Former US president Bill Clinton is one of the most famous faces around the world. He is recognisable by many people who may not even be able to identify the location of the US on a map. But it was not always scripted like that from the beginning.

When he announced his intention to contest for the US presidency in 1989/1990, many Americans did not even know where he came from and much less, whom he was. Yet he had been governor of a small southern state of Arkansas, of which many Americans asked: Arkan...what? This bewilderment was the reverse of what happened to a previous Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, of whom it was asked: Jimmy Who?

Clinton’s handicap was not just because of his relatively unknown and unprepossessing state, he also did not come from a rich family. His surname did not ring any bell like say a Kennedy or a Bush, Rockefeller or Ford.

In Arkansas itself, Clinton comes from a place called Hope. And what he had in abundance in addition to his charisma and confidence was great hope that he could achieve his ambition to be president of the most powerful country in the world against all odds!

One of the events that inspired him was an earlier encounter with an icon of American politics and probably the most revered US president, John F Kennedy. As a school kid, Clinton shook hands with the great Camelot and that fired him. And by sheer determination, luck and personality, Clinton became president and probably only second to his icon on the popularity stakes.

In spite of his many foibles, he remains a hugely popular former US president both within and beyond the country. His was a genuine triumph of hope over adversity. No wonder he remains the ‘Mr Feel Good’ and a loveable rogue by many.

The Clinton/Kennedy encounter came to my mind as I ruminated over the last AU Summit in Nigeria’s soulless federal capital city of Abuja at the end of January. The government in a country where ‘more money than sense’ is the official public spending policy, spared no expenses. No expenses were spared in making sure that the executive tourists to the city are impressed by Africa’s slumbering super power.

As it is customary on these occasions, head of state after head state who rose to speak, including the AU Commission chairperson and the UN Secretary-General, thanked ‘the people and government of Nigeria for their... generous hospitality...bla bla bla’!

What was not in doubt was the presence of the government of Nigeria, whose security and intelligence and other operatives were crawling all over the International Conference Centre. As for the people of Nigeria, perhaps they followed on their televisions, that is if the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) or (is it Never Expect Power Always by long suffering Nigerians) stood to honour its role. I was not sure if any of those leaders thanking ‘the people’ bothered to look up at the huge public gallery of the conference centre as they spoke.

That is where most of ‘the people’ would have been if they had been given access to the function. Unfortunately, the place was largely empty. One would have thought that for the sake of PR, they would not have filled up the place only with the countless security operatives. If they did not want ‘the people,’ why could they not trust their under-employed security operatives? Or why could they not have packed the place with school children from the countless public and private schools in and around Abuja. Imagine the impact on young kids of being in the public gallery and seeing all these movers and shakers of Africa at work. Who knows how many little Clintons could have been inspired? Then the answer came to me like a revelation. It is not just that many of our leaders hate and have contempt for the people they rule, they also do not want us to have hope for a better tomorrow and that we may dream of a future without them. That is why they do not want little boys and girls to dream like that poor boy from Arkansas, that one day, they could be presidents.

To the extent that some of them contemplate succession, they think of it only in monarchical terms, that is even after they have long passed their sell-by-date. This murdering of hope by deliberate marginalisation of the youth and killing of their aspirations is a far worse crime by some of the leaders than their misrule. It is like someone slapping you and also denying you the right to cry or shed tears. So whether they like it or not we must ‘KEEP HOPE ALIVE’.

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

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The Situation in Togo since the death of its long-term dictator, Gnassingbe Eyadema, has not shown any sign of being resolved. The sub-regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed by the African Union and supported by the United Nations and the EU, has led global opinion in rejecting the succession of Baby Eyadema. All the right noises have been made and in an unprecedented consensus, Faure Eyadema has been told that this time around the answer is Non!

However strengthened by Togo's army, which is nothing but a personal militia of his father, Baby Eyadema and the ancient forces of reaction built by his father have continued to ignore the wishes of their people and advise of neighbours and the rest of the international community. Their tactics are very simple. They intend to sit it out hoping that with time their unconstitutional change may become a fait accompli and all concerned will shut up so that even if he is not accepted by de jeur he will remain leader by de facto. After all his father, even when democratisation through the Movement for Sovereign National Conferences in many former French colonies in the 1990s swept aside fellow dictators, managed to weather the storm. A divided opposition and a ruthless capacity to intimidate, co-opt or eliminate the opposition helped him to maintain an iron grip on power for almost four decades. He also relied on liberal exploitation of ethnic and regional fault lines to divide his opponents and the country in addition to presenting himself as the only 'strong leader who can hold the country together'.

However Baby Eyadema cannot be as lucky as his father for many reasons. One, the Togolese people, brutalised and silenced by his father and his henchmen for many years, have remained consistent in fighting for their democratic rights against all the odds. They fought his aged father to a standstill, often betrayed by opportunistic and factionalised opposition parties and leaders. Eyadema was a lame duck leader for many years but held on to power by subterfuge, intimidation, corruption and luck in his choice of formal opponents. It was not just raw power and its use that helped him to remain in charge. The fact that most people under the age of forty did not know any other leader other than Eyadema conspired to create a psychological situation of 'if not him who can?' His son does not have all these advantages, but more importantly the Togolese were no longer afraid of his dad by the time he gave up the ghost. The opposition is not just within the political class but spread across the whole society.

Two, the sub regional situation in West Africa has changed in favour of democratic constitutional rule. Related to this is a willingness of ECOWAS to intervene in the affairs of erring member states. Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Ivory Coast are clear examples of the region acting together, sometimes with great contradictions, to help stabilise a neighbouring country. This precedence compels ECOWAS countries to reverse the military coup in Togo. Three, what is further strengthening the regional resolve is the qualitative changes that have occurred at the continental level through the more proactive provisions of the charter of the new African Union. The Act of Union makes it clear that it is not only military coups that are no longer tolerated but also all unconstitutional changes of government.

From 1999 when the Algiers principles were unanimously adopted the continental body has shown its willingness to put its money where its mouth is. The first casualty was the hapless military regime of General Gueye in Cote d'Ivore. The OAU refused to recognise his regime precipitating the uncompleted transition that forced Gueye out of power. Since that first example Central Africa, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia, with different outcomes, have provided opportunities to test the principle. Whatever the contradictions it is now clear that the old narrow definition of sovereignty and territorial integrity that operated as 'leave my victims to me and I leave yours to you' is no longer operational in Africa. We have moved from non-interference into 'non-indifference'. In 1980, Samuel Doe assassinated the then Chairman of the OAU, William Tolbert, and he was able to sit in the next summit because it was considered an 'internal affair'. This is no longer possible in Africa today therefore the internal affairs of all member states have become legitimate concern of the AU.

Three, the international environment has also changed dramatically. The cold war is over even if it has mutated into another kind of war, no less intense. However the old practice of 'their bastard and our bastard' that turned every dictator into a bride is becoming obsolete. Structural Adjustment Programmes, the IMF/World Bank and globalisation have delivered African countries to imperialism in a way that makes it increasingly insignificant who is in power as they will follow the neo-liberal hegemony. Therefore interests of former colonial powers are no longer tied to that of one individual or group in a particular country. Though there are still notions of 'strong man' or 'the best they have got' that feed the ego of reluctant democrats across this continent, the tolerance level for unreconstructed dictatorship and personal rule has become very high. Eyadema relied on France for most of his rule and when he had contradictions with France he could flirt with the Eastern bloc, but all these are gone now.

The odds are weighted against Baby Eyadema and the Togolese army. If they go peacefully that will be good for Togo and the rest of Africa but if they refuse, targeted sanctions and swift military intervention when necessary should be deployed to get rid of them. It will be a signal to other political megalomaniacs who think that their countries are their personal property to be ruled in perpetuity by themselves or their offspring that Africans no longer accept self proclaimed divine misrule.

ECOWAS has to learn from the horror of Ivory coast where regional pressure forced out Gueye but produced an inconclusive outcome that is still wasting that once prosperous country. While pressures must be unrelenting in restoring constitutional rule in Togo immediately there is a need for wider engagement with the broad democratic forces: political parties, civil society groups, professional associations, trade unions, etc so that Eyadema's people do not exploit the situation to create chaos. Togo is not just a test for ECOWAS but an opportunity to show the rest of the world that Africa is no longer prepared to continue 'business as usual'.

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

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The Chancellor of the British Exchequer (that is Finance Minister to you and I), Mr Gordon Brown, a man popularly believed until recently, to be THE heir apparent to Teflon Prime Minister, Blair, is visiting Africa this week, taking in four countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa. In his bag of Goodies is a set of proposals that have been dubbed 'Gordon's Marshall Plan for Africa'.

A former political ally and friendly rival to Blair but now disgruntled by his friend's unwillingness to honour their gentle manly deal to step aside and allow Brown to take over as her majesty's Chief Minister is believed to be striking out differently from Blair to put his own stamp on both domestic and international policy in preparation for his eventual take over. So just as he has been doing inside Britain he is raising his stakes in the rivalry for compassion about Africa in a year in which Britain is heading both the G8 Club of rich nations and their first cousins in the European Union.

Blair has pledged to make Africa the centre piece of his dual presidency but since it is not a personal mandate Brown has every right to put his stamp on it too, just in case the crown falls on him before or after the British elections in May although my analysts are suggesting that because he has waited too long for the crown he may become yet anther 'great PM' Britain never had.

To be honest Brown has been a long campaigner for reforms of the International Monetary Fund and financial institutions to allow for greater debt relief and tremendous increase in Aid to poorer countries in the world.

His friends and their allies in the British media are calling his plan the Marshal Plan after the famous post second world war American General who master minded the post war reconstruction of Europe. This is more than a bit hyperbolic. First Brown is no general. Second, the Marshall plan was fully paid for by the US treasury without needing the support of ay other country as a price for keeping communism out of Western Europe and Asia Pacific. Britain, a middle ranking post imperial country, has neither the resources nor the clout to do the `same for a vast and diverse continent like Africa.

The whole British effort for this year is predicated on the potential influence it may wield as a result of the historical opportunity of being President of the EU and Chair of the G8 countries during 2005. This influence is being talked up but the reality is different.

There are a number of factors that will impact in a humbling way on this accident of history. One, this is an election year in Britain. It is safe to assume that the governing Labour Party will win another term but it is not certain what the composition of that government will be. Thus the unresolved Blair/Brown rivalry will limit British influence. We won’t know which of them will be able to deliver on what deal!

Two, Tony Blair has promised a referendum on Europe to Britain's Euroskeptic public and political classes. The outcome is not altogether a foregone conclusion. If you are a European leader why should you listen to any sermon from Blair about Africa or any other international issue when his country has yet to decide if they are travelling together with you on the Euro train.

Three, Blair's Prime Ministership and his cringing hanging on to Bush's coat tails show that when the chips are down he will follow Bush whatever the European consensus therefore why should other European leaders trust him? So British influence in Europe despite its Presidency will be severely limited.

Four, apart from EU consensus he needs also the support of his American bosses and other G8 countries for his grand vision since Britain is not able to unilaterally support a Marshall Plan for anybody. Again here the answer has to be in the negative. His 'shoulder to shoulder' toadyism with Bush has not yielded any fundamental influence on the neo-con provincial isolationists and unilateralists in power in Washington.

So where does that leave Blair's and Brown's grand plans for Africa? From where I am looking most of it will add to the mountains of well meaning initiatives and little action. Does this mean that there is nothing Britain can do? I am a political optimist therefore I always look at political possibilities. But both Blair and Brown have to abandon their missionary approach to Africa and concentrate on what they can deliver as a government and hope that their good example can catch on with other EU and G8 countries.

They also need to listen and act on what Africans have decided to do for themselves instead of bringing on new plans. Africa does not need new promises but fulfilment of old ones, both those we made to ourselves and those made to us by others.

I will suggest a number of indices of progress for Tony Brown and Gordon Blair. One, it is good that Brown is suggesting a massive increase in Aid budgets for Africa but while this may appeal to the liberal guilt of his western audience and the compassion entrepreneurs in the huge Aid and humanitarian industry it is not going to help Africa in the long run.

The other aspects of his plan concerning reform of trade and finance and Third World debt must receive greater attention. You can quadruple Aid but in the long run it will be like putting water in a basket if unequal trade and unfair financial dealings and debt trap the poor countries. It is not debt relief that is needed but universal debt cancellation. Let Britain lead by example then we will know that it is serious. Two, the demands of global trade and financial justice is not just at the level of commodities and terms of trade but should include labour access. After 5.00 pm (when most offices close) Africans and especially West Africans are in charge of the city of London because they are the cleaners, security staff, etc. Your traffic warden car park attendant, minicab driver and security personel in stores in many areas of London are more likely to be Africans these days. Many of them are highly qualified and professional people just 'doing anything' to make ends meet. Why can't Britain normalise their stay and let them compete on merit with their skills and experience instead of banishing them into the parallel economy of illegal immigrants, permanent part time students, over stayers, etc. Yet in some countries the remittances from these workers are even more than the total Aid into these countries. Many hospitals will not function if African doctors, nurses, auxiliary staff, etc stopped working. So who is aiding whom?

Three, and on this Britain can really inspire the rest of the world and cause a fundamental shift in global accountability, the city of London has been a major beneficiary of stolen money and other assets looted from Africa and other parts of the world by dictators and their Western masters and agents. If we can get back some of these looted funds British taxpayers need not be giving Aid to many African countries. If either Blair or Britain or together can deliver on these three points even critics and cynics like myself will hire praise singers and roll out the talking drums. But would they?

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

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It is almost two weeks since the Boxing Day tragedy of theTsunami Earth Quake that devastated countries of South Asia and to a lesser extent the two African countries of Kenya and Somalia. We are used to and have become more cynical of the media and humanitarian agencies describing every natural and unnatural disaster as 'the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen' or 'a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions', suspecting they are hyping it up in order to raise the bank balances of the agencies' accounts and extort compassion from an increasingly compassion-fatigued world.

But the huge scale of the Tsumani tragedy has blown away all cynicism and suspicions about humanitarian publicists and compassion entrepreneurs. Words can neither describe nor express the full impact of this disaster that immediately became a tragedy right in front of our eyes and most of us powerless to do anything about it once it started. Despite all the available technology, information and knowledge, nature still struck in a most menacing way humbling human beings and our historical and evolutionary arrogance that we are supreme in the universe and all that abounds in it.

The symbolic period of Christmas (and all the consumerism that has expunged most religious or spiritual meaning out of it) in which the tragedy unfolded unified many people's anxiety about God and nature.

Religious people look up to God for explanation, comfort and deliverance, but even the most religious person must ask what kind of God inflicts such catastrophe on his creation and for what sins? The non-religious and agnostics also look on helplessly and take out their frustration on God by asserting that the indiscriminate way in which the disaster struck was proof to them that God could not have been existing and not avert such huge tragedy.

The tragedy also showed the limits of science despite all the undeniable advances over several centuries: there is still plenty more to be unravelled and known in nature. We are yet to be full masters of our environment. The positive side for science though is the belief that all things are knowable, but we are limited by available knowledge and technology whereas metaphysical people believe that some things are not knowable. The ultimate truth must belong to scientific progress because its truth is accumulative through the years such that what our forefathers could not explain we now can just as what is baffling us today may not ruffle our children or their children after them.

While the scientist and the religious people wrestle with their explanations or non explanations one of the most encouraging things that has come out of the tragedy is the outpouring of genuine human solidarity, reaching out to the victims from across the world. In the midst of all these pains the unequal power relations in the world manifests itself both openly and subliminally. Would there have been such massive concern if a considerable number of Westerners were not involved? Can we recall similar outpouring of grief exactly a year ago when a similar earth quake devastated Iran killing more than 40, 000 people?

Do not get me wrong about the huge scale of the South East Asian eathquake and the untold suffering for all the victims. I cannot help feeling that were westerners not involved on such a huge scale it would not have been treated as yet another disaster that happens to hapless peoples especially in Africa.

Look at your screens and see the hands of friendship, humanitarian support and solidarity of people in the richer countries of the world mainly Europe and the USA that we see constantly. Yet solidarity is being shown even if in small but symbolic ways in virtually every country of the world. The BBC or the CNN may not broadcast them but compassion is not the monopoly of the richer countries.

In times like these it is the totality of our humanity that counts not one country or class of peoples. The popular response to the disaster has exposed how insensitive and narrow-minded governments can be not just in poorer countries but also in the richer, supposedly more democratic and enlightened of the West. The President of the World and self-proclaimed God's son, George Bush, took three days before he could make any statement. His loyal British poodle, Tony Blair, despite public clamour in Britain, remained on his holiday resort in Egypt. However the public in both countries led the way in providing support of all kinds. Now both governments are playing catch up with popular momentum and promising to match the public contributions. Bush has even recalled his father and Clinton from retirement to help him galvanise public support.

In a number of African countries there has been the usual official statements but also public concern. However, many do not have the infrastructure to convert the genuine concerns into concrete solidarity. We need to look into this because no matter how bad our situation may be there may always be some other people somewhere on this planet whose conditions may be worse off from ours. We cannot be constantly playing victims and be complacent about our and other people's suffering. We must fight against the disaster fatigue that may make us appear insensitive or inured to the suffering of others because of our own suffering. We need to build people to people solidarity between ourselves and between us and other peoples of the world. Every little bit counts towards building genuine bridges of human understanding.

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tragedy there is a growing debate about where Africa's case in 2005 will be given the immediacy of the situation and the genuine popular opinion in the West.

There is talk of debt write off, cancellation and full scale restructuring of the affected South East Asian countries. This is right and necessary but it needs not be a case of either / or because as Ghandi used to say: 'There is enough in the world to satisfy our need but not enough to satisfy our greed'.

Africa does not have to be devastated by earth quakes before its debt is written off, it is suffering devastation in many other forms that may claim more lives this year than the final total of those perishing as a result of the Tsumani. Powerful countries in the world should not play the poor against each other and we should not also engage in competition for compassion. Global justice should be our aim whether in the north or the south of our shared hemisphere.

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

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The mild-mannered, soft-spoken UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, has been receiving the unwholesome attention of the triumphalist neo-con fundamentalists and also that of sections of what passes for 'liberal' opinion in the USA, a country that is in the grip of right wing extremism.

The ostensible reason for shooting pointed arrows at Mr Annan are the salacious but very selective revelations emanating from US investigations into the Iraqi Oil for Food programme. The allegations include corruption, diversion of food money into private coffers, fraudulent contracts and all manners of underhand activities by individuals and companies (mostly Western), and others.

These allegations are not earth shattering given what is going on with US mishandling of the Iraqi economy and its vital oil resources since they occupied the country. US companies and principally the notorious Halliburton of the US Vice President Dick Cheney are accused of similar practices. So why is the US so interested in investigating the UN in Iraq without allowing any censure of its own illegal activities in that country?

Even big Western humanitarian agencies that often keep their mouth shut in relation to powerful Western Governments (who were often their biggest Donors or protectors) were sufficiently outraged to break with their unwritten convention (of looking the other way when their governments are misbehaving) and demanded accountability from the US proconsul for Iraq, Paul Bremmer, before he handed over to their crony, Iyad Allawi and other US puppets in the Interim Government of Iraq.

Both Bremmer and the Bush administration treated the request with contempt because they believe they are above the standards of public probity they demand of everybody else, especially those governments or individuals they may not like. Since the US demands accountability from everybody else, who dares demand accountability from the US and its chosen agents? This is why the US has given itself the power to act as global law enforcer but exempts itself from the International Criminal Court. The Americans can fight wars on behalf of the UN but are not bound by UN procedures or resolutions.

The double standard stinks. The attack on the UN has taken an ironical personal turn for Mr Kofi Annan. His son is alleged to have worked for and received payments from one of the companies accused of being involved in the Iraqi gravy train. And because of this Annan's persecutors are demanding that Uncle Kofi should resign. They want him punished for a yet to be proven criminal act by his son. The logic is that because Annan Sr was in charge of the UN and these things happened under his watch he should carry the can. Yet nobody demanded the resignation of Bush for allowing the US to be attacked by not concentrating on his watch! Not even the chiefs or operatives of the various security and intelligence services that failed the country on that fateful day were compelled to resign!

The fact that Bush's family has a long history of juicy business relationship with the Bin Laden family and the obvious conflicts of interest in that was never an issue for US voters who returned Bush to power. The Enron and Halliburton scandals and the personal involvement of senior administration officials, Republican financiers and other supporters have not led to any resignations in the US government.

So why are they calling for Kofi Annan's head?

The reason is not difficult to see. Kofi Annan, like Boutros Boutros- Ghali before him, both of them pro American gentlemen, when they started out, later than sooner, discovered that the credibility of the UN and their own personal credibility demand being able to stand up to the bullies in the US who see the UN as an after-sales service complex for American misadventures. They hounded Boutros-Ghali out of office when he began to resist the US’s more brazen abuse of the UN system and their contempt for multilateral solutions.

When they were sending attack dogs at Boutrous-Ghali, Mr Annan was the master's poodle presented to the world as a 'safe pair of hands', 'moderate', 'sensible' and all the other superlatives used to dress up being 'a house Nigger'. And he seemed to play ball for many years, but over Iraq he began to grumble which became much more open during and after the last UN General Assembly when he declared the war against Iraq and the Anglo-American occupation of that country as illegal.

Consequently the Bush administration and their screaming loony sects decreed an end to his term. Some of the criticisms they are making of Annan today were the same ones many who had opposed his candidacy in 1997 put forward.

For me the biggest stain in his dull bureaucratic career at the UN will remain inaction over genocide in Rwanda which he has been doing everything to atone for in the past few years. However his Rwanda record did not matter then so why now? The answer is simple: Mr Annan is now tired of being 'a House Nigger'. For talking back to his masters they want to banish him from the palace. It is yet another abject lesson for those Africans or other developing world peoples who always want to play it safe and be on the right side of the big powers. You are nothing but a disposable towel to them. You are not any 'special friend' or 'great leader' but a convenient tool and they will get rid of you when you are no longer of service.

A defence of Annan and the UN is a correct thing to do today because those calling for his head and bashing the UN are more dangerous to our world. It is not an endorsement of all Annan and the UN did or did not do but an expression of hope that together the whole world can make the UN be of better service to humanity. It is a proclamation of a fact that is definitely lost on Bush and his gangsters that the US does not own this world. It is a shared universe in which all of us, big and small countries, rich and poor, super power and powerless, are legitimate stake holders whose interests are better served by genuine cooperation, multilateralism and respectful interdependence, than by the bullying by one super power. It is a shared world in which none of us is a tenant to the Americans.

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

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>>>>>SOLIDARITY LETTER

(The following is the text of a petition email circulating on the Internet in support of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan)

Dear Secretary General,
We, a group of concerned young people from across the globe, have watched with dismay the attacks on the integrity and the legitimacy of the United Nations.

During these difficult and challenging times, we stand with you in solidarity against all forces that seek to destroy the organization or undermine the high office of the Secretary-General. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." We believe that you will rise to the challenge and lead the organization out even stronger.

The United Nations, today more than ever before, needs a leadership that is firm and not intimidated into giving up the integrity and independence with which a body like the UN deserves to operate. We the people need to stand up and defend the organization not only against those who are bent on destroying it, but also against those who's actions expose the organization to such critics.

We recognize that giving in to the forces currently calling for your resignation would only serve to undermine the UN as an in dependent organization and would weaken the ability of the UN as a vehicle to work for peace and justice around the world. That is why this cannot be seen as an attack on any one individual, but the UN as a whole. For the UN to continue to play its vital role and to command the respect of the world, it must maintain its credibility by ensuring that those who act in the organization's name do so transparently and with high integrity. We hope that with this full knowledge of the facts, appropriate actions shall be taken to save this essential organization unfounded damage and accusations.

We pledge to do all we can to defend the integrity of the organization in our communities and resist the systematic campaign that seeks to poison public opinion against the organization. We strongly urge you to continue to play your role without fear or favour.
In Solidarity,
Signed:

PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING URGENT ACTIONS:
1. ENDORSE this letter to the UN Secretary General by responding to this with Your NAME and COUNTRY (Add organization if you want) by Sunday. PLEASE SEND IT DIRECTLY TO [email][email protected]
2. FORWARD this email to other colleagues and POST this announcement on your organization's website and list-serves.
3. Shape PUBLIC OPINION in your community and country by raising the issue and challenging the critics. Contribute to media discussions- Radio, Print and TV etc.
4. Our US colleagues should visit the UN Association website and take action:

Yesterday was World Aids Day. The previous week and the rest of this week is being used to focus global attention on the pandemic and what we all, rulers and subjects, victims and carers, local, national, regional and international actors can do to fight the scourge. Africa, as the continent with the largest number of infected people is rightly getting a lot of attention. 25 million people (almost half of the global total) across this continent are living with the killer disease which has not even peaked in some of the worst affected countries like Botswana, who have an almost 40% infection rate. The gender impact of the disease, the class burden and demographic distribution is even more devastating, with at least one in six children affected. Meanwhile the daily death rate is mounting.

Whatever one's view of statistics, its uses and abuses, the stark truth is that our peoples are dying and dying in great numbers and doomed to die in greater numbers and we have to (and can) do something, something very drastic, to arrest the situation. There is no point arguing about how the disease arrived or quarrel with the apocalyptic scenarios. While the arguments may be useful to historians of science and medicine and academics they do not address the problems at hand. Our people are dying.

The sad truth is that the situation is not hopeless; it is reversible. While there may not be a cure there is enough progress in science research and medicine to stem the rise, prolong the lives of infected people and provide even more information on various preventive measures. What is making Africa and Africans more vulnerable than other peoples is a combination of ignorance and poverty. The situation is not limited to Africans on the continent. There are alarming reports about the rapid spread of the disease among Africans in the diaspora, especially African-Americans and in particular African-American women.

It is not all bad news across Africa. A country like Uganda has a deserved image globally as a country which has shown openness and innovative local and national leadership in confronting the disease. But even Uganda's positive record for many years risks being undermined by complacency. If you have a winning formula why change it? This may be contributing to an atmosphere one concerned HIV/Aids activist described thus: “One hundred percent HIV/Aids awareness, Zero % Sex education.”

People who know enough (and some believe know too much ) about the disease take whatever care they can but in some sections of the population the law of diminishing returns may be setting in and even fatalistic attitudes (‘this thing will kill all of us’) may substantively drive the deadly curve up again. Thus more concerted efforts need to be continuously embarked upon to warn people that HIV/ADS remains real. Until there is a cure or effective vaccine everybody is still vulnerable. The fear about Uganda's continuing success in confronting the disease centres around more creative communication methods with vulnerable social groups (especially in rural areas, women and the Youth), prospects for universal access to cheap (if not free) anti retriovirals and relentless educational campaigns. There is also an unnecessary dilution of the message in the secondary argument imported from the neo-con religious right in America and other fundamentalists across the world about ‘abstention’ . The argument is not either or but effective education on all forms of preventive measures and safe sex including the active but culturally sensitive promotion of the use of condoms.

Many other African countries are unfortunately in various stages of denial. While every country now has one form of national campaign strategy or the other the full impact of the threat posed by HIV/AIDS is not generally appreciated, therefore the fundamental lifestyle and behavioural changes needed are not being addressed systematically. For instance, in many countries in the West African region the use of condoms is still resisted for many reasons including convenience, reactionary cultural attitudes and general ignorance.

Talking to educated people (who should, theoretically, know better) many of them in NGOs, academia, media, public institutions and local elite in their communities I discover an alarming mountain of ignorant complacency. Some of them have inverted tired racist arguments about the origins of AIDS by concluding that as long as they do not mess around with white partners they are safe! Yet I look in the newspapers and see death notices of many big people and the not so big who died ‘after a long illness’ or ‘heart attack’ or ‘high blood pressure’ or ‘pneumonia’ or ‘malaria’ or ‘short illness’ or ‘hypertension’ and my mind races back to similar coded messages in Uganda many years ago. And I wonder if all of these deaths are due to the stated public reasons or could be AIDS-related complications.

It took many years for even countries that are Uganda's neighbours to come out about HIV/AIDS. Kenya for instance thought admitting HIV/AIDS may affect its tourism trade. Actually, not so long ago a prominent politician who shall remain nameless died almost certainly of Aids-related illness. But both the public and high level political burial could not disclose the reason even though media speculation went close enough to suggest this was the case. Even in Uganda public disclosure about ‘big people’ is not common. There are many issues involved including stigma against the widows left behind, orphaned children and the right to privacy of affected peoples both living, dying and the dead.

The first task in confronting the disease is combating the mass ignorance that still surrounds the disease and associated social stigma that makes it extremely difficult for people suffering and living with the disease to admit it and seek necessary treatment. This will require both public and community leadership to raise general awareness that can turn the disease away from ‘death sentence’ to ‘can live longer’ hope. The second task is the poverty that makes poorer and marginalised peoples (especially Women, Youth and the majority of our peoples in rural areas) more vulnerable in terms of access to information and anti retriovirals and prevention programs. But addressing poverty and access issues alone will not deal with the problem fully. Even the relatively rich who have the money or middle classes who have easier access to the available medicines need the power that existing knowledge and available technology can afford them to appreciate that they need not ‘die of ignorance’. HIV/AIDS is real, knows no social boundaries and threatens all of us but together we can all do something about it.

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

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Last Monday I participated in a segment of the BBC discussion Programme ‘Four Corners’. The topic I discussed with two other guests (one Portuguese and the other from The Netherlands) was whether the relationship between former colonies and former colonial masters can ever be rid of master-servant complexes. The immediate stimulus for the discussion was the tragic situation that has been long unfolding in that former shining star of former French colonies on the West Coast of Africa, Cote d'Ivore.

Needless to say that the three of us had divergent views (that's the whole purpose of a multi sided discussion, isn't it?). But our disagreements were not principally due to the obvious: That because the other two were Europeans and myself an African, one belonging to victims and the other a descendant of perpetrators, there were objective and subjective contradictions. No. We were all opposed to colonialism and agreed too that the consequences were generally bad for the victims regardless of who the colonizer was. But that's where the agreement stopped.

Our differences emerged as a result of what is happening today and what can be done. Both Europeans were rather sanguine about the impact of history on contemporary relations between the former colonies and their erstwhile colonial subjects. The Portuguese saw no direct influence for his country as could be found in former British or French colonies. Maybe because the Portuguese were the first to arrive in Africa and the last to be chased out! The Dutch representative also felt his country did not have much control in the former colonies.

Both of them however saw moral and political responsibility to intervene in their former colonies. The Portuguese chap even argued that, but for Portugal, who cared about Guinea-Bissau or Cape Verde? When I retorted that even if both countries were not important internationally or even regionally they mattered to Cape Verdians and people of Guinea-Bissau the man was still relentless, finally quipping that he was not even sure about that! A few seconds later he realized the incongruity of his colonialist template by qualifying the absurd claim with ‘I don't think the elite care’. But the genie was already out of the bottle. So powerful and consuming is the latter day missionary fervour of many in the West that they actually believe that they care more about Africa than Africans themselves. This ideology of being more Catholic than the pope is so pervasive that even many Africans share in it. On the surface the argument is so beguiling and dressed in humanitarian concerns that it is almost seductive. But it is only a latter day repackaging of the old imperialist ‘white man's burden’.

The relationship between former colonies and their former colonial masters need not necessarily be a continuing repackaging of the same colonial attitudes through neo-colonialism or present threatening recolonisation. Looking at the relationship between Britain and the USA today, especially Tony Blair's ‘America right or wrong’ servitude to Bush, many would have forgotten that America used to be a colony of the British. The relationship between Britain and the former white colonies of New Zealand, Australia and Canada are also different. And yes too the relationship with India is different say from that with Gambia or Sierra-Leone. Even within Africa I do not think that Britain can be presumptuous enough to take South Africa or Nigeria's cooperation for granted. The Italians can never dream of controlling Libya, which is their former colony. And the French or the Belgians cannot walk like former masters across present day Rwanda.

What makes African countries vulnerable to continuing manipulation by former colonial powers is their essentially unviable nature built as they were to serve foreign interests and mostly lacking in organic linkages and legitimacy among the peoples forcibly brought together in these artificial states. But more than the economic linkages, in many countries security and intelligence networks help in retaining metropolitan hold.

This is certainly more evident in many of the former French colonies where the added burden of the French cultural policy of assimilation made many of their elite think they were French. It must be said that there are so many elite in the former British colonies too who regard themselves as English and mimic the English in many ridiculous ways, including confused middle class elements who refuse to speak their African mother tongue to their children even in the home because they fear their English will suffer.

But generally the colonial cultural project seems more complete in former French colonies. That was why France has always had far greater neo-colonialist influence in her former colonies. In recent years it has gone into retreat - but old habits die hard hence the current situation in Ivory Coast. But that mess is made messier by the fact that Laurent Gbagbo's government and his leadership is that of a genocidaire yet to be put on trial.

However that situation can only be sorted out by the Ivorians themselves, their sub regional neighbours, the African Union and the support of the international community. A positive role for former colonialists is one in which they support African efforts if and when asked and not by justifying continuing imperialism with 'the need to do something'. Too many times that something has turned out to be nothing but old fashioned imperialism in new robes.

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

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The Band Aid Album, ‘Do they know its Christmas time’, which sold millions of copies and directly raised even more millions of dollars for the relief of famine in Ethiopia 20 years ago is again being released in time for this Christmas. As in 1984 it is widely expected that the album will be a runaway success.

Apart from the millions of dollars raised then and to be raised now, what both the album and the Live Aid concert it inspired in July 1985 (which was watched reportedly by over 1.5 billion people across the world) achieved was to raise awareness about hunger, starvation and famine in Africa. The bloated tummies of underfed babies clutching at emaciated breasts of a hunger-ravished mother or the multitudes of flies and army of other insects holidaying on the mouths and bodies of desperate children, women and men in refugee camps became the dominant image of Africa in the global media. What we saw with our eyes on televisions became engraved permanently on our minds. It was successful in causing almost a stampede of humanitarian concern and focus on Africa.

However it had its own unintended consequences then and twenty years on these negative consequences have a greater impact in that they perpetuate the popular perception that Africa is a basket case continent and Africans are a hopeless and helpless people.

The fact that the same song could be re released without altering the lyrics and with similar accompanying horrible pictures on televisions, in newspapers and other more widely accessible multi media today than then speaks volumes. It is either an admission of failure of previous efforts or a confirmation that Africa is indeed a basket .

I am particularly irked about that dubious line: ‘Thank God tonight its them instead of you’! The only variation on the theme is that instead of targeting Ethiopia last time around it is Sudan that is competing for the sympathy of the West as Africa's most hellish of hells!

It is an indictment of Africa's leaders and also the powerful countries, individuals and institutions within the international community that despite all the awareness and pangs of conscience in the last 20 years, fellow human beings can still be facing such penury, humiliation and starvation in a world with ‘enough for our needs but not enough for our greed’ as Mahatma Ghandi once put it.

However as Africans we can be disgusted, ashamed and rightly critical of the deliberate use/abuse of those horrible images that strip us of our dignity and humanity, but we should be more outraged that Africans (through acts of both omission and commission) have been largely responsible for such continuous misery inflicted on our own peoples. Band Aid, Live Aid or any of the busy body Western NGOs raising huge sums of money on these images did not create them, they are merely exploiting them for their multi-million dollar humanitarian mega business. Therefore the first responsibility and admission of guilt is ours and ours alone. It is up to us to put an end to the brutalisation and extreme pauperisation of our own peoples.

But the Humanitarian agencies also have to ask themselves whether their chosen methods have worked or are working. Or if the end now justifies the means and that end is about their unaccountable power to play god with the destiny of poor people by merchandising our people’s suffering. They often defend the use of the bad images as necessary to raise awareness and prick the conscience of the world (most of the time they mean, Europeans and Americans!). One is bound to ask of Live Aid and Band Aid that after 20 years what the harvest of this conscience safari has been if they have to use the same images and record two decades later.

It has always intrigued me why the conscience of the West can only be pricked by degradation of other peoples. The process of getting westerners to part with their donations end up dehumanizing and degrading Africa. Instead of creating the much needed understanding and solidarity it creates an unequal power relation with psychological hang-ups about superior and inferior peoples; one is a permanent donor and the other is a permanent supplicant. That one-way street does not lead to understanding, rather it institutionalizes a ‘we know best’ attitude on the part of the humanitarian industry. It also makes the humanitarian agencies married to bad news from Africa, thereby becoming professional merchants of our misery. It will seem that the worse the situation is the better for their fund raising drives! Needless to say that this breeds cynicism among those who are supposed to be grateful for the kind help they are receiving.

The more important lesson of the 20 years of Band Aid must surely be bringing into sharp relief the naiveté of those years that symbolic acts of genuine human solidarity will somehow change the hearts and minds of the powerful both in Africa and internationally. They can throw a few coins at the problem to appease immediate pressure and gain public mileage but the real change will only come from raising the power questions that turn drought into famine. It is politics and power that makes Africans seemingly more vulnerable to hunger and starvation than other peoples. Africa is not a poor continent but our peoples are poor because they are powerless over their resources. People are powerless in their countries and our countries are impotent in global power relations. That is why we get fleeced on all fronts.

Charity may offer an instant fire brigade service but it cannot be a substitute for sustainable long-term solutions. Why is it that Ethiopia that received massive humanitarian support twenty years ago is today one of the least recipients of long-term development aid in Africa? Even if it gets more help in aid, as long as it continues to get bad terms of trade and returns for its coffee and other raw materials, like other African countries, it will continue to run a deficit economy needing aid. Many of our countries especially those beloved by IMF/World Bank and Western Countries as ‘doing well’ have become aid addicts while the humanitarian interventionists and NGOs have become aid pushers.

The extreme poverty faced by many Africans in a majority of our countries is structural and unless both the internal and external dimensions of that unequal power relation are transformed I can assure you that in another 20 years, when Bob Geldof and many of his original collaborators would have become Old Age Pensioners (OAPs) they may still be organizing Band Aid 3. I think Saint Bob and Bono in the past few years have come to realize this and that's why they are talking less about charity but more in terms of trade, equity, global justice, debt cancellation, etc. Soon they will have to engage with reparation for Africa for both historical and contemporary depletion and pillage of the continent and her peoples and also the structural linkage between the prosperity of the West and the poverty of global humanity.
This shift is necessary in order to build a global alliance (rather than self -obsessed angst -driven Western do-gooders and their selective conscience) that can truly make poverty history in this new millennium.

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

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Early Thursday morning the suffering of President Yasser Arafat of Palestine was brought to an end with the announcement of his death. He never recovered from the coma he had slipped into since last week.

Chairman Arafat as he is more popularly referred to was certainly one of the most recognizable faces of our times, a man who was dodged by death all the time, had many close shaves, was victim of many assassination attempts, and countless poison attempts too. And he survived them all for the more than four decades that he was at the forefront of the struggle for the liberation of his wronged people.

The final hour came on a military hospital bed in Paris. He had survived more than the proverbial nine lives of a cat. Death is a winner in the end. It will take the patient and one by one overwhelms even the doctors too.

The implacable enemies of the Palestinian struggle in Israel and US could not even wait for the final hour before dancing on his grave.

The Zionists have been announcing his death since he arrived in Paris after Israel had 'allowed him' to leave his beleaguered ramshackle office complex in Ramallah where he had been barricaded for more than two years and illegally kept under house arrest in the full glare of the global media by the mass killer, yet-to-be- convicted genocidaire, Ariel Sharon.

Last week, Sharon's patron saint, the newly triumphant George Bush, was ambushed by reporters prematurely asking for his reaction to Arafat's death. You could see the feigned surprise on his face. If it had been in private he would probably have rejoiced since he had deliberately erected road blocks to peace that excluded Yasser Arafat in his so called road map for peace in the Middle East which was a blue print for Sharon's mendacity.

But the televisions were there so Dubya could only, after prolonged seconds, say: MAY GOD BLESS HIS SOUL! We must not forget that this is a very Christian President therefore he was only extending Christian charity for the repose of Arafat's soul. If he had his way with God (I have no doubt he thinks of himself as God's chosen one!) he must be wishing something else.

Ariel Sharon and his goons do not even have to go through the kind of public hypocrisy that Bush went through when Arafat's death was confirmed.

The humiliation they made him and his people suffer throughout his life and more directly in the last three years of besieging his office did not stop with his failing health and even with his death. They have already made it known that his wish to be buried in Jerusalem will not be 'allowed'. Trust these usurpers for originality! They are claiming that the city is a holy sight to bury worthy Kings of Jews! Those privileged kings include disgraced former British Newspaper baron, Robert Maxwell, who died a few years ago in suspicious circumstances. He is buried among the worthy kings for his services to Zionism. Maxwell was a Jew of East European origin yet Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian, cannot decide where he should be buried in the land of his birth inhabited by his people from time immemorial.

Washington and Tel Aviv hawks and their fellow travellers, apologists and the many they confuse with their relentless propaganda are suggesting that the death of Arafat will see a renewal of efforts at resolving the Israeli-Conflict. Why the death of Arafat will bring peace when Sharon and his likes are still very much alive I do not know. Why is the US bent on imposing leaders on other peoples when they reject this in their own country and never dictate the same to Israel? Has it ever occurred to these people blinded by their greed for other people's land that their opposition to Yasser Arafat actually made him a matyr to Palestinians, Arabs and other admirers across the world? His humiliation became the humiliation of a people.

In Bush and Sharon's warped thinking the conflict is down to one man and now that he is out of the way everything should be looking good. One does not need rocket science to see the ruse in this type of argument. Yasser Arafat (with all the twists and turns in his long career as a freedom fighter) among Palestinians and all lovers of human freedom was more than just a man but the symbol of a struggle and the idea that human beings will always resist oppression no matter how difficult the situation. His physical demise will not mean the end of the dream and hope for freedom that he devoted all his life to.

In the pantheons of revolutionary icons Yasser Arafat is in the same class as Nelson Mandela although with different historical methods and outcome but one shared and abiding connection: triumph of hope over despair in search of human liberation. Arafat may not have lived long enough to see a liberated Palestine but that triumphal hour will come certainly in the life of his only daughter, nine year old Zahwa.

For many Africans the Palestinian struggle became twinned to the African struggle against apartheid and colonialism in South Africa and the rest of Africa. Today the Zionists have succeeded in penetrating many African countries (through Security and Intelligence establishments and also financial /commercial inducements). A consequence of this is the re-establishment of diplomatic relations for the state of Israel mostly broken for most of the 1970s and early 1980s. However in spite of the collusion of our state elites (especially insecure presidents who believe only MOSAD and Israeli mercenaries can protect them) the solidarity with Palestine continues to be popular among Africans. As a people who have known (continue to suffer) racism, discrimination, exploitation, extermination , occupation and humiliation on our own lands (past and present) the solidarity is instinctive and independent of whatever any Arab country is or is not doing and what our governments may or may not be up to.

The death of Arafat will not diminish this even if PLO offices have become almost extinct across the continent as Israeli embassies open up behind gilded barriers (like that of their biggest sponsors, USA). The PLO retains special status within the African Union (as it did in the old OAU), including Summits of Heads of State and Governments expressing the collective diplomatic and political position of Africans to stand firmly in support of the Palestinians.

To Chairman Arafat, we say ‘Go well to your maker, brave soldier, you tried your best and acquitted yourself as an unwavering strugglist. Even if your best did not bring freedom to your people in your lifetime, be rest assured that the Struggle continues and the Victory will be yours posthumously.’

Yasser has gone but the Palestinians remain to continue the struggle that he so valiantly served with total dedication. In death as in his life only moral cowards will be indifferent when they hear the name Yasser Arafat. And each time we mention the name Palestine comes to mind and vice versa too. Indeed the struggle was the man and the man was the struggle for a free Palestine.

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

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The outcome of the US presidential election is a shock to many people outside of the US who have been hoping against hope that Americans will do the world a favour with their votes and get rid of George Bush. Even the much predicted repeat of the disputed outcome of the last presidential election, which Bush controversially won, not by popular vote but through electoral machinations in the state of Florida (in which his brother Jeb was and still is Governor) and the connivance of the Supreme Court did not materialize in the end. Bush this time has won with a clear popular majority.

Winning by a whiff in 2000 did not stop him from behaving as though he had won an overwhelming mandate not just inside America but also to govern the whole world. He has divided his country and polarized the world. Indeed George Bush has succeeded in making America the number one bogey nation of the world with his reckless approach to international peace and security.

If the rest of the world had a vote in the US elections there is no doubt that Bush would have been booted out. If the views of the rest of the world mattered to Americans there would not have been a cliffhanger and it would have been a thorough defeat for the Bushman.

The fact that this is not so shows a number of things. One, Americans are as bitterly divided today as they were four years ago. Two, at the end of the day they (or at least a majority of them, no matter how small) do not care about what the rest of the world thinks. The attitude is one of take it or leave it. Three, opinion polls in America despite all the much-vaunted technology are as voodooist as in any developing country. All the exit polls indicated a Kerry victory but the actual declared results tell a different story. The same happened four years ago. Same mistakes twice should discredit the trade. Either American voters are incredible mass liars or the pollsters are fraudulent or both. Four, all the fears, allegations and counter allegations about the electoral process should humble Americans and all westerners who are quick to judge other peoples that democracy, even in the allegedly most developed country, is still a work in progress.

Now that Bush has been re-elected president the implications should be clear for Americans and the rest of the world. First, he will see the result as a legitimation for his domestic and foreign relations despite all the bitterness that they have caused. If Bush could wreak such havoc with a stolen victory what would he now do with a less controversial one?

Second, If Americans do not care about the views, interests and opinions of the rest of the world, why on earth should any other people or country care about America's views? A world in which every country does as it pleases is a recipe for global chaos. America has every right to decide who and how it is governed but it must respect that right to self-determination in other countries too. For instance if Zimbabweans want Mugabe or Venezuelans want Chavez and Cubans still want their long term president, Castro, why should the US government give itself the right to proclaim or orchestrate regime changes in these and other countries whose leaders it does not like? This also means that if some countries' voters desire theocratic leaders whether of the Islamist or any other religious inclination it will be their right to do so. After all Bush fought on a Christian fundamentalist neo-conservative agenda and his last four years in office has tested the notion of America being a secular state to extreme limits. If that is democratic in America why should it be less so for other peoples?

Third, victory twice over candidates who are definitely intellectually superior to him and more nuanced about the world is yet another demonstration that the standard of both national and global political leadership is in free fall. Bush’s victory could mean only charlatans, dimwits, liars, duplicitous and cruel politicians need aspire for success. This is a publicly Christian president who will even change the American constitution to protect the foetus and unborn children yet has no qualms killing women, children and innocent men in Iraq by the thousands!

Four, the received wisdom in Western election studies is that the voters are so enlightened that they will vote for their economic interests but Bush victory has stood this on its head. His father lost when the economy was not doing badly and he has won with a wobbly economic record whose limited recovery has been jobless. All his life personal failures have never stopped him from political victory. Five, Bush re-election may help reinforce a popular prejudice among non-Americans that Americans are one of (if not the most) ignorant peoples in the whole planet. Otherwise how does one account for the appeal of Bush?

However, America's selective disinterest in global opinion did not diminish the interest of the rest of the world in America's elections. I was particularly happy that observers from around the world, including a few Africans, were there to monitor the elections.

The reaction of the Americans was predictably hostile, believing that their democracy is beyond outside scrutiny. Yet US foundations, government, academics, NGOs and other election tourists from other parts of the West are now institutionalised accessories for any elections in Africa, Latin America, and other poor parts of the world. If they could observe us why can’t we observe them too? Why is what is good for the goose not good for the gander?

Finally, Kerry's running motto for the election was to exhort Americans not to vote for their fears but vote for hope in a new beginning. It is clear that fear has won and the nightmare from it will not be limited to the shores of the USA in the next four years. But one thing is certain - the world will survive Bush.

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

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Today the United Nation’s General Assembly will be voting again on an issue concerning Cuba, as it has done for almost four decades now. The subject is the continuing blockade of the small Caribbean socialist nation by its bullying neighbour, the lone superpower (some will say hyper power).

The Assembly will undoubtedly call for the end to this punitive measure on Cuba by the US, not for any act of aggression or intent to do so, but just because Cuba has dared not to organise its society along the cut-throat vulture capitalism of its neighbour. For daring to imagine different worlds, successive US governments since the early 1960s have sought both to eliminate Fidel Castro and destroy Cuba’s socialism. In an enduring victory for common peoples across the world, the big guys have never won in this case!

Before the revolution of 1959 Cuba was a playground to the US. A combination of ideologically driven obsession with regime change in Cuba and nostalgia for US hegemony in the country fuelled by the powerful Cuban-American interests in the state of Florida in particular and across the US has meant that a rational debate on what threat, if any, this small island posed to the US has been almost impossible.

One does not expect that in an election year in which all opinion polls and forecasts predict a very close run between the incumbent hawkish Republican Bushman and his patrician democrat rival, reason can prevail on America’s negative policies against Cuba.

The rest of the world has no vote in the US elections even though its outcome has grave implications for all of us. However, all of us do have a voice in the United Nations even if the UN is a pejorative nomenclature inside the US. That voice should be used to restate again to the US that it cannot claim global leadership and at the same time defy global consensus and civilised standards. It cannot give itself the role of global Sheriff and act like a rogue.

Bush may have cowed many countries and peoples into quiet acquiescence in his irresponsible behaviour internationally but there is a growing concern at its exercise of power without responsibility both within America itself and internationally. The vast majority of the peoples of the world must use today’s vote on the illegal blockade on Cuba to yet again demonstrate to the US that the rest of us will have our say and exercise our right not to be colluders in US brigandage.

The usual suspect client states of the US, most notably Israel, will vote against the censure resolution while most countries of the world will vote for it. A small number may even abstain. Some African countries (a very small minority I am happy to say) in recent years have chosen, out of fear or misplaced loyalties or even diplomatic incompetence by officials, to abstain. Abstinence on such an issue is voting along with US bullying of Cuba.

Unfortunately, Uganda was one of those few African countries that abstained in last year’s vote despite assurances from the highest level to the contrary. Not long ago President Museveni bravely admitted in public that he was hoodwinked by Bush on Iraq and regretted the mistake in supporting the illegal occupation of the country. He needs to correct another US related diplomatic mistake by causing Uganda’s ambassador to the UN to vote in support of the UN resolution calling for an end to the blockade against Cuba.

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

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The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Kenyan Environmentalist, Mama Wangari Mathai of Kenya has been greeted with justifiable chorus of cheers from around the world and in Africa and the African Diaspora even more ululation, praise songs and loud talking drums. If anyone is deserving of such global acclaim he or she does not come more unprepossessing than this people's Professor who had dedicated her life to a very simple task: planting trees in order to safe her environment from destruction and degradation as a result of excessive exploitation. Who would have thought that such a an ordinary act could be so threatening to the state, local companies and the multinational corporations to make this African woman victim of state violence, intimidation, arrest, detention and other kinds of harassment?

Her impact on Kenya on the Moi regime and its land grabbing elite was similar (even if on a smaller scale) to another simple demand of a different historical epoch. Mahatma Ghandi demanded of the British colonial overlords in India to allow Indians to wear Indian dresses that they had made themselves and also get Salt from their own waters as their ancestors had done from time immemorial. This of course struck at the core of the colonial economy in a way that was very profound. If Indians only bought Indian made things and produced what they consumed then both the British colonial trading houses and their local agents will be out of business. From wanting to determine what they produced and consumed these Indians will (as indeed it came to pass) eventually demand to be their own rulers.

In the early years she suffered all kinds of derision. She was ridiculed as 'the tree woman' by those blinded by their financial interest in turning all lands into money regardless of the impact on the people, environment and the future of our cities and countries as a whole. Africa's governing elite from Independence up to now are dominated by ideas of 'modernisation' which ideologically they mean not just industrialisation, agricultural mechanisation and building of cities but also cultural westernisation: the aping of everything western especially western habits of crass materialism. Even when conscious groups in the West have woken up to the dangers that such a life style posed to their long-term existence and that of humanity our development planners are still stuck at classical modernisation at all cost. Thus people like Wangari who dared to raise environmental concerns were seen as enemies of progress and development. The state murder of Writer and environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa and his 8 other colleagues by Abacha in Nigeria is a demonstration of how dangerous being an environmentalist is in Africa. Wangari's tree planting forced her on collision course against powerful vested interests of private land lords, land grabbers in government and their business friends, big local companies (often owned by powerful politicians or controlled by their cronies) and multinational corporations all united around profiting and profiteering from Land regardless of the impact on people and environment. But she became a champion of the urban poor in their ghettoes and slums and rural masses and their insecure and constantly threatened tenure of smallholdings.

From Tree planting she moved on to Land reform, town and country planning issues, rights of users, demands for open green spaces for the public, preservation of historic and heritage sites, etc. In all these fronts Wangari and her growing supporters found bureaucratic obstacles and official hostility. It became clear that the freedom to plant trees and the right of poor people to decent housing and farmers' right to grow crops they like on lands handed down from generation to generation are directly related to the quality of governance, its legitimacy and its respect for its peoples. Tree planting like the right to clean drinking water or education and health services were intricately linked to democratic rights of the whole country. Environment like all issues that concern human beings are about power and politics. She and her constituencies became part of the political activism against the corruption and autocracy of the Moi/KANU power structure. But even in the opposition alliance, which finally defeated KANU Wangari Mathai, remains a difficult partner because she was not willing to sacrifice her environmental concerns to the powers that be. Even though she is now a minister in government that position has not hindered her and she remains one of few Ministers in the NARC government that is still regarded as being true to their convictions. For many it did not take them long to abandon their principles in favour of their new comforts and privileges of office.

By this honour Wangari has shown that you do not have to sell your soul in order to be successful in politics. As many had rightly pointed out her Nobel Laureate is also a positive celebration of the African Woman, Salt of the earth, the solid foundation of our communities and societies whose labour remains largely unpaid for and often unrecognised. But above all else it is an inspiration to all those who still value principles and selfless commitment to public good.

Congratulations, Mama Wangari.

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

The self-chosen prophet of the World's self-anointed 'Political God' (paraphrasing President Mugabe's recent blunt remarks at the UN General Assembly) otherwise known as Tony Blair, British Prime Minister, is on a mercy mission to Africa. Yesterday he was in Sudan to add whatever is left of British diplomatic and political pressures and his hugely depleted arsenal of personal influence on the Al Bashir regime to stop killing its own citizens. It is very difficult to know who the Khartoum government really responds to, therefore all kinds of pressure needs to be brought to bear from all corners. Why they would listen to Blair I don't know but it gives good footage for Blair's public at home who have become too suspicious of their Prime Minister.

From Sudan Tony moved on to Addis-Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia and head quarters of the African Union. He is attending a meeting of the Commission that he had set up to advise him on his missionary interest in Africa: Blair Commission for Africa.

It is very unAfrican not to show empathy to a man who had recently been hospitalized (Tony has just undergone a 'minor' heart operation) who cares so much about Africa that he did not put off this meeting even though people would have understood if he did. So I must say Pole, Bwana Blair! Karibu Afrika!

I hope the lights in the various rooms where he would be meeting his African hosts will be brightly lit and he would be putting on the best magnifying lenses that Her Majesty's Health service can provide so that he can distinguish between these Black people in suits! We would not want him to make the same 'mistake' as his hapless Foreign Minister, Jack Straw, who had shaken the hands of President Mugabe at the UN General Assembly apparently without realizing it was him! One would have thought that given the priority the British government had disproportionately given to encouraging 'regime change' in Zimbabwe and demonizing President Mugabe the British Foreign Minister will recognize him, lit room or unlit! Perhaps David Blunket, the British Home Office Secretary and enforcer of tough immigration rules and other authoritarian law and order regulations, is not the only member of the cabinet visually challenged. I am hoping that Mr. Blair, a great believer in spin that he is would have committed to memory the image of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, President Benjamin Mkapa, the ECA Executive Secretary, Dr KY Amoako and other eminent dark people on the Commission that he will be meeting. Maybe they could make it easier for him by wearing nametags!

The Addis meeting is the first the Commission is holding in Africa since Blair set it up. But holding this session in Africa does not detract from the cynicism that has continued to dodge this commission which many believe to be yet another liberal-do-gooder interventionism manufactured in Europe (London, or more precisely NO 10 Downing Street, in this case). Africans did not decide the agenda and terms of reference of the commission. Blair did not bother to ask many Africans if they wanted yet another Commission on the challenges of our development. If analysis, good intentions and promises alone can deliver, every African will be living in paradise. Why did Blair have to set up another Commission when he was one of the G8 leaders who had encouraged Mbeki and Obasanjo and the other so called Group of 5 African states to be running around with NEPAD (KNEEPAD to critics like me) from one G8 meeting to the other. The African leaders are still on their knees while Blair has removed his pad and has now moved on to his own Commission.

The initial cynicism by many was countered by supporters of Blair's missionary activities as too pessimistic and too hypercritical. They also point at the prospect of Britain and Blair (if he is still British Prime Minster) heading both the EU and the G8 next year as providing opportunity to put Africa at the center stage internationally.

I have no doubt that in his own way Blair does care about Africa (after all did he not declare us 'a scar on the conscience of the world' in a famous triumphalist Labour party conference speech a few years ago). It is what that care translates into that worries me. Does he care more for African children and women than he does for those Iraqis that he and his American gangster boss, Bush, are killing everyday in the name of liberation? It should worry us that his tunnel vision of the world is being transplanted on to Africa. This is a man who believes that he is always right and even when he is proven to have lied or be mistaken he (allegedly the most openly religious Prime Minister in modern British politics) is unwilling to say sorry, let alone show remorse and ask for forgiveness. To be fair, many Africans will recognise that 'know all' mentality in many of our own dealers who like to call themselves leaders across this continent.

Therefore even if one is to suspend disbelief for the time being and give the Blair Commission a hearing because it is coming from Blair, the credibility deficit will not go away. Why should Africans and the rest of the world believe in the innate goodness and honest motives of a Prime Minister distrusted by his own party and country? The messenger has become the message.

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

When in 2002 the crumbling Moi and KANU regime in Kenya nominated, with obvious orchestration from President MOI (a.k.a. MY OWN INTEREST), the son of the former founding President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, as its presidential candidate, I was one of many outside observers who commented that the old Fox was desperate and desperately hanging unto any straws.

Uhuru, the anointed one, was a relative new comer to Kenyan politics and had nothing going for him other than his surname. His first foray into politics was both a personal disaster and comeuppance to Moi/KANU for taking the loyalty of Kenyan voters for granted assuming that the people of Gatundu, the Kenyatta constituency, will vote for anybody or anything, for that matter as long as Kenyatta was the last name. In 1997 Uhuru contested and lost most embarrassingly to a relatively unknown Nairobi architect, Mwihia, in a great electoral upset. Many felt that Uhuru’s political end came from the beginning and predicted his sunset before it even rose.

To choose someone who could not even deliver his father’s feudal estate as a presidential candidate, five years later, was indeed a sign of desperation. Needless to say that Uhuru and KANU deservingly lost that election to an overwhelming desire for democratic change by Kenyans that produced the current multiparty alliance government led by President Mwai Kibaki.

Not a few analysts and observers thought that the unwilling politician (pressed by family, Moi and KANU interests) that Uhuru was he would gracefully retire from politics and go back to the family business that he understood better. But he has hung on and he seems to be gaining both in confidence and acquiring personal political credibility that may yet make him a viable alternative leader for the country. Thanks to the unbridled ambitions of various fat egos in the NARC alliance the Kibaki government is virtually in paralysis and is increasingly forced to rely on KANU direct or indirect support to thwart his alliance partners. The exasperation of the jubilant and triumphalist electorate of 2002 is such that many are beginning to look back at KANU years as probably ‘not too bad after all’. Even those who will not go that far may say with extreme despair that ‘this is not what we expected’ and some will even argue that ‘the new lot are as bad as KANU’. Politics of despair works in favour of a shrewd opposition. Since most of the big parties are in the governing alliance this leaves KANU as the only credible formal political opposition. Uhuru accepted his defeat most gracefully and one must say that even Moi disengaged himself in a surprisingly dignified way much to the pleasant surprise of many critics who thought that the Old man would not go out peacefully. Since 2002 Uhuru seemed to have been putting his personal stamp and authority on KANU in a moderate reform agenda to ease out the Old guard, exorcise Moi’s ghost and also show Kenyans that he is much more than just his illustrious surname.

Take his recent frank statement to a KANU meeting apologising to Kenyans for the mistakes and wrongs done by KANU in its 40 years strangle hold on the politics, economy and society of Kenya. According to a BBC report ‘Mr Kenyatta noted a long list of acts KANU could be held responsible for. These included the repression of opposition activists, the lack of government accountability and politically motivated tribal clashes’. Quoting Uhuru directly: "I offer my most sincere apology to all Kenyans for mistakes made during the tenure of our party and call upon our members to join in this apology,"

How many politicians on this continent will be this humble and honest? Would a Babangida in Nigeria who robbed and ruined the country for 8 years and is now clamouring to return to finish his demolition job be contrite enough to say ‘sorry’? Someone who annulled a democratic election and has never explained to the public is now hoping to bribe his way back to power through democracy without remorse or shame or even sense of irony! 10 years after Genocide in Rwanda many MRND leaders and their allies in the clergy and other apologists continue to deny the Genocide and despite many of them professing religious faith have never expressed remorse let alone ask for forgiveness. IN Uganda how many of those anti Museveni Multi partyists who are rightly criticising the government and struggling against its growing excesses have ever taken the time to accept their own past responsibilities?

The queries are endless about the lack of political responsibility by both government and opposition in Africa. Many of our Opposition politicians think all they have to do is just oppose. But the opposition of today could be the government of tomorrow or in some cases were the government of yesterday. What kind of democracy is it that we are trying to build where governments (previous, present or future) do no wrong?

Uhuru’s honest confrontation with the ghosts of KANU past, whatever his motivations, is a breath of fresh air.

I disagree with him when in the same meeting he reportedly insisted that the responsibility is not collective. Politically it was a party based regime therefore KANU cannot claim successes without owning up to the failures too. However I am in full agreement with him in his "… call upon all individuals - present or past... responsible for those acts and omissions which so much aggrieved Kenyans to publicly own up, offer their individual apologies and seek forgiveness from the people of Kenya," How many politicians in government and outside of government will take up the challenge for political responsibility for their actions or inactions?

Last week in Nairobi at a summit of the leaders of the East African Community (EAC) countries the envisaged political federation of the region was given a new push. A committee has been set up to look at the modalities and submit its report to an ordinary summit of the leaders to be held November 30 this year.

This is a landmark progressive development with implications for other regions of Africa (ECOWAS, SADC, IGADD, etc) and the whole of Africa through the African Union. It is a good example that should spread and do so quickly. Unfortunately the media in the region and outside of it are not giving the matter the due consideration it deserves.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a firm believer in the federation, was so incensed by the media's lukewarm attitude that he branded Ugandan journalism and journalists 'useless' for not giving proper coverage to the issue. As a freelance member of the profession I will not go as far as the president who is not known for saying 'room for improvement ' where 'very bad' will fit. I don't think the local media is 'useless' instead I will say that it suffers from two serious (but politically curable) diseases: petty localism and external ideological dependence.

One makes it grab as headlines any local issues no matter how silly. The other makes it victim of 'download the downloadable' from the internet about any other issues that are an 'inch' outside the national boundaries and even more embarrassingly sometimes, national issues outside of the capital city!

In the 1960s the former British colonies of East Africa through the East African Community (EAC) were a beacon of regional integration envied by other regions, not just in Africa but even internationally. This was a period of nationhood and nationalism as former colonies asserted their right to govern themselves and exercise sovereignty over their affairs. Supranational organisations that required loss of sovereignty were not popular. In practice they operated as multilateral bodies cooperating on specified issues rather than integration agencies.

The late AM Babu, a radical icon in African Nationalism from Zanzibar and later a minister for Economic Development in Tanzania after his small island country was united with mainland Tanzania in the mid 1960s, used to reminisce about the early years of the East African Federation and the Pan Africanist dreams that inspired many of them in those days. He told us how ministers from the West European countries used to ask him and his colleagues how they were managing their federation without too much squabbles. These were days when the European Union was little more than a trading cartel around steel. By that time the EAC already had a common educational system and university, a common airline, and a communications and transport system.

Unfortunately, as the crisis of neocolonialism deepened across Africa the real gains of the union, rather than be a continuing source of further integration, became victim of bad politics and governance leading to its break up in the 70s. But even after its break up the remnants of the federation, in spite of division of assets, survived through infrastructure, both human and material. For instance telephones between the three countries remained local but more than this trade, commerce and movement of people have continued to defy the colonial boundaries and the internecine power struggles between the leaders over many years.

Indeed the political instability of a country like Uganda for most of the 70s up to the mid 1980s and Kenya in the Moi years succeeded in creating new regionally aware people who have had to live outside their countries among their neighbours. Many of the leaders were educated in each other's countries and therefore made friends across the region. This people to people contact and the force of interactive economic activities ensured that regionalism continued to survive in spite of the state elite. For instance Museveni remains popular in Tanzania especially in his old University of Dar es Salaam whereas Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa is more popular at Makere University. Many of the political leaders and activists were contemporaries at these universities.

After the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979 mostly through the efforts of the Tanzania Army and Ugandan exile groups based in Tanzania it was hoped that EAC would return to its glory days. But those were times when Kenya was a cold war darling of the West and had delusions of surviving and doing better than her neighbours. So ideological suspicions did not help rebuild the Union. The Obote 2 regime was also too unstable internally to be a credible regional player.

However with relative stability returning to Uganda from the late 80s under Museveni the idea of a renewed EAC began to flourish. Moi's Kenya, though the regional economic power with more to gain from further integration, remained suspicious of its neighbours and for much of the 80s and early 90s Kenya's reluctance slowed the movement back to integration. But Kenya was fast losing its 'oasis in an ocean of crisis' status as Uganda under Museveni became a new darling of the West with Aid money and 'generous' IMF/World Bank facilities turning the once basket case of Africa into another 'miracle'.

At the same time the pressures of globalisation were beginning to take their toll just as the cold war was thawing after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Like in all regions of the world the East African states were being driven by the forces of economic necessity in a predatory globalisation to move closer to each other. Consequently ideological and political suspicions were thrown aside as new efforts took place to restart the romance long suspended between the states. This culminated in the East African Cooperation treaty.

By this time Museveni's revolutionism that Moi had feared had become an economic counter-revolution with vestiges of his revolutionary past only surviving in his no party movement politics. Tanzania had also abandoned its Uhuru Na Ujama as privatization took roots and historical anti capitalist ideology of the country turned against collectivist solutions deemed socialist. The economic convergence of the states made it easier for them to see and deepen their integration efforts. Collective survival dictates the tempo.

There were cautious steps initially in order to avoid problems of the past and rebuild bridges but progress has been incremental since the late 1990s. The EAC has a parliament appointed from among elected legislatures in all the three countries. It has agreed to set up an East African court. It has signed Custom Union agreements and has a timetable for a common market and monetary Union. The final bloc in its regional integration efforts is a political federation of the states. It has also set conditions under which other states in the region can ascend, to membership. Rwanda, after its elections last year, should not have any obstacles in its ascension to full membership. If Burundi's peace process culminates in an elected government acceptable to the people it should also be able to gain full membership.

The bigger prize should have been the DRC but in the current circumstances one has grave doubts. However some of its regions, especially the volatile Eastern region, are culturally and economically part of the EAC therefore some real politic will be needed to accommodate that reality.

Uganda, that was the bane of the old EAC, has been very upfront and almost impatient in the current drive. In a twist to history, Tanzania that has been the home to both regionalism and Pan Africanism in the region, later became the one slowing down things. This was mainly due to the relative weakness of its emergent bourgeois interests who feared that Kenya capitalists would swallow them up.

There are many challenges ahead but regional federation is indispensable for a Pan African Union envisaged by the Constitutive Act of the African Union.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Today the Security Council of the United Nation is meeting to discuss the pitiful situation in Darfur. The same body had given the Government of Sudan an ultimatum of one month (which ended Tuesday 31 August) to disarm its killer allies, the Janjaweed Militias, that have been running rampage with impunity in the Western region of the country.

Many independent observers, humanitarian NGOs and concerned people doubted then that the Sudan government would meet this deadline or even had any intention of doing so. The suspicion was that the government would use that time, albeit a short one, to gain more time and pretend it was doing something in order to ease the mounting diplomatic pressures on it.

The UN resolution was not just about the Government of Sudan - it also called upon the armed rebels to observe a ceasefire and cease any violence against innocent civilians. Further the resolution called for active resumption of peace talks under the auspices of the African Union and broad support for the AU's peace monitors.

One month later has there been any positive development to assuage the doubters? The sad answer is a definitive “No”. The humanitarian crisis continues to worsen for the people of Darfur and all kinds of humanitarian agencies are feeding fat on their misery through endless appeals, a huge chunk of which may not reach Darfur. On the political front, there have been more talks about talks than a real political breakthrough in addressing the political issues behind the conflict.

The Abuja talks hosted by General Obasanjo as Chair of the AU and also Chair of the AU peace and Security Council is more or less in impasse. There were lots of motions without movement. However in order to keep the efforts on track a lot of diplomatic speak is being employed to dress up the situation and talk up little gains.

The small gains include, one, the rebels attended the Abuja talks at senior level thereby abandoning their initial misguided belligerency in boycotting a previous AU talk in Addis in July. Two, the Sudan government by sitting at the table with the rebels, has diplomatically and politically acknowledged that it was recognising rebel political groups even if it does not recognise their aims. Three, the meeting also offered opportunity for the AU and others interested in the Sudan conflict to learn more about the complexity of the many conflicts in the Sudan.

Many had (wrongly for years) seen Sudan only in terms of its Arab/African fault lines or the religious prism of Islam/ Christianity. In Darfur these assumptions take different permutations. Also many naively assume that peace will break out once the SPLA and Khartoum long-negotiated peace deal takes full effect. While the North/South conflict may have the most prominence internationally Sudan has been fighting all kinds of bitter wars on many fronts with all kinds of marginalized and disaffected sections of its huge country, the largest on the African continent. That simplistic understanding of Sudan has led many well-meaning peace initiatives by different African states and other members of the international community to collapse.

However the Arab/African dynamics of the conflict is threatening the effectiveness of AU action and seriously endangering its consensus. It is playing into the hands of militants in the conflict especially in Khartoum. So what would the UN Security Council be deciding today on Darfur? China and Russia and Arab allies of Sudan including some African states, ignobly blocked a more censorious resolution that would have made sanctions mandatory if Khartoum failed to deliver. Now there will be further negotiations on what to do.

Allies of Khartoum will continue to insist that it is doing enough and willing to do more but that the time was short. Its opponents will retort that it has no intention of doing anything but merely buying more time to defeat or considerably weaken the rebels militarily and also intimidate the civilians into submission. The evidence for the past one-month does not augur well for the government.

The case for a more effective pressure to be brought to bear on the government is clear. While the UN's support for the AU effort is most desirable it is also important that the AU's engagement be more robust. It should move beyond peace monitoring to peace -making and enforcement. It has given too much room for Khartoum to bog it down in procedural and administrative issues. The constitutive Act of the Union unlearnt the dubious notion of 'territorial integrity and sovereignty ' of the old OAU which became the Dictators' charter. Thus there are now clear grounds under which the Union can intervene in the 'internal affairs' of its member states. The Darfur situation is a clear test of Africa's commitment to new ways of governance and solidarity.

Even if for political reasons the AU may not want to see the situation in Darfur as 'genocide', by any definition, it is a gross violation and systematic abuse of rights of Darfur Africans on a mass scale.

The AU cannot just be negotiating small numbers of troops with Khartoum but must be more aggressive in enforcing its mandate. This will mean more troops, which a number of states have indicated they are willing and able to contribute. A number of human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch have called for Chapter VII of the UN charter to be invoked so that the AU troops on the ground can be increased and its mandate expanded to include protection of civilians.

The silenced voices of those killed and being killed right now and the agony of those fleeing death stalking their villages and towns, not to talk of the agony of the innocent women being raped and children being traumatised in Darfur demands no more words or yet another plan but direct enforceable action against the Janjaweed militias. Asking or relying on the Government of Sudan to do this will be like asking turkeys to vote for an early Christmas. The time for action is now: no more excuses from Khartoum.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

"A prophet has honour" as the saying goes - but "not in his village" is the concluding refrain. How else could one begin to understand the recent tragedy that befell prominent African literary and political figure, Ngugi wa Thiongo and his wife on their maiden visit to Kenya meant to end Ngugi's almost two decades of exile from the dictatorship of the KANU regime that had detained him without trial and persecuted him into and even in exile.

They were violently attacked and viciously robbed in the apartment they were staying in -a relatively secure area of Nairobi, a city that is dubiously mimicking the Nigerian commercial city of Lagos or South Africa's Joburg in notoriety. It is no wonder that Nairobi is now infamously referred to by residents as Nairobbery!

The couple took a very brave and courageous stance of disclosing the full details of their ordeal, which included the rape of Ngugi’s wife. What a way to be welcomed back to a country that you have given so much of your life, energies and resources for. It is an Afropessimist’s wish come through and true!

Our hearts go out to Ngugi and his partner and we send our solidarity at this grave hour and wish them the courage and conviction to weather this storm. If Ngugi had imagined this and written it in one of his novels or political essays many people would have dismissed it as fantasy. It is indeed true that life is, unfortunately, often stranger than fiction.

If this had happened during the nightmarish days of the Moi dictatorship many, including myself, would have been quick to point to the ruling regime and its hirelings as the culprits, thereby giving the criminal attack a political colouring. While Ngugi may not be a card carrying member of either the ruling Rainbow Alliance parties or any of the formal opposition parties no one is seriously suggesting that the attack was politically motivated. From all the reports of his hugely welcomed return home there has been nothing to suggest that he has uttered or done anything to ‘provoke’ this attack.

Despite several years of exile and political activism his return had largely been non political, to the great disappointment of many of his former comrades and youthful activists who had hoped that Ngugi's temporary return would fuel some political fires and provide a focus for more sustainable opposition to the faltering leadership of the Rainbow politicians. But Ngugi had stuck to his literary, cultural and academic activities.

So one has to conclude that the attack was criminal rather than partisan. However it does have many political implications. If a prominent "son of the soil" well known locally and internationally cannot feel and be secure in his native capital city then who on earth is safe in that city? Kenya has become like Nigeria where the minister of Justice was murdered by hired killers and up to now the killers and their sponsors "have not been found".

If a Minister of Justice cannot get justice where is the rule of law in that country? Who will blame Ngugi if he goes back to the U.S. and never makes any attempt to return to Kenya again? I hope and trust that this tragic incident will not diminish their political activism and vision for a secure and democratic Kenya in a humane world.

Crime against persons and property and the gratuitous violence that often attend them are serious problems for many African countries. Standard left-wing, progressive views will try to explain away these things as symptoms of deeper structural problems of inequalities and injustices in "the system" whereas right-wing persons will see these as "just criminals who deserve no sympathy". I don't know whether it is old age catching up with me but I am beginning to find faults with many of my comrades on the left. I am still not comfortable with the rightist instinct to personalize the issues but I am more and more drawn to "personal responsibility" of the offenders no matter the circumstances.

Nobody forced those people to plan and execute their violent crime against Ngugi and his partner. Worse still they needed not rape their victim and the physical torture suffered by both of them were simply gratuitous. The physical wounds will heal but the psychological stress and trauma will take long for both his partner and Ngugi.

Let us hope that their courage in not hiding the horrible truth may actually help them to deal with it in their private lives and may also provoke further action and debate on general insecurity across the country but especially the gender dimensions of generalized violence in many of our countries. Rape remains a taboo topic in many of our societies yet it is taking place everyday in all kinds of situations, armed robbery being one of the extreme contexts including war. It is about time we stop the denials and defensiveness around it and face it squarely: Rape is worse than death therefore its perpetrators must be dealt with sternly and victims supported by various means.
Pole Sana, to our good friend, Ngugi, and his partner.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The untrammelled exercise of power, without legal, political or moral restraint is the bane of many countries across Africa. That is why the abuse of power tends to manifest itself in a more grimly way amongst our peoples. It is not that politicians in other societies are not wilful or whimsical, but there are other institutions that can checkmate them or restrain them and control their excesses.

These will include the formal separation of powers between the Executive, Judiciary and Legislative functions. But outside of that are other autonomous and independent institutions and organisations that offer alternative centres of power and consensus building on values and goals of their society. They include vibrant political parties whether in government or opposition, independent media, religious institutions, academia and intelligentsia and above all an active citizenship including vocal public figures and dynamic civil society organisations at various levels in the society. All these will make varying claims on a democratic system that often restrain and engage with those in power.

I say often because sometimes there may be a dissonance between these forces and things may (and do) break down. But the essence of a democratic state is that periods of extreme pressures on the system tend to be temporary and society can look forward to a peaceful resolution of differences and return to the normal dynamic chaos of a democratic society.

There is nothing in Sudan that a genuine people-driven democratic governance cannot help to resolve. I say democratic governance not the more fashionable 'good governance' much beloved by NGOs and Donors. You can have a good government without it being essentially democratic.

The continuing tragedy in Darfur makes clear the need for democratic governance. If their government treated all Sudanese as equal citizens with the same rights and obligations, the impunity with which one section of the community can kill or exterminate another section of the society would not have risen. If the government of Sudan is one that cares about its people it will not be aiding and abetting these sectarian killings and hate campaigns.

Furthermore, if there are reasonable hopes for those who desire a change of government in Khartoum (as a means of effecting policy changes) then a resort to arms could have been avoided. This is not in defence of violent changes but a restatement of the old dictum: 'Those who make peaceful changes impossible make violent change inevitable'.

It is a central problem of the Sudan that all attempts at peaceful resolution always take for granted the existence of the Khartoum government of the day. The peace deals then become regime specific rather than for all Sudan. A comprehensive settlement in the Sudan has to be one driven not by the needs of the government of the day and armed groups they consider threats but all Sudanese otherwise rebel groups will continuously become more militant. Africa has had too many bitter and painful experiences of many pretenders to power and false messiahs, offering themselves and their rebel groups as liberators only to become worse than those they claim they have come to liberate people from. Therefore as we rightly criticize the government of Sudan for abrogating its responsibility to defend all its citizens and maintain the rule of law we should also look critically at the rebels, their promises, their actions and what alternative vision of society they are offering.

If the government is a killer government what are the rebels doing to protect the victims? How are people despite the emergencies and death that surround them being involved in decisions? It cannot be enough that rebel groups build good will from the badness of the government. The stress should shift from what they are opposing to what they actually stand for.

Talks between the government and the Darfur rebels are due to begin in two weeks in Abuja under the auspices of President Obasanjo, who is both Chair of the Peace and Security Council and the African Union. The SLA and JEM have both said they would attend after failing to show up in a previous AU brokered talks in Addis.

The Sudan Government is very good at showing itself as a victim of conspiracies. They play whatever music suits the ears of their audience. In AU circles they play up Pan Africanism and the anti imperialist card while arming one section of Africans in their country to exterminate another set of Africans! When they are in the Arab League they play to Pan Arabism and Islam. It is not surprising that the recent Arab League meeting came out in support of Khartoum and made a plea for more time for Sudan to comply with the UN deadline of the end of this month. Why should the government have more time to continue to kill its citizens?

And they have a baby face Foreign Minister, well-spoken Dr Mustafa Ismail, to sell their bad case diplomatically and politically. I first met the urbane Dentist early in 1994. I had gone to persuade the government of Sudan to attend the 7th PAC in Kampala. They had been very suspicious of our efforts largely due to the bad relationship between Kampala and Khartoum. Khartoum was not happy that Dr John Garang and the SPLA were being given prominent platforms in the Congress.

Ten years on Mustafa has emerged as the star of Bashir's killer regime while his former mentor, Dr Al Turabi is languishing in detention; Bashir is holding hands with Garang; Kampala and Khartoum have restored diplomatic relations and my good friend, Mustafa, has changed masters without anyone noticing! He may have smoothed his way from Turabi to Bashir effortlessly, but the rest of the world should not be that gullible. It is obvious that Khartoum is using talks to delay any meaningful action and the rebels will be colluding in that if they do not actively engage with the peace process.

Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur shows no signs of abating at the same time as the national, regional and international politics of the conflict take on new dimensions.

Last week the UN finally agreed to a watered down resolution requiring the Government of Sudan to disarm and bring to justice the leaders of the Janjaweed militia that have been killing, maiming, raping and destroying the peoples of western Sudan. There is a deadline of 30 days. A stronger version of the UN resolution including the threat of imposition of sanctions had to be modified thanks to the combined opposition of China and Russia at the Security Council and also other dubious allies of the Sudan government in the General Assembly, principally Arab and Muslim states and their fellow travellers.

China's interest is quite clear. Its national oil company is the largest foreign investor in the new oil industry of Sudan. Russia is always cautious about UN intervention and censure against governments maltreating their own peoples. The Russian army has been committing atrocities in Chechnya for years without many cries from the UN or the usual self-appointed global policemen and guarantors of international peace and security.

The position of the Arab and Muslim countries is one informed by a herd instinct and a long historical misunderstanding of the basis of conflict in the Sudan. The herd instinct is further enhanced by the current global Islamophobia consequent to 9/11 and the criminalisation of every Muslim as an Al Qaeda suspect. The War against Afghanistan/ Iraq and the continuing tragedy of Iraq under the Anglo-American occupation has underpinned this 'need' for Muslims to stick together. Since Sudan is considered a Muslim country, therefore it must be supported against its enemies even if those 'enemies' happen to be the majority of her own citizens.

The racialist aspect of the Sudan conflict is one that sees the country as an Arab country therefore both North African and Middle East Arab states must express solidarity with it, right or wrong.

Both the religious and racial allies of Khartoum are wrong. Any Muslim should be outraged at what the NIF government has been doing in Sudan since 1989 when it came to power. Muslims must stop associating Islam with dictatorial regimes. In Darfur the Arab Militia, aided and abetted by the Khartoum government marauding through villages and towns and destroying people and property is supposedly Muslim. The peoples of Western Sudan that are victims of Khartoum and the Janjaweed are all Muslims too. So which kind of Islamism is this that kills fellow Muslims?

The Arabist view of Sudan is the most ridiculous. How many of these so-called Sudanese Arabs are really Arabs? The name of the country itself is a good give away: Balad al Sud. It means Land of the Blacks. Many are Arabised but not really Arabs and have taken to that identity as part of the power politics in the country and its unequal historical ties with Egypt and other Arab countries. In Darfur you will even find a significant part of the population to be of West African origin.

While identity, religion, race and other social factors may be part of the conflagration, the centre of it is power - unaccountable and illegitimate power exercised by a tiny oligarchy in the military, merchant families, hegemonic Muslim sects and clergy and their political infrastructure and networks. Darfur is for instance a victim of the split within the National Islamic Front personified by detained former spiritual leader of the organisation, Dr Hassan Al Turabi and his former protégé, General Omar Al Bashir, the President. Al Turabi's support is very strong in Darfur and because of that Darfur is enemy territory for the government.

What kind of intervention will work in Darfur? The American poodle in Britain, Mr. Tory Blair, is already talking about moral obligation to intervene and is reportedly considering sending British troops. This will not help in any way. Any direct British or American military intervention will not be helpful because it will muddy the waters given their bad record in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Supposedly Christian crusaders against allegedly Muslim soldiers again? Whose interest will this serve?

The Darfur crisis is a great opportunity for the new AU to show that it is really different from the old OAU. The Chairperson, Konare, has been upfront on the Darfur situation and he needs the support of Africa's leaders and the rest of the international community. The peace monitor group the AU has sent into Darfur is too small. And even smaller still are the 300 member troops that are supposed to guard them and also protect civilian victims. The mandate needs to be expanded to include peace keeping and peace enforcement including disarming, arresting and bringing to trial the perpetrators of the killings. The UN and other members of the international community who want to help should back the AU effort not to set up parallel initiatives.

Darfur is Africa's problem and the AU must show the leadership. One symbolic action that will show Khartoum that Africa means 'Never again' to genocide is to stop Khartoum from hosting the next AU summit as planned. How can we confer such diplomatic and political legitimacy on a government that is killing its own citizens?

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Last week, along with a group of about 40 (mostly Africans in Britain) I was a guest at a very beautiful stately guest house, Cumberland Lodge, amidst the luscious green of the picturesque English country side near the Windsor Castle, one of the many palaces of the English crown dotted across the United Kingdom. It is not far from London, if the Lagos -like traffic congestion allows you, but it is a very different and serene place, away from the concrete jungle and human automatons that London is fast becoming.

We were joking among ourselves with some of the other Africans in our group that these Basungus really do not know what a village is. There is electricity, pipe borne water, telephone (though the mobile connection was epileptic, maybe deliberately so to preserve the quiet atmosphere), good tarred roads, some of them connecting just fields or a few houses. There is even internet service for God's sake. With all these in Africa it qualifies to be the nation's capital! Anyway wealth and poverty like urban and rural divide, are merely relative.

But our purpose for invading the tranquil 'village' was not tourism but a consultative meeting of Africans in Britain under the auspices of the Royal Africa Society (RAS). The aim was to find ways and means of making Africans living in the United Kingdom to dialogue among themselves, build some consensus and devise strategies to make themselves more effective players in the affairs of their host community, Britain. People came from different walks of life and originally from different regions of Africa: business, academia, media, NGO and others.

The immediate background to the meeting (and sponsors of the gathering) is the Blair Commission for Africa. It was part of its consultation with different African constituencies. However both the RAS (under its new Africaphile Director, Richard Dowden ) and Africans working with it were clear that the meeting was about wider issues of Africans in Britain. To the extent that the Blair Commission came into it, it is merely as a strategic entry point for Africans in Britain to influence British policy towards Africa.

If the sole object of the meeting was about Blair's commission I doubt if many of the Africans there would have bothered at all. I know I wouldn't have. This because my view of the commission has been clear from the start. I do not think that we need another report on Africa's condition, we have enough gory details around. What Africa needs is not another bonanza for consultants and bureaucrats to feed off our misery but action to remedy the situation. Africa does not need new promises but fulfilment of old ones both those we made to ourselves and the ones others made to us.

I do not think that the Blair commission will make any difference to Africa in spite of the plenty of good will that it may generate because of Blair's presidency of both the European Union and the G8 in 2005. It is clear that Blair wants to showcase Africa but at a time when his international credibility (as a result of his reactionary cheering of Bush and amoral lack of remorse) is in tatters. Who will listen to him? Even if they do how many will believe him?

But in spite of my reservations I see the British joint presidency of these key multilateral institutions as providing opportunity for engagement by a number of civil society activists in Britain. The first beneficiaries of this will be the big British international NGOs in the broad development, humanitarian and conflict resolution lobbies. Their activities and priorities are often shaped by humanitarian emergencies (on which they feed) and the policies of the day so they will make extra miles from Blair's showcasing of Africa.

Another set of actors will be African organisations who are a bit visible in Britain and could engage in more guilt tripping of their fellow middle class liberals and thereby gain more resources and/or recognition as a result of the Africa euphoria during Blair's dual presidency. Even African journalists and British journalists with a focus on Africa will find that they are in more demand.

But if thoughtfully and strategically worked out the greatest potential of the Blair Commission could be to renew the so far untapped (beyond individual remittances) potential of the huge African Diaspora in the United Kingdom to become effective players at various policy levels. They have been around for a long time. They are in Britain but many do not feel part of it. Consequently the British government makes policies about Africa with little or no input from this constituency. And worse still African governments relate to the British government as if they do not have people in Britain.

The way some of these Diaspora organisations behave may also make one doubt where their feet are, whether in Africa and Britain. Some of them think because they are in the Diaspora they know best, the same arrogant attitudes they criticise Europeans about. Others think they should have the first and last say on any thing related to Africa and Africans without any mandate to do so from anybody. Still many take British government or NGO money and proclaim their independence! Another miserable lot proclaim revolution in Africa without the slightest idea of the conditions our peoples live in and are confronting. These kinds of posturing must stop.

Imagine the insult of Blair calling African leaders to advise him on Africa. Would an African leader set up a commission on Europe and ask European Presidents and Prime Ministers to serve in it? In the unlikely event that they say yes would you imagine such European leaders arriving in such an African capital without previous briefings from his or her own nationals and the EU intelligence, business , media, diplomatic, NGO and other sources. Would they be in Africa without meeting their nationals who are in that country? Yet this is what is happening with the Blair commission.

To the best of my knowledge Bob Geldof , with all his outbursts and outlandish ways, has been the only commissioner actively seeking engagement of Africans in the work of the commission. He has a track record of speaking truth to power internationally on global poverty, debt and suffering of the third world but Africa in particular. He often robs people the wrong way and sometimes comes across as crying more than the bereaved. He is also too hopeful about the Commission but at least he offers an entry point.

Africans in the Diaspora must learn not to throw the baby away with the birth water. They must engage as British residents and citizens, but more than that work in concert with African groups in Africa to engage the African leaders and others participating in the commission. If they wish to shave our head it should not be behind our backs.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]