As Cote d’Ivoire’s political leaders struggle with the conflict that has divided their country for the past four years, Ivorians at the grass-roots level have managed to resolve festering, deadly battles over land rights. Authorities this year completed a pilot programme to record rights to land after lengthy consultations with villagers, elders, chiefs and local officials.

Police in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have arrested 337 people, including 87 children, over violence that rocked the city on Saturday (11 November 2006), Interior Minister Denis Kalume said on Monday. At least four people died when fighting broke out between security forces and supporters of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the challenger to President Joseph Kabila in presidential elections on 29 October.

417 people, including women, children and street children, who were arrested by the Congolese National Police (PNC) after the November 11 2006 unrest in Kinshasa, have been detained and will now be sent on national service against their will.

Climate change is to blame for health problems such as increasing epidemics of malaria and water-borne diseases in Africa, heat wave-related deaths in Europe and the high incidence of cerebral-cardiovascular conditions in China, specialists said on Tuesday (14 November 2006) while calling for appropriate public-health responses to tackle the problem.

Marginalised communities attending a United Nations conference on climate change being held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have given accounts of how their lives are being altered for the worse -- something they blame on climate change.

Donors have expressed "grave concern" over the Tanzanian government's commitment to combat corruption and fear that the fight against graft has been put off until 2006, when President Benjamin Mkapa will leave office.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the imposition of prior censorship on the print media and a ban on sensitive issues on private radio stations under a state of emergency in the capital, N'Djamena, and six of the country's regions, which the government decreed on 14 November 2006 in response to the serious intercommunal violence of the past few weeks.

Journaliste en danger (JED) calls for a radical reform of state-owned radio and television stations so that they might effectively serve the public interests. In a report on media coverage during the election period, JED noted that a large number of Congolese media failed to live up to their role.

World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) condemns in the strongest terms the broadcast suspensions carried out against Kinshasa-based Radio Réveil FM, along with six other radio stations and three television channels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Financial Gazette has, in partnership with leading mobile telephone operator, Econet, launched a hassle-free classified advertising solution called 'TXT Classifieds', which enables advertisers to place their adverts with the Fingaz straight from their mobile phones. The service takes off from next week, November 16. Pilate Machadu, the Fingaz sales and marketing manager, confirmed the development, saying the service was created with convenience in mind.

Post-conflict recovery is affecting efforts to fight the spread of HIV in the Liberian town of Ganta, which has become "emblematic of the AIDS challenge facing the country" as it recovers from a 14-year civil war, PlusNews reports. According to PlusNews, Ganta is the "hub of trade and travel" with neighboring countries Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire, and the factors fueling its reconstruction also threaten to jeopardize its long-term stability.

Water treatment such as desalination and wastewater reuse could become much cheaper for developing countries, thanks to a purification membrane developed using nanotechnology. Researchers in the US have designed nanoparticles to create a membrane that does not clog easily, allowing the water to be pumped through using less energy.

Zimbabwe's privately owned cellular companies last week won a court order against a government attempt to force them to route international calls through a state-controlled gateway. High Court judge President Rita Makarau granted the interdict to Econet Wireless and Telecel.

Expletives are scrawled across the classroom walls, the library ceiling has collapsed and up to 45 pupils cram into each filthy classroom -- when the teachers turn up that is. But despite the shoddy state of her school, 14-year-old Constance Mpho has even bigger worries. "Smoking and killing people," said the pupil from Veritas Secondary School in Soweto.

Muslim clerics from 25 African countries have begun a five-day population and development meeting in the island of Zanzibar, focusing on issues such as HIV/AIDS and gender violence from an Islamic point of view. The participants, from member countries of the Network of African Islamic Faith-based Organizations, are also focusing on social and development problems.

The Tanzanian government is reviewing the country's Marriage Act with the aim of raising girls' age consent for marriage from 15 to 18 years, Deputy Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mathias Chikawe has said. "The Law of Marriage Act of 1971 allows the marriage of girls at the age of 15 years; at this age the girls are still biologically and psychologically immature," Chikawe, said.

Lands Minister Daniel Omara Atubo has strongly denied claims, mostly by politicians that the government plans to parcel out Acholi land to investors. Atubo said the government would not allocate any land in Acholi to investors without the consent of the owners.

Tanzanian authorities have started sending back immigrant pastoralists in the northwestern region of Kagera, who had moved into the area from neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, the deputy Livestock Development minister, Charles Mlingwa, has said.

The United States signed an agreement November 13 with President Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali to provide $461 million over five years to fund three sustainable development projects in the West African democratic nation. The $461 million agreement -- or compact -- with Mali "embodies ... our commitment to democracy and development," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a signing ceremony at the State Department.

Zambia's maternal mortality ratio is 728 per 100,000 live births, Health minister, Angela Cifire, has disclosed. Speaking yesterday (14 November 2006) when she received surgical and medical supplies to the department of obstetrician and gynaecology worth US$150,000 from UNFPA goodwill ambassador, Geri Halliwell, on behalf of the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), Ms Cifire said it was Government's intention to expedite the health agenda for Zambia for it to be beyond reproach.

A year after establishing a specialised unit to combat domestic violence and child abuse, Swaziland is claiming to have reduced crimes against children by a third. At the launch of the first annual report by the Royal Swaziland Police Force's Domestic Violence and Child Protection Unit, Leckinah Magagula, head of the unit, told IRIN: "Last year, we recorded three abuse offences committed against children every day.

A group of women met this week to consult on the draft national policy on peace-building and conflict management. Some participants had been involved in drafting the policy, spearheaded by the National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management.

A visitor to Ibadan University in pre-independence Nigeria more than 50 years ago was impressed by its modern structure and 100 000-book library. "I might have forgotten that we were in tropical Africa," wrote globe-trotting journalist John Gunther in 1953. Since then, Nigeria's premier university, which started in 1948 as a University of London college, has come down in the world.

The Executive Director of WFP, James Morris, has called on the international community not to forget the plight of the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria, tens of thousands of whom are still entirely dependent on external assistance to survive, some three decades after fleeing a territorial dispute.

Two refugees are dead and more than 78,000 people have been uprooted by flooding that engulfed refugee camps in eastern Kenya over recent days as rising waters destroyed hundreds of homes in the mainly Somali camps near Dadaab.

This report, based on interviews conducted with refugees from mixed Eritrean-Ethiopian families in Egypt, seeks to explain the uniquely difficult situation still faced by this group. It contends that because of their family relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia, people from mixed families find themselves in limbo legally, socially and psychologically, and should therefore be of concern to UNHCR's international protection regime.

On Monday, a group of some 200 militiamen in the western government-run town of Duekoue abducted the UN employee, demanding money from the government disarmament programme in return for his release, the UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI) said in a statement on Tuesday. The abduction followed clashes on Friday that pitted pro-government militia holed up in improvised barracks against angry residents and security forces in the Yopougon suburb of Cote d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan.

Chad's government has claimed that ethnic violence in Sudan's Darfur region is spilling across the border, sparking an upsurge of deadly Arab-African fighting among Chadians. Government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said in a statement late Tuesday that the latest fighting broke out Saturday in the eastern region of Sila and left "numerous victims'' on both sides.

Scholars and intellectuals are faced with stark socio-political choices, writes Henning Melber. Do they side with those maintaining the status quo in unequal societies or do they demand the right to engage in social struggles?

This essay argues for the need for a permissive postcolonial socio-political system allowing for dissenting views, including manifestations of critical loyalty through the articulation of dissenting views, and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-political commitment.

The virtues advocated are considered as ingredients in the promotion of a human-rights-focused and development-centred culture conducive to socio-political as well as economic progress of the people. This view follows the notion advocated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In the introduction to his collection of lectures on Development as Freedom he maintains: “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”. He points out that freedoms of different kinds are linked with one another. They include political freedoms, social opportunities, and access to economic resources.

Political regimes in many of the African societies lack recognition of such contributing factors or even deny them. Instead, all too often, the political environment has militated against freedom of thought and expression.

Honesty and Betrayal

“Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom. What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it’s the lesser evil to destroy it.”

These were the thoughts of Yakov Bok, the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer, while being carried to his bitterly-fought-for trial to prove his innocence after a long and excessive ordeal under torture and dehumanisation in the prisons of Czarist Russia.

As a victim of anti-Semitic hatred, he refuses to compromise with a regime that violates his human dignity and self-respect, but even more so his profound sense of justice. Malamud created his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a monument to civil disobedience, guided and motivated by a strong belief in humanism.

Those in control over social power have often considered the Yakov Boks of this world as a threat to their hegemonic rule, not in their individual capacity but mainly reduced to the anonymity of faceless ‘masses’ representing social movements. In contrast to this tendency towards an impersonal reduction, those considered as scholars and intellectuals are often perceived as a danger on the mere grounds of their individual capacities. They are viewed as individual ‘risks’ in the sense of being potential opinion-leaders able to contribute to, if not actively shape, public opinion and debate.

It would be a gross misunderstanding, however, to conclude that scholars and intellectuals are by nature or preference a critical counterweight to authoritarian or totalitarian rule or any other forms of abuse of power. Instead, the ‘intelligentsia’ has all too often been of strategic relevance in supporting such power structures for the sake of their own benefits.

Members of an educated elite have frequently been advocates and protagonists, if not architects and masterminds, of oppressive structures, and many more have even been among the silent supporters of such systems and their devastating results. To be educated does by no means protect one from turning into an ideologue or a perpetrator of crimes against humanity of the worst kind.

Far from being noble creatures, scholars and intellectuals are often tempted to serve political aims for their own gains. Honesty and integrity, supposed to be among the core values of intellectually ethical behaviour, are abandoned or neglected for more profane rewards than respect. Those who uphold their principles despite lack of material recognition are a rare species. Opportunism reigns. This is also true for the postcolonial era of southern African societies, some of which had to fight long and bitter wars of liberation at high costs to achieve sovereignty – only to deny their citizens the right to practise freedom in a democratically comprehensive way.

Decolonisation processes all too often displayed cases of a striking metamorphosis by individuals. Being social revolutionaries initially, claiming to represent the ‘povo’ or masses, they ended up as relatively high-profile representatives of a postcolonial establishment placing their own gains above earlier principles.

These members of a new elite have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of former liberation movements now in power. After seizing legitimate political control over the state, they turned their liberating politics of anti-colonial resistance into oppressive tools under the guise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans. Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive of aiming to occupy the political commanding heights of society against all odds – preferably forever – at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic living conditions for the once colonised, now hardly liberated (and anything but emancipated) majority.

The Struggle Within the Struggle

Scholars in politics include all too often the prototype of the sell-out intellectuals already lambasted by Frantz Fanon for their role in the decolonisation processes of the late 1950s, whom he accused of joining the liberation movement only to secure a slice of the cake shared after independence among those in control of the party in power.

Almost half a century ago, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and political revolutionary, who had joined the Algerian liberation struggle, presciently described in his manifesto The Wretched of the Earth the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anticolonial resistance and organised liberation movements. Writing at a time when the Algerian war of liberation had not even ended, Fanon prophesied the abuse of government power after attainment of independence and in the wake of establishing a one-party state. In a chapter entitled “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” he predicted that the state, which by its robustness and at the same time its restraint should convey trust and calm, foists itself on people in a spectacular way, makes a big show of itself, harasses and mistreats the citizens and by this means shows that they are in permanent danger.

He continues by criticising the abuse of power exercised by the party, which:

"…controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline. The political party, instead of welcoming the expression of popular discontentment, instead of taking for its fundamental purpose the free flow of ideas from the people up to the government, forms a screen and forbids such ideas."

The growing blending of party, government and state among the liberation movements in power indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era. The specific constellation based on the use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of southern Africa was hardly favourable to the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms. As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically-minded people. But independence without true democracy is still far from being liberation.

Criticism as Loyalty

The governments of postcolonial states in former settler societies such as Namibia and South Africa are, in contrast to the previous minority regimes broadly legitimate. Hence there is no justification for a right to generalised resistance to the state authorities as implied in the arguments concerning the colonial order. Notwithstanding this necessary clarification, a similar guiding principle of legitimate dissent from the state authorities’ controlled and enforced views should be advocated for an ethically motivated civic behaviour in the postcolonial societies of today.

In the context of a political culture committed to the values and virtues of pluralism in a liberal democracy, critical voices should not automatically be associated with disloyalty to the existing system. After all, this has been one of the aims of a struggle against the totalitarian regimes previously in place – to abandon the intolerant authoritarianism shaping the colonial societies under minority rule and to allow for a variety of views. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the common and accepted understanding of many of those in control of political power in post-apartheid societies, who seem to feel mainly “accountable to themselves”, as the scholar Ken Good phrased it. He had spent most of his academic life in Southern Africa until he was - 72 years of age and after lecturing 15 years on the campus of the University of Botswana - declared a prohibited immigrant by the Head of State Festus Mogae, allegedly for his criticism of the government’s policy of forced removal imposed on the Bushmen.

While most of the existing political orders are able to claim – in contrast to the preceding minority regimes – a more or less democratic legitimacy, they often fail to recognise the difference between its formal and moral dimensions. In other words: the mere fact that one is formally entitled to take certain decisions and actions on behalf of others without further consultation on the basis of (at times dubious) election results, does not necessarily and always justify such decisions or actions from a moral or ethical point of view.

Rapid social transitions have an impact on those involved in the transformation, which affects them in a direct way. Once moving into the seats of power, the effects of being alienated from people at the grassroots whom political office bearers claim to have represented since the ‘struggle days’, should not be underestimated. It requires a high degree of (self-)critical reflection and assessment to protect oneself from not being moved further and further away from ‘the masses’.

With reference to democratic South Africa, this process has been described by a local observer quoted in an article in the Guardian (16 May 2001) thus:

“The pace of change is such that individuals cease to live in real time. Human journeys that under normal circumstances take decades, if not generations, are completed in a few years, if not months. So the prisoner becomes president; law-breakers become law-makers; armed guerillas become arms dealers. The person who slept on your floor only 10 years ago, after a wild party, is now a government minister with an entourage.”

With the change a growing degree of intolerance often emerges, which considers dissenting views as unacceptable. As a recent South African study by Gibson and Gouws on the degree of (in-)tolerance diagnosed:

“For most South Africans, the idea of putting up with their political enemies is distasteful and/or foreign. And indeed, most South Africans have political enemies they dislike a great deal, and these enemies are perceived as quite threatening. The combination of disliking a group and feeling threatened by it is a powerful source of political intolerance.”

With reference to earlier processes of transition from colonial minority rule to formal political sovereignty under African governments in other parts of the continent, the backlash which often occurred, had been described as a return to repression by Hydén and Okigbo in a chapter to a volume on Media and Democracy in Africa:

“It became clear quite early on after independence that the new nationalist governments were not comfortable with the idea of challenges to their policies. Arguing that the new nation-states could not afford bickering over what is right or wrong, these leaders did their best to suppress opinions other than those favorable to their own stance. The political leadership was ready to bar others from using the public realm, exceeding the efforts of the colonial state in this regard. Political space in this public realm could only be used at its pleasure and permission to do so could be revoked at its sole judgment. The most significant change was the transformation of the discursive realm from being civic and cosmopolitan to becoming parochial and local.”

As part of the historical legacy, those who were fighting against institutionalized discrimination and oppression under totalitarian structured societies tend to resort to similar mechanisms of control once in power themselves. They are tempted to marginalise those who beg to differ or are perceived as different from the accepted norms under the newly imposed discourse of nation building.

Choices for Commitment

African societies and the social forces operating under the given constraints imposed by state control – similar to forces within other societies the world over – face the challenge to achieve and maintain a maximum of independence of thought as a precondition for the realisation of citizenship. It is important to note that such criticism of repressive policy is shared by some of those in established and responsible positions within the currently emerging continental African bodies of relevance. In his keynote address to a conference organized mid-2004 in collaboration with the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda did not mince his words. Having worked as a legal expert on the drafting and conclusion of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (adopted in 1981), Jallow stated:

“Good governance is not only about majorities; it involves the protection of all, including minorities such as those in the opposition. The right to free speech and dissent rests on the existence of an independent private media – both in print and on radio, given literacy levels in Africa. The establishment of independent civil society organisations and the creation of the democratic space for them to operate effectively must be nurtured to diffuse the over-centralisation of power and authority, empower the ordinary citizen and thereby reduce the risks of abuse of centralised authority. Governments should relentlessly strive to ensure the realisation of all categories of rights and freedoms for all without distinction.”

As scholars and intellectuals we have socio-political choices to make. We have to decide if we are merely guided by our petty bourgeois class interests to enhance our relative privileges in a given power structure and social hierarchy by siding with those executing social control and maintaining economic and/or political power within the grossly unequal societies of southern Africa. Alternatively, we can opt for committing class suicide as Amilcar Cabral had suggested (and practised), although this sounds rather crude (and highly idealistic) in the era of postcolonial re-established social hierarchies.

Instead, demanding the right to engage in social struggles as academics might be a more realistic point of departure – and difficult enough to practise. Like any other members of society, scholars and intellectuals are faced with bigger choices. These are about more than how best to ensure their narrowly defined self-interest of academic freedom in cosy niches of institutions of higher learning. Academic freedom in its true, wider sense is related to and is about fundamental aspects of human rights and development. And it’s up to us, if we accept the challenge and decide to fight for such interlinked goals. The question remains: Which side are we on?

* Acknowledgement: This is a shorter version of an article based on a plenary paper presented to the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Universities’ Social Sciences Conference (SAUSSC) on “Human Rights and Development” (University of Botswana, Gaborone, December 5–7, 2005) and published in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, May 2006, pp. 261-278. Please consult the original publication for the full text with detailed bibliographic references.

* Dr. Henning Melber was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000) and Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000-2006), where he is now the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (www.dhf.uu.se).

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

During the struggle for Kenyan independence, the Mau-Mau controlled over 50 newspapers and many printing presses, setting up libraries in liberated territories in forests and cities, writes Shiraz Durrani. It’s facts like these, he says, which are largely buried in an information system inherited from the colonial era, a system which fails to serve the majority of African people.

“Silence in the library”

Perhaps the best way to understand the contradictions facing libraries in Africa today is through a story. It is only when social contradictions are accepted and understood that attempts can be made to resolve them. And resolve them we must, if libraries and information are to play their part in creating a new Africa where there is justice, democracy and development for all. The story is “silence in the library”:

“Nyanjiru wakes up at 4 am; a water debe on her head, she walks for an hour and a half to the nearest stream. Then she climbs back from the river to her home, picking dry wood on the way for fire; she arrives home three hours later to start the day's other work: crying children to be calmed with bits of left over food, chicken to be fed and watered; then to start digging her half acre shamba in the hot, burning sun. This is the daily routine for a peasant.

And then there is Kamau. Kamau pats his dogs fondly as they surround his new Volvo. This is his daily ritual. He realises that the gates are not open yet and hoots loudly. Where is Mutua? Does he not know that today is the library board meeting and he has to report early? They are to discuss library regulations. He has prepared a long list of ‘don’ts’. As Mutua opens the gates, Kamau speeds out, the silent sound of the Volvo soothing his mind. He starts thinking about library rules. Yes, users must be controlled. Only last week he found a fellow eating mandazi in the library. How can that be allowed? Kamau had him thrown out. The first rule is going to be about eating in the library. And then of course ‘Silence: silence in the library’”.

In such an atmosphere works the modern librarian. Inside the stone walls of the library, in total peace and calm among the well preserved volumes, the liberian is oblivious to the ruin and chaos of hunger, starvation and mass exploitation outside.

The contrasting lives of Nyanjiru and Kamau can be found anywhere in Africa. Their activities are taking place within miles of each other and on the same day. Yet the two are so removed from each other that they may easily be on different planets or in different historical ages.

The library is a concrete structure inaccessible to Nyanjiru, and Nyanjiru as a library user is unacceptable to the librarians. For Nyanjiru there is no time to waste, no compromises to be made. All her labour and thoughts are to satisfy her family's basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. Anything that helps her in this work, she accepts with open arms and mind. Anything that prevents her from acquiring what she needs, she will fight. Her information needs are clear - she wants information which will help her to support and protect her family.

On the other hand is the library service - set up during colonial days, with a colonial vision, through ‘assistance’ from a colonial, neo-colonial ‘mother’ country. A mother whose very touch brings death. “Silence please; please, silence in the library”.

Silence, in spite of Nyanjiru’s dying children; silence, in spite of Nyanjiru’s twenty hour working day; silence, even though Nyanjiru's hard labour fails to fill her family’s stomachs. Nyanjiru knows no library. No library wants to know Nyanjiru.

The story of Nyanjiru and Kamau highlights the key need in Africa today: development – development of people, resources, industries, agriculture, art, culture… But “development” does not take place in a vacuum. In order to develop, people and societies need relevant information and knowledge in a number of fields such as science, history, geography, history, technology. Yet, under capitalism, information and knowledge and the very process of learning and education have become commodities to be bought and sold on the “open” market. Those without resources to purchase information end up having no access to it. The irony is that even those who produce information often have no access to that information which is taken from them, copyrighted, patented, repackaged, and sold at prices which the original producers cannot afford.

Thus peoples, countries and societies have been forced into “un-development” and inequality by the economic policies and practices of international finance and transnational corporations using the mechanisms of international financial and political control, such as the IMF, WTO and the UN.

But are these issues that should concern the library profession? Some say it is not our “business” to get involved in “politics” as we are professional people, not politicians. But if we accept that Africa needs a second war of liberation – economic liberation this time – then we need to accept that no liberation can be successful without appropriate information vision, strategy and tactics as well as trained information activists. This is the lesson from the major revolutions in the world. This is also the lesson from Africa’s long history of wars against colonialism and imperialism. And this is where we find a relevant social role for African librarians and information professionals and activists today.

The first requirement for liberation from an inequality imposed on Africa is access to information about the real reasons for poverty. Yet the information and communication systems created by the departing colonial powers were not expected or equipped to put this information before people. They were merely tools for a small, rich elite to impose its world outlook and culture on the poor and exploited majority of people. Post-independence systems and policies have made no fundamental change in this colonial-inspired information framework. We urgently need to seek a role for the information profession that is relevant to the needs of Africa in the 21st century.

An important task for Africa is to document fully the achievements, successes and failures of the anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Information about these can arm us for current and future struggles. This has not been fully documented. But if the history of African struggle for political and economic liberation is poorly documented, the struggle for African information liberation is even less well documented and understood.

It is not a matter of general knowledge, for example, that during the Mau Mau war of liberation in Kenya, the combatants controlled over 50 newspapers and many printing presses; they set up libraries in liberated territories in forests in cities, ran an efficient information collection system, and created their own distribution network, using “traditional” and modern methods available to them. This complex communications system was created and managed by activist librarians and information workers who were active not only in the information field, but in the larger political and social fields as well. Their experience, if fully documented, can help us find a relevant role for the information professional in Africa today.

And yet today, we tend to follow blindly the “Western” model of public library services which actively seeks to remove politics from information theories and practices. This model has not been successful in the “West” itself to provide information to all, particularly to those politely referred to as “socially excluded”. Yet we in Africa have not fully challenged this situation. It is only by subjecting our current policies and practices to a vigorous challenge that new and relevant theories, policies and practices can emerge.
Opportunities for information liberation

Just as in the political field, so in the information field, there are major developments when social contradictions are at their sharpest. It is at such key points in history that opportunities arise for making revolutionary changes in the way information and politics are organised. Colonial Africa has had a number of opportunities to change its societies for the better and serve the needs of the majority of people.

One such opportunity was in late nineteen fifties and early sixties which saw achievement of political independence in many countries. It was a time when foundations of the old colonial world were being destroyed and those of new free societies were being laid.

Many activists had the vision of a society where all would have free access to information and knowledge created by the work of all. It was a time of immense change and high hopes for a just, equitable future after decades of colonial oppression and exploitation. This was the time when people did influence events in a major way, underscoring what was said at the World Summit for Information Society (2003): it is “people who primarily form and shape societies, and information and communication societies are no exception”.

But the opportunity at independence to challenge the very basis of social organisations such as libraries was lost. Library services continued to function on the same basis as under colonialism, targeting their services to the elite, although now this included some more people and became “multiracial”. Class divisions, which formed the real divisions in the society, were deliberately played down, and racial, “tribal” and other “divisions” were brought into prominence. An information service operating in the real interest of people would have ensured that this “information blind-spot” was removed and the question of who the library actually serves would have been resolved in favour of the majority of working people. Thus an information service using resources from all but serving a few was developed. This situation has more or less continued until today.

But today, there is another possibility for change. Changes at a global level in the last 25 years now present Africa with another opportunity to make a fundamental shift in the way societies are organised – and in the way information services are organised. If managed correctly, we can make the transition to a people-orientated library service that did not take place at independence.

A key requirement for development of Africa is a redrawing of the “information map” to reassess our information work. We need to assess the relevance of the sources of information we provide to the people and to review whose point of view such information reflects. We need to look afresh at the form and content of information in our libraries and look at what languages they cover. We need to see if the information is targeted correctly and review how outcomes are monitored. Our information needs to reflect Africa in a new perspective and reinterpret its history from the point of view of African working people.

The world-view that people are daily presented by the Western media needs to be challenged for African people to see themselves as equal partners in a global context. An alternative vision and view of the world needs to be made available to every African. No people can develop under a situation of daily images of their own powerlessness and inadequacy, where facts about their exploitation are hidden and their suffering is shown as resulting from their own fault. In order to build our self-confidence we need to see the world from our own perspective in which the “other” is just that – the other.

Collection building

An important area that needs to be addressed urgently is the collection policy and practice of African libraries. Again, this is not the forum to go into this in detail, but the following needs to be addressed:

- Material from African liberation struggle. The enormous amount of oral and written material generated during the long history of African struggle against colonialism needs to be collected, documented and made available. Developments in information and communications technologies make this task easier than it was some years back. Part of this process is the need to get back from colonial countries the vast amount of African documents, material culture, and archives stored in London, Paris and other colonial capitals.

- Documents of the Pan African movement need to be included in the above, as do material on slavery whose effects Africa has not recovered from even today.

- Documentation on the policies and activities of organisations and leaders active in the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movements (before and after independence) need to be made available through every public and University library in Africa. These should include organisations and leaders in every African country. For example, films on Lumumba and other anti-imperialist activists need to be collected or commissioned.

- African libraries seems to be flooded by material from a Western, imperialist point of view. There is a need to actively collect material from an alternative, people’s, point of view. This should include material on the World Social Forum (WSF) as well as on the people’s anti-globalisation movements.

- Material from a Pan-African and internationalist perspective. African libraries need to collect material from other African countries, organise a translation service to make material available to all, and promote major regional African languages throughout the continent (e.g. Kiswahili, Arabic, and Yoruba).

- Collections on social and economic development. Experiences on development in other parts of the world needs to be made available to African planners, teachers, lecturers, extension workers and others as a way of disseminating it to people. Thus experiences from China, Cuba, Venezuela and India should be actively collected.

* Shiraz Durrani is a Senior Lecturer, Information Management, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University. He is the author of the book “Never be Silent: Publishing and imperialism in Kenya, 1884-1963”. Durrani formed the African Progressive Librarian and Information Activists’ Group (PALIAct), a partnership with a group of progressive African librarians and information workers. PALIAct seeks to develop people-oriented information services decided upon by workers, peasants, pastoralists, fisher people and other marganilised individuals and groups whose information needs have not been met. It involves working in partnership with other professionals and service providers.

* This article is a shortened version of a paper presented to the XVII Standing Conference Of Eastern, Central, & Southern African Library & Information Professionals (SCECSAL XVII), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 10th- 14th July 2006 (http://www.tlatz.org/scecsal2006/) The full length paper is also to be published in Journal of Pan African Studies. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This the quarterly update (July to September 2006) that Equality Now received from SOAWR members who are working on the campaign for popularization, ratification, domestication and implementation of the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa as well as from the African Union Commission, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other organizations that are also doing work around the Protocol. Also included is the information on the status of ratifications, meetings attended by the SOAWR members and upcoming events.

FEATURE: In the final article of a three part series on the Niger Delta, Ike Okonta goes to the heart of the democratic deficit in the region
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Libraries should be a centre of activism, not silence: Shiraz Durrani makes a case for information liberation
- What is the role of intellectuals in socio-political change? Henning Melber explains
- Miriam Madziwa says one women’s group is using love to unsettle Zimbabwe’s Mugabe
- Liepollo Lebohang Pheko remembers PW Botha
LETTERS: Oil and Angola
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Bush, looking left to Nicaragua, faces the music
BLOGGING AFRICA: Blogs to Botha: Goodbye and good riddance
BOOKS & ARTS: Have you seen my gender lenses?
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: Protocol on the rights of women campaign update
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Using killers to catch killers in Darfur
HUMAN RIGHTS: Mozambique citizens mete out rough justice to criminals
WOMEN AND GENDER: Women send peace torch to Juba peace talks
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Failed UK asylum seekers sleep rough
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: DRC poll contenders urge calm
DEVELOPMENT: The lessons from China; African nationalism; To Bee or not to Bee
CORRUPTION: 2006 corruption index released
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: New frontiers in social policy?
EDUCATION: Globalisation, migration and education
ENVIRONMENT: Nairobi climate change conference opens
LAND AND LAND RIGHTS: Better land access for rural poor
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Enemies of the internet named
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Software piracy creates jobs; free and open source software creates opportunities, says APC boss
FUNDRAISING AND USEFUL RESOURCES: Innovative South African education project embarks on international fundraising trip
PLUS: e-Newsletters and Mailings Lists; Fundraising and Useful Resources; Courses, Seminars and Workshops; Jobs.

Kenyan Environment Minister Kivutha Kibwana opened the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi with a warning that climate change could endanger whatever gains have been made against poverty. He urged countries to work together to ensure that real action is achieved on the issue of adaptation to climate change. More than 5,000 participants from 178 countries are in Nairobi for the two-week meeting.

The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) must pursue more charges against Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga and prosecute others responsible for heinous crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) if the court is going to bring justice to the Congolese people, Human Rights Watch said today. The hearing to confirm these important charges marks a milestone for the victims in Ituri. But these charges only begin to address the horrific acts committed by the UPC. If the ICC is going to have an impact on ending impunity in Ituri, the prosecutor must pursue more charges against Lubanga and target more perpetrators responsible for atrocities.

The World Bank on Tuesday approved a delayed $80 million loan to support Kenya's education sector, following stepped-up measures to guard against corruption and ensure resources are properly used, officials said. The approval of the new project is the first since the World Bank delayed $265 million in aid to Kenya, including $100 million in loans for health programs, due to corruption concerns.

Five people were killed in a Kenyan slum after fighting broke out between two outlawed groups over extortion, police said on Tuesday, adding that two of them were killed by police who tried to quell the violence. "Officially, we know that three people were killed last night," police spokesman Gideon Kibunjah told Reuters. Kibunjah said the violence in Nairobi's sprawling Mathare slum was by the rival Mungiki and Taliban groups over protection money levied by one of them on brewers of an illegal drink.

Environmental campaigners have welcomed a decision by the World Bank to debar German-based Lahmeyer International for bribing officials to win contracts for Africa's largest inter-basin water transfer scheme, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP).

Marginalised by society because they have few legal or institutional forms of protection, disabled women in Cote d'Ivoire are now coming out of the shadows and demanding their rights -- particularly those related to their sexual and reproductive lives. "Even if we don't get benefits, what's important to us is our rights," said Fatim Koné, a resident of the Ivorian financial capital, Abidjan, who had a leg amputated three years ago.

Dennis Brutus is a veteran of the South African liberation struggle, a leading figure in the global justice movement and a world-renowned poet. Brutus spoke with the Socialist Worker Online about the political situation in Africa today - focusing especially on the crisis in Darfur.

This paper explores the historical precedents to BEE in South Africa, its origins, and its points of contact with the experience of 'empowerment' in Malaysia. The authors review the different steps taken by the South African government in promoting empowerment over the past 12 years, together with some of outcomes to date.

CAF Southern Africa is a non profit organisation that encourages and facilitates effective giving by individuals and companies. CAF Southern Africa enables donors to make the most of their giving and non profit organisations to make the most of their resources.

Have you seen them
Those gender lenses of mine,
That I brought back with me
From Beijing 21 years ago?

I swear I packed them among
My souvenirs and memorabilia
As I took up that coveted appointment
As Executive Director of this
International NGO with its seat in Washington D.C

In this international arena, Siseranism rules
Only those familiar with Un-speak
Are allowed into the loop of privilege-
Where thematic topics change
With each passing season---
Making it a members-only-club.

We spend our days drifting from
One diplomatic cocktail to the next,
Intoning in our bland, technocrat language
Our double speak, which is no speak
Ever mindful about peoples
Diversity and sensibilities.

We are quite busy sister, trying to
Draft work plans and futuristic agendas
That will usher you into a new era.

So don’t remind me about that grass root talk
Of women in development (WID)
And gender and development (GAD)
So dinosaurian if you ask me!

Today’s buzzword is Women
Peace and Security (WPS)
Keeping and building peace
After men’s big ego’s have suffered
Deflating punctures in battlefields
Where spurts of blood sprout
Off your daughters life spring.

Ana Ndayizeye embodies the havoc that the unrest in Africa's war-torn Great Lakes region has played on people's lives. The 25-year-old was born in a refugee camp and knows no other world. Born, raised and married in camps, the second-generation refugee has flitted from the Congo to Tanzania to Mozambique, where she now lives in the Maratane refugee camp, along with about 5 000 other people. Maratane, linked by a dusty alluvial road, and about 2 000km north of the capital Maputo has a forlorn, lost air.

Yayi Bayam Diouf says that for the past two months, she has managed to prevent any boats leaving her home area in Senegal, loaded with migrants trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands - making her campaign more effective than all the warships and planes sent to the Atlantic Ocean by the European Union. "Every morning I go to the seaside, I call many young fishermen and I start speaking to them," she says. She started her campaign after her only son drowned trying to reach the Canary Islands.

With continued human rights abuses, crumbling social services and economic freefall, many Guineans were incredulous after a senior European Union humanitarian official said he was “very favourably impressed” with the governments efforts at reform to win back aid. ''With each passing day we face more difficulties," said Mamaissata Camara who lives in the capital, Conakry.

The United Methodist Church in Africa needs to address the lack of women in positions of authority in both church and society, according to the head of the denomination's Africa University. Rukudzo Murapa, vice chancellor of Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe, was one of many United Methodists from around Africa who provided leadership at the Council of Bishops' meeting Nov. 1-6 in Maputo.

Sipho Mathathi, Secretary General of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), victoriously holds up her fist at the National Civil Society HIV and AIDS Prevention and Treatment Congress, a watershed event marking a dramatic change in government’s outlook in dealing with the treatment of HIV and AIDS, after sustained civil society lobbying and advocacy.

The Zimbabwe government is planning fresh home demolitions, reports ZimOnline. The government in May last year and weeks after controversially winning a key general election, ordered the police and army to demolish thousands of backyard cottages, shantytowns and informal business kiosks, in a campaign President Robert Mugabe said was necessary to smash crime and to restore the beauty of Zimbabwe’s cities.