Why were we colonized? And were we ever really decolonized? These are the central questions that should be at the core of liberation discourse in Zimbabwe and Africa at large, in order to start dealing with neo-colonial ‘ghosts’. These ghosts are real enough when they take the form of dictatorships, exploitative neo-liberal capitalism and repression of our growing resistance to these.

Dibussi Tande, who produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, brings this week's selection which covers: Zambians living abroad; the vulnerabilities of South Africa; identity and belonging in Africa; political invovlement and the younger generation in Malawi; persecution of members of the African LGBTI community in a number of African countries; and the elections held in Cameroon in July 2007.

comments about the exclusion of Zambians living abroad from the planned National Constitution Conference (NCC):

"The Government has responsibility to ensure Zambians abroad were brought into the fold to take part in such crucial issues. Equal responsibility also lie with Zambians abroad who should not wait for Government and other people to 'remember' them! Zambians abroad must seize the initiative to define their destiny - unless they gave up being Zambian long time ago! It is for this reason that I fully support what ZASN is trying to do in creating a framework where Zambians abroad can leverage their skills and expertise back home. Our hope surely must be that may be one day an organisation like ZASN can push for such representation in other areas of decision making e.g. voting (which I currently oppose but maybe future technology will overcome my worries)."

Eliesmith argues that the South Africa has the potential to become another Zimbabwe:

"But the truth is that, if care is not taken, South Africa may become second Zimbabwe in less than two decades. The current economic, political and social ruin in Zimbabwe, engineered by a clique headed by Robert Gabriel Mugabe, has made that country (Zimbabwe), not just to become a metaphor for countries on the highway to economic, political and social oblivion, but, she has also shown the vulnerability of a country like South Africa, which, apparently have stronger institutions than countries on the rest of the continent. Well, that is, in a situation where, people with similar ideologies now leading Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe's ruling ZANUPF, takes over the ANC in South Africa and thus wins political power in 2009.

But South Africa is not yet Zimbabwe and we are all still impressed and bewildered at the same time, how that country, has succeeded to sail through apartheid to a multiracial democracy, without the expected bloodbath baptism. Some say, the South African miracle or political feat happened because, the creation of what is/was labelled the rainbow nation, which bore and wore, the consensus and the no-need-for-revenge-attitude of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. And this question: What will happen after the fatherly figure of Nelson Mandela is gone? Perhaps Frederick Willem De Klerk will take over. However, It is true that, since 1994 and until now, the Mandela effect is there, casting his strong shadow over the country."

Senegal-based blogger Francis Nyamnjoh

What these brief notes on the Tikar tell us is that pre- and post-colonial identities in Cameroon and throughout Africa are complex, negotiated and relational experiences that call for a nuanced rather than an essentialist articulation of identity and belonging (Nyamnjoh 2002; Pelican 2006). With the Tikar, as well as with any other group in Cameroon, Africa, America or elsewhere, being 'authentic' is a function of the way race, place, culture, class and gender define and prescribe, include and exclude.

'The project is multi-pronged with emphases on tackling environmental issues that directly affects the villagers, building sustainable infrastructures, empowering the villagers to seek manageable solutions, especially the women and providing an efficient health care program.

According to Malawi Politics the young Malawians do not seem interested in playing leading roles in the country's political life:

"When you look at what is happening in Malawi now, one would think there are no fresh faces in our politics. All we hear from are the same recycled tired old politicians all of them groomed by Malawi congress Party.

Why does the young generation refuse to get involved? To serve requires sacrifice. A lot of our brothers are in the Diaspora building a future for themselves and their kids...

It is the intention of Malawi Politics to encourage our readers and contributors to bring up fresh names to this dialogue. Our generation should not so easily concede to the old Gladiators. Their time came and went. Africa and Malawi is looking for economic freedom and fresh ideas.

It is our time to fight for Malawi."

Blacklooks writes about the persecution of members of the African LGBTI community in a number of African countries in recent weeks:

"The African LGBTI community has been under attack this week in Cameroon, Nigeria and in Uganda...In Nigeria there were riots in Bauchi state after some of the men arrested were released on bail and faced a barrage of stone throwers from the crowds... The case for the 4 young men [arrested] in the Cameroon is worrying as only last year 9 men were released after spending a year in prison for charges of homosexuality which were eventually dropped."

'On the whole, however, these elections represent a missed opportunity for Cameroon - a missed opportunity to continue building public confidence in the democratic process as Cameroon looks ahead to its next election.'

*Dibussi Tande produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, http://www.dibussi.com

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem comments on African leaders' apparent contradictions between regionalism and contintenal unity, and how their quest for regional integration is becoming a smoke-screen for slowing political union. But, he says, 'How can you argue for gradualism at the continental level and not concede the same at regional and national levels? That is the ridiculous but logical conclusion of the gradualist argument about pan-Africanism. They will never be ready.'

The world’s ancient forests continue to be destroyed at an alarming rate – threatening both biodiversity and the global climate. Do you want to do something about it? Do you have a talent for creating positive change? If so, you might be the person we are looking for to join our international team as a forest campaigner. Closing Date: 21 September 2007.

This open conference brings together business, multilateral institutions, governments and civil society to discuss the role of business in respecting and promoting human rights. In today's business environment, companies play a critical role in ensuring that international standards of human rights are being upheld and promoted. This relation-ship is highlighted in the United Nations Global Compact, which lists adherence to human rights as its first principal, emphasizing the need for business to use its re-sources and expertise to rebalance global inequality.

I understand what Pambazuka is about - a platform, and outlet for those angry indignant people who have experienced an injustice and raised their pen to wage a war against it, with a pent-up feeling simmering inside them. It is there for them. I know what it really means because I was in search of such a platform myself for a few years and I tell you it has never been easy to find one. But it is not for those who have already spent their anger and indignation. I really appreciate your service in providing this platform as it gives voice for the voiceless.

The UN refugee agency is working with internally displaced Sudanese to rehabilitate the environmental degradation that has been both a cause and a consequence of the Darfur conflict. Earlier this year, UNHCR through its implementing partner INTERSOS started a community-based environmental rehabilitation project in three localities in West Darfur: Forobaranga, a small town bordering Chad, in Garsila and in Um Kher village

Kenya's parliament will soon debate a constitutional amendment bill to improve female representation in the legislature by creating 50 special seats for women. At present, only some eight percent of parliamentary posts in the East African country are occupied by women. The bill is scheduled for discussion Aug. 14, to be adopted or rejected in its entirety the same day. Over 2,000 women from across Kenya will be present at parliament to lobby legislators to vote for the bill.

A report published by Wateraid argues that there is a genuine risk that the human development related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be met if international donors continue to pursue single issue ‘global causes’ instead of building an aid system that will respond to the complex needs of poor communities.

This paper by the UN Millennium Project analyses the need to reform abortion laws and policies in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on maternal health, gender equality and poverty reduction. The paper reviews existing international agreements which support access to safe and legal abortion including the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action, and the actions of international bodies, governments and non-governmental organisations in promoting women’s access to safe abortion.

Experts are warning Senegalese men who have sex with men not to get caught up in the hype about male circumcision after recent research indicated that the procedure could offer some protection against HIV, and are urging them to keep using other means of protection. In 2006, the results of three studies, one each in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, showed that the risk of HIV infection was up to 60 percent lower among circumcised men. However, these studies were specific to heterosexual interaction.

Military officials in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda say they will work together to ease tensions along their shared border, where two people were killed in clashes last week. Army officers from the two sides met on Monday on an island in Lake Albert, which straddles the border.

It all seems almost too normal to be newsworthy. On August 11, Sierra Leone goes to the polls to choose a new president among three candidates, all pledging to reform government, create jobs, address health and education, and expand the economy. For most countries, this would hardly merit outside attention. But Sierra Leone remains for many the ultimate symbol of the failed state, the classic case of a violent crisis arising from environmental degradation, crime, overpopulation, and ethnic divisions. What seems normal elsewhere is exceptional here.

The demons of the past will remain the evils that will continue cursing the development of ICT in Africa, if not exorcised. This was the sentiment held by the delegates attending the session on 'ICT Policy in Africa' at the SANGONeT conference. Delegates from various countries in Africa were given an opportunity to share experiences of the information technology communication (ICT) environment in their countries.

More than a dozen activists from the Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise were finally released on Thursday, but they had been badly beaten. They were arrested on Tuesday while playing a game of netball and mixed soccer when state security agents arrested them at Macheke Stadium in Masvingo. The victims spent two cold nights in police cells in their sports uniform. They were released after being forced to pay admission of guilt fines. WOZA coordinator Jenni Williams said all 16 activists were badly beaten.

Namibia is to set up two special offices to implement obligations related to climate change control under the Kyoto Protocol. Namibia acceded to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in July 2003. To implement the Protocol, Namibia needs to establish a Designated National Authority (DNA) and a Clean Development Mechanism Office (CDM). At its latest meeting, Cabinet decided to create these two offices.

The yams in the family plot were ripe when Elizabeth Igwenagu's husband died. But at the end of the one-week-long burial rite, his family harvested the entire crop of the thick, potato-like tubers, a staple starch in southern Nigeria. In many African societies, women's rights to land and property are tenuous and dependent on males. Although legislation may guarantee equality among men and women, family matters are often managed under customary law, which evolved to retain property within the family and under male control.

Community wireless networks have been set up at telecentres in northern Uganda in Lira and Nabweru, areas that are considered extremely rural by the CWRC. This intervention arose out of the need to reduce the high cost of Internet connectivity at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) that is supporting telecentres in Uganda, to explore optimal connectivity models such as sharing the existing bandwidth with neighboring institutions via outdoor wireless networks.

There is an innate paradox in the global conversation about poverty alleviation that eludes even the most astute scholars. Proponents of foreign aid are advocating for a big push, featuring an increase in foreign aid through which billions of dollars could be transferred to the poor. Yet $2.3 trillion in foreign aid and nearly sixty years later, over one billion people around the world are still hungry, infirm, illiterate and homeless.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Thursday spoke out against corruption in poor countries that receive the bank's loans, echoing the anti-graft stance of his controversial predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz. "If people are trying to steal the World Bank's money, we can't accept that," Zoellick told reporters.

Africa is witnessing impressive growth in the development and use of mobile communication networks and the Internet. This development is changing the face of media and the way people are informed. Open communication and uncensored exchange of opinions are helping to build transparent societies. This serves good governance and helps to build stronger democracies.

The Africa Women Peace Makers Program (AWPP) is a Program of International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and is committed to showcasing Africa as a beacon for peaceful co-existence by enhancing the capacities of Africa women peace makers to promote gender sensitive active non-violence. The Africa WPP intends to hold a Training of Trainers (ToT) is to deepen participants’ skills in gender and nonviolence training and education, in order strengthen their capacities to spread the work of WPP through empowering women at the grassroots.

The Maandagshoek community, nestled in a valley just outside Burgersfort (a booming mine town that straddles the Mpumalanga-Limpopo border), is theoretically one of the richest places on the planet. But here, where platinum rises up from the bowels of the earth to empower a new breed of capitalist, the people of this valley still wait for the illusive dream of a ‘better life’ for all’.

Making Governance Gender Responsive (MGGR)" is a generic course that can be adapted and modified to suit the needs of the different countries in Asia-Pacific. The initial training module was developed by the Center for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics (CAPWIP), with funding support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through its Asia-Pacific Gender Equality Network (UNDP-APGEN) and the Regional Governance Programme for Asia and the Pacific (UNDP-PARAGON). The training will take place from November 12-19, 2007.

Workers migrate away from their families to serve as labor in rich countries and send capital in the form of remittances, or money transfers, back to their loved ones in impoverished communities around the world,say Yania Marcelino and Shannah Kurland in a report for New America Media. But a key challenge faced by these communities is the high fees associated with remittance transactions. Studies show that if money-transfer fees were cut in half, 33 million people could be lifted out of poverty in the developing world.

"My name is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help." A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet café at the north Kenyan camp.

The Ugandan Government is mobilizing funds to send primary and secondary school teachers to Rwanda for training in Information and Communication Technology(ICT). Speaking at the Uganda-Rwanda Education Joint Expo in Kigali recently, the education minister, Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire, said "Rwanda has taken serious strides in the development of ICT to achieve its development goals and it's a good lesson for us."

The British Council is looking for young people who have an interest in exploring past and present relationships between Africa and the UK by documenting the personal histories of families over three generations, highlighting shared experiences, and creating fresh understanding to build new relationships for the future. Forms must be returned by 3 September 2007.

As is customary, Pambazuka News is taking a break during August to rest and recharge the batteries. The next issue (No 317) is scheduled for 30 August 2007. We wish all our readers and contributors a good break - and thank you for your continued support in making Pambazuka News the platform for discussion, analyses and advocacy in Africa.

The lives of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, who daily try to cross the border from Egypt into Israel, may be in danger, following the use of excessive force by law enforcement officials in the area. This follows the reported death of two men believed to be of Sudanese origin, who were allegedly shot dead by Egyptian security forces as they attempted to cross the border during the night of 1 August 2007.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)has condemned the statements uttered by the Zambian Minister of Information, Mike Mulongoti’s that those threatening to beat up some media personnel are justified, because they have no other forum through which they could express themselves. “These statements are uncalled for and unexpected from a personality holding such a respectable position as the Minister of Information” said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office.

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Somalia François Lonsény Fall has called on the war-ravaged East African nation’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to invite opposition groups to join the reconciliation meeting currently under way in the capital Mogadishu. “We would like to see the stakeholders who renounce violence inside and outside the country take part in this process,” Mr. Fall said in an address to the National Reconciliation Congress.

Climate change could lead to potential food shortages and increase the risk of hunger in developing countries, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has said. However, industrialized countries could see an increase in their crop yields, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said in a speech in Chennai, India.

Repression continues with no end in sight as pro-democrats continue to be arrested and brutalized with impunity, by state security agents. Just this week alone a torture victim from the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) is missing in Mutare; another victim of police brutality, a student leader, has been seriously injured and is in custody in Bulawayo and more than a dozen members of Women/Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA/MOZA) were arrested when they were playing sport in Masvingo.

Sierra Leone holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday, the first since U.N. peacekeepers left two years ago and a watershed in its recovery from an 11-year civil war fuelled by "blood diamonds". President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a war-time leader re-elected on a wave of euphoria after a 2002 peace deal, is stepping down under the constitution amid dismay at his Sierra Leone People's Party's (SLPP) failure to provide water, power or decent roads in one of the world's poorest countries.

The High Court in Chennai, India has upheld India’s Patents Act in the face of a challenge by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. The ruling allows the Asian country, dubbed the “pharmacy of the developing world”, to continue supplying antiretrovirals at much reduced prices to countries battling to treat the thousands in need.

It was as if my CD player had developed a heart, a passion, a resonant emotion of its own. How, I thought to myself, can an instrument such as the double bass, usually lost as the background in the orchestra, so rarely heard as an instrument in its own right, play with such passion and meaning? And how was it that it has such meaning for me, largely unschooled in Western classical music? I don’t pretend to have even heard of the Italian romantic composer Bottesini, so I can’t say whether it was just the music that touched me. But I also sensed that it was the player, the South African musician Leon Bosch, who was reaching out to me, across years of experience of repression and suffering – that was what made listening to this an extraordinary experience.

‘I have no doubt that the double bass and I were made for each other,’ writes Bosch on the CD sleeve. ‘- we’re completely inseparable and the music we make together brings me unbridled joy! It has always been my mission in life to defend the cause of the underdog and my passion for the double bass, the ‘Cinderella’ of instruments, will never die.

‘Every note I play on the instrument embraces my life experiences, both in Europe and in my South African homeland. I’ve known love and comradeship, but also witnessed the epitome of hatred. I’ve felt both shining optimism and deep despair. I’ve benefited from the pleasures of civilised society, but also seen the destructive impact of poverty and ignorance. I’ve been privileged to stand side by side with people who’ve lost their lives in the defence of their principles.’

As a 15-year-old protestor in Cape Town Bosch was arrested, detained and tortured by the apartheid regime. After a trial at which he was found not-guilty as a result of being defended by Abdullah Omar (subsequently Minister of Justice in the new dispensation), Bosch wanted to study law, but was denied a place at University as a consequence of his political activities. And that made him turn to music, first at the South African College of Music and then the Royal Northern College of Music in the UK.

There is a long tradition of music as a place for protest and politics. We are used to hearing jazz, reggae, hip-hop, and similar forms of music expressing the struggle against oppression. To hear the same through classical music is rare, and even rarer was to hear the soul of the double bass sing of the struggle and of love. This is something to be experienced. Add this one to your collection.

We hope to feature extracts of this music in future Pambazuka News podcasts. Look out for these!

* Virtuoso Double Bass: Giovanni Bottesini 1821-1889 is published by Meridian Records, 2007 (www.meridian-records.co.uk)

* Firoze Manji is editor of Pambazuka News and director of Fahamu

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Since the first HIV test was licensed in 1985 there has been a constant tug of war between those who advocate the widest possible use of HIV testing, and those who argue that testing throws up a raft of ethical issues that need to be considered before testing can be expanded. In an effort to increase access to and uptake of HIV testing, there has been growing support for implementation of provider-initiated testing and counselling (PITC).

As SADC Heads of State and Government meet for their annual Summit in Lusaka, Zambia in mid-August, one of the expected outcomes is the adoption of the Protocol on Gender and Development. The SADC Protocol on Gender and Development will provide a legal and institutional framework for the region to accelerate implementation of the commitment to gender equality and women's empowerment. A Protocol is the most binding of SADC legal instruments.

At 10:00 a.m. August 9, Philani Zungu, deputy president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, was arrested in the Pemary Ridge settlement. A meeting had been scheduled with the eThekwini Housing Department. However they arrived with the Sydenham SAPS who immediately went to Philani and demanded to search him. He asked them why they were searching him and was immediately arrested for 'resisting arrest'.

Bukavu is perched high above Lake Kivu, gently encroaching on the placid body of water between Rwanda and Congo. Once known as the pearl of Congo because of its beautiful climate and mountains, the Bukavu I found last summer barely resembles the famed city I heard about as a child.

In the past ten years, South Kivu province and its capital city of Bukavu have been known for two things: insecurity and coltan. I came for both. In anticipation of the country’s first multiparty elections in four decades, I wanted to understand the potential effect of insecurity on the elections and learn first-hand the role minerals such as coltan play in fueling insecurity.

Four times the size of France, and as big as the United States east of the Mississippi river, Congo holds 80 percent of the world’s reserves of coltan, a heat-resistant mineral ore widely used in cellular phones, laptop computers and video games. The ore derives its name from a contraction of columbium-tantalite, the scientific nomenclature.

Columbium-tantalite is so vital to the high tech industry that without it, wireless communication as we know it would not exist. Refined coltan yields tantalum, which is used primarily for the production of capacitors, critical for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries.

Even though it has been exploited for years, this mineral did not come to prominence among the uninitiated until the “coltan rush” of the late 1990’s. At the beginning of 2000, a pound of unprocessed coltan cost between US$30 and US$40 on the international market. By the end of the year, the price had risen tenfold to US$400.

The advent of a new generation of mobile phones, the upsurge of tech products, and the popularity of video games such as Sony Playstation 2 increased demand for the ore to unprecedented levels and drove prices to new heights. Hoping to make money, thousands of Congolese men rushed to the mines.

Insecurity welcomes me as soon I exit Bukavu’s Kavumu airport. On the way to town, we pass a couple of United Nations peacekeepers’ camps – South Africans, Pakistanis and others. On the rest of the road, we see the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, known among the people as FARDC.

The FARDC does not inspire trust. Far from a typical army, it is a patchwork of various militias that fought each other not so long ago and still treat each other with suspicion. They idle at the market, smoke at the street corner or fight for public transportation with civilians. They are always armed, do not receive regular pay, and beg whenever they get a chance. Above all, they are hungry and mean. The FARDC seems to own the 35 kilometer-road to town.
The bad condition of the road mirrors the collapse of Congo’s infrastructure and reflects the failure of the State, which is unable to provide the minimum of public service. It takes over an hour to reach the center of town and I see no sign of coltan’s wealth. It is an old beat up city.

By the end of 2001, coltan overproduction and the subsequent decrease in demand drove prices down to their previous level. Adam Smith’s invisible hand did its job. A few international traders made a fortune and militia leaders stuffed their war chests and foreign bank accounts. Local miners, however, only had their dreams for trophy. Coltan perks had evaporated long before I arrived in town.

Bukavu mimics Congo’s problems. Like the country, South Kivu has unlimited potential, from its physical beauty to hydro-electrical capacity to human and natural resources. Yet, conflict, mismanagement and corruption prevent the region from benefiting from these riches.

“If you want to understand what has gone wrong in Congo,” says Thomas Nziratimana of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) and vice governor of South Kivu in charge of finance, economy and development, “You start with the way the country has been run so far. Despotic regimes cannot attract investors. They create tensions that do not make anyone feel safe to come and invest.”

Congo has had its share of dictatorships, war and civil unrest. From 1965 to 1997, the late Mobutu Sese Seko presided over a kleptocracy - a predatory regime that benefited a few members of the political elite, bankrupted the rich country and left its population in misery.

“In the past we have had a highly centralized system where everything went to Kinshasa, the capital, yet the provinces were very productive. This has continued today,” reflects Nziratimana. “Eighty-five percent of the income generated in South Kivu is sent to Kinshasa and nothing remains here, nothing.”

The kleptocratic culture did not end with Mobutu’s fall. In May 1997, Laurent-Désiré Kabila forced Mobutu into exile and became president.

A former pro-Lumumba guerilla fighter who had trained along side Che Guevara in the hills of eastern Congo in the 1960’s, Kabila launched his rebellion from South Kivu with the support of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda in 1996. Bukavu served as his rear base and suffered great damage in human and infrastructure terms during the fighting.

In the new Kabila regime power remained in the hands of a few cronies who amassed wealth for themselves à la Mobutu. A new millionaire class emerged overnight as Congo sank deeper into misery. In 1998, after Kabila fell out of grace with his backers in Uganda and Rwanda, these two countries invaded Congo in an attempt to overthrow him. A multinational war followed, with Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia intervening on Kabila’s side. Unable to unseat Kabila, Rwanda and Uganda chose to support a second rebellion in eastern Congo.

In 2001, following Laurent-Désiré’s assassination, his son Joseph assumed the presidency. The city did not recover from the suffering. Neither did the country.

The conflict partitioned the country. Supported by Uganda, Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo ruled over northern Congo, from east to west. Rwanda-backed RCD militiamen controlled eastern Congo for five years until a series of peace accords brought a transitional government in Kinshasa, which included leaders of various warring factions.

Rwandan occupation years also coincided with the coltan boom years. In fact, while neither Rwanda nor Uganda have gold, diamond or coltan deposits of significance, both countries have become important exporters of these minerals. A 2003 United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources accused both countries of prolonging the civil war so that they could illegally siphon off Congo's wealth with the help of Western corporations.

This second rebellion, which has claimed over 4.4 million lives, has made Congo’s conflict the deadliest in the world since World War II. Mineral exploitation was one of the driving forces behind the war and the proliferation of militias; some of these militiamen still operate in the region and control mining areas.

When I inquire of the people how to get to a coltan mine, I receive different versions of the same response. “It’s too dangerous out there,” they say. “There is too much insecurity. We advise you, ‘don’t go to the mines’.” For several days, I tried to arrange a trip to the mines and found nobody to take me.

My search eventually takes me to the city’s Ibanda neighborhood, to the backyard of a two-story house that someone converted into offices. Olive Depot is one of the largest coltan companies in town, but to my surprise, it is unimpressive.

Considering the publicity coltan has received recently in Western media, I expected a large processing center – an imposing edifice with complex machines and engineers barking orders to their foremen. Instead, I found the most rudimentary of processing systems, two dozen men working with their hands and playing with dirt like children. No one barked orders. They worked in silence, interrupted only by the sound of their own movements.

My attention turns to several men squatting down and playing with dirt – black dirt – in a medium-sized hangar. “That is coltan,” says my guide Alexis Mushaka, a metallurgical engineer.

“Are you joking?” I ask. That dirt in front of me could not be the highly-prized coltan, the bloody ore that fueled the conflict and the subject of several UN investigations. “No, I am serious,” Mushaka responds as he motions me to follow him to the hangar.

The men give us a quick look and return to their business. They are covered in dust, coltan. A couple of them sift through a large bowl of dirt and blow on the dust, which falls on their faces. It looks terrible. Most of them do not wear any mask. Neither do they wear any uniform. They also do not wear shoes, perhaps by choice. I do not ask. They work in silence and quietly listen to Mushaka explain the process to me.

“First, the négociant brings the coltan from the mine,” he says and points to a white sack of dark brown dirt on the floor. “He sells it here and then these fellows start the separation process.”

The process means the men in the hangar have to separate all impurities from the product itself. “Deep in that dirt is coltan or its sister products of cassiterite and wolframite,” Mushaka continues, “and they will have to find it.” The end product looks like crushed gravel.

He beckons me to the other side of the hangar where a man dressed in a tank top and shorts sits on the floor, working with two small piles of black dirt. “Look, he is holding a magnet in his hand,” Mushaka says. “He is separating iron from the rest. The bag of cassiterite comes with all kinds of other minerals. They need to get all of them out.”

When I ask the men what type of work contract they have, I learn that most of them have no contract. Every morning a large group of laborers lines up outside the compound’s gate and ask for work. Few are chosen and the rest are sent home. They make less than US$1 a day.

“If we did not have this job, we will have no work,” says one of them when I ask why they accept to work in these conditions.

The négociant’s situation is not much different. As the middleman, he is very much at the mercy of the depot. “They wait until their merchandise is processed before they are paid,” Mushaka explains when I ask how a négociant sells his load. “The tonnage they bring does not equate their pay. It shrinks quite a bit after the impurities are sorted out.”

The négociant who arrives while I visit the depot says most of the time he is in the red. When asked why he still deals coltan considering his losses, his response reflects what the average Congolese worker in any profession says. “If I did not do this, then what else?” he retorts. He makes US$1.59 per pound.

On the international market, coltan costs between US$8 and US$18 per pound. If anyone still makes any money with coltan, it’s the processing depot and the other dealers on the international market. The final product is exported via Kigali in Rwanda to the ports of Mombassa and Dar-es-Salaam where it is shipped overseas.

The coltan business underscores the failure of the State. Beyond a new mining code adopted by the transitional government, which imposes a high tax rate on businesses and investors, the government has not undertaken any serious initiative to formalize the coltan industry, as is the case with other resources such as copper, cobalt and zinc.

“There is an issue with taxes these days,” says Nzojusa Belembo, director at Olive. “During the RCD rebellion, there was an exportation monopoly through a local company called SOMINGL. Companies paid a fixed tax, regardless of the product price fluctuation. Everyone benefited.”

After a pause, Belembo continues. “It is simple. We have porous borders,” he says. “You can cross the river to Rwanda with coltan in your pocket. They offer better prices there. Our legislation encourages fraud.”

The visit at the Olive Depot did not prepare me for what I saw at the mines. Dug on the steep flank of a high mountain, Mushangi mines are located about 90 kilometers west of Bukavu. Driving as fast as we could on an arduous road, the trip took two hours.

The mines are 15 kilometers from the Nzibira area where several militias have operated, including the Interahamwe and the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda. The FARDC also has a post in the vicinity, which is not encouraging either. Insecurity required that we brought armed guards with us.

At Mushangi, a treacherous path leads to the mines where we find only a handful of adults. The mines are exploited by children of all ages, working in precarious conditions.

From sunrise to sunset, they toil in open pits with the most primitive tools and no protection from falling rocks and mudslides. They crawl through dark tunnels with no structural support.

In my travel across Congo, I have seen a great deal of suffering. Watching children crawl through those pits and tunnels tested my resolve. Ten-year old Bashizi tells me, “I do this hard work because my father is too old to support me.” He has been doing it for several months. “That is the only thing there is to do around here,” he says.

The children swarm around us, seeking attention and asking to be photographed. I snap several pictures as I speak with them and hear their stories. Through my lens, I see lost childhoods and broken dreams. Images from my own youth in a different Congo flash before my eyes when I push the button.

We ask 16-year old Baruti and his friends whether they understand where their coltan goes from Mushangi. “It goes to Bukavu,” they say. “Do you know coltan is highly prized in America and Europe? It is needed for computers, mobile phones and video games,” I follow. “No,” Baruti replies. Their world revolves around the open-pits where they spend seven days a week and make less than 20 cents a day.

One last question before we leave for Bukavu. It is three in the afternoon, and that is late to be out here. “Do you understand that the exploitation of coltan fuels the conflict in Congo?” I inquire. Baruti looks at me straight in the eye and answers, “If we knew that, we would no longer work here.”

* Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is an independent journalist and writer who traveled across Congo in the summer 2006 on a grant from the .

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Politics in Ethiopia, region and in Africa has been, for the most part, destructive since the post-war period, writes Mammo Muchie. There is a need to find an alternative system, where conflict is managed through debate and conversation, rather than by lethal or non-lethal fighting.

‘Since anyone who criticises the entire systems of others has a duty to replace them with an alternative of his own, containing principles that provide a more felicitous support for the totality of effects to be explained, we shall extend our meditation further in order to fulfil this duty.’ – G. Vico, La Scienza Nuova in 1725, quoted in Reinert, E., 2007, How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, London: Constable and Robinson.

The success of traditional mediation emerges from rules of engagement that are not predicated on conceptual frameworks of punishment or reward, winning or losing, right or wrong, justice or injustice. Mediation must not free one party and censure the other, make one the ‘hero’ and the other the ‘saint’.

The main concept of traditional mediation is to bring the parties from a state of conflict into normal communication. It asks them to refrain from pursuing grievances through threats, legal action, courts, violence and imprisonments. It brings opposing parties to negotiate, accept the principle of dialogue and find workable settlements.

In some cases, mediation can be so successful that enemies turn into partners. But mostly it is a case of ‘antem tew, antem tew’, meaning ‘stop pushing your maximum demand on the case and settle for the average or the golden mean’.

In a country such as Ethiopia, where litigation is plentiful, poverty and deprivation encourage conflict, and there are insufficient judges and courts, nearly 90 per cent of disputes fall into the domain of traditional mediation. The creation of justice requires more than formal courts. The context of Ethiopia requires that traditional mediation remains critical to redress justice and conflict resolution.

There is thus a lot to be gained from our tried and tested methods of traditional mediation and to develop it by providing the resources to reach and expand the justice sphere in our society. In fact, this alternative method may be the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with the intractable difficulties that our country, region and continent have been suffering from the times of the colonial encounter.

Let us be bold enough to suggest traditional mediation as an alternative to war, violence, endless court wrangling, imitated legal ideas and discourses from Euro-American jurisprudence that may not work in the difficult contexts of our largely peasant societies and peoples.

Perhaps intractable problems that have defied solution, such as the chaos in Somalia, could be resolved, not by mounting an invasion to support despicable warlords, but by supporting traditional mediation amongst peoples.

The problems between Eritrea and Ethiopia cannot go on with each side using refugees as political opposition; but by engaging in mediation, including on the vital issue of why such an unjust settlement was reached in 1991 that denied Ethiopia its historic right of access to the sea.

Settling major political disputes through mediation The submission of the recently detained Ethiopian prisoners of conscience and the government to a traditional mediation process sends a positive signal: left to ourselves, we Ethiopians are capable of dealing with any problem, however intractable, by using local imagination, local arbitration tools and local ideas of fair-dealing and fair play. This is a generous way of reading the outcome.

Beyond the politics and propaganda of the government, the settlement between the prisoners and the government crystallised something new and original in the culture. Regardless of how the regime wishes to capitalise on the release of the prisoners, who were threatened by its courts with the death penalty and life sentences, we ask: does its action betray that it may have broken from fast-held and worn-out politics of ‘my way or the highway’?

The only way we can admit proof that the Meles [Zenawi] government is prepared to see traditional mediation as an alternative model of conflict resolution is if – and only if – they commit themselves beyond the contested episode of the prisoners of conscience. The government will only demonstrate acceptance of traditional mediation when it has conceptualised and committed itself to choosing traditional mediation as an alternative and critical method for broad and comprehensive national reconciliation and the resolution of all major conflicts. If they are not prepared to use traditional mediation with the other problems in the country and region, it is fair to conclude they have no commitment to the approach.

While it is an encouraging that the government might consider traditional mediation as an alternative to perpetual conflict, it is not easy to ascertain whether it is converted to this model for reasons of conviction or tactics. From the way it behaved before and after the release of the prisoners of conscience, the regime seems eager to capitalise on the fact that it had to play politics, using the carrot of pardon, after wilfully administering the stick of court punishment.

The prisoners of conscience never recognised the court or the charges against them. Thus entering into traditional mediation, of which some had openly advocated the value for a long time, has been natural to them.

As the government insisted all along that the case against the prisoners of conscience was a ’crime’ that only the courts can settle, its submission to traditional mediation is a real climb-down from such a public position. The government stuck to ’the political is the legal and criminal position’. But eventually it gave in to mediation. By its action, if not by its words, it bolstered the traditional mediation system of conflict resolution; in fact doing exactly the opposite of what the government seemed to want to achieve through the courts.

The acceptance in principle of a mediated model of conflict resolution represents a new flexibility, uncharacteristic of this regime for the last 16 years. We must recognise and encourage such flexibility, even from this regime.

Solving such major national conflicts through traditional mediation is a new phenomenon, regardless of the motivation and subsequent barrage of propaganda. For a regime stuck in a dogmatic time warp of the mindless position of the politics of ‘my way or the highway’, its latest stance must be acknowledged as new.

Judging by the pardon politics, by claiming it was giving total ‘pardon’ to those who confessed, after they admitted guilt by signing, it is hard to think that this regime has accepted the principle of traditional mediation. That it had to resort to such gimmick is deplorable.

Its stance does not however eclipse the significance and importance of the emergence of traditional mediation as a new domain. Traditional mediation has been ignored by elites, too often seduced by the trappings of Western legal notions that very often have not helped create sustainable resolutions to our intractable troubles. The fact that traditional mediation is being seen to produce results is significant for efforts to resolve complicated conflicts in Ethiopia, the region and Africa.

The partner group, headed by the Canadian ambassador, appears also to have facilitated traditional mediation efforts. If indeed traditional mediation is supported and resourced by citizens, opposition, government and partners, our country may move faster from pervasive conflict to secure development.

Broadening the domain for traditional mediation Now that the prisoners of conscience are released, and traditional mediation has played a significant role in the process, the prisoners, the mediators, and all who submitted to the process, including Ethiopia’s current government and the partner groups, especially Canada, deserve our acknowledgment.

But we must not stop at the first success, and must follow this with a further demand: to create a new alternative method for all the conflicts in our country, region and continent. The only way we can truly appreciate the significance of changing the method of conflict resolution to traditional mediation is when mediation is applied to all domains of intractable conflict based on a sustainable and consequential strategy.

The positive energy and spirit for the millennium requires that all the political prisoners detained from May 1991 be released. And everything must be done to open the opportunity for those who suffered to forgive those who disrupted their lives and killed their loved ones. If families refuse to forgive, it is understandable But government, political parties in opposition and traditional mediators must do all they can to encourage the concept that those who killed others may not handle being forgiven by those they hurt.

Launch the era of productive politics

Politics in our country, region and in Africa has been, for the most part, destructive since the post-war period. A number of productive moments have existed, but have not been sustainable. There is a need to find an alternative system, where conflict is managed through debate and conversation, rather than by lethal or non-lethal fighting. Fair dealing, fair play and the attenuation of grievance thresholds must be clear objectives to create a context where people feel secure to carry on normal lives. The fact that the regime, which has been so adamant in refusing any form of dealing with political opponents, conceded and accepted a mediation process is a break with the last 30 years. The question is whether this new engagement in mediation can be generalised to provide a framework for a national and regional reconciliation strategy from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

We should encourage this traditional model as a realistic alternative of creating a radically new political environment, no matter how intractable and difficult a conflict may be. Only then will it be possible for destructive politics to lead into a new era of productive politics. Traditional mediation empowers and accords agency to local stakeholders. It bolsters national self-confidence and creates learning and local competence. It is hugely beneficial in many respects. It requires our total commitment.

A fresh and empowering start We would like to see a generalised and comprehensive application of traditional mediation, and full political support for it inside and outside the country. We would like a full amnesty and the release of all political prisoners arrested since 1991, with the sole proviso that those who enjoy generalised amnesty must commit to carrying out politics without resorting to violence, and by agreeing to engage in debate and a political culture of reason and argument. Perhaps this will not be so difficult, provided the prisoners are fully informed, and their prior understanding is secured.

The acceptance and extension of traditional mediation as an alternative or integral part of comprehensive reconciliation from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean may be the most significant achievement of the millennium. All armed and non-armed political forces would voluntarily accept rules that silence the gun, and put forward programmes and arguments peacefully, getting the people to vote freely and choose the party they support.

We would like traditional mediation to be extended between the Ethiopian government and all its opponents from Eritrea to Oromia, Somalia. Inside the country, we would like to see all the multi-national and self-determined armed and non-armed parties enter into traditional mediation to create a favourable environment of tolerance, free debate and competition where only those voted for by the people can come to power.

What is needed is the courage to stop fearing the loss of comfort of the current position. There is no comfort in continuing destructive conflict. There is everything to gain by creating a peaceful environment. Conflict is productive only when it is pursued within legitimate rules that all have agreed to promote peaceful and civilised competition. Let us hope the coming millennium catapults the nation, the Horn of Africa and indeed wider Africa to climb the great wall of peace, stability, security and prosperity for the next 1000 years.

* Mammo Muchie is chair of the Scandinavian Chapter of the Network of Ethiopian Scholar. He writes on their behalf. He is a professor at the Center for Comparative Integration Studies, Department of History, International and Social Studies (CCIS) (http://www.ccis.aau.dk/) and director of the Research Center on Development and International Relations (DIR) (http://www.ihis.aau.dk/development/), both at the Aalborg University, Denmark.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Once upon a time there was a country which had only one restaurant. All the people in that country had to eat in that restaurant, so thousands went there every day.

But the service was a bit of a problem. People who were hungry had to wait for hours, and in some cases even days. There did not seem to be an order to things. Some people who arrived late got service quicker, a few others got particularly big plates of food, but most suffered more or less silently.

They did not dare to ask questions of the waiters or managers. Experience showed that it did not help. Those who had asked in the past had been told ‘be patient’, ‘don’t you see I am busy’, ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘we have lost your order’. Others were told ‘come back tomorrow’ or ‘who are you anyway?’ The customers paid ‘a little something’ to expedite the order, or waited, take your pick.

When the food did arrive, often it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very balanced or healthy, at times it wasn’t clean, and usually it wasn’t enough—especially in the second half of the month because the restaurant had ‘run out of supplies’. You had to pay anyway, though some waiters charged a little less if you agreed not to demand a receipt, right underneath posters exclaiming ‘this is a corruption free zone’.

One day the restaurant owner passed by, and became quite alarmed. He called a meeting of all the managers and told them things had to change. The managers were to remember that ‘customers were king and queen’. Service had to improve, and there was to be more accountability. New rules were issued, including a code of ethics for managers, a manual for waiters. There was even a ‘client service charter’, that explained the restaurant values and its obligations to customers, though most of the customers never got to see it.

Afterwards, there was some difference. Several managers worked really hard to make their part better organized than before. Some of the waiters were more alert and kind to customers, though they could do little about delays in the kitchen or the mosquitoes. But for many others it was business as usual. Another problem was that a lot of the managers and a few waiters always seemed to be away for capacity building seminars. They would come back with lots of files and papers on improving restaurant services, but kept the little brown envelopes for themselves.

The funny thing was that it did not seem to matter if you treated the customers well or did your job right. The incompetent and uncaring staff always got their salaries, and were not held accountable. The hard working ones got the same as the rest, and no special recognition. If anything, the other staff ridiculed them, saying ‘you think you are better than us’, ‘you think you are smarter’, etc… and so after a while even they stopped taking initiative, asking questions or going out of their way to make the restaurant work better.

The newspapers kept reporting about the continued problems at the restaurant, so everyone was aware. This time a team of expert consultants was hired, with funding from donors. They interviewed a lot of the customers and managers and wrote large reports. A strategy was developed with a Swahili name to show it was locally owned – MKUKUHUMGA (Mkakati wa Kuboresha Uwajibikaji na Huduma za Mgahawa) More capacity building seminars were done. Managers went abroad on exchange visits. Codes of ethics, manuals and client service charters were all updated.

But life for most of the restaurant customers did not improve. The food was mostly poor and the service bad. And despite all the tough talk about accountability, the rules were rarely enforced. The reality was that it did not matter whether the managers or waiters did their job or not. There appeared to be no consequences; at most a few of the really bad ones were transferred.

All this puzzled the frogs, who lived at the edge of the restaurant, immensely. “Instead of all the rules, guidelines and seminars”, observed one frog, “why don’t they just get their incentives right – reward those who do well and sanction those who don’t?” “Moreover,” quipped another frog, “and why not give power to the customers to hold the staff accountable?”

* Rakesh Rajani is the executive director at HakiElimu (http://www.hakielimu.org/)

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Betty Maragori reports on her experiences of visiting the US. The big thing that she experienced for the first time in the US was hard wired virtual segregation. There were no signs designating white and black zones, but the reality of segregation was visible to an untainted African eye.

I went to study in the USA in the 1980s in the time of what was to me the inexplicable presidency of Ronald Reagan. It was an enigmatic presidency for me for two reasons. First, at my university and amongst the mostly left leaning circle that I was to hang out with it, I never found anybody who had voted for him. The second reason was that for me Reagan was clearly challenged on the intellectual front. I could not believe that a nation with all that maendeleo or development, we in Africa so covet, would tolerate some folksy guy who could have come from a darker and more ignorant century. Certainly the cool left leaning students at C University had no time for Reagan.

In my two years in the US the only person I found who would publicly admit to voting for Reagan was a 65 year old black man, in Albany, Georgia, the father-in-law of my cousin. Pops, as he was called by his children, in that quintessential African American manner would routinely proclaim his love for President Reagan, loudly to people, in the presence of his children. Pops broke two rules I had come to accept about voting patterns in America, first that black people were not members of the republican party and second that they always voted for the Democratic party. To this day I am still left with the question, “So how did President Ronald Reagan win with such landside victories twice, if only one black man in the South voted for him”?

America’s Presidents and War

Eight months into America, I had imbibed the paranoid conspiracy theories of my Marxist circle and lost my African ease. Late one night I turned on the television to find the President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan ranting and raving in the most alarming manner about the “evil empire”. He was referring to the former Soviet Union, America’s then mortal enemy country of cold war days. And you thought “Axis of evil” was original? Do you see a pattern here? This is clearly the language of America’s dumb dumb presidents.

Twenty years later as I watched the elections that brought another dumb, dumb unfathomable US president into power, George Bush Jr., I realized that my vantage point with its emphasis on linear “development” or maedeleo had warped my thinking. Until that instant, I had thought development also brings highly enlightened people who would not lie about the presence of weapons of mass destruction to bring pain and destruction to innocent women and children many miles away in another country. For what, for oil, (I can’t believe that), to get revenge for daddy, (that’s too weird) to get their way (what way, the American way in Baghdad?) To be right about a perspective? (Probably the only right answer outrageous as it may seem).

For us in this part of the world, things like technological advancement, elimination of hunger, industrial development, foreign vacations, microwaves, one doctor per 100 people, four lane highways, per capita income of US$ 30,000, a new car every two years, pensions, social security, (pick your top ten) all of which come with development also lead to progress, to maendeleo. And ultimately to enlightment, the cherry on top of the development cake. We think, surely in America or Europe there must be such enlightenment that people, ordinary people everywhere must have become immune from the dictates of the baser human urgings like fear, malice, jealousy, racism, intolerance, corruption, violence, the need to declare war for dubious reasons, religious fanaticism, (again pick your top ten).

I now realize of course that human beings may have made huge technological advances such that they can send men to the moon or invent the internet and they will still rely on some form of magic, juju or alchemy for managing their lives. The advances have not created certainty. In fact they create even more uncertainty and the threat of a backlash which can take people deeper into the bosom of their juju side.

Impressions of the American South

I went to visit my cousin’s in-laws in the American south in Albany, Georgia for a week and discovered I could not hear so I took to endless grinning and nodding my head. I left those people thinking I was simple in the head. But I couldn’t understand them and I soon got tired of asking them to repeat themselves so I withdrew into an African grin of protection and lost my reputation in the process. They speak English in the south so it wasn’t the language and there was still a language barrier. The long dragged words that go on seemingly forever lost my short attention span. I found that my mind had wondered before the end so I never heard the finish. Caaaahhhn aaaaah speeeek to Eyyyyd Coooook is what I thought I overheard a woman in a bank asking. It was shocking to hear, like somebody caricaturing an American. I tried not to laugh and asked my cousin-in-law what the woman was saying. And she translated, “Can I speak to Ed Cook?”

Virtual Segregation in the American South

The other big thing that I experienced for the first time in the US was hard wired virtual segregation. There were no signs designating white and black zones any where in Albany, Georgia that I saw. Indeed on the surface all seemed well in race terms. But even my Republican cousin’s father-in-law made sure he hid his de-segregated business to keep up appearances. He was in business with a white person because it was a good business cover that allowed him to get white business. The trick was he had to keep his partnership hidden so that he could get and keep that lucrative white business. He passed himself off as a worker in the business. I know the logic is challenging.

The two groups occupied the same physical spaces, they ate at the same restaurants, entered all buildings and transport from the same entrance, sat anywhere on buses. And yet my stranger’s eyes quickly saw through this façade and identified the fault lines of virtual segregation. The new apartheid still did not allow the twain to commune freely even as they congregated. As soon as I stepped into those spaces I could feel the barriers. There was a sense of forced togetherness. If the gap between the two races could speak it would say, “OK we have to share this same physical space but we are not giving up our right to be separate. They can take away our right to segregation but they can’t take segregation out of our hearts.” It was in what was missing in the interaction between black and white. There was no ease, peacefulness, insignificance, silence, freedom, love.

What existed in that gap was tension, a hateful watchfulness and worst of all an embryonic violence that was always ready to grow into fully-fledged adulthood. You could feel it. This violence ebbed and flowed and hung around like a dark threat. When I was amongst black people everyone was relaxed. They are a very laid back people, but in the presence of a group of white people in the segregated spaces there was an all round tensing alertness, an expectation of something unpleasant.

Black and white people occupied those common public spaces differently too. White people seemed to strut and begrudge black people’s presence. It was white people who still seemed to be the bona-fide owners of the space. Black people were the interlopers, but they had no choice, they had to occupy the spaces, otherwise they risked recreating segregation by their absence. But the sense of threat in those spaces implied that Black people occupied those spaces under peril. Desegregation had been about pulling down the limits placed on the existence of black people. It was not white people who were fighting to sit in the seats reserved for black people on buses or to use the black only entrances. Desegregation demands that white people cede space and privileges that define their superior place in society.

Race in the North

My experience of race in the American north was not one of absence rather the north was racially clandestine, a state I much preferred. It gave me freedom to spend many more hours in a day being just another human being. The colour of my skin was not a constant conscious presence foisted on me by open racial hostility. Thank you but I am not black, I really am just a person. I am an African living in Africa so although I have many identifies being black is not my premier identity. That is the advantage of growing up black in Africa.

When I brought this to the attention of my southern black relatives-in-law they made that claim that always bemuses me. “I like the south they said, the boundaries are clear people here are not hypocrites like in the north. I know where I stand here with them.”

“I know where I stand?” What the hell is that? What I understand from that telling statement is an admission on the part of black people that it’s OK for there to be limits on a black person’s existence. I never heard a white person say things like that, only black people. For a person simply because of the hue of their skin to know where he or she could go and what he or she could expect from their world? In other words there was a limit of possibility which means that there was no possibility at all. And it was fine for white people to have veto powers over the dreams, scope of existence of black people. You can dream so much and no more. You can aspire so far and no further, these are the limits on your movement. And black people accepted this proscribed world and were happy that they knew their place in this controlled world. That world was a banned dream which they passed onto their children and this was done with the active connivance of black people. To know my place?

I understand how dangerous the world in which black people live in the south. I imbibed a small part of that fear many thousands of miles away from movies and media reports of the Ku Klux Klan. So much so that I arrived in America terrified. For four days I refused to leave my sister’s apartment because I was sure the Ku Klux Klan were going to gun me down. Living with that dreadful history can skew any one and the wonder is that black people have lived to step out of the shadow of such terrors and nightmares. The journey has had its negative impact that sometimes their ability to see beyond the boundaries of their terror has been compromised. A person exposed to these negatives on a daily basis for most of their life will loose their perspective. Such an environment can beat down the most-thick skinned, sanguine, optimist man and woman and create an oversensitive “defensive human” who can no longer see the forest for the trees and perceives racism under every bush. Such an environment can leave people severely embattled and debilitated. Centuries of actual and virtual lynching that black people are subjected to in the USA will do that.

This is where Africans can lend their sight when the dreams have been extinguished. We have the same racial reality because our existence in the world gives us the same reference points. Yet we live in our own homes largely amongst our own people. We are not vested in only a racial reality. Our human reality predominates. We can fly above “black person negatives” and separate fact from damaging fiction.

* Betty Wamalwa Muragori is especially interested in how Africans are constructing new identities as they redefine their place in the world. She believes in the power of words. She has a BSc degree from the University of Nairobi and MA in Environment from Clark University in Worcester Mass. USA. Currently Betty works for an international conservation organization in Nairobi, Kenya

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Mukoma wa Ngugi's article (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/42869) article is still resonating inside me, but I did not know what to say at the time. But on this anniversary of Hiroshima (August 6th 1945), it hit me again.

Significant anniversaries come upon us now and again like flood waters and we are caught speechless, and then, the very thing you point out happens: "Oh well, next time we shall speak up", thus losing the opportunity to wake up, stand up, resist with all one's might against apathy, lethargy, accommodation to a growing cancerous mindset.

With regard to Hiroshima/Nagasaki, my sense is that the master narrative still dominates and threatens us with severe and collective punishment if we were to call it, as it should be, i.e. the modernization of Auschwitz, itself the modernization of previous unspeakable crimes against Africans and Native Americans which continue unaccountable. If we are going to repair, as in healing, the human conscience, then one should work at making it ultra sensitive to any form, intention of maiming, diminishing life in any of its manifestations. Gaia is a living organism. The level at which it has been violated is still misunderstood and/or denied through the use of propaganda which is no longer perceived as such. On this anniversary, is it possible for people to stop any business as usual? Is it possible to insert in our lives, consciously, a moratorium, a sort of time out away from the modernized enslaving system called globalization. Time out to treat our nuked selves, time out to take time to heal and rebuild, really, a conscience worth calling a conscience. Time out to reconnect with the collective conscience of those who, like the Native Americans, like Corbin Harney, who warned against the idea of messing up with the yellow cake (uranium), long before the physicists decided that splitting the atom was not an act against nature.

You asked at one point why do we have to keep laundering our history as though it was for sale to the richest bidder. From your article I get that you are wondering how and why our collective mindset, consciousness have been brought to the point where we would rather be activists than revolutionaries, to the point where Mandela sees nothing wrong in creating a Rhodes-Mandela Trust so as (my words) "to capitalize on both sides of the old and new capitalist", not that your words are less cutting, as if it is ok for Elie Wiesel to join hands with Himmler to create a Trust Fund. Some people will not forgive you for thinking such thoughts.

Yet, we are living in the kinds of times which do call for thinking unthinkable thoughts because the unthinkable, the "never again" have been said and trespassed so many times that it seems futile to remember all of the unthinkable things which continue to be committed today.

As we were talking about these things (crimes against humanity) with another person here (just met). He asked me if I were a priest. I laughed because that question reminded me of a certain mindset today in South Africa where such horrendous things are happening that it has become a custom to turn to pastors and the likes (how many?) of Desmond Tutu to provide a believable ethical compass for a humanity which has been so mangled that it can no longer recognize itself, except by way of people like Desmond Tutu, the presumed Global re-conciliator.

Here we are once again remembering Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and all of the things which led to it, industrialized slavery to individualized and industrialized ways of killing as savagely as possible, perpetrated against the Jews, the Palestinians, the Ota Bengas, the street children, the raped babies, women, the Armenians, Chinese in Nanking, the people of Rwanda, DRCongo, pygmies, Namibians, Native Americans, Amazon Indians, Aborigenes in Australia, Inuit, Untouchables, the list is almost endless. If we do not join hands with the current Hibakusha, sooner or later we shall be sorry we did not, whatever the reasons might be, because we are all being led, some knowingly, some not, to a nameless slaughterhouse.

How did we get from Hispaniola to Hiroshima and still doing even more horrendous things than then. We have become so accustomed to them that until we see another mushroom cloud we shall think it is OK. Yet, if one were to look at the Planet today, from the lens of an astro physicist trained, in quantum physics, I would not be surprised if such a physcist were tell us that the Planet is closely resembling a mushroom cloud...if one looked from a virtual telescope on the Moon.

Mukoma, you have expressed the thoughts which have run in the minds of the countless terrorized from way way way back when the roots of the current system were hardly visible. Then, women, children, men were violated, raped in unspeakable ways. Countless screamed. Are we going to need the help of quantum physicists to confirm to us their words? The list of names should be put on a roster as a sort of unfinished, in the making Humanity Holocaust, an art project. A sort of monumental, planetary reminder that the smallest, least victim, most forgotten, must also be the most remembered.

Which kind of humanity has this become when it is considered ok to kill anybody, but especially the most vulnerable people, in the name of making a killing at the bank. Which kind of consciousness are we referring to when more and more philsophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and scientists are trying to study it (consciousness), and understand the material basis of it, while sensing (from which physical sense?) that such an entreprise would be futile.

My problem is.....and, I am afraid, this rambling letter is not helping resolving it: Is it possible to reverse the mindset, the consciousness (or whatever is left of it) which has brought us to the point where one is ready to accept any unacceptable outrage, crime against humanity?

The Peace and Security Commissioner of the African Union (AU), Saïd Djinit, arrived in Bujumbura Monday afternoon on a three-day working visit, aimed at gathering information on the current political and security situation in the country, a diplomatic source said here.

Some 7,292 refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia resident in Nigeria are to be integrated into the country under the terms of a multi-party agreement signed by ECOWAS, UN refugee agency UNHCR and the three countries, an ECOWAS statement said here Tuesday.