The MDC has demanded compensation from the Robert Mugabe regime now that terrorism charges have been dropped against dozens of activists who spent nearly four months in custody. Supporters of the opposition party were rounded up in raids in March when the police claimed to have thwarted plans for a campaign of petrol-bombings. The arrests came days after security forces broke up a planned opposition rally and assaulted MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and scores of supporters and party officials.

Environmental groups in Gabon demanded on Thursday the government reveal the terms of a $3 billion iron ore mining deal with China, saying they feared the huge project could damage an area of virgin forest. The project, awarded to state-owned China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corp., is for the construction of an big iron ore mine in the Belinga mountains of Gabon's remote northeast Ogooue-Ivindo province. The Chinese group expects to complete the mine in three years.

Former rebels in southern Sudan have withdrawn their members from a national coalition government, party officials said on Thursday, to pressure their northern partners to reignite a stalled peace process. "The SPLM (Sudan People's Liberation Movement) has recalled all ministers and presidential advisers from the government of national unity," SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum told reporters in the southern capital Juba.

The history of African Europeans is little known, but this is beginning to change as more research is conducted on the subject. In this essay, Onyekachi Wambu, film maker, journalist, and editor of the recently published, Under the Tree of Talking featuring several African intellectuals including Chinua Achebe, Ali Mazrui, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Chinweizu, William Gumede, Wangui wa Goro, Kimani Ngoju, Martha Chinouya, Eva Dadrian, Marianna Ofosu and others, explores the work of black writers in Britain since the 18th century.

The African Business Leadership Conference 2007 will be held in Accra, Ghana, October 17-19, 2007. Among the renowned speakers at the conference, writes Carole Muchendu, will be Jerry Vilakazi, whose passion for transformation, social equality and the economic development of the entire African Continent is evident in his current role as CEO of Business Unity of South Africa (BUSA).

A new Ugandan pharmaceutical factory has begun producing antiretroviral medication drugs locally, something the government says will significantly increase the number of HIV-positive people accessing the life-prolonging drugs across the country and the East African region. The US$38 million factory is the first in Africa to produce full triple-therapy generic antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and is based in a suburb in the south of the capital, Kampala.

The High authority of audio-visual and communication (HAAC) of Togo has criticesed the use of SMSees in Togo's election campaign. In a watershed decision the High Court on Tuesday denounced the publication of short messages by a member of the RPT which is the rulling party in Togo to send SMS messages to potential voters.

Institutions of higher education around the world are embracing the concept of online education as technological developments continue to cement their role in global development. The United Nations University has also embraced the idea of providing online education through the Global Virtual University (GVU), currently headquartered at GRID-Arendal in Norway. Launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2002, the UNU-GVU offers short and masters-level online courses in environment and development issues.

Tens of thousands of uprooted people have welcomed plans for the creation of a UN-mandated multi-dimensional mission to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid in volatile parts of Chad and Central African Republic. But many fear it will come too late to prevent more attacks on refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs).

With the view to preserving the history of black gay people in South Africa, Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (formerly Gays and Lesbians Archives of South Africa [GALA]) published a book entitled Till the time of trial – The Prison letters of Simon Nkoli. The book was launched a week ago in Johannesburg at Constitution Hill. While celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action contributes to the development of human rights and democracy in the country by sharing its archived information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) affairs with communities.

One of Africa's largest rubbish dumps is harming the health of children living nearby and polluting the Kenyan capital Nairobi, according to a report from the UN. The study, commissioned by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, found that half of 328 children tested near the Dandora dump had amounts of lead in their blood exceeding internationally accepted levels.

Mounting tensions in the oil-rich Abyei region are the most dangerous threat to reignite that war, as the latest report from the International Crisis Group, Sudan: Breaking the Abyei Deadlock,* demonstrates. It examines the dispute over Abyei, the most volatile aspect of the CPA, the deal that ended the country’s twenty-year civil war in which over two million people died. The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is violating the CPA by refusing the “final and binding” ruling of the Abyei Boundary Commission, leaving an administrative and political vacuum.

In 1997, the first regional Climate Outlook Forum (COF) took place in Zimbabwe. Forums have since been created in East and West Africa, providing seasonal climate forecasts for each region. The COF forecasts predict rainfall 3–6 months in advance. Initially, efforts to use forecasts were not promising, with inaccuracies leading to lack of trust.

Conflicts in Africa since the end of the Cold War have cost the continent $306-billion, equivalent to all the foreign aid it has received over the same period, according to a report released by The research released on Thursday by Oxfam, Saferworld and the International Action Network on Small Arms, estimates that conflict shrinks economies by 15% on average. The study, Africa's Missing Billions, says that almost half of the countries on the continent have been involved in some form of conflict since 1990.

The East African Sub-regional Support Initiative for The Advancement of Women (EASSI)is proud to announce the publication of the September edition of Women's Lexis.

UNIFEM, the women’s fund at the United Nations, and the Women’s Funding Network, a global network of 124 women’s funds, have called for greater investment in equal opportunities for women as a key to combating global poverty. The UNIFEM-Women’s Funding Network collaboration is in response to increasing evidence that women hold critical — yet often untapped — potential in helping to improve the economic prospects of communities and societies as a whole. The partnership will centre on a public awareness campaign on October 17, World Poverty Day.

Two former leaders of Sierra Leone’s Civil Defence Forces (CDF) militia have received prison sentences following their convictions in August for war crimes committed during the country’s decade-long civil conflict. Justice Itoe said that while both Prosecution and Defence had recommended single, “global” sentences, the Court had decided to hand down separate sentences on each count for which the two accused had been found guilty.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43667-jena-6.jpgIn the Black American experience the act of defending one's community has always been viewed as subversive and any attempt to assert your own justice in self-defence will be criminalised. The case of the Jena 6 is one that has been repeated throughout the history of Black America from lynching whether as a genocidal act or in this case a symbolic one.

One of the main implications of the case of the Jena 6 is one that has sent countless activists to prison. The implication—if you dare to remove yourself from the role of a victim and attempt to assert justice yourself, you will pay a heavy price. The notion that six young Black men responded appropriately by not allowing an environment of terror to exist in their lives and their community enrages a society that does not want to see Black people recognizing and acting on the understanding that we alone will change our conditions. This case would have made countless people considerably more comfortable if these young brothers did not engage in a physical encounter with the white student. Many would have been appeased if we as a community continue to appeal to a legal system that has made it clear that it doesn't place much, if any value on the lives of Black people.

The Jena 6 engaged in an act of self-defense and their actions reflect our reality. Lynching, a genocidal act that occurred with the consent of the government, has long been a part of Black Experience in North America.
In a petition submitted to the United Nations in 1951, titled "We Charge Genocide", Paul Robeson and other prominent Blacks, documented that at least 10,000 Black people had been lynched since the abolition of slavery.
The exact number of people murdered can never be known. The horrendous act of lynching did not stop with the Civil Rights movement and our communities remain intimately familiar with the legacy of the noose.
Countless numbers of Black people have been killed throughout recent history with the legal system failing to prevent similar cases from reoccurring.

The call for justice in this case must include the dismissal of all charges against the Jena 6 and the immediate termination of prosecutor Reed Walters. Any call for decreased charges affirms the notion that Black people can do anything to struggle against white supremacy/racism except for physically defending ourselves.

Our history of struggle in North America has always had the importance of defending our lives as a fundamental pillar. The act of defending ourselves as a community has always been criminalized. This process of criminalization is an attempt to dissuade communities at large from becoming self sufficient in their own security. Former Black Panther Party member, Jalil Muntaqim stated, "We are our own Liberators"; our path to liberation must be decided and executed by us in the manner that we determine. It is this act of self-determination that is considered to be the most dangerous by government officials. The legacy of the Black Liberation Movement was rooted in this ideology and was responded to viciously by all levels of law enforcement, which routinely attacked and murdered activists. Thus we have the many political prisoners and prisoners of war in the united states today. Nationally we have a responsibility to call for the freedom of all political prisoners in the united states who have been found guilty of simply defending the lives of Black people.

We are pleased to hear the many calls for people to pay attention to Jena 6s in our own towns. We must recognize that we all live in Jena. The same people who boarded buses from all corners of this country must organize against the mass criminalization of our youth, militarized law enforcement and participate in the work for self-determination and the unconditional release of the political prisoners and prisoners of war in the United States.

Self Respect, Self Defense and Self Determination We will defend our freedom fighters To find out how you can participate in the movement to free political prisoners, please contact:

Jericho amnesty campaign
Hands Off Assata campaign
Free the San Francisco 8 campaign
[email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43669-Sankara-4.jpgMukoma Wa Ngugi celebrates the lives of Thomas Sankara and Che Guevara, and in doing so, asks us to remember all our other leaders and heroes who died at the hands of colonialism and apartheid.

In April this year, we celebrated 50 yrs of Ghana’s Independence. This October, in addition to remembering the revolutionary promise of Che Guevara executed forty years ago, we will also be remembering that twenty years ago, Thomas Sankara was assassinated – a stark reminder that we are still in the state Odinga Oginga called Not Yet Uhuru. We will be remembering that if Africa suffers today, it is because yesterday its best political minds, and its most fiery and committed sons and daughters were assassinated. All for thirty pieces of silver, for tea, coffee, oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, uranium and African sweat.

But we should also remember the living. Aziz Fall, the co-coordinator of the International Justice Campaign for Sankara (ICJS) has been receiving anonymous death threats since December 2006. They tell him “stop or be stopped” “commit suicide or face execution” and in the last one, he was informed that his family would be targeted. His crime? Coordinating 22 lawyers dedicated to using legal means to find the truth behind Sankara’s assassination.

The ICJS helped Mariam Sankara, Thomas Sankara’s widow, take her case to the United Nations after, predictably, the legal system in Burkina Faso stalled each time she appeared in court. Finally, in March 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Sankara’s family has “the right to know the circumstances of his death.” The Committee also argued that failure to correct the natural death entry on Sankara’s death certificate, refusal to investigate his death, and “the lack of official recognition of his place of burial” pointed to “inhumane treatment of Ms. Sankara and her sons” contrary to Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Dictators and your torturers all over the world take note! Article 7 declares: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” In a strange way, the death threats against Aziz further validate the UN ruling.

Victoria Mxenge, Ruth First, Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel, Chris Hani, Mhodlane, Kimathi and many others dead at the hands of colonialism and apartheid. But what makes the assassinations of Sankara, Lumumba or Maurice Bishop of Grenada all the more painful is knowing that they were betrayed by those closest to them Then, without exception, they were succeeded by less able people- to say the least. Their successors are egregiously guilty of violently pulling back their societies miles behind the starting line.

After Lumumba, Mobutu –a common thief who under the guise of a shallow nationalism - maimed, killed and stole in the Congo. In Grenada, Bernard Coard’s bloody counter-revolution allowed a predatory U.S. to invade Grenada. And in Burkina Faso, each day we see what President Blaise Compaore has done with the Sankara revolution.

Life expectancy is 47.9 years, adult literacy, 21.8 percent and Burkina Faso now has the dubious distinction of being ranked the 3rd poorest country in the world with 80 percent of its 13 million people living on less than two dollars a day. In November of 2007, Compaore will be running for presidency, again. I say give him five more years to see if he can do it – Let him get Burkina Faso the coveted first place title of poorest country in the whole world!

For a nation to heal, it must know and come to terms with the truth of its past. And it must make good with the promise of that past. In Kenya Dedan Kimathi was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave in Kamiti Prison by the British in 1957 where the post-independence government left him. Having set Kenya on neo-colonial rails and rewarded the collaborators with land, then turned their backs on Mau Mau veterans, both Kenyatta and Moi wanted what Kimathi stood for forgotten. Compaore is afraid of the truth because Sankara is a reminder of how far he has fallen from the promise of the revolution. Compaore knows we know he cannot make good on Sankara’s promise.

We have to remember our dead. But our presidents prefer gold monuments and statues. Sometimes they cultivate heroes’ acres without growing freedom. Better the monument be societies that are free and egalitarian. Instead of grand monuments, it is better we have nations that would welcome the revolutionary dead. Because truth be told, Nkrumah would not have been welcomed to Ghana’s 50 year celebrations. Kimathi would not be welcomed in today’s Kenya and Sankara would be assassinated again in today’s Burkina Faso.

What if Sankara had grown old with us? Would he have become a dictator as we have seen with many? We do not know. But we know how he lived, we know what he died for and his promise. That is what should matter.

Koni Benson, a friend and agitator, named her son Sankara because, she said, “What Thomas Sankara did, tried to do and what happened to him, should not be forgotten. Sankara is the history and the future of the continent. He dared us to invent the future.”

As we remember our dead – Let us also remember the living. We have to dare to dream again. We have to dare to remember the past. And we have to dare to act.

* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change (KPH, 2003), and editor of the forthcoming, New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine where a shorter version of this essay first appeared.

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43671-Sankara-3.jpgIt is 20 years since a great combatant for African dignity, integrity and human liberation, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, was assassinated. Widely recognised as pivotal to his death, his incumbent, Blaise Compaoré, meanwhile, has been in power for 20 years. Frequently compared with such dictators as Mbotu at home, his legitimacy resting solely on orchestrating the military coup that murdered Sankara.

On the commemoration the anniversary of his death that will be mourned in Burkina Faso and marked by the popular leader’s supporters throughout the world, Cheriff M. Sy, editor of the progressive and independent Burkinabe weekly political and cultural affairs journal, Bendré, recounts the assassination of one of Africa’s most important independence leaders, and assesses the legacy for his country and continent.

The tragic fate of Thomas Sankara is tied to the struggle for a social democracy. The ‘Africa mafia’, the businesspeople and their collaborators who control Africa, did not like the struggle. Therefore, he had to be exterminated. They found armed hands among the local ranks. The killing machine splurged into motion.

Reflecting on the causes of a dark Thursday

‘In favour of the meandering direction of history, this autocrat heaved himself up to the head of our revolution to choke it from the inside. This high treason was illustrated by his derision of all the organisational principles, the various denials of the noble objectives of the RDP [Rassemblement Démocratique et Populaire: ‘democratic and popular rally’], the personalisation of power, the mystical vision. As for bringing solutions to the concrete problems of the masses, everything engendered demobilisation at the heart of the militant people.’ – Extract from the Proclamation of 15 October 1987

‘People of Burkina Faso…the tragic moments that we lived through on 15 October belong to the exceptional events that often make up the history of the peoples. As revolutionaries, we must have the courage to assume our responsibilities. We did so through the proclamation of the Popular Front. We will continue…with determination, for the triumph of the objectives of the August revolution. This brutal denouement shocks us all as human beings, and me more than most, for having been his comrade in arms, moreover, his friend. For us too, he remains a revolutionary comrade who got things wrong.’ – Extract from the message to the nation delivered by the president of the Popular Front, comrade captain Blaise Compaoré, 19 October 1987

On Thursday 15 October 1987, the democratic and popular revolution in Burkina Faso was brutally arrested on the strike of 4pm. After the onslaught of the kalashnikovs, which lasted all the evening, the signed Proclamation of the Popular Front fell down like thick rain mixed with hail, surprising the RDP militants as much as those uninterested in and distanced from the revolution.

For a while, it had been known that there was a serious crisis in the national revolutionary council. Its principal leaders, formerly united, no longer agreed about orientation and strategy for action. Increasingly, the four historic leaders, Thomas Sankara, Blaise Compaoré, Boukary Lingani and Henri Zongo, appeared to be ‘too many’ to lead the revolutionary movement.

But the serious crisis that shook the RDP leaders remains mainly concealed from the grass-roots militants, to the extent that they will be surprised by the magnitude and the brutality of the October denouement.

Additionally, many sincere militants still regret the outcome of the 15 October, as it has been presented, telling themselves there had been no lack of opportunity for debates about ideas to avoid this tragic event. But those responsible for the coup ran a significant risk by giving Thomas Sankara a voice, because he was such a convincing speaker that he may have emerged victorious.

His same capacity for persuasion led to certain decisions, which have retrospectively been judged as wilful or spontaneous, whereas in his time, he did not receive such constant criticisms. And this same personality trait of the late president saved the skin of more than one soul, whom close collaborators wanted to sacrifice, over-and-over, on the alter of the counter-revolution.

In fact, we can ascertain that the interventions of 15 October and the subsequent adjustments were precisely because the comrades who had started the RDP with Thomas Sankara were already exhausted. They had neither the strength nor the heart to continue. As there were influential enemies within and outside of the revolution, they had no difficulty in rallying to their side a whole world of people to counterbalance the RDP. The invented reasoning of ‘betraying the initial path’ was rapidly conjured up.

Now, captain Thomas Sankara was the first to realise the need to democratise, which he professed in his speech of August 1987 in Bobo Dioulasso: ‘Burkina Faso needs a people of conviction, not a vanquished people subjugated to their fate.’

He thus began the genuine rectification of the RDP, otherwise marked by the release of several political and common law prisoners. The wrongly sanctioned would be able to restart their careers.

But this policy, initiated by Thomas Sankara, was quickly short-circuited by the events of 15 October, and claimed by the Popular Front. The image of Sankara as closed and hostile to openings had to stick.

Things accelerated after the speech of reconciliation on August 87 in Bobo Dioulasso, when Sankara said: ‘in recent years, we have sometimes made errors. They must not re-occur in the scared land of Burkina Faso…we must prefer to take one step together with the people rather than ten steps without the people’.

After this speech, it was necessary for his opponents to take power. Leaving Thomas Sankara time to initiate democratisation of the RDP would deprive them of a justified pretext for the plot.

The political crisis that had prevailed for some time, as is customary, benefited the military, and from then on, arms had to speak to unlock it. Such have the tactics of politicians in Bukina Faso always been. Thomas Sankara opposed this, asserting that the soldier must ‘live amongst the people’, and preaching ‘a quarter of chicken per day per soldier’.

During regular meetings with their chief, he constantly made this complaint. To which the chief in question responded that he did not see a problem, except that ‘Sankara is opposed to us’. The soldiers replied: ‘why don’t we remove him?’ By force of repetition, he was finally removed on 15 October 1987.

What happened on that day?

According to Gilbert Diendéré’s book, ‘on 15 October, with the meeting of the officers, elements in the palace accused the soldiers of Pô of organising a coup. The atmosphere was heated…we went our separate ways without reaching an agreement…we knew that Sankara had a council meeting at 4pm and we decided to wait for him there…shortly after 4pm, Sankara’s Peugeot 205 and his guard’s car arrived at the pavilion. A second security car went to park a bit further on. We encircled the cars. Sankara was in sports gear. As always, he held his weapon, an automatic gun, in his hand. He immediately shot and killed one of our people. At this time, all the men broke loose, everyone fired and the situation got out of control…after the events, I telephoned the house of Blaise to inform him. When he arrived, he was extremely disappointed and dissatisfied, above all, when he established there had been 13 deaths’.

So the coup was apparently made without the knowledge of Blaise Compaoré! He declared ‘when I arrived at the council, after the shooting and that I saw the body of Thomas lying in the ground, I failed to have a very violent reaction towards his killers. That would undoubtedly have been a monster carnage, which I would certainly not have got out of alive. But when the soldiers provided me the details of the business, I was disappointed and disgusted…when I asked my men why they had arrested Sankara without informing me, they answered me that if they had done so, I would have refused them. And it is true. I knew that my political camp was strong. Thomas did not control the state any longer. I did not need to enact a coup d’état. But, my men became frightened when they learned, after midday, that we would be arrested in 24 hours’.

However, the truth is that on that day, Thomas Sankara was in a work meeting with some of his collaborators in a room at the council. Always in the council, 70 metres away, there was a white [Peugeot] 504 with seven people. A vehicle arrives at the meeting. The few elements of the guard in front of the room do not worry, because the passengers of the vehicle are their colleagues. The vehicle pulls over; the passengers open fire immediately. A police officer and two drivers are shot dead. They collapse. Thomas Sankara is in the room when he hears the shooting. He stands up, his gun in the hand and said to his collaborators ‘stay, stay, they want me!’ Just after crossing the door, he is shot. He collapses. Do they stop there? No. The attackers entered the room and killed his collaborators.

In short, let us suppose – and it is difficult – that the thesis that captain Blaise wanted to impose on the fait accompli were true. Would that however exonerate him? Would he not have been indirectly at the root of the tragic events of 15 October? Is he not the main beneficiary of the plot?

The man, even if he had never been really thirsty for power, as he claims, leaves any observer of political life in Burkina Faso sceptical all the same. Effectively, after 15 October, he proved that the power cannot be shared. The entire cohort of intellectuals that constituted the insurrectionary committee that psychologically prepared for 15 October with a series of filthy leaflets and intrigues of the lowest order will learn this at their own expense. Commander Boukary Lingani and captain Henri Zongo will learn at theirs.

Today, 20 years later, what should we remember?

Beyond the rhetoric, Sankara died because of his patriotic and progressive convictions, but also because he prevented some of his civilian and military comrades and soldiers from eating luxuriously and spending handsomely, to the detriment of the people.

When he arrived, his country was a ‘mournful synthesis of the sufferings of all humanity’, held the world record on infant mortality, and had permanently negative trade and agricultural balances and extremely high public debts. He wanted to make his country a land of dignity and freedom.

Thus courageously, he redefined the sum total of all the possible and the thinkable ways in which the development of a country among the most denuded in world could be envisaged.

On the evidence that underdevelopment and dependency could not be resolved without the integration of the marginalised, he engaged his country in progressive social transformation.

Sankara’s revolution was simple: work more, spend less and spend better, produce more, be concerned with the priority needs of the country. He said ‘our revolution is and must be permanent; the collective action of the revolutionaries to transform reality and improve the concrete situation of the popular masses our country. Our revolution will only have a value, if, looking back, we will be able to say that the people of Burkina are a little happier because they have clean drinking water, sufficient food, good health, education, decent housing and more freedom, more democracy, more dignity. Our revolution will have a right to exist if it can answer these questions concretely.’

Within a few years, he had achieved a qualitative jump for his country. But he remained aware that the essential questions of his people were those of his whole continent and of all the exploited and oppressed people. Pan-Africanist and anti- globalisation activist, he knew how to be the voice of the voiceless.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43671-death-certificate-of-... afternoon, bullets of the assassins shot Sankara dead. He fell, but had had time to sow the seeds and sprinkle them with his blood, time to break a link in the chain and free the oppressed youth of Africa.

He was a precursor of an alternative policy to the dependency and enslavement that the global economic institutions continue to impose by their model of development based on indebtedness.

Most importantly he has contributed to the understanding of his people and all the oppressed that a credible alternative cannot come from outside to save them. It is only by relying on themselves and their intrinsic capacity that they may ‘dare to invent the future’ and find the keys of their development and freedom.

Today, in each of our movements for social, political and cultural advancement, Sankara, the man, lives on in us. He will remain forever in the collective consciousness. He will be an example to those struggling for the liberation of humankind.

Link: Thomas Sankara -

* Cheriff M. Sy is director of the weekly Bendré publication providing information and reflection on Burkina Faso, http://www.journalbendre.net

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

* Translated and adapted from the original by Stephanie Kitchen.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with headquarters in Ibadan (Nigeria), is seeking candidates for a Manager of the project “Promoting Sustainable Agriculture in Borno State” (or PROSAB) funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and is implemented with a broad range of local stakeholders and regional partners. The position will remain open until a suitable candidate is found.

Since 3rd October 2007, the government of Sudan, supported by the Janjaweed militiamen, are conducting massive military operations in Darfur. Deployment of large numbers of government troops was observed all over Darfur. Heavy military equipment and aerial bombardments were used against civilian targets in Haskanita and Muhajariya localities, South Darfur State.

Oxfam’s Country Programme Managers never cease to amaze. They make decisions that affect the lives of millions in whole countries and provide solutions that bring lasting changes to all sorts of communities the world over. Right now, we’re looking to build a pool of candidates from a wide range of backgrounds with humanitarian and relief experience to take on these roles So if you can bring direction to some of the world’s most challenging environments in humanitarian, development and advocacy work, read on.

This independent review of land issues in twenty countries in Southern and Eastern Africa is the third since 2004. The idea of conducting a regular review arose in an informal meeting of land rights activists in Pretoria in 2003. They were drawn from NGOs, research and teaching institutions and/ or were working on assignments for international agencies and/ or African governments.

"Taking a stand against poverty on October 17th - Let us all join hands and say no to poverty" Tajudeen Abdul Raheem argues why we should support of the Millennium Development Goals and join the "Stand Up Against Poverty" Campaign.

Are you one of those overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world who only read of about the Guinness World Records but never has a clue how they are set and have ruled out the possibility of ever setting any of those records? Until last year I had never thought I could be part of the Guinness records myself and doing so for a very worthy cause.

Between 9.00pm (GMT) Tuesday 16th of October and 9.00 pm (GMT) on Wednesday the 17th of October 2007 you could also become a Guinness record holder. All you have to do is join millions of other peoples across the world to beat the record set last year for the largest number of people ever to 'Stand Up against poverty' and in support of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

It all began very humbly last year. The UN Millennium Campaign Communications group had suggested to Guinness that we could set a record of people standing up for a particular cause in a 24 hour period. Guinness had never done that before. So they set a target of 10, 000 across the world. When I heard about the 10,000 target, I was amused because and even boasted to my colleagues that I could raise more than that just by mobilizing my extended family in Funtua, Katsina State, Northern Nigeria! By the 18th of October when the results were announced my boast proved right because almost 50, 000 people stood up in Funtua, the small town where I was born, joining over 3.6 million people across Africa. Interesting even bigger numbers across the world bringing the total to: over 23.5 million in more than 80 countries.

Both the UN Millennium Campaign and its partners including the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) and its various National partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe were pleasantly surprised. Even the Guinness recorders were taken by surprise that so many people could show their solidarity with the poor in such huge numbers.

It is not just the numbers that were staggering but the range of activities and broad coalition of peoples, social classes, individuals, groups and associations that took part: schools, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, government officials, community groups, professional associations, NGOs, CBOS, , Trade Unionists, Political parties, legislatures including local councillors, etc. They took part in cities, towns, rural areas, hamlets and town halls. at peoples homes, town centres, cinema halls, Theatres, on the streets, parks and Gyms. For instance in Abuja, Nigeria a group of Lepers in an isolated community organized a STAND UP Moment in their community telling the National GCAP Coordinator that no one in authority had ever asked for their view on anything. in Kenya an elderly grassroots mobilize wearing a Sikh-like turban stormed the offices of the Millennium Campaign demanding nothing more than leaflets and banners and went on to stun us by mobilizing over 10, 000 people to Stand up in Kariobangi!

The idea is so simple and at the same time most empowering. You can do it anywhere you are. You are not powerless. You can at least say NO to extreme poverty in the midst of global plenty. More than saying NO you can also support the MDGs as a means of eradicating global poverty and hunger, redressing the imbalances between the rich and poor countries, the rich and the poor in all societies, educating our children , treating and caring for those sick amongst us and all the other goals.

The MDGs have been criticized by many since they were adopted in 2000 but implementing them has led to better living standards for millions who were without hope seven years ago. A disproportionate focus on what has not been achieved may actually make one lose sight of the progress being made and what more could be done. For instance, millions of children who could not have passed by the gates of a school are now in school. In some countries they are moving access beyond primary school to secondary school.

In a country like Kenya the provision of mosquito nets has dramatically brought down the number of people, especially children, dying from malaria. Malawi today is only second to Peru globally in the most dramatic reduction of infant mortality. In the past four years infant mortality has come down by more than a third.

The MDGs are not cocktails that states and communities can cherry pick as they go along. Progress in one goal must demand progress in others if the success is to be sustainable. Hence Campaigners in all our countries have to focus on some of the sad paradoxes. For example, as infant mortality is coming down maternal mortality remains scandalously high in many African countries. How can we achieve the lofty goals on gender and women’s empowerment if so many women continue to die in childbirth?

In general there has been slow and patchy progress in many African countries but this does not mean that the outcome is necessarily doomed. More can be done. But this depends on citizens demanding that their governments meet their commitments made on the MDGs. Seven years may be short but it is long enough for all states to meet these goals if citizens insist and continue to put pressure on the policy makers, whether government or parliamentarians or politicians at all levels. Indifference is the enemy of delivery and a great ally of insensitive politicians.

If you think demonstrations do not make a difference please read Nelson Mandela's LONG WALK TO FREEDOM. Whatever snippets of information that the censors of the apartheid jails allowed to spill in to the prisoners cheered them up. One of the first places that Mandela first visited after his release was London. He had refused to see any body in the official government of Britain instead he had a people’s reception at Trafalgar Square to thank the people of Britain for their demonstrations, pickets, protests in support of the liberation of South Africa.

Every little bit counts. It is the small steps of ordinary people that lead to extraordinary events in human quest for freedom and liberation. Poverty is the greatest enemy of freedom today for more than a billion people mostly in Africa and Asia.

On October 16/17 every one of us will have the opportunity to show how much we care about the poor by Standing Up against Poverty and supporting the MDGs . Help us beat the Guinness record that we set last year. Over 23.5 millions of people participated then. Make it even bigger this year. You can do so anywhere you are. Look at or [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Amnesty International and ACAT -- Burundi (Action des Chrétiens pour l’Abolition de la Torture) have called on the Burundian government to take immediate action to protect women and girls from rape and other sexual violence in Burundi. Despite the fact that the rape of women and girls is widespread throughout the country, the Burundian authorities have systematically failed to take concrete steps to prevent, investigate and punish these crimes. As a result, perpetrators regularly escape prosecution and punishment by the state and victims are left without protection.

This week, the AU Monitor is calling for your contributions toward a Peoples’ Audit of the African Union (AU) (www.aumonitor.org/comments/413/).

The Audit Review panel was set up by the African Union in July in order to identify the areas where significant improvement has to be made to accelerate the African integration process. Having launched an official invitation for contributions to the review, the AU Monitor is asking our readers to contribute to this important review. We have uploaded the official terms of reference of the review as well as a background summary for your attention.

We ask that you forward this invitation for submissions, contributions, debate and discussion far and wide so that CSO, including and particularly social movements, grassroots organizations, trade unions and women’s rights groups etc., as well as citizens’ perspectives on the African Union and the Union Government influence the policy recommendations of the Review Panel.

Please submit all contributions directly to [email][email protected] with the subject heading “Peoples’ Audit” before October 26th, 2007.

I appreciated Dr Adesanmi's imaginative way of offering a critique ( see ) of the absence of African feminist/womanist thought from the Norton Anthology of Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, but I'm not sure how it would sit with Sartje to know that when she is given voice in the twenty-first century, she is not allowed to speak the names of her continental sistren unless they have relocated to the States. I wonder if Ms Bjartman would like it that when she speaks from Canada, her countrywoman Rozena Maart is not mentioned. I'm sure she would like the world to know about her sister's book: The Politics of Consciousness: The Consciousness of Politics. When Black Consciousness Meets White Consciousness. Volume One. The Interrogation of Writing. Awomandla Publishers 2006

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43627-disllusioned-african.... time ago, in 1993, a forum of Anglophone Cameroon writers held under the auspices of the Goethe Institute of Yaounde produced, among many excellent articles, a reflection by Tatah H. Mbuy on "The Moral Responsibility of the Writer in a Pluralist Society". Every such writer, says Mbuy, is to see himself as a spokesman for his society. He must seek the truth, propagate it and defend it. He is to be the prophet and soothsayer of his society, pricking the consciences of all and trying to correct faults where these are to be found. Elsewhere in this forum other participants described present-day Anglophone writing as concerned with "deconstructing victim hood", through a discourse revolving around shared values or reference points.

This also entails the need to move on, into reconstruction of heritage that Cameroonians, and indeed all Africans, are clinging to precariously, in the pluralist era of Africa's democratisation.

It is in the new, post-election scene, which Nyamnjoh has described elsewhere as "a decline to one-dimensionalism", that "The Disillusioned African" takes his bearings on the world. Its framework is the ongoing politico-economic process of the 1990's with its own peculiarly African 'fin-de-siècle' flavour, seen from the distancing haven of an imaginary trip to Britain. The vehicle of communication is the letters of the philosopher-hero to his friend Moungo back home. The air-flight and touch-down, the first sight of London, the brief stay in academic Manchester, and an interlude in hospital, laid low with malaria, provide the author with a variety of jumping-off points from which to view both British society and his own.

Part One, situated in the "Mandela Hotel", evokes reflections on leadership, class systems and the universal greed for wealth - or what may be called "officially-sponsored theft".

Part Two provides much paradoxical comment on the foibles and attitude of what Nyamnjoh refers to throughout as the "Queendom" of Britain.

Part Three chronicles life as the only student of a university department of philosophy, bringing in its train wry observations on the ambiguous cross-cultural influences that followed in the wake of colonisation and including an appalling, scarcely credible specimen of official memoranda from the Belgian government to the departing missionaries to what is now Zaire.

From his hospital ward in Part Four, the narrator muses on the demise of Communist autocracies and their effects on the world balance of power: "Today, people have got to find new enemies, which isn't easy... The truth is, people have simply got to have something they fear, for people are united more by FEAR than by LOVE." After drawing a parallel between leftist dictatorships such as that of the Ceasuscus, and the present modes of government of various African leaders, the book takes a helter-skelter, tumble-down free fall to the present day, to the chicanery of the 1992 Cameroon elections, and the hero's flight from the central critical arena into his native Grasslands village.

The book was written before the accession to power of Nelson Mandela, the Rwandan genocide or the depredations of devaluation in the economies of francophone Africa could provide further examples of both the best and the worst scenarios for a problematic future.

Satirical writing has an honourable history among Anglophone Cameroonians, whose use of language as a political instrument is as powerful as any polemicist in nineteenth century England. Readers of Nyamnjoh's previous work have grown to expect, beneath the racy, humorous style, an incisive and merciless analysis of social ills. Here is indeed a seeker after truth. However, where the previous book, Mind Searching, adopted the light-hearted and hilarious device of an extended daydream taking place in church, as a vehicle for his observation of the Yaounde bureaucratic and religious scene, this work seems to fish in murkier waters altogether. By the medium of an apparent, tongue-in-cheek naivety, by repeated digressions and diverse literary and historical parallels, Nyamnjoh's subversive intent remains constant: to strip pretensions, to explode phoniness and humbug, to expose the sores that underlie the veneer of Africa modernity, particularly among the elites and their sad counterparts, the under classes. The vigour of expression reveals the bitterness that underpins the author's surface urbanity:

The African elite today loves kingly life so much that, at independence, what mattered to him most was political power, not economic power. The economic power was largely retained by the Europeans and expatriates, which is why the leaders suck the peasants like ticks in order to sustain their kingly appetites. Had the African leaders been sensible enough to think seriously of economic power as well, African countries today would certainly not be this dependent upon the unmechanised efforts of the peasants. And they would also be in a position to carry out their own development efforts, without necessarily posing as "les Mendiants du monde"."Beggars of the world, unite," Marx is likely to have written, had he been born in Africa." As he remarks elsewhere: "Nothing man-made is neutral, and this includes language..."

A counterpart to the African dimension is the book's extended commentary on life in the UK. Here is no innocent anthropologist. Charles's uproarious tour of London, in the company of those unlikely twins, Thompson and Thompson, and compared by him to circumcision or an initiation rite, occasions a mixed bag of comments on the British world view. A few well-worn themes come up for comment: the behaviour of the British on trains; the national meal of fish-and-chips; and, inevitably, the weather:
"The sun has not shone since I arrived in this Queendombut the English say this is the best summer they've had in decades."

Many in his host country would share his reaction to instant foods, to the paradoxical attempts on both sides of the racial divide to change the colour of one's skin. Though they might be puzzled by other assertions, such as the inferiority of the Queendom's methods of washing-up, or the supposed inability of its subjects to dance? No doubt many a Dark Continental visitor will have suffered the same frustration at the Western doctor's ignorance of malaria; even in the "Hospital for Tropical Diseases." Better not to go in the first place, but to stick with the traditional healers!

Keba, like many other tourists, is ambivalent about Britain; not without his own 'idées reçues '. At times, indeed he could be regarded as throwing the baby out with the bathwater: when, for example, he deplores the impact on Africa of Western education, or is disgusted by the publicity methods of aid agencies launching Third World disaster funds. In his search for inconsistencies, everything is grist to Charles's mill; but one cannot be a universal sender-up without falling at times into inconsistencies of one's own.

In the wide spectrum of contemporary Anglophone writing Nyamnjoh's genre stands somewhere between the sardonic humour of the political lampoonist and the anguished cry of prophecy. Bernard Fonlon, in his open letter to African students, declares:

"Still I persist in the belief that it is necessary, even imperative, that at least some intellectuals should steel their will and brace themselves and enter the arena of politics in order to usher in and further though and conscience and righteousness and integrity in the conduct of public affairs."

Is Charles's withdrawal, at the end of the book, into his Menchum peasant community an admission of defeat, or a case of 'reculer pour mieux sauter'? Is there hope for the future? Does Nyamnjoh, in the terms of his fellow-authors quoted above, provide any ways forward to the reconstruction of the African heritage? Coming as it does at a moment of even greater economic peril, political passivity and mendacious propaganda than that prevailing at the beginning of the story, one is bound to say that the vision is indeed sombre, the sense of despondency profound.

Yet this is a fighting literature and the analysis of victimhood is not wholly pessimistic. As witness the final, dream-letter from Keba to Moungo's wife:

"What we are witnessing are the signs of a crumbling system, one deaf and blind to the needs and wishes of our people. One in which the stomach has for thirty years been the only political compass. The violence and bloodshed show the tyrant as cornered and desperate, and with a little more effort and coordination on our part, tyranny would have met its Waterloo. Whenever the rays of change do at last penetrate the darkening thickness of our suffocating jungles, it shall be the result of a massive all-involving effort, the fruit of our collective suffering."

Whatever the imagined future for Africa, this courageous book will certainly provide, for both its foreign readers and the young generation of Cameroonians, a provocative insight into the complex web of despair, frustration, paradox and hope that, on the eve of the twenty-first century, constitutes the "downtrodden and forgotten bulk of the Darkened Continent."

One such young man, recently encountered in the North-West province, voiced his surprised discovery, rapidly growing into a conviction, that the liberation of Africa was not, as he had always thought, a process that would come upon it from outside, but a deep transformation to be wrought by each one from within.

To all who have Africa's interests at heart, the heartfelt cry of "The Disillusioned African" will come as a powerful incentive to set about the task of 'redeeming the time' and, whether from without or from within, of building a better future for the Continent.

* Published by Langaa Publishers, 2007 and available on amazon.com

* Reviewed by Louise Cuming - Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaounde

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

We are pleased to inform you that, for the third consecutive year, Pambazuka News has been voted by subscribers and voters around the world to be amongst "The Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics" in an award organised by PoliticsOnline and World E-Gov Forum.

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A burial ground for African slaves, which had been forgotten for almost two centuries, has been opened to the public in New York. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and poet Maya Angelou attended a dedication ceremony for a monument at the site. The late 17th Century burial site was gradually built over as New York expanded, but was rediscovered during an excavation in 1991.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) has announced a major new initiative to address the most critical obstacles to the delivery of effective and essential health services in sub-Saharan Africa: fragile and fragmented health systems and a dire shortage of health care workers. The foundation’s African Health Initiative (AHI) will provide $100 million over five to seven years to African-led partnerships working on innovative strategies to overcome barriers to integrated primary health care delivery.

AIDS, like poverty, has a disproportionate impact on women and girls. Worldwide, of the 1.2 billion people living on less than $1 a day, 70% are women. Women own a minority of the world’s land, and yet produce two thirds of the food in the developing world, are the primary caretakers for children, orphans, and the sick, and represent almost half of those living with HIV globally – nearly 60% in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA) calls for scientific articles in all areas of education for the maiden edition of the Journal of Educational Research in Africa (JERA), a social science review. JERA, a long time objective of ERNWACA, will help promote quality research relevant to African contexts and should help teachers, educational administrators and policymakers gain analytical in-depth understanding of contemporary educational issues.

In its preliminary findings, the first ever Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank in India found that the Bank had an undue and disturbingly negative influence in shaping India’s national policies disproportionate to its contribution, financial or otherwise. A four-day Independent People's Tribunal (IPT) on the World Bank found that the Bank's policies and projects in India have led to increased and needless human suffering since 1991, among hundreds of millions of India's poorest and most disadvantaged in rural and urban areas.

The 29 September attack on an African peacekeeping base in Darfur has raised fresh questions about the planned transformation of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) into a hybrid AU-UN force that includes personnel from non-African countries. Ten AU peacekeepers were killed in Haskanita, North Darfur, and 50 others are still missing.

The government and the army in Guinea Bissau are implicated in drug trafficking according to the latest report on Guinea Bissau by the UN Secretary-General. “Drug trafficking threatens to subvert the nascent democratisation process of Guinea-Bissau, entrench organised crime and undermine respect for the rule of law,” the report, issued on 28 September, concluded.

The UN refugee agency has reported it was facing a critical shortfall of US$11.1 million for its refugee return and reintegration operations budget in South Sudan for this year. "We are in a very dire situation because if we don't get this additional support we will have to scale down or even halt our operations with serious consequences for all our activities," said Chris Ache, the UNHCR representative in Sudan. "I implore donors to give us the money we need to continue our work," he added.

The violence, corruption and generalised poverty marring more than three decades of independence in Portugal’s five former colonies in Africa, and five years of independence in East Timor, have been the main obstacles for development in these countries, but not the only ones. Brain drain is another phantom that is slowly but inexorably destroying hopes for progress and wellbeing for the people of Guinea-Bissau, which became independent in 1974, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Sao Tomé and Príncipe, which became independent in 1975, and East Timor, independent since 2002.

The executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is urging action as concerns the transmission of HIV to children through sexual abuse, incest and early teenage sex. Many outreach programmes target HIV-positive pregnant women and young children, and progress is being made in this arena, Peter Piot told IPS during a recent conference at Harvard Medical School in the eastern U.S. city of Boston.

This International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) report provides insight into the local management of conflict over natural resources between herders and farmers in north-western Mali. The study finds that social, economic and environmental change within the region has led to growing pressure on natural resources and a marked deterioration in relations between farmers and herders. The paper warns that because this conflict is based on ethnicity, there is potential for serious escalation.

In this week’s AU Monitor, Michael Deibert argues that regional trade and integration are key to African development, while President Abdou Diouf, Secretary General of la Francophonie and former President of Senegal, speaking at the African Development Bank (AfDB) Eminent Speakers bureau, stated that “Africa’s regional integration should not be in service of globalization but in service of the continent’s development”. Further, the UN Security Council supported strengthening ties between the UN and the AU with the aim of enhancing capacities to deal with conflicts. This, after the AU peacekeeping mission suffered the loss of ten personnel and the wounding of ten others in South Darfur. AU Commission Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare has said the assailants will bear the consequences of the heinous act.

In trade news, African Development Bank (AfDB) Group President, Donald Kaberuka, called for more effective channelling of these resources noting that remittances from the Diaspora amount to figures comparable to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of many States, and in some cases remittances are as high as 750% of ODA. Also from AfDB, macroeconomist Hyacinthe Kouassi says that limited relevance of structural reforms financed by aid are the missing link in the analysis of aid effectiveness. While the World Bank has intervened on the issue of Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations, requesting that the European Union extend its end of year deadline.

In analysis on the global actors vying for influence in Africa, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is attempting to raise support for a Mediterranean Union, which would increase France’s geopolitical and economic influence in the region, while the United States increases its military presence in Africa with Africom becoming fully operational this week. Further, Penny Davies of Diakonia analyses China’s development assistance policies in a new report.

In event news, the Pan African Parliament ordinary session will be held in Midrand, South Africa from 15-26 October. The AU Monitor will bring you information, news and analysis from this meeting as soon as they become available.

Although a lot still needs to be explored, one thing is certain: there is a strong will to identify ways in which the latest participatory web-based tools, for example Web 2.0, can be used to improve collaboration and share experiences for the benefit of rural development. More than 300 participants from all over the world shared their experiences with Web 2.0 tools at the first Web 2.0 conference for the development sector which was held in Rome, Italy from 24-26 October 2007.

Ethiopia on Thursday pledged 5,000 troops to a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region. The 26,000-strong joint mission is to replace a hard-pressed AU force that lacks experience, equipment and cash and has been unable to stop the conflict that has caused a humanitarian crisis in which some 200,000 people are estimated to have died.

Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of reporter Ahmed Aadan Dhere, who was arrested four days ago in the city of Berbera, in the east of the northern breakaway state of Somaliland, and has been held ever since at Berbera police headquarters. Dhere is the correspondent of Haatuf, a privately-owned daily based in the Somaliland capital of Hargeisa.

Senior officials from a number of developing countries have called for greater international cooperation to help the world’s poor and vulnerable States respond to climate change – the central focus of this year’s annual high-level debate of the General Assembly. Marco Hausiku, the Foreign Minister of Namibia, said climate change is a global issue with serious implications for economic growth, sustainable development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty targets toward the year 2015.

Researchers are calling for enhanced healthcare for HIV-infected mothers after they give birth, following a study showing that in the two-year period after birth, mothers with HIV have a high incidence of infectious diseases. The study findings were published this week (1 October) in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Dire shortages of such essentials as electricity and water are forcing Zimbabweans living with HIV/AIDS to combat the country's hardships with new and novel approaches. According to the Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, 18.1 percent of the population of about 11.5 million are infected with HIV - the sixth highest prevalence in the world.