PAMBAZUKA NEWS 152: AFTER THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTION, RHETORICS AND REALITIES
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 152: AFTER THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTION, RHETORICS AND REALITIES
On 31 March 2004, Gaston Bony, publication director of the weekly "Le Venin" ("Venom"), was sentenced to six months in prison with no parole and jailed at the Agboville prison, in a suburb of Abidjan. Bony's imprisonment came despite assurances by the authorities, including President Laurent Gbagbo, that no journalist in the country would ever be jailed again.
According to reports, on 30 March the Luanda Provincial Tribunal sentenced Felisberto de Graça Campos, director and editor of the weekly magazine Semanario Angolense, to 45 days in prison or a fine of US$1,200 for a series of articles published in 2003 that detailed the fortunes of the 59 richest Angolans, including prominent government officials. Mr Campos's sentence follows defamation charges filed against him by the defence minister, General Kundy Payama, who was included in the list of reputed millionaires. The list included politicians, economists, senior military officials, ministers and members of parliament.
According to reports, on 2 April a federal court in Addis Ababa jailed Mr Merid Estifanos, former editor-in-chief of the private, Amharic-language weekly Satanaw, after he was unable to pay bail in a criminal defamation case. The defamation charge stemmed from a September 2001 opinion piece entitled "The Hidden Agenda of Prime Minister Meles", which accused Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of supporting the government of Eritrea and alleging that Eritrea had defeated Ethiopia during the two-year border war ending in 2000.
The first formally organised session on agriculture negotiations since Cancun was held at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva on 22-26 March, in what was termed the “Agriculture Week.” It ended without convergence of views among members on the three major “pillars”, i.e. market access, domestic support and export competition. The Chairperson of the agriculture special session, Ambassador Tim Groser of New Zealand, said: “The members are still in the hearing and listening mode.” The week saw a change in the negotiating process, with members negotiating or discussing among themselves in “informal mode”, rather than each of them consulting with the Chairperson. During the week, numerous meetings were held between the various groupings. The organisation Third World Network has produced a report on the meeting.
The government returned to three coloured communities on Monday a parcel of land confiscated under apartheid in the 1970s, but the families dismissed the move as an election ploy. Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza was in the Lohatlha area in the northwest of the country to return 2000 hectares of land to the Gatlhose, Maremane and Khosis communities, whose land was turned into a military school in the 1970s. But a spokesperson for the communities, Marcia Manong, said the apartheid government had confiscated 62 000 hectares of land from more than 500 families in the community between 1975 and 1978.
A decade ago, conservationists set an ambitious goal of protecting 10 percent of Earth's land in nature reserves within 10 years. To nearly everyone's surprise that goal has been more than met, with 11.5 percent of the world's land now in protected areas. But some conservationists fear that the millions of acres protected are not the right ones. Despite the vast expansion of reserves, 20 percent of threatened animal species worldwide and about 12 percent of all animals have no part of their territory protected, according to a new analysis.
Mozambican Tourism Minister Fernando Sumbana said in Maputo on Monday that most of the country's conservation areas have never been properly researched, and need deep and continual studies on their bio-diversity. About 15 per cent of Mozambique's total surface area has been classified as national parks or other conservation areas.
Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU) plans to intensify livestock and game ranching programmes in Matabeleland South and North to promote agricultural production on land unsuited to crop farming. ZCFU president Davison Mugabe told journalists in Bulawayo that the union had tasked its regional offices in Matabeleland to consult local farmers in designing proposals for both game and cattle ranching projects.
The Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) has recently published a report on HIV/AIDS and humanitarian action. The report explores the role of humanitarian relief in the context of the AIDS epidemic. It argues that the disease is clearly a massive crisis in its own right: to the extent that humanitarian response is concerned with increased levels of mortality and morbidity, HIV/AIDS can clearly be described as an emergency. At the same time, HIV/AIDS is only one of many factors contributing to food insecurity. It is important to understand how the impact of HIV/AIDS relates to other factors, such as drought and conflict, to create acute humanitarian crises.
Click on the link below to sign a petition demanding a cancellation of impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, an end to all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize and an end to all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.
The Network of African Women Ministerial and Parliamentarian Bureau met last week in the Namibian capital of Windhoek to plan its sixth conference scheduled for October in Gabon. The meeting aimed to evaluate, monitor, adopt resolutions and prepare for the next meeting, the theme of which is Gender and HIV/AIDS: Reinforcing the National Response. The meeting will also focus on domestic violence.
In addition to prosecuting third world leaders with blood on their hands, the ICC and other similar courts must also prosecute western political leaders, corporate leaders, and civil servants whose decisions and actions have directly and/or indirectly resulted in atrocities (Pambazuka News 144: Africa and the ICC: Is Africa ready and waiting?).
Alex Weir, Zimbabwe
Yes our children are hungry, but what good is beating empty pots in protest against the exorbitant food prices? The idea of civil disobedience is forthcoming but will it really achieve anything? What needs to be taken into consideration is whom we are addressing the issues to and do they care? As citizens we should first understand the flow of our economy, that is, where is it coming from and where is it going to. Until we can answer these questions what arguments are we going to present to the rulers of the country? Maybe we all need fast track courses in business administration and economics to get the grounding of the economic flow of Zimbabwe? As it stands hyper-inflation is the result of high food prices.
How can we develop the economy first? After that how do we stabilise it? Then price controls. We need to start from the root of the problem. Where did we go wrong? What were our main sources of income for the country ten years ago? What are they now? Are we importing more than we are exporting? Are we now importing more than we used to?
Besides, if we are importing the basic things then we are looking at a very serious situation that requires much more than words and disobedience. How valuable are our exports if we have any at all? How are we proposing to rectify the problem? Do we have a reasonable percentage of investors? What are the investments in and how beneficial is it to Zimbabwe? Do we have more companies than we did ten years ago, and if so what good are they to our every day life? Where are the taxes going? Who is really benefiting in Zimbabwe? Are the rich, richer and the poor, poorer? How are we fairing on an African scale, are we lagging behind? If so how far behind are we from other African nations? How are we relating with the rest of the world and vice versa?
Bearing in mind that Zimbabwe has become a lawless totalitarian state, is putting our efforts in a worthwhile cause? We also need to realise that lobbying for reduction in food prices may have negative consequences. There is a much higher price to pay in all this and are we prepared for this? As a civil society what other methods are there of making food more available to the country? How else can we implement a system that is more responsive to our needs as a nation. I would say we are not yet ready because we are thinking with our "tummies" and not our brains.
What good is it to have a whole day of marching, screaming and shouting to have food prices reduced when it is impossible under the circumstances. We need to think rationally and act rationally like a nation with focused goals. We all need to start working hard to produce results for the benefit of the country.
We need to kill the element of corruption, because corruption is for short-term success and long-term failure. We need to be united and generate ideas from one another. We need to be more analytical about our surroundings for the continuance of the prosperity of our nation. We need real and well-thought strategies because it is never too late.
The economy has been scared so much already. These food prices only reflect the value of Zimbabwe’s economy. Much more needs to be done than just marching the streets screaming and shouting for food reductions. Is there no chance for a referendum? It may be a starting point to see how we fair in our requests and where we stand with those in power.
I believe that Zimbabwe is no longer as democratic as it seemed a while ago, therefore most peaceful movements in the last three to four years have resulted in damage to property, animals and people being killed and injured. So we should ask ourselves this, if those in power are fully fed and sheltered they will just look at the rest of the nation as a bunch of "hungry and angry" men. I am not trying to discourage people from expressing their feelings but it requires for us think carefully and logically.
We need to convince the police and the army that we are sailing in the same boat because by the end of the day we are still living in the same country. The police and the army are members of our own families, our fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, they are also our friends, neighbours, fellow workmen, most of all they are human beings, Zimbabweans for that matter.
But can they stand up and really support their purpose for the country, which is to protects the nation from criminals, to act in pursuance of the rule of law, to honour their obligations with full respect for the law. What is the role of law in our society? Is it the corruption we encounter in our everyday life? The police, the politicians, as well as the society at large are cheating the system and therefore endangering our economy. Members of law enforcement need to realise that they have had a larger part to play in this downfall due to failure in their duty to protect citizens. It is not too late to make a change of things and reduce flaws in the system, particularly corruption. Is a civil disobedience the best that can be done? It is now time to wake up.
Monica, Newcastle
Thank you very much for your editorial (Pambazuka News 151: What choices for South African voters). Your piece shows what politics is all about: a matter of conscience, a matter of thinking. It is not about power. Sounds iconoclastic, but that is the only way to go: dissolve power. Take care.
P.S: I keep mentioning this book: 'John Holloway: Change the World Without Seizing Power' (verso 2002).
We need to do more than hope, we need to make it a reality. That means that we need to enlist those that are working for good to work together, we need to network and to utilise our collective resources for targeted and significant action.
Everyday in South Africa, where we also celebrate 10 years of democracy after a complicated oppression, I am in awe of how much work needs to be done. Everyday I am witness to both tragedy and triumph - but I know this - we must go on, we must go forward, and we must do it now.
While so many countries immerse themselves in strife - our world is being lost to us, the breath of our mornings forever lost - our lives, our futures tainted and the futures of our children snatched from their cradles.
Just a few years back, I lived some time in Jerusalem and travelled much around Israel. It was a girl called Simone in the northern town of Akko who convinced me to attend the holocaust museum there. At first I was reticent. But she persisted - she said: "You need to know, so that THIS may never happen again." I went. Indeed, 50 years + after the holocaust, I fail to understand things so painful that the mind cannot comprehend them, but I have learnt that people need to know. People need to learn to feel for each other again - and cease from reducing themselves to redundant elements of the systems that proliferate oppression.
We need to build awareness - so that people can act.
There is no "Africa", or "Europe" - there is you and me, each one of us in Africa, or Europe. People make a country, not countries, their people.
These things were NOT MEANT TO BE - it is time for us to wake up and realise that they are not INEVITABLE - they are the collective result of individual choices - made in error and blindness and greed. None of these characteristics are essential to the human character, they are forged by circumstance, social disintegration, lack of self esteem, domination....
But within us all we have the capacity to love, to nurture and to heal. We all must work towards the realisation of these qualities within ourselves and our communities and those of us who are willing and able, have a moral obligation to strive for our brothers freedoms, not only our own.
We write history each day as we each make a passage through our lives, every little action and every grand gesture. We are not puppets - and the time has come for us to break free of the kind of thinking that accepts inevitability, that instils in us inertia.
It is not escapist to say that the "International Community" fails Africa. In many ways, it does, in many ways, the global family fails itself, Africa fails herself and she fails the international community. It is so terribly easy to fail, but in so many ways, we must recognise we have triumphed.
We must strive to respond to any "accusations" of failure with open hearts - to say "If I have failed you brother - let me redress - if I can help you sister - let me take a stand, and if I fail because you are beyond my reach and means, may God help me to keep trying again."
Let us never forget.
(A response to Valentine Ngwa published in Pambazuka News last week, from the AFRO-NETS mailing list)
Each year, more than 200,000 Nigerian children are forcibly taken from their homes to be put to work. Some go with the permission of their parents, and some do not. Many, especially boys who may be as young as five or six, end up as household slaves far from home, or as agricultural workers on smallholdings or in quarries, where they break large lumps of granite with heavy iron hammers and earn little more than a few cents a day. The dust they inhale will do them lasting damage. Some, especially the younger ones, die as a result; others end up with terrible scars, both physical and psychological.
The plight of former child soldiers and war-affected children in Angola is beginning to ease as they slowly reintegrate back into their communities, but new threats such as child trafficking and HIV/AIDS are emerging, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday. A post-war child protection strategy had shown "significant results", Abubacar Sultan, UNICEF's head of child protection, told IRIN. Around 3,500 children had been reunited with their families, and 3,480, including former child soldiers, were involved in reintegration programmes such as back-to-school schemes, micro-enterprise programmes for older adolescents, or child-friendly centres where they could socialise and discuss issues.
Some 85 Burundians representing families of returnees based at the Gatumba transit site near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), staged a sit-in on Wednesday at the offices of the Burundian human rights group, Iteka, to demand food aid and shelter. "We came to Iteka because all our attempts to get the CNRS [the National Commission for the Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons and Refugees] assistance have failed," the returnees told IRIN. The returnees, who were repatriated in 2002 from the DRC, Tanzania and Rwanda, complained that since their return the CNRS had left them on their own. They said the commission kept promising food aid, which it had failed to deliver.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for more commitment to the provision of an enabling environment for quality education. UNICEF country representative, Stella Goings, said in an interview that the nation should do more to enable children to acquire quality education. Dr Goings said UNICEF was recognisant that the Zambian Government was doing a lot with scarce resources to make sure that the children got the best education. She said UNICEF was committed to helping the government realise that dream, but called for more dedication from the government to make sure that Zambia produced educated leaders and professionals.
The World Council of Churches has condemned the rising cases of child abuse in Kenya. "The Church, together with parents, must act together to shield future generations from the consequences (of child abuse)," said Dr Samwel Kobia, the body's secretary general. He told churches, as the voice of conscience in the society, to employ their moral and spiritual resources in eliminating rampant violence against children.
The government has been warned that should they exclude youth opinions in decision-making they would be sitting on a time bomb. According to Kagiso Ntume of the Botswana National Youth Council (BNYC) "in most historical revolutions it was the young people who started the movement towards change." He also said that youth organisations that are in existence only encourage a lot of head nodding and do not accommodate the youth opinions at the macro level.
The Federal Government has directed all tertiary institutions in Nigeria to start the teaching of peace studies as part of courses for their students commencing from the next academic session. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Ayodele Falase dropped this hint at the closing of the first foundation course in peace practice organised by the peace and conflict studies programme of the university. The Vice-Chancellor, in an address read on his behalf by one of his deputies, Prof. Olusoji Offi, stated that violent conflicts rank amongst the most potent factors stifling the objectives of sustainable development in Nigeria today. He said: “This ugly situation can be reversed through both formal and informal peace education."
Parents with children in public primary schools had paid Sh2.64 million in "school fees" by early last year, despite a Government directive that made primary education free and compulsory. The directive was effected early last year but some schools continued to charge fees. The questionable payments were detected by an audit firm commissioned by the Government to establish the impact of a donor funded book project. Carried out in 25 districts countrywide to establish how the project was working, it discovered that nearly a quarter of the country's 18,000 schools had been charging fees. Parents were being forced to pay the money to the district education boards to finance "mysterious" projects.
This year UNHCR plans to repatriate 150,000 out of 300,000 Burundian refugees who fled to Tanzania in the past decade. The UNHCR facilitated repatriation process is moving at a rapid pace, perhaps too rapid. Refugees International (RI) is concerned that the pace of the repatriation threatens the security of the returning refugees for two reasons. First, UNHCR Burundi lacks the capacity to protect the returnees at the current levels of repatriation. Second, conditions inside Burundi are unstable, with continued violence in rural areas and fundamental issues, such as land rights, unresolved.
Ivory Coast's parliament has amended a controversial law on the status of foreigners that the opposition has said was one of the sparks that ignited a rebellion and civil war two years ago. The amended law, passed late Wednesday, outlines five different types of residents' permits in Ivory Coast, including a "free movement permit" for nationals of member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) who do not hold a passport and are staying in Ivory Coast for less than three months. A free movement permit will also be accorded to nationals of non-ECOWAS countries, provided their country has a reciprocal agreement for Ivorians.
Winrock International (WI), a nonprofit organization that works with people around the world to increase economic opportunity, sustain natural resources, and protect the environment, is seeking proposals for its Urgent Action Contracts (UACs) from organizations working at the community level for innovative projects that provide access to quality education for children in areas of high and exploitative child labor. Projects will be funded for amounts of $1,000 - $3,000 for a short-term lasting from one month to three months in developing countries. There is no deadline for submission since Winrock will review the proposals on a rolling basis.
Isis-WICCE is a global, action oriented resource centre based in Kampala, Uganda. It exists to promote justice and the empowerment of women globally through documenting violations of women's human rights, and facilitating the exchange of information and skills to strengthen women's capacities, visibility, and potential. This is done through the production and exchange of information, the promotion of ideas, solidarity actions, and networking. Isis-WICCE's has been running annual Exchange Programme Institutes since 1984. These institutes offer women activists working in the area of human rights, armed conflict and peace building issues, an opportunity to spend time working on specific themes, and developing skills in using the human rights framework for advocacy purposes.
A meeting, jointly hosted and organised by the Centre for Governance and Development (CGD) and the Development Policy Management Forum (DPMF) was held in Nairobi on the 4th of March 2004. The theme of the meeting was “Deepening Regional Integration For Democratization and Development Through Networking/Coalition Building in East African Community (EAC)”. The meeting was organised under a project of the Ford Foundation's Special Initiative for Africa (SIA) which, through an earlier workshop, mandated the DPMF to develop a program for mobilizing CSOs and Research Institutions (RIs) to “promote regional cooperation for democratic governance and monitoring the African Peer Review Mechanism process”. Another meeting of networks took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 29th of March 2004.
The foiled coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in March 2004 provided an urgent reminder of the destabilising consequences when two of Africa's most troubling unsolved problems intersect: poor governance and the platoons of former soldiers and guerrilla fighters left scattered and idling across the continent's former battlefields. The one creates a job market for the opportunistic other. “I used to command these guys,” said Johann Smith, a former South African Defence Force commander, referring to the 80 suspected mercenaries now awaiting trial in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe, where many were arrested allegedly en route to topple the government of President Obiang Nguema. “There are 2,500 to 3,000 of them in South Africa. This will definitely happen again, given their current economic realities. One former soldier lamented that he had missed the Equatorial Guinea ‘recruitment drive’ by 30 minutes.”
To bring security and democracy to northern Uganda, the government needs a new strategy, argues the International Crisis Group in a new report. The situation demands a comprehensive approach, in which greater political action and intensified humanitarian relief complement military measures against the murky and murderous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The UN calls the eighteen-year civil war, which has displaced 1.5 million people, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
A high-profile Kenyan opposition lawmaker was on Wednesday charged in court with corruption in connection with a land transfer deal that cost a state firm 272-million shillings (about $3,5-million), police said. William Ruto was charged together with a former commissioner of lands, Samuel Mwaita, in a Nairobi magistrate's court with "obtaining money by false pretences and handling false documents", said a spokesperson for the anti-corruption police.
Health authorities have confirmed a new case of polio in Botswana - the first in southern Africa since 1997 - and traced it to Nigeria. The finding jeopardizes efforts to eradicate the disease and prompted preparations for a nationwide immunization program in Botswana to reach 250,000 children. "This shows unless the virus is eradicated everywhere, no one is protected anywhere," said Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, senior adviser for immunization activities for UNICEF in New York. "As long as we have a couple of pockets of transmission, we are not safe at all."
This document, a chapter of the International Youth Parliament's Youth Commission Report, considers the way that globalisation affects young people and their communities in the specific field of education. The processes of globalisation have both positive and negative effects on young people and their right to education, argues the document. Improvements in communication technology and educational delivery have the potential to improve the quality of education and make it increasingly accessible. However, the positive effects of globalisation are countered by the negative impacts of factors such as higher costs of provision, national budget misallocation, poor resource mobilisation, privatisation, international debt and economic instability.
Education is one of the key defences against the spread of HIV and the impact of AIDS. This is according to a fact sheet from UNAIDS, which says that while ensuring girls are in school is important to reducing overall vulnerability, it is insufficient without specific measures to provide information, skills and links with school-community services.
A Tunis court has sentenced eight Internet users from the southern city of Zarzis to up to 26 years in prison. The convicted Internet users were accused of promoting terrorist attacks on the sole basis of files they downloaded from the Internet. Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has voiced shock and outrage over the sentences and called for the Internet users' release when their appeal is heard. "The trial of these young people demonstrates the Tunisian judicial system's outrageous contempt for the rights of the defence. Simply consulting Internet sites cannot be considered evidence of a terrorist plot. The Tunisian regime is trying to terrorise Internet users and silence dissent," the organisation said.
The ceasefire in Darfur, western Sudan, is a welcome first step but requires immediate and rigorous international monitoring to avert a humanitarian disaster and continued civilian displacement, Human Rights Watch said this week. The humanitarian ceasefire is aimed at halting a 15-month conflict between the government of Sudan and two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. The 45-day, automatically renewing agreement was brokered by the Chadian government and signed in N’djamena, Chad, on April 8, 2004, under international observation. The parties also agreed to try to reach a political agreement at a later date.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has called for the immediate release of Islam Salih, the Qatar-based television news network Al-Jazeera's Khartoum bureau chief. On 10 April 2004, Salih was convicted of "disseminating false news" and sentenced to one month in prison and a one million Sudanese pound (approx.US$3,800; 3,200 euros at the official rate) fine. He faces another month in prison if he does not pay the fine. The organisation also urged the Sudanese authorities to lift their news blackout on the tragic situation in the Darfur region, which is the underlying reason for Salih's arrest and imprisonment.
Ongoing crimes against humanity and acts of genocide are being perpetrated by the Ethiopian Armed Forces and "highlander" militias against the Anuak (or Anywaa) indigenous ethnic group, which comprises around 100 000 persons, in rural areas of Gambella, Ethiopia, according to information received by The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). Since December 2003, there have been numerous reports of attacks leading to massacres of civilians, mass rapes, forced disappearances, torture, illegal arrests and detentions, burning of homes and crops, and the forced displacement of thousands of persons. These acts have caused a humanitarian crisis which may lead to a significant number of additional casualties if steps are not taken immediately by the Government of Ethiopia and the international community, says OMCT.
The official version of the Rwandan genocide is largely a fairytale, argues commentator George Monbiot in this article from The Guardian UK. Monbiot argues that the recent commemorations of the genocide masked the resource-plunder of the DRC by the Rwandan government. "The prosperity which has helped to secure peace in Rwanda derives in large part from the plunder which has helped to sustain war in the DRC," he writes.
Trade liberalisation processes impact differently on men and women due to the fact that men and women have different roles in production. Despite the fact that women are actively involved in international trade, WTO agreements are gender blind and as such have adverse impacts on women. The first part of this paper presents an analysis of the impacts of WTO agreements on women in developing countries. Provisions of specific agreements and the impacts on women are outlined. The second and main section of the paper is a compilation of case studies on the impacts of trade liberalisation on women in Africa.
Trade policy continues to overlook the work of social reproduction, or 'the invisible, unpaid and undervalued work required to sustain the human family and the human community', which is done predominantly by women. There are four areas that fall under the jurisdiction of the WTO that are critical to social reproduction which, this report argues, should be removed from the WTOs jurisdiction: agriculture, services, intellectual property and investment.
The United States, as the main investor in and beneficiary of Angola's oilfields should stop supporting the "sham government" of Angola, according to Rafael Marques, a freelance journalist and director of the Open Society Foundation, Angola. "The US has more leverage than any other country or international institution over the Angolan rulers. It has been very supportive of them. So it can help, through a clear and committed support to democracy and human rights protection, to stop them from plundering the country and from derailing it back into the darkness of sheer violence and an uncertain future." Marques was making a presentation to the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars Africa Program in Washington DC on April 5 2004.
A radical redistribution of land in Namibia could lead to disinvestment and undermine economic growth, a new study has warned. Land reform in the southwest African country has re-emerged as a political hot potato since last year. Frustrated by the slow pace of transferring commercial farmland from white to black Namibians, the government announced that it would accelerate the land reform process by expropriating property.
Amnesty International has reiterated the importance of effective international oversight of the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the UN Commission on Human Rights. "Barely a week ago UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned continuing atrocities in DRC and expressed concern over rising factionalism within the DRC's government of national unity. In Amnesty International's view, it therefore staggers belief that the Commission would consider removing such an essential mechanism for the effective international scrutiny of human rights in that country."
The Government is going to appoint a special team to investigate reports of employees' rights violations within Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in Changamwe area of Mombasa. Coast Provincial Commissioner, Cyrus Maina, said he would set up the team, after being informed by officials of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) that the lives of hundreds of employees in three EPZs were in danger, as they were forced to work overnight under lock and key.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has heavily criticised Guinea, describing the West African country as a "caricature of democracy," where basic freedoms are enshrined in law, but are not respected by the government of President Lansana Conte. The Paris-based human rights organisation published its report earlier this week shortly after the government banned two opposition leaders from leaving the country to travel to Senegal.
The number of suspected cholera cases has increased in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, since the beginning of April, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) medical officer. Speaking by telephone from Mogadishu, Muhammad Fuje said between 3 April and 9 April, 489 diarrhoeal cases had been diagnosed in three of the city's hospitals, of whom nine patients had died.
Rebel forces occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire have played down suggestions that they may declare a separate breakaway state following the latest setback to implementing a year-old peace agreement. Rebel leader Guillaume Soro told a rally in the rebel capital Bouake on 4 April that his "New Forces" movement had set up its own administration in the north and had got schools functioning again without the help of the government in Abidjan. The rebel authorities, he added, were even ready to pay regular salaries to their fighters for the first time.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Central African Republic (CAR) Ministry of Health have conducted immunisation drives against meningitis and measles in several parts of the country, officials told IRIN on Wednesday. MSF coordinator Carlos Recio said that MSF, in collaboration with the UN World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health, was immunizing the people in the northwestern sub-prefecture of Boguila against meningitis "A".
A local human rights organisation, Voice of The Voiceless, has claimed that at least 200 people of the Ngbandi ethnic group in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been arrested in connection with a recent attack by ex-soldiers of the nation's former army on several military and civilian installations. The chairman of the Kinshasa-based NGO, Floribert Chebeya, told IRIN on Monday that a government investigation into the incident had been "oriented" in a manner in which it seemed that only the Ngbandi people, the ethnic group of the late Congolese president, Mobutu Sese Seko, had been targeted.
A minor Senegalese politician who has confessed to re-exporting to Europe subsidised anti-retroviral drugs meant for poor Africans is gaining the support of Islamic and human rights organisations who say he is being persecuted by the government. Abdou Latif Gueye, the former president of the international charity Afrique Aide l'Afrique (AAA) has admitted buying anti-retroviral drugs from international drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline for distribution at subsidised prices to people living with AIDS in Senegal and then re-exporting part of the consignment at a profit. However, Gueye, who also heads a small political party, the Rally for Social Democracy (RDS), has been in prison for 16 months awaiting trial.
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe should be held accountable for crimes against humanity, delegates attending the Second World Bar Conference of the Forum for Barristers and Advocates heard in Cape Town on Tuesday. "What is happening there could be summed up as a gross violation of human rights and Robert Mugabe and his henchmen must be made accountable for crimes against humanity," said Dato' Param Cumaraswamy, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.
More than 1500 farm workers and their families have been evicted by the Zimbabwe government from an export-processing farm in eastern Zimbabwe. The farm workers were thrown off Kondozi farm over the Easter weekend by police, who claimed that the property belonged to a state-owned land agency. The raid came a day after Information Minister Jonathan Moyo threatened that the farm would be taken from the private owner, despite a high court ruling in the farmer's favour.
Zanzibar's parliament has passed a bill that outlaws homosexuality and lesbianism. The bill imposes stiff penalties which include up to 25 years imprisonment for those in gay relationships. The overwhelmingly Muslim Indian Ocean island is a key tourist destination on the East African coast. The attorney-general said they were determined to prevent Zanzibari culture from being corrupted. The president is expected to approve the bill into law.
International creditors of the African nation of Niger have agreed to cancel 1.2 billon dollars of its debt over time under a controversial debt relief scheme, rewarding the country for its pro-free market economic restructuring plan. Niger becomes the 11th nation to reach the completion point of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) - the mark where creditors permanently grant debt forgiveness. But doubts remain over whether the move will actually reduce poverty in one of the world's poorest nations. “Our call is for a 100 percent debt cancellation,” said Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network, a leading group that lobbies for debt forgiveness.
Food shortage has hit Cameroon, prompting agricultural experts to devise a plan to overhaul the country's farming system. This is not the first time that Cameroon, which enjoys abundant rainfall, is facing food shortages. In August 1991, the country received its first donation of 2,600 metric tonnes of food from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).
At first glance Lupane seems no different from other rural districts in Zimbabwe. Its tranquillity, coupled with a canopy of luxuriant forest, gives no indication of the recurring droughts that plague the area. Situated 170 kilometres south-west of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, this is a place where appearance masks, rather than reflects, reality. Ironically, it is the district’s lesser revealed life and issues the media and politicians are now interested in. So too are observers and human rights officials, who have zoomed in on the district as the upcoming parliamentary by-election - scheduled for May 15-16 - draws near. The government of President Robert Mugabe is determined to win this one seat, after it lost all eight in the province to the opposition in the 2000 parliamentary elections.
Malawi's chief elections officer has been suspended for alleged abuses of his office, including a claim that his wife used an electoral commission vehicle to campaign for office. The allegations against chief elections officer George Chimwaza forced the Malawi Electoral Commission to suspend him less than five weeks before the country's May 18 election, commission chairman James Kalaile, a Supreme Court justice, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
During apartheid the mining industry was the biggest employer and the main generator of the country's wealth. It was also the central pillar for the structures of racial discrimination. Today a whole raft of progressive labour laws has given workers rights they could not have dreamt of before 1994. However now as before, in this dangerous occupation, miners continue to pay with their lives in order to multiply the profits of large multinational companies. Like in other sectors of the South African economy, workers in the mining industry are reeling from the hardship and suffering caused by the steady haemorrhaging of jobs and the toll of HIV/AIDS.
"Over the last ten years the situation for women in Tanzania has changed considerably. The Tanzanian government has adopted affirmative action in encouraging gender equality in parliament and local government authorities. The number of seats in parliament held by women has risen from 10 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2000." This is according to an interview with Gertrude Mongela, MP and Speaker for the Pan-African Parliament, Tanzania, by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA).
Health workers in government hospitals went on strike Wednesday to demand a pay increment, their union announced. The chairman of Uganda Medical and Allied Workers Union, Dr Apollo Nyangasi, told The Monitor by telephone that all negotiation avenues with government had been exhausted.
Will the recent salary and harmonisation of housing allowance for public university lecturers stem the brain-drain from the country? Universities Academic Staff Union (Uasu) secretary-general, Charles Namachanja, doesn't believe so. "What we have been offered is way bellow our expectations. We wanted to be paid salaries that could attract the best brains from any part of the world," says Namachanja.
Last year the General Assembly produced a new treaty that many would say was long overdue - the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. A few dozen countries have already signed on. But now what? With the new convention as a weapon, and even before it is ratified by the 30 countries needed to bring it into force, a range of international and private organisations are demanding real action, not just promises from governments. People who have spent long years looking for reasons why some countries never make it to the level of development their resources would indicate they should are now zeroing in on corruption more than ever - along with the failure to advance the rights of women - as central impediments to progress.
Kenya has sought a delay in its participation in an African governance rating system designed to win donor and investor dollars for the globe’s poorest continent, a senior evaluator has said. Last month the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) said Kenya would be among the first four countries to be scrutinised under a peer-review system being closely watched by Africans and international lenders.
Only 6,000 people out of an estimated population of 800,000 Zambians living with HIV/AIDS have been availed with the anti-retroviral (ARV's) drugs since last year. Health Minister Brian Chituwo said this in Lusaka when he received a consignment of ARV's worth K55 million donated by the Indian government.
What works in the fight against HIV/AIDS is a combination of prevention, care, treatment and impact mitigation strategies, alongside efforts to embed HIV/AIDS responses in the broader and longer-term work of strengthening public health, promoting development, and respecting and protecting human rights. This is according to a report from the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (2003) that presents an assessment of the successes and failures of the global response to AIDS from 1993-2003.
This on-line tutorial has been compiled to provide individuals and community organisations concerned about race relations with the resources and tools to make their concerns known to a wider public. Each of the user-friendly sections below provides information ranging from how to analyse media representations to how to access the print media.
Bishop Desmond Tutu famously described South Africa as the “Rainbow Nation” after the 1994 election. Ten years later, skin colour still profoundly divides and defines South Africa. Race colours the views of the new South Africa and its future, a Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University survey has found. Two-thirds of blacks say the country is going in the right direction while majorities of coloured, Indians and whites disagree. Three in four blacks are optimistic about South Africa’s future - a view shared by fewer than half of all whites.
Internet Voice, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), is a technology that allows you to make telephone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Some services using VoIP may only allow you to call other people using the same service, but others may allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number - including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers. This page contains all the information you need to know about VoIP.
Kiswahili speakers can now spellcheck documents in their own language. A group of developers taking part in the Africa Source joined forces - and resources - to develop the first-ever Kiswahili dictionary. The project, led by Jason Githeko of Kenya and Translate.org.za's Dwayne Bailey produced the new dictionary in one of the training sessions during the conference.
An international consortium is set to launch the East and Southern Africa Centre for International Information and Communications Technology in Kampala, which will work to increase the capacity of the region to participate in international ICT policy-making. Officials of the consortium say there is widespread recognition of the role that ICT can play in poverty alleviation and socio-economic reform.
A three-day United Nations Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) Task Force meeting ended in the city of New York recently with over 300 participants, including Internet Society (ISOC), calling for more active involvement of developing countries. The meeting was in response to the request of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Plan given last December in Geneva, which requested the UN Secretary General to set up a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).
This year’s edition of the World Bank publication, African Development Indicators (ADI) 2004, launched last week, depicts a diverse picture of development in Africa, with several countries making remarkable progress and others lagging seriously behind. ADI 2004 presents data for more than 500 indicators of development for 53 countries. Thirteen Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries averaged more than five percent growth for the period 1995-2002, but many others saw their economies contract, usually as a result of severe civil conflict and adverse weather conditions. The region’s economic growth slowed in 2002 to 2.8 percent, slightly down from 2.9 percent in 2001.
The National Refugee Commission has approved the proposal of the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance (NPTA) and African Youth Parliament (AYP), Kenya, in collaboration with Movement for Cultural Awareness (MOCA) to hold a conflict management and transformation workshop with refugees at the Oru Camp, Ogun State.
The United Nations will begin the orderly repatriation of more than 300,000 Liberian refugees dispersed in other West African countries in October once the rainy season is over, Abou Moussa, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia, said on Wednesday. Moussa said that would allow time for the disarmament of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 former combatants to take place beforehand.
Efforts to tackle poverty in Mozambique have made progress with the authorities this week reporting a "visible" improvement in social services delivery. At a meeting with donors on Monday to review the country's anti-poverty programme, officials noted a drop in household poverty from 69 percent in 2000 to 54 percent in 2003. "Progress was especially visible in improvements in health care, education, and access to potable water," Prime Minister Luísa Diogo reportedly told journalists in the capital, Maputo, after the meeting. However, despite the gains, the country still faced formidable challenges, Diogo added.
The whole of last week was rightly dominated by events in memory of the victims of genocide in Rwanda.
Everybody, whether they meant it or not said: 'Never again'. One just hopes the 'Never again' is not like that echoed after the Jewish holocaust. It was a cry of shame and guilt that in practice worked out as 'never again to Jews' but open season in other areas or other peoples.
The Zionists have had no hesitation to visit holocaust on their Palestinian victims since 1948. They have continued till date because the USA, its principal Patron, and its allies are prepared to look the other way and actively encourage Israeli crimes against humanity as 'self defense', 'incursions', or 'retaliations against Palestinian Gunmen'.
Since 9/11 Bush's America has Israelised its own political and military strategies. In Iraq its capacity for occupation is being built by Sharon's experts. Therefore Israeli genocide against Palestinians is now part of the global 'war on terrorism'.
The big powers internationally refused to do anything as the Rwanda genocide went into full swing because the unwritten post second world war statute of limitation on genocide meant 'not against Jews' anymore, otherwise how does one explain the repetitions of genocide since 1945 in different areas of the world?
But because of cold war (and the cruel logic of protecting 'our bloody crooks') or in order to derogate international responsibility consequent to the Geneva convention on Genocide, they changed the terms to 'ethnic massacres', 'civil war' or now the more fashionable, 'ethnic cleansing'.
It was a very big struggle in 1994 to get the world to accept that what was happening in Rwanda was Genocide because the USA and some of the European countries especially Britain that are now trying to outdo each other as 'the best friend of Rwanda' did not want to accept their international obligations that would have necessitated direct military intervention to stop the genocide.
There was vicarious guilt by many African states too, largely conditioned by regimes who were like the kettle calling the pot black. After the genocide a new guilt about their inaction has set in that makes them largely uncritical of Rwanda's government.
The guilt is by no means limited to extra African powers. Even across Africa the huge official diplomatic and political good will towards Rwanda now has been mostly due to four factors.
One, guilt about African inaction on the Genocide. Two, many predicted that the RPF would not last long in power but it has proven them wrong and showed itself a real force to be reckoned with. Three, many African leaders really envy President Kagame for the kind of tight control he has over his government and country. Four, there are many especially civilianised generals in Africa who are genuinely mesmerized by the military prowess of General Kagame.
Therefore from initial doubts and suspicion the RPF government is now in danger of becoming too respectable in Africa. The consequence of this universal rehabilitation both in Africa and internationally is that a post humus statute of limitation on genocide is being imposed on Africa.
We shout 'never again' in Rwanda and are silent on other genocidaire activities on this continent. What is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan is genocide that is understated as 'civil war', 'Militia violence', or ‘rebellion’.
The world is so desperate for an end to the 'Southern Sudan problem' that it is not prepared to confront other structural problems of marginalization of Sudanese peoples. Darfur is one of the historically marginalized areas of Sudan whose interests are not protected by the largely military treaty agreed between the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army/ Movement.
Yet another error as is common with many peace agreements across Africa (except South Africa) is where priority is given to military formations and those groups that have no armies are supposed to just put up or shut up. It is not by accident that the Darfur liberation efforts took military form as the agreements in Naivasha were being drawn up.
The logic is clear: Our claims can only be credible if we show a capacity to threaten everybody. The Government of Sudan has previously fuelled the conflict by proxy but now it is direct through its allied Arab Militias in the region. It had kept up the pretence that what is happening in Darfur is a kind of local 'tribal conflict'.
But it was a kind of local battle in which the Arab militias have had the support and active encouragement of the Khartoum government to kill, maim, rape and destroy the local population of Darfur who are mostly of African origin.
For Genocide to occur the ideology must exist. The Arab militias believe in their innate superiority and consider the African population as inferior peoples fit only as beasts of burden, to accept Arab or Arabised supremacy without question. The other condition for genocide to take hold is willingness of the government to let this happen with impunity or even encourage it actively.
Lastly, genocide succeeds because the international community refuses to act. All these conditions hold for Darfur. The government of Sudan bombs the people indiscriminately and the Arab militia kill from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, house to house. Like their slave raiding ancestors, they arrive on Camels and horses to wreck havoc on Darfur's defenceless citizens.
People of Darfur do not have to lose another one million people as in Rwanda before we wake up. The dead are already in the thousands and the displaced are almost three quarter of a million. If the UN and the powers that be cannot act what about the new African Union constitutive act of Union that specifically identified genocide and other crimes against humanity as a basis for intervention?
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.
Sixty years after their founding, the World Bank and IMF remain the dominant institutions in development but face determined opposition to their role in shaping globalisation. Bank president James Wolfensohn says that critics should stop "going back to things that were addressed five years ago". The Bank says it has moved on from the Washington consensus to the Post-Washington consensus. Of the ten elements which made up the original 'Washington Consensus', three have been both most aggressively pursued and most strongly opposed. Have the Bank and Fund changed their attitudes to liberalisation, privatisation and fiscal austerity?
* Conflict and Emergencies: Monitor Darfur ceasefire, says Human Rights Watch
* When 'never again' becomes again and again
* Human Rights: Ethiopian Anuak face crimes against humanity
* Women and Gender: Trade policy overlooks women's role
* Elections and Governance: US should rethink its support for Angolan government
* Development: The World Bank and IMF at 60: Any changes?
* HIV/AIDS: Ten years on in the struggle against Aids
* Education: Access and the privatisation of education
* Land and Land Rights: No progress in WTO agriculture talks
Slightly more than a year after the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) took power on a “popular wave”, the Front for Popular Change has been launched in Kenya. The move follows the launching early this year of “Masikini Liberation Front” and “Chama cha Wananchi”, two ambiguous formations which were launched without political programs, profiles or funfair. The emergence of new “popular” fronts and Movements in Kenya is a direct reaction to the political vacuum that currently exists in the opposition after Narc came to power, failure of the government to honour basic election promises and mass disillusionment with the Kibaki administration due to internal wrangling, power struggles and personality clashes.
Not enough thought and resources has been given to healing the wounds of survivors of the Rwandan genocide, says African Rights in a new report. "Many say that for them it is as if time has stood still - their everyday lives are still dominated by the genocide." African Rights said much more must urgently be done. "We issue a special plea to the international community to recognize in particular the unbearable suffering endured by the survivors of genocide and rape and their immediate need of assistance." The report 'Broken Bodies, Torn Spirits, Living with Genocide, Rape and HIV/AIDS' provides detailed testimony of the condition of genocide survivors.
The third free election and the 10th anniversary of democracy in SouthAfrica this month together offer a chance to distinguish between celebratory and critical thinking.
Global and local mainstream media tend to the former, adding the obvious caveats about Pretoria's handling of AIDS and Zimbabwe, and remarking upon unemployment. Henning Melber's Pambazuka #151 article, 'What choices for South African voters', in the latter category, has already advanced a variety of other doubts about, especially, the regional and international weaknesses of president Thabo Mbeki's government, which we need not dwell on here.
Now that the dust is settling on the election results - with no surprises whatsoever - the polity can consider what trajectories might lead to a different future, and what socio-economic results of a ten-year neoliberal governing strategy must be reversed. The details of the government's domestic performance since 1994 should be subject to far more rigorous examination, now that the hot rhetoric of the campaigns is fading.
The results, after all, appear tediously similar to 1999. The ruling African National Congress won roughly 70%, as anticipated, and Mbeki's brilliant Machiavellian divide-and-conquer of the white-dominated opposition parties reduced their combined vote markedly, with Tony Leon's Democratic Alliance winning around 13%. At closer to 5%, half its 1994 percentage, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party will need the DA to help it continue governing KwaZulu-Natal. The 2% won by Patricia de Lille's centrist Independent Democrats was in the same league as the conservative African Christian Democratic Party and the New National Party, which in 1994 had more than 20% and in 1999, 7%. The Afrikaner bitter-ender Freedom Front had 1%. Parties whose critique of ANC rule was mainly from the left did badly: the United Democratic Movement and Pan Africanist Congress appear to have each barely maintained a parliamentary seat; the black-consciousness Azanian Peoples Organisation and its breakaway Socialist Party of Azania do not seem to have even attained parliamentary standing.
But with its two-thirds of the vote, will the ANC use its power to pass constitutional amendments that could, in theory, revise the Constitution against residual property rights and patriarchy, in favour of the ANC's low-income, black, women constituents? Although ANC campaigners are talking left these days, the same people, when in government, persist in walking right.
One reason is that the progressive forces which did not run candidates for election have not shown sufficient strength and consistency, what with ANC-aligned trade unionists sending mixed signals, and independent leftists in the urban communities and rural landless movement working at cross-purposes. Leading Johannesburg township activists engaged in a spoiled-ballot exercise (they scrawled all over their voter card), in tactical conflict with the Landless People's Movement, which called for a simple boycott, in anticipation that the apathy factor would rise substantially. Early returns suggest that turnout was substantially lower than 1994 and 1999, but at more than 70% of registered voters, the LPM cannot claim victory for the boycott strategy.
What the landless activists can do, however, is honour the arrests of more than 50 of their members in the ghetto of Thembelihle, near Soweto, on election day. As their press release explained, 'The people have been arrested in terms of the Electoral Code of Conduct and the 1993 Prohibition of Illegal Gatherings Act. The charges are related to illegal gatherings on the day of elections. The LPM regards the charges as spurious. The LPM members were not permitted to gather even though they were prepared to observe regulations allowing only protests held at least 200m from any polling station. They were arrested as they disembarked from their transport, and so no gathering or meeting even took place.'
Judging by this sort of repressive - indeed, paranoid - security and the falling living standards experienced by the majority of black South Africans, the government should be subject to the kinds of insurgent protests witnessed recently in Bolivia and Argentina. To naysay these harsh realities, the ANC took to doctoring simple statistics during the campaign.
Some illustrations demonstrate why the government can make inspiring claims of delivery - but retain market-oriented policies ranging from macroeconomics to microdevelopment. It is no secret that Pretoria's homegrown structural adjustment policy, co-authored by the World Bank in 1996, codified the pro-corporate economic philosophy inherited from apartheid. The result was the doubling of the formal unemployment rate from 16% in 1994 to 32% in 2002. When one considers, in addition, those millions of people who have given up any hope of finding a job, the rate rises to 43%. Both the public and private sectors shed more than 10% of formal sector jobs since liberation in 1994.
Yet as the election neared, ANC politicians like trade and industry minister Alec Erwin began insisting that two million new jobs were created since 1994, based on an official Labour Force Survey. That survey defines 'employment' as including 'beg[ging] money or food in public' and 'catch[ing] any fish, prawns, shells, wild animals or other food for sale or family food.' Asked about this measure two months ago, the main trade union official, Zwelinzima Vavi, said simply, 'It is absurd to record such labour as jobs.' Nevertheless, last week Vavi's chief economist defended the statistics by way of justifying labour's endorsement of the ANC as the only party with, supposedly, 'the workers' interests at heart.'
In reality, the ten-year liberation celebrations to be held around the day of Mbeki's re-inauguration, April 27, will be much more boisterous in the mansions and corporate headquarters of Johannesburg. 'The government is utterly seduced by big business, and cannot see beyond its immediate interests,' remarked the neoliberal editor of Business Day newspaper, Peter Bruce, last June.
Shortsighted ANC election propaganda bragged of having created 'a level of macroeconomic stability not seen in the country for 40 years.' Stability? In reality, there were three currency crashes witnessed over a period of a few weeks in February-March 1996, June-July 1998 and December 2001, ranging from 30 to 50% each. Each led to massive interest rate increases which sapped growth and rewarded the speculators. These moments of macroeconomic instability were as dramatic as any other incidents during the previous two centuries, including the September 1985 financial panic that split big business from the apartheid regime and paved the way for ANC rule.
It is here that the core concession made by the ANC during the early 1990s transition deal is apparent, namely in the desire by white businesses to escape the economic stagnation and declining profits born of a classical capitalist crisis, in the context of a sanctions-induced laager, and amplified by the 1970s-80s rise of black militancy in workplaces and communities.
The deal represented simply this: black nationalists got the state, while white people and corporations could remove their capital from the country, and simultaneously remain domiciled in South Africa with, thanks to economic liberalisation, still more privileges. Trade, credit, cultural and sports sanctions ended; exchange controls were lifted; luxury imports flooded in; white people's incomes rose by 15% during the late 1990s; taxes were cut dramatically; and the corporate pre-tax profit share soared during the late 1990s, back to 1960s-era levels associated with apartheid's heyday.
Hence inequality soared during ANC rule, state statistics show. Black 'African' South Africans suffered an income crash of 19% from 1995-2000, with every indication of further degeneration in subsequent years. The ANC rebuttal is that when state spending is accounted for, the inequality lessens. Yet notwithstanding deeper poverty, the state raised water and electricity prices, to the point that by 2002 they consumed 30% of the income of those households earning less than $70 per month. An estimated 10 million people had their water cut off, according to two national government surveys, and 10 million were also victims of electricity disconnections (see for the ongoing numbers controversy).
This is all crucial for the coming months, in the event policies can be altered by a more confident government, as claimed by leftists within the ANC and amongst its allies.
On an optimistic note, the debate over whether state services have been provided to low-income black customers in a sustainable manner - or instead are priced too high because of privatisation pressures -- was finally joined by Mbeki last week. As reported in Sunday's City Press newspaper (mainly read by blacks), 'After meeting pensioners like 92-year-old Mamelodi resident Johanna Mashigoane, whose electricity had been cut off as she could not afford to pay for it, and unemployed Macassar resident Zelna Hendricks, who had received an eviction letter from the council after failing to pay rates, Mbeki could not hide his outrage. Local government policy towards the poor, he declared, would have to change after the elections and central government would need to allocate more money to municipalities to deal with this problem.'
Although municipal policy on disconnections and evictions is in fact a national policy with World Bank fingerprints, approved by the Cabinet on several occasions, Mbeki's raised consciousness is a step forward to reality. The week before, his chief communications officer took a step backwards when he wrote insensitively in the Sunday Times (mainly read by whites) in defense of disconnections: '10 million people connected to water which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be compared with the few households occasionally cut off.'
The question is whether such zigzagging is merely a product of election rhetoric, or instead reflects the permanent contradictions between big-business advocates of essentially neoliberal development policies, and well-moblised activists. South Africa hosts some of the world's most militant social movements, who demand the decommodification of water, electricity, anti-retroviral medicines and healthcare, education, and even a Basic Income Grant.
Defenders of the elite transition deal may claim that leftward pressure on the ANC also emanates from the Constitution's celebrated socio-economic rights clauses. But the 1996 document appears a bit tattered these days, partly because the judges are too frightened to take a stand against the state's neoliberal policies, and partly because of an incident on March 21 at the opening of the Court's beautiful new building in central Johannesburg
at the site of the old Fort Prison next to Hillbrow.
The tale is worth recounting. Johannesburg community activists in the Anti-Privatisation Forum called a march to protest the installation of pre-paid water meters in Soweto by the French company Suez, which is running the city's outsourced water company. City officials banned the march on absurd grounds (traffic disturbances - on a Sunday?). The police arrested 51 activists, some simply because they were wearing red shirts, and blocked travel of APF buses into Johannesburg. Neither the judges nor Mbeki – who attended the opening ceremony - uttered a word in the protesters' defense, so even first-generation civil/political rights now appear merely contingent.
That incident aside, the country's highest court has heard three major cases on socio-economic rights: one led to the death of a man denied kidney paralysis treatment because the judges deemed it too expensive; the next helped the Treatment Action Campaign acquire AIDS medicines for pregnant women because the judges agreed the state was needlessly killing tens of thousands of infants each year; and another allegedly enforced the right to emergency municipal services - but checking back on the successful plaintiff, Irene Grootboom, in her Cape Town ghetto, the Sunday Times found her community as destitute as in September 2000, at the time of her case.
To be sure, the status of women like Grootboom includes some improvements since 1994, especially in reproductive rights, albeit with extremely uneven access. But contemporary South Africa retains apartheid's patriarchal modes of surplus extraction, thanks to both residual sex discrimination and the migrant (rural-urban) labour system, which is still subsidised by women stuck in the former bantustan homelands.
Structured super-exploitation of women is accompanied by an apparent increase in domestic violence associated with rising male unemployment. Mbeki was quoted by the SA Press Association on March 22, the day after Human Rights Day: 'He said if ever his sister was to arrive home and tell him that she was in love with African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe, he would have to beat her.' A spokesperson said the president was only joking.
Women are also the main caregivers in the home, and bear the highest burden associated with degraded health. Public-sector services continue declining due to underfunding and competition from private providers. Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, diarrhea, cholera, malaria and AIDS are rife, all far more prevalent than during apartheid. Most South Africans with HIV still have little prospect of receiving antiretroviral drugs to extend their lives. Only last week - in time for the election -- did the medicines finally begin to make their way to hospitals and a few clinics.
During his five years as president, Mbeki has taken various obstinate stands against the poor and the sick. He has also stood down human rights activists and arms-control groups opposed to his $6 billion purchase of sophisticated weaponry from European corporations. The widespread influence-peddling scandals associated with the arms deal threatened deputy president Jacob Zuma last year, after he allegedly solicited a bribe in a manner the justice minister deemed 'prima facie corruption', and it forced the resignation of several leading ANC politicians and officials caught in plots.
On the environmental front, the country's ecosystem as today in worse condition, in many crucial respects -- e.g., water and soil resources mismanagement, contributions to global warming, fisheries, industrial toxics, genetic modification -- than during apartheid. For example, in spite of water scarcity, major dam projects are generating destructive environmental consequences downriver, and the extremely high costs of water transfer deter consumption by poor people. The location of natural surface and groundwater remains skewed towards white farmers due to apartheid land dispossession. Because a World Bank-style neoliberal land reform policy was adopted just after liberation, less than 3% of arable land was redistributed, as against a 1994-99 target of 30%.
The systematically repressive side of Mbeki's regime was unveiled to the world during the August 2002 protests against the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development. Leading anti-privatisation activists in the black townships of Johannesburg and Cape Town are repeatedly harassed and detained by police -- mainly illegally (resulting in high-profile acquittals) – for resisting evictions and disconnections. Treatment Action Campaign members were savagely beaten in early 2003 during a non-violent civil disobedience campaign to acquire medicines.
In short, the record upon which the ANC campaigned was one of low-intensity democracy in which the ruling party regularly wins elections because US-style corporatist trade unions remain aligned to the ruling party, their leaders unwilling to risk establishing a broad-based progressive movement to fight neoliberalism from outside. But because the transition from racial to class apartheid will not go unpunished forever, this state of affairs is certainly not the last word. Certainly in another ten years, or before, a much more optimistic report will be filed: optimistic, that is, for genuine socio-economic transformation.
Patrick Bond - [email][email protected] - teaches at Wits University, Johannesburg and York University, Toronto while on sabbatical. His new book, out this month from University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, is Talk Left, Walk Right: South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 202: Global Week of Action: A continuum of struggles
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 202: Global Week of Action: A continuum of struggles
"Make every mother and child count" is the slogan of World Health Day 2005. This year's World Health Report calls for a new momentum to address and improve maternal, neonatal and child health. Every year 10 million children die, 4 million of these in the first four weeks of life (the neonatal period). Policy tensions exist between maternal health and child health, and between clinical and community-based approaches. Who matters most - the mother or the child? Is skilled care the only answer and what happens while coverage is still low? These conflicts are explored in a new key issues page on maternal, newborn and child health now available on the HRC/Eldis Health Resource Guide. This clear and concise guide outlines the key policy debates, and examines what action is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on maternal and child health. Written by experts in the field, the guide proposes a win-win solution which will benefit mothers, babies and children, while contributing to stronger health systems.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 151: WHAT CHOICES FOR SOUTH AFRICAN VOTERS?
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 151: WHAT CHOICES FOR SOUTH AFRICAN VOTERS?
Mobile Government is one of the new and important developments in e-government. The high rate of mobile phone penetration opens a new channel for governments to reach their citizens fast and provide timely information to them. The features of mobile technology to be accessible anywhere, anytime make that possible.
mGovlab provides top quality resources for Mobile Government Technologies and services. Here you will find among other things news, short articles, forums and a library of online documentation - all on mobile government.
At least 1,000 Rwandan refugees have returned home from Uganda since January, in a repatriation programme organised by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency reported on Monday. Some 228 of the returnees left Nakivale Camp in the southwestern district of Mbarara in Uganda on Monday, aboard five UNHCR trucks. "The returnees were visibly happy to be back," UNHCR reported. "Many had not seen their home country in at least 10 years, while their children had been born in the settlements and were setting foot in Rwanda for the first time."
Makerere University has engaged consultancy researchers to review the 1.5 affirmative action points scheme introduced in 1990, to enable the university to plan accordingly. According to a circular by Sebastian Ngobi, the academic registrar, the research will weigh the principles of affirmative action to enable the university's Senate to make decisions supported by factual and analytical data. Through the affirmative action scheme 1.5 points are added to the score of each eligible female A' level student applying to join Makerere University.
Over the last two years, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) Global Studies Programme has organised a series of workshops in Africa on Refugees' Right to Communicate. The series culminated in the publication of a call to action summarising the key findings of the workshops. Here, Valérie Gatabazi highlights critical gender issues in relation to the situation of refugees, based on the presentation she gave at one of the workshops which took place in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The issues are universal and call for urgent redress, especially with regard to the situation of women and girls in refugee camps.
The Fouta Djalon region of northern Guinea is among the most picturesque parts of West Africa. Its lush rolling hills are covered in coconut trees, orange trees, banana trees, mango trees - just about whatever you plant will grow. It is also the region's water tower, boasting the sources of the Rivers Niger, Senegal and Gambia. But despite its abundant natural wealth, its biggest export is people.
Rich country governments have failed to provide financing they promised under the "Education for All Fast Track Initiative" (FTI) to help fund universal primary education in poor countries, according to a World Bank report. The scheme—intended to help countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of providing primary education for all children by 2015—is suffering from a lack of financing, according to a report by World Bank staff. The report was prepared for the development committee of finance and development ministries, which advises the boards of the World Bank and IMF.
This report, by Human Rights Watch, explores the human rights situation of child soldiers in Liberia through a series of interviews with former and current child soldiers undertaken in the country in late 2003. The report argues that approximately 15,000 boys and girls under the age of eighteen, some as young as nine and ten years old, were involved in the fighting in Liberia. Since the enforced ceasefire of August 2003, an extensive demobilisation program which includes specific provisions for child soldiers, has been put in place. The rehabilitation of child soldiers, however, remains an enormous challenge: whole communities have been destroyed; populations have been displaced; and many children have lost one or more family members.
The ceasefire agreed between the Angolan government and UNITA in 2002 ended 27 years of civil war and provided the momentum for millions of internally displaced people (IDPs) to return home. More than four million people were displaced before the ceasefire. In early 2004, 450,000 of them were still waiting to go back to their homes, while around 400,000 were expected to settle permanently in their current place of residence. The majority of those IDPs who were able to return have faced a lack of basic services and food insecurity, as well as a widespread threat of land mines.
Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Burundians have fled their homes to escape fighting between the government and Hutu rebel groups seeking to put an end to the political dominance of the Tutsi minority. Many others, predominantly Hutus, were forcibly displaced into camps by the government in the second part of the 1990s. More than one in seven Burundians has fled his or her home over the past ten years. Prospects for the return of internally displaced people (IDPs) improved significantly at the end of 2003, following the signing of ceasefire agreements between the government and several rebel groups. Many challenges lie ahead though, such as conflicting land claims and the lack of preparation of communities in areas of origin to receive returnees may complicate the process.
A first group of displaced Liberian teachers have gone home with UNHCR assistance under plans to resume basic services and restore normalcy for tens of thousands of returnees in post-conflict Liberia. They had fled their homes and jobs at Zwedru's Multilateral High School at the height of the conflict last year, and are returning now as part of efforts by the Ministry of Education to kick-start basic services like education in areas of return.
The new third series of the ever popular and controversial Yizo Yizo, which is going to embrace South Africa television screen on the 1st of April 2004, promises to blaze the country with another burning issues. In this new edutainment series, the Yizo Yizo makers attempt to show that the inner city is evolving and is becoming what you can term a "new township".
CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organisations, has released a study on the legislative frameworks and country practices that governs civil space in Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. The study relates specifically to freedom of association, expression and assembly in these four countries, with a focus on the grave and worsening situation in Zimbabwe.
The Seychellois government has announced that Seychelles has become the first small island nation in the world to develop an integrated national strategy for plant conservation under the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.
The path to democracy is long and weary, experience has shown. Unfortunately there is no shortcut that one can take because the entrenchment of democratic thinking has to be firmly anchored in the mind of the nation through experience, sometimes very painful. It is a good thing for us that we do not have to re-invent the wheel. It is there, rolling in our lives, and sometimes we take this for granted.
The weekly Sesotho tabloid, Mololi, a publication of the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy political party, has been served with a court summons by a Member of Parliament for Mokhotlong constituency No. 79, demanding maloti 350 000 (approximately 54 000 US dollars), for defamation.
African leaders are busy signing agreements with major US software companies, granting them long term monopolies in return for short term donations. They are proudly announcing short-term benefits but remaining silent about any long-term costs. Foreign corporations know well how important immediate benefits are to politicians and how difficult it is for them to resist such opportunities.