Samir Amin examines the processes and impacts of the World Social Forum and considers whether it is after all a useful forum for popular struggles.

The undeniable success of the World Social Forums (and of the national and regional forums), from their first edition (Porto Allegre 2001) to their seventh (Nairobi 2007) shows that the formula met a real objective need, felt by many militants and movements engaged in their struggles against neo-liberalism and the aggression, including military aggression, of imperialism. In these struggles, movements and militants have much renewed their forms of organisation and active intervention in society.

Yes, the dominant political culture of the left had been marked in the 19th and 20th centuries by practices based on the hierarchical vertical organisation of parties, trade unions and associations. In the circumstances of the period the movements they stimulated – radical and reformist social transformations, revolutions, national liberations – transformed the world, in a direction generally favourable to the working classes. Nevertheless the limits and contradictions specific to these forms of action appeared strongly from the 1980-1990 period. The democratic deficiency of these forms, going as far as the self proclamation of 'vanguards' armed with 'scientific' knowledge and the 'exclusive effective' strategy, are at the root of later disappointments: reforms and revolutions brought to power regimes of which the least that can be said is that they frequently badly kept their promises, often degenerate, sometimes in criminal directions. These failures made possible the return to the offensive of dominant capital and imperialism as from the 1980-1990 period.

The moment of euphoria of capital and imperialism – which went onto the offensive under the banner of neo-liberalism and globalisation – was short lived, 1990-1995. Very quickly the working classes entered the struggle to resist this offensive.

Yes, in general, this first wave of struggle placed itself on the ground of retaliation to the offensive in all its multi-dimensionality: resistance to economic neo-liberalism, to the dismantling of social benefits, to police repression, to the military aggressions of the US and its allies. The chain of these grounds of resistance is continuous, and according to the local circumstances, struggles are deployed mainly on the grounds of the immediate challenge with which people are confronted. In this sense the demand for market regulation, the promotion of women’s rights, the defence of the environment, the defence of public services, for democracy, armed resistance to the aggression of the US and its allies in the Middle East (Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon) are in-dissociable from each other.

In these resistance struggles the peoples have innovated. Many of the old political forces of the organised left remained aloof from these first struggles, timid in face of the aggression, sometimes won over to the liberal and imperialist options. The movement was initiated by the 'new forces', sometimes almost 'spontaneously'. In their deployment, these forces promoted the fundamental principle of democratic practice : refusing the vertical hierarchy, promoting the horizontal forms of cooperation in action. This advance of democratic consciousness must be considered as progress of 'civilization'. To the extent that it is reflected in the social forums, these must therefore be considered as perfectly 'useful' for the development of the struggles in progress.

The resistance struggles have recorded indisputable victories. They have initiated the defeat of the offensive of capital and imperialism. The US project to control the planet militarily, which is necessary to guarantee the 'success' of the globalisation in place, the 'preventive' wars conducted to ensure its effectiveness (invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, occupation of Palestine, aggression against Lebanon) have already visibly held in check the political project of imperialism. The so-called neo-liberal economic and social project, designed to provide a strong and stable base for the accumulation of capital – ensuring the maximum rate of profit at any price – is, in the opinion of the very authorities who are its authors (World Bank, IMF, WTO, European Union), incapable of imposing its conditions. It is 'falling apart': the Doha round of the WTO round is in an impasse, the IMF in financial collapse. The menace of a sudden economic and financial crisis is on the agenda.

The challenge to which the struggling peoples are confronted is entirely situated in the answer they give to the question asked here, in the terms so forcefully expressed by François Houtart, moving up from the collective consciousness of the challenges to the construction of the active social agents of the transformation.

Obviously this challenge concerns, well beyond the forums, the peoples themselves. To what extent does the collective consciousness find its expression in such forums? It is certainly present in unequal degrees of maturity, as always in history, depending on the moments, the places and the movements concerned.
But beyond this, do the forums contribute to the necessary advance of consciousness, to the construction of agents of transformation? To which extent this collective consciousness is reflected within the social forums? We will attempt to reply to this question further on.

Progress is and will be difficult. Because it implies (i) the radicalisation of the struggles and (ii) their convergence in diversity (to use the formula of the World Forum for Alternatives) in joint action plans, which imply a strategic political vision, the definition of immediate and more distant objectives (the 'perspective' which defines the alternative). The radicalisation of the struggles is not the radicalisation of the rhetoric of their words, but their articulation to the alternative project which they propose to substitute for the systems of social power in place: constructing social hegemonies (class alliances and compromises) imposing themselves as alternatives to the social hegemonies in power (those of the alliances dominated by capital, imperialism and the local comprador classes in its service). Beyond a wave of 'coordination' of struggles (or even simply exchanges of views) which does not enable their dispersion to be transcended (and thereby their weakness), convergence can only be the product of a 'politicisation' (in the positive sense of the term) of the fragmented movements. 'Non-political civil society', an ideology imported straight from the US, which continues to wreak devastation, is fighting against this demand.

Convergence in diversity and radicalisation of struggles will find their expression in the unavoidable construction of stages allowing (i) advances in democratisation (conceived as an endless process and not as a 'blueprint', supplied by the model of western representative political democracy) associated with (and not dissociated from) social progress, and (ii), the affirmation of the sovereignty of states, nations and peoples, imposing forms of globalisation which are negotiated and not unilaterally imposed by capital and imperialism. These definitions of the content of the alternative construction are certainly not accepted by all.

Some believe that democracy (multi-party system and elections), be it dissociated from the social question (subject to the working of the market), is better than nothing. However the peoples of Asia and Africa do not appear on the whole inclined to fight for this form of democracy dissociated from social progress (and even in fact associated at the present moment with social regression). They often prefer to rally para-religious/ethnic movements which have very little democracy about them. It may be regretted, but it would be better to ask the question why. Democracy can be neither exported (by Europe) nor imposed (by the US). It can only be the product of the conquest by the peoples of the South through their struggles for social progress, as was (and is) the case in Europe.

The very mention of nation, national independence or sovereignty makes some people’s skin crawl. Sovereignism is almost always qualified as a vice of the past. The nation is to be thrown into the rubbish bin, moreover globalisation has already made it obsolete. This thesis which is popular among the European middle classes finds no echo in the South, nor in the US, nor Japan.

Transformation in stages does not exclude the affirmation of the prospect in the long term. For some, including the author of these lines, this transformation is that of the socialism of the 21st century; others refuse socialism, for them it is henceforth definitively polluted by its practice in the last century. But all the same, even if the principle of convergence is accepted, its implementation will be difficult. Because it is a case of reconciling (i)the advances in democratic practice acquired in and by the struggles (having to abandon the nostalgia for movements commanded by the 'vanguards') (ii)the requirements of unity in action, modest or ambitious depending on the local (national) situations.

The principle of necessary convergence is not accepted by all. Certain so-called autonomist currents, more or less inspired by post-modernist formulations, reject it. The movements they inspire must be respected for what they are, a frontline struggle. Some go as far as maintaining that the movement, although it is dispersed, is constructing the alternative by itself, going as far as claiming that the 'individual subject' is already on the way to becoming the agent of the transformation (the theoretical vision of Negri). However many powerful mass movements engaged in great struggles do not adhere to this theory. It can also be thought that organisations inherited from the past – political parties, trade unions, and so on – are capable of transforming themselves in the direction of the required democratic practice. The thinkers of the autonomist currents affirm they are able to change the world without taking power. History will tell if this is possible, or an illusion.

In any case, whether it is in big organisations or small ones, the conflict opposes the logic of struggle (which insists on its needs) to the logic of organisation (which insists on the interests put into play by the leaderships in place or waiting to seize the leadership, the participation in the dominant power in place, and thereby encourages 'opportunism').

Convergence cannot be constructed at the world or regional levels if it is not first put in place on the national levels because these define and manage the concrete challenges. It is at these levels that the swing in the social and political balance of power in favour of the working classes will or will not occur. The regional and world levels may reflect national advances, no doubt facilitate them (or at least not hinder them), but hardly more.

Advances in the directions opening the way to the construction of the alternative are taking place at the moment in Latin America, in contrast to their absence, or near absence, elsewhere, in Europe, Asia and Africa. These advances, in Brazil, in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and their visible possible coming success elsewhere – Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua – are precisely the product of the rationalisation of movements having reached the level of an effective critical mass, and their political convergence. These are revolutionary advances in the sense that they initiated the swing in the balance of social and political forces in favour of the working classes. Their success is due to their real practical answer associating the democracy of the management of the movements and the political focusing of their projects, overcoming the dispersion which dominates elsewhere.

Who could deny that the state powers that these advances have produced pose problems; that they risk getting bogged down under the pressure of external constraints and those of the local privileged classes? For all that, should the possibility that these changes (in power!), which open for the mass movements, be spurned? These powers will allow other advances, based on the association (and not on the dissociation) of the affirmation of national independence (vis-à-vis the US), of democratisation and social progress.

Elsewhere the image of reality, despite the struggles, is less promising. In Europe the priority given to the construction of the European Union encourages a slide towards social liberalism, the illusions being kept alive by the rhetoric of the third way, and of capitalism with a human face. Will the 'movement' succeed on its own in overcoming these handicaps? Personally I strongly doubt it and think that decisive changes in the orientation of the political power is a precondition, in particular the break with atlanticism (NATO is the enemy of the peoples of Europe). Others don’t think so. In Eastern Europe, fast on the way to becoming, in its real relations with Germany and Western Europe, the analogue to what was (and still is) Latin America in its relations with the USA, illusions are even greater.

In Asia and Africa we are seeing excesses which we qualify as culturalist and which feed the illusion of supposedly civilizational projects based on para-religious or ethnic gatherings. Here the talk of cultural diversity often comes to the help of this retreat into impasses. This talk is, moreover perfectly tolerated (even encouraged) by the capitalist and imperialist power.

It is necessary to know more at this point – how progressives have asserted themselves in Latin America, to know more about the reasons for the relative stagnation of the movements elsewhere, about their decline or defeat in certain cases. That should be the essential direction for numerous debates, in the forums and elsewhere. The world forums are meeting places and poorly equipped to provide an adequate framework for deepening these debates. The national and regional forums are or could be more suitable.

The proposals drawn up in the Bamako Appeal in January 2006 answered the call to give more importance to deepening the debates of this nature. They are only proposals and not imposed decisions. These were naturally refused on principle both by the extreme autonomist currents and by the mass of apolitical NGOs. But they are making their way elsewhere.

The World Social Forum Charter in no way forbids initiatives of the Bamako type, and the Bamako Appeal was moreover endorsed by Movements’ Assemblies . Nevertheless, this initiative irritated the WSF Secretariat. Why? Perhaps because it does not basically share the proposals contained in this appeal. Should we conclude from this that the secretariat aligned itself with apolitical NGOs (and perhaps the extreme autonomist currents) to close the forum to other currents of action? Who would deny that the document in question – drawn up by 200 participants in one day and a night – points out inadequacies, even contradictions. Should its drafters furthermore be accused of intellectual arrogance, of outmoded vanguardist attitudes, even of dangerous political motives? It would be necessary to show that the extremist autonomist currents produce nothing which is not the spontaneous, eloquent and coherent product of the direct expression of the masses, that the intellectuals who formulate the theses of these currents do not exist. It would be necessary to show that the apolitical NGOs do not hold views which, in fact, have an obvious political sense, in making their own the rhetoric of the system institutions: reduction of poverty, good governance and exacerbated culturalism.

The world forums have a history and a prehistory. They did not appear suddenly without preparation. François Houtart, Bernard Cassen and others have recalled the essential stages of this history, from the anti- Davos in Davos (1999) and other initiatives. The object of this paper is not to propose an assessment of their deployment over the last seven years. Even if one thinks that their success is certain and their impact real (which is our case); nevertheless emphasis must be put not on self-congratulation but on the weaknesses.

The authorities responsible for the actual management of the forums are various (secretariat, international council, leadership of the principal movements and NGOs represented). They are the focuses of power, by definition, as always, and it would be naïve to ignore it. Their often dominant concern is self assessment with respect to internal performance criteria, often of a very banal nature (quantity of participants, number, perhaps quality of the debates, direct material questions of organisation). The real criterion of assessment is external to the forums: do they contribute to facilitating the progress (rather than the stagnation, even the decline) of the struggles? It would be desirable that this dimension of the challenge find a greater echo in the assemblies and meetings organised by these authorities..

Taking the criticism a little further we venture to say that the world forums suffer from a growing imbalance in the presence of their participants. The forums, which are very costly in money and intellectual work, attract more NGOs (sometimes of course devoted to the support of the struggles) endowed with staff and financial means – those of the North, but also, in brutal terms, those of their Southern clientele – than the major movements in conflict. Hundreds of thousands of peasants engaged in fierce struggles, whole peoples confronting the machine guns and bombs of the imperialist occupier, sometimes make their voice heard here and there in a workshop. But many other organisations, sometimes insignificant in the scope of their action, dispose of workshops to make their propaganda. Let us speak frankly: some of these organisations are part of the system constituting safety valves rather than being part of the alternative. These failings of the world forums are also seen in the national forums. But here the immediate proximity of the forces in conflict with the existing order favours, at least potentially, the overcoming of the failings mentioned here.

The reconstruction of a front of countries and peoples from the South is one of the basic conditions for the emergence of another world, one not based on imperialist domination. Without in any way underestimating the importance of the transformations of all types which have originated in the societies of the North in the past and present, up to now these have remained harnessed to the imperialist wagon. One should therefore not be surprised that the great global transformations have originated in the revolt of the peoples of the peripheries, from the Russian revolution (the 'weak link' of the period) to the Chinese revolution and the non -aligned front (Bandung) which, for a moment, obliged imperialism to 'adjust itself' to demands which conflicted with the course of its expansion. This page, that of Bandung and of the Tri-continental (1955-1980), of a multi-polar globalisation, has been turned.

Since the conditions of globalisation in place preclude a remaking of Bandung, the current ruling classes of the countries of the South are trying to join this globalisation, which they sometimes hope to be able to change in their favour, but which they are not fighting. They divide into two groups of 'countries': those which have a national project (the nature of which – essentially capitalist but nuanced by concessions or their absence in favour of the working classes, but nevertheless in open or muted conflict with the imperialist strategies – may be discussed case by case), such as China or the emerging countries of Asia or Latin America; and those which have no project and agree to adjust unilaterally to the demands of the imperialist deployment (in this case they have compradore ruling classes). Variable geometry alliances are in the process of being constituted between the states (the governments), the emergence of which was seen within the WTO. The possibilities which these rapprochements can open up for the working class movements must not be disdained, but examined with open eyes.

Is a front of the peoples of the South, going well beyond the rapprochements between ruling classes, possible? The construction of this front remains difficult, handicapped as it is by the culturalist excesses here referred to, and by the confrontations they entail between peoples of the South (on pseudo-religious or pseudo-ethnic grounds). It would be less problematic if and to the extent that the states having a project would – under the pressure of their populations – evolve in a more resolutely anti-imperialist direction.

That implies that their projects free themselves from the rut of the illusion that resolutely and exclusively 'national capitalist' powers are in a position to influence imperialist globalisation in their favour and to enable their countries to become active agents of imperialist globalisation, participating in the fashioning of the global system, and not unilaterally adjusting to it. These illusions are still great and strengthened by nationalist rhetoric as well as that which encourages the emerging countries in the process of 'catching up' developed by the institutions in the service of imperialism. But to the extent that the facts refute these illusions, new popular and anti imperialist national blocks will be able to clear the way and facilitate the internationalism of peoples. It must be hoped that the progressive forces of the North will understand it and support it.

In conclusion it should be said that the future of the forums depends less on what happens within them than what develops elsewhere, in the peoples struggles and in the evolution of the geo-strategy of states. This does not lead to any pessimism about the forums, but it leads to modesty in assessing their achievements. In parallel then (and not in conflict) with the continuation of the forums militant actions, other forms of intervention are necessary, allowing the deepening of the debates and joint actions.

Since its creation in 1997, the World Forum for Alternatives has been engaged on this path. It is a network of numerous 'think-tanks' directly articulating social and political forces struggling against the system. It attempts to stimulate working groups (and not only exchanges of view) perhaps facilitating joint action fronts. For information: groups of trade unionists ('rebuilding the united labour front'), of peasants’ movements (imposing access to the land for the benefit of all peasants), of non-aligned political forces on the global policies of capital and imperialism, working on questions of international law or the reform of the United Nations system and the economic management systems of globalisation.

Many other national, regional and global networks are deploying praiseworthy efforts in comparable directions. We will not list them at length, but simply recall – as examples - what ATTAC represents in France, or the work of 'Focus on Global South', ARENA and so many others. It would be highly desirable, in the perspective of strengthening the effectiveness of the forums, that a greater presence of these programmes be reflected in the forums.

* Samir Amin is an Egyptian political thinker and is a director of the in Dakar, Senegal. He has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus. His memoirs were published in October 2006.

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

Africa continues to be misrepresented as a continent of victims of poverty, violence and ridden with HIV/AIDS. Selome Araya says campaigns such as "Save Darfur", the Red Campaign by GAP and the "I Am An African" AIDS campaign all contribute to the stereotyping of the continent as a place of despair.

Ask anyone what they think of “Africa” and you may receive a response related to poverty, AIDS, hunger, ‘tribalism’ or animals. Trails of pity might linger in their words as a hint of disgust shimmers in their eyes. They may give an example of how they helped to “Save Darfur” or dreamed of adopting an “African orphan”. Most likely the view of the continent is that it is not a continent at all, but one large country, where everyone speaks the same language, eats the same food, wears the same type of clothing, and creates the same type of art. Yes, in their eyes, “Africa” is a homogeneous place of simple people with simple activities.

But, for someone who has never been to the continent, can they be blamed for this ignorance? The media and “humanitarian” agencies do an incredible job of misrepresenting the birth of civilization and projecting it as a down-trodden place of mishaps and has-beens. A place of disease, poverty, and chaos, and a place devoid of any history or future. Even today, it is still depicted as “The Dark Continent”, with dark tales of gore and war. And it’s not just the media. So-called “experts”, practitioners, and scholars perpetuate these stereotypes to no end, continually feeding the misrepresentation engine.

This cynicism is not to be taken lightly. “Africa” has been placed at the bottom of every pole on the international scale. It is deemed as possibly one of the worst regions on earth, and this notion is perpetuated continually with images and language, misinformation and racism, and media blitz and negative attention. Very few media outlets provide their viewers and readers with positive information about the plethora of countries and events occurring on the continent. For that would be mundane and not “sexy”. Yes, it seems that “Africa” is sexy these days. A crisis in “Africa” gets more response, more money, and more attention than a positive occurrence.

Granted, there are many issues affecting numerous countries in Africa. But I’m appalled at the fact that every time I hear of this place my family and ancestors call home, it is in a negative light, in a pitiful light, in a savagery light, in a deadly light. What I fail to understand is how all other elements of life are negated for the sake of a “good story” and a dramatic plea for funds. I have seen with my own eyes many elements of life that are beautiful beyond explanation, and I beg someone to explain to me why these elements aren’t projected.

Recently I was skimming Elle Magazine (yes, clearly not a place to be reporting on affairs of an international nature) and was deeply disturbed by the only two pages dedicated to “Africa”. The article disturbed me so much that I had to write a letter to the Editor expressing my utter disgust at their depiction. Africa was [mis] represented as a place where everyone is dying, has AIDS, or who is thirsty and hungry. There was no context provided, nor was there any balance that spoke of the positive elements of the continent. There was no mention of how people are responding to their own needs. All that was discussed were ways in which Europeans are “saving” this dreadful place from falling further into its cave of darkness. I couldn’t help but wonder how many readers of this pretentious high-fashion magazine walked away with a haunting perception of a place that they have never been to. If I were reading about “Africa” for the first time, I surely would think of it as a place that is just a hot mess of hell.

As a graduate student at Columbia University, where so-called “experts” teach aspiring public health students about “Africa”, I experience the same generalizations and stereotypes being perpetuated. These “experts” have dedicated their lives to joining the “saviour” movement that’s happening in certain circles of humanitarian assistance. And so, “women” are all victims and need outsiders to help them do everything. “Child soldiers” need to be rehabilitated by people from European countries. “Women and children” need outsiders to intervene and “save” them from the heathens that are the men in their lives. Everyone is dying of some disease. Every home seems to be in a dilapidated state with no food, water, or electricity. Almost everybody is in need of a program designed from abroad. People don’t know (or remember how) to grow their own food, so they need continual food aid packets dropped in their “communities”. And everyone belongs to a “culture” and has traditional ways that they live their lives, in their villages.

“Health” must be shaped from a Western point of view. It sickens me to hear how excited they become as they talk about the next country they are travelling to, to implement their pre-designed projects on people. They are the Lords of Poverty and aren’t even conscious of the stereotypes they carry with them as they lecture. And they’re producing an entire pedigree. Many of the students make drastic generalizations and proclamations about the countries they have lived in (for three months) and become self-proclaimed spokespersons for this region of the world.

There are also many campaigns today that continue to project negative perceptions of Africa onto the world. For people who have no exposure, direct contact, or knowledge of Africa, these campaigns are down right dangerous and counter-productive. Instead of “raising awareness” about important causes, they invoke pity for “the other” and perpetuate the concept that Africa is backwards and in need of saving. The campaigns I am referring to are the “I am African” campaign, the “Red” campaign from The Gap clothing company, and the numerous “Save Darfur” campaigns occurring in the world. As I walked down the streets of Manhattan today, I retained some of the advertisement for the “Red” campaign at the Gap. It pleads for people to help end AIDS in Africa and to save women and children from dying. Again, another universal representation of Africa for all of the Gap Corporation consumers. The millions of Gap Corporation consumers.

The “I am African” campaign is one that may have good intentions, but is grossly offensive and appalling. Appalling because an African woman is behind it, offensive because of the feathers, face paint, and European superstars posing as “Africans”. So now we have Gwyneth Paltrow with striped paint on her cheek, a plethora of jewellery on her neck, with the phrase “I am African” across her chest. I understand the point is to educate people on the AIDS crisis on the continent, but could it not have been done in a more respectful, tactful, and tasteful manner? But more importantly, what these campaigns do is make “AIDS in Africa” a commodity, something that is fashionable and marketable, and makes the only reference people have to the continent one that is linked to death and poor health. To have celebrities (who are not of African descent) say that they are “African” is to imply that since they are now “African” they also somehow have AIDS. It’s sending a message that being African is synonymous with AIDS.

International Non-Governmental Organizations who do business in “Africa” are no better. They spend much of their time and resources depicting the continent as a place that only they can “fix”, and spew out endless facts to justify their own causes. Yes, they are there to save the lowly Africans, and the more dramatic the picture or story, the more support they receive. And more importantly, the longer they stay in business. What people fail to understand is that, while it is imperative to raise awareness about the global poverty that is the reality for billions of people around the world, it is not helpful in the least to project an entire continent through a one-dimensional lens that is lined with despair and imbalance.

If people are going to campaign and discuss such despair, they need to provide context and background information, and underlying root causes of issues like AIDS and other poverty-related concerns. To simply present them independent of any other information is to represent people as helpless, hopeless victims who need saving. It is time for a change. It is time for “Africa” to be uplifted more often in the media. We need to hear more about the other dimensions of life for “Africans”; those that are not living in abject poverty and dying every second from whichever health concern is “hot” at the moment.

There’s music, there’s movement, there’s knowledge, there’s progress, there’s love, there’s tradition, there’s strength, there’s beauty, there’s nature, there’s power, there’s wealth, there’s health, there’s humanity, there’s history, there’s unity, there’s peace, there‘s LIFE. Sometimes, wouldn’t it be great to hear about these elements too? Because the “Africa” that I know is much more than death.

* Selome Araya is a community activist and freelance writer who is currently finishing her Master's degree in Forced Migration and Health.

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

Mukoma Wa Ngugi argues that one of the major threats to African Democracy comes from international NGOs such as the IRI, NED and USAID. These organizations act in the interest of the United States by attempting to and often succeeding in effecting regime change and influencing political outcomes in African countries.

Some of the most important threats to democracy in Africa are the International Republican Institute (IRI), USAID and other international NGO’s that are directly funded by the United States Congress. These are US foreign policy institutions that masquerade as philanthropic organizations of good-will all the while furthering American foreign policy. They are currently operating in over 40 African countries including Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

A brief history of the IRI is as follows: In a bid to make the world friendlier to US interests, President Ronald Reagan (a supporter of Apartheid South Africa) called for the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. The US, he claimed, needed an organization that would “foster the infrastructure of democracy--the system of a free press, unions, political parties universities--which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.” As a result the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which spawned the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were formed. NED receives about $50 Million from the US Congress. USAID requested a staggering $9.3 billion for 2007.

Out of these three organizations, the IRI and USAID are the most active in the promotion of a world safe for US Democracy. The IRI at first “focused on planting the seeds of democracy in Latin America,” according to its website. After the “Cold War, [it] has broadened its reach to support democracy and freedom around the globe.” USAID states that U.S. foreign aid helps in “furthering America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world.” Through what NED terms Consolidating Democracy, democratic principles and sovereignty are being violated. The NED, IRI and USAID attempt to unify opposition against a target government. They provide strategic and monetary support to the opposition. They also infiltrate university student organizations, women’s and youth groups, trade unions, teacher associations and other sectors of civil society which they then into supporting the opposition parties that they have effectively turned into a coalition. Worse than instigating a coup (a top down mechanism of change), the IRI and USAID infect the very blood lines of the country by affecting “regime change” through civil society.

Consolidating Democracy was successfully used in what the IRI refers to as the color revolutions in Ukraine (Orange), Georgia (Rose) and Kyrgyzstan (Tulip). In Haiti, democratically elected Aristide was overthrown using the same methods of unifying a rag-tag opposition and then mobilizing civil society behind it. But some countries such as Venezuela remain a failed target. The IRI’s 2005 Programs in Africa webpage states that it “provided training for political parties in Angola to establish a strong and stable political party system, and reinforce the national reconciliation process.” In Kenya it “worked with political parties to teach them how to develop positions and communicate them to voters.” In Nigeria they “focused on strengthening and preparing political parties for the 2007 elections and fostering partnerships between the parities and civil groups”. And in Liberia the IRI “sponsored the first-ever formal presidential candidate debates.”

In September 2006, when receiving the IRI 2006 Freedom Award together with Laura Bush, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf thanked the IRI which “was particularly active in promoting [the] elections.” She added that: “Very quickly an office was established. They came, they did workshops. They brought political groups together. They worked with the media. They educated. They instructed. They supported. They assisted the process.” She was in fact recounting the steps taken to consolidate democracy in Liberia by the foreign NGO.

President Mbeki has in the past questioned to what extent South African civil society makes independent choices. This concern can be extended to the continent. For example, a Boston Globe survey “identified 159 faith-based organizations that received more than $1.7 billion in USAID prime contracts, grants and agreements from fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2005” as part of President Bush’s Faith Based Initiative. The implications here are obvious. USAID has also tied acceptance of Genetically Modified food to foreign aid even in terms of disaster as in the case with Zambia in 2002. Organizations such as Oxfam have showed that GM foods in Africa would in the long run be harmful to the small scale African farmer, lead to the destruction of local food economies, create a cycle of dependency and cause more acute starvation. It was an absurd case of stopping starvation today by creating conditions for more starvation tomorrow. And in even more direct interference with the internal economy and politics of African countries, USAID, has worked in concert with the World Bank to promote the now infamous Structural Adjustment Programs. But it is the hijacking of democratic processes by using civil society that should be of the most concern to Africans concerned with genuine democracy.

The IRI and USAID don’t have to win every African election they participate in – each parliamentarian and each political organization that gets a seat in the government becomes their lobbyist. In effect, they become shareholders in the new government. And as the American proverb says, “whoever pays the piper calls the tune.” To understand the absurdity of what Africans have accepted as a norm, imagine African countries financing a third party in the United States. And in addition they also train student leaders, trade unionists, journalists and the rest of American civil society how to oppose or overthrow the US Government. Americans wouldn’t stand for it.

African election processes should be monitored by the African Union, the African Peer Review Mechanism and the international community to ensure opposition candidates get equal time in the media. Campaign finance laws should make it illegal for both the opposition and the sitting government to accept foreign funds. Taxpayer money (with a reasonable ceiling) could even be allocated to opposition parties, depending on the number of legally registered voters.

Sitting governments in Africa have access to state money, state television and newspapers and easily attract business money to line their pockets, while the opposition feels compelled to take foreign money. But foreign money perpetuates the goals of the donor. As a matter of democratic principle, alternatives have to be found. With governments that don’t address debilitating inequality, growing majorities living in absolute poverty, and opposition parties whose foreign funding sets the political platform instead of focusing on the causes of the marginalized, the gains made by those who fought for democracy with content are under threat.

* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change and Hurling Words at Consciousness. He is the coordinator of Toward an Africa Without Borders and a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine where a shorter version of this article first appeared.

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

The Gender and Trade Network in Africa (GENTA) write an open letter to President Mbeki of South Africa criticising his failure to address gender issues in his economic development and poverty alleviation policies.

Dear Mr. President,

We as African women awaited your speech with interest and with open minds. We hoped that you would speak to our aspirations and make significant pronouncements on interventions intended to advance our citizenship as South African women during the mid term of this government. When you spoke of the ‘stench of living’ we could relate because many of us live with this stench. What sounded like a robust recommitment to tangible poverty eradication was weighed down by the market driven imperatives obscured by a pretty but ultimately empty rhetoric. An excellent opportunity to leave an outstanding legacy to the women and men of this country has been lost.

There is no doubt that the economy is growing. There is also no doubt that South Africa is an environment attractive to investors. However this growth is not translating into improved lives for the majority of people in this country especially women who are largely the least skilled, the lowest paid and the ones whose labour is the easiest to barter to foreign investors. It is extremely worrying that in the same breath President you speak of eradicating poverty and then suggest that a more flexible investment environment is needed to make doing business easier. In real terms this means consigning women to poorly paid, often risky employment conditions, with no union protection to produce profits that will be repatriated overseas. Your constant use of the “two economies” partition reflects the need by the state to accommodate both the demands of business for a non-interventionist state with the explicit requirement for state led intervention to tackle the burgeoning needs of the economically excluded.

Women are explicitly mentioned only once during the State of the Nation Address and that is in the context of indigent women. In mentioning this particular group of women, you have not in any way suggested any mechanism of enabling them to participate significantly in the economy and make the quantum leap from the so-called second to the first economy. If government persists in its own propaganda, enabling this dualism will certainly cause deepening poverty and destitution as the ‘first’ economy continually ejects those superfluous to its requirements. Moreover objectifying our poverty serves no function other than to further dehumanise women.

Much has been said in this speech about strengthening SMEs. In so doing it is important to address the supply side constraints, the financial environment particularly to access to credit, small business mentoring, child care, skills development and the many other factors which inhibit women’s ability to fully benefit from the opportunities available. Fluctuations in capital flows and cyclical instability disadvantage women more than men. There is a strong case for re-regulation of capital of international capital flows, especially portfolio flows. This is because they are 'gendered' institutions and structures. That is, they are institutions created, dominated and controlled by men. Institutions like DTI are therefore being shaped by a particular gender and class of people. They are expressions and vehicles of the preferred vision aspirations and assumptions of this particular group in South Africa. This occasion would be an opportunity to articulate the aspirations of citizens across gender, income and class lines.

The speech thus ignores the question of gender issues in economic development. It is not simply one of economic or social problems. It involves social relations of gender and the problems of deconstructing the ideology of gender relations, which includes a redistribution of power. Access to basic services are lauded as meeting Millennium Development Goals. The President states that access to water follows a rights approach in this country. Mr. Mbeki you fail to mention that millions of the most vulnerable people in this country –most of whom are women - still have to contend with water and electricity cut-offs, many of which are not legal. The rights based paradigm would not force the most economically vulnerable to pay for services that they cannot afford. The rights based paradigm would ensure that water, sanitation and electricity were readily available by subsidising the most impoverished households and charging the ‘haves’ greater amounts. This is the difference between poverty alleviation and poverty eradication. Poverty eradication requires a radical and consistent re-alignment and redistribution of resources across sectors and a complete shift in thinking. If we are to see the evidence of Ubuntu, this requires considering and rescinding the negative consequences of state policy on the most vulnerable particularly women. It is not comfortable and it requires more profound and accelerated impetus than government has hitherto shown. Is this a shift that you and the government are willing to make?

The speech speaks vociferously about increasing the personnel numbers and capacity in the criminal justice machinery, mentions violent crime in passing and highlights poaching, cash in transit heists and animal trafficking. More puzzling is the omission of rape and gender based violence. Given the ongoing reports of these crimes, this is reprehensible. In a country with the highest incidence of rape in the world it is a shameful lapse. We recognise the sterling efforts of many police, judges, prosecutors, district surgeons and other public servants. However no mention is made of the collusion of some criminal justice personnel in allowing certain dockets to go ‘missing', the trauma that many women and children face when they give evidence, the non-responsiveness and insensitivity of police in dealing with domestic violence. Equally worrying is that the speech mentions nothing abut the trafficking of women and children in and out of South Africa yet this is a global crisis. Considering all this, should we conclude that poaching is a higher priority than rape or human trafficking or domestic violence?

Social welfarism is a laudable component of State policy, particularly when there are such deep schisms and social inequalities. However it is disingenuous to present a speech full of promises as though the status quo is a result of forces other than Government policy of the last 13 years. GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution economic strategy) and now ASGISA (Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa) are objects of contestation not only because their origins are not clear but because they do not offer a clear social contract with the nation. Despite the fact that the GEAR failed to meet its targets on most of its goals, including increased levels of local and foreign investment and employment creation, government for its part continues to hail the success of GEAR based on the attainment of two narrow indicators which are the reduction of the budget deficit, and the reduction in inflation. ASGISA has so far failed to address these contradictions and has so far kept women invisible from the policy constructs and processes. Moreover you have not told the nation that many of the 500,000 new jobs that have been created are short term or temporary and that these figures include self employed people in the informal sector. And most critically for African women, you have not told us how many of these jobs are for women who comprise the biggest group of unemployed people.

In defining a common national identity it is critical to be cognisant of the totality of the nation. The character of the Nation State, Mr. President, is linked to the manner in which the state relates to all in those within Her borders. It is connected to the nationhood that enables, that protects and that nurtures. As citizens we must challenge the role of the state as protector, provider, enabler and defender especially when this role is all but vacated. We must as women interrogate the nationhood that ignores us or replicates all that is reactionary, patriarchal, gender blind and hostile to our development in the name of ‘growth’ , of ‘investment’ or hidden under a gender desk. The greatest irony is that the resumption of the Doha Round of the WTO negotiations reduces the role and notion of the State to a moot point and rescinds any progressive domestic policy cutting across access to and provision of services, agriculture, investment policy, intellectual property rights and non agricultural market access.

This multilateralism promotes a supra state accountable to none and yet keeping all in its grip. Added to this is the threat of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) which many of our neighbours are being bludgeoned into by the European Union with indecent haste and almost sinister opaqueness. There are inevitable consequences on South Africa through dumping and trade diversion. In all this, Mr. President, we urge you to remember that in order to remove ‘the stench of living ’ nationhood must restore our dignity, must enforce an authentic pro Africa agenda, must promote intra Africa trade which does not replicate colonial relationships. Nationhood in this era requires courageous leadership, Mr. President, which enables social cohesion without threats to dissenters, which makes us all feel safe physically, economically, socially and financially without selling our interests to foreign capital and which can relate to the mighty women in this country as more than vote fodder.

* For more information contact GENTA on: Liepollo Lebohang Pheko [084
881 9327] or Mohau Nthisana Pheko [082 670 2505]

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

Not the biggest investor but the most dynamic - Walden Bello discusses China’s investments in Africa and why China is so popular with African governments.

At the Seventh World Social Forum (WSF), held in Nairobi, Kenya, in late January, the most controversial topic was not HIV-AIDS, the US occupation of Iraq, or neoliberalism. There was a rough consensus on these issues. Aside, of course, from the lively internal politics of the WSF, perhaps the topic that generated the most heat was China’s relations with Africa.

At the “The China Question” seminar, organized by the semi-official “China NGO Network for International Exchanges,” the discussion was candid and angry. “First, Europe and America took over our big businesses. Now China is driving our small and medium entrepreneurs to bankruptcy,” Humphrey Pole-Pole of the Tanzanian Social Forum told the Chinese speakers. “You don’t even contribute to employment because you bring in your own labour.” Stung by such remarks from the floor, Cui Jianjun, secretary general of the China NGO Network, lost his diplomatic cool and launched into an emotional defence of Chinese foreign investment, saying that “We Chinese had to make the same hard decision on whether to accept foreign investment many, many years ago. You have to make the right decision or you will lose, lose, lose. You have to decide right, or you will remain poor, poor, poor.” At this point, Dale Wen, a Chinese environmentalist, intervened: “That’s not true. The Chinese people did not decide to accept foreign investment. Deng Hsiao Ping [the late Chinese leader] decided.” An African in the audience added: “You have to treat us with respect.” Great Promise or Great Harm?

The vigorous exchange at this panel and at another organized by the Fahamu Networks for Social Justice and Focus on the Global South was perhaps to be expected, since many Africans view China as having the potential of bringing either great promise or great harm. One sensed that if the African speakers were hard on China, this was because they desperately wanted China to reverse it’s course before it was too late to avoid the path trod by Europe and the United States.

The debate at the WSF took place amidst a marked elevation of Africa’s profile in China’s foreign policy. President Hu Jintao is now on his third trip to Africa in three years, following the success of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which took place on November 4 and 5, 2006. Attended by 48 African delegations, most of them led by heads of state, the event was the largest international summit ever held in Beijing.

At the start of the meeting, Beijing unveiled a glittering trade and aid plan designed to cement its “strategic partnership” with Africa. The key items in the package were raising the volume of trade from US$40 billion in 2005 to $100 billion by 2010; doubling of 2006 assistance by 2009; provision of $3 billion worth of preferential loans and $2 billion worth of export credits; setting up of a China-Africa Development Fund that would be capitalized to the tune of $5 billion to support Chinese companies investing in Africa; and cancellation of all interest-free government loans owed to China by the heavily indebted and poorest African countries that matured at the end of 2005.

If not yet the biggest external player in Africa, China is certainly the most dynamic. It now accounts for 60 per cent of oil exports from Sudan and 35 per cent of those from Angola. Chinese firms mine copper in Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville, cobalt in the Congo, gold in South Africa, and uranium in Zimbabwe. Its ecological footprint is large, says Michelle Chan-Fishel of Friends of the Earth International, consuming as it does 46 per cent of Gabon’s forest exports, 60 per cent of timber exported from Equatorial Guinea, and 11 per cent of timber exports from Cameroon.

China is popular with African governments. “There is something refreshing in China’s approach,” said a Nigerian diplomat who asked not to be identified. “They don’t attach all those conditionalities that accompany Western loans.” Justin Fong, executive director of the Chinese NGO, Moving Mountains adds, “Whether accurate or not, the image Africans have of the Chinese is that they get things done. They don’t waste their time in meetings. They just go ahead and build roads.” An African development specialist working with a western aid organization claimed that Chinese projects are low-cost affairs compared to western projects. “Labour costs are low, they integrate African labour, so some transfer of skills takes place, and the Chinese workers live in the village, and this means living like the villagers, down to competing with them for dog meat!” This characterization of the Chinese impact would be disputed by many observers. However, most NGO’s are nuanced in their assessment of China. They acknowledge that China has a different trajectory in Africa than Europe and the United States.

Whereas the West began by exploiting Africa, China initiated its relations with Africa with “people-to-people” medical and technical assistance missions in the sixties and seventies, the most famous of which was the now fabled building of the Tanzania-Zambia (Tanzam) Railway. But with China’s rise as a modernizing economic superpower after the definitive decision in 1984 to use capitalism as the engine of growth, the old solidarity rationale has been replaced by a dangerously single-minded pursuit of economic interests—in this case, mainly oil and mineral resources to feed a red-hot economy growing at 8-10 per cent a year.

If African governments were accountable to their people, say NGO critics, Chinese aid could play a very positive role, especially compared to World Bank and IMF loans which come with conditions to bring down tariffs, loosen government regulation, and privatize state enterprises. But with non-
accountable, non-transparent governments, such as those in Sudan and Zimbabwe, say the critics, Chinese loan and aid programs instead, contribute to consolidating the rule of non-democratic elites. No conditions, in effect, means intervention on the side of the governing groups.

The Sudan is one country non-accountability and non-transparency is most evident. Using its membership in the United Nations Security Council, China has prevented a multinational peacekeeping force from being constituted that would protect people in Darfur who are being killed or raped by militias backed by the Sudanese government. One African diplomat sympathetic to China asserts, “China’s strong backing for the Sudanese government has discouraged African governments that are trying to push it to accept an African Union solution to the problem.”

China has very substantial interests in Sudan. These are set out in detail in an important collection of studies launched at the WSF entitled “African Perspectives on China in Africa”, edited by Firoze Manji and Stephen Marks. China obtained oil exploration and production rights in 1995 when the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) bought a 40 per cent stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, which is pumping over 300,000 barrels per day. Sinopec, another Chinese firm, is building a 1500-kilometer pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where a tanker terminal is being constructed by China’s Petroleum Engineering Construction Company. Chinese investment in oil exploration is estimated by analyst John Rocha to reach $8 billion.

Chinese interests go beyond oil. Its investment in textile mills is estimated at $100 million. It has emerged as one of Sudan’s top arms suppliers, with one deal being a barter arrangement whereby it would supply $400 million worth of weapons in return for cotton. It is active in infrastructure building, with its firms constructing bridges near the Merowe Dam and on two other sites on the River Nile. It is involved in key hydropower projects, the most controversial being the Merowe Dam, which is expected to ultimately cost $1.8 billion.

The construction of the Merowe Dam has involved forced resettlement of the Hambdan people living at or near the site and repression and an armed attack on the Amri people who have been organizing to prevent the authorities’ plan to displace them to the desert. Local police and private agencies now provide 24-hour security to Chinese engineering detachments, but civil society observers say the aim of these groups is less protection of the Chinese than repression of the growing opposition on the ground. As Ali Askouri, director of the London-based Piankhi Research Group, puts it, “The sad truth is, both the Chinese and their elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership. They are joining hands to uproot poor people, expropriate their land, and appropriate their natural resources.”

Chinese and Sudanese officials tend to be dismissive of such criticism, which they often attribute to the machinations of western powers who are alarmed at China’s becoming the top international player in a country that they had long treated as being in the West’s sphere of influence but whose dismal record of colonial plunder deprives their statements of any moral authority. Defending its close relations with the Sudanese government, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Zhai Jun, noted the contrast of African governments’ reception of China and the West: “Some people believe that by ‘taking’ resources and energy from Africa, China is looting Africa…… If this was so, then African countries would express their dissatisfaction...they would approach China, as they did...countries that exploited the continent in the past.” Chinese officials are, however, wrong to think that African NGO’s are merely parroting the rhetoric of self-interested western governments. In fact, civil society groups are just as critical of such Western governments, considering them as hypocritical. Commenting on the remark of a World Bank official to the effect that “Chinese handouts without reforms” would not be beneficial to Africa, John Karumbidza, a contributor to the “China in Africa” volume, acidly remarks that “It is the case...that this same bank and Western approach over the past half century has failed to deliver development, and left Africa in more debt than when they began.” Other problematic partnerships being based on actual events, the criticisms are unlikely to go away, not only in Sudan but in many other countries where China has a deep involvement with controversial regimes.

With relations with the west and even South Africa deteriorating over his political record, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has increasingly turned to China, which one of his key ministers has characterized as an “all-weather friend.” Chinese investment in mining, energy, telecommunications, agriculture, and other sectors was estimated at $600 million at the end of 2004, with another $600 million pledged in June 2005. The price, however, has been high, according to critics, who claim that Mugabe’s government has handed de facto control of key strategic industries to the Chinese. A contract with China to farm 386 square miles of land while millions of Zimbabweans remain landless has also come under fire, with rural sociologist John Karumbidza blasting it as amounting “to nothing more than land renting and typical agri-business relations that turn the land holders and their workers into labour tenants and subject them to exploitation.”

The Nigerian government is another problematic Chinese partner, according to civil society activists. China has extensive interests in Nigeria, particularly in oil exploration and production. John Rocha notes that the China National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC), has acquired a 45 per cent working interest in an offshore enterprise, OML 130, for $2.3 billion; the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has invested in the Port Harcourt refinery; and a joint venture between the Chinese Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the L.N. Mittal Group, plans to invest $6 billion in railways, oil refining, and power in exchange for rights to drill oil.

These interests have led to an increasingly close alliance of China with the faction of the ruling People’s Democratic Party dominated by President Olusegun Obasanjo. This relationship has a controversial security dimension. As Ndubisi Obiorah, another contributor to the “China in Africa” volume who is also director of the Center for Law and Social Action in Lagos, notes: “The Nigerian government is increasingly turning to China for weapons to deal with the worsening insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The Nigerian Air Force purchased 14 Chinese-made versions of the upgraded Mig 21 jet fighter; the navy has ordered patrol boats to secure the swamps and creeks of the Niger Delta.” Not surprisingly, the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Nigerian Delta (MEND) has warned Chinese companies to keep out of the region or risk attack.

With their integrated political, military, economic, and diplomatic components, China’s “strategic partnerships” with governments such as those of Nigeria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe increasingly have the feel of the old US and Soviet relationships with client states during the Cold War.

The role of Civil Society is important in effecting change and many activists do not discount the possibility that things may yet be turned around. Though critical of current Chinese policies, Humphrey Pole-Pole of Tanzania appealed at the WSF Nairobi meeting, for a “win-win-win” strategy—that is, “a win for China, a win for African governments, and a win for African people. This is not impossible.” The key to such a change may be the growth of Chinese civil society organizations, some of which are increasingly independent of and indeed critical of government policies within China, according to Dorothy Guerrero, coordinator of Focus on the Global South’s China program: “If the Chinese government and business interests in Africa are to be moderated by concerns for local people, the environment, human rights, etc., it is of extreme importance that the international voices arguing for this are joined by a constituency of people within China who are also concerned about such principles.” She added that links must be forged between African and Chinese NGO’s and it was for that reason that representatives of Chinese civil society went to Nairobi.

But closer ties are not enough, said Justin Fong. Mechanisms have to be devised that could be effectively used to press for accountability on the part of the Chinese government. One point of vulnerability he identified is the practice of Chinese government entities, such as the China Export-Import Bank, of seeking co-financing for their Africa projects from international banks such as HSBC and Citigroup. When it came to controversial projects, he suggested, pressure might be indirectly placed on the Chinese by lobbying these institutions, which are more sensitive about their image than Beijing.

Others were sceptical that such tactics, which might have worked with Western governments and businesses, would succeed with China. But whatever their differences, African and Chinese civil society activists, have a consensus on one thing, it will be a hard, uphill struggle to change the Chinese juggernaut’s direction in Africa.

For further information read: "African Perspectives on China in Africa" published by Fahamu and can be obtained through their website - Fahamu.org

* Walden Bello is executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

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

Henning Melber presents a “state of the continent” report and comments on the “new African order” as designed by the global power structures of the World Economic Forum.

Almost 50,000 people from social movements all over this world gathered in Nairobi during the second half of January at the World Social Forum (WSF). Originally initiated in the Brazilian city of Porto Allegre a few years ago, it is organised as a counter meeting to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) during this time of the year in the Swiss town Davos. The WEF brings together those in command of politics and economy in this world and those “celebrities” who like to be close to them. They represent a world in which Africa remains at the receiving end of the global power structures and increasingly again the object of external interests. This article summarises and comments upon recent developments on the continent.

Old wine in new bottles

It is anything but new that the African continent’s human and other natural resources are the object of more or less systematic looting from the outside world. Who still believes that “globalisation” is a very recent phenomenon simply needs to look in an African perspective on the devastating impact of the slave trade to understand, “how Europe underdeveloped Africa” (so the title of a seminal book published by the late Walter Rodney during the early 1970s). Already Karl Marx had observed (though in a rather insensitive language) in his Critique of the Political Economy that the hunt for black skins signalled the dawn of capitalism.

Since the days of the Trans Atlantic human resource transfer various subsequent forms of brutal exploitation through colonialism and imperialism were ultimately by means of formal decolonisation processes at least modified. But the “winds of change” created sovereign African states, whose societies remain to a large extent characterised by the structural legacy of an externally oriented dependency. Beneficiaries of such limited socio-economic development are still mainly externally based, with the limited participation of – all too often parasitic – small local elites, who exploit their political control over national wealth for their own gains.

They collaborate with those operating from the outside offering them the most convenient (and unashamed) access to the small slice of the cake they are able to keep for themselves in such sell out deals. Seen in this light, some (if not most) of the recent critical accounts of the aggressive expansion of Chinese interests into African countries and societies and their collaboration with local autocratic elites and despots has a hypocritical taste or at least bears traces of amnesia. After all, the Chinese penetration only rears the ugly face of predatory capitalism, which for far too long has already abused the dependency of the majority on the continent. One therefore is tempted to wonder, if the concern expressed is actually not more about the Western interests than about the welfare of the African people, given that what we witness today is anything but new with regard to its forms and effects. While this critical observation does not exonerate the at times appallingly imperialist nature of the Chinese expansion into Africa, it does undermine the credibility of those critics, who find no similar words for the other forms of imperialism, which for far too long had (and continue to have) crucial responsibilities for contributing to the state of misery many of the African people are in.

Africa since the end of the bipolar world order

The collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of a more than forty year period of bloc confrontation was by no means “the end of history” (as suggested by Francis Fukuyama). It was the beginning of a new global order for hegemonic rule with far reaching consequences also for African governments. Gone were the days, where in midst of a Cold War some manoeuvring space for limited opportunistic bargaining existed, which allowed for a bit of strategic positioning. Not that this was necessarily to the best of the African people: all too often, this constellation encouraged and protected self-enrichment schemes for dictators and/or small local elites through forms of rent seeking or sinecure capitalism, as examples from A (like Angola) to Z (like Zaire) document. The bi-polar world order was in no ways a suitable breeding ground for development “from below”, but offered parasitic agents the opportunity to position themselves as satellites in return for their own gains within the East-West polarisation.

The consolidation of the US-American dominance during the 1990s and its impact on the global order resulted in several changes also for the African continent. A regionally inter-linked “appeasement” strategy (with the Russian retreat from Afghanistan and the Cuban withdrawal from Angola) secured in Southern Africa the final decolonisation of Namibia (1990) and paved the way for an end to Apartheid and democratic elections in South Africa (1994). During this period the economic paradigms represented by the international financial institutions (World Bank and IMF) resumed the only power of definition. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) emerged as the broker to regulate comprehensively binding the global exchange relations of goods. The most to say in these regulating processes with far reaching implications for not only “classical” trade relations but wider defined exchanges has the club of the G8 members, which defines the rather one-sided rules of “global governance”.

Towards a new African order: NEPAD and AU

Significant inner-African dynamics complemented at the beginning of this century the global re-arrangements. With the democratically elected and legitimised new governments in South Africa and Nigeria the two economic powerhouses on the continent South of the Sahara left behind their pariah status. Based on internal and international acceptance, they resumed leadership roles in international policy arenas. At the turn of the millennium presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo emerged (with active support by Senegal, Algeria and Egypt) as new figureheads representing the collective interests of the South and in particular Africa vis-à-vis the industrialised Western countries. Originally tasked to negotiate debt cancellation arrangements in direct communication with them they moved on to seek new forms of interaction under the premises of the acknowledged socio-economic premises as defined by the WTO. As kind of junior partners in the global market they became the architects of what was finally termed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

After some incubation period and assumingly intensive political negotiations behind closed doors this blue print was upgraded to the status of an official economic programme and institution of the African Union (AU). The AU itself was a parallel transformation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In the course of its change it undertook some significant corrections to the hitherto established continental policy pillars. Most importantly it moved away from the erstwhile almost holy principle of non-intervention into internal affairs of member states.

With a lot of confidence and trust and substantive political support offered by the G8 since its 2001 summit in Genoa the NEPAD-architects could bring back home the reassuring message that the industrial West is on board and willing to support the initiative. This contributed to the acceptance both in Africa as well as by the United Nations system, which in a General Assembly resolution officially recognised NEPAD as the economic programme for Africa. While this looks like a success story, the critical policy issues were to some extent at the same time aborted or at best watered down. The good governance discourse in line with the new uni-polar world system and to some extent imposed by the Western-capitalist hegemony was after all not only cosmetic rhetoric, but in some parts indeed a meaningful deviation from past practices of unquestioned autocratic rule by African despots and oligarchies.

The AU Constitution was adopted at the same summit in Durban when NEPAD was incorporated. It introduced a collective responsibility so far absent, justifying joint intervention for specified reasons. This has in the meantime provided several results, as cases like Darfur, the DRC, the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Togo have among others shown in different ways (and varying degrees of success), all seeking to contribute to conflict reduction or enhanced legitimacy of the political systems. In contrast to this new responsibility, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), conceptualised by NEPAD as a cornerstone for enhancing the notion of good governance, did not meet the expectations. The disappointment over non-delivery was maybe biggest when it came to the absence of any determined policy action by the NEPAD initiators in the case of Zimbabwe (where the South African president preferred his so-called silent diplomacy to any meaningful political intervention). Nonetheless, the demand for democracy, human rights and respect for constitutional principles articulated by the NEPAD blue print as a prerequisite for sustainable socio-economic development might have been a contributing factor to the new phenomenon of an increasing number of African heads of state more or less voluntarily (and peacefully) vacating their offices (which does not mean that the rotten apples have been eliminated, as Museveni, and even – though less successfully - Obasanjo as well as some others have shown in their recent efforts to extend their stay in office beyond the originally stipulated period of time).

New multi-polar tendencies and the competition for securing African resources

Systematic new efforts to access African markets and tap into the local resources became visible with the adoption of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by the out-going Clinton administration. Through this initiative the USA openly underlined the relevance of the African dimension for its external trade relations (Africa ranks higher than Eastern Europe in the US trade balance). The break down of the AGOA trade volume, however, also discloses that with the exception of a few smaller niches (e.g. the temporary opportunities created for a locally based – though not owned – African textile industry with preferential access to the US market) the trade volume is mainly composed by exporting US-manufactured high tech goods and machinery and importing oil, strategic minerals and other natural resources for meeting demands of US-based industries.

Soon after AGOA was enacted, the trade department of the EU headquarters in Brussels initiated negotiations for a re-arrangement of its relations with the ACP countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The declared aim was to enter a post-Cotonou agreement phase meeting the demands for WTO compatibility. The EPA negotiations have since then entered critical stages meeting the resistance of many among the ACP countries. They are afraid of losing out on trade preferences and feel that Brussels seeks to impose a one-sided trade regime in its own interests, which also denies the declared partners the right to autonomous negotiations by re-drawing the map of regional configurations in Africa to comply with EU expectations.

Both initiatives, AGOA and the EPA negotiations, seem to reflect less so the genuine desire in fairer trade than securing access to relevant markets not least in the own interest of the USA and the EU. The competition for preferential trade agreements with South Africa (successfully negotiated by the EU during the late 1990s and currently facing an impasse with regard to the USA) are illustrating at the same time the point, that the industrialised states are anything but sharing the same interest when it comes to securing their individual links with other countries.

The new offensive pursued by China, which expands aggressively into African markets and seeks access to the fossil energy resources and other minerals and metals it urgently needs to fuel its own further rapid industrialisation process, adds to the rivalry and conflicting interests. In a matter of time, India, Brazil and Russia (as well as a number of other actors such as Malaysia and Mexico) are likely to add further pressure on the scramble for limited markets and resources. This new stage of competing forces on the continent has resulted in a plethora of recent analyses dealing mainly if not exclusively with the Chinese impact and practices. Interestingly enough, the EU and US-policies and practices seem to almost fade away from the picture. The current type of Cassandra-prophecies presents at times a rather one-sided story. Such selected narrative tends to downplay if not ignore the damaging external effects, which the existing socio-economic imbalances and power structures have created and consolidated. It appears at times, that the criticism raised towards China is more so an indicator of an increasing fear for losing own interests than for being motivated by a genuine concern for the African people.

Into more dependency or towards enhanced manoeuvring space?

The global initiatives for liberalisation under the WTO regime pose the question, if the markets and producers in the so-called developing countries are able to meet the challenges of a relatively free competition with the industrialised world or instead would require continued protection. At a closer look, it becomes obvious that this is a question wrongly posed. It had been indeed the markets and producers of the industrialised OECD countries, which were one-sided beneficiaries of state protection and distorting subsidisation policies. This turned any form of proclaimed fairness in trade and market relations into an illusion and ideological humbug.

Those advocating a liberalisation of trade relations contribute to the misperception that such steps would be identical or at least similar to a de-regulation of exchange relations with goods. As a matter of fact, the trend is quite the opposite. The so-called liberal global trade structures and networks have never before been to such an extent contractually defined and put into clauses. Numerous additional rules, such as hygienic and sanitary specifications, regulate access to markets even more so at times than tariffs. They are open to abusive control resulting in undue pressure and could turn into a tool for sanctions in cases of disagreement.

The historically-structurally disadvantaged societies should however at least be enabled to gain socio-economic strength based on own initiatives. This requires a framework, which would as a matter of principle allow for a kind of protectionist policy as legitimate survival strategy to empower local producers and foster own markets. This could create preconditions, from which in subsequent exchange relations the people in both the industrial as well as the African societies could benefit (but maybe at the expenses of unhindered profit maximisation for those who earn most).

With new rivals such as China, India, Brazil, Russia and a series of further countries at the threshold to meaningful own industrial production the competition for entering favourable relations with African countries might increase. This is in itself not negative to the interests of the African people. But it requires that the tiny elites benefiting from the currently existing unequal structures put their own interest in trans-nationally linked self-enrichment schemes behind the public interest to create investment and exchange patterns, which provide in the first place benefits for the majority of the people.

Selected Further Reading

Alden Christopher/Daniel Large/Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (eds) (2007), China Returns to Africa: The Politics of Contemporary Relations. London: Hurst
Broadman, Harry G. et. al. (2007), Africa’s Silk Road. China and India’s New Economic Frontier. Washington: World Bank
Brüntrup, Michael/Henning Melber/Ian Taylor (2006), Africa, Regional Cooperation and the World Market. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI Discussion Paper; 31) (accessible for download at
China in Africa. South African Journal of International Affairs, vol. 13, no. 1, 2006
Fombad, Charles Manga/Zein Kebonang (2006), AU, NEPAD and the APRM. Democratisation Efforts Explored. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (Current African Issues; 32) (accessible for download at
Manji, Firoze/Stephen Marks (eds) (2007), African Perspectives on China in Africa. Nairobi & Oxford: Fahamu
Melber, Henning (2002), The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – Old Wine in New Bottles? In: Forum for Development Studies, 29(1), S. 186-209
Melber, Henning (2004), The G8 and NePAD – more than an elite pact? University of Leipzig Papers on African Politics and Economics (ULPA), no. 74
Melber, Henning (ed.) (2005), Trade, Development, Cooperation. What Future for Africa? Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (Current African Issues; 29) (accessible for download at
Melber, Henning (ed.) (2007), China in Africa. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute (forthcoming)
Southall, Roger/Henning Melber (eds) (2006), The Legacies of Power. Leadership Transition and the Role of Former Presidents in African Politics. Cape Town: HSRC Press & Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute
Taylor, Ian (2005), NEPAD. Towards Africa’s Development or Another False Start? Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner
Taylor, Ian (2006), China and Africa. Engagement and compromise. London & New York: Routledge
Tull, Denis M. (2006), China’s engagement in Africa: scope, significance and consequences. In: Journal of Modern African Studies, 44(3), pp. 459-479

* Dr. Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden. He has been Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute (2000-2006) and Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000).

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

The AU Protocol on women's rights has breathed new life into the feminist movement in Africa and centralised the issue of women’s rights on the continent. But Janah Ncube says African women cannot afford to be complacent if implementation of the protocol is to be achieved in the near future.

The protocol is a vehicle/mechanism that is now creating the appropriate legal environment to enable equity and equality to be realised for the African woman. It is the evidence of our winning the fight for women’s rights in Africa and it shows that it is only a matter of time before we completely win the fight. The Niger set back was overt evidence and testimony to the progressiveness of the protocol as an offensive assault against patriarchy. The fact that they considered and debated the protocol and realised that if they ratify it they would lose patriarchal privileges and desecrate patriarchal structures is affirmation that the women’s movement has developed as a tool, an instrument designed to challenge and pull down the strongholds of patriarchy. What we need to work on now is ensuring that the Protocol is implemented. So we must mobilise our governments, institutions and peoples to ensure that they are implementing it and making demands on the protocol.

Indeed we saw the protocol breathing life back into the African Feminist movement as many began to coalesce around its drafting, its adoption, its ratification. It again triggered conversations on sensitive and taboo issues which for this continent where difficult to converse about. It revitalised the long forgotten issues of women’s basic human rights which have been for a long time not realised and had been left to the dustbin of history. Most importantly, it put women’s human rights back into the centre of the continent’s agenda.

Cynics and critics will argue that the protocol is only a legal instrument but is in its-self not tangible rights. Indeed many countries have laws and policies that grant women’s rights but have not appropriated those rights. Do legal instruments deliver equity or equality? My response to that is that they do set a basis and a standard and their existence is an admittance that there has been a wrong which through the instrument is being made right. And wherever there is rule of law and a just legal system then any woman whose rights are denied and/or violated can make claim and get those rights.

We have to be realistic about the challenges that will face the implementation of the protocol. Challenges of structure, adequate resources to ensure delivery and most importantly political will to see this protocol benefiting African women. We must not be satisfied by the existence of the protocol, we must refuse to be comforted by its ratification. Instead we must be stubborn, have tenacity, be bold, be courageous and keep on with the agenda. The agenda was not the protocol, the agenda is African women enjoying their human rights. The protocol is one of the vehicles that can deliver that.

Until there is not one girl child afraid of her father molesting her, until there is not one woman afraid of her husband’s kicks we can not say we have won the fight. Until our decision makers in all sectors, spheres, levels are gender sensitive and have equal representation of women and men then we can not rest. It may not be a fast process but we can ensure that it is a sure process that will deliver African women not just their rights but their dignity.

Three things we must do; mobilise the African woman; let her be aware of the protocol as an instrument to engage her communities about her rights and let her make demands based on the protocol. We must target the rural woman who is in the majority and also target the urban woman who many times is ignorant of these civic issues. We must build a strong feminist movement across the continent; it has delivered the protocol and without it the protocol will lose its momentum and force.

The women’s movement must confront and engage with the broader politics; time to talk to women alone is over, its preaching to the choir, we must start to ‘evangelise’ preach to those who do not know/understand the issues we articulate about women’s human rights. This of course means confronting one’s own personal beliefs, things at home, in our work places, the institutions we engage with in our daily lives and indeed our governments. These things are very political and so we must be political actors. Our political legitimacy and clout increases when we engage with politics in all issues that affect our lives and communities and not only the ones that concern women’s issues.

* Janah Ncube is Gender Thematic Manager at The Agency for Co-operation & Research in Development. Ms Ncube is also a contributing author to “Grace, Tenacity and Eloquence: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in Africa” published by Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice. Copies of the book can be purchased through the Fahamu.org website.

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

The government of the Union of Islamic Courts has been ousted but a weak and ineffectual Transitional Federal Government has left the country and people of Somalia in a state of chaos and violence with no protection against horrendous human rights violations, states Birgit Michaelis.

In Mogadishu, the air is thick with gunfire. Nearly every night, the sound of bullets and artillery fire can be heard throughout the city. Unidentified gunmen carry out attacks on Ethiopian troops. The presidential compound was targeted by heavy mortar fire; houses in the neighbourhood were also hit. The ambushes left many civilians and soldiers dead. Suspicion falls on Islamist remnants who have vowed guerrilla war. For their part, Ethiopian forces randomly open gun and artillery fire on civilians and have claimed several casualties. Warlords are back in the city and checkpoints, where clan militia raise funds by extorting money from motorists, have reappeared on roads leading out of the capital. Freelance militia and bandits are taking advantage of the power vacuum and there is an increase in robbery. Residents fear Mogadishu could slide back into the anarchy that gripped the city after 1991, when the former dictator Siad Barre had been ousted, and await to see whether the government will be able to cope with the chaos.

Until recently, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) controlled all but a small area of south and central Somalia. With Ethiopia’s support, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) only maintained control over its seat of government, the south western town of Baidoa. At the end of December, US-supported Ethiopian troops carried out a pre-emptive attack against Somalia. The invasion, in violation of international law and the UN Security Council Resolution 1725, proved easier than expected. The comparatively more powerful Ethiopian army allied with a militia loyal to the TFG to achieve their objective of regime change and overthrew the Islamists. The TFG is now seeking to install itself in Mogadishu and faces a huge challenge in trying to bring peace and security to the war-torn country.

Ethiopia is still reducing the numbers of its forces in Somalia. On 20 January, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council approved the deployment of a peacekeeping force for an initial period of six months. So far, only Uganda, Malawi and Nigeria have pledged to contribute to the AU force. Other countries are considering possible contributions. The mission's role would be "to provide support to the Transitional Federal Institutions in their efforts towards the stabilisation of the situation in the country and the furtherance of dialogue". Many Somalis doubt if the TFG, which has no military power, will be able to fill the power vacuum when the Ethiopian troops leave before the peacekeeping force is deployed in Somalia.

As violence escalates throughout the country, many commentators stress that after more than a decade of brutal fighting the Islamists, which controlled large parts of south and central Somalia from June to December 2006, established security and stability by expelling the hated warlords and offered something comparable to a government while the weak and divided TFG had been unable to reign. The UIC, with known militants within its leadership, imposed a harsh rule on the basis of a strict interpretation of Islamic law, the Sharia, in contrast with the moderate Islam that has dominated Somali culture for centuries. The hard-liners within the UIC wanted an Islamic Somali state where the Qur’ is the constitution and the Sharia is the only source of legislation. The secular constitution of the transitional institutions, which emanated from peace talks in Kenya from 2002-2004, is in contradiction of this plan. This fundamental contradiction was the most important obstacle to reconciliation between the UIC and the TFG. In the case of the emergence of an Islamic state in Somalia the transitional institutions would have been dissolved. The UIC’s interpretation of Sharia led to gross human rights violations such as public executions and public floggings. Their strict rule consisted of permanent violations of recognized international and African human rights treaties and standards.

In October last year, a group of children was arrested for playing football during the holy month of Ramadan in Mogadishu’s Boondheere district and detained in prison for over five hours. They were only released after their parents pledged that they will never again allow them to play ball. On 17 October an Islamic court released a fatwa to arrest all members of the National Music Committee of Somalia which forms part of the UNESCO’s International Music Council. Furthermore, it imposed the death penalty on the musicians for making music deemed as un-Islamic. A fatwa is a legal pronouncement in Islam made by a scholar permitted to issue judgments on Sharia. On 6 December, an Islamic court in Bulo Burto, southern Somalia, announced an edict that residents who do not pray five times a day will be beheaded. During prayer time, shops and tea houses should close and no one should be in the streets. The UIC restored security by ending years of massive human rights abuses against civilians by armed factions, but these few examples demonstrate that this happened very much at the cost of fundamental freedoms. Since the takeover of the Islamists thousands have fled the country for fear of being prosecuted or being forcibly recruited by the militias. It is doubtful if there was such an overwhelming support for the UIC as was widely reported.

The presence of foreign troops has not only profoundly changed the political dynamics in Somalia, but has also aggravated the already dire humanitarian and human rights situation in the severely impoverished country. Somalis are suffering the consequences of a triple humanitarian crisis: drought, flood and now conflict. An estimated 2 million people have been affected by the worst drought in a decade. Pastoralists in particular have been weakened by persistent droughts in recent years and have been forced to move their families to towns and villages in search of food and water. In November and December last year an estimated 400,000 people were directly affected by rivers that breached their banks and flash floods that followed heavy rainfall. Hundreds of towns and villages were hit, homes destroyed or seriously damaged and roads cut off. An estimated 1.4 million Somalis urgently need humanitarian assistance. To make matters worse, the recent fighting between the allied forces (Ethiopian and Somali government forces) and the Islamists complicates the humanitarian situation. Aid agencies have suspended some planned relief operations due to security concerns. In some regions, there is restricted access for humanitarian workers trying to reach vulnerable populations and there have been incidents of aid staff being harassed and detained by Ethiopian troops.

Between 65,000 and 70,000 people are estimated to have been displaced by the fighting between the TFG and the UIC. At least 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed, mostly between Mogadishu and Baidoa in south and central zones, of whom 700 have not been buried, the World Health Organization says. The US and Ethiopian air strikes in mid-January on Afmadow near the Kenyan border had a grave humanitarian impact as they left more than 40 people and several hundreds livestock dead. The animals safeguard the livelihood of rural communities. The bombardment took place in an area known as a very good pastureland, with the highest concentration of cattle in the Juba valley. Hundreds of families fled their houses. Most of those killed were in a convoy of donkeys carrying sugar to the outlying villages, which have been rendered inaccessible due to recent heavy rains. The raids, backed by the Somali government, targeted alleged Islamists and al-Qaeda members believed by the United States to be hiding in the region. The US denies any civilian casualties as international humanitarian law prohibits direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects. On 22 January, US forces carried out a fresh air strike in southern Somalia. The number of wounded civilians and killed livestock is still unknown. A Pentagon spokesman said the US would continue to pursue members of al-Qaeda, wherever they were.

There are reports that during the recent fighting camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) had come under grenade attack. Before the invasion Somalia counted 400,000 IDPs. The largest IDP population -an estimated quarter of a million people- lives in Mogadishu where for years they have been abused by gunmen who control their sites. The appalling situation of IDPs in Somalia has remained below any minimum acceptable standard, and is among the worst in Africa. Often IDPs remain displaced long even after the violence that caused their original displacement has abated. While remaining in situations of protracted displacement, many IDPs and other vulnerable populations face discrimination, restrictions on their freedom of movement and political rights, exploitation and physical violence, difficulties accessing basic social services as well as limited income earning opportunities. Most IDPs survive through a mixture of casual work and begging and their income is barely sufficient for one meal a day, resulting in high malnutrition and mortality rates. IDP camps are particularly dangerous places for women as the number of rapes is very high with an estimated one third of cases involving children under the age of 16. Now there are up to 70,000 more IDPs who will face discrimination because many of them are separated from their traditional support mechanisms, including their clan base. As long as insecurity prevails, their future is uncertain and unresolved displacement crises will remain constant sources of instability.

The situation of refugees who want to leave the country is no better. On 3 January, several thousand asylum seekers fleeing recent fighting in Somalia were stranded near the border with Kenya, which has blocked their entry. Kenya has stepped up security along its border with Somalia in a bid to prevent militias loyal to the UIC entering the country. Between 4,000 and 7,000 asylum-seekers have gathered around the border town of Dobley in the hope of entering Kenya. They are mainly women and children. Only after two weeks was the World Food Programme able to access the area and provide them with food assistance. Kenya already hosts more than 160,000 Somali refugees, but the closure of its border violates international law protecting refugees.

According to Ethiopian human rights defenders there is a crackdown on Oromo refugees within Somalia. During the last four decades, thousands of Oromo, which are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, fled persecution in their country and have sought refuge in Somalia. Since the arrival of Ethiopian troops in Somalia they become the target of harassments and arbitrary detentions. Some of them were reportedly forcibly returned to Ethiopia where they are at risk of serious human rights violations.

Civilian casualties far outnumber those of armed combatants. Women and children are most affected by fighting. Scores of women and children have been separated from their families or wounded in fighting between Somali government forces and remnants of the UIC. Women suffer disproportionately and differently from militarization and war. Fleeing without the protection of their communities or male relatives they face heightened risk of sexual violence, including rape. They may be forced to offer sex in return for safe passage, food and shelter. Further, they risk injuries from mines or unexploded ordnance and attacks by armed fighters. There are reports of women being raped by the allied forces during the recent conflict in what amounts to a war crime. Armed militia setting up roadblocks in Mogadishu also put women at risk of being raped. The factors which contribute to violence against women in armed conflict have their roots in the pervasive discrimination they faced before the conflict broke out. Women in Somali society are politically, socially and economically marginalized. They do not have access to political participation and were marginalized in the peace talks in Kenya in 2002-2004 leading to an under-representation in the TFG. Domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape are widespread, although there is a culture of denial. To safeguard the family’s honour, some rape victims are forced to marry the perpetrator. Early forced marriage occurs. Female genital mutilation continues to be inflicted on 99% of Somali girls. Girls’ education lags far behind boys’ education. Only 22% of children have access to primary school education with a third being girls and the Ethiopian invasion has severely affected school enrolment.

Children had featured prominently in recent fighting as active combatants. However, a spokesman for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government has denied recruiting underage soldiers. There are also reports that the UIC has declared publicly its intention to recruit from schools. In Mogadishu, children were randomly shot in the street while others risk being recruited to fight by re-emerging warlords. Thousands of Somali children have been separated from their parents and are unaccompanied making them prey to child traffickers and sexual exploitation. Some have lost one or both parents and others are left with no surviving family members. The psychological scars children bear after witnessing such attacks have long-term effects. Child soldiers, in particular, suffer deep-seated trauma that persists long after the fighting has ended.

This reflects the violations of children’s human rights on many fronts. Infant mortality is the highest in the world and a quarter of children are stunted from lack of food. Child labour is rampant. Some 200,000 Somali children (5%) have at some time in their lives carried a gun or been involved in militia activities. More than a quarter of both children and adults (26% and 31% respectively) have been exposed to a serious or traumatic event caused by conflict. In the absence of a functioning public service following the overthrow of the Siad Barre government and the disintegration of the state into civil war in 1991, a whole generation has been deprived of the right to education and most of the population has no access to health care.

Somalis are war-weary and desperate for peace and respect for human rights. Human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent international human rights treaties and standards are indivisible, interdependent and inter-related. All rights are of equal value and cannot be separated. Violations of economic, social and cultural rights – such as failure to protect land rights, denying education rights and inadequate provision of health care – are linked with civil and political rights violations in patterns of denial. No human right can be realized in isolation from other rights. The large-scale violations of civil and political rights in Somalia demand a holistic response. The right to effective political participation, important with regard to clan hostilities, depends on a free media and the right to freedom of expression, but also on an educated and literate population. Land and housing rights will be better realized if a fair and effective system for the administration of justice is in place.

Amnesty International is making an urgent call for human rights to be made a priority. The TFG should ensure that it reflects the human rights aspirations of the Somali people. A first step would be to start dialogue and reconciliation with all groups and factions. A second one would be to make assiduous efforts for reconstruction. This includes measures such as back-to-school programmes, income-generation activities, establishment of a fair judicial system and a health care system, resettlement of internally displaced persons and the demobilisation and reintegration of militias. As the disarmament process is ongoing, demobilized members of faction militias should be offered alternatives such as education, vocational training and job opportunities. If they are not given an alternative to the gun, they will return to it, with all the consequences that entails. The Somali government now has a unique chance to turn desperation to hope.

* Birgit Michaelis is the country coordinator for Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia of Amnesty International - German section.

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

Activists from social movements all over the world flocked to the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre six years ago for the first World Social Forum (WSF). It was organized under the slogan “another world is possible” to demonstrate impressively the counter position to the neo-liberal globalization project as represented and pursued by those in political and economic power. These meet every January for the World Economic Forum at the posh Swiss skiing resort of Davos.

Often erroneously referred to as anti-global movement, the activists mobilizing for the WSF represent simply another global movement, challenging the current forms of capitalist hegemony (and, as many would claim, capitalism as such). The “another world” they believe is possible represents the desire for “a better world” – a world without exploitation, discrimination, marginalization. They treasure global social conditions, which would allow for human security and a dignified life for all (well, at least most, given that there are those class interests represented by human beings, who would object to the implementation of such alternatives). Six years down the line, the latest WSF in Nairobi showed that while it’s rather easy to have such visions, it’s more difficult to implement them.

Some wear and tear resulted in a gradually increasing WSF fatigue among some of those who originally with enthusiasm mobilized and participated. The initial euphoria over the global bonds between “the wretched of the earth” (Frantz Fanon) remained not without mixed feelings over growing internal differences on the future course. Already at the first WSF a manifest of anti-capitalist youth was signed, criticizing the event for what they perceived as a reactionary policy of “humanizing capitalism” instead of trying to defeat it. An alternative “celebrity culture” with its inherent hierarchical structure was also emerging and suspiciously observed. It cultivated an aura of authority - if not personality cult - around some of the perceived, styled (or even self-proclaimed) alternative development gurus.

While the local grass roots crowds gathering during the earlier WSFs contributed to far above a hundred thousand participants in each case, the Nairobi WSF as the first of its kind on African soil provided a markedly lower turn out with less than 50,000 estimated participants. Many locals were simply denied access originally, because they were too poor to pay the registration fee. Others from further away were unable to fork out the travel costs and local expenses. Instead, the dominance of world wide operating NGOs (including foundations of political parties, the trade unions and the churches) as well as representatives of other institutions more or less directly linked to state agencies played a visibly dominant role and illustrated the obvious dividing lines between grass root activists, scholars and other professionally concerned “do gooders” from different spheres and social backgrounds.

As divided was the scenery at the Moi Stadium at the outskirts of Nairobi, where the sessions took place from January 21 to 24. Among those mingling with parts of the crowd were at least three Namibians: Alfred Angula represented the organized workers, Rosa Namises the women’s movement, and Ian Swartz from the Rainbow coalition strengthened the coming out of gays and lesbians, who used the opportunity to courageously fight the notorious local and continental xenophobia.

The opening and closing ceremonies were at the centrally located Uhuru (Freedom) Park. Among the speakers to open was Kenneth Kaunda, and I was certainly not the only one wondering about the basis of his merits. The mere fact that he finally behaved somehow decent as an “elder statesman”, after messing up the country and people with his earlier politics, was certainly not good enough a recommendation to address those committed to “another world”. The junior minister from Italy speaking at the closing ceremony and a number of other political office bearers and aid bureaucrats documenting their commitments to the common (?) cause left as dubious a taste and showed that the dividing lines are a contested issue. – Certainly not everyone among the WSF organizers and activists is immune against the flirting with power.

There were numerous other visible contradictions during the days in and around the Moi sports stadium adding to the mixed feelings. Ironically, this was built in the 1980s by the Chinese, had its peak moment when hosting the All Africa Games and is these days mainly reserved for paid leisure activities by the urban middle class. Those hundreds of thousands of shack dwellers in the slums nearby look at it at best as an alien object, which does not relate to their daily struggle for survival.

The professional North-South and global concern entrepreneurs occupied the best spaces in the venue. A local telecommunication company under foreign ownership provided a so-called special offer to participants, which maximized the company profits by means of a monopoly over services secured. The ordinary people running their humble food vendor businesses at affordable costs for the bulk of participants were forced to operate at the margins. The best-placed catering outlets were overpriced. The minister of inner security owed one of them. During an earlier stage of his career he was among those who tortured the same victims of the Mau-Mau movement, who testified at the WSF to their ordeal in the anti-colonial struggle some fifty years ago.

“Another world is possible”, yes, maybe. But the road to get there is long. And not all among those attending the WSF in Nairobi are (or should be) on board. That might, by the way, include myself too.

* Henning Melber had joined Swapo in 1994. He was the director of NEPRU in Windhoek (1992-2000) and the research director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala (2000-2006), where he is now director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

This article was first written for the Namibian Big Issue and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

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

Doreen Lwanga responds to a review of Blood Diamonds by Del Hornbuckle and contextualises the role of the RUF in the Sierra Leone civil war.

Del Hornbuckle’s recent review of Blood Diamond, “Blood Diamond…TIA (This is Africa)” in Pambazuka News 287 (2007-01-17)() offered me an inside look at the film without having to give my money to Hollywood. My reason for boycotting Hollywood movies on Africa was due to their deliberate refusal to get the story right and preferring sensational exaggerations and faces of miserable and chaotic Africa in need of a “white humanitarian”. The last Hollywood movie on Africa I watched was “Black Hawk Dawn”, expecting to see the gallant Somalis taking down the US military invaders. Instead, I was bombarded by pictures of Somalis handing roses to US marine saviours on the streets of Mogadishu. What part of Mogadishu was that? Ironically, many on the African continent anxiously await such movies (including the acclaimed Last King of Scotland) even when they depict Africans as brutal and bloodthirsty cannibals.

Back to Blood Diamonds. Although I learned a lot from Ms Hornbuckle’s film review, I was not convinced by the equation drawn (seemingly from the film), that is, the RUF war was about child soldiers and blood diamonds. It is easy for Hollywood to accuse the RUF of accelerating the war through illegal diamond mining and using child soldiers without putting all the facts together. For one, why was a movie based on events that occurred in Sierra Leone shot in Mozambique, a country in Southern Africa with no regional context? Remember that the Sierra Leone civil war involved regional players in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria. This reductionism of the Sierra Leone conflict to a “RUF problem” of greed, violence and conflict reminds me of Robert Kaplan’s thesis entitled “The Coming Anarchy” published in The Atlantic Monthly of February 1994. Kaplan claimed that scarcity of resources, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease in Africa where rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet. His essay was so influential that the US State Department faxed copies to all of its Embassies around Africa, undoubtedly shaping its Africa policy.

Fortunately for us, whose attention to context and historical understanding of events does not wither away, along came Paul Richards’ 1996 book ‘Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone’. Richards dedicated this book to critiquing the New Barbarism thesis espoused by the likes of Kaplan. He analysed the Sierra Leone civil war as deeply rooted in the troubled history of resource exploitation, involving slave trade, timber, ivory, and valuable mineral resource exploitation. Through dedicated scholarship and long-term residence in Sierra Leone, Richards conducted interviews with child soldiers, ex-combatants, youth, diamond traders, RUF members, government forces, village leaders and residents in mining areas and other regions with RUF incursions in Sierra Leone. Thus, he successfully contextualises the RUF struggle as a revolt against the patrimonial rule of Sierra Leone and marginalization of ordinary people rather than one driven by greedy and trigger happy illiterate people.

It is also true that RUF cut off people’s limbs but not necessarily as alleged by Ms Hornbuckle that, “the less desirables, one-by-one, have limbs chopped off when they’re not useful as child soldiers or mine workers.” RUF cut off limbs to stop people from going into fields for the harvest and to stop hands from voting in the elections of February 1996 (Richards, op cit. xx). However, RUF also had a disciplined and non-materialistic way of life, which involved sharing looted food and medical supplies to all recruits and punishing anyone who looted for personal wealth. According to Richards, RUF was a group of “excluded educated elites”, a product of intellectual anger making rhetorical point deeply rooted in the troubled history of resource extraction (pp. 25-27).

The RUF war in Sierra Leone included several professionals and school dropouts who joined as a protest against the socio-economic marginalization and corruption of the ruling government in the distribution of national resources. Schoolteachers who joined the RUF sought to avenge against the ruling government’s failure to pay their salaries while school-going youngsters in the diamond districts of eastern and southern Sierra Leone saw no future with schools broken down long before the RUF arrived (Richards, Chapter Four). Even conscripts terrorized in the process of capture, later discovered that RUF political analysis addressed their sense of exclusion and the rebels often treated them generously (Richards, p. xix; 53). Richards tells of girls who had never owned decent shoes, being offered a choice of shoes and dresses by the rebels. Others had a chance to resume their education, and received a good basic training in the arts of bush warfare (pp. 28-29).

Since I didn’t see the film myself, I am relying on Ms Hornbuckle’s account that leaves out the political economy context in which RUF incursion took place in Sierra Leone. That is, the patrimonial state benefited from blood diamonds and distributed national resources to political constituencies, thus accelerating social marginalisation, fuelling social grievances and the emergence of the RUF guerrilla movement. For instance, in exchange for security, the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) granted huge mining concessions in Kono district to the South African private security company, Executive Outcomes (p.17). The RUF joined the control of some mineral deposits and diamond resources as a means of obtaining basic subsistence and military equipment. Whereas the patrimonial government collected revenue for personal consumption from trade in diamonds with licensed dealers (mainly Lebanese), the RUF as an outlawed non-state entity could not legally trade in its diamonds. The act of criminalizing the activities of ordinary diamond traders in resource-rich communities denies them an income for school fees and family survival. Previously, communities in resource-rich areas of Eastern Congo, DRC have spoken out against international sanctions and boycott campaigns that criminalize their non-licensed batter trade in their minerals. This is perhaps what President Nelson Mandela meant to re-echo.

No doubt that the atrocities committed by the RUF undermined their campaign. They failed to take their protest to the central government in Freetown and mostly hurt those people sharing similar grievances against the ruling government – the rural population. However, the usual story Hollywood enjoys telling about Africa is a decontextualised one involving the evil (RUF represented by Captain Poison), the disposable (Solomon Vandy) and the saviour (a white journalist Maddy Bowen). Paul Richards book is a must read for everyone because it excels in giving a human face to rebels and guerrilla fighters, as members of a frustrated society, something continuously diminishing with our fascination with the growing global terrorism outlook.

* Doreen Lwanga is an Africa Scholar, Researcher and Activist working in the areas of African security, Pan-Africanism and Higher education in Africa. In 1993, Robert Kaplan, a US journalist wrote a book on the Balkan conflict and later expended his argument to African events in Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone in an influential essay in the Atlantic Monthly, February 1994. This essay was a reading for my graduate class in the US on Humanitarian Assistance. Paul Richards also sought to challenge the “Resource Curse” thesis advanced by World Bank economist Paul Colliers and others. Paul Richards (1996): Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey

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

The Shack dwellers in South Africa are one of the most marginalized communities, criminalised for being poor. Yet it is they who more often than not suffer from crime along with continued police harassment. These two factors have brought the shack dwellers of Durban together to fight the crime in their communities, says S'bu Zikode.

The poor were not born to be poor. We didn't become poor because we are lazy or stupid. In fact we have to work very hard and be very clever just to find a place for ourselves in this world that the rich have made for themselves. History made us poor and the history of our country is a history of crimes against the innocent. Because of these crimes millions of people are living in shacks and selling in the streets. The poor have the most to gain from an end to crime. More than anybody else we want a country where the human dignity of every person is respected. More than anybody else we understand that working for an end to crime is the responsibility of every one of us. It is our duty to God, to our country and to our children. We are prepared to do our part of this work.

But I feel oppressed when high profile people, including politicians, speak about crime especially since it is very unusual for anyone at their level to be a victim of crime. So few powerful people want to speak directly to communities. They prefer to make statements on the papers, radios and televisions. But when you make a statement there is no person in front of you to tell you about their lives. When you just make statements it is like you think that you already know everything. But when you humble yourself and talk to people you show that you know that you don't know everything. A proper understanding can only come from talking to everybody and for discussions to be open ended. That is why all the good leaders were humble. They were servants of the people, not masters.

Some kinds of crimes are planned in shacks. Others are planned in big conferences at the ICC. Both kinds of crimes make people suffer and must be stopped. However the truth is that with both kinds of crime, most of the time, the victims are not the powerful people but rather those with no power, the poor, the women and the children. Putting more poor people in prisons will only make them better criminals. The way to deal with crime is to invest our energy, resources and time in our communities. When human dignity is at the centre of our communities then our communities are places where crime is not accepted inside or outside.

There is a big problem with many local police stations. We will begin to deal with local crimes only when men like acting Superintendent Glen Nayager of the Sydenham Police Station can acknowledge that he and he alone can't deal with crime. If he keeps treating all the poor as if we are all criminals he will just be wasting his energy. He will just make us feel that the police are our enemies. He must acknowledge that he is too distant to understand the daily life at the grassroots level. He must understand that just because we can't address him like he can address us that doesn't mean that we are just rogues.

Prior to starting the struggle against the big crimes with Abahlali baseMjondolo I struggled against the local crimes. I joined the Police Reserve Force in February 2000 and I had been part of the Sydenham Community Service Centre. Before I entered I found an old African Mama with a baby on her back standing outside the door just helplessly waiting. When I asked her why she was just waiting there she told me that she had been chased out because she didn't speak English. None of the policemen on duty could speak isiZulu or even isiFanakalo and this hurt me. How can a police station serve the people when no one there can speak to people in their own language? I went inside with that woman to translate so that she could lay her charge and from there I decided to be a reservist. I underwent interviews, tests from the District Surgeon and trainings and worked as a Reservist at the Sydenham Police station.

Now that shack dwellers are fighting against evictions and for land and housing in the city we are all called criminals. The police think that they can arrest and beat us any time. They come when we are marching. Superintendent Glen Nayager comes when we are meeting and even when we are just living our daily lives. The Superintendent needs to understand that we are an anti-crime movement. We have a trackable record in working against all kinds of crime. He needs to think about the fact that although the police have arrested hundreds of us, the courts have dropped the charges every time. But we, the shack dwellers, have won a number of victories against the City in the courts. We work to make this a country in which there is respect for the human dignity of each person. We would be happy to work with the local police to make our communities and all the people around us safe if they recognised us as citizens. If our communities could work against crime in a partnership with police officers who treated us with respect, we could make our communities and neighbourhoods safe for everyone.

If the police continue to behave arrogantly towards the people like Nayager does, then I fear that incidents of people taking the law into their own hands, as it happened in KwaMashu recently, could happen more often. When police officers like Nayager take the law into their own hands thinking that they are above the law then communities start to do the same. We can only really condemn what happened in KwaMashu when our police force becomes a police service as Madiba instructed.

We need senior officers and politicians to make less statements and do more talking where people live and work. We need these discussions to be real discussions. We need the results of these discussions to be acted on. We need to build a country where the police serve all the people. If the police serve all the people then they will be trusted and it will be easy to marginalise the criminals in our communities and to organise not just against local criminals but also those high up who are using the country's money for themselves and making the poor poorer. Then we can make our country safe for everyone.

* S'bu Zikode is the elected president of the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. On 12 September 2005 he and the organisation's deputy president, Philani Zungu, were arrested on a charge of 'assaulting a police officer' by officers from the Sydenham Police Station while on their way to an interview with iGagasi FM. They had just been warned to cease speaking to the media by a senior official in the provincial Housing Department. They were released the next morning and all charges against them were dropped. Zikode and Zungu have laid criminal and civil charges against Nayagar who they have accused of beating and abusing them severely while they were in his custody.

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

The mythological bird, the “Sankofa” is used as a metaphor for Africa. While it is important for the continent to remember the past it is even more important to look to the future and build on the positive aspects of the past, writes Emira Woods.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which ripped an estimated 12 million Africans from their homelands and transported them to lives of unspeakable suffering and humiliation in Europe and the Americas. It is important to reflect on this tragic history, but also, like the Sankofa bird, to look towards ways of abolishing the forms of slavery that still ravage lives throughout much of the African world.

Modern-day slavery takes many shapes. In Liberia, the Bridgestone/Firestone Corporation continues to profit from slave-like conditions in their rubber plantation. Firestone's operations force children as young as 11 years old to work in the fields from before the sun rises to the late day. Used as beasts of burden, these kids typically carry two 75 pound buckets of rubber for up to two miles to storage or collection tanks. Should the children refuse to work, their parents risk losing the measly $3.19 daily wage, all while Bridgestone/Firestone announces record level profits for 2005 and the first half of 2006.

In the spirit of Sankofa, an alliance of human rights groups and labor unions is fighting to end this disgraceful abuse, and the International Labor Rights Fund has filed a case against the company.

Trafficking

Another, and perhaps most overt, form of modern day slavery is human trafficking. Throughout the African world women and children face a murderous and exploitative system of servitude. There are the parents in Egypt who reportedly sell kidneys and other body parts to feed their children. And there are the teenagers forced into prostitution working in the “AIDS corridor” running through oil-producing areas of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad. The millions of impoverished women and children in Africa make easy targets for a growing number of traffickers who push them into unpaid or poorly compensated labor or sexual services. This takes place often through trickery and, at times, kidnapping. In response, the anti-trafficking movement has gained strength and visibility in recent years. This movement which includes survivors is making steady strides to break the chains for women and children around the world.

In the Americas, where wealth is being accumulated into fewer and fewer hands, modern-day forms of slavery are easily visible, from the flower pickers in Latin America to the garment factory workers in Haiti; from migrant workers in fields picking tomatoes in the southern United States to African-Americans locked into poor work conditions with inadequate compensation for their labor. Within the U.S., African girls and women are being enslaved in homes as maids and nannies for diplomats, foreign nationals, and Americans alike. Reports of individuals being held against their will, made to work around the clock for little or no money are becoming increasingly common. Advocates using new strategies and unusual bedfellows from law enforcement are working in the U.S. and around the world to tackle these and other issues of modern-day slavery.

Jubilee Movement

Religious and other groups around the world have united in a Jubilee movement to liberate the African world from another set of shackles – the extreme burden of foreign debt. According to the United Nations, $100 million a day is squeezed out of Africa in debt service payments to the rich world, siphoning off scarce resources needed to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other key concerns of the continent. In exchange, African governments are further enslaved by stringent loan conditions that control everything from inflation rates to wages for teachers and doctors.

Last year, the Bush Administration agreed to a plan to cancel the debts of 18 countries, most of them in Africa. The Jubilee movement is working to build on that precedent by pushing for the cancellation of the debts of 50 or so additional countries that are in desperate need.

The egg of hope in our Sankofa year lies in another commemoration. This year also represents the 50th anniversary of independence for many African states. The movement for change that brought an end to the slave trade culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation’s abolition of legal slavery. The abolitionist movement later inspired a pan-African drive for political independence. It was visionary leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Cape Verde’s Amilcar Cabral, and Zaire’s Patrice Lumumba who in turn led a movement to throw off the yoke of colonial slavery. Today we have new inspiring leaders like the many women civil society leaders, cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, and yes even Presidents, reshaping Africa’s political landscape.

This Sankofa year is a vehicle to build movements for peace and justice. There couldn’t be a better time to focus the world’s attention on ending the economic scourge that has drained the African world since the days of legal slavery. Justice for the African world can only come by restoring the dignity of her people, wherever they may live. Seize the Sankofa year. End all forms of modern day slavery and secure reparations for all debts incurred.

* Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. She was born in Liberia. See http://www.fps-dc.org

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

Health campaigners and activists led by 2004 Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Mathai have petitioned the African Union member states for failing to honour their 15 per cent pledge of their annual budgets on health care.

This fact became public knowledge as the WSF entered the third day.

The petition comes ahead of the forthcoming AU Heads of State and Government summit in Addis Ababa.

The petition by South African Nobel Laureate Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, but signed on his behalf by Prof Mathai calls for Africa leaders to act fast and implement their pledges in a bid to reverse the ugly trends of treatable diseases in Africa.

“We write to appeal to you to act without further delay on arguably the most crucial challenge African leaders will have to confront in modern times, that of taking immediate and concrete actions to end the tragic loss of an estimated 8 million African lives annually to preventable, treatable or manageable diseases, illnesses and health conditions,” the Petition read in part.

Prof Mathai noted that sustainable financing for public health in Africa is arguably the most important challenge facing our continent today but which is put at the bottom of their agenda. She has thus challenged African leaders to revisit their 15% commitment as a matter of urgency lest Africans risks dying before their time.

In a campaign rally dubbed ’ 15% now’ activists noted that Africa risks loosing all her people to preventable and manageable diseases that have failed to top its leaders’ budgetary agendas. Yet in 2001 AU member states signed the Abuja declaration that called for each country to commit at least 15% or more of national budgets to health care.

“Africa is at the brink of extinction because our leaders have failed to prioritize the lives of their people. An estimated 40 million people Africans have died from health related conditions as a result of the Abuja commitment not being met.”

Citing the example of her own government’s negligence, she noted that the Kenyan government has failed to stop companies from producing thin plastic bags that litter the streets of Nairobi, acting as breeding grounds for mosquitoes and causing malaria.

Rotimi Sankore of CREDO Africa, an organization that campaigns for African rights lashed on African leaders for failing to break the ceilings as regards health issues. He accused them of prioritizing their own political interests in the expense of the lives of their people.

“Denying people of their health rights is like a death sentence. This is like genocide as generations will continue to be wiped off. Without mincing words, Sankore presented the grim statistics from UNAIDS and WHO indicating that 40 million Africans have died from health related conditions and many more will continue dying if our leaders fail to act accordingly.

The 2006 statistics from global and African health institutions indicate that at least 586,911 Africans are dying from TB annually, this is 35% of the world total. Figures also show that 24 million people living with HIV Aids have TB and that over 4 million children under the age of five die annually due to TB related infections.

Sankore sees the whole picture as damning as these statistics are merely seen as figures. The annual Aids death figures for Africa alone is 2.1 million. An estimated 24.7 million Africans are living with HIV and new infections are as high as 2.8 million. In the case of malaria, annual African deaths are estimated at 1,136,000. Also over 12 million African children have been orphaned by HIV Aids.

Chair of the Nigerian Social Forum, Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi said that Africa presents the worst indicator of women health issues with the continent having the highest number of women living with HIV Aids.

Gender budgeting, she said was crucial if women are to overcome some reproductive health issues that continue to surface amongst them. She urged nations to build alliances and mobilize health institutions. “Our leaders have signed these agreements so it is time we force them to ratify the protocols of the rights of women.

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

Media practitioners in Africa have been challenged to help African governments in formulating a regulatory environment that is conducive to the establishment of indigenous media.

Speaking at a media session 22 January at the ongoing World Social Forum at Kasarani in Nairobi, the Director of Highway Africa News Agency (HANA), Chris Kabwato said there was urgent need to engage African governments in media best practices. This kind of dialogue with the government would enable indigenous African practitioners to invest in producing culturally relevant content and counter the highly

Skewed Euro-centric content that Africans are currently consuming. Mr Kabwato said that Africa had for years been infiltrated by foreign media and this had reduced Africans to almost pure consumers of media and not producers. Time had come he said, for Africans to establish home-grown media as alternatives to the foreign media which dominate broadcast and print media in Africa. Mr Kabwato warned that some of the alternative media in Africa relied heavily on donor funding for their operations. This he said was dangerous because it meant that the media were not self-sustainable.

Other issues he outlined as crucial for African government’s to address in order to create indigenous African media with culturally relevant content were : access of media ; citizenship versus consumerism ; the north/south relationship ; hegemony ; and diversity and pluralism. Speaking at the same forum, the Africa director of Inter Press Service news agency, Ms Farai Samhungu revealed that although IPS was formed with the ideal of the South to generate home- grown news, the agency was still donor dependent 43 years later. Ms Samhungu said although IPS publishes in about 20 languages, the cost of translations was exorbitant.

“For example it may cost us three times more to produce a French translation of a news report from English”, said Ms Samhungu emphasizing the expenses involved in producing multi-lingual content. She however said there is room for the co-existence of information as a commodity as well as for the common good.

A communication activist, Jason Nadi, spoke about the liberalization of media content production. Mr Nadi said that the modern information communication technologies such as the Internet, had enabled individuals to produce their own news content culminating in a information society. In common parlance an information society is one where information is treated as a form of currency at different platforms and fora. Mr Nadi said this individually produced media is an alternative to the traditional mass media. Mr Nadi said that in Europe, media conglomerates in individual countries have distorted media freedom as giant companies had the financial power to control content and the manner of distribution. He said information through mass media is becoming less reliable because it is treated as merchandise for consumers not audiences.

“To counter this we need communities to be able to create and exchange their own content and use different platforms”, said Nadi adding that modern technology in the media was operating amid medieval media governance structures. Jon Barnes from the PANOS London office said that his organisation had identified weaknesses and challenges within the African media and began redressing them. For example, he said, PANOS was engaged in building African journalists capacity to report effectively on trade issues especially at international level where there is a dearth of African generated content.

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

African Flames Brenda Zulu speaks with Wahu Kaara, Convener of Mobilisation, WSF

On the main challenges of hosting the WSF in Kenya

The irony of it is that many members of the Kenya Social Forum can not afford to pay the US$ 5 registration fee and these people are from homeless communities like Kibera. The other thing is that we were operating under the budget. I have been convener of mobilisation but was not able to raise the funds.

On the main issues that Kenyans would love to address

Kenyans would love to create a consciousness of good governance because of multi party politics. It should be known that not all the solutions are in politics

On what WSF will do for Kenya and Africa?

It would be able to give us another identity of being an equal actor with others. It would put the record right that we are not a nation of insecurity and not what the Americans are doing to Somalis by chasing them out of their own country.

The World Social Forum has already demonstrated that the government, civil society and mass movements can work together. We have enjoyed having meetings with our government. The World Social Forum has also bridged the working relation between us and the government.

This World Social Forum will give Africans presence and voice in bringing about paradigm shift from neo-liberalism that has perfected exclusion, disposition, violence in the guise of globalisation for prosperity; yet it is globalisation for commoditisation of all aspects of life and natural wealth to serve the interest of market and wealth.

On the impact of the forum

The NGOs and Civil societies have no choice than let go the leadership of social movements in demonstrating this leadership.

On the Forum’s handicap

For our local media there have been no media reports. This has been the main handicap because the media has not been interested in publicising this event.

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

The Rural Womens Movement is based in Kwa Zula Natal. The organization began in 1998 but was not officially launched until 2000. The RWM grew out of the need to address gender inequalities in the rural areas in post Apartheid South Africa.

RWM works to enable women to access, own, control, use, and manage land and natural resources in their own right. They work mainly with indigenous, poor and landless women and at present there are some 500 community based organizations with a membership of some 15,000 women. of whom 50 percent live below the poverty line.

Yesterday I spoke with Olivia Nomzamo who is a young agricultural activist with the Rural Women’s Movement and who lives in a small village in Kwa Zulu Natal called Underburg. She left school in 1994 and worked in a garage for one year but then decided she wanted to learn about farming as a way of supporting herself so she went to work on a farm. In 1999 Olivia joined the RWM and began to talk to other women in her village about the possibility of acquiring some land and using it to set up a collective farm project and cultivate the land which would bring some income for the women and enable them to feed themselves.

They approached the Traditional Authority in their area which is managed by local chiefs many of whom had been imposed on the community by the Apartheid government. The land is actually held on behalf of the people but the Chiefs act as if they own the land and in many instances people have to pay bribes of 3000 rand plus gifts of beer and vodka in order to receive an allocation of land.

The women of Underburg were given 10 acres for their farm project by the Chiefs and with the help of other local farmers who taught them how to cultivate the land and also lent them equipment they were able to begin the project. The women are divided into 5 groups each with between 20 and 25 members. They all contribute to the purchasing of seeds, one group manages the seedlings and the other 4 groups manage the transplanted seedlings on the main farm where they grow potatoes, beans and vegetables. They have still not been able to purchase any of their own equipment and totally rely on borrowing from male farmers in the area. Most of the food is sold to local markets and a small amount is divided up between the women and used to feed their families. The money they make has enabled them to improve their lives generally including sending their children to school. There is a local clinic in the area which has recently had a change of staff and who are providing a much better service.

Many of the women in the farming project are AIDS widows and some 90 percent of the women are HIV positive so access to decent health care is a huge priority for the village. There is also a large number of orphaned children some who live with relatives but quite a few who live on their own as street kids with no support and have to fend for themselves.

The women of the rural communities in regions like Kwa Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape have benefited the least from the New South Africa. Many of the women in these areas who were ANC activists or part of families who were ANC activists were hounded, beaten and killed by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The regions have the largest numbers of illiteracy due to the poor educational provision during apartied and not much has changed for them since then. In fact many are suffering and starving due to lack of unemployment and HIV/ AIDS. Women are particularly vulnerable as men blame them for the spread of HIV. Women have been evicted from their homes by their husbands or dead husbands male relatives when they have revealed their HIV status as it is the women that go to get tested whilst the men refuse to do so.

Sizani Ngubane is the founder and director of the Rural Women’s Movement and you can listen to an interview with her on Pambazuka Broadcasts. She lives in Pietermaritzburg, is self-educated and has been an ANC and Women’s activist for most of her adult life. If you wish to contact the RWM you can do so at rwm at mail dot ngo dot za

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

The LGBTI activists presented a workshop on Sexuality and Social Justice which included Fikile Vilakazi is the director of the Coalition of Africa Lesbians (CAL), Wendy Landau of Behind the Mask, Bridge from the UK and Manohar from Sangama in Bangalore in India. The focus of the workshop was sexual rights and social justice. The concept of sexual rights is a different way of talking about sexual issues in which an integrated approach to sexuality must include women broadly because they made be denied their sexual rights in various ways. The concept is to move away from identity politics to one of integration of sexual minorities such as , sex workers, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, and also breaking these down into class and gender. The approach is a new and radical one which moves to incorporate all minorities and to make alliances with as many oppressed groups across a broad spectrum of the communities in which we live.

Fikile Vilakazi is the director of the Coalition of Africa Lesbians (CAL) which covers 12 countries including, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Uganda, Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania. The CAL run a number of programmes for lesbians across Africa including a Creative Expression project to help lesbians come out through writing, discussions, poetry and art. The main issues facing the lesbian community in Africa is that even in countries like South Africa where lesbian rights are enshrined in the constitution, society itself is still very homophobic which puts them at risk of hate crimes including rape, beatings, and even murder. The recent Civil Union / Same Sex Marriage Bill passed by the South Africa parliament is not the primary concern of the LGBTI community in South Africa. Rather women are concerned over the curative hate crimes, and the homophobia in society. Despite the fact the lesbians are legally able to adopt children people still ask how can lesbians be parents in South Africa? There is also the issue of fundamentalist religions, Christians, Muslims and Hindus .

The legalising of of same sex marriage in South Africa has had repercussions in various African countries such as Nigeria and Uganda which have been extremely negative in their response and have used the South Africa decriminalisation to enforce even more draconian punishments of homosexuality in their countries. On a postive note the response by these governments has been that there is now an active dialogue in Africa around LGBTI issues and more and more of the LGBTI community are coming out and challenging their respective governments and religious institutions on the issue of sexuality and human rights.

Manohar of Sangama spoke eloquently about the innovative movement to bring together different sexual minorities across class and caste divisions in India.

* Sokari Ekine is the new Online News Editor of Pambazuka News

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

The plight of about 3000 indigenous Kenyans, on the verge of losing their land has come to the fore at the Kenyan WSF.

They claim that they are fast losing their means of survival to internal displacement by American investors. The investors under the Dominion group of companies are reported to have bought off a bigger part of the Yala area of Siala district, west off Kenya, where the people live and earn their bread through farming. The citizens’ economic mainstay is agriculture and fishing, and the successful sale of the land could spell doom for the activities through denial of access to the land for cultivation and the river for fishing.

These facts came to light when a participant in the on-going World Social Forum expressed dismay at the way the Kenyan government was allegedly handling foreign investment issue in the country. Rapudo Hawl a community mobiliser in the ‘Friends of Yala Swamp’ told African Flame that the investors had taken the land and set up a plant for rice growing in Yala river, the district source of Fish farming, without any proper compensation to the dwellers. He alleged that because of the dam built for the activity, the villagers now have to migrate from their homes to other places such as churches or trees whenever it rains as the water in the dam overflows into their homes.

“This is the second year since the government gave them the authority to take the land and government can’t do much about the situation because the politicians have been compromised and they made sure they signed the treaty to pass a law on investment” claimed Hawl. “It has affected their livelihoods because they have been depending on agriculture and fishing, and the company can’t allow them to go near the river or they will be arrested.” He added that the people who did not heed the prohibition order had in the past been arrested and taken to court. He however stated that his organisation was working towards lobbying government to revisit the decision, saying a survey was being conducted to obtain facts about the consequences of the investment decision on the indigenous people. “The survey was done in October and is ready but is not yet in circulation. We need to lobby government because they say there is no evidence to our claims” he added.

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

The launching of the Charter of Feminists Principles for African Feminists at the 3rd International Feminist Dialogue marks a major contribution by the African Feminist Forum (AFF) and the larger feminist movement to the on-going world social forum. The AFF took place last year in Ghana and this space was created as an autonomous space in which African feminists from all walks of life and at different levels including local levels and the academia, could reflect on a collective basis and chart ways to strengthen and grow the feminists movement on the continent.

Mercy Siame an activist from Zambia sees the launch as a breakthrough in African feminism and encouraged other feminists to rally behind it and support it. “It may be difficult for the AFF to be accepted. We should spend more time and explain the ideologies to the people especially our leaders”. Director Coalition of African Lesbians, Fikile Vilakazi a first time participant to the International Feminist Dialogue is amazed that the space has rallied people from different background of fundamentalism. She says she has learned a lot on the situation of women in conflict situations and issues on gender based violence which she say is a different experience from her native South Africa.

The International Feminist Dialogue was held prior to the WSF from 17th to 19th January 2007 under the theme “Transforming Democracy: Feminist Visions and Strategies”. Over 250 women from different parts of the World attended to deepen the intensive dialogues on feminist perspectives and strategies in addressing fundamentalisms, militarism and neo-liberal globalisation. In organizing the third International Feminist Dialogues, the Coordinating Group (CG) created a vital space for critical minded feminist activists to re-examine, re-imagine and move forward the vital political project of feminist movement building and new forms of democratic processes.

The setting of the WSF in Africa in January 2007 offers a strategic space for feminists to come together in their broad diversity to explore the current moment, their differences and common ground, and their role in the larger social movements. Feminist Dialogues (FD) is a transnational meeting of feminist networks and organizations usually held before the WSF being one such space for this kind of strategic dialogue. The pre-WSF meeting is meant to promote effective intervention in the broader WSF process as feminists organizing for change, and to establish strategic and politically relevant links with other social movements. The first FD was held in Mumbai in January 2003, the second in Porto Alegre, Brazil and the third now in Nairobi, Kenya.

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M’du Hlongwa explores the role of NGOs in the struggle for social justice. “Even some NGOs call us criminal when we speak for ourselves. We are supposed to suffer silently so that some rich people can get rich from our work, and others can get rich having conferences about having more conferences about our suffering. But the police never come to these conferences. These conferences are just empty talking.”

South Africa does not think of the poor. The poorest of the country are the majority but we are kept voiceless. The poorest I am talking about are the shack dwellers, the street traders, the street kids, the flat dwellers who can’t afford the rent and the ‘unemployeds’ from Cape Town to Musina in the Limpopo Province and from Richard’s Bay on the Indian Ocean to Alexander Bay on the Atlantic Ocean.

We always say that the fact that we are poor in life does not make us short-minded. We know that our country is rich. There are all the minerals like gold and aluminium, the water and the forestry, the trade and the industry, the agriculture, the art and the culture and the science and the technology.

The Freedom Charter said that the wealth of South Africa should benefit the people of South Africa but it is not like that. The land of our ancestors was taken for the farms and the forests. Our grandparents and parents worked on those farms and in the mines and factories and houses. Now we are either trying to make a living selling to other poor people or we are the servants who come quietly into the nice places with our heads always down, to keep them nice, and to keep them working for the rich. Most of our time goes into just trying to survive. To get some little money, to get water, to see a doctor, to rebuild our homes after they have burnt down, to get our children into school or to try and stop evictions. We shouldn’t be suffering like this.

Our shacks are flooded during heavy rains. Sometimes they are even washed away because the City won’t let us build proper structures or build proper houses for us in the city where we need to be to work and study. And our shacks get burnt down in fires because the City thinks that we don’t deserve to have electricity. We are always losing our belongings in these fires and sometimes loved ones, especially children and old people, are lost. The constitution says that everyone must have adequate shelter. We don’t have adequate shelter and the situation is not getting better. Now the city is trying to evict us and is leaving people homeless on the side of the road. How many lives will be destroyed before our voices are heard? How many children will drown in rivers on the way to school because ‘there is no budget’ to build bridges while casinos, and airports and theme parks have huge budgets? Who will do something about the fact that the police who are supposed to protect the people are always abusing us? Is it right that they come into our houses and ill-treat us, insulting us, stealing from us and hitting us? Who will do something about the fact that even when our youth finish grade 12, they just sit at home because there is no work and because our parents can’t afford to send us to university? Who will turn our economy from something that lets the rich get richer off the suffering of the poor into something that lets all the people make a better life?

The politicians have shown that they are not the answer to our suffering. The poor are just made the ladders of the politicians. The politician is an animal that hibernates. They always come out in the election season to make empty promises and then they disappear. But we know that lies are for the time being but truth is for life. These guys get into power by lying to us and then they make money. They don’t work for the people who put them up there. In fact our suffering ends up working for them. Their power comes because they say that they will speak for us. That is why in Abahlali [Shack Dwellers Movement] we started to say ‘Speak to us and not for us’ and why we vote in our own elections for people who will live and work with us in our communities and without any hopes for making our suffering into a nice job.

We know that our country is rich. We know that it is the suffering of the poor that makes it rich. We know how we suffer and we know why we suffer. But in Abahlali we have found that even though we are a democratic organisation that gets its power from the trust of our members and have never hurt one person, the government and even some NGOs call us criminal when we speak for ourselves. We are supposed to suffer silently so that some rich people can get rich from our work, and others can get rich having conferences about having more conferences about our suffering. But the police never come to these conferences. These conferences are just empty talking. When we have big meetings where we live, the police are even in the sky in their helicopters. These conferences demand our support but they never support our struggles. We are always on our own when the fires come, or when the police come, or when the City comes to evict us.

I want to say clearly that I am a Professor of my suffering. We are all Professors of our suffering. But in this South Africa, the poor must always be invisible. We must be invisible where we live and where we work. We must even be invisible when people are getting paid to talk about us in government or in NGOs! Everything is done in our name. We are even told that the 2010 World Cup is for us when we can’t afford tickets and will be lucky to watch it on television. The money for stadiums should go for houses and water and electricity and schools and clinics. Even now shacks are being destroyed and street traders are being sorely abused by the METRO and SAPS police to make us invisible when the visitors come. This World Cup is destroying our lives. I call 2010 ‘The year of the curse’. South Africa is sinking. It will only be rescued if the poor take their place in the country.

But before 2010 is 2009. This is the year of the National Elections in our beloved country. When the elections come I want to see who will be queuing in that hot or rainy day to vote. I see voting as the same as throwing your last money in a flooded river. I believe that many people who voted before want to go and ask to get their X’s back. Abahlali sensed this early and in the 2006 local government elections we said “No Land, No House, No Vote”. We said that whenever we have voted for people who say that they will speak for us, they hibernate afterwards. We said that we would struggle for land and housing against all councillors. We said that we would make ourselves the strong poor by building our settlement committees and our movement.

We got beaten for that by the police. Some of the NGO people said that we were too stupid to understand what elections were for and that we needed ‘voter education’. They need an education in the politics of the poor. They should come and live in a settlement for even just one week before they say that we are too stupid to understand our own politics. Our boycott brought the percentage of voters in the areas where we are strong right down. In these areas the councillors can’t claim to represent the poor and we have made our own organisations, which do represent the poor because they are made for the poor by the poor, much stronger than the councillors. Abahlali is much stronger than Baig and Bachu and Dimba.

I am sure the number of non-voters who choose to work very hard every day struggling in their communities instead of giving trust to politicians will be multiplied in 2009. I will personally be pushing for Abahlali and our sister organisations to take the ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’ campaign into the 2009 National Elections. Oh! South Africa the rich, sinking country! There is no more need to vote for politicians in this country. I always say to people that they should vote if they ever see even one politician doing something good for the poor.

But from the local government to the provincial and national parliaments I only see politicians on gravy trains and holidays and in conferences with the rich. They are the new bosses, not the servants of the poor. They deceive us and make fools of us. They ask us for our vote and then disappear with our votes to their big houses and conferences where they plan with the rich how to make the rich richer. Their entrance fee for these houses and conferences is us. They sell us to the rich. Can anyone show one politician who has stood up to say build houses not stadiums? Can anyone show one politician who has said that Moreland’s land should be for the poor who are still waiting to be a real part of South Africa and not for more shops and golf courses? Can anyone show one politician who has said that it is wrong for the police to beat us and arrest us when we want to march? Can anyone show one politician who has stood with us when the police shoot at us?

Let us keep our votes. Let us speak for ourselves where we live and work. Let us keep our power for ourselves. The poor are many. We have shown that together we can be very strong. Abahlali has now won many victories. Other organisations are working hard too. Let us continue to work to make ourselves the strong poor. Let us vote for ourselves every day.

• M’du Hlongwa lives in the Lacey Road settlement in Sydenham, Durban. He is unemployed and his mother works as a cleaner in a state hospital. He was the secretary in the first and second Abahlali baseMjondolo secretariat but did not stand for election for a position in the 2007 secretariat in order to be able to complete his book on the politics of the poor and to try and gain access to a university to study to be a teacher. However he continues to be an enthusiastic ordinary member of Abahlali baseMjondolo and to do volunteer work each week day morning work for people living in HIV/AIDS. He is 26. For information on Abahlali baseMjondolo visit

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