books.
- “Endless Shit Flinging” (2004).

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