There are so many pessimists about Africa around the world that it seems there is nothing Africans can do that can change their mindsets. Otherwise how does one explain a very common question that any talk of Uganda in many circles outside Africa still prompts: Idi Amin. The fact that Idi Amin was booted out of power in 1979 seems to have passed many people by! On seeing my name tag, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan African Movement, Uganda at a huge international conference, only two years ago, a delegate came to me at Tea Break and asked: How is Idi Amin? He seems quiet these days!

I had grown accustomed to these daft questions so I gently broke it to him that the Field Marshall had been out of Uganda for sometime, lodging in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, since 1979. I thought the questioner would walk away quietly in diplomatic embarrassment but he shot another question at me: so what does he do these days? Since he could not get the message it was my turn to walk away from the embarrassing conversation.

But the Afro pessimism is not just from outsiders. So many Africans; many of the educated elite class who are allegedly supposed to know better, are guilty of the same pessimism about Africa and Africans. A religious fundamentalist acquaintance even tried to convince me that our woes were because of many sins that we have committed and unless we return to God in penitence there can not be any respite from our multi legged afflictions, from AIDS to bad governance. I asked him if our disobedience to his God is worse than that of any other peoples on this planet and he was adamant that it was. So if Africa is to continue to suffer all these problems what will God do to those who enslaved us, colonised us and continue to rig the international rules of trade and commerce against us with the active collaboration and grotesque submissiveness of our leaders who are really dealers.

Of course blaming the victim is not a new trick from those who benefit from any system of oppression and exploitation. That is why many of our leaders assume the mantle of ‘father of the nation’ (who does no wrong) as soon as they enter state house and with time they become theocratic asking us to return to God in order to be governed well. They become the chosen ones by God but somehow God’s message is not for them but for the poor hapless citizens. Didn’t colonialists and Slave dealers before them declare their murderous enterprise as ‘civilisation’?

However as the Late Walter Rodney once declared Africa has an incredible capacity to surprise both outsiders and the natives. Amidst all the gloom and doom we see flickers of hope and rays of sun shine here and there, keeping hope alive that our peoples have it within them the capacity to change their conditions for the better. Outsiders can and may help but the duty is that of Africans.

While not denying the challenges we must also put our victories in perspective and build on those good practices of things that work in Africa by African efforts.

South Africa has just concluded its third post apartheid general elections without the much-predicted mass violence especially in Kwazulu Natal. Even Chief Buthelezi is reaching his sell-by-date and is no longer capable of destabilising the democratic order.

Yet just ten years ago there were all prophets of doom about the inevitable catastrophe that a post apartheid South Africa will become. Enemies of Africa now say the ANC has won too much votes and that is supposed to be dangerous for democracy. Does that mean that Tony Blair whose party has a overwhelming majority in the British parliament without overwhelming votes across the country should have shared it with his Liberal and conservative opponents?

Another unsung development is the decision by President Sam Nujoma and SWAPO that finally this term is his final and final term. No more tinkering with the constitution to prolong the rule of one person.

The system should be able to cope with the exit of its founders, veterans and pioneers and move to another person and another generation.

Africa’s enemies will be further proven wrong if and when the same message echoes from Kampala, Harare, Addis Ababa and Asmara. President Thabo Mbeki has made the same declaration in Pretoria as indeed President Kagame (though he still has many years ahead) in Kigali. We have to help those who have seen the light beyond state house and also help those who are yet to that there is more to enjoy outside of it instead of remaining prisoners to power. Some leaders like Eyadema (who is beyond the pale of any democratic pressure) we have to pray to the ancestors to fastforward his recall to the higher house. The next phase in the very painful transitions in many African countries will require being liberated from our liberators.

Let us keep hope alive, Afrika Yetu!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.

The whole of last week was rightly dominated by events in memory of the victims of genocide in Rwanda.

Everybody, whether they meant it or not said: 'Never again'. One just hopes the 'Never again' is not like that echoed after the Jewish holocaust. It was a cry of shame and guilt that in practice worked out as 'never again to Jews' but open season in other areas or other peoples.

The Zionists have had no hesitation to visit holocaust on their Palestinian victims since 1948. They have continued till date because the USA, its principal Patron, and its allies are prepared to look the other way and actively encourage Israeli crimes against humanity as 'self defense', 'incursions', or 'retaliations against Palestinian Gunmen'.

Since 9/11 Bush's America has Israelised its own political and military strategies. In Iraq its capacity for occupation is being built by Sharon's experts. Therefore Israeli genocide against Palestinians is now part of the global 'war on terrorism'.

The big powers internationally refused to do anything as the Rwanda genocide went into full swing because the unwritten post second world war statute of limitation on genocide meant 'not against Jews' anymore, otherwise how does one explain the repetitions of genocide since 1945 in different areas of the world?

But because of cold war (and the cruel logic of protecting 'our bloody crooks') or in order to derogate international responsibility consequent to the Geneva convention on Genocide, they changed the terms to 'ethnic massacres', 'civil war' or now the more fashionable, 'ethnic cleansing'.

It was a very big struggle in 1994 to get the world to accept that what was happening in Rwanda was Genocide because the USA and some of the European countries especially Britain that are now trying to outdo each other as 'the best friend of Rwanda' did not want to accept their international obligations that would have necessitated direct military intervention to stop the genocide.

There was vicarious guilt by many African states too, largely conditioned by regimes who were like the kettle calling the pot black. After the genocide a new guilt about their inaction has set in that makes them largely uncritical of Rwanda's government.

The guilt is by no means limited to extra African powers. Even across Africa the huge official diplomatic and political good will towards Rwanda now has been mostly due to four factors.

One, guilt about African inaction on the Genocide. Two, many predicted that the RPF would not last long in power but it has proven them wrong and showed itself a real force to be reckoned with. Three, many African leaders really envy President Kagame for the kind of tight control he has over his government and country. Four, there are many especially civilianised generals in Africa who are genuinely mesmerized by the military prowess of General Kagame.

Therefore from initial doubts and suspicion the RPF government is now in danger of becoming too respectable in Africa. The consequence of this universal rehabilitation both in Africa and internationally is that a post humus statute of limitation on genocide is being imposed on Africa.

We shout 'never again' in Rwanda and are silent on other genocidaire activities on this continent. What is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan is genocide that is understated as 'civil war', 'Militia violence', or ‘rebellion’.

The world is so desperate for an end to the 'Southern Sudan problem' that it is not prepared to confront other structural problems of marginalization of Sudanese peoples. Darfur is one of the historically marginalized areas of Sudan whose interests are not protected by the largely military treaty agreed between the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army/ Movement.

Yet another error as is common with many peace agreements across Africa (except South Africa) is where priority is given to military formations and those groups that have no armies are supposed to just put up or shut up. It is not by accident that the Darfur liberation efforts took military form as the agreements in Naivasha were being drawn up.

The logic is clear: Our claims can only be credible if we show a capacity to threaten everybody. The Government of Sudan has previously fuelled the conflict by proxy but now it is direct through its allied Arab Militias in the region. It had kept up the pretence that what is happening in Darfur is a kind of local 'tribal conflict'.

But it was a kind of local battle in which the Arab militias have had the support and active encouragement of the Khartoum government to kill, maim, rape and destroy the local population of Darfur who are mostly of African origin.

For Genocide to occur the ideology must exist. The Arab militias believe in their innate superiority and consider the African population as inferior peoples fit only as beasts of burden, to accept Arab or Arabised supremacy without question. The other condition for genocide to take hold is willingness of the government to let this happen with impunity or even encourage it actively.

Lastly, genocide succeeds because the international community refuses to act. All these conditions hold for Darfur. The government of Sudan bombs the people indiscriminately and the Arab militia kill from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, house to house. Like their slave raiding ancestors, they arrive on Camels and horses to wreck havoc on Darfur's defenceless citizens.

People of Darfur do not have to lose another one million people as in Rwanda before we wake up. The dead are already in the thousands and the displaced are almost three quarter of a million. If the UN and the powers that be cannot act what about the new African Union constitutive act of Union that specifically identified genocide and other crimes against humanity as a basis for intervention?

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.