Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem returns from a weekend in Accra where they are busy preparing to celebrate 50 years of independence. For Ghana’s ruling party, the New Patriotic Party and President Kuffour, the 50th anniversary celebrations are problematic. How do they celebrate the legacy of Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism when they and their forbearers opposed him and his party, the CPP (Convention People’s Party)? Well, they do so by having the 'mother of all parties' and attempting to make political gain out of the celebrations.

Last weekend I was in Accra to participate in a symposium at the Great Halof the University of Ghana, Legon. It was organised by a coalition of Nkrumahist and other prgressive forces under the aegis of the African People’s Platform.

The choice of the dates (23-24 February 2007) for the two day workshops were not accidental. On 24 February 1966 the government of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, founder, leader of the independent state of Ghana, and trail-blazer of the anti-colonial movement and foremost Pan-Africanist leader of the mid-2oth century and probably most popular of all times, was overthrown in a military coup orchestrated by domestic reactionary forces and their imperialist backers notably the ex-colonial masters, Britain and their American cousins through the CIA. Two monographs compiled by the Socialist Forum of Ghana: 'THE GREAT DECEPTION: The role of the CIA and right wing forces in the overthrow of Nkrumah', and 'FIGHT BACK: A Response to anti-Nkrumah provocations' refreshes our memories about the local and international context of the various challenges that Nkrumah faced both in life and even in death.

Amidst the official celebratory mood, the Legon symposium sought to situate the independence struggles and Ghana’s emancipation within the context of: the ideals of the Osagyefo on Ghanaian, African and World politics; The fight for freedom, justice and the continuation of the anti-imperialist struggles today; and the struggles of ordinary peoples for a just new economic and social order. It is part of the many alternative celebrations by Ghanaians who feel marginalised by the official anniversary or are dissatisfied with the Opportunistic politics of the celebrations.

President Kuffour is generally seen as a very decent man especially outside Ghana but even many domestic opponents will give him the benefit of the doubt. However ordinary decency is not enough when it comes to state craft. For instance many Nigerians will attest to former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon’s honesty as a person and swear by his personal integrity even more than 20 years after his overthrow. But in the same breath they will condem the profligacy and crass incompetence of his administration in managing post Civil war Nigeria. There are too many uncomfortable parallels with Ghana’s Mr Nice guy President who overwhelms people with his gentlemanliness!. Politically it is too apologetic to continue to perpetrate the sophistry of ‘the good leader ... bad advisers’ about our leaders. If they are so good how come they surround themselves with ‘bad people’. They choose these advisers so they should have responsibility for accepting or not accepting their advice. The flip side of this of course is the disclaimer by many of these advisers soon after they are booted out of office or the president is shown the back door. They mostly come with claims of ‘we told him but he did not listen’. They never tell the public why they remained with a client who never follow their advice. They are all
guilty of political opportunism and that’s why they can only give excuses for their conducts but no convincing explanations.

President Kuffour and the ruling New Patriotic Party have a wider political problem about celebrating Ghana’s 5oth annivessary. They come from the anti –Nkrumahist tradition of Danquah-Busia political families. Their forebears even opposed Nkrumah and the CPP when he moved ‘THE MOTION OF DESTINY” that heralded the final exit of the British colonialists. They collaborated with imperialism to overthrow Nkrumah thereby orphaning not just Ghana but the African revolution. Ironically Kuffour’s victory is the first time that reactionary political group has ever won a democratic election (Busia’s victory was orchestrated by the military junta). The poachers of independence struggle have now become the game keepers hence their ambiguity and cheap politics about the celebrations.

They are trying to celebrate and have the mother of all parties, make enormous political, diplomatic, commercial, cultural, tourism and all kinds of gains from the land mark but are pained to acknowledge the main architect of not only Ghana’s independence but a man who represents the best in the aspirations of Africans for liberty, freedom and dignity.

It is not a dishonour to Nkrumah but a reflection of the small mindedness of Mr Kuffour’s party because for many people inside and outside Ghana the independence of Ghana was not conceivable without the courageous leadership of the Osagyefo. As Basil Davidson said of Liberation struggles in Portuguese Africa 'no hand is big enough to cover the sky'. Nkrumah does not need governments and presidents to remember him as he continues to be an inspiration for millions of Africans and freedom loving peoples across the world.

It does not mean that Nkrumah did not have his own faults as a person or a leader but he has endured because no one since after him has come near his socio-economic and political achievements for Ghana. For many decades until the latter years of Rawlings’ rule and now Ghanaians did not know power shedding as is common among their richer cousins, oil-cursed Nigeria. When Nkrumah conceived of the Akosombo and the Volta Dam projects they were not meant for Ghana alone but for the whole region. He also did not see it as merely provision of electricity but within a wider industrialisation strategy. This point was discussed in detail by Yao Graham of the Third World Network within the context of energy privatisation in Ghana and the West Coast of Africa.

At the Pan-African level we have not seen another leader who has been so inspiring in his example of complete dedication to the ideals of Pan-Africanism and a better humanity. Many pretenders have come forward and but have not had the staying power of the Osagyefo. Today many of them scramble to be friends of imperialism (now euphemistically referred to as donors, development partners, friends from abroad etc betraying their peoples, Africa and the possibilities of a better humanity at the alter personal power.

It is too petty to deny our nationalist heroes/heroines their place of honor in our history simply because our masters of today were either not born then or played no role in them or were on the opposite side of freedom or even on account of what those nationalist leaders may have become later. History is a lived experience that cannot be erased.

It is not only Kuffour and the ruling party of Ghana that are ambiguous about Nkrumah. Even the former military dictator turned reluctant democrat, Jerry John Rawlings has always been anti-Nkrumah. in typical empty populism he claimed that there was nothing to celebrate in the 5O years of Ghana's independence. He was so much in a hurry not to give any credit to Nkrumah that he even forgot that 20 of the 50 years he was rubbishing were under his misrule. Nkrumah was in power for only 10 years and yet all the other forty years combined have not equalled his record!

There are many 50th anniversaries coming up in the next few years and it would be interesting to see how the present occupants of our state lodges celebrate them . For instance how would President Museveni and the increasingly exclusionist and revisionist NRM government (if they are still in power) celebrate Uganda’s 50th anniversary in a few years time? Would they try to write Obote/UPC out it or downplay his role as the NPP is doing and not succeeding with Nkrumah? How would Guinea mark its 50th anniversary next year, with or without its dead-but-not yet buried military dictator who took over after the death of the radical Nationalist, Ahmed Sekou Toure who was a popular leader but made many mistakes too.

If current leaders are sure of their own loyalties and commitment to the cause of their peoples they will not need to be hunted by the legacy of their predecessors. So unsure of their place in history that some of them like Museveni are beginning to honor themselves with statutes completely oblivious to what happened to other self-worshipping gestures most recently Saddam’s many statutes in Iraq that were pulled down with glee once the myth of immortality with which dictators always decorate themselves.

For many years Museveni refused to allow any street to be named after him and also have his picture on the national currency like previouis leaders. But now he has started launching his own statues. May be he does not trust Ugandans to honor him after he leaves office or dies, so he is on a 'DO IT YOURSELF' narcissism. A sage once said: greatness does not abide in how many honors one has BUT IN DESERVING THEM.

Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, is Deputy Director, Africa, UN millennium Campaign and more recently General-Secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement.

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

Tajudeen reports back from the launch of the Citizenship Rights in Africa initiative (CRIA) held last week in Kampala, Uganda. If we are all Africans, and recognised as such, then we can stop 'foreignising' people who disagree with us, or referring to other Africans as aliens, or discriminating against fellow citizens as 'indigenes' or 'settlers', and practising other forms of xenophobia that are so rampant across Africa. An African citizenship will, he says, restore to all of us what is naturally ours - being African.

Last weekend I returned to Kampala for a few days. It is always a pleasant return for me in a way I do not or expect to be welcomed to Lagos, or feel very homely in my current abode, Nairobi, now more notoriously referred to as Nairobbery. Kampala is a city bursting with all kinds of construction: roads, hotels, bungalows and shopping malls. It is a frenzy the economics of which I have not been able to understand. They are all ostensibly being built for the Commonwealth Summit (CHOGM) being held in November. No expense is being spared and the government is in overdrive to give all kinds of subsidies and concessions to ensure that all these luxury apartments are completed before the summit begins. In this rush it is strangling the struggling domestic furniture industry because CHOGM builders can go to Malaysia and import all that they need with little or no tax. After the summit what will happen to these hotels? Would a one-week summit generate returns to keep them open forever? It is clear that in spite of all the rush some of them may never be completed, while some may find other uses, and the very big ones like the new Serena Hotel should survive having risen from the ashes of the old Nile Hotel to the status of a hotel 'fit for a Queen'.

My visit was not about touring the dizzy heights of Kampala. I was in town to participate in a launch of a very important campaign sponsored by the Global Pan African Movement (PAM), the International Rights Initiative (IRRI) and Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI): Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative (CRAI).

It is a matter that concerns all Africans. We may call ourselves Ugandans, Nigerians, Malawians or whatever, but are we really citizens? Do we really enjoy the full rights, freedoms and feel the complementary obligation to be loyal and voluntarily discharge our duties towards these states? I am always envious at the rate at which Western governments dispatch airplanes and soldiers to take their citizens out of any conflict situation, whether war or natural disaster, across the world. Hence Westerners are often the first refugees from any theatre of conflict. How many times has an African government mounted the same operation to rescue their citizens?

How many times have we heard any of our numerous diplomatic representatives in Europe or America or even in Africa make any public comment about the treatment of their citizens in the countries they are resident in? But let one Westerner be unfortunately lost in some impenetrable forest anywhere in the world, and the ambassador or high commissioner and the full weight of their propaganda machines - the BBC, CNN, VOA, RFI - would be brought to be bear on all of us; and if it is in Africa our security establishments will do anything to find the missing Westerner yet may not raise a finger for their own citizens. That is why many of our people will not run to the police or the army or 'government people' when they are in trouble.

The one aspect of citizenship that makes news is the now routine arbitrary denial of citizenship to compatriots who may have fallen out with the powers that be. The most recent demonstration of this is the publisher of the only surviving privately owned media in Zimbabwe, and also the proprietor of the Mail and Guardian in South Africa, Trevor Ncube. Because he would not toe the line, the Zimbabwean government refused to renew his passport, denationalised him and rendered him stateless. An older, well-known case is that of Jenerali Ulimwengu, who is the CEO of the Habari Corporation, publishers of several Kiswahili and English language newspapers in Dar es Salaam. Of course there was the more famous case of Zambian President Kaunda who was denationalised by his successor, the little man with even smaller brain, Chiluba, who was later 'discovered' to be of DRC origin himself.

Jenerali and Trevor were at this meeting and gave chilling, if sometimes ridiculous, accounts of the processes leading to their denial of citizenship. Trevor has brothers and sisters who are not in trouble at all, and Jenerali also has siblings who were never the subject of any investigation by the Mkapa government. What is common to both cases is that the matter was purely political. The first time I met Mkapa, it was Jenerali who took me to his house near the Aga Khan hospital in Dar. He was certain that 'he was our man' to succeed President Hassan Mwinyi. Our man indeed!

But Trevor and Jenerali or Kaunda are lucky because their cases became a source of huge embarrassment to their governments who had to back-off either in court or gave in politically. There are millions of people across this continent who are affected. According to the press statement issued at the launch of CRAI:

'Tens of millions of Africans have been victims of the pandemic of statelessness and denial of citizenship. In terms of the number of people affected and the implications for peace and security, it is easily the most serious human security and human rights problem on the continent today.'

It further stated: 'Statelessness and the arbitrary denial of citizenship violate human dignity, undermine the integrity of government and its institutions, dislocate families, destroy the livelihoods of those affected, and render the victims open to further abuses of their rights and lead to war.'

Leading international and African advocacy groups joined the three organisations in launching CRAI. It is a cry for liberty in which all of us have a role to play, either as part of the problem, or as part of the solution. Anyone of us could be a victim. The solution is very simple: accept Africans as Africans and treat them with dignity anywhere they may be as legal African citizens, from Cape Town to Cairo.

If we are all Africans and recognised as such then we can stop 'foreignising' people who disagree with us, or referring to other Africans as aliens, or discriminating against fellow citizens as 'indigenes' or 'settlers', and other forms of xenophobia that are so rampant across Africa. If we disagree we should try to solve them peacefully or understand the basis of our differences without resorting to stripping our opponents of their humanity and citizenship.

Rights should derive from our being human beings and the state has an obligation to protect all of us as citizens regardless of the circumstances by which we come about our citizenship which may include, ancestry, birth, settlement, marriage, migration, naturalization. Conferring African citizenship on all Africans may not solve all our problems but it provides an important legal and political basis for us to hold our governments accountable and enjoy the full rights of political and socio-economic participation wherever we may be without fearing expulsion and statelessness. It will also remove the insult that non-Africans are freer to move around the continent, especially those holding North American and European passports, while Africans are routinely humiliated and treated as 'others'. We are both 'others' abroad and still 'others' in Africa. Do we not deserve a place to call 'ours' where we can enter or leave without hindrance? We may never quite be Nigerians, South Africans or Kenyans, Chadians or any of the other possible colonially-induced artificial creations, but at least we can be who we are: AFRICANS. An African citizenship will restore to all of us what is naturally ours.

* Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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

I spent New Year with two visiting friends, both of them Ugandan, who have been living outside of the country for most of their lives. One is more Nigerian than I can ever claim to be. He is married to a Nigerian, and I am not. He has lived in the country for the past 30 years, which I have not done. Having left home at 22, I could not go back for a decade and a half. I have never spent more than one month there since 1999, when I was ‘allowed’ back. The other friend crossed over to yankee-land, studied, worked and became famous - though he has never lost his Kabale roots. The former is Professor Okello Oculli and the latter is ‘Mr Terrific’, the hugely popular anchorman of VOA’s mass audience programme, Straight Talk Africa.

We were invited to dinner by an Eritrean sister, the immediate director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Nairobi, Aki Aseghedech, and her visiting brother, the former long-term minister in the EPLF government of Eritrea, Tesfaye. Tesfaye - like a few other prominent refugees from president Afworki’s one-man rule - is now working with the UN.

They say opposites attract in marriage but there are more opposites than cupid could conjure up between these two siblings. Aki is a hot-blooded radical who sometimes makes me seem like a ‘moderate’! But the brother is more sedate - though no less a revolutionary. He is one of those stoics who can keep his brains on ice while his heart is on fire.

You can just imagine the kind of conversation, intellectual and political exchanges around that dinner table that night. Five widely travelled and politically committed Africans, none of them in their country of birth, but feeling no less African. All angry because they know that their individual countries and Africa as a whole can and deserves to do better than it is doing at the moment. Our heated conversations and passionate exchanges over all kinds of topics and themes from the global to the local gave me more hope than anything that although this continent might be down, it is not out: not yet, and it will not be, so long as there are many Africans not giving up on themselves, and on Africa. But it also confirmed to me the necessity to heed Karl Marx’s advice and move from ‘interpreting the world’ to ‘changing it’.

I had promised a friend that I would come to their church. So soon after honking in the New Year, we left Aki’s beautiful home in one of the most posh areas of Nairobi - which residents call Nairobbery - because of the high rate of crime! Since I was the driver, my two guests had no choice but to go to where I was going. And that’s how we arrived at the Parklands branch of the Nairobi Pentecostal Church, joining the faithful in their midnight service for the New Year. There were hundreds of worshippers who had been keeping vigil all night, pouring out their hearts to God in anticipation of good tidings. One would have thought that I, being born a Muslim, would be the most uncomfortable in the church. But thanks to my missionary education, lifelong love of Christmas carols and Christian choirs, I acquitted myself well. But one of my guests was more uncomfortable. He cannot remember when he was last in a church. Just imagine a scenario in which a Muslim was trying to placate the nerves of a person born and christened in a church! But that’s another story, to be continued another time. Anyway, we survived the service.

Okello has again been visiting Nairobi, and we got involved in church-related conversations again. A few days ago, in my office, we were engaged in a half day discussion about God in Africa. A firebrand Anglican reverend, responsible for mobilising 45 million Anglicans on this continent, came to my office to say hello. We were still halloing three hours later. Our discussions soon veered towards the church in Africa. The context is a Kenya that has been gripped by the story of a very popular born-again reverend, Rose Wanjiru whose desire to marry another Charismatic priest from South Africa had been the subject of a very public legal tussle. It turns out that this self-proclaimed bishop has been married before and had children. The husband in question went to court to stop the marriage, and also demand ‘his conjugal rights’ from a woman he had married under customary law and had never divorced! The courts stopped the marriage. The battle continues both in the law courts and the court of public opinion. However it has raised questions about the role of the church, and the ever-growing born-again, Pentecostal charismatic church across the continent.

Okello, our Anglican reverend sister, and I spent hours discussing this. There were no conclusions to our exchanges, though a number of issues are becoming clear. First, the Pentecostals are occupying a vacuum created by the established churches, which focus more on delivering their herd to heaven. Whereas, the Pentecostals offer God’s kingdom on earth. Second, while the established churches preach humility, poverty and guilt, the born-again (or mulekole as they are called in Uganda) preach prosperity and ‘feel good’ ideologies. For instance Bishop Wanjiru admits to fornication, children outside marriage, witchcraft and all kinds of failings, but then says, ‘see what God has done in my life, if I can make it so can you’.

These ideologies offer hope to the hopeless in a way that no government, president or CSO activist can do. We know many of them are fraudulent but their supporters believe they are God’s ‘little angels’ with all kinds of miracle prayers that can solve their immigration problems, marriage and other relationship challenges, barrenness, even HIV/Aids. And even but more importantly: their poverty. They offer bargain priced prosperity, as captured in one of their more popular slogans, 'a giver never lacks'. The more you give to God the more you are entitled to expect. They proclaim ‘Jesus is the answer’; but never quite tell their believers what the question is. What can or should we do about it? It is not enough to say ‘religion is the opium of the masses’, because it is both the rich, the very rich, the poor and poorest who are flocking to be saved. It is not just the ‘uneducated’ masses, but our highly educated and professional classes who are seeking salvation and refuge from the helter-skelter rat race of their lives.

And it is not only these churches that are witnessing revivals, but all religions. Many Muslims are becoming radicalised thanks to Bush and Blair’s ‘wars on terror’, that has made Islam and Muslims targets. Are the manmade problems of the world so out of control that ‘Only God’ can solve them? Or are we inventing God as a shield and convenient excuse to avoid facing up to these problems, both personally and politically? What has God got to do with poverty? What has he got to do with rapacious globalisation, intolerance, Iraq, the Niger Delta, Darfur, Palestine and Lebanon? It is about time God issued a disclaimer!

* Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned Pan-Africanist.

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

The 8th Ordinary Session of the African Union ended in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Tuesday. Although the theme of the summit was “Science and Technology in Africa’ it was the political and Peace and Security issues that dominated media attention. This is not unexpected because the summit is the most important political and diplomatic forum for Africa. And since the AU was launched, there have been concerted efforts on the part of Africa’s leaders to make it relevant despite many criticisms and doubts by both Africans and outsiders. One indication of this is the large number of leaders who attend these summits and the increasing openness even on the most controversial issues.

There has also been more formal and informal spaces opened up for engagement by different stake holders in Africa whether African or onternational NGOs and CSOs, business sector, think tanks, etc. Gone are the days when the summit used to be dominated by largely ‘special invitation, ‘special guest’ chosen at the whims and caprices of the bureaucrats of the Union who were generally more disposed to welcoming all kinds of foreigners, but fearful of ‘trouble makers’ from Africa!

Almost anybody who wants to engage with the AU has some access and opportunity to do so. That only a few of our NGOs and CSOs engage, is both a reflection of residual cynicism and also of the donor-driven agendas to which they are captive. On the other hand, the lack of engagement by broader social movements and popular forces is due to continuing perception that the AU is essentially a leaders’ forum and since many of them have gripes against their national leaders they are suspicious of the Pan Africanist credentials of these leaders.

That cynicism, whether amongst CSOs/ NGOs or our Social movements, is tantamount to behaving like the proverbial ostrich. There are many windows for engagement that can only become gates of opportunities if used by Africans to expand the frontiers of democratic governance and accountability of our institutions. They will not change of their own accord but as a result of constructive dialogue, or sometimes confrontational approaches, but remaining engaged all the same.

Often outsiders are quick to grasp the opportunities and significance of our institutions than we are, since we are too consumed by our own alienation from our governments. For instance could it be by accident that all major international NGOs (INGOs) have representation in Addis Ababa, monitoring, engaging and lobbying the AU on all kinds of issues? Increasingly these INGOs are appointing Africans to represent them. But these Africans will mostly be carrying out the self-given mandate of these organizations and their interests. Sometimes they may coincide with ours, but often they do not in a most fundamental sense. Our misery is their career.

The political landscape in Africa is changing and generally for the better even if the challenges of democratization and development continue in many countries. It is a work in progress that should make us focus on the larger pictures and trends instead of the ‘problems’ no matter how overwhelming they may seem.

Would it have been possible in the old OAU for Sudan to have been rejected twice in succession in its claim to assume the chair of the organization? In the old days, the argument would have been that what is happening in Darfur is an ‘internal affair’ on which Sudan’s ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’ could not be questioned.

But these days those arguments do not hold sway anymore. We may not have collective sovereignty in place but it is no longer a case of “leave my victims to me and I leave yours to you’. We have moved from non-interference to non-indifference. What happens in all African countries is legitimate concern of other African states. A new sense of shame has arrived where bad conduct by leaders and states are frowned at, and public opportunities for rebuke are used instead of the old ‘diplomatic hush- hush’.

In the past Sudan would have threatened to leave the Union. But today, Sudan remains despite the snub. Clearly, Sudan’s rulers judge their interest better served by remaining than by leaving.

The isolation of Sudan on the Darfur issue also demonstrates how Civil Society activism in dialogue with progressive African governments, Union bureaucrats and other concerned Africans can yield positive result. It is not the noise of the US or Britain or their NGOs (who are the ones the BBC, CNN regularly quote) that has made it impossible for Sudan to become Chair of the AU. Instead there is consensus among Africans that a country like Sudan that is so flagrantly and massively abusing the rights of its own people -- orchestrating their mass death -- is just not able to speak in our name. Pressures were not only being exerted by the West: there have also been serious pressures, cajolery, all kinds of carrots and inducements on Sudan, its allies in the Arab League (which announced its contribution for Peace Keeping in Darfur only a few days before the Summit), and filial support from some North African countries in support of Sudan’s claim to the Chair. But the AU still said: NO to Al Bashir. In saying that we are saying: No to Genocide in Darfur!

Even the reluctance by many states to contribute troops to Somalia is not a weakness, but a statement that Africa will no longer act as proxies for the US or any other foreign interests. Ethiopia might wish to be the Americans’ trojan horse, but the rest of the states are not so eager.

* Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned Pan-Africanist.

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

The World Social Forum (WSF) that took place in Nairobi was one of those 'once in a life time' events for many people; and 'once a year' events for the veterans who continue to attend every one.

It is an all-comers forum. For instance, the gay and lesbian lobby in Africa are there along side the Maoists, Anachists, peasant movements, trade unionists, radical scholars, grassroots movements, all kinds of gender activists and more. The reactionaries will say: all lunatics are in town.

It should be no surprise if there were many Africans since this is taking place in Africa, but so marginalized are we in our own affairs that one is always happy to see Africans at these meetings even when they are happening here. Many of the usual suspects are around, from the veteran radicals to the budding ones; and not only from Africa but from across the world. If you want to gauge the state of global revolutionary consciousness, the frustrations, the challenges and opportunities of the global forces for change and transformation, the WSF is the place to be.

But these gatherings always frustrate me for many reasons. One; they show up Africa's weaknesses whether they are held outside or inside Africa. One of the critical areas is our level of participation and preparedness. A majority of the African participants - even many from Kenya itself - were brought by foreign paymasters or organisations funded by outsiders. Often they become prisoners of their sponsors. They must attend events organized or supported by their sponsors who need to put their 'partners' on display, and the 'partners' in turn need to show their loyalty to their masters.

Two; even when these meetings happen in Africa, the participation of local groups and citizens are constrained by the three factors of fees for participation, language of discourse, and location. Local activists and sympathizers in the WSF had to organize a protest and even a temporary occupation before the fees for Kenyan participants were waived.

Three; we go to these events without adequate preparation about our own agenda and line up behind other peoples' not-so-hidden agendas, although at this WSF there were a number of attempts to forge a Pan-African agenda before the summit consultations. One of them was the Pan-African Youth Forum working closely with the Youth Commission of the WSF. But the truth remains that many of the youth who came did so on the platform of one donor or the other and were mostly not African.

This dependence on foreigners, both financially and ideologically, is so pervasive that it cannot be ignored anymore. There are signs that an increasing number of Africans are not only outraged by it but becoming ashamed by it, and are looking for ways and means of freeing our activism from the clutches of donor funding and donor-driven agendas. These issues were frankly and honestly discussed at many forums before and during the summit.

This dependence on foreigners raises a lot of disturbing issues about the state of Africa's NGOs and CSOs, and their capacity to contribute to lasting changes in the social, economic and political conditions of Africans in favour of social justice.

The first is a question of legitimacy. Who do these NGOs represent? Who are they accountable to? To whom do they owe their loyalty: to their donors or to the African people they claim to speak for? The second is the related question of the generally anti-government posture of these NGOs. They take money from foreign governments/agencies like DFID, USAID, DANIDA, SIDA, allegedly as independent CSOs. But why should foreigners be helping us to be independent of our own governments? How are their own citizens independent of them? The same African NGOs that queue up to suck up to all kinds of foreign governments and funders will raise their eye-brows and shout 'autonomy' and 'sell out' if any of their members has close financial or political links with their own governments.

In effect, the autonomy they are asserting is one of being sovereign against their own government and subservience to any foreigner. Where governments are illegitimate or have bad governance records this may hold for sometime, but in the long run it delegitimises the NGOs concerned.

The third issue is the constant conflation of NGOs to mean CSOs which should not be the case. Genuine CSOs will include trade unions, guild and professional associations, self-help groups, village or town associations, faith-based charities or interest groups, etc. Their most distinctive character is that they are voluntary, membership-based and generate their funds from their members.

How many of our busy-body, noise-making NGOs qualify in this sense? It is similar to our governments being dependent on the aid of outsiders, and we demanding that they should be accountable to us. We do not pay taxes but demand representation and wonder why the leaders are more responsive to any noise that comes from outsiders?

The worst excesses of the dependence on foreign sponsors are the various scams that have developed in many of these NGOs about 'creative accounting', which does not mean accountability: Per diem wrangles, multiple claims, bogus ticket refunds, multiple accounting, budgeting and reporting for similar proposals from the same organisation and many other unsavoury practices that make these organisations not dissimilar to the governments we climb on holy mountains to attack for being corrupt, inefficient and unaccountable.

And this issue of dependence on foreign donors is not just because there are no resources. How come the nationalists freed this continent from the yoke of colonialism without writing proposals to any funder? Why are our peoples not willing or able to support our activism? Could it be that the people do not associate themselves with the self-given mandate of these largely middle-class led, elite focused, and urban-based counter elite? Or worse still, people may be seeing that these self-declared crusaders, whether foreign or local, are only there for their own interest. The proliferation in the last decade of MONGOs (My Own NGO), GONGOs (Governmental NGO) , BONGOs (Business NGO), PONGO (Private NGO), all over Africa, may be an indication of democratic openings, or state collapse, or of the irresponsive state, but are not good indicators of building democratic, people-led, people-based organisations connected to and organically linked to the wider social movements without whom social progress, democracy and development is not possible.

If they truly belong to the masses the masses will defend them. And if they are truly based on the interests of our peoples their first allegiance will be to those they serve.

In that sense it should worry us that the African participation in the first ever WSF in Africa in Nairobi is more of a gathering of NGOs than that of the real social and political movements and peoples' organisations who can make lasting change possible. Many of our successful NGOs and INGOs, like their forebears, have become gate-keepers - or to use a better term - commissioned agents between the masses and their oppressors, occupying spaces for the poor and the marginalized when most of them do not or no longer belong to that class or share their vision of change.

* Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned Pan-Africanist.

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

The World Social Forum (WSF) is holding its Seventh Session in Nairobi, for the first time in Africa, 20-25 January 2007.

This is a global Movement against globalization and the triumphalist neo-liberalism that underpins it. For any African who is casually aware of the painful history of this continent in relation to the rest of the world globalization should not be a new term. Slavery was global and so was colonialism. And Imperialism has always been global.

So why are we using globalization today as if it was discovered a few years ago? It is used as if it all has to do with technology, internet, freer movement of goods, services, people, skills, knowledge, etc. It is all these and more. It has both an ideological, political and class context. Technology is not neutral.

What is distinct about globalization today? One, it is happening in the context of a UNIPOLAR world that is dominated by an illiterate lone superpower: USA. Two, it asserts an end of ideology with another ideology: There Is No Alternative (TINA) thereby turning neoliberalism, into a gospel truth, from which there can not be deviation.

Democratization, progress and survival of humanity, in this discourse, become linked or even interchangeable with western political structures, capitalism and Western culture. Consequently the destiny of the world is to become Westernized and even more brazenly become Americanized!

If Westernization produced prosperity for all the peoples of the world and respect the dignity of all human beings there may not be much opposition to it and its hegemony. But slavery, colonialism, genocide, mass violence, expropriation of majority by the minority, destruction of cultures and peoples and many more atrocities in the pursuit of raw materials, profits and markets are the heritage and contemporary expression of this ideology. Hence it has always provoked resistance from its victims and other peoples who desire social justice and a better humanity.

The WSF movement has evolved from the late 1990s becoming organized expression of the peoples of the world at its first meeting in 2001 at Porta Allegro in Brazil. It brings together all kinds of anti-globalisation forces and social movements struggling against all kinds of class, racial, ethnic, religious, gender and other kinds of oppression at all levels of human existence. It is united by the twin ideology of opposition to the current imperialist anti –people globalization and the totalitarian ideology of there being no alternative to Neo liberalism.

Those may be the only two things they agree on because different groups, organizations and individuals decide where and how they go about confronting the two evils they identify. To the untutored in WSF dynamics it may look like an anarchists’ bazaar. But there is a method to the madness. These are people committed to changing the world they live in and are prepared to sacrifice for it. They may sound like lunatics and champions of lost causes but so did many thought of Mandela who, as a firebrand youth believed they could overthrow Apartheid and bring about Black Majority rule at a time when people thought White power was impregnable.

Winston Churchill infamously and loquaciously declared his opposition to Independence for Non White British Colonies in his rude reaction to Mahatma Ghandi’s mobilization of ordinary Indians against colonialism insisting he had not become the Prime Minster of ‘His Majesty’s government’ to hand over the British Empire ‘to a half-naked Kaffir’. But it came to pass in his life-time. Not only India, but also Ceylon (Sri Lanka now), and several Asian and African Countries became independent before Churchill’s life snuffed out and they were welcomed to England by the British crown in pomp and pageantry at Buckingham palace.

History is full of the contributions made possible by people who were regarded as ‘lunatics’ by their contemporaries and the powers that be that they challenged but with time many of these ideas and issues they fought on became common sense.

Many will snigger and even be amused by the clarion call of the Nairobi WSF: “Another World is Possible”. The cynicism will in part be due to many people believing that the world as we live it today has come to stay, that America will always gets its way and the west will always dominate therefore since you cannot beat them you had better join them or get lost. But this reading of the world’s history is so short sighted as it is ahistorical.

Most of the territory we now know as the USA today used to be a colony of Britain, but now Britain especially under TORY Blair has become a vassal state of Britain. Yet at the height of British Imperial grandeur in the 19th and up to the middle of the 20th century its imperial propagandists use to boast that: ‘The sun never sets on the British empire’ because the colonies stretched against all continents.

Those struggling against British Colonialism used to retort that the reason the sun never sets on the British Empire was because: God never trusted the British in the dark! The Empire did collapse. Why should the American empire be any different? Were not Rome and the Catholic Church imperial power before? What happened to the Egyptians and Greek civilizations? From generation to generations, from one epoch to the other human beings continue to seek alternatives making change the only permanent condition of humanity.

Empires rise and fall. Just imagine the next fifty years with China, India, and Africa, Latin America and other previously marginalized peoples and regions of the world on the rise. The apostles of neoliberalism want to put an end to our imagination but the ‘strugglists’ assembling in Nairobi from all corners of the world for the WORLD SOCIAL FORUM (which should really be World Socialist Forum) just as the beneficiaries of the current unequal and unfair global power structures gather for their annual vultures’ festival in Davos, for the World Economic Forum (really WORLD EXCPLOITERS FORUM) are defiantly reaffirming the truism that Another world , without hunger, poverty and greed is possible and desirable. But more than that they are prepared to work for it.

Karibuni to Nairobi to all of you. A luta continua

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN millennium, Campaign. He writes this weekly column in his personal capacity as a concermed Pan Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem hastens to the defence of his ten theses on the new leaders in Africa (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/39066). The power-worshippers, he says, believe only in one thing: power. And whoever is wielding it at the moment, they have only one party, which Nigerians call AGIP (Any Government In Power)

My piece last week has, predictably provoked a number of reactions from all kinds of corners.

First, there were those who say ‘we told you so’ or ‘welcome to your senses’. They were cynical about the 'New leaders' from the start and were never as enthusiastic about them as I and many others were.

Secondly, there were the hardcore believers in these leaders who still believe that they are progressives caught up in the realities of holding power in a dependent state and are engaged in tactical manoeuvres rather than strategic sell out.

Thirdly, there were those who agree with all the analysis but believe that the problem is more structural than personal degeneration. That the system is amenable to the excesses that we decry and all of us can become its victims unless we are willing to take it on fundamentally.

And finally, there were those who accuse me of still being naively puritanical by expecting that people in power can behave differently.

I must concede that all of these have elements of truth in them. But they do not diminish the points I made last week. We are not judging these leaders by intention alone. It is on their record in office. And most of them have now been in power for more than a decade. There is no need to be smug about ‘we told you so’ because those who do not make mistakes are those who do nothing. The fact that history may not turn out the way we like does not mean that we stop doing things unless we are ‘sure’ we will succeed.

Political independence did not bring economic independence and liberation to our peoples in many countries, does that mean we go along with the recolonisers who argue that everything has been going wrong since colonialism ended in Africa? We can critique the anti-colonial movement and struggles without throwing away the historical and political victories it brought to us. Without those struggles many of us may never have had the opportunity to go to school or even realise that what we were having was neo-colonialism.

Similarly the ‘New Generation’ of African leaders did bring about many positive changes. Maybe their ‘historic mission’ is to stabilise neo-colonialism. Therefore it is the responsibility of other generations to transform the situation. As Achebe used to say, many critics criticised him not for the book he had written but the ones they should have written!

Those who are happy that the New Leaders turned out as bad as they feared remind me of some of the Trotskyites who were jubilant at the collapse of the old Eastern Bloc believing it proved their case against Stalinism without realising that the right wing counter revolution was directed at all socialist forces whatever their differences.

The undying band of believers in these leaders are a mix bag of the usual power worshippers, genuine patriots and faithful supporters. The power-worshippers believe only in one thing: power. And whoever is wielding it at the moment, they have only one party, which Nigerians call AGIP (Any Government In Power). You will find them in every government virtually since Independence singing the same praises of the leader as everything, omnipresent and omniscient, and if he is not in charge the “country will collapse! Initially our new leaders detested such characters and shunned them but over time you find such people are getting closer to them, as their former comrades and decent people move away from them. There are many such charlatans around president Museveni in Kampala today.

There are also many genuine patriots who think that the leaders still mean well but are constrained by circumstances both objective and subjective to become ‘moderate’ given the fact that reactionary forces are the dominant forces globally. Such patriots try to preserve some progressive nucleus within the regimes. In many countries the leaders tolerate them and used them especially in propaganda at election time, in the grassroots mobilisation and to maintain progressive contacts internationally. But often they lack real influence in government policy that is policed by pro IMF/WB technocrats. They are given direct access to the President or made advisers but no access to real policy.

In the end they become apologists for the leader blaming ‘people around him’ for misleading him. But the key question is who appoints these advisers? Is it not the President or Prime Minster himself? How come we are always ready and willing to blame ‘those around the president’ instead of the president who surrounded himself with those people in the first place?

As for my friends who take a more structuralist view of the challenges: I agree with them, but only up to a point. I have been around many corridors of power long enough to know and be very sympathetic to the pathetic demands on an African leader, not just the president. Anybody with some office, comes under extreme pressures from family, clan, friends, relatives (in the most expanded sense), in laws, cronies, fellow officials, not t talk of the corporations, foreign governments, companies, etc.

All of them seeking one favour or the other. People in power are supposed to deliver miracles, legislators are supposed to bury every constituent who died, donate generously at various Harambee in Kenya, pay school fees and even participate in the wedding of their constituents! The reason why this is so is the extreme poverty faced by majority of our peoples and also some enabling cultural norms that perpetrate this. The other reason has to do with the weaknesses of our institutions.

The challenge of leadership is to find a more institutional and collective public policy bases for dealing with these problems. Instead, what you get is a more personalised power relations that has turned the New Leaders into destroyers of institutions. If any of them were to die today there will be so much chaos because they have not allowed institutions to develop their own autonomy. They have become the system, rendering the country like an aeroplane on a long haul with only one pilot and no auto pilot mechanism! Any leader who cannot imagine life without leading or the country surviving without him is on an expensive ego trip on the backs of his or her peoples. If after 20 years of presidents in power, people in Kampala or Harare can still not imagine life without the president, then we should ask: what have these leaders being doing in all these decades?

Finally, I am too involved not to realise that power both objectively and subjectively changes those people entrusted with power, the people around them but a progressive person must show their progressive credentials in the face of all the challenges. At the end of the day the questions to be asked must include: what do you stand for? In whose interest are you governing? How do you want to be remembered? By the size of your bank account and number of cars in your garage or the fabulous mansions you own across the world? Or the honest service you gave to your country?

We adore Castro today and remember Nyerere with nostalgia as we celebrate Madiba, not because they did not make any mistakes buy because we knew where they stood and on whose side they are. The problem that most of the ‘New leaders’ face is that people just do not know on whose side they are anymore. And in some cases the painful truth is that they seem to be there only for themselves. And will do anything (including enlisting as headmen, pointsmen or foremen for imperialism) to remain in power.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN millennium, Campaign. He writes this weekly column in his personal capacity as a concermed Pan Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Where did the New Leaders go wrong?

It is a new year but excuse me if I do not begin with the customary seasonal platitude. Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, playing the role of a Bush clone in Africa presented us with a Christmas present of bombs in Mogadishu. LIke Israel in Lebanon he claimed to be supporting the 'legitimate' government by offloading bombs on the Airport! For a country that cannot feed its own peoples Ethiopia seem to be overfeeding its defence (or is it offensive?) establishment.

In the Middle East, while Muslims were preparing for the Eid. American Cretins, otherwise called Iraqi government, presented Saddam's head to their Patron-Saint in Washington on Eid Day. Ironically the Eid El Kabir, was institutionalised as Ram slaughter in place of human slaughter but Bagdad and Washington reverted back to the barbaric practice.

I am not sure how many of us can say Happy New Year in these circumstances?

Prime Minister Melees Zenawi of Ethiopia is one of the most intellectually engaging leaders on the African continent today. He is one of the small groups of younger and supposedly dynamic leaders that burst on to the political scene in the 1990s for whom President Yoweri Museveni (who had come to power earlier in 19856) became a titular head. They were generally referred to as ‘New generation of African Leaders’. I was, along with many colleagues inside and outside the Pan African Movement, a great proponent for these leaders. They represented a fresh approach to leadership, seemed to be clear ideologically and politically. They spoke with confidence and inspired many Africans and friends of Africa that indeed ‘African Solution to African problems’ was indeed a reality.

But did we celebrate too early? Were our hopes and enthusiasm misplaced? By the mid-1990s, many of these leaders began to show personal, political and ideological strands that made people to wonder whether these are not ‘old wines in new bottles’. To some of their opponents these leaders are even worse than the former dictators they replaced.

I am not one of these perpetual pessimists who always seem to see an unending bad news that imprison the present and moors us permanently to our inglorious and the more unsavoury parts of our history. A lot of positive changes did take place and are still taking place in many countries. And we did learn to dream again but more importantly renewed our hopes.

Whatever one thinks of Museveni now he is not an Idi Amin. And Meles is no Mengistu. Whatever may have happened in the DRC, we did well to remove Mobutu. Whatever anyone thinks of the RPF or Kagame in Rwanda we should never feel or be made to feel guilty for ending genocide and putting the country on a path of normalcy.

We can explain what has happened to these leaders and what they may have become without forcing the parallels that they are not different from past dictators. Such blanket criticism negates many of the positive things that have happened and continue to happen, albeit, unevenly across the continent.

Like other enthusiasts, I am still asking why and what happened to some of those I got to know fairly well. For now I would like to share 10 reasons why the ‘New Leaders’ seem to have extinguished or are extinguishing the hopes they had inspired. It may not wholly apply to all of them but the pattern is generic.

One: They come as liberators but the longer they stay in power the more they become oppressors, intolerant of dissension or even discussions within their own political and military formations, among original leaders and in the wider society. Check in all these countries where the original leadership has remained intact even five to ten years after assumption of office.

Two: The vanguard of the masses slowly become vanguard of the ruling party / clique and soon degenerates into vanguard of the leader. Take the example of Eritrea‘s Issias Afwerki, who has managed to turn a country we all thought was going to be a shining example of a ‘future that works’ into a large garrison. They wrote a beautiful constitution that was ‘people-driven’ but became ‘Leader jammed’ and remains gathering dust. The people had their say but the leader had his way!

Three: They usually come in with big dreams and enormous commitment to the masses but the paraphernalia of power, the glitz, pomp and pageantry and all the trappings begin to take over. The ascetic ones amongst them begin to enjoy the good life and could not have enough of it. Add to that the institutionalized culture of sycophancy, jungle fatigues soon give way to the best of Savoy row suits, Gucci shoes, Rolex watches, etc. The comrade has now ‘arrived’ and will not be in a hurry to vacate he State House which he once detested. Some of them made a point of not occupying huge palaces vacated by their predecessors but soon moved into them or build even more imposing ones ‘on national security grounds’.

Four: A ruling group that had been held together for many years (from rebel groupings until they capture power) by shared ideology and perspectives become more and more built around the personality of the leader, his family, in-laws, freelance opportunists and other cronies recruited for ‘loyalty’ rather than any commitment to the country or people.

Five: The interest of the party, the government and the people become indistinguishable from the whims and caprices of the Leader. To oppose him was to oppose the people.

Six: The progressive changes they have brought about in the country become ‘gifts’ from a benevolent leader to his hapless citizens. Again here we should not throw away the baby with the birth water. Generally these leaders did turn around the economy and political arrangements in their countries. Things did improve even if in most of the cases, they were growth without development anchored on neo liberal policies beloved and imposed by the IMF / World Bank.

Seven: The one failing that many people -- especially their former comrades --find unpardonable in these leaders are their ideological somersaults. Most of them were revolutionaries who began their political carriers and rebel lives as firebrand anti imperialists but soon became converts to the free market and new best friends with the imperialist countries especially the USA and other Western powers. What angers many is the way in which some of them even use their new approval by Washington as a badge of honour replacing their former revolutionary icons!

Eight: These former revolutionaries, who previously espoused Pan Africanism, resigned themselves to ‘better managing’ the neocolonial state and soon became engrossed in competition rather than cooperation with their former comrades. Instead of more Pan Africanism, they engaged in less as they reduced relationship with other states to one of bilateral economic and political arrangements. The consequence of this is a tragedy like the DRC where we built a Pan Africanist Alliance to get rid of Mobutu, but could not sustain it after victory because every state wanted to have a pliant regime in Kinshasa instead of a Pan Afrianist regime in the interests of the people of DRC people and those of the region. Liberators become looters and occupiers...

I have saved the last two reasons deliberately to the end because they help explain the folly of Meles in Somalia.

Nine: This is the twin evil of these leaders becoming both victims of their militaristic means of getting and retaining power and wallowing in external validation by the same Western powers that not too long ago were praising our dictators as ‘moderate’.

Most of these leaders do not know how to negotiate without having their AK47s corked. They are used to conquering. Therefore, even when they profess democratic reforms, they are being tactical rather than strategic. They expect their peoples to be forever grateful and to accept incremental changes as decried by the leader. The only institution they trust is the armed forces. That’s why Ethiopia could fight Eritrea and Uganda and Rwanda can do the same in a third country despite assumptions of solidarity and affinity between the leaders.

Ten: My last reason -- and probably more decisive -- is the flattery and endorsement by the West. It makes these leaders feel that they are doing their peoples a favour. But more than that, it gives them illusions of becoming global players and they instinctively ally themselves behind geo-political and economic strategic interests of the West. But in these days it means lining up behind the USA and bush for all kinds of Bush wars.

Meles’ Ethiopia is the current worst practice of this. I am not one of those who think that Meles is just doing what Washington wants. What he has done is to use Bush’s doctrine to affirm his alliance but also justify his narrow national and sub-regional security concerns.

In invading and occupying Somalia, Ethiopia even has the legitimacy of the IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) and AU backed process that led to the formation of the TFG (Transitional Federal Government).

But as intelligent as he is, why can he not learn from his Washington friends that, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, it is easier to occupy a country than govern it in peace. Are they not talking to Rwanda and Uganda about their experience in the DRC? Why does Meles think that Somalia will forever remain weak militarily? If a country with almost 100 % Muslims want to be governed Islamically how undemocratic is this? Does Meles not realize that the TFG will remain what we call in Hausa ‘GWANATIN JEKA NA YIKA” (i.e. a puppet regime)? Sooner than later, its allies will turn against it the way Kabila senior turned on his Kigali and Kampala allies.

It was Prime Minister Meles who famously insinuated that African leaders may be having psychiatric problems because ‘they repeat the same things but expect different outcomes’. Since he was a medical student before leaving for the Bush, it is perhaps about time he turned his diagnosis to himself.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN millennium, Campaign. He writes this weekly column in his personal capacity as a concermed Pan Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Professor Issa Shivji is a legend in his own lifetime. He is one of the few veteran members of the leftist intelligentsia who has withstood all storms and remains firmly on the side of the people. He is truly a life long member of the ‘Africa will never, never surrender’ Club for whom ALUTA CONTINUA is not just a slogan, but a working motto. He retires from the University of Dar Es Salaam this year. He may be retired but he is certainly not tired. More importantly his colleagues, comrades, and several generations of students are not tired of him.

It is not often that Africans, especially those of us on the left, say thank you to one of us. Often we reserve our best homage till they are no longer with us. We think it is a kind of bourgeois ostentation, vanity, or what they call ‘feferity’ (ie showmanship) to celebrate individual achievements because the struggle is all that matters. Individuals, no matter how much they have contributed to our struggles, are not supposed to matter.

I have always had unease about this... It is the people that matter in the end but who are these people if not an aggregate of individuals?

It is heartening that times are changing and we are beginning to celebrate our heroes and heroines while they are still alive. The Africa Research and Resource Forum this week in Nairobi has been holding a celebratory seminar alongside a series of public debates in honour of Shivji.

One of the public lectures was entitled “Choosing leaders: The dilemmas of democracy in Africa and abroad”. It was held at the Kenya National Theatre close to the University of Nairobi and opposite the colonial edifice of the Norfolk hotel. Prominent African scholars participating in the seminar were on the panel chaired by Prof Peter Wanyande who is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Nairobi. The panelists included Prof Thandika Mkandawire; former Director of the Dakar based CODESRIA and Head of the UNRISD in Geneva: John Oyoo of the Africa Institute of South Africa; Prof Haroub Othman of the University of Dar; and Professor Mahmood Mamdani.

Thandika opened up the discussion with a Brecthian quote suggesting that in Africa the challenge of democracy may not be about the way to choose our leaders but how they choose their peoples. He was not downplaying the importance of the formal processes of free and fair elections, or rule of law and associated freedoms, instead of drawing attention to the mystification of formalities that lead to people confusing the process with the end itself. This has created a situation in many countries where people vote without choosing or become ‘choice-less voters’.

Just being chosen in an election is not enough. There are consequences for the chosen one. One of these is the obligation to be accountable to the voters. This is an area where democracy is still facing numerous challenges in Africa and elsewhere. How do we hold our chosen leaders accountable in between elections? How do we prevent them from becoming elective dictators and self-serving lots who only care for themselves? This is very important in Kenya where the MPs are among the best paid in the world. During this week President Kibaki had to turn down a salary increase awarded by the parliament that would have seen him earning more than President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Even in the so-called ‘advanced democracies’ where institutions are more developed and there are countervailing centres of power, checks and balances, accountability is difficult to enforce. For instance Tony Blair went to war even though an overwhelming majority of British voters did not support the unjust war.

In Africa, thanks to the IMF and World Bank and their fellow travellers in the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the moment, accountability has now become accounting. Yet according to Thandika, it was African scholars who first suggested to the IMF/World Bank, in a now forgotten pioneering dialogue with African scholars, that governance was a central issue for the continent. This was in the 80s when the Bank and its egg-head economists believed that only structural adjustment mattered. They produced a two-volume report which was quickly forgotten but they were to pick up on ‘good governance’ later as a mantra. In Washington terms, good governance is government without politics, a dictatorship of experts in the name of technocracy.

Thandika advised that African scholars should examine our societies more in terms of how they are shaped, and who is shaping them, in order to understand our politics and the political behaviour of the masses. By looking at ourselves we can better understand the sociology and ideology that determines the consciousness of the African voter, and why this voter is susceptible to class, ethnic, religious, and other forms of manipulation.

Finally, he suggested that there is a cyclical turn-around in African politics that he estimated to be between 30-40 years, during which the same political elite have been dominant (whether in or outside of government) waiting to be government. He sees the next few years as the period during which a new cycle will begin. He challenged the younger scholars and political activists to seize the opportunity to reshape Africa.

I am not quite sure about this cycle of Thandika’s because there is another problem that I see with some of our political leaders especially the so-called ‘New Leaders’. They are a special class that has known no other role other than leading. Last job: Leader. Present job: Leader. Future expectation: Leader. They do not know ‘followership’.

John Oyoo spoke after Thandika. He observed that in the independence period there was a more unified elite with the common aim of riding the continent of colonialism. Many of the politicians were intellectuals and many intellectuals were politically involved. However in the post-colonial phase, intra-elite conflicts led to military coups which decimated the intellectual class and devastated state and society. Intellectuals became either opponents of the khaki boys or their stooges and hirelings.

The Cold War also took its toll on our intellectuals and politicians who became cold warriors for the east or the west. By the late 1970s and throughout the 80s, Africa had become prostate and formed an experimental ground for all kinds of half-baked ideas of development from outside, principally through the hegemony of the IMF /World Bank and their dubious Washington Consensus.

The IMF and World Bank did not want thinkers who would challenge their dubious assumptions and arrogance. The military or one party dictator did not want any criticism of their misrule. Between both of these, our once promising and flourishing intellectual centres became deserts and development thinking and planning became externalized.

Haroub concentrated on his familiar themes of the essential difference between visionary and non-visionary leaders. At independence, many of the leaders, regardless of their ideological leaning, were visionary, charismatic and beloved by their peoples and they derived their legitimacy from the people.

However the unity between the leaders and the masses soon fizzled out in many countries as class differences began to emerge and consolidate. The progressives of the nationalist period soon became the conservatives in power, unwilling to set their own people free. Resistance to their tyranny developed.

Some countries like Tanzania under Nyerere managed to retain popular legitimacy largely due to the personal discipline, humane and humble leadership of the Mwalimu.

He concluded by observing that leaders do not emerge from the heavens but need to be developed organically from among the various social forces in any society: political parties, mass movements, factories, industries, workshops, production sites, farms, villages, etc.

The final speaker was Mamdani. He lived up to his well-deserved reputation as one of the most engaging intellectuals of this continent. As usual he turned the topic upside down, preferring not to focus on individual leaders per se but first the structural basis of the relationship of power, and secondly the kinds of individual leaders they produce.

In the past few years it has become very difficult (or maybe impossible) to discuss anything with Mamdani without coming back to ‘Citizenship and Subject’, his seminal book that still remains very thought provoking. It is still provoking Mamdani himself.

He began by postulating that, in general, countries that have gone through colonialism are susceptible to group violence especially civil war. A cursory look at the history of India, the USA and Africa will confirm the point. Mamdani thinks this is largely because of the struggle for the expansion of the rights of citizens who live in these colonial states. They are about citizenship since citizenship defines who belongs, who has a right to belong, who is to include and who is to be excluded.

Colonialism distorted peoples’ ways of life and imposed new identities, regimented those that were previously converging and in many cases offered different sets of rights to different peoples in the same political community. At independence the leaders did not inherit a country with one citizenship and one people but a myriad of political communities in one state with different grades of rights enforced through colonially constructed customs and traditions, natives and subjects. What the colonialists used to maintain their power was soon adapted and adopted by the new elites with devastating consequences.

He contrasted Nigeria and Tanzania. While Nigeria carries on with the colonial divisions albeit through new forms of tribalisation (state of origin instead of tribe, federal character instead of ethnic character), Tanzania completely changed the colonial basis of citizenship and succeeded in creating a nation which Nigeria has not been able to do in spite of all the riches.

While identifying the colonial roots of the problems Mamdani was clear that the responsibility for changing them and righting these wrongs are ours, not anybody else’s.

On the role of individuals, he posed a number of questions: How do we find a saint in politics? Why should we be looking up to those in power to help us make them accountable to us?

They are rhetorical questions for which he provided his own answers. It is not the leaders who will voluntarily render themselves accountable. Rather, we have to mobilize socially and politically throughout society not to accept lack of accountability in our public and private lives. We must struggle to broaden the political space for the fullest participation of all members of our political communities without discrimination. We also have to make politics about the social questions that affect the majority of our peoples rather than the political ambitions of the individual elite.

It was a very good forum and a worthy testimony to Issa Shivji as one of the most important of our intellectual leaders. The turn out was great and quite refreshing to find so many young people in attendance.

But I am always left frustrated whenever there is a discussion about leadership in Africa. The comments, questions and answers session of this panel discussion had all the elements that frustrate me.

One, the discussion of leadership is often too narrow and limited to politicians. We do not include ourselves and our role or inaction and how this impacts on the socio-economic and political lives of our peoples. Invariably we blame others and are content to ignore our own culpability. These leaders did not emerge from space; they grew from amongst us and are kept in power in part by our collaboration or indifference.

Two, Mamdani asked why we want saints in politics. The same question has to be asked about our intellectuals. Why do we expect them to be prophets or messiahs? They are part and parcel of our society, with their contradictions, and they have to make choices to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

Three, we need to look beyond our political class and politicians for the failures of leadership on this continent. Are our universities better run? Are our NGOS better run? Are we running our homes democratically? How many NGOs, including the human rights ones that make so much noise about political leaders and state abuse, can claim that they practice what they preach?

The dilemma of democracy is not just about the leaders. It is about us as a whole and about creating a democratic culture that tolerates difference, manages diversity and respects the right of everyone of us whether as children and parents, old and young, women and men, bosses and workers.

• Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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

Rwanda and Burundi were recently admitted as full members of the East Africa Community. It is both historic and timely. We criticize our leaders a lot, and most of the time justifiably. However, when they do good things we should also have the integrity to say well done.

It is historic in beginning to right some of the injuries inflicted on Africa that turned us into Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone and all the phony phones in spite of the fact that majority of our peoples do not have access to any phone! And if we are to be phonic, why should it not be Africaphone?

Whenever Pan Africanists talk about colonialism critics always say we are too focused on the past, escapist and blaming colonialism when, in their view, colonialism ‘finished’ long time ago. My retort has always been: How I wish! The impact of colonialism is so pronounced in our lives that even our physical geography is determined by this shameful past. For instance, go to any of the fancy hotels on the continent and ask for the breakfast menu. The option you will be given in many places is ‘continental breakfast’ but the continent will not be referring to the African continent. If you ask for African meals (Nigerian hotels being exceptions in terms of always having African foods) many of them will tell you that they needed ‘24 or 48 hours’ notice yet they can offer you all kinds of so called ‘international’ cuisine. In ‘Francophone’ countries, choices of cheeses and wines from particular regions of France are available on demand!

Leave the foods and let us look at traveling on the continent. If you travel from Kampala to Kigali by road and it is raining in Mbarara, it is likely that it will rain all the way to Kabale and from there to Kigali. Similarly the physical geography, topography, the lush greenery, hills, valleys, all remain the same, only increasing in density as you move on. Then you reach Kabale, the last major city on the Uganda side, about 20 kilometers from where you come to the border post, Gatuna (to Ugandans) or Katuna (to the Rwandese).

Nothing has changed in the geography, the looks of the people and even the languages they speak are mutually intelligible. You will see the peasants, petty traders, carrying their wares through panya panya roads parallel to the formal border roads, while those of us with passports are waiting to cross over on either side in our vehicles. These peasants just carry on as good Pan Africanists ignoring the tarred road and officials.

After you clear border bureaucracy, your first challenge will be to change from driving on the left (as in Britain) to the right (as in France). Before you recover from the driving change you also have to adjust your watch by one hour! I am not a geographer but I am not persuaded that between Kabale and Kigali or Kampala there is an hour time difference, exactly the same time difference between Paris and London! I think this has more to do with history than geography, and that history is colonialism. Those who claim colonialism ended have definitely been quick to forget. However there is a part of the criticism that I do accept. The responsibility for keeping these mental and physical borders rests with Africans and our leaders. It does not excuse you and I, because these leaders came from among us and we are the ones who through our action, inaction or indifference keep them in power.

They enjoyed keeping us divided so that they can remain big fishes in the tiny ponds bequeathed to them by colonialism. They talk regional integration but engage in national disintegration politics. They talk Pan Africanism but preside over sectarian political systems of ‘tribalism, ‘clannish’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘regionalism’, ‘religiosity’ and other kinds of divisive politics. Since they could not hold the country together it became impossible to aspire to regional integration or Pan African unity.

The Cold War also gave some of our leaders the false confidence that they could survive as client states of the West or the East without bothering about their neighbours.

Hence the first East Africa community collapsed under the twin pressures of internal political disagreements between state elites and their external alliances. But the peoples of the region continued cooperating irrespective of what happened in the state lodges. The governments are now listening to the people and reconciling themselves to reality.

In the past few years Africa has returned to the agenda of regional integration and Pan Africanism because globalization is making most of the states irrelevant. Also with the end of the Cold War many of our states and leaders ceased to be of strategic importance and lost their opportunistic levers of playing the West against the East.

The larger point is the fact that in spite of the many challenges, our democratic struggles are succeeding. Most of the leaders are not able to rule in the old ways again. The quality of leadership is improving across this continent.

In addition to the Cold War, the old colonial rivalry especially between the British and their French cousins endured for a long time in Africa and militated against regional cooperation, integration and Pan-Africanism.

Two regions of Africa - East Africa and West Africa - suffered most the consequences of this European tribalism. As the European Union became a reality the Francophone countries suddenly became aware that they were in Africa after all because France could not take them into the Euro Zone.

What makes Rwanda and Burundi, Central Africa? Geograhically and historically if they are central to anything it is East Africa. However because the French had to distinguish their looted territories from those of their British cousins, the geographic misnomer came about. This misnomer groups Cameroon, which is in West Africa, with Rwanda, the real Central Africa, the two Congos and Gabon as Central Africa!

By formally admitting Rwanda and Burundi into the East Africa Community the political leaders are finally reconciling history with geography and snatching victory from the jaws of colonial defeat.

It is a sign of a region slowly coming to terms with itself. The biggest contribution of the two countries to the region is their peoples as workers and producers. The Banyarwanda are easily the largest ethnic group in the region. They live in their millions in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and DRC. But historically they have been badly treated in their own countries and treated as either refugees or long-term migrants with no permanent rights as citizens no matter how many generations they may have lived there. Genocide and irresponsible leadership drove many away from their homes, and xenophobia prevents them from becoming full citizens in the countries of their refuge.

Xenophobia is so strong in the region that in Uganda two popular ways of discounting the claims of your political opponent is to call them ‘Banyarwanda’ (meaning Tutsi) or Nubian (meaning Sudanese).

The expanded East Africa now provides opportunity for regional citizenship and with it the right of every citizen of the region to live, settle, work in any part of the region. With progress towards a political federation this will include the right to vote and be voted for.

For Africa as a whole we want our peoples to have the right to move, settle, work, and live without visas or passports from Cape Town to Cairo. As steady progress is being made at regional level it makes this Pan African dimension inevitable. West Africans have been free to move across their region for two decades now, and this has not led to everyone moving to Nigeria. The peoples of the Old East Africa have been free to move around and adding Rwanda and Burundi to the region does not mean that all the people will move to Kenya or Tanzania or Uganda. It just means that they are free to do so if they wish without any security or police always harassing them as ‘foreigners’.

Similarly, other East Africans could go to Kigali or Bujumbura as and when they please.

South Africa and Southern Africa need to learn from these two experiences to assure them that freedom of movement does not mean that everyone wants to come to Joburg. The majority of Africans live and would like to remain in their villages in peace, security and prosperity. Those who need to move will do so one way or the other. We need to stop criminalizing them as ‘smugglers’, ‘aliens’, or ‘illegal immigrants’. Most of them are Pan-Africanist entrepreneurs delivering goods and services to our peoples, as and when needed in the true spirit of ‘Africa sans Frontiers’ or ‘Africa without borders’.

• Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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