With the US presidential election fast approaching, Mukoma Wa Ngugi offers his reflections on Barack Obama’s candidacy, George W. Bush’s exalted status within particular African countries and the future prospects for US-Africa relations under a new US administration. While asserting that Obama’s rise would scarcely have been possible in Wa Ngugi’s own native Kenya, the author contends that Africans must ultimately rely on themselves if the continent’s promise is to be fulfilled.

Hepatitis E is on the increase in Uganda's northern district of Pader, where it has claimed scores of lives and infected thousands in the past year, officials said. Since May, there have been 55 new infections and seven deaths in Pader, according to Angelo Luganya, a health official in Pader. "More cases are being received in health units in villages and there is need for urgent attention to check on the disease that is on the rise," he told IRIN.

An intensive evening and weekend program of experiential learning and new perspectives on ways to bring about conflict transformation and peacebuilding. The goal is to develop the knowledge and skills needed to facilitate the transformation of interpersonal, organizational, community or complex societal conflicts, including ethnic, religious or cultural tensions, using techniques of multi-track and citizens’ diplomacy.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa is launching a landmark programme to breathe new life into efforts to empower the poor and marginalised. The Masters in Social Justice is the first of its kind to be launched by a South African university and combines law, social justice and development. Run by the Institute of Development and Labour Law at the UCT Faculty of Law, it involves prominent South African legal and development experts, including Judge Dennis Davis, and is designed for both law and non-law graduates.

When I first visited Haiti a decade ago – about two years before Margaret Trost's initial visit – one incident shocked me beyond all others: A man offered me his child. Understanding French, but not Haitian Creole, I thought I had misunderstood; a translator assured me that I hadn't. There was a drought; the man's crops had failed. He had five other children. He could not feed them all.

In order to reduce poverty and foster inclusive development through affordable access to the internet, APC is working on a resource kit for realising a universal access agenda, present promising options, experiences, lessons and opportunities in pro-poor access provision in developing societies.

Nokia launched a regional research center in Nairobi on Sept. 30 to gain a better understanding of the needs of African consumers, said Dorothy Ooko, communications manager for East and Central Africa. Nokia Research Africa (NoRA) will work with universities and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to develop prototypes of devices that are suitable for the African market, with an eye on offering benefits in health care and education. Nokia researchers will also study the telecommunication services sector on the continent.

Tuberculosis patients who are also HIV positive and require being booked for Anti Retroviral drugs should can do that, Amon Nkhata, ART officer responsible for sexually transmitted infections has said. He said it is safe to combine the two treatments and added that earlier deaths reported were rumour.

As millions of Zimbabweans face a daily battle to survive, it is becoming clear that ZANU PF continues to hold the nation hostage – this after police and war veterans prevented the MDC from distributing critically needed food to hungry orphans in the Nyanga rural district in the eastern Manicaland province last week. The severe food crisis is taking it’s toll on the country and unknown numbers of people are beginning to suffer the effects of extreme hunger and malnutrition.

An increase in violence in northern Darfur last month has displaced around 50,000 people, many of whom could be short of food and water, a United Nations official said on Saturday. Gregory Alex, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in northern Darfur, said around 24,000 people fled their homes after clashes between government and rebel forces near the areas of Birmaza and Disa.

Ivory Coast's long-awaited presidential election, which will cement peace between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebels, is "technically impossible" this year and will be held in 2009, an electoral official said on Friday. The vote in the world's No. 1 cocoa producer, which had already been delayed several times since 2005 by political conflict and sporadic violence, was scheduled for Nov. 30.

African leaders from three regional economic blocs are due to hold a historic joint summit in Uganda this month to harmonise regional integration policies and programmes in a move that may give fresh impetus to the long-conceived goal of an African Economic Community.

The ILO global reports have particularly highlighted the link between poverty and racial discrimination and examined in detail the situation of ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, people of African descent, the Roma and religious minorities. The effects of multiple discrimination, particular discrimination faced by women on the basis of race and sex, were stressed.

This report from UNCTAD examines Africa’s export performance after trade liberalisation to draw lessons for use in the design of future development strategies. Liberalisation over the last 25 years has removed policy barriers that were seen to inhibit export performance. Despite this the level and composition of exports has not changed. Exports have not diversified and as a whole market share is down from 6 per cent of world exports to 3 per cent.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has accused its neighbour Rwanda of sending troops across the border in support of a Congolese rebel leader. Dozens of people were injured in fighting near Goma, the eastern provincial capital of eastern Nord-Kivu, but Rwanda denied involvement saying the accusations from Kinshasa were "ridiculous".

Uganda has been elected to occupy a non-permanent seat of UN Security Council when delegates today cast their votes to the international body's powerful for 2009-10 term. Uganda, which was already assured of a seat from a unanimous regional backing has been joined by Japan, Turkey, Austria and Mexico.

Following a recent offer by Kenya to train Somali forces, Islamists have responded with a threat to launch an attack on Kenyan territory if it goes ahead with plan. According to reports, Kenya had offered to train 10,000 Somali government troops in a bid to boost capacity to deal with insurgency and bring back law and order in that country.

West African governments considering lifting health care fees for all will soon have a guide to manage the financial impact of the move. The guide, which the NGO Save the Children expects to launch in November, will show policymakers in developing countries how to estimate resource needs that may arise from abolishing fees.

Computers are increasingly ubiquitous in the developing world as software and internet companies create operating systems, computing programmes, and web-based portals in hundreds of indigenous languages. Following the rapid growth of local-language technology in mobile phones and open-source programmes, many software and internet companies are scrambling to gain a foothold in these markets.

Clinical trials of a new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine recently kicked off in Kenya, meanwhile international TB researchers and activists are worried by funding gaps that may worsen in the global financial crisis. In the first stage of human testing, known as Phase I trials, the new vaccine will be tested for safety on healthy adults with no previous history of TB in Kombewa, near Kisumu in western Kenya.

This April, Cameroon adopted an amendment to its constitution that eliminated term limits for the President, as well as granted him immunity for any acts committed while in office. No one was smiling more prettily than President Paul Biya, who at 75 has been in office for 26 years and is seeking re-election in 2011. But one of the country's best-known singers, Lapiro de Mbanga, wasn't happy about it, so he voiced his disillusion in song.

The director and a staff member of the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI), a Sierra Leone media advocacy group, say they are receiving death threats after publishing a report on press conditions late last month. Director Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai told CPJ that he and Information Officer John Baimba Sesay have received threatening phone calls nearly every day this month.

Tanzania journalists, editors and media associations on October 14, 2008 condemned the ban of the weekly privately owned Mwanahalisi newspaper and resolved from October 15 to boycott to publish all news concerning the Minister of Information, Sports and Culture, Captain George Mkuchika.

The Zambezi is one of the most heavily dammed rivers in Africa. More than 30 large dams have already been constructed throughout its basin, at great cost to local people and wildlife. These impacts have been particularly harsh in Mozambique, where the giant Cahora Bassa Dam displaced tens of thousands of people, and severely degraded downstream floodplains and fisheries.

Zwakala Books hosts D-Urban (w)Rites –a showcase of published Durban poets on the 31st October 2008 at 4pm at Urban Zulu 321 Berea and Bullwer road. The writers who will present their works are Adam Knight, Bheki Mthembu, Bongekile Mbanjwa, Mphutlane wa Bofelo, and Khulekani Magubane. Adam Knight is a responsive anarchist involved in alternative architecture travels mostly on bicycle or on foot and lives a sort of sustainable living.

This paper investigates the impact of the framework and strategies to retain critical health professionals (CHPs) that the Zimbabwean government has put in place, particularly regarding non-financial incentives, in the face of continuing high out-migration. The study investigated the causes of migration of health professionals; the strategies used to retain health professionals, how they are being implemented, monitored and evaluated and their impact, in order to make recommendations to enhance the monitoring, evaluation and management of non-financial incentives for health worker retention.

The general policy lessons from the high-growth economies of Asia for others are clear: the need for an educated and healthy workforce, timely investment in infrastructure, and the assiduous extension of governance; and the importance of making every effort to access the global economy. But the challenge for African and other policy-makers is less about knowing 'what'they should do than about 'how' they can do it.

Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu remain in custody in Bulawayo Central Police Station tonight following their arrest earlier in the day. The seven other members that had been arrested before the demonstration had started have all been released without charge.

Judges at the International Criminal Court have asked for more evidence before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's leader. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo wants the court to issue a warrant for President Omar al-Bashir over war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur.

An international tribunal should be set up in Kenya to try those implicated in clashes after December's disputed poll, an inquiry into the violence says. The commission found that in some areas, the violence was planned and organised with the support of politicians and businessmen.

The ex-premier of South Africa's Gauteng province has resigned from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to join those calling for a new party. Mbhazima Shilowa said the rebels, led by ex-Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, would hold a convention on 2 November.

South Africa's new Health Minister, Barbara Hogan, has called for a renewed global effort to find a vaccine for HIV, which can lead to Aids. Ms Hogan said it was unquestionable that HIV caused Aids and conventional medicines were the best treatment.

Spain’s accelerating effort to send back unaccompanied children who enter the country illegally might subject them to danger, ill-treatment and detention, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The government needs to halt repatriations until it has a process to ensure their well-being, and, as an immediate step, give them the same right to an independent lawyer that adult migrants have under Spanish law.

Mawusi Awity and her husband were willing to jeopardize his military career for her dream of running for parliament in Ghana but there was another price to pay that she could not afford. "The excessive use of money to win the minds and hearts of the voters is making it difficult for women to get into the forefront of politics," Awity told IPS.

The World Bank has agreed to help developing countries strengthen their economies, bolster their financial systems and protect the poor against the financial turmoil in international markets. Robert Zoellick, the bank's president, said the contagion affecting the global economy “has been a man-made catastrophe and responses to overcome it lie in all our hands.''

Sudan's president, accused of genocide by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), launched a national initiative on Thursday to bring peace to Darfur. Rebels dismissed the move by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as a public relations trick and boycotted the launch.

The second Pan-African film festival, intended to raise awareness of the various forms of violence committed against women in Africa, will open here on 26 November. Sponsored by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the Government of Senegal, donors, non-governmental organizations and other partners, the festival is held on the occasion of the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women,” 25 November.

On the heels of UNFPA’s recent efforts to promote maternal health at the High-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals has come increased media exposure to the plight of mothers in developing countries. Prominent print and photo coverage in the 10 October 2008 edition of the Washington Post highlights the perils of poor access to emergency obstetric care and limited health-care resources to the lives of women and children.

Angolan oil exports, the country's main source of revenue, will continue to increase in the near future thanks to growth in demand from China which will compensate for possible setbacks in other markets, according to analysts from Portugal’s Banco BPI. “Despite certain conditions that could limit the demand from developed economies, China's strong growth provides guarantees that, in the near future, demand for Angolan oil should be maintained,” say the BPI analysts in the latest report on Angola, published in September.

This year's International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is a call to everyone, from policy makers to the public, to recognise the rights and dignity of people living in poverty. Amnesty International, other NGOs, civil society organizations, people living in poverty and supporters around the world will mobilize to raise their voices and demand action from governments.

An additional 5,500 people have been displaced this week from the capital of strife-torn Somalia, the United Nations reported today, bringing the total number of those uprooted by fighting between Government forces and Islamic insurgents since 21 September to over 61,000.

Corruption, arms sales and a civil war in Africa: France's biggest ever bribery scandal sees 42 leading figures of the French business and political world on trial. They are accused of being involved in a murky network said to have facilitated the illegal transport of arms to Angola in the 1990s.

This article, , begins with an extremely inaccurate premise. Assuming that the author really has no background in any African liberation movement, nor in he politics of black liberation or class struggle, it makes me wonder what kind of analysis Pambazuka offers to the black community.

By “black” I mean those Africans involved in the class struggle as well as the movement for international African unity, because for those of us in the Western Hemisphere that is the context out of which the term black originally evolved. Not only is the premise of the article crooked, but the whole text degenerates into an attack on the African liberation movement in Southern Africa, and elsewhere.

One must ask if this article was written by a disillusioned Afrikaner with a monkey on his back. While Melber tries to come across as somebody trying to spark “a broad political debate”, that cannot honestly happen based on Melber’s half-baked assumptions, misrepresentations of current events, and a hidden agenda.

The military mindset in Africa did not arrive with the black liberation movements, which came late to the scene. Kwame Nkrumah documented the long list of coups d’etat up from 1957 up thru 1970 or so. In the states where coups occurred, not only were military regimes installed, the rulers also were staunchly pro-imperialist. Those who couped Nkrumah, Azikiwe, Lumumba, Obote and others were in the West’s pocket, in every instance.

While your author tries to introduce Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre into the discussion, he is inept at presenting an argument which justifies the article’s title.

First, the hard fought victories won by FRELIMO, ZANU and MPLA to defeat colonialism cannot be compared to any other wars in modern history. Melber dismisses all this with a sweep of his word processor. However, for those of us who appreciate that period of struggle, we know the hawks of Imperialism have sworn eternal vengeance. They declared, thru out the US media on the eve of the Lancaster House Accords in 1980, that Africans were too stupid to build the stone buildings at Old Zimbabwe and had no business naming the country after ruins that either Arabs or Europeans had left.

Second, that these countries struggled to build democratic societies while facing extreme odds because of military attacks from South Africa, assisted by Israel and the US, it is miraculous that military regimes do not administer power in any of those countries. The grip some forces exercise on power reflects the history of repression which not only demanded their rise, but demanded emergency measures. The Southern Africa security question was never adequately addressed by the world bodies, and it emerged out of imperialist racism. So Melber is not only wrong on this point, but completely haphazard. He neglects to state how the SADF created an extensive ecological disaster thru out Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Angola. The warfare against peasants in Mozambique, carried out thru war criminals enlisted in Renamo, was a precursor to the violence demonstrated against the Tutsi by interhamwe machete murderers in Central Africa. Zimbabwe helped settle the security question during that period.

The security issues of Southern Africa have never been definitively articulated the way the US, by comparison, has defined its security issues. Minorities in Southern Africa have never been violently subdued and enslaved or gradually given rights, as a form of long-term policy. Political parties in Africa do not recognize any traditional path of development for African people. In terms of security issues, Renamo in Mozambique is a counterinsurgency party which the US would smash as a domestic terror organization. Same as for UNITA in Angola.

Finally, the fact that democracy is a stunted child in Africa does not mean it has to be paraded thru out the Southern African states as their particular embarrassment. No mention is made of supposedly democratic Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, elsewhere.

Melber’s article should have been more accurately named something along the lines of something like An ad hominem attack on Black liberation, and subtitled, “Niggers don’t deserve independence”.

In regards to , I have several problems with this method of thought not the least of which is the author's serious legitimization of the bankrupt ideals of Julius Nyerere. Indeed, one could argue that for the weakness and arrogance of Nyerere at the founding of the OAU, Africa could have acheived a much stronger Union. We tend to forget that the Union of African States was the correct model to follow. But, the Union of African States gave way to the OAU in order to keep the likes of Nyerere in the overall African fold. Nyerere's regionalism was really nothing more than a sabotage of Nkrumah's program of a strong African Union.

It is true that regionalism, even Nyerere's sub-continenlaism was a failure if for no other reason than that it was meant to not succeed towards African Unity. Tanzania was a feable attempt to unite two little East African states. Such a structure did not even rise to the level of regionalism much less sub-continentalism becasue it did not include East Africa: Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Mozambique or Ethiopia. Recall that Ethiopia was a member of the Casablanca Group and as such, Ethiopia was very friendly towards Nkrumah's project for Continental Unity.

Stop apologizing for Nyerere. He lived a long life. And, he was head of ststae for many years. He had plenty of time to correct his mistakes. But, he never did. I think he failed to do so becasue Pan-Africanism was never a part of his commitment nor internal ideological make up. Indeed, I know of nothing prior to the OAU that indicates any commitment on the part of Nyerere to Pan-Africanism. Of course he sang the Pan-Africanist song just as he sang the socialist song. But, Nyerere's idea of Pan-Africanism was not Pan-Africanism which was defined by Nkrumah as the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. And, Nyerere's socialism may have include some socialist policies, but it was NOT scientific socialism. In fact, Nyerere went so far as to emphasize this point by calling his socialism "African socialism".

Unfortunately, the author does not even rise to this occasion. Instead he mentions something that none of us has ever heard of before now; namely some kind of weird liberal democracy. I mean, really! In these times in which even the most right wing free market capitalists, such as George W. Bush and Gordon Brown, have been forced to use scientific socialist methods to try and rescue world capitalism, we in Africa are still too cowardly to acknowledge that anything short of scientific socialism, such as what we see in China, will NOT lead to African Unity and NOT solve African problems.

Your commentry, , is a bunch of facts/observations but with no clear conlusion - in short very misleading.

Your commentry talks about democracy in the ANC as if the ANC came to power without resistance from those they defeated(competitors). Address issues knowing that an ideal situation is only on paper not in real life! People are trecherous and cunning! Therefore expect prudence from rulers and not church service while the Laws of the state prescribe between acceptable and non acceptable behaviour.

Therefore rewrite your article - it has all the truth but has misplaced facts!

Love thy neighbour the same way you would want them do unto you, then we shall be building the nation. And not what Bishop Tutu is doing in his old age, that is Dividing the Nation!

And give credit to the ruling party. They are facing elections just around the corner.

The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Witwatersrand is Southern Africa’s premier centre for academic research and teaching on migration and social transformation. The FMSP is seeking a researcher for its Migrant Rights Monitoring Project (MRMP). The MRMP builds on the FMSP’s record of research and advocacy with sustained, rigorous social science research into migrants’ access to basic social services; the implementation of asylum policy; and the nature and causes of rights abuses against non-nationals in South Africa. Closing Date: 31 October 2008.

Dibussi Tande reviews the following from the African blogoshphere.

Nigerian Curiosity
Hii Dunia
Vultures Dreaming
My African Father
Scribbles from the Den

The street is called Mtipesa because at the head of it is an old mkanju (cashew nut tree) where the local drug dealers sit on truck tyre wheels half buried and cemented into the ground. The mabeshte, as someone decided to call them, sit here all day, selling their wares quite openly, collecting cash from their customers while the police stroll by just a few metres away, aware that they will get a cut from the collection later.

Woman's fate is bound up with that of the exploited male. This is a fact. However, this solidarity, arising from the exploitation that both men and women suffer and that binds them together historically, must not cause us to lose sight of the specific reality of the woman's situation. The conditions of her life are determined by more than economic factors, and they show that she is a victim of a specific oppression. The specific character of this oppression cannot be explained away by setting up an equal sign or by falling into easy and childish simplifications.

It is true that both she and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current economic system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use as their pretext physical differences. It is clear that the difference between the sexes is a feature of human society. This difference characterises particular relations that immediately prevent us from viewing women, even in production, as simply female workers. The existence of relations of privilege, of relations that spell danger for the woman, all this means that women's reality constitutes an ongoing problem for us.

The male uses the complex nature of these relations as an excuse to sow confusion among women. He takes advantage of all the shrewdness that class exploitation has to offer in order to maintain his domination over women. This is the same method used by men to dominate other men in other lands. The idea was established that certain men, by virtue of their family origin and birth, or by divine right, were superior to others. This was the basis for the feudal system. Other men have managed to enslave whole peoples in this way. They used their origins, or arguments based on their skin colour, as a supposedly scientific justification for dominating those who were unfortunate enough to have skin of a different colour. This is what colonial domination and apartheid are based on.

We must pay the closest attention to women's situation because it pushes the most conscious of them into waging a sex war when what we need is a war of classes or parties, waged together, side by side. We have to say frankly that it is the attitude of men that makes such confusion possible. It is men's attitude that spawns the bold assertions made by feminism, certain of which have not been without value in the war which men and women are waging against oppression. This war is one we can and will win – if we understand that we need one another and are complementary, that we share the same fate, and in fact, that we are condemned to interdependence.

At this moment, we have little choice but to recognise that masculine behaviour comprises vanity, irresponsibility, arrogance, and violence of all kinds toward women. This kind of behaviour can hardly lead to coordinated action against women's oppression. And we must say frankly that such attitudes, which can sink to the level of sheer stupidity, are in reality nothing but a safety valve for the oppressed male, who, through brutalising his wife, hopes to regain some of the human dignity denied him by the system of exploitation. This masculine foolishness is called sexism or machismo. It includes all kinds of moral and intellectual feebleness – even thinly veiled physical weakness – which often gives politically conscious women no choice but to consider it their duty to wage a war on two fronts.

In order to fight and win, women must identify with the oppressed layers and classes of society, such as workers and peasants. The man, however, no matter how oppressed he is has another human being to oppress: his wife. To say this is, without any doubt, to affirm a terrible fact. When we talk about the vile system of apartheid, for example, our thoughts and emotions turn to the exploited and oppressed blacks. But we forget the black woman who has to endure her husband – this man who, armed with his passbook, allows himself all kinds of reprehensible detours before returning home to the woman who has waited for him so worthily, in such privation and destitution. We should keep in mind, too, the white woman of South Africa. Aristocratic, with every possible material comfort, she is, unfortunately, still a tool for the pleasure of the lecherous white man. The only thing these men can do to blot out the terrible crimes they commit against blacks is to engage in drunken brawls and perverse, bestial sexual behaviour.

And there is no lack of examples of men, otherwise progressive, who live cheerfully in adultery, but who are prepared to murder their wives on the merest suspicion of infidelity. How many men in Burkina seek so-called consolation in the arms of prostitutes and mistresses of all kinds! And this is not to mention the irresponsible husbands whose wages go to keep mistresses or fill the coffers of bar owners.

And what should we think of those little men, also progressive, who get together in sleazy places to talk about the women they have taken advantage of. They think this is the way they will be able to measure up to other men and even humiliate some of them, by having seduced their wives. In reality, such men are pitiful and insignificant. They would not even enter our discussion, if it were not for the fact that their criminal behaviour has been undermining the morale and virtue of many fine women whose contribution to our revolution could be of the utmost importance.

And then there are those more-or-less revolutionary militants – much less revolutionary than more – who do not accept that their wives should also be politically active, or who allow them to be active by day and by day only, or who beat their wives because they have gone out to meetings or to a demonstration at night.

Oh, these suspicious, jealous men! What narrow-mindedness! And what a limited, partial commitment! For is it only at night that a woman who is disenchanted and determined can deceive her husband? And what is this political commitment that expects her to stop political activity at nightfall and resume her rights and responsibilities only at daybreak. And, finally, what should we make of remarks about women made by all kinds of activists, the one more revolutionary than the next, remarks such as ‘women are despicably materialist,’ ‘manipulators,’ ‘clowns,’ ‘liars,’ ‘gossips,’ ‘schemers, ‘jealous,’ and so on. Maybe this is all true of women. But surely it is equally true of men.

Could our society be any less perverse than this when it systematically burdens women down, keeps them away from anything that is supposed to be serious and of consequence, excludes them from anything other than the most petty and minor activities!

When you are condemned, as women are, to wait for your lord and master at home in order to feed him and receive his permission to speak or just to be alive, what else do you have to keep you occupied and to give you at least the illusion of being useful, but meaningful glances, gossip, chatter, furtive envious: glances at others, and the bad-mouthing of their flirtations and private lives? The same attitudes are found among men put in the same situation.

Another thing we say about women, alas, is that they are always forgetful. We even call them birdbrains. But we must never forget that a woman's whole life is dominated – tormented – by a fickle, unfaithful, and irresponsible husband and by her children and their problems. Completely worn out by attending to the entire family, how could she not have haggard eyes that reflect distraction and absentmindedness? For her, forgetting becomes an antidote to the suffering a relief from the harshness of her existence, a vital self-defence mechanism.

But there are forgetful men, too – a lot of them. Some forget by indulging in drink or drugs, others through the various kinds of perversity they engage in throughout life. Does anyone ever say that these men are forgetful? What vanity! What banality! Banalities, though, that men revel in as a way of concealing the weaknesses of the masculine universe, because this masculine universe in an exploitative society needs female prostitutes. We say that both the female and the prostitute are scapegoats. We defile them and when we are done with them we sacrifice them on the altar of prosperity of a system of lies and plunder.

Prostitution is nothing but the microcosm of a society where exploitation is a general rule. It is a symbol of the contempt men have for women. And yet this woman is none other than the painful figure of the mother, sister, or wife of other men, thus of every one of us. In the final analysis, it is the unconscious contempt we have for ourselves. There can only be prostitutes as long as there are pimps and those who seek prostitutes.

But who frequents prostitutes? First, there are the husbands who commit their wives to chastity, while they relieve their depravity and debauchery upon the prostitute. This allows them to treat their wives with a seeming respect, while they reveal their true nature at the bosom of the lady of so-called pleasure. So on the moral plane prostitution becomes the counterpart to marriage. Tradition, customs, religion, and moral doctrines alike seem to have no difficulty adapting themselves to it. This is what our church fathers mean when they explain that ‘sewers are needed to assure the cleanliness of the palace.’

Then there are the unrepentant and intemperate pleasure seekers who are afraid to take on the responsibility of a home with its ups and downs, and who flee from the moral and material responsibility of fatherhood. So they discreetly seek out the address of a brothel, a goldmine of relations that entail no responsibility on their part.

There is also a whole bevy of men who, publicly at least and in ‘proper’ company, subject women to public humiliation because of some grudge they have not had the strength of character to surmount, thus losing confidence in all women, who become from then on ‘tools of the devil.’ Or else they do so out of hypocrisy, proclaiming their contempt for the female sex too often and categorically, a contempt that they strive to assume in the eyes of the public from which they have extorted admiration through false pretences. All these men end up night after night in brothels until occasionally their hypocrisy is discovered.

Then there is the weakness of the man who is looking for a polyandrous arrangement. Far be it for us to make a value judgment on polyandry, which was the dominant form of relations between men and women in certain societies. What we are denouncing here are the courts of idle, money-grabbing gigolos lavishly kept by rich ladies.

Within this same system; prostitution can, economically speaking, include both the prostitute and the ‘materialist-minded’ married woman. The only difference between the woman who sells her body by prostitution and she who sells herself in marriage is the price and duration of the contract. So, by tolerating the existence of prostitution, we relegate all our women to the same rank: that of a prostitute or wife. The only difference between the two is that the legal wife, though still oppressed, at least has the benefit of the stamp of respectability that marriage confers. As for the prostitute, all that remains for her is the exchange value of her body, a value that fluctuates according to the fancy of the male chauvinist's wallet.

Isn't she just an object, which takes on more or less value according to the degree to which her charms wilt? Isn't she governed by the law of supply and demand? Such a concentrated, tragic, and painful form of female slavery as a whole!

We should see in every prostitute an accusing finger pointing firmly at society as a whole. Every pimp, every partner in prostitution, turns the knife in this festering and gaping wound that disfigures the world of man and leads to his ruin. In fighting against prostitution, in holding out a saving hand to the prostitute, we are saving our mothers, our sisters, and our wives from this social leprosy. We are saving ourselves. We are saving the world.

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