A significant proportion of the world's 2.2 billion children, many of whom are victims of violence, sexual abuse, labour exploitation and preventable diseases, are from the crisis-plagued African continent.

Human Rights Watch ("HRW") is seeking a highly-qualified, senior-level professional to head its Africa Division. The Executive Director of HRW's Africa Division is responsible for the development and implementation of strategies for HRW's work in Africa and ensuring the setting of programmatic priorities, including response to emergencies. S/he is responsible for overseeing the division's research on human rights violations and for developing effective advocacy and communications strategies for maximum impact.

More than 80 percent of high blood pressure disease occurs in the developing world, and mostly among younger adults, researchers said on Thursday in a report that belies the image of hypertension as a disease of harried, overfed rich people.

The Burundian military has announced the deaths of at least 11 fighters from the National Liberation Forces (FNL) in fresh fighting near the capital Bujumbura. The clashes on Monday between the government and the FNL comes after the United Nations warned of sanctions unless a ceasefire is observed.

PLAAS is pleased to announce the launching of a new small grants project for action research on gender and land in Southern Africa: Securing Women's Access to Land - Linking Research with Action. The project is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and in collaboration with the International Land Coalition (ILC) and Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR, responsible for East Africa).

As the global community marks World Intellectual Property Day 2008 (26 April), an eight-country African research network is being launched with a mandate to investigate the relationship between copyright and education in African countries. The network, called the African Copyright & Access to Knowledge network (ACA2K network), is a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda, supported by a team of international advisors.

Uganda Telecom has started work on a fiber-optic link from the western town of Mbarara in Uganda to the Rwanda border-crossing point at Katuna - essentially giving a major boost to the long-awaited regional fibre project. When completed in November this year, a significant section of what has come to be known as the East African Backhaul System (EABS) will be in place, giving Uganda end-to-end fiber coverage, the telecommunications news outlet IDG News Service reported on Monday.

The former governor of Nigeria's Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has challenged the fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him by the anti-graft commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC]. The anti-graft agency has filed a 51-count suit against the former Ekiti governor at the Federal High Court in Lagos.

Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village. She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city's outskirts, collecting and breaking rocks into chips at a local quarry. For every 20-litre jerry can she fills, she earns 100 Ugandan shillings (US$0.06). On a good day, when she is feeling strong and can take the sun beating down on her back as she chips away at the rocks, she takes home about 1,000 Ugandan shillings (US$0.60).

Along the Nakuru-Eldoret road, the charred remains of homes and businesses scar the picturesque landscape of Kenya's Rift Valley province and serve as a reminder of two months of violence that rocked the nation early this year. The calm that is typical of most rural settings belies the suffering experienced by thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) since fleeing their homes in January and February.

Thousands of Kenyans who dropped out of HIV treatment programmes in January as a result of the country's post-election violence are gradually returning to clinics and the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that help prolong their lives.

Based on a multi-year ethnography, this presentation describes township youth's multiple social representations of morality. Drawing on Moscovici's theory of social representations, it details what these might be, how they are empirically elicited, and why social representations are important for social science that aims at making a difference.

The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that the City of Johannesburg’s practice of forcibly installing prepayment water meters in Phiri, Soweto is unconstitutional. It also set aside the City’s decision to limit its free basic water supply to 25 litres per person per day and ordered it to provide the residents of Phiri with free basic water in the amount of 50 litres per person per day. The City was further directed to give the residents of Phiri the option of an ordinary credit metered water supply.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/367/47799scale.jpgChido Makunike looks at the various competing interests in Zimbabwe, the MDC, ZANU PF, Mugabe and the West in relation to what the Zimbabwean are hoping to get out of democracy.

A month after Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections, the winner of the presidential poll remains unknown. The delay adds considerable additional complexity to the many undercurrents of the country’s problems.

By virtue of the suspicious, poorly explained delay in announcing who won the presidential poll, the authorities in Harare have ensured that the only outcome that will be widely believed by a sceptical world would be one in which main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai emerged the winner. Any other result would be widely dismissed as “fixed” by the authorities to produce a favourable outcome for President Robert Mugabe in the time since the election.

Even a close result requiring a run-off election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai would be seen by many as engineered to give the ruling party a second chance to mobilise the state machinery to do whatever it took to ensure the “right” result for him. The results delay and whatever other gambits the authorities are likely to serve up arguably can no longer serve to impart even the veneer of electoral legitimacy on Mugabe.

It would be one of many recent defeats in which Mugabe resorts to out rightly thwarting the electoral will of the people. But he does nevertheless need a façade of democracy. He has often responded to his Western criticism by saying they have no authority to chide him on the basis of his democratic credentials. “We brought democracy at independence in spite of Western support for the racist, anti-democratic government we replaced” has been his argument. He points out that by the measure of regularly held elections, Zimbabwe is far more democratic than many other countries that are in much better books with the Western world than it is.

Mugabe makes this point to bolster his argument that Western opposition to him is not because of any concern for the welfare of Zimbabweans, but is due to his stinging criticism of the double standards of the West, as well as his refusal to be compliant with Western expectations of how an African leader should conduct himself. It is precisely Mugabe’s fearlessly expressed, hard-to-fault arguments about the West’s relations with the rest of the world that makes him such a hero to many in Africa and beyond, even as Zimbabweans have suffered steep economic decline and increasing repression at home.

If the veneer of democratic legitimacy such as that imparted by regularly scheduled elections, no matter how flawed, has always been so important to Mugabe, why would he seem to risk throwing it all away now? Whatever the presidential results will show when released, the opposition MDC’s unprecedented win of a majority in the concurrently held parliamentary election is a convincing indication of the level of disaffection with the rule of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. His actions since March 29 do not at all suggest a man who respects the right of the voters to choose their leaders.

For the three election cycles up to the mid 1990s, Mugabe’s desire for the perception of a strict adherence to at least the forms of electoral democracy, if not the substance, was relatively easy to achieve. Independence-era euphoria and “gratitude” may have been lifting with every election, but until about then, Mugabe could count on genuine popularity to make his party’s re-elections a foregone conclusion. Mugabe has now shown that his dedication to those electoral forms is not quite so strong after all, now that the evidence suggests a likely majority of the electorate want him gone.

Merely conducting an election cannot bestow democratic legitimacy when it is clear that the only results that will be respected are those in which the incumbent wins. By so awkwardly making this obvious, Mugabe’s government has trapped itself into the equally unhealthy situation in which much of the Zimbabwean electorate and the world would now only believe a result which showed Mugabe losing. This has made “the Zimbabwe crisis” take on a dimension far beyond what can be resolved by the much anticipated release of the results of the presidential poll.

The desire to hold on to power and privilege, and fear of prosecution for past crimes are the usually discussed reasons for Mugabe and ZANU-PF conducting themselves with so little dignity in the face of evidence of an electorate earthquake of rejection against them. But genuine revulsion at what Tsvangirai and the MDC are perceived to represent is no doubt also part of the intransigence of Mugabe & Company in conceding defeat.

There is a self-serving element to Mugabe’s painting of the MDC as stooges of the West who are bent on reversing the efforts to have Zimbabwe’s political independence also have economic teeth for its citizens. Yet Tsvangirai and the MDC have ineptly only fuelled these suspicions in their words and deeds over the years. Mugabe and ZANU-PF in turn have largely failed to convince a majority of Zimbabweans that the claimed slavishness of the MDC to their Western backers is the reason their country is in such poor shape. Mugabe & Co. may genuinely worry that Tsvangirai and the MDC wish to “sell out” the country to the West and “reverse the gains of the revolution” by restoring the economic dominance of whites in commercial agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

But if so, electoral democracy required that Mugabe sell that message to the electorate more convincingly than the MDC’s pitch much needed change and renewal. The MDC has arguably won that battle for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans, helped considerably by the country’s desperate economic state under Mugabe.

Instead of accepting his failure to sell his message of “Things are bad because we are besieged by powerful external foes, stick with me while I work out a plan to thwart them and improve things,” Mugabe has instead arrogantly chosen to accuse the electorate of not fully understanding what is at stake. His stance is essentially that the electorate are mistaken to buy the Tsvangirai’s message and reject his. And if he can get away with it, he seems inclined to “correct” the misguided electorate by hanging on in power regardless of the popular will!

Yet the price one must pay for accepting a system of electoral democracy is to respect the will of the people even if one believes that will to be wrong. You then revert to opposition, sharpening your message for the next election. The current impasse is partly because of the refusal of Mugabe & Co. to respect this rule of the game because for the first time its result has been unfavourable to them.

The MDC had begun to make inroads into reversing the suspicion with which it was regarded in many African capitals by a belated diplomatic outreach to them. Those efforts have in recent weeks become compromised again by the over-the- top eagerness of the Western political establishment and media to take sides in the Zimbabwean election. In the days leading up to the election, and since then, the Western political and media establishment abandoned all pretence of merely being onlookers who were just interested in seeing that Zimbabweans were able to freely exercise their vote. Zimbabwe’s economic, political and humanitarian problems are severe enough, but the Western media, particularly that of ex-colonial master Britain, went into an absolute frenzy to depict the country as a virtual war zone.

Whether or not it was a coordinated campaign to give the Mugabe a decisive final push out of power, in their shrillness the Western political and media establishment only served to give credence to Mugabe’s long-held claim of a Western conspiracy to depose him for not being pliable in the mould of most African leaders. Britain had kept a relative distance in the months leading up to the election, correctly fearing that any unusual interest would be used by Mugabe as proof of its dishonourable neo-colonialist intentions. But at the time of the election and immediately after, Britain seemed to smell Mugabe’s blood and lost all self-restraint in the excitement of the prospect of seeing its old nemesis gone. It was almost as if Britain were so certain of Mugabe being deposed that it no long felt the need to maintain the façade of being a neutral observer.

Western shrillness has only grown since the election, with the Zimbabwean authorities also feeding it by the astonishing games over the election results, as well as the jailing of some Western journalists for slipping into the country to report on the election without getting accreditation - under the country’s tight media laws. But the effect of all this has been to justify the paranoia of the Zimbabwean authorities about a claimed coordinated Western “regime change” agenda.

Such an agenda could not justify the flouting of the popular electoral will, but it is not much of a stretch to guess that the unseemly eagerness of the West to interfere in and influence the election against him would only have made Mugabe and his whole political machinery feel inclined to dig in even in defiance of the voters. It is therefore quite plausible to speculate that the Western eagerness to “help” the MDC ensure Mugabe’s exit may in the short term have done the exact opposite.

In the immediate term the desire of the West to see the back of a troublesome-to-them-Mugabe probably overlaps with the wishes of many Zimbabweans who put the blame for the political repression and economic hardships in their country squarely at Mugabe’s door. But it is not at all certain that those similar desires perfectly coincide. Neither Britain nor the US have an honourable history in regards to Zimbabwe, so their posing as great champions of democracy and defenders of its peoples’ best interests have a hollow ring.

Mugabe has indeed degenerated into a despot who has refused to accept any responsibility for his country’s mess. But he is no worse a ruler than many others who dare not point out the West’s double standards and who are quite happy to have their countries be client states in return for being absolved of scrutiny over their governance records. Therefore the West and the Zimbabwean citizenry want a change from Mugabe for likely very different reasons.

If Mugabe somehow survives the electoral and diplomatic onslaughts against him and hangs on for several more years, the ill-advised Western intervention on behalf of the MDC would provide him considerable ammunition against the opposition party. This may make little difference to the voters’ feelings towards him if economic decline and hardship continue, as is likely to be the case in a situation where the Western world would be even more resolute in closing doors to Mugabe’s government. Yet if Mugabe were able to stem the slide, say by paying serious attention to improved agricultural productivity, he might well be able to say “you saw how the Westerners behaved during the 2008 election; their conspiracy against me was not a figment of my imagination.”

With the economy continuing on its present slide, few outside his immediate circle and the die-hards in his party would listen to this argument. But with even modest stabilization, his idea of radical land redistribution remains popular enough amongst even his opponents that the argument could gain political currency to his benefit and at the expense of the MDC.

Even if Tsvangirai and the MDC assume office, their doing so with such open support for it as the West has shown will be a double edged sword. If the expected massive Western financial support flows in a way that quickly results in a stabilization of the economy that is widely felt at the grassroots, the whiff of the suspicion of the MDC having agreed to be “stooges” in return for Western support would be neutralised, at least in the short term. The need for a return to economic stability is probably the one issue that unites people across the country’s criss-crossing political divides.

But in the absence of either quick or widely-felt economic recovery, the tag of “Western stooge” around the necks of Tsvangirai and the MDC could remain a potent political weapon in the hands of a ZANU-PF that no longer dominates parliament, but nevertheless has only a handful fewer seats than the MDC. This assumes that ZANU-PF adjusts to being a minority party without disintegrating, which in turn also depends on how successfully they can choose a leader to fill Mugabe’s very large shoes. Without dramatic economic recovery, ZANU-PF in opposition could remain a formidable thorn in an MDC government’s flesh, with its Western backing becoming more of an albatross to it than a blessing.

Having won a majority, the MDC has not spent much time contesting the legitimacy of the parliamentary results. If they are considered to be a true reflection of the electoral will, it is astonishing that the ruling ZANU-PF did as well as it did, winning almost half of the popular vote and the number of parliamentary seats. With the rate of inflation said to be close to 200,000% and virtually every other economic index being strongly negative, one would have expected the ruling party to have been electorally wiped out.

Herein lie some of the nuances of the Zimbabwean crisis that much of the media we are exposed to is either oblivious of or simply not interested in relating. Mugabe has increasingly become repressive, he has been a brilliant ideologue but a very poor manager and he has simply stayed in power longer than was advisable for his own legacy. But his broad message of an unapologetic, assertively expressed desire for African empowerment retains its appeal and has led to a sea change in how black Zimbabweans think about what their independence should mean.

To say many and probably most Zimbabweans want Mugabe to step aside is not the same as saying his ideas have been largely rejected by them. For example, most would want his flawed land reform effort to be fixed to work, not for it to be reversed. The MDC was slow to understand this and other nuances of Mugabe’s complex legacy, losing it precious time and early support in Zimbabwe and elsewhere.

Now the opposition party is careful to say it would not return land to its previous white occupiers, but would make sure it was productively used by the new black landholders. It remains to be seen if the MDC’s Western backers understand these nuances and would let it negotiate the minefield of balancing the need for reviving the economy with the political imperative of a strong desire for African empowerment that will remain one of Mugabe’s strongest legacies despite his failure to translate that desire into concrete, practical reality.

There has been talk of a Kenya-like ‘government of national unity.’ Both sides naturally posture against it. It may still be emerge as the immediate way out of the present crisis. But as in Kenya, such a compromise solution robs whoever the winner is of the spoils of electoral victory. When the game is played, all the participants are fully aware that they could lose by a mere handful of votes.

Whether in Kenya or Zimbabwe, another potential flaw of a GNU is to rob the electorate of two or more competing visions of how their country should be ruled. It may avoid conflict in the short term, but it also effectively allows political parties to put aside their competition for power because the GNU allows all of them a chance at the feeding trough. There is also the potential of them collectively ganging up against the citizens they usually claim are their whole reason for being.

Resolving the current impasse is undoubtedly the most urgent order of business in Zimbabwe. But the country’s tortured and violent history, the cynical external interests seeking to exert their influence for their own ends, the huge ideological gulf between the two main political parties and the closeness of the results announced so far suggest that whichever way the immediate crisis is resolved, there are long term difficulties ahead in getting Zimbabwe back on the track of political stability, psychic healing and economic growth.

*Chido Makunike is a Zimbabwean social and political commentator.

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/367/47801farm.jpgIn this open letter to the Secretary General of the Food and Agriculture organization (FAO), Henry Saragih argues that the food price crisis exposes the instability of liberalized agricultural markets and calls for concrete measures that will strengthen peasant and farmer-based food production.

OPEN LETTER To : Mr Jacques Diouf Secretary General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister of Japan, President of the G8, Mr. John W. Ashe, Permanent UN representative, Antigua and Barbuda's Permanent and Chairman of the Group of 77

Dear Mr. Diouf, Mr. Fukuda, and Mr. Ashe,

Our movement, La Via Campesina, consists of millions of small farmers and landless workers in more than 60 countries around the world. Although we are the ones producing food for our families and communities, many of us are hungry or living in poverty. Over the last months, the situation has worsened due to the sudden rise in food prices. We are also severely hit by the crisis because many of us do not have enough land to feed our families, and because most producers do not benefit from those high prices. Large traders, speculators, supermarkets and industrial farms are cashing in on and benefitting from this crisis. This current food crisis is the result of many years of deregulation of agricultural markets, the privatization of state regulatory bodies and the dumping of agricultural products on the markets of developing countries. According to the FAO, liberalized markets have attracted huge cash flows that seek to speculate on agricultural products on the “futures” markets and other financial instruments.

The corporate expansion of agrofuels and the initially enthusiastic support for agrofuels in countries such as the US, EU and Brazil have added to the expectation that land for food will become more and more scarce. On top of this in many southern countries hundreds of thousands of hectares are converted from agricultural uses in an uncontrolled way for so-called economic development zones, urbanization and infrastructure. The ongoing land grabbing by Transnational Companies (TNCs) and other speculators will expel millions more peasants who will end up in the mega cities where they will be added to the ranks of the hungry and poor in the slums. Besides this, we may expect especially in Africa and South Asia more severe droughts and floods caused by global climate change. These are severe threats for the rural as well as for the urban areas.

These are highly worrying developments that need active and urgent action! We need a fundamental change in the approach to food production and agricultural markets!

Time to rebuild national food economies!

Rebuilding national food economies will require immediate and long-term political commitments from governments. An absolute priority has to be given to domestic food production in order to decrease dependency on the international market. Peasants and small farmers should be encouraged through better prices for their farm products and stable markets to produce food for themselves and their communities. Landless families from rural and urban areas have to get access to land, seeds and water to produce their own food. This means increased investment in peasant and farmer-based food production for domestic markets.

Governments have to provide financial support for the poorest consumers to allow them to eat. Speculation and extremely high prices forced upon consumers by traders and retailers have to be controlled. Peasants and small farmers need better access to their domestic markets so that they can sell food at fair prices for themselves and for consumers.

Countries need to set up intervention mechanisms aimed at stabilizing market prices. In order to achieve this, import controls with taxes and quotas are needed to avoid low-priced imports which undermine domestic production. National buffer stocks managed by the state have to be built up to stabilize domestic markets: in times of surplus, cereals can be taken from the market to build up the reserve stocks and in case of shortages, cereals can be released.

Regulating international markets and supporting countries to strengthen their food production

At the international level, stabilization measures also have to be undertaken. International buffer stocks have to be built up and an intervention mechanism put in place to stabilize prices on international markets at a reasonable level. Exporting countries have to accept international rules to control the quantities they can bring to the market, in order to stop dumping. The right to implement import controls, set up programs to support the poorest consumers, implement agrarian reform and invest in domestic, farmer peasant-based food production has to be fully respected and supported at the international level.

We ask the FAO, based on its mandate, to take the initiative and create the political environment for a fundamental change in food policies. In the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) a broad majority of governments recognized and agreed on the importance of rural development and agrarian reform to combat poverty and hunger in the rural areas. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), an assessment of the agricultural sector that involved Civil Society organizations, the private sector, and governments as well as the FAO and the World Bank came to the conclusion that corporate-led agriculture and the increasing dependence of peasants and small farmers is at the heart of the problem. They also concluded that peasant, and farmer-based sustainable agriculture has to be supported and strengthened. The International Fund on Agricultural Development (IFAD) also recognizes the key role of peasants and small farmers in the production of food.

We request that G8 governments allow these initiatives to be taken. They should stop the promotion of agrofuels as these are no solution for the climate crisis and add to the destruction of forests. Especially in the southern countries, agrofuels occupy millions of hectares that should remain available for food production.

We also demand that the G8 analyze critically their own agricultural policies, take initiatives to stop the ongoing volatility of the international markets and shift their financial support away from industrial agriculture towards sustainable family farmer-based food production.

We also demand that the G8 stop and cancel any free trade agreements that will only contribute to the destruction of food production in developing countries and block any possibility of autonomous industrial development.

The influence of transnational corporations and financial speculative interests has to be controlled as much as possible and kept away from the the international food market. Food is too important to be left to business alone.

A possible WTO agreement in the Doha Round will mean another blow for peasant-based food production. We demand that the governments of the G77 assess again the WTO negotiations on agriculture in the Doha round and reject any agreement that has negative implications for domestic food production and does not allow the taking of all necessary measures to strengthen food production and increase national self sufficiency.

Peasants and small farmers are the main food producers

La Via Campesina is convinced that peasants and small farmers can feed the world. They have to be the key part of the solution. With sufficient political will and the implementation of adequate policies, more peasants and small farmers, men and women, will easily produce sufficient food to feed the growing population. The current situation shows that changes are needed!

The time for Food Sovereignty has come!

*Henry Saragih is the International Coordinator for La Via Campesina.

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

GROOTS International/Groots Africa and the Huairou Commission are seeking an Africa Regional Organizer / Coordinator, based in Nairobi, Kenya, to support members of GROOTS and the Huairou Commission in the region to facilitate grassroots women’s effective participation in our networks and programs. The African Regional Organizer will work to fulfill GROOTS’ goals, and will work with a team based in Africa and New York to coordinate the Huairou Commission’s Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA) joint regional partnership project.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) is looking for a Deputy Director, to be based at its Headquarters in New Delhi, India. CHRI is an advocacy organization whose core concerns are Access to Information and Access to Justice. Send CV, with contact details of three referees and a covering letter outlining why you are applying for the position and how you would contribute to the organisation to: [email][email protected] Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

I had been out of journalism school for barely two weeks when Julia Opoti, a friend and an editor at Kenya Imagine, a popular online discussion forum for Kenyans, sent a text message to my cell phone. My name, she wrote, had been the subject of another online forum. "Hey, did you know that there is a whole thread about you on Mashada?" the message read.

Corruption is a cosmopolitan problem. However, its adverse effects on less-developed countries are perhaps more profound due to the fact that it has greatly affected the potential for governments in such countries to meet the basic needs and expectations of the common people. There is, therefore, a pressing need for a sustained effort to nip the seemingly elusive problem of corruption in the bud, so to speak. This study endeavours to conceptualise the nature, causes, and effects of the scourge.

To ensure the right to a basic education, the Dakar Framework called upon governments to develop responsive, participatory and accountable systems of educational governance and management. Since then, the search for improved institutions better able to deliver education has accelerated and it is now common for education programmes to have a ‘good governance’ component.

Kenya needs to find another $300m to pay for the expanded coalition cabinet formed after a power-sharing deal. Finance Minister Amos Kimunya says he may be forced to shift funding from vital programmes like resettling the displaced to pay for new ministries.

Police in Mozambique have been accused of killing and torturing people with near total impunity. The human rights group Amnesty International has published a report saying the Mozambique police appear to think they have a licence to kill. The group says officials have responded to rising crime rates with often lethal force, but that they almost never face criminal proceedings.

Up to 170 census monitors in southern Sudan have been told to return to the capital, Khartoum, after being accused of interfering with the count. Southern officials said the monitors were not approved and were mostly from the north of the country. The controversial first population count in 15 years will help determine how wealth and power are shared out.

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia deteriorating at an accelerated pace due to sky rocketing food prices, a deepening drought due to an abnormally harsh dry season and a delayed and poor start to the seasonal rains (mid-April to June). As result the number of people in need of assistance has increased to 2.6 million people in Somalia (35% of the total population), which is an increase of more than 40% since January '08.

The Security Council has extended until 30 April 2009 the mandate of the United Nations mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO), tasked with monitoring the ceasefire between Morocco and the Frente Polisario and organizing a referendum on self-determination. In a unanimously adopted resolution, the Council called on the parties to enter into “a more intensive and substantive phase of negotiations” to resolve their long-running dispute.

As the recount process for the parliamentary elections confirm the victory of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the party's rival factions announced on Monday that they had reunited. This gives the opposition a comfortable majority in the parliament.

Climate change is the newest threat to the increasing HIV and Aids epidemic worldwide, panelists said Wednesday at an HIV forum at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, the AAP/Age reports. The forum, titled "A Future Free of HIV," was moderated by Justice of the High Court Michael Kirby and included several HIV and Aids researchers, according to a UNSW release.

Oral treatment to improve vaginal health could have the potential to reduce the risk of infection with HIV for women, according to a study published in the May 15th edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases. Most new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa are among women, for whom new HIV-prevention strategies are needed.

Trouble getting an education or finding a job is a fact of life for young, disabled Moroccans. Government plans are already in place to end workplace discrimination and expand integrated classrooms.

The regime of Robert Mugabe's violent onslaught on the MDC continues without remorse. Four more members of the MDC have been killed in Guruve, seven shot in Rusape, and one of them died on his way to the hospital. In Hurungwe North, the regime has killed Tapiwa Mubwanda an MDC activist in the area. Tapiwa Mubwanda was killed by one Jauet Kazangarare, who is a ZANU PF councilor and Peter Madamombe who is a member of the Zimbabwe National Army.

‘Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women’, the third Millennium Development Goal is a priority of the Dutch government. More action is needed to truly create a society where men and women are equal and enjoy the same rights and opportunities. Concrete action is called for to achieve equality between women and men. As a result Dutch NGO’s, companies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have decided to put their back into the fund: MDG3 Fund:Investing in Equality to contribute to the realization of Millennium Development Goal 3.

Egyptian police have arrested 109 African migrants hoping to cross illegally into Israel from Egypt, an Egyptian security official said Wednesday. 95 migrants from Eritrea and 14 from Ethiopia were caught Wednesday in the city of Aswan, 685 kilometers (425 miles) south of Cairo, after crossing the border from Sudan on foot, said the official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Sahara FM, a privately-owned radio station based in Agadez, the largest city in the northern part of Niger, was on April 22, 2008, shut down indefinitely by the media regulator, the High Communications Council (CSC) for allegedly "inciting ethnic hatred and undermining the morale of the Army".

Reports from the rest of the provinces paint a bloodcurdling picture. Army barracks across the country are issuing war veterans and former military/police officers with weapons (AK 47 assault rifles). The official line is that they need to protect themselves against anticipated attacks by the MDC and its foreign supporters, particularly on former white-owned farms. But the real intention is to use the weapons against opposition supporters in the rural areas. The issuing of weapons began 24 April.

Four weeks to the day after Zimbabwe queued to vote in the 29 March 2008 elections, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission have finally confirmed their original results, and that was that Zanu PF has lost its majority in the House of Parliament for the first time in 28 years.

Sudan has contracted two Chinese companies to raise the height of Sudan’s Roseires Dam. China’s involvement in this project is significant, given that the Roseires Dam supplies more than 70 percent of Sudan’s hydropower and that China has also been criticized for ignoring not only Darfur, but also the human rights abuses and environmental consequences arising from Sudan’s dam projects.

Mary Ndlovu argues that the MDC missed an opportunity to once and for all get rid of Mugabe and return democracy to the people. The likely outcome she argues is an agreement between Zimbabwean elites.

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has done it again – won an election but failed to dislodge the incumbent from power.  Ever since 2000, when they first experienced the dismay of seeing a victory turn to defeat in the hands of authorities, the MDC has been wandering in the wilderness, looking for a policy that can bring success in the face of repression, open violence and electoral fraud.  They have vacillated between taking to the courts, calling people onto the streets to protest, and boycotting outright.  They have appealed to every international body, both legal and political, but  nothing has brought the desired displacement from power of the aged “liberation” leader, Robert Mugabe.

What is wrong?  Why has the MDC failed?  Could they have succeeded with a different strategy?  Should they have boycotted this election as they threatened to do? 

CONDITIONS THAT MADE AN MDC VICTORY POSSIBLE

Many commentators warned that MDC could not win the recent election. They said that in spite of the people’s desperation and anger caused by the imploded economy, in the repressive situation where ZANU PF controlled everything, this could not translate into an election victory. Some were insisting until the announcement of the election date that the opposition should boycott the election. But it turned out that no one, including those who had boycotted senate elections, wanted to boycott, at least no one in the MDC party structures.  They wanted to stand for office; maybe they would be “lucky” this time.  Furthermore, many of the people wanted to vote.

And this time was different.  The fated “mediation” by Thabo Mbeki established two important changes: there must be a minimum of visible pre-election violence perpetrated by ZANU PF; and the legislation which had been previously ignored must be adhered to – all results must be posted outside the stations when they had been counted -  including the presidential vote.  Probably Mbeki assured Mugabe that if these conditions were observed, then he would back the result.  All other shenanigans such as a partisan electoral commission, gerrymandering of constituencies, tampering with the voters’ roll, inadequacy of the “indelible” ink, complete manipulation of postal votes would be forgiven in the interests of obtaining another ZANU PF win.

But these two conditions proved fatal to Mugabe and ZANU PF.   By mid-morning of the day after the voting it was known that Mugabe had lost – not just the parliament but also the Presidential vote.  ZESN observers had the results, MDC had them through their polling agents and through photographs, and it would be next to impossible to deny.

The second condition loosened up the rural vote.  No longer intimidated, beaten tortured and burned out of their homes, the disaffected rural voters of Midlands, Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo, who had previously voted for ZANU PF, took courage. Disappointed by the failure of the land reform and the deteriorating standards of living, they voted against Mugabe.  They voted out his Ministers, they voted out the old man as President.  Faced with a choice of opponents, they opted for Tsvangirai as the man they knew over Makoni, who had no structures on the ground and was tainted by his refusal to make a clean break with ZANU PF.

A ZIMBABWEAN HOUDINI

Since the 29 March elections Zimbabweans dared to hope that Mugabe would concede defeat.

And then what happened?  MDC did not count on the Houdini they confronted. Mugabe still had tricks up his sleeves.  He really didn’t care what the truth on the ground demonstrated or whether anyone believed the excuses and prevarications.  While still in a state of shock, and divided about how to respond to the losses, ZANU PF released the House of Assembly results in a carefully crafted slow drip to keep people in suspense.  But it was all a charade – the results were known by anyone who cared to ask. 

The MDC were taken in by the “negotiations for a solution” which proceeded parallel to the release of results.  Were they genuine or were they a deliberate delaying tactic? Or was it the agenda of one section of a divided ZANU PF?  Probably the latter, but Tsvangirai now admits he agreed to many compromises to achieve a negotiated transfer of power. Mugabe rallied his troops at a Politburo meeting on April 4, and then it became clear that no deal would be made.  ZANU PF would use all sorts of trickery, even dismantling the Electoral Commission command centre without releasing the presidential results.

The MDC then followed a double-barrelled strategy to get the results released:  appeal to the court, and appeal to the SADC Presidents. The court was owned by Mugabe and the statement wrung from a reluctant and divided SADC a week later on April 12 was too little and too late. By then Mugabe had time to muster his shock troops and the retribution was taking place in the villages – burnings of homes, torture, forced meetings to witness atrocities, and a few killings.  All of this would render both the results and a run-off second round of presidential voting irrelevant to MDC, as the people would this time be intimidated into either not voting or voting “correctly” to ensure the continuation of Mugabe’s Presidency.

THE INADEQUACY OF THE BALLOT BOX

The MDC have once again been taught a hard lesson:  the ballot box is necessary, but is not enough.  Where was the “Plan B”, the “defend your vote” campaign? Where is it now, as Tsvangirai shunts from one regional capital to another? Mugabe’s regime is tottering, even as they cling to power.  What was needed in order to make it collapse, to deprive it immediately of the support of the police, the army and the civil service, was popular action.  MDC had to show its people power outside the ballot box in order to dissolve the feet of sand. 
But it did not.  Why? Since at least 2002, the MDC has known it has been necessary to have a Plan B.  At each election they have insisted that they had one but it has never been implemented.

Were the MDC afraid to get the people out to visibly demonstrate that they had the power in their hands?  Were they incompetent to mobilise mass action?  Probably a little of both. In the first few days, while people were still waiting for the results, MDC was saying privately and publicly that they could not call for mass action because ZANU-PF wanted to provoke them so that they could declare a state of emergency. They did not want people to suffer. That position looked less and less tenable as Mugabe’s terror began to spread through the countryside, targeting supporters and lower level organisers.  It is a tough leadership decision to call the people to action which may put many in danger, but it has to be taken at critical moments. Tsvangirai has confirmed to his critics that he does not have the toughness to rise to the moment.  MDC had neither organised the people on the ground nor were they prepared to lead them into the final push.

That last push could not just be taken by elites behind closed doors; nor could it be forced by an international midwife; that last push had to come from a disciplined, organised, people acting together.  That action has to be understood by the people, it has to be worked for – it does not just happen.  It should have been an integral part of the election campaign strategy, that the people would know what to do when the moment to act came.  When the call finally did come, through foreign media, text messages, and some fliers in Harare, it barely reached a disheartened, frightened and confused people.  The moment to act was not when elite deal-making had failed, but the minute the result was known and ZANU PF was in shock.  The people could have spoken immediately, ZANU PF was divided, and might well have fallen.  But the MDC leadership was afraid to call for the required sacrifices, and the moment was missed.

Progress has of course in some way been made.  The world has seen, that Mugabe is not wanted by the people of this country; his hypocrisy, deceit and nakedness have been exposed; ZANU PF is further divided in spite of its façade of unity; the SADC establishment has been forced into an open split.  But the opportunity to bring a popular party to power through their own struggle using democratic processes has been missed.   The transition is now likely to come – and come it must – through the collapse by implosion of ZANU PF and its law enforcement agencies, possibly some open skirmishes and some type of negotiated agreement between elites.  It is doubtful whether we have moved much towards any genuine democracy or achievement of social justice for the people.  All we can hope is that lessons have been learned by the people and by their leaders and when the next opportunity knocks on the door they will be more ready.

*Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean socialist. This article first appeared at

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

In relation to your recent essay [Congo's rape and sexual violence: UN's delinquency, the UN has long acted as a cover for powerful international actors to have their way - especially in Africa. The latest revelations in this regard concern Rwanda and the actions of the UN's Louise Arbour: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041708D.shtml

simone williams

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