Pambazuka News 391: Cyber democracy: an African perspective
Pambazuka News 391: Cyber democracy: an African perspective
In the West African nation of Burkina Faso, millions of trees are planted every year to reverse desertification. However the growing socio-economic needs of local populations pose a constant threat to these efforts. "People have built homes, marketplaces, places of worship, full cities within our national reserves," said Salifou Sawadogo, Burkina Faso's minister of the environment in an interview with IPS.
The Nigerian government ratified CEDAW in 1985 without reservations. Consequently, it is bound to fulfill all obligations stated in article 2 towards the promotion of the principles of CEDAW. The situation of women’s human rights in Nigeria, however, signifies that the Nigerian Government is not carrying out its obligations as CEDAW requires. The sorry state of women’s rights in Nigeria has been attributed to the non-domestication of and non-implementation of CEDAW.
Peace agreements form a crucial element of strategies to bring security from outside: they involve third-party mediators during the negotiation stage and often peacekeeping troops to guarantee the agreement at an implementation stage. This paper reviews parts of the academic debate on power sharing and war termination, touching on some key findings by the main researchers working on the topic.
Rapid urbanisation is a fact of live even in the least developed countries where the lion’s share of the population presently lives in rural areas and will continue to do so for decades to come. This paper examines the causes, consequences and policy implications of the ongoing urbanisation in the African less developed countries (LDCs). The authors find that the employment opportunities in either rural or the urban sector are not growing adequately.
Around 30 journalists demonstrated outside the main lawcourt building in Nouakchott to protest against the way two detained colleagues - Nema Mohamed Omar and Mohamed Abdelatif of the Al Houriya newspaper - are being treated to demand that they be brought before a criminal court. With their hands and ankles manacled, Oumar and Abdelatif were brought before an investigating judge half an hour after the protest.
Reporters Without Borders is worried about recent comments by President Abdoulaye Wade and certain government ministers and ruling party legislators indicating a desire to step up censorship of the independent press. “The repeated scathing comments about the independent media can only aggravate the climate of hostility between the press and government,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We urge the Senegalese authorities to respect the work of the media and allow the media regulatory body to do its job.”
Reporters Without Borders has written to the head of the Lesotho Communications Authority asking him to reverse his decision to close privately-owned radio Harvest FM for three months.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the decision by Niger’s public prosecutor to appeal against an investigating judge’s decision five days ago to dismiss the charges on which Radio Saraounia manager Moussa Kaka has been held since last September. The authorities would have had to free Kaka if the prosecutor had not filed his appeal.
A ruling by the Abuja Federal High Court has ordered the Nigerian government to halt the transfer of the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon pending the determination of a case against the move. The ruling will strike a blow to an agreement on the transfer of the peninsula to Cameroon on 14 August this year. Until the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of Cameroon, the two sides had had several clashes over the area's ownership.
A plenary of Angola's National Electoral Commission (CNE) has approved a model of ballot paper ahead of the country's September legislative elections. CNE's Spokesperson, Adão de Almeida, announced that the introduction of the model ballot paper is in line with the graphic characteristics of the law.
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Wednesday he hoped talks aimed at resolving the country's political crisis would give President Robert Mugabe an "honourable exit". Mugabe's Zanu PF party began power-sharing talks with the opposition in South Africa last week, but doubts have surfaced over progress after they were adjourned on Tuesday.
Clashes between insurgents and government troops in Beletweyne, Hiiraan region of central Somalia, have created serious food scarcities in the town, hitting thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) hardest, locals said. "Already, two children are said to have died of hunger; many others are malnourished," a journalist, who requested anonymity, told IRIN on 1 August.
Experts fear presidential elections scheduled for November may be destabilised following the withdrawal of the opposition African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) from the national unity government on 25 July.
here is a growing belief among men in Swaziland that circumcision provides complete protection against HIV, a perception that worries non-governmental organisations (NGOs) battling the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world. In recent years circumcision has been lauded by Swazi public health officials as a procedure that reduces the rate of HIV transmission by about 50 percent, but it is far from the silver bullet solution some men see it as.
Prison conditions in Benin are so deplorable that they were, alongside police brutality, one of two reasons that compelled the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International to list the country in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report for the first time in 2008. Prisons suffer from overcrowding, cases of unjustified detention, a lack of trained prison staff and lack of adequate food, according to the report.
More than a million people are at risk of starvation in Uganda's semi-arid and remote northeastern regions and over 40,000 children are suffering acute to moderate malnutrition, a government official said. Musa Ecweru, Uganda's state minister in charge of refugees and disaster preparedness, said prolonged dry conditions after flooding in the region last year had led to a 90 percent crop failure. Plants had failed to germinate under very hot conditions.
Doctors in Burkina Faso say fistula is being under-reported, and are launching a new project to offer free surgery to some of the affected women. According to the government’s statistics, there were just 54 cases of fistula in Burkina Faso in 2007. But Aboubakar Coulibaly, a doctor in the national health system, said “Cases are being under-reported.”
South Africa's highest court on Thursday ruled against African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma in his attempt to stop seized evidence being used against him in a corruption trial. Nine of the 10 judges of the Constitutional Court said warrants used in raids on Zuma and his lawyer were valid and the state could use seized documents in its prosecution of Zuma, the frontrunner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki next year.
This new investigative report exposes another hidden aspect of export-driven resource extraction in the DRC and the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. Internal company documents obtained by Greenpeace International show how the German owned, Swiss-based logging multinational Danzer Group, one of the largest players in the Congo logging sector, is using an elaborate profit-laundering system designed to move income out of Africa and into offshore bank accounts, thereby appearing to evade tax payments in the countries in which its companies operate.
On Tuesday, July 8, senior police officers in Nairobi, Kenya, beat,
sexually violated, and arrested a group of seven civil society advocates as
they planned a peaceful protest against government corruption. Two of them,
including Ann Njogu, a leading democratic voice and Kenyan lawyer who
helped push through Kenya's landmark Sexual Offences Act, suffered sexual
violations.
AMwA is announcing a Vacancy - Regional Coordinator, UK/Europe to be based at our UK/Europe Office in London, United Kingdom. Based in London, United Kingdom, AMwA’s Regional Coordinator, UK/Europe will work with the Executive Director to facilitate the identification, planning, development, implementation, leadership, achievement and spearheading of policy advocacy and programme initiatives relevant to African women, within the UK and Europe, in line with AMwA’s mission and objectives.
This Report analyzes politically motivated and food-related human rights violations in the run up to the 27 June run-off of 2008. Since the release of the ZPP Post Election Violence Report No. 2 of May 2008 which had, among other things, postulated an escalation in election violence, questions have arisen about the extent to which these postulations have remained consistent with unfolding scenarios in the run up to the June election. Also of interest is how this presidential run-off [the first of its kind in Zimbabwe’s post independence electoral history] will influence trends and patterns of violence.
A multi-billion dollar oil deal between China and the west African state of Niger has been denounced by unions and transparency campaigners. Civil rights groups in Niger are calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the $5bn (£2.5bn) contract and for scrutiny of how funds will be spent.
African Women’s Day gives us the opportunity to remember that gender-based violence is one of the most serious and widespread violations of the basic rights of women, particularly on the African continent. Gender discrimination is both one of the causes and an aggravating factor of the consequences of violence against women, thus contributing to the perpetuation of impunity of such cases.
Aid agencies working in a climate of heightened insecurity in Somalia have been forced to come up with inventive ways to keep their HIV programmes, and their staff, alive following the recent kidnappings of several foreign and local aid workers.
Tanzania is undertaking a US$10 million programme to modernise medical laboratories in regional hospitals to improve HIV/AIDS monitoring, Minister of Health David Mwakyusa has said. The programme was launched on Monday 28 July in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, and is being backed by the Abbott Fund, the philanthropic arm of Abbott Laboratories.
BAE Systems, the British arms manufacturer under investigation in several countries for alleged bribery, paid at least £20m to a company linked to a Zimbabwean arms trader allied to President Robert Mugabe, documents seen by the Financial Times show. John Bredenkamp, who has indefinite leave to remain in Britain, has had a controversial career ranging from supplying military equipment to the Zimbabwean military to mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ishmael Beah’s memoirs, A Long Way Gone, is an emergency one. Not only does Beah highlight the horrors of war that he went through in Sierra Leone, but he also reveals how gross and wasteful war is. Just like Grace Akallo’s Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children, Els De Temmerman’s Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda, John Bul Dau’s God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir, the documentary, The Lost Boys of Sudan, and the film, Blood Diamond, the children who are not killed during the war are turned into soldiers and indoctrinated in murderous violence. The gun is magnified. What starts as a war tactic eventually becomes deeply ingrained in children’s mind, the gun becomes not only a ‘vehicle’ to power but power itself.
Beah begins his story in an engaging but detached manner. News of war come to him as if the war is happening in a faraway and different land. Later, as fleeing refugees begin to spill into his town does Beah realise that the war is taking place in his country. Soon it ravages a substantial chunk including his home area and neighbouring towns. In an effort to escape, Beah ends up right in the arms of the rebels. He is forced to grow. He loses his childhood, his family, his friends and part of his dream. Throughout the war he carries remnants of his dream in his pocket—cassette tapes of rap music. In his mind are snapshots of the schools he would have gone to and the kind of hip-hop artist he would have become had war not destroyed the tapestry of his dreams. This is what becomes of Beah’s land: littered with bodies. “The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die.”
Wole Soyinka was addressing a conference on the issue of the ‘brain drain’ from African countries. He remarked on how many of the speakers before him had lamented the flight of millions of Africans to the West and how apparently desperate were these speakers, who included African heads of state, to reverse the trend so that the bright young minds and their skills could be retained on the continent. ‘Lucky drainees!’ Soyinka enthused, with a whiff of sarcasm. While they went abroad exploring new frontiers, ‘the brains of their stay-at-home colleagues will be found as grisly sediments on the riverbed of the Nile. Or in the stomach linings of African crocodiles and vultures’ (Olaniyan, 2003).
You will understand then why, at a conference of writers in exile held in Vienna in December 1987, the award-winning Somali writer, Nuruddin Farah, spoke ‘In Praise of Exile.’ He was not disparaging his home country: he was seeking to challenge the perspectives of its leaders. Basically agreeing with Soyinka's opposition of lucky exiles to dead stay-at-homes, Farah said he himself could not have been a writer in Somalia, only a prisoner. Not for him the common idea that the distance of exile kills artistic creativity: ‘For me,’ he wrote, ‘distance distills; ideas become clearer and better worth pursuing’.
Removed from Zimbabwe, many of us have now become, in positive terms, more critical analysts of the situation in our homeland; in negative terms, soppy armchair critics. But the fact is that, we have the liberty of doing so! This armchair critic, for I am one, has become pre-occupied with the segmentation of Zimbabwean transnational website communities. Racially-charged politics, a high rate of HIV-AIDS infection, the complexity of gender relations derived from a country context that mostly is culturally conservative, and settlement in Britain by Zimbabweans and the various sensitivities that surround it, in both countries, are some of the issues that are raised in these website discourses. But difference is an opportunity to negotiate identities and is not inimical to the historical particularities that have shaped a definitive and distinctive ethnic presence in the demographics of Zimbabwe and in its diaspora.
For Diaspora and Communication studies, Zimbabwean electronic fora – the ‘new media’ - and their associations in Britain represent an important interface - a ‘social embedding’ (Aarsaether and Baerenholdt, 2001:49) of Diaspora communities in the homeland agenda that has created of the websites ‘specific communal refuges’ based on networks of family and friends and ethnic associations. In a generation of émigrés witnessing their homeland’s political and economic ruin but possessed of enhanced media technologies, the facility to not just track, but respond to events has led to the emergence first of social networks, and later the source of Internet activism that irked Robert Mugabe (2003) who said it represented ‘the same platforms and technologies through which virulent propaganda and misinformation are peddled to de legitimise our just struggles against vestigial colonialism, indeed to weaken national cohesion and efforts at forging a broad Third World front against what patently is a dangerous imperial world order led by warrior states and kingdoms’.
Compatriots wanting to assuage anxieties and nostalgia created and contributed to a web of electronic activism that contributed meaningfully – and varyingly - to Zimbabwean communities as the discourses and their associations grew vivid, provocative, and productive. Creatively using new technologies to define themselves, the Zimbabwean Diasporic websites raise social and anthropological media properties bound to attract scholarly attention.
Secondly, the fora are a microcosm of Zimbabwean diversity which deconstructs the authoritarian nationalism that has been a signature of Mugabe’s 28-year rule. This study characterizes the Diaspora websites’ ‘production of difference within common, shared and connected spaces’ (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997:45). It fills a research void acknowledged by Mwangola (2007) regarding smaller Diaspora communities ‘considered by both their host countries and the African world to be insignificant because of their small numbers and lack of political and/or economic capital’. Diverse Zimbabwean identities and their expressions which convey not only data and meaning, but community building through communication, form a transnational public sphere of website communities and associations representing a vibrancy absent from the ‘intolerant’ and ‘dull…intellectual ghetto’ Zimbabwe had become (Nyamfukudza 2005:21, 23) .
Thirdly, there is a general lack of authoritative source material of a qualitative nature on which UK agencies can rely for assessment of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, in the UK and at home. Over a two-year period I have provided assessments for law firms pursuing asylum cases and was given access to not just the claims, but the material on which government agencies drew to make their determinations. The source material nearly always lacked comprehensive detail. In particular, the expectation that all hardship in Zimbabwe must have had a party political dispensation to be worthy of an asylum claim betrayed an insensitivity to other tensions existing in that strangled environment, which UK-based agencies in particular seemed to be uninterested in. My research has the potential to expand the value and the knowledge base of interested parties.
It makes diversity a factor of social research with its emphasis on ‘undigested minorities’ (Nyamnjoh 2006:94; Nyamfukudza, 2005:18). Despite the significance of ethnic and cultural difference to Zimbabwe’s distant and recent history, this has not been a priority area in the research there has been into Zimbabwean transnationalism. The odd scholarly observation in this direction has remarked on the ‘fragmentation’ (Pasura, 2006a), although to view the diverse representations of a country’s multi-ethnic make-up solely in that light is to potentially omit positive aspects which the diverse populations and their plural expressions might bring to the discourse, something the electronic media may have enhanced. Conceptualizing this multi-polar engagement, I use Appadurai (1996), Werbner (1997a), Wise (2006), Moyo (2007) and Habermas’ descriptions of the public sphere as the ‘epistemic dimension’ (2006:411) to the procedures of democratic discourse. The research hopes to demonstrate not only the extension of democratic space, but also the production and reaffirmation of marginalized cultures in the electronic fora. Zaffiro (2002), Raftopolous (2004), Ranger (2005; 2002) and Nyamfukudza (2005), among others, have tracked the Mugabe government’s attempts to forge a corporate Zimbabwean identity and history that either excluded or assimilated minorities, or distorted their historical roles and the entitlements of their Zimbabwean citizenship. The social and economic upheaval which ensued, notwithstanding political arguments in mitigation, were accompanied by a re-ordering of Zimbabwean historiography that replaced even-handed analysis with unbalanced and at times rabidly racist literature (Nyamfukudza, 2005; Ranger, 2005; Raftopolous, 2004). By contrast, the transnational websites may inform an alternative narrative that acknowledges Zimbabwe’s demographics in deconstructing history and re-defining the nation.
As it expands its functions and its properties become progressively more accessible to households and other non-institutional users in Britain (OfCom, 2004), Internet communication is being appropriated by various echelons of the society to serve diverse interests: to ‘encompass the cultural forms of marginal constituencies’ (Ebo, 1998:x) as well as ‘emphasize hierarchical political associations’ (1998:2); to ‘encourage broad participation and emphasize merit over status’ (1998:3) as well as create private media spaces for individual, group and culture aggregations (Burnett and Marshall, 2003:67-68). There is a sense of virtual spaces being freed up to ventilate the previously unventilated: the minorities and the marginalised, their aspirations, their political and social will all being articulated in the relative freedom of a media-savvy Western liberal democracy.
In Ebo’s words, internet technology allows groups ‘traditionally dislocated from mainstream social linkages …to develop communal bonding’ (1998:4) through virtual and real-life associations that ‘fulfil the same traditional essence of associations and bonding, and invariably promote social relationships that are orchestrated by inherent inegalitarian tendencies in society’ (1998:5). He concludes that the stratification in the online associations will continue, for ‘as long as communities on the Internet allow participants to engage freely in the creation of social realities, economic and social classifications rooted in race, class and gender…will invariably influence relationships in virtual communities’ (ibid., p6). Ebo refers to this property of online engagement as the ‘cyberghetto perspective’ (ibid., p5), betraying a fear of negation and inequality being extended to cyberspace. But the facilitation of self-propelled diverse interest groups which use Internet communication to gain leverage in a world of inequalities is the rather more positive intuition behind this research.
CONCLUSION
To foregrounds a plurality of ethnic, political and professional continuities to introduce a study that addresses the democratic deficit and counter-authoritarian discourses that co-exist in an extended public sphere which this thesis seeks to describe. It has introduced plurality as a key element in website production and usage and the real-life associations that are formed based on shared affinities to the respective websites.
*Clayton Peel is the Vice-Chairman, Britain Zimbabwe Society. This paper was presented at the Britain Zimbabwe Society Research Day, 2008.
*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
Bibliography:
When I was young and impressionable I had this grand vision of saving the world. It was so easy to dream up a free and fair world where sanity, justice and good health prevailed. It was even easier to engage in activities that could quicken the coming into being of those dreams. Now that I am older, I’ve since learnt that many of us go through such phases until we arrive at a waking place. I have now known the toughest place to be; the here and now. Forget the interval for a moment. And don’t get me wrong, I am not against dreaming. That’s where we all have to start anyway. I cannot imagine how best to survive and change harsh realities without a map of radiant dreams. But we must not stamp our eyes on the map, on the canvas. We are only to look at it for direction, not dwelling. Imagine if we were to focus all our attention on the compass without moving, what would we achieve? And yet it seems to me many of us and a big number of organizational realists are trapped between the dreaming and the coming true, avoiding the here and now. I am writing about all the Millennium Development Goals setters and implementers. They haven’t stirred from the map, the deep sleep and soft dream. Here’s my analysis.
In the area of HIV/AIDS prevention, the United States government has been criticised for increasing funding for abstinence-only strategies, while religious establishments like the Catholic Church continue to question condom use. The current HIV/AIDS prevention campaign urges women especially, to abstain, be faithful, or use condoms (ABC). This is because women and girls comprise the majority of those found to be HIV positive. UNAIDS 2006 report estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, 57% of adults with HIV are women, and young women aged 15 to 24 are more than three times likely to be infected than young men of the same age group. Based upon these statistics is the short-sighted conclusion that women should be the main target in combating HIV/AIDS. Truthfully, they are the majority that turn up to be tested and their results are easily available. In many countries in Africa, the HIV/AIDS statistics for men are hard to find, if they exist at all. Do we then conclude that the HIV/AIDS campaign should focus largely on urging the women to be more vigilant and careful when it comes to prevention or it should all the more be about empowering the men to be loving, respectful and protective towards the women?
Apparently, January 1 2008 saw a breakthrough in Chinese workers’ rights, and a flight of employers to other lands where labour is cheaper and less protected. At least that is what must have happened if the rosiest [or most alarmist] interpretations of China’s new labour law, which came into force on that date, are to be believed.
But getting at the facts behind the reports is another matter - and of interest to African activists for at least two reasons. First, China’s competitive labour cost advantage is blamed for loss of employment in Africa especially in textiles. Second, Chinese firms in Africa are supposed to conform to local laws or failing that, to Chinese legislation. So if China’s labour laws are now to become a worker’s nirvana, could African workers in future hope to hitch a ride on the apparently greater rights of their Chinese brothers and sisters?
1. AU MEMBER STATES MUST STRENGTHEN CAPACITY OF THE AU COMMISSION AND ASSEMBLY OF HEADS OF STATES TO COPE SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH LONG-TERM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, AND ‘EMERGENCY’ ISSUES SUCH AS ZIMBABWE:
The dominance of Zimbabwe’s governance and human rights challenges at the recently concluded 2008 African Union midyear summit in Egypt highlights that AU member states urgently need to strengthen their capacity to follow through on details of, and implementation of commitments to key African development issues – alongside other equally important issues that are not summit themes.
Specifically the Commission of the African Union needs to be provided with more resources and capacity to ensure AU ability to maintain 100% focus on long-term key development goals while simultaneously coping with emergencies on governance, human security, and peace and security issues. In addition, the Assembly of Heads of State themselves need to build their own capacity to cope with these ‘emergencies’ at summit level, alongside producing clear decisions and outcomes on summit themes. Issues like Zimbabwe, Darfur or the food crisis could hardly be described as a surprise to any of our Heads of State. They also need to provide the crucial resources for in country summit preparation, and implementation of outcomes between summits by a strengthened AU Commission, the AU Executive Council, relevant line Ministers and the Ambassadors on the Permanent Representatives Council.
I was on a flight from Entebbe to Nairobi on June 30 when I read The New Vision's front page story titled "Mother cuts off defiler's penis."By the time I finished the story, my spirits were up and I have been in a great mood ever since.
According to the article, Angelina Kyomugisha was weeding her banana farm in Mbarara when she heard her 10-year old daughter cry out. She went over to have a look, only to find 40-year-old Geoffrey Mugarura defiling her little girl. Kyomugisha did what every mother ought to do in such situation - she pounced on Mugarura and cut off his penis. Then she flung it into the bush.
Neighbours helped search for Mugarura's severed penis till they noticed a dog running off with something in its mouth. They threw a stick at the dog till it dropped what was left of his snack. At this point in the story I had to control my laughter for fear being thrown off the flight. At hospital, a doctor confirmed that they would refashion what was left of Mugarura's penis so that he could at least urinate with it. As for any other business, the dog had taken care of that.
Statement of the Communist Party of Sudan
The inclusion of the name of the President of the Republic of the Sudan among those wanted for justice by the International Criminal Court, increases the complications engulfing the crisis prevailing in the Sudan. Despite the fact that such procedures were already in place and expected since the establishment of the Court, and this last step of naming the President of the Sudan was preceded by a similar step indating two prominent figures in the Government in February 2007, the Government of the Sudan was ill- prepared both legally and politically to react to either attempts.
It is well-known, generally accepted and cannot be hidden that what is going on in Darfur is a real tragedy and the human catasrophy. We, the Sudanese Communist Party, reiterate what we have already declared that the Sudanese Government bears full responsibility for it is happening in Darfur, since its own policies have led to the aggraviation of the tragedy. We continue to demand together with others the investigation to the crimes committed in Darfur, and to bring those responsible to justice regardless of their position in the state hierarchy. The Government did not heed two reasons.
Ten years ago, in May 1998, I had the pleasure of meeting Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of the US, for a few minutes in Geneva during the World Health Organisation's 50th Anniversary Assembly. She was one of the VIPs invited to celebrate this event at the WHO which had just passed under the leadership of its first woman Director-General, Dr. Gro Haarlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway.
Mrs. Clinton's presence was in recognition of her unsuccessful, but commendable attempt, during her husband's first presidential term, to convince her country's legislators to introduce some form of medical insurance for American citizens, some 40% of whom had no medical cover then, and still do not, to this day.
It's just been a few weeks since Nelson Mandela was taken off the United States terrorism watch list. No doubt so that they too could join in the celebrations of this living icon, without the embarrassment of hoisting up a revolutionary.
I gather that a revolutionary in America is, someone, not quite viewed through the same rose-tinted lens worn by us Southerners.
Mandela made the cover of Time Magazine again this week. It's his fourth time on the cover. I couldn't resist picking it up as I walked past the magazine rack at the local store, knowing well that I was going to be presented with yet another romantic glorification of his role as reconciler.
Not that I disagree with the sentiment. I join the rest of the world in praising the power of his peacemaking in our deeply divided nation. But Mandela is my hero for a few different reasons too. There is much more to our beloved leader than the image of the sanitised reconciler we've been fed since his release from prison.
I love to travel. I enjoy visiting distant and new places and learning about new cultures. Of late, however, I have developed a dread for travel not because of a latent fear of traveling by air or road, but more so on account of my strong objection to the increasingly degrading treatment travelers, especially from the global south, are subjected to at embassies and in both northern and southern ports.
My primary objection lies with the fact that the traveler today is subjected to gross violations of his or her privacy and personal rights, demands and practices which a few years ago would have attracted wide condemnation from different quarters. The War on Terror, as well as the desire of western nations to keep migrants (and visitors) from the global south out of northern borders has meant that the civil liberties of populations, especially from the global South wishing to visit the North, are disregarded and even abused.
Recently, the Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group in Bamenda has republished Francis Nyamnjoh’s first novel Mind Searching (2007 [1991]). After having read A Nose for Money (2006) which came with lightning and thunder, Mind Searching entered my mind as a thought provoking but gentle breath of air. The central theme in the two novels is the perverse functioning of the political system and its effects on the man in the street, in Mind Searching explicitly set in Cameroon, in A Nose For Money in the fictional Mimboland, a mirror of Nyamnjoh’s beloved and reviled Cameroon. Where the protagonist of Mind Searching, Judascious Fanda Yanda, is presented as a more or less virtuous man in most part of the book, Prospère, the protagonist of the second novel, is far more opportunistic right from the start. Although the idea that greed is stronger than anything else prevails in both novels, it is worked out in much more detail in A Nose for Money.
MIND SEARCHING
As the title Mind Searching suggests, the reader is presented with the detailed river of thoughts of Judascious Fanda Yanda. He is a young man, a pious Christian, living in Briqueterie, a poor neighbourhood of the capital. One of the persons who gives him a lot of food for thought is the very prosperous Honourable Vice Minister, who attends the same church as he does. Judascious Fanda Yanda knows that this minister rends nocturnal visits to a fortune teller behind his shack. When there is a baptism feast at the residence of the minister, Judascious Fanda Yanda decides to “capitalise” upon the piece of knowledge that he has (p.106) by telling the minister he knows all about his secret visits. It appears that this is the key to a better life, providing Judascious Fanda Yanda an entrance to the world of the well-to-do-people: It so happens that the Honourable V.M. gives him a job as his Private Secretary in exchange for keeping the secret. like At the end of the story, Judascious Fanda Yanda can be considered a successful young man, who has moved from the shacks of the neighbourhood Briqueterie to the upper-class quarter of Bastos.
is a well written article. I remember way back when I was young, we used to be asked in class, "what would you like to be when you grow up?" Most everyone would say they wanted to be teachers or lawyers; Many a times my answer would elicit sharp glances from the teachers: A writer, I would say. "You need to get more practical Judy. What would you have of interest to tell to the world? If I were you, I would aspire to be a nurse, now thats a noble profession."
Anyway, I shouldn't put my having not penned anything substantial to-date to negativity by teachers etc; frankly it might be more to laziness, but all in all, it is hard to produce an African writer with all those negative vibes.
On Walter Turner's . Unfortunately the transition from rebellion and revolution to good governance is extremely difficult for any people. The Chinese nation has accomplished much in the last one hundred years but still many have been left behind. In South Africa majority rule has not resulted in all that was hoped for.
Hopefully the neoliberal economic model will soon be abandoned and the people at the bottom will reap more benefits of the struggle. Otherwise their leadership will turn out like our Andrew Young, Vernon Jordan, etc.
New hope for the jobless in Philippi, Cape Town. has come with the launch of a computer hub which will allow people to register for work, create CVs and get information about job opportunities and skills development. The Umsebenzi Job Opportunities Information hub, which was launched on Tuesday by Western Cape Transport and Public Works MEC Marius Fransman, is situated at Philippi's Tsoga Centre.
Are Africa and South America destined to be 'resource-rich underachievers', or can knowledge intensification change all that? 'Resource Intensity, Knowledge and Development: Insights from Africa and South America' was launched at the Cape Town Book Fair 2008 in a public discussion between academic, researcher and volume editor Dr Jo Lorentzen and UCT sociologist Professor David Cooper, where the two speakers shared their views on recent resource-based development and the global economy debates.
The Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), an international organization that advocates for gender equality and women’s human rights in global policy, is in a process of reorganization and change, and is seeking a candidate with the vision, leadership, and skills to oversee and manage the transition process with the active guidance and support of WEDO’s Board of Directors. Deadline for applications is August 31, 2008.
Sokari Ekine review blogs from:
Intern Africa
Ghana Web
Gathara’s World
Dipesh Pabari of Sukuma Kenya
Kenya Environmental and Political News Blog
Black Looks
Mr. President,
4613 soon to be half a million Kenyans say you are greedy!!
Yes Mr. President and fellow cronies posing as leaders. There are over 4000 Kenyans across the world and more and more joining everyday with one simple message to you:
YOU ARE SHAMELESS!
Kenyans online have joined hands on Facebook:
* "How sad and frustrating is it to find that our MP's earn the highest salary compared to all the other countries in the world. While 20 million Kenyans are in abject poverty; living on less than $ 1.00 a day.
* As Kenyans we need to stand for our rights to live and prosper in our country.
* Therefore please join us to bring change in our country by reducing our MP's salaries and privileges, so as to improve the life of the mwananchi.
OUR GOAL IS TO UNITE AND GET HALF A MILLION KENYANS IN THIS GROUP.....can we do it?....lets try"
The seizure of farmland for the purposes of commercial diamond mining in Angola’s Lunda provinces is causing widespread hunger and deepening poverty, according to new research to be released on July 30 2008. The report, titled Harvesting Hunger in Angola’s Diamond Fields, focuses on the activities of the Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC): a joint venture led and managed by a British-based mining enterprise, ITM Mining, in partnership with the Angolan diamond parastatal, Endiama, and Lumanhe, a private company owned by Angolan Army generals.
Research conducted by independent Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, in collaboration with a network of local activists in the Cuango municipality of Lunda Norte province, records how SMC usually arrives without warning at night and destroys fields where crops are cultivated. The company then takes arbitrary measurements of the affected areas in order to determine how much to pay the peasants. This practice is leaving thousands of people hungry while SMC expands its concessions. In 2007, SMC had a production turnover of 340,002 carats of diamonds, yet farmers are paid only US$0.25 for each square metre of land that is seized.
The report highlights how the legal framework that governs the diamond industry in the Lunda provinces effectively denies full rights of citizenship to the region’s farming population, putting the commercial interests of the companies ahead of the local people’s land rights. Yet even those aspects of the law which ought to provide some protection for farmers – demanding, for example, fair compensation for land expropriated – are routinely ignored by SMC, whose compensation payments in no way reflect the productive value of the land that is being seized. The company appears to enjoy impunity despite the illegality of its actions.
The report calls on the companies involved to start negotiations with the farming communities of the Lunda region with a view to establishing mechanisms to ensure fair compensation for people who lose access to their land as a result of the granting of diamond mining concessions. It calls on the Angolan government to enforce the laws that govern the diamond industry in the Lundas, and to ensure that the region’s farmers are accorded their full rights as citizens.
*For further information, please contact Rafael Marques at +244 929 419644; +244 912 331034; or by e-mail at: [email][email protected]
*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at
Pambazuka News 392: The food crisis and the destruction of African agriculture
Pambazuka News 392: The food crisis and the destruction of African agriculture
People in government, business, and political and civil society organisations routinely talk about 'stakeholders'. They do exercises in stakeholder analysis to inform their 'strategic planning'. Invariably they use the stakeholder language to advertise claims about the inclusivity of their thinking, their processes, and their practice. The organisation we work with [Church Land Programme (CLP)] was asked recently to prepare an input for a 'stakeholder analysis' for a collegial NGO and this forced us to reflect on why we were so uncomfortable with the very idea. We presented some of our thinking as the basis for discussions at the NGO meeting. It was good that there was a mix of people there including grassroots militants as well as civil society employees.
The note below includes some thoughts we had prepared, as well as things we learned from people at the meeting. It outlines why we conclude that the stakeholder discourse, and the practices that go along with it, are in fact part of an order that functions to exclude and silence. For those at the meeting who came from grassroots formations, it was clear that this approach fitted very much with their analysis and experience. Summarising their key points, it was said that the stakeholder approaches exclude, enslave, silence and demobilise. The combined effect is to try and reduce their struggles to what can be managed within the terms set by the rich and powerful.
STAKEHOLDERS = THOSE WHO COUNT and EMANCIPATORY POLITICS = MADE BY THE UNCOUNTED
By definition, stakeholders must mean those people or groups who are recognised as having a stake in something. Part of CLP's evolving way of understanding the world we're in has meant moving decisively away from the assumption that we get toward good praxis by analysing, and working with, relations with 'stakeholders'. It's not that we think stakeholders don't matter – on the contrary, they constitute 'what is' and they therefore affect a lot of things that people have to deal with. But they cannot constitute spaces for a liberatory politics. The 'stakeholders' are those who are counted and who are qualified to speak – their counting, qualifications and speaking being constituted by and within the terms of the existant order (of 'the police' as Rancier would have it). A liberatory politics is the opposite – it is precisely the disruption of those terms by those who are not counted, not qualified, and therefore, should not be speaking. In short: naming the stakeholders is in order – liberatory praxis is the 'out of order' of those who do not qualify to be stakeholders.
Sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) is a scourge on Africa; a pandemic that has undermined women and girls’ rights to autonomy, bodily integrity, human dignity, sexuality, security and tranquillity. SGBV has, and continues to be a major hindrance to rights and justice. It is prevalent in all our societies across the continent, including non-conflict situations. It is repeatedly used as a weapon against girls and women in conflict/crisis situations. SGBV, including intimate partner violence, is a leading factor in the increasing "feminisation" of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.
The inadequacy of our societies’ responses has cast SGBV as an abuse we are willing to live with. Women and girls, regardless of their race, age, social and economic status, live in perennial fear of violation.
We, the delegates of say ENOUGH.
Pambazuka News 390: Palestine: a South African perspective
Pambazuka News 390: Palestine: a South African perspective
The Proteus Fund is seeking a strong program leader for the National Security Human Rights (NSHR) Collaborative Fund, our collaborative program supporting work to restore human rights and promote progressive national security policy. The Program Officer reports to the Proteus Fund Executive Director.
Every year, SOAWR, which is a regional network of 26 civil society organizations and development partners across Africa working towards the promotion and protection of women’s human rights in Africa, attends. During the Summit, SOAWR challenges the host country to sign, ratify and/or domesticate the AU Protocol on Women’s Rights. Following the Regional consultation strategy on the same held in Tunisia, 2007, SOAWR took up the lead once again and sent press releases and other material to its members and stakeholders in the process urging Egypt, the host for the AU Summit 2008, to ratify the protocol.
Equality Now, an international human rights organization dedicated to ending violence and discrimination against women globally, is seeking to recruit a Program Officer, who will assist the Nairobi Office Director with program work and specifically in the areas of managing a fund for grassroots activism to end female genital mutilation (FGM), helping draft and publish Awaken, a semi-annual newsletter that addresses FGM, and research and campaign related to the legal defense of adolescent girls in Africa. Applications must reach Equality Now by 31 July 2008. Equality Now will unfortunately only be able to respond to short-listed candidates.
The Africa Youth Trust is seeking to recruit programme officer for its East African Youth Reinventing A Democratic And Human Rights Culture And Centering Youth Voices In Regional Law Making programme. Attached are the Terms of Reference and requirements needed for the post. CV can be emailed directly to [email][email protected] Application closes on 5th August 2008 at 4:00pm local time.
At the forefront of feminist publishing in South Africa for 20 years, the Agenda journal raises debate around women’s rights and gender issues. The journal encourages critical thinking, debate and social activism and strengthens the capacity of women and men to challenge gender discrimination and injustices.
The IBSS/SAPSE accredited and peer reviewed journal will be published in mid-November 2008. We invite contributors from all over the African continent and other countries in the South to write on the above-mentioned topics from either a research or an activism perspective. Please submit no later than 6 August 2008.
The Kenya Government will start implementing the Ndung’u report on irregular land allocation from next week, Lands Minister James Orengo has announced. Orengo said he has studied the report and does not need to consult Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki or form another commission to implement it.
Teachers’ unions are now asking the Government to shut down all secondary schools to end the mayhem, but Education Minister Sam Ongeri has ruled this out, saying it would postpone the problem. The unionists called for tough measures as one more student died in Western Province, more schools were closed and striking students arraigned in court, with no sign of let-up in the chaos that has paralysed secondary education.
The Rwandan government has made notable progress in reforming its judicial system since 2004, but fair trial is still not assured, said Human Rights Watch in a newly released report. The 113-page report,“Law and Reality: Progress in Judicial Reform in Rwanda,” examines changes to the judicial system adopted over the past four years. The report documents reforms including the abolition of capital punishment, but identifies continuing areas of concern.
We are writing to urge you to take decisive action on the problem of violence against children, and specifically corporal punishment in schools and in other settings. We believe that in your new role as Minister of Education, you will have a crucial function in improving the future of young Kenyans and protecting their rights.
Tens of thousands of civilians are still unable to return to the contested town of Abyei, two months after half of the town was destroyed in fighting, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. A Human Rights Watch investigation in June 2008 documented the deaths of at least 18 civilians in the fighting in mid-May, most of them deliberately killed by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or allied militia.
Climate change has a profound effect on food security in Africa, as increasing temperatures and shifting rain patterns reduce access to food across the continent. This transpired at a conference on global warming and climate change July 21-July 24 in Cape Town, South Africa. The discussion was organised by South Africa’s Fynbos Foundation, which aims to realise investment in the media, publishing, arts and culture sectors, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in the United States.
South Africa’s award-winning multilingual software developer, Translate.org.za, has been awarded a grant by the Mozilla Corporation to extend its translation tools. The US-based Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, co-ordinates the development of popular Internet software projects such as the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client.
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat and it demands an urgent global response. It currently affects and will affect basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food and livestock production, health and the environment. Hundreds of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.
The World Bank overstated its commitment to environmental projects since 1990, possibly by billions of dollars, an internal watchdog group reported on Tuesday. The bank's official estimate for commitments to programs specifically aimed at helping the environment is US$59 billion from fiscal 1990 to 2007, according to the Independent Evaluation Group.
As the Zimbabwean government and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) prepare to enter power-sharing talks, Amnesty International called on both parties to ensure there are no pardons for those who committed human rights violations in the post-election period. “There can be no lasting political solution to the crisis in Zimbabwe without addressing past human rights violations. While human rights violations must end immediately, investigations must be carried out and alleged perpetrators brought to justice,” said Amnesty International.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the release of Tunisian journalist and human rights activist Slim Boukhdir. Boukhdir, who has been the frequent target of harassment by Tunisian authorities, on Monday was released early from a one-year prison sentence.
The first women lawyers association in Somalia has been established in the Somaliland region with the help of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “It will take time for the male-dominated legal profession to understand and accept the importance of women lawyers in society,” Antonia Lulvey, UNDP’s judiciary project manager, said.
Displaced people this week began returning to their homes in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with the help of the United Nations refugee agency. Five boats chartered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ferried the first group of 712 people – from a settlement for internally displaced persons (IDPs) at Tchomia – across Lake Albert to the town of Gobu in the Ituri district of DRC's Orientale province.
Human rights officials with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have expressed serious concern about the living conditions in the Mbuji Mayi central prison, where at least 26 prisoners have died from severe and acute malnutrition since February. In the latest incident at the prison, located in Kasaï Oriental province, four prisoners died of hunger last week, bringing the total number of deaths in one month to 10.
The National Congress for the Defense of the Congolese People (CNDP) rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda (photo) is reportedly provoking fights against other militia groups and causing instability in the restive North Kivu province. Meanwhile, President Joseph Kabila's government has accused the rebel group of going on rampage and executing civilians whom they claim to be members of other militias in the area.
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni says that his government will not hold further negotiations with the Lord Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. The President made the remarks shortly after meeting the First Vice President of Sudan General Salva Kiir who is in Uganda on an official visit. What remains is for him to sign the peace agreement,” Mr. Museveni stresses.
Potato farmers forming part of the Western Free State Seed Growers (Pty) Ltd, in Christiana have identified farm workers skills development as a key requirement for agricultural economic growth in South Africa. The farmers in partnership with government’s AgriSETA and a private owned company, Media Works have embarked on an Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) meant to provide adult basic education and training to permanently employed farm workers in different national languages as well as numeracy skills.
As members of Zimbabwe’s political elite finally sat down for talks in South Africa on Thursday, many of their fellow citizens who sought refuge in the country are facing deportation back to the homes they fled as a result of political violence.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling party will not accept a power-sharing deal that fails to recognise his re-election or seeks to reverse his land reform programme, a state-owned newspaper said on Friday. The conditions, which the Herald newspaper said were agreed at a ZANU-PF politburo meeting earlier this week, could dim prospects for a deal at negotiations between Mugabe's party and two factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
A Darfur rebel faction that has a pact with Sudan's government accused the army on Friday of bombing a village this week even while President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was in the region making a call for peace. Tension has grown in Darfur since the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said on July 14 he would seek an arrest warrant for Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
A journalist working for French radio in Niger must remain in prison after the country's prosecutor appealed on Friday against a court order this week dismissing charges of collaboration with rebels, a judge said. Moussa Kaka, who works for French state-owned Radio France International (RFI), has spent 10 months in prison. The charges against him have twice been dismissed only for the prosecutor to appeal both times against the freeing of the journalist.
Cape Town researchers have announced plans to launch a pre-exposure prophylaxis (Prep) HIV prevention trial among men in the city. Prep is a therapy taken to prevent, rather than to treat, an infection or illness, and it is one strategy being studied by the University of Cape Town’s Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, as part of its effort to develop new HIV prevention tools.
With an HIV prevalence of 19 percent -- the highest in the world -- AIDS is having an unprecedented impact on Swaziland. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 years to 31 years, the world's lowest figure, and one in three children are orphaned or left vulnerable from AIDS. Last year, about 40 percent of the population needed food aid.
In a twist of realism, a new feature film, "Johnny Mad Dog", uses a cast of actual ex-child soldiers from Liberia to portray the violent lives of youth forced to participate in armed conflict. The original script was adapted from Emmanuel Dongala's acclaimed book "Johnny Chien Mechant". Johnny, 15, and his small commando unit comprised of young boys ages 6 to 15, rip through an unnamed African country, terrorising and slaying everything in their path.
Cinema in all its diversity will once again be celebrated at the 29th Durban International Film Festival which runs from 23 July to 3 August. Featuring more than 200 films from more than 95 countries, spread over more than 300 screenings at 26 venues across the city, the festival will bring together established masters of cinema and innovative new talents from around the world.
Cancer care in Africa faces the same challenges as general healthcare, but also needs local data and targeted solutions, says Twalib Ngoma. African countries face many challenges when providing health services in general, and care of cancer patients in particular. Financial constraints are one obvious barrier. But many others exist, and need to be understood by anyone seeking to improve the situation.
The fight against corruption in Southern Africa needs tougher laws against bribery and fraud, more transparent political financing, cleaner public procurement and a stronger judiciary, according to seven studies just conducted across the region in the second half of 2007.
TI-France and the SHERPA Association have reported that a law suit was filed at the Court of Paris on Wednesday 9 July, relating to the circumstances under which huge real estate and financial capital was acquired in France by Denis Sassou Nguesso, Omar Bongo, Téodoro Obiang, Blaise Compaoré, Eduardo Dos Santos and their close associates or families.
According to the UNICEF Humanitarian Action Report 2008, there are 16,000 children aged under 14 living with HIV in Lesotho and an estimated 180,000 children orphaned or made vulnerable by AIDS. Some of these children have been forced by the circumstances to head their families and yet there is no programme in place to educate them about HIV.
According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Congo has continued to feel the effects of a decade-long brutal civil war that ended in 2003, displaced millions of people and ravaged the economy. The war left in its wake thousands of children without birth certificates, young girls with babies from unknown fathers, and child soldiers needing demobilisation and reintegration into civil society.
The urban poor in the Horn of Africa are the new face of hunger in a region where up to 14.6 million people now require humanitarian assistance due to poor rains, high food and fuel prices, conflict, animal disease, inflation and poverty.
The persistent and increasing outbreaks of violence against members of the gay community in Africa are jeopardising efforts undertaken to combat HIV, both within this group and across the population as a whole, AIDS activists warned at a recent meeting in Limbé, Cameroon.
The government's campaign to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child is failing pregnant HIV-positive women in Kenya's remote rural areas. A shortage of testing sites and trained medical staff in rural areas means many of these women are unaware of their status and that their babies are at risk of contracting the virus.
The return of over 4,000 Mauritanian refugees who have been living in exile in Senegal for almost two decades has been smooth on the whole, but in some cases tensions are arising as refugees complain about their new living conditions and come up against difficulties in reclaiming their land.
Mali's government and Tuareg rebels reached aceasefire agreement on Monday to end almost a year of sporadic clashes in the country's vast northern desert, Algeria's official APS news agency said. The truce came after four days of talks in the Algerian capital, Algiers, between government envoys and members of the rebel Democratic Alliance for Change mediated by Algeria's ambassador to Mali, Abdelkrim Ghrib.
The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Tuesday denounced the alleged embezzlement of $1,3-billion by public companies and finance officials. The embezzlement was revealed following a public audit.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni already looks set to win re-election in 2011, ensuring stability for the fast-growing economy despite concerns about democracy under one of Africa's longest-serving rulers. News that the 64-year-old former rebel will stand again has found favour with investors hungry for opportunities in emerging markets, but confounded opponents who have criticised his increasingly autocratic leadership style.
The reaction of the African blogosphere to the Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai outlining a framework for talks on Zimbabwe's political crisis has ranged from guarded optimism to outright condemnation.
Dibussi Tande reviews:
This report from Liberian-based Stop Firestone coalition member, the Save My Future Foundation, details human rights, labor and environmental abuses on the Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. The report is an update of SAMFU's 2005 report on Firestone.The report is also one of the first examinations of the role that several different security forces operating on the plantation play in violating the rights of workers, their families and communities surrounding the plantation.
There has been a continuing debate amongst grass root Kenyans as to what is truly causing the high food prices. Theories proposed have ranged from there having been poor harvests due to lack of rain; and the after-effect of the post-elections violence and displacement; the disappearance of traditional foods from the farmers’ options of crops and that the food crisis is a global problem.While there may be some truth in these factors, Kenyans nevertheless see a clear link between the high food prices and corruption.
Tasintha Programme and Equality Now sponsored and organized a 3 day regional African Conference from 20-22 June 2008 in Lusaka Zambia. The Conference - with participants from Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - gave organizations and survivors of commercial sexual exploitation the opportunity to share their experiences and strategies in working to end the trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls.
Remember Goldenberg! Cost Kenya 10% Of GDP. The final opinion on the evidence reviewed is that although the above were criminal actions of an economic nature, they could only have succeeded with the necessary political backing they were provided with by officers of state who flagrantly violated the basic rules by which they were bound in virtue of their positions.
The Third EQUINET Regional Conference on Equity in Health in east and southern Africa will be held at Speke Conference Centre, Munyonyo, Kampala, Uganda September 23rd -25th 2009. The conference theme 'Reclaiming the Resources for Health: Building Universal People Centred Health Systems in East and Southern Africa' highlights the opportunities we seek to highlight for improving health equity in east and southern Africa.
On the heels of yet another G8 summit the global hand-wringing about the crisis of African development lumbers ahead with its parade of conferences, commissions and concerts proclaiming support for the poor from the seats of power. Conspicuously absent from the spectacle of solidarity is any acknowledgement of history. In fact, the discourse and politics of the West’s relationship with the African continent is deliberately, decidedly and dangerously a-historical.
Like the small boy watching the parade, who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes, Gerald Caplan has written a small but powerful book to expose this latest betrayal of Africa: the denial of context and history. A Canadian scholar and political activist with a life-long commitment to justice and African development, Caplan has made a much needed intervention in debates about Africa’s future. His book, The Betrayal of Africa, asserts that history matters, for understanding the present in which we live, and for finding ways forward to the future we desire.
Africa faces the greatest challenges of any region in tackling extreme poverty, which afflicts the lives of millions on the continent. Despite stronger economic growth, more than 40 per cent of the population of Africa still lives on less than $1 a day, and education and health systems are inadequate in many areas. The Millennium Village in Ruhiira, Uganda shows how modest inputs can enable communities to improve their lives and livelihoods.
Opening new opportunities for women is a key to development, as well to strengthen efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. In Nigeria, where cultural attitudes and traditional beliefs often circumscribe women’s roles and hinder access to training and education, a women’s project is changing lives.
According to a report appearing in the South China Morning Post, Beijing authorities are secretly planning to ban black people and others it considers social undesirables from entering the city’s bars during the Olympic Games, a move that would contradict the official slogan, “One World, One Dream”. Bar owners near the Workers’ Stadium in central Beijing say they have been forced by Public Security Bureau officials to sign pledges agreeing not to let black people enter their premises.