Kameelah Rasheed argues that we should not abandon the WSF or global civil society to the bourgeoisie and liberals who we assume are harmoniously preoccupied with talking and reform agendas. Instead, “we should work toward radical re-appropriations of this problematic space.”

For the past 3 months, I have been trying to decide whether to attend the World Social Forum in Nairobi. The World Social Forum first met in 2001 in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a challenge to the World Economic Forum (WEF) and 'claimed to organize an alternative to capitalist neo-liberal globalisation.' Lofty mission, right? I have been lukewarm about the forum for a few months because such transformative discourse is not always met by such transformative politics or action. Furthermore, I like to investigate a bit before I invest the 600 USD for a plane ticket plus 300 USD in associated costs. As I scoured for analysis of the World Social Forum, I came across critiques accusing the WSF of being a glorified discussion group for the emerging class of career activists and NGOs, to an incubator for the domestication of possibly explosive actors.

One paper that I found particularly interesting was Rodha D'Souza's "The WSF Revisited: Back to the Basics." D'Souza analyzes the WSF as advocating discourses that run counter to the tagline "another world is possible." D'Souza interrogates the notion of "civil society" that the WSF harps on (the World Social Forum as "an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulations of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society.")

She examines civil society within a historical context not as a democratic space for the development of counter-hegemonic activity and discourses, but as an incubator for the domestication of the possibly explosive elements of society. In examining the WSF's support of Third World debt cancellation and leading intellectuals’ examination of the Tobin Tax, she finds that the WSF does not interrogate capitalism or state power. Rather it advocates for a "more sustainable exploitation of society." In a search for compassionate capitalism and benevolent states, D'Souza finds that the WSF does not work toward "another world" but toward a reformed vision of the world that does not disrupt the fundamental structures that feed global exploitation.

Patrick Bond's "Gramsci, Polanyi and Impressions from Africa on the Social Forum Phenomenon," further frames the critiques of the WSF. Bond finds that the dichotomous reading of civil society, and by extension the WSF, are rooted in the conflicting arguments of Hungarian social scientist Karl Polanyi's construction of civil society as the "new social movement challenge to neoliberalism", and Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci's construction of civil society as a "stabilizing, conservative force." If the WSF is a seemingly "stabilizing, conservative force," is the preoccupation with discussion just a politics of diversion to distract us from the need for discourse to be anchored to transformative action?

Before I allowed the pessimism towards the WSF to overwhelm me, I received an email that suggested that our attitude toward the WSF should be that of Gramsci's "Pessimism of the Intellect; Optimism of the Will." Irrespective of the critiques, he reminded me that we should not abandon the WSF or global civil society to the bourgeoisie and liberals who we assume are harmoniously preoccupied with talking and reform agendas. Instead, he argues that we should work toward radical re-appropriations of this problematic space. This process of building is a matter of great urgency. If we become too preoccupied with critiques of the WSF, we will find ourselves both frustrated and without the visions of the new spaces and worlds we want to build.

A lack of funds kept me away from the World Social Forum this year. However, for the lucky many that have the opportunity to participate in this event please keep in mind the words of Patrice Lumumba. Forty-five years ago, before Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, he left a very important message in "Congo, My Country." He wrote: "It is easy enough to shout slogans, to sign manifestos, but it is quite a different matter to build, command, spend days and nights seeking the solutions of problems." While written nearly 45 years ago, this call to action is still important today as many pack our bags en route to Nairobi.

• Kameelah Rasheed is a community activist and Fulbright Scholar at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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

Liepollo Lebohang Pheko discusses the real impact of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) on women and the failures of liberalization policies to examine and address the specific needs of women.

Trade liberalisation produces different results for men and women. The differential outcomes are associated with the most essential aspects of livelihoods and well-being, including food security, employment, income and access to affordable health services. Differentiated outcomes across countries and regions are based on the category of economic area and specific sector, measures, timing and sequencing of trade policies. They traverse various sectors and sub sectors of trade liberalisation: agriculture, services, clothing and textiles, and intellectual property.

Policy-makers and any groupings concerned with gender equality, poverty eradication and development-orientated economic growth must be cognisant of the massive constraints and challenges presented by the liberalisation of these sectors. In short any cultural, policy and structural constructs that ignore or exacerbate the oppression of women must be redrafted or replaced.

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have not examined the cost of liberalisation on women in terms of physical resources, human resources and social capital needed to transfer resources, skills as control to effectively manage liberalisation. The liberalisation programme of EPAs need to be examined in a broader, gendered context that is mindful of the non neutrality of the market economy.

Geo-politics of EPAs

It is crucial to be mindful of the geo political agenda propelling the Economic Partnership Agreements. The agreement is being punted at a time when European markets are shrinking, production costs are making it difficult for companies to make a significant profit from Northern consumers and three successive WTO ministerial meetings have gone badly for corporate interests.

The African, Caribbean and the Pacific offer the opportunity for the European Union to find an unfettered market. Many observers thus argue that the intentions are related more to pro-North market driven interests than pro-South development ones.

This assertion is evidenced by the intensity of protectionism the EU is permitted while habitually dumping surplus produce on overseas markets. Though 90% of ACP countries’ tariffs must be removed to access EU markets, there is no mention of dismantling the Common Agricultural Policy or of stemming the anti competitive practices arising from dumping. The consensus among many progressives, NGOs and policy analysts in both the South and North is that there is great cause for concern.

EPA and women

In all this, women emerge as the double losers. THE EPAs focus on primary production and force countries to de-industrialise. As such:

• Women are locked into the lowest paid work with the least statutory protection and benefits. Even though employment may increase, the quality of that employment is poor;

• Labour rights are thus violated while factories are given tax holidays at the expense of providing real livelihoods and permanent employment to women workers;

• Women are subject to competing with poorly paid contract workers abroad as the move to ‘outsourcing’ continues as seen in the notorious Export Processing Zones [EPZs] operating in the South;

• The ability to organise and gather as unions or worker groups is minimised through threats, bullying and in extreme cases murder of vocal workers;

• Women’s reproductive rights are violated whether through forced abortions, dismissal when pregnancy is disclosed, or miscarriages through strenuous work and exposure to toxic chemicals;

• Earning an income externally to the household can lead to greater empowerment for women, both in the home and in the wider community. However, trade liberalisation can also lead to unemployment and the restructuring of labour markets – a situation that tends to affect poor and marginalised groups of women more than men. In fact, occupational and wage segregation is widening and bad working conditions are rife in many export industries. The need for flexible workers to respond to market fluctuations has led to a rise in the numbers of informal sector workers, of which a high percentage are women.

• Access to education, health care and other basic services is often truncated through trade liberalisation. As such there is often less to spend at household level so the role of social reproduction in terms of providing care, gathering fuel and food etc is brought upon the women and girls. Where choices are made about whether to send the boy or girl child to school, most communities and families favour the boy. The ‘care economy’ meanwhile remains unregulated and unsupported;

• The displacement of indigenous women farmers and artisans in favour of European tourism interests transforming the South into a huge exotic safari and often linked with increasing sex trade;

• The diminishing of women’s role as custodians of traditional knowledge and bio-diversity has been well documented and bears restating in the wake of the GMO assault and the threat to food sovereignty;

• Cheaper goods come onto national markets from overseas, affecting existing indigenous producers but also providing cheaper options for consumers, many of whom are women who manage diminishing household budgets.

Value Added Tax and Women

Value Added Tax [VAT] can be extremely unfavourable for women, not only as consumers but also relative to their reproductive role, since it is normally levied on goods for the household and labour-saving devices such as domestic appliances. This is in addition to the taxes paid on food at the point of purchase.

The theory of fiscal austerity has fundamental repercussions for expenditure on services such as health and education, which are critical particularly for women in their socially assigned task as ‘carers’. Fiscal austerity may also constrict governments’ capacity to establish social protection measures and safety nets to counteract the harmful consequences of liberalisation.

Production structures and employment

In real terms, the effects and shocks of trade are experienced by individual women, by individual men, by households, by families and by communities whenever fluctuations in price (related to availability of goods) and changes in output (the goods and services people work to produce, how they produce them and under what conditions) occur. A typical claim made by advocates of EPA policies, including some gender advocates, is that increased trade and investment liberalisation can improve economic growth, which in turn can increase women’s participation in the labour market. However, we need to examine the nature and terms of this participation.

Case Study on Production Structures - Leather sector South Africa

Rapid liberalisation of tariffs in the South African footwear and leather sub-sectors (from 41.2 per cent in 1995 to 28.9 per cent in 1999) has resulted in retrenchments and drastic changes in production processes in local factories.

Additionally, there is a correlation between company restructuring in the footwear industry and the expansion of the informal sector. Not only is this the only apparent option for the increasing number of retrenched workers, but also for factories through subcontracting to the informal sector in order to cut labour costs. South Africa’s informal sector has increased from 1,136,000 workers in 1997 to 1,907,000 in 1999. There are approximately 193,000 African women compared to 28,000 white women working in the informal sector. What this illustrates is that it is the social groups with the least power and resources who are over represented in the ‘informal’ sector (Statistics South Africa 1999 cited in ILRIG 2001: 82-83).

Investment measures

There are typically four ways in which a government can protect the national investment measures environment:

1. By prescribing and enforcing minimum local content requirements (in terms of value, volume or proportion);
2. By setting trade balancing requirements (limits on purchase or use of an imported product up to the maximum value or volume related to local production);
3. By placing restrictions on repatriation of dividends;
4. Be placing ceilings on the equity holding of foreign investors.

Several African, Caribbean, South American and Asian countries have adjusted their mercantile and investment laws to comply with bilateral investment agreements aimed at encouraging foreign direct investment (FDI). Usually the result has been to remove regulations which govern minimum local content, trade balancing, access to foreign exchange and repatriation of dividends.

Several South American and Asian countries implemented import substitution policies in the 1960s and 1970s to encourage local production of consumer goods and to maintain a balance of payments through barriers on certain imports. Under WTO agreements these would now be illegal. The gender dimensions of this are that women tend to work more in industries in which capital flight is common and that are more susceptible to foreign competition. These industries are profoundly distressed by economic downturns, which have repercussions on the job protection of the largely female workforce.

Case Study on the Investment Environment – Tomato Sector, Senegal

Some years ago, the Senegalese government reduced tariffs on food imports to comply with a trade liberalisation package. This coincided with the launch of tomato paste business by a group of Senegalese women. They had taken out micro-credit loans. Having shifted from producing subsistence crops to solely growing tomatoes tariffs dropped and cheap foreign tomatoes flooded the Senegalese market. In what seems the typical story of the South when confronted with Northern imports, co-operatives were unable to compete. The result was that they could not honour the payment of micro credit loans. This illustrates the hostility of the market towards women and less resourced business people. It also shows the importance of Southern government regulation and protectionism of women and their families. It is critical to prevent families from entering economic situations that are more invidious than before as a result of placing them in competitive environments without adequate support.

Small and medium enterprises and women entrepreneurs

Enterprise development and market access are commonly promoted as policies that enable developing countries to engage in international trade. Overall, liberalisation under the WTO rules has not significantly increased women’s access to credit, nor has it enhanced opportunities to generate domestic savings for entrepreneurial activities. Structural gender inequalities linked to property rights and ownership women have fewer assets that can serve as collateral.

Instead of introducing a framework to enable women’s access to credit and venture capital, profit-motivated liberalisation policies have propagated the discrimination against marginalised and dispossessed women by mainstream financial markets by aiming at urban areas and more lucrative economic sectors. This excludes poor women who are concentrated in the informal sector and operate mostly in small and medium enterprises. The Most Favoured Nation principal merely enforces this.

Women largely go to unregulated sources of venture capital. These are composed of specialised moneylenders, pawnbrokers, savings and credit associations, and characterised by the lack of regulation and high interest rates.

Currency devaluation

Currency devaluations have particularly insidious effects on people living on the economic margins especially women. Typically, women and girls absorb the direct consequence of price increases attributable to classic societal expectations that prescribe women as custodians of domestic well-being. This encompasses:

• Extra workloads in waged and unwaged work to outpace appreciating prices;
• Survival mechanisms to source affordable alternatives (replacing home produced food for shop bought);
• Transferring consumption rations to family members who earn the most.

The African Women Leaders in Agriculture and Environment (AWLAE) have published a case study of the devaluation of the CFA franc in Mali. The findings assert that since the devaluation, “women are participating in greater numbers in agricultural production as the number of households threatened by food insecurity increases.” Women invest more labour into crop cultivation as an incoming generating venture. This resulted in decreased child care at domestic level. In addition AWLAE’s research also exposed the irony that women’s status improved due to their ‘indispensable’ financial contributions to the household. In contrast men tended to abandon their social, community and household responsibilities as financial pressures mounted as an inverse coping strategy.

Capital controls on direct investment

Capital controls (owning physical property) or portfolio investment (investing in the stock and bond market) are pivotal in preventing speculative investment and encourage enhanced financial stability. Speculative investment often results in major economic disturbance, and swift, substantial changes in money moving into or out of a country for rapid profit. Investment controls restrict external money flows enabling countries to pursue social investment priorities such as employment creation and technology transfer. Free market proponents argue that liberal capital movement is more efficient while restrictions discourage investment. The primary concern of the free market investment environment is that investors may opt to go to countries with fewer controls.

Case study on capital controls - Asia Crisis

A major catalyst of the Asian financial crisis was the swift capital flight from Thailand, Indonesia, and Korea, following a drastic increase in speculation. (FDI doubled in South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines between 1994-1996.) Most of these had inadequate [if any] capital controls having liberalised financial markets without sufficient regulations. This inadequately protected environment enabled investors and well-off individuals to effortlessly remove money from banks, the stock market and certain businesses to more lucrative off shore markets. Inexorably financial volatility resulting from capital flight plummeted foreign exchange rates, triggered scores of bankruptcies and momentarily shattered Asian economies.

This period was characterised by escalating joblessness and prices for essential commodities. The numbers of people in extreme poverty soared in tandem with the increasingly desperate economic conditions. For example from 1997-1998, unemployment in Indonesia tripled, according to the International Labour Organisation. One immediate coping mechanism was to despatch women and girls to augment household incomes. Indonesian government figures state that there was an increase of 2.4million self-employed people and 1.3 million in unpaid workers (including family businesses like farms). It is not clear how many of new workers were female. What is well documented is that females are disproportionately over-represented in the informal sector and among unpaid family workers. Statistical data is not yet able to quantify the spectacular rise in migrant labour and prostitution among Indonesian women.

Conclusion

The EPAs will undeniably affect individuals, families and communities through their impact on prices, employment, capital flows, investment conditions and production structures. Most critics of the EPAs agree that these structural changes will have differentiated consequences on women and men, the wealthiest and the least wealthy due to their incongruent locations in the economic system. These diverse positions arise partly from various national contexts and are strengthened by nuanced social and cultural factors such as gender, ethnicity, class or race. Furthermore, the New Issues so far resisted at WTO level could make a pernicious come back through the EPAs.

In all this the power and social relations between the South and the North, between women and men, between girls and boys, between differently abled citizens, between the economically dispossessed and the wealthy, between people with different educational attainments and a plethora of other societal textures will be exacerbated. The experiences of Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes and the current struggles against the World Trade Organisation provide ample evidence of this.

The Economic Partnership Agreements have implications for job security, livelihoods, well-being and human rights. The dangers of liberalisation for women are well crystallised by the construct of social inclusion. This inherently respects and acknowledges a sense of human community in which all community interests must be considered in order for the whole to progress.

These bring human rights to life and remind us that any policy, practise or law that further removes the displaced, further excludes the marginalised and further impoverishes the most vulnerable- most of whom are women- must be redrafted, rethought and realigned to promote gender equity and authentic social transformation.

• Liepollo Lebohang Pheko Is a member of the Secretariat for the Gender & Trade Network in Africa based in Johannesburg. This paper was presented at the European Commission, Brussels, and is republished here with the kind permission of the author.

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

Durban is known for its beautiful beaches and its sunny skies. Saranel Benjamin, however, argues that life in Durban in not all that rosy, especially for street children.

I’ve been walking the streets of Durban with my friend and co-researcher. We’ve been walking from the beachfront to the workshop looking for street children. We walk through alleyways with names I didn’t even know existed in a city I have lived in all my life. I see things that I have read about but never seen up close, in my life. I see things that I know a modern society like ours should not be having in its midst.

Our brief is specific. We have to find street children for our research. But they cannot be any street children – it has to be street children that survive by scavenging in refuse bins for food. I have seen tons of research done on all aspects of street children - from their survival strategies, HIV/Aids, the impact on the family system, to the psychological impact on children who live on the street. Many researchers have walked this path that we are walking. I am certain that they too felt their souls shattering as they talked to these children.

Every night I am haunted by the faces of the children I meet during the day. Their stories weigh heavy on my heart and when I close my eyes I see their hungry, pained, desperate faces. I want to hug them all, save them all. I am riddled with guilt with every spoonful of food I put into my mouth, for the roof I have over my head, and the warm bed I have every night. I panic when it starts to rain because I think of Thabo, Senzo and all the other children who are sleeping on pavements with no shelter over their heads, getting drenched to the bone - six children sharing one tattered blanket. I look at the time. It is about 5pm. I know that the children will be going out, like stealth-hunters, spreading through the shadows of the city, scavenging in bins for food.

But my sadness comes most from how, as the human race, we have failed our children. As a society, supposedly built on humanness, we have sacrificed our children. We look at the children on the street and we don’t give them a glance because we rationalize that they are not our own. We are the adults, the grown-ups, the custodians of the children of our society. We brought them into this world and gave them life. As the grown-ups we have a duty to care for them, all children, not just our own. Most of the children we spoke to were forced onto the streets because their parents had died and/or their families were so destitute that these children had to go out onto the street either to take care of themselves or to send money back home to their poverty-stricken families. When the economics and the politics of our country becomes so inhumane that our only answer to our children is to thrust them out of their homes to fend for themselves, we should know then that our time, as the humane race, is over. We have become savages amidst our country’s neglect to devise a back-up plan for this catastrophe.

Recently we met Thabo, a little boy of 12. He has been on the street for just two weeks. Both his parents died and his granny couldn’t afford to take care of him and his two sisters so she sent them out of the house. He doesn’t know where his two sisters are. They got separated on the streets. He looks like a fish out of water on that sunny yet grotty part of the Durban beachfront. He should be playing on the beach, frolicking in the water. Instead he sits outside a supermarket not knowing how to go about asking these grown-up strangers for food or money. His heart hasn’t hardened enough to allow him to make that decision to steal as yet. Nor has he been integrated into any of the other packs of street children where he would be taught the skills of surviving on the street. Instead, Thabo’s broken heart and hungry stomach forces him to stick his little, innocent hands into a garbage bin and scrummage inside it with the hope that some grown-up stranger has thrown away his or her lunch. His sad, tear-streaked face made me feel ashamed that all this time I didn’t know the extent of what lay at the foot of where I lived and that in all this time, I didn’t do anything - that I lived my life as if the world, South Africa, Durban was alright.

I know that when we come back in a few weeks, Thabo will be integrated into a pack of seasoned street children. There is a greater likelihood that he will be beaten up by some of the older boys. He will definitely be introduced to the ways in which he can ease the pinching hunger in his stomach and the splitting headache by sniffing glue and/or prostituting himself to the grown-up men in big cars with big money. He will be taught how to steal. He will inevitably spend a couple of months in a jail cell.

But there is always the hope that Thabo will find his way into a pack of street children who hold the dream of making something of their lives by living honestly. Some of the boys we spoke with hold a simple ambition of earning money for their food and shelter. They do this by washing or guarding cars they know they will never get to own, let alone drive in. Or they sell trinkets and snacks to tourists or passer-bys. In this group Thabo might be able to earn just enough to keep his little hands out of the rubbish bins, his little body safe from seedy men, and his innocent life out of prison.

But even these boys find themselves living on the fringes of a safe life. For as much as these children want to escape the reality of their shitty existence, there are those grown-ups, big people, adults, custodians of children like the police, for example, who are intent on erasing our modern city landscape of the eyesore that is street children. Some of the boys on the street have reported that at least twice a week, the “Black Jacks” (police) come around and confiscate the goods that they are selling by claiming that the street children are illegal traders and do not have permits to trade. For extra good measure, just to make sure that the kick to the hungry stomach is humiliating and lasts long enough to keep the kid on his knees, the police take away their blankets and their clothes. Some of the boys have resorted to wearing all their clothes at once so that they won’t be stolen by their custodians. Although one boy said that he regularly gets stripped down to his underpants and his clothes taken away by the “Black Jacks”.

As we walk into one of the parks in the city centre, I see a boy sitting by himself under a tree. He has a defeated look on his face. He stares blankly into space. Whilst we are talking to the other boys in the park and they are showing us the papers that show that their goods have been impounded by the police, the boy gets up and joins us. He says that his stuff was taken away by the police and he can get it back if he pays the R100 fine and an additional R100 to release his goods. He holds his head like a boxer who just received a knock-out punch. My heart breaks again. For them, and for the endless cruelty that has become our society.

So here they are: the children of a lesser god, sitting in the baking heat contemplating the day’s hunt and how to get the maximum amount of food from the city’s rubbish bins to fill their hungry stomachs. They sit on drums, buckets, on the pavement that is covered in filth and grime. They sit there in the pure irony of their situation, a parody so cruel: they wear clothes that don’t belong to them that bear the brand names (Adidas and Levis T-shirts, Von Dutch belts, Nike takkies three times the size of their little feet, Polo jeans) of big multinational clothing companies that are the beneficiaries of the very system that has given us street children. They sleep in the enclave of a shop front of a building that has a mural of a happy child having fun on the beaches of Durban.

The street children have a hard night ahead of them because they have no blankets, except for Musa. He’s been on the street for 15 years, speaks fluent English and is wise enough to strike a deal with a nearby shop owner to store his blankets in the shop owner’s premises. He gives us a toothy grin as he tells us this. We admire his street smart ways as he desperately tries to pull his Levi jeans over his tattered Adidas track pants, in preparation for what the night might bring.

• Saranel Benjamin is an independent researcher from the Advocacy, Research and Training Consultancy.

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

Carry me softly through the night
On the slightest breeze hold me tight
Lest I be blown away
And from your side
Depart

In a world so torn and angry
Walk with me –hold my hand
I am a child in the eyes of your love
I shall stand back tenderly
And let all sorrow and fear depart

Let your tender sigh
Let the memory of you
Carry me softly
Through the night
Hold me
As I tenderly hold
The memory of you

• Victor Mavedzenge is a Harare base visual artist, comedian, poet and actor who was in the play Territory which was featured at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Writing in Zimbabwe seems to be experiencing an upsurge. There are obviously huge problems for publishers – few people have any spare cash to buy anything but the bare essentials for survival, and few bookshops in Zimbabwe stock any books that are not set school texts. Writers too are affected by the struggle for survival – paper and pens are expensive, let alone computers, which are beyond the reach of the majority, and there are few outlets for their work. But writers are writing, and publishers publishing.

Over the last three years, five collections of short writings have been published by two publishers: Short Writings from Bulawayo I, II and III from amaBooks and Writing Still and Writing Now from Weaver Press. This piece focuses on the Short Writings from Bulawayo series.

Many pieces in these anthologies document the effects of the crisis in Zimbabwe in stories and poetry. Writers are reflecting what they see happening around them day after day - the human suffering resulting from government policies. This is particularly pronounced in the most recent of these collections, Short Writings from Bulawayo III.

The effects of Operation Murambatsvina or ‘clear out rubbish’, where hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless, are seen through the eyes of those at the receiving end of the destruction in the work of Diana Charsley, in her short story Forgiveness, as their homes are razed to the ground.

It is not only the newer writers who record the present moment. Established writers like John Eppel and Albert Nyathi document, through poetry, record the destruction of communities and vendors losing their livelihoods. John Eppel in Sonnet with One Unstated Line:

‘Hear the cry of hornbills lost in yards
of rubble and rags, to split the ears
of those who stand and watch; and the guards
unguarded, hammering, hammering.’

and Albert Nyathi in Ode to Departed Writers:

‘Operation Murambatsvina came
With a large broom called bulldozer
And the new townships which were blessed
With the cutting of ribbons were all gone
Africa Unity Square had roses
And now it is clean again’

Writers are looking at issues hitherto largely avoided in fiction. In Thabisani Ndlovu’s powerful story The Boy with a Crooked Head, the violence inflicted on the people of Matabeleland during Gukurahundi is seen through the eyes of a child – ‘I wonder why Uncle Vikitha, a useless person, was made to disappear … by soldiers who looked like us but spoke our language in a funny way.’

Christopher Mlalazi’s id i weaves together, in a nightmare township landscape, the realities of Murambatsvina and the present hardships with the effects on a family of the atrocities committed in 1980’s Matabeleland: ‘My brother’s problem is not hereditary, it’s the army and what they did out there that did that to his head.’

Mlalazi again turns to Murambatsvina in his piece The Bulldozers are Coming, published in the 14 December 2006 edition of The Zimbabwean, where he documents the effects of the ‘clean up’ on a woman who miscarries.

The land issue appears in several stories. Catherine Buckle’s Full Circle in Short Writings from Bulawayo II shows the pain of dislocation experienced by both a white farmer thrown off her farm and a black woman subsequently thrown off her small plot on the same farm. Masimba Manyonga’s A Seed of Hope in the first Short Writings from Bulawayo details the hopes and the despair of an impoverished ex-combatant farmer as he journeys from his rural home to the streets of Bulawayo, where his finds evidence of economic breakdown wherever he looks. Fiction that documents what the writer sees happening around them is often more accessible than history and is able to capture the human story.

Even in the midst of the tragedy of Zimbabwe, there is still humour in the collections, in some of the township characters of Christopher Mlalazi and in the protagonist in Godfrey Sibanda’s The Coming. In The Coming, the narrator is unable to attend the Great Leader’s rally because of diarrhoea; his excuse is mocked by one of the youths who has the task of rounding up everyone to attend the rally: ‘The Great Leader is coming and you want me to believe there’s suddenly an epidemic in this town. And the epidemic only affects members of the Opposition Party.’ Mzana Mthimkhulu’s writings can always be relied upon to bring a touch of humour, such as in his depiction of an eager young boy in a school choir competition in The Concert.

However, poverty, despair, hopelessness, AIDS, loss, queues – the suffering of the people - are recurring themes in much of the writing. Juba, in Farai Mpofu’s story Whirlwinds, in Short Writings from Bulawayo II, walks the streets looking for, and failing to find, permanent employment, despite his qualifications. In the end, he decides to ‘rob three or four of those township dwellers, raise enough money to go to Johannesburg, and graduate into the world of crime.’

Ignatius Mabasa’s character in Paying to Die has ‘never had the guts to go and get tested.’ Instead, he seems ‘to have decided to help the disease he believes is there, by living carelessly.’ The mother, in Judy Maposa’s One by One My Leaves Fall, loses all four of her children. ‘One by one my leaves withered and fell. All dead. All gone.’

In Pentecost Mate’s Pay Day the people in queues ‘are mostly quiet because there is nothing left to talk about. They have talked about price rises, about shortages of basic commodities, about the changing laws and rules that govern them, about the taxes they pay…. They have talked about the fuel crisis … about power cuts, water cuts…. And about salaries below the poverty line, about the huge sums of money they owe….’

As would be expected, queues have become a ubiquitous topic. In John Eppel’s My Dustbin, poverty and hunger drive children to rifle through dustbins:

'These children have acquired the patience of queueing;
children of the neighbourhood; suburban;
queueing at my bin for a lucky dip.’

Phillip Chidavaenzi writing in the Sunday Mirror comments, ‘the economic hardships in Zimbabwe today continue to offer a fertile template for literary works. … (These collections of short writings) have given a whole new generation of Zimbabwean writers that could have remained in the wilderness the space to display their wares and in the process make their claim on Zimbabwe’s literary space.’

Many of the writers whose work was first featured in the Short Writings from Bulawayo series have gone on to ‘claim the space’: Christopher Mlalazi has had short stories published in the Edinburgh Review and in the Caine Prize anthology, The Obituary Tango, Deon Marcus’s poetry collection Sonatas has won first prize for poetry and drama at the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association awards and for Best First Book at the National Arts Merit Awads, and several writers have had stories published in Writing Now and in other collections.

There will be more writing from many of the authors featured in the Short Writings from Bulawayo series to look forward to. Bryony Rheam, Christopher Mlalazi and Raisedon Baya have novels either completed or at the finishing stages, Thabisani Ndlovu and Mzana Mthimkhulu, amongst others, have collections of short stories awaiting publication. John Eppel has a new short writings collection, White Man Crawling, due to be published in 2007.

The writing of now is naturally a reflection of our times. A unifying theme in many of the stories and poems is loss – of livelihood, of innocence, of purpose, of freedom, of love, of belonging, of culture, of home, of country, of life. A reflection of our times. ‘Dreams shattered beyond repair.’ (Tawanda Chipato, from Hope, Short Writings from Bulawayo II)

• Jane Morris is an editor with amaBooks, publishers of Short Writings from Bulawayo I, II and III.

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

Chaltone Tshabangu interrogates the social role of women in traditional African marriages. Commenting on what is expected of women, Tshabangu writes: “A decent woman sits like this; legs tucked beneath her like so, or legs stretched out before her, thus. Always covered.”

Sit down Lulu, sit down. What time is it? Good. Thixo! You have been busy this morning, eh? Now, what have you done since daybreak? No, don’t tell me. I will tell you. You woke up at third cock-crow and made a fire in the kitchen. You heated bathing water for the children, swept the kitchen and washed the plates. That is good, daughter of my mother, except for one thing; those plates should have been washed yesterday. Hen-roaches must be forced to lug their shiny brown suitcases elsewhere. I must state the obvious, even if you dislike it – that saying about cleanliness and godliness? Thiiixo, where would we be without stating the obvious?

Sit up straight, Lulu! Ah! A decent woman sits like this; legs tucked beneath her like so, or legs stretched out before her, thus. Always covered. And never, never sit on a stool in the presence of men. Mother must be getting old. If you must sit on a chair, sit nicely, don’t squat or perch as if you are negotiating the hole of a pit-latrine, or sit as if there are thorns between your thighs. Do it! Now! Yes, like that. What is the use of a wife who sits as if she wants to trap the sun with her nether parts?

Right. You swept the yard, at the same time prepared porridge for the children. You bathed the children, dressed them up for school, watched them eat and saw them off. Good. Then you went to the river to collect water.

How many buckets did you bring? Three? Not bad, but not enough to fill up the drum. Anyway, you heated bathing water for father, went to the bush to collect firewood and now, you are preparing breakfast for everyone.

Admirable, daughter of my mother. Admirable. Except for one other thing; I never saw you, and I have been watching you closely, I never saw you wash either your face or, Jehova ka Shadreck lo Misheck lo Abednigo, your hands! You do right to squirm. I saw you go behind a bush. I don’t know what you did there. You know what you did there. You are a big girl now. A woman. Lulu, there is no point in being neat by half. Thiiixo! Everything is important, child of my mother; when to bath and how to bath, how often as well as changing your knicker and so forth. Hmm?

And, mntaka S’gugude, do something about your fingernails! Yeyi! You have been digging up roots or what? Look, that body of yours must be treated with respect, girl. And nobody else will do that better than yourself! Don’t treat your body with contempt, child. What use is reckless attention? Thix’! Treat it with respect and you will be amazed at what it will do for you. Hmm?

Yet I must warn you, mother’s child, it will not be easy. Yes, there will be long, sweet moments. You smile. Yes, smile. Keep smiling, sis. But, there will be long, terrible days too.

Everybody hates dirt, I think. Well, except for Vundla, who enjoys his home and wife inspite of what we both know. That woman is what is called inuku. Don’t laugh. I could say isinyefu, but that would be too severe. Besides, she is good hearted. God does not give you everything, nkazana. But the point is be …? Yes. Be clean. As clean as? There's my girl! No woman has a cleaner size nine.

Men detest badly cooked food. So do I. So do you. Do that and your food will get cold on the table. Ever heard the indaba called ‘The Slammed Door’? Perhaps not. Never mind. If you like talking, and I know you do, teach yourself to listen and consider your views. Nag him if you will, but at the right time, at the proper setting. Yes, there is a time for everything, even for nagging! It does get things done you know, sometimes. Overdo it, he will walk out of the house, the door is likely to be slammed and you may earn yourself tingling ears and a swollen upper lip. Besides, you never know what he might bring back; another beating or worse.

In marriage, winning isn’t everything. Besides, you can win, quietly, every time, without being like the pee of a drunkard about it. Always remember that. As for friends, well, you are a married woman now. Some friends are like Joel's boots, which stink worse when he's wearing them. Others are like honey - sweet to the tongue but the stomach can only take this much before it brings up what you ate during that drought. And yet others are like your own shadow - they will stay peacefully with you and you will never tire of them.

Need I say more? He will get you what you need, if he can, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing to waste. In fact, it will do you well to conserve, conserve, conserve, for that is life. Use your hands. I don’t think that your ambition is limited to being a mere ‘goal-keeper’. Be as independent as decorum allows and he will respect you more.

Oh, another thing, his relatives are your relatives. You will treat them no differently from your own. But, I have no fears for you in that respect.

You know him, he likes his beer. Be glad that he does not smoke. Ever been kissed by a combination of masese and Shamrock? Remember Joe, my Joe? Hee hee. Thixo! Don’t ask. However, remember; you can’t win everything.

As for bedroom matters, I have nothing to say but this; be clean. Each man takes to his bed with relish, unless he is sick or something is distracting him. Can be very energetic too, even by the standards of your age. Hee hee. You have been taught how to handle a man – I bet there is no better teacher than Aunty Eliza. Yes? Take it from me, the most ridiculous things that Aunty Eliza taught you are the most important! Hee hee. Now, that is a powerful tool you have there, sister. But you cannot use it to hold him at ransom. Weeeell, maybe once, but at your own risk. Oh, I suggest that you take a dish of water, a towel and soap. Never mind any peculiarities, as long as they don’t hurt you, or demean you. But, each man his madness. Have fun, that is what sex is all about. Hee hee hee.

Lulu, I suppose you are still… intact? What are you laughing at? I am serious! Of course it is important! Well, not very important I should think, but it has its advantages. What’s that you said? Oh, I don’t know, but it is important, somehow. It reflects well on our family, does it not?

The important thing, my sister - children. All marriages need children… everybody needs children, I think. If there is anything God believes in, it is children. Children, they are the only viable faith! I hope you understand. Life! Aaah!

Come here. Come outside with me. Look at all this, this parched selfish land that gives us sustenance grudgingly. Yet, is it that it is selfish? Is it that it is entirely barren? Completely inadequate for our dreams? No. Never! Why? Because we have grown up on inadequacy. We have grown strong on pain and pain has become something else, which we embrace with a smiling fortitude. Look at the sky above us, these trees and burnt grasses… this is home. All these things around us are prayer. Over there, the graves of our fathers, those mountains and the scorched river beds - our home, our prayer. We address our lives the same manner we address our ancestors; with prayer, with ancient resonances which the elements understand. All these things pray along with us. Winds blow and in a while, dust settles. There is a meaning in all these things; there is a meaning in what we seek to achieve. The occasional storm, laughter, pain, suffering, joy… joy… we lay our fears and tears at the feet of the most feared god… especially us, women, you and I. We are the lips, the tongue, the very mouth that fashions the words to move men and persuade gods. We are prayer. Like this land that brings forth, though grudgingly, we women must also bring forth, abundantly.

I pray that that prayer becomes the stuff on which your children, our children, will grow strong upon. Inhale with me, is this not fresh air? We make it fresh by our laughter, women laughter. We make this horrible land beautiful for our husbands, our parents, our children and even for those who have gone before us. So, sister, in making your man happy, you will also be making us happy and our prayer all the purer and certain to obtain blessings. We must seek happiness, for it will not come to us all the time.

Why am I repeating myself about prayer? Because it means that we are not alone. It also means that we cannot take our lives and the gifts we have been given, for granted. There are things we can be proud of, as mothers, and you are going to make a mother of us, yet. But, there is a pride that will never allow us to remain committed and sane enough to keep the family together. Beware. Also, there is a despondency which will not allow those who have not been given particular gifts to lead sane lives. I can no more shake my fist at the sky, spit on the graves of our ancestors than clap my hands for myself and tell my heart that I care not. I have realised that even though in my hands I cup a gift I have received quietly, I can only move on and hope.

Even though my hands remain cupped, as though I have received nothing yet, it is because of hope, not greed. I have also realised that it is possible to refuse what you have been granted. Fortunately I have also been made to realise that it is possible to turn whichever way and still remain insane - and that the insanity itself, could be a gift. So, I have accepted mine and my hands cup a different song entirely. But, enough for now.

Remember, even the juiciest mopani caterpillar has thorns. One day you will have children and one day, perhaps, you will be different. We must change, but it is our responsibility to let dogs eat their own vomit and not to help them lap it up. What I am trying to say… what am I saying? I am not trying, I am telling you this; one day there will be hate between us. It is to be expected. But it cannot be allowed to overshadow what we seek to do here. No matter what happens, I shall remain your sister. S’khova is a good man… in fact, he is far better than most men we know, certainly better than that boyfriend of yours whose major kick is njuga. Yes yes you part ways with that crook a long time ago but he lived for njuga anyway. And, I wonder how you managed to hold him off for so long, he must have been an insistent type that one. What was his name by the way? Almost? Almost what? Hee hee!

I know your man; he is a good man. His mother, well, you know her. His sisters, now. His sisters are mean, venous bats who will not hesitate to criticize and condemn. Don’t mind them. Their families broke down nineteen-long-ago, when animals could speak. Anyway, I will be there to help you.

Hand me that cup of water. Thanks. I talk too much eh? Daughter of my mother, I am glad of what you have decided to do. I am particularly grateful because it is you Lulu, and not somebody else, not any of our sisters but you. Thank you.

So, get ready woman, today you will meet your husband, my husband. Our husband. Hurry up, Thixx! You don’t want to keep your husband waiting, do you?

What if you what? Fail to have children? Sister, we will crawl beneath that bridge when we get to it. Move it, girl!

• Chaltone Tshabangu is a Bulawayo based writer. He has in the past participated in the British Council sponsored Crossing Borders project and last year was a joint winner of the BBC World Service Short Story Award.

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

References:

The words in italics are from the Ndebele language:
Thixo – God.
Jehova ka Shadreck… - God of Shadreck, Misheck and Abednigo.
Mntaka S’gugude – child of S’gugude
Inuku – very lazy person, dirty.
Isinyefu – worse than inuku.
Masese – opaque millet beer.
Njuga – game of cards, bets are placed.

Christopher Mlalazi explores the consequences of dissent under an intolerant society. Through the lives of Bakithi and Bongani, Mlalazi outlines what it means to be a dissenter, the unintended effects this may have on the family of the dissenter and the tragic consequences that dissenters face in an undemocratic society.

They had been moving across the river for some time now, when, suddenly, Bongani threw his hands into the air, and his body disappeared with a splash under the water.

Bakithi’s heart lurched, and he heaved himself towards where Bongani’s head had disappeared. Just as suddenly, Bongani’s head and shoulders erupted out of the water in a shower of spray. He gasped and spluttered water. He was clutching his now dripping wet bundle of clothes to his chest. Bakithi gripped Bongani’s shoulder. In his left hand he also held an identical bundle. ‘What happened?’ he asked, his breathing heavy.

‘I slipped on a stone!’ Bongani cried out, his left hand wiping water back over his head.

‘Be careful,’ Bakithi said, then caution took over as he remembered that sound carried easily over water, especially at night, and his voice dropped lower. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

The moon disappeared behind a large chunk of scudding cloud, shaped like the head of a snarling lion, and complete darkness engulfed them. ‘Which way?’ Bongani’s voice asked from the darkness. A night bird shrieked above them, the sound amplified, as if the darkness had tried to do something terrible to it.

‘What do you mean?’
‘Which direction?’ Bongani’s voice was faint. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Me also.’
‘What are we going to do?’

The stricken moon re-appeared. Bakithi quickly looked around him. He thought he could see the two banks on either side of the moon washed river, darker smudges in the darkness ahead and behind them against the lighter sky.

‘I can see!’ Bongani cried out.
‘So can I,’ Bakithi’s voice was solemn.
‘So let’s get going!’
‘Which way? The banks look all the same to me.’

There was silence, and below it the drone of mosquitoes that relentlessly attacked their ears. ‘You are right,’ Bongani broke the silence. ‘And we have no time to lose - remember the crocodiles?’ He voiced both their unspoken fear. He looked at the surface of the water, trying to see underneath it – but it was as good as looking into a mirror. And the part of his body submerged into the water felt so exposed, as if it was hanging down into nothingness.

Bakithi did not reply. Instead, he reached for Bongani's free hand and gripped it in his. And so the twin brothers stood hand in hand in the moon-washed chest high water, drawing comfort from their physical contact, as they had once done so in the sacred waters of the womb. Bakithi looked up at the moon, as if trying to draw inspiration from it. It disappeared behind another cloud, as if to disassociate itself from their plight, plunging them into darkness yet again. A shooting star defiantly streaked across a gap behind the scudding clouds. Bongani whispered softly, his eyes on it, ‘Protection -!’ and the comet winked out.

‘What?’ Bakithi asked.
‘A shooting star,’ Bongani whispered.

‘I also saw it also,’ Bakithi whispered back. ‘But it disappeared before I could think of a wish.’ The moon appeared again. ‘Listen Bongani,’ there was an urgency in Bakithi’s voice. ‘I think I can feel the current. The river is flowing that way.’ He pointed with a finger. Bongani held his breath, and tried to feel the water with his body. Was it moving? It felt, and looked, still to him.

‘That is downstream,’ Bakithi was saying, still pointing. ‘The east. So, if you face downstream,’ he turned and faced his downstream. ‘The South African border is on the right hand side. Let’s go.’ Without warning, Bongani disappeared into the water again, this time silently. Bakithi instinctively grabbed out. His hand fastened on a wrist. He felt another greater force pulling the other way, the water churned, a scaled tail flashed above it -and his heart went cold. The moon disappeared.

Bongani’s head broke surface, he screamed, and disappeared again. Bakithi still clung to his arm with all his strength, now using both hands – he had cast his bundle of clothing away. Bongani’s screams tore up the night whenever his head appeared above the water. Overhead in the troubled sky, the moon quickly appeared from behind a smudge of cloud, bathing the world, and the grim battle in the river, one of many in the world, in its pale light.

Suddenly, the force pulling Bongani the other way ceased. The hard pulling Bakithi was caught by surprise, and he almost fell backwards. He pulled the hysterically screaming Bongani against his chest, and wrapped his arms around him. ‘Go that way!’ he yelled into Bongani’s ear, pushing him hard in the direction he assumed was the one they had come from, where lay home – he was no longer sure now - the home they were fleeing from, that, the last time they had seen it, had been in flames.

Three days previously, Bakithi had jerked to wakefulness late in the night, to the sound of loud singing outside his hut. A chill had crept down his back, for right away he knew. Sethu had woken up after him, and she had held his hand in a tight grip, the whites of her wide opened eyes showing in the darkness.

‘What is it?’ she had whispered, fear in her voice Their one year old child, Sipho, who slept next to the wall so he could not fall off the single bed, had started screaming shrilly. ‘Come out, sell outs!’ A voice had shouted above the singing. ‘We are dead,’ Sethu had announced.

The singing was now an uproar, and the earth resounded to the stamp of feet. Bakithi had stood up from the bed. He had groped for his trousers on the wall, where he hung them from a nail. He had taken the trousers and, as he was pulling it on, a whiff of smoke had reached his nostrils, and a familiar crackle. Shirtless, he had rushed to the door and flung it open.

His mouth had opened in shock. Across the yard, the roof of his twin brother’s hut was ablaze, orange flames that leapt joyously to the sky, lighting the yard and the singing crowd in gold. Some of them held flaming torches aloft, like initiates of a satanic cult. A fleck of soot had floated past his eye, and he had looked up.

‘Hayi aah!’ He had grunted in further shock. The thatch of the roof of his hut was ablaze too! He had gone back into the hut, the light from outside now casting a faint light into it. Sethu was scrambling into a dress. He had grabbed the screaming child from the bed, took Sethu’s hand and they had rushed outside, where they were immediately surrounded by the singing mob, most of them youths. His mother and two sisters, his twin brother Bongani, also shirtless, with his wife and two infant children, stood in the middle of this circle. Tears streamed down the cheeks of Bakithi’s mother.

An elderly man had stepped forward, carrying a pistol. Bakithi knew his name. He was called Ninja, the leader of the forest camp. The rest of the group also carried an assortment of weapons that ranged from stones, sticks to iron bars. Ninja was dressed in green military trousers tucked into boots, a black t-shirt, and a black beret. ‘You thought we wouldn’t know, dog!’ Ninja had addressed Bakithi. Sparks crackled above the flames that devoured the huts, seeming to reach out at the stars that blinked in disbelief from the sky.

‘Why are you burning my home?’ Bakithi’s mother, maSibanda, had cried out. ‘Because of these dogs,’ Ninja had spat, pointing his gun at Bakithi and Bongani. ‘They will see tonight, stinking sell-outs!’ One of the youths had unraveled a poster in front of Bakithi. On it was written in bold red letters; SAY NO NOW!

‘This is your work!’ Ninja had accused the twins. ‘You were seen. Deny it.’ He had cocked his pistol. The twins had not replied, but just looked sullenly at the poster, Bakithi rocking the crying baby against his naked chest. Bakithi’s mind had flashed to the other posters hidden in the forest. Posters he instinctively knew they would never put up again.

Ninja had smiled, a gap toothed smile. ‘Say no now,’ he had said, then seized a burning torch from one of the youths and walked towards his mother’s hut, which was still untouched by flame, the torch held above his head. ‘No!’ the twins, their two wives and maSibanda, had all cried out with one voice. Laughing, Ninja had thrown the flaming torch at the roof, and the dry thatch had immediately caught fire.

A sobbing maSibanda had watched her two boys led away by the militia, and she wept fresh tears for them. Her husband had been taken exactly the same way by the soldiers a decade and a half ago, and she never saw him again. And that man who had burnt her hut had been leading them, although younger then. She could not forget his face, especially that gap toothed leer. It was seared into her memory with the hot branding iron of rape. And the crime her husband had committed had been ‘harboring dissidents’, although the said dissidents had forced their way into their kraal, forced them to cook food for them, and then, after eating, had left - after threatening them not to say anything to the soldiers when they tracked them there. Her husband had told the soldiers all this - with a gun pressed to her head – when they had come the following day on the spoor of the dissidents, but still, they had taken him away, just like a lot of other villagers had been, after Ninja had pulled her into a hut and forced himself on her.

The twins were force marched by the singing mob away from the village, and deep into the mopani forest, boots on their posteriors urging them on. They passed darkened homesteads, dogs barked at them, stones were thrown at them by the youths, and finally, an hour later, they came to the camp. It was a hastily made pen of thorns bushes, a few weeks - and terror - old, and they were thrown inside it. A fire was burning in its middle under a fig tree, with some other youths sitting around it, passing a mug of what was obviously the local illicit brew around.

Their hands were lashed with ropes to overhanging branches of the fig tree. Then, the youths still singing loudly, and Ninja, now carrying a sjambok, had stood before them. ‘Who gave you the posters?’ he had asked Bongani first.

Bongani had not replied. Ninja had regarded Bongani silently for a moment, and then he had turned to Bakithi. ‘Who gave you the posters, my twin?’ Bakithi had also not replied.

Ninja had held up his free left hand, and a joint had been instantly pressed into it from behind. He had taken a deep hissing pull, his eyes still on the twins, then he had held up his hand and the joint had been taken away. His eyes had still not left the twins, as if sizing them. ‘I asked who gave you the posters?’ he had finally shouted. The twins had just looked sullenly at him without replying. ‘Water,’ Ninja had said, and, as if from nowhere, two youths carrying plastic buckets had stepped before the twins. They had thrown the water at the twins, drenching them, and then stepped back.

Then Ninja had whipped their upper bodies, one after the other, with the sjambok almost to tatters, all the while accusing them of being ‘fucking sellouts.’ Later, the tormentors had withdrawn from the pen, and closed the entrance with a thorn bush, leaving the twins still tied to the tree, almost unconscious with pain. As the night lightened to dawn, the drunken singing and arguing outside the pen had died down. The fire in the pen had also been reduced to a few glowing embers and ashes, but the twins, faced with the ugly reality of unceremoniously visiting the underworld, were still wide awake in their bonds.

Then a bush at the side of the pen had moved, and opened. Bongani had been the first to see it, and he had whispered at Bakithi to look in that direction. Then an old woman had crept in trough the gap. A superstitious terror gripping their hearts, the twins had watched her approach them. She had got nearer, and they had both recognized her. It was their mother’s sister Rebecca, a childless widow who lived alone in a nearby kraal. She was renowned in the village for not taking nonsense from anyone in the village, and conducted herself almost like a man. She carried a gleaming knife in her hand. Without any word to the twins, she had cut them free from the tree, and immediately fled out through the gap again, her skirts flying.

When the twins had cautiously emerged from the gap, she was nowhere in sight, and their captors were also out of sight on the other side. Two hours of hard running later, headed south away from the village, and the sun now risen to a bright morning, Bakithi and Bongani had stood shirtless under the shade of a mopani tree, sweat coursing down their bodies, stinging their whip wounds.

‘What are we going to do now?’ A worried Bongani had asked his twin. His mind was on their kin they had left behind in the burning kraal last night. ‘We have no choice,’ Bakithi had replied. ‘Let’s head for the border and follow the others across.’ ‘What about our families?’ But there was no answer from Bongani. A hard three days walk later, the twins were crossing the river.

Bakithi whirled around and faced the place where he thought the crocodile could be lurking. He was yelling and splashing the water with his hands, at the same time retreating slowly backwards. A whimpering Bongani desperately splashed away in the direction his twin brother had pushed him towards. His right leg felt not there, and a great big fire where he thought it had been.

Two hops away, and the yelling behind him suddenly stopped. He looked back in the moonlight Bakithi had disappeared. ‘Bakithi!’ he screamed hoarsely.

A great force thudded into Bongani’s left leg under the water. Teeth clamped on his knee, shattering bone, and he was violently twisted under. The last thing the young man saw was the silver eye of the moon silently watching him from the troubled sky.

• Chris Mlalazi is a playwright and fiction writer from Bulawayo. His work has been featured in the Crossing Borders project and several publications. His story, Broken Wings has been shortlisted for the HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award 2007.

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

Nyevero Muza relives the siege. “It was Kumarukesheni where the siege had assumed a brutal appearance. Those who had, when the times were still good, spread spurious roots into land they did not own and called that land equally pretentious names, or those who owned land by wartime credentials, were unceremoniously uprooted and their settlements instantly razed to the ground by ravenous fires or front-end loaders.”

As they poured into the school’s well-manicured grounds in their crispy winter uniforms, the children were blissfully unaware of the future that myself and others of my generation, as parents were conjuring up for them. In the sky a thick blanket hung, still smelling of years gone up in smoke.

The feeling of anxiety was unmistakeable, in spite of the laughter and chatter of a schoolyard. The siege was getting more pronounced by the day; seizing all those who tried to escape and throwing them right back into the centre. I turned my back on the school and commanded the car to join the slow, procession of other cars that unerringly and dutifully transported people from homes to their jobs in the offices and factories of Harare.

I inched forward until I discovered the cause of the agonisingly slow speed of traffic. An accident! A Nissan Sunny had smashed into the back of a VW. The owners, still unable to believe their joint lack of luck so early in the morning, were negotiating a truce at the side of the road. The police had been notified but having been informed that no one was injured, would probably turn up years later, panting from cycling Chinese-made “mountain bikes” to remove cobwebs from the scene of the accident and open a docket for yet another case of “driving without due care.

As I manoeuvred past the scene, taking care not to run over bits of broken glass and twisted metal on the tarmac, I promised myself that I should never have to find myself entangled in such a situation so early in the morning.

Further down, a snaking queue of motor vehicles of all shapes and sizes, now close to 2 kilometres long and still growing, was forming itself on the side of the road. The forlorn looks on the faces of the owners of the cars or their agents said that they were not looking forward to whatever they had joined the queue for. I traced the queue until it veered to my right and found its way into the police station where it disintegrated into several other smaller queues. The motorists were waiting their turn to be subjected to thinly veiled arrogance disguised as traffic policemen, which one had to contend with before having their car cleared. Those who knew someone or could pay the required amount of money did not have to deal with the queue; the policemen simply came to them.

As I eased the car into the road that would soon swallow me and throw me up right in the middle of the city centre, I saw people waiting alongside the road for anything with four wheels to rescue them from the tyranny of waiting, roadside dust and early morning sun. They thumbed for lifts, stretching their hands right into the road. I didn’t stop; they stared at me open-mouthed, unable to comprehend why a lone motorist should choose to abandon them like that. Didn’t I know that they had money to pay me for my troubles? Didn’t I know that they had jobs to go to too, and bosses to contend with when they eventually arrived late for work, as they were bound to? Didn’t I know that they too had, like me, families to feed?

On the other side of the road, women from the market waited with their prized assorted wares – tomatoes, shrivelled vegetables, onions, avocado pears, maputi – which they hoped to sell at a profit at small stalls back in the kumarukesheni and eke out an honest living for their families. Soon an old battered Peugeot 504 would pull up and inexplicably gobble all of them and their wares and take them back to a more familiar environment.

It was Kumarukesheni where the siege had assumed a brutal appearance. Those who had, when the times were still good, spread spurious roots into land they did not own and called that land equally pretentious names, or those who owned land by wartime credentials, were unceremoniously uprooted and their settlements instantly razed to the ground by ravenous fires or front-end loaders. Now these people carried their battered egos, some in their hands, some in hired trucks and yet others in ubiquitous pushcarts as they receded to the barrenness of rural homes to stare defeat in the face and face an uncertain future.

And there were the policemen keeping peace. Every tenth person you saw was one.

I expected getting into the city centre to provide some sense of relief for my harangued nerves, but the city itself was a sorry sight. It had been relieved of what the owners of the country - the murambas3 of this world called tsvina4: flea-market operators, black market foreign currency dealers, drug peddlers, flower vendors, street kids, prostitutes and common criminals all in one fell swoop.

Flea markets that had once been teeming with all manner of life were now deserted, empty shells that told a story. Hopes and dreams had been ambushed by a merciless clean up exercise and hounded to the periphery of possibility.

The erstwhile sellers of everything from cellular phones, cellular phone pouches, chargers, imitation trainers and oversized FUBU jeans had since retreated to nondescript corners to ponder their next move. What had once been flea markets were now flee markets, patronised by imperious policemen with jackboots, bloodshot eyes and uncompromising baton sticks. They had an attitude and knew how to use it. They turned everything upside down in search of foreign currency but found none.

Now all was quiet and all form of life was gone. The streets were empty, if not for the march of nine-to-fivers, who approached their sweatshops with a sense of trepidation.

I parked the car in the basement, amongst the neat rows of other cars whose owners were still lucky to have fuel, now a precious commodity that sent big men from pillar to post, from Q to Q at the behest of an SMS or a quick telephone call. My own car was fast running out of fuel and there was no telling which Q it was leading me to.

At the foyer, there was an impatient mass of people whose attention was intently focused on the only elevator that was still working – the other three had been cannibalised for spare parts to keep the one elevator going. When the elevator eventually turned up, the mass of people jostled to get inside, just as they did with the ETs.7 As the elevator door closed, it shrieked in despair.

I opened the door to the office to find that only one person had arrived. The rest were probably still stuck in some Q somewhere, wishing they would never have to go anywhere if it took so much trouble. As I sat at my desk at 0830hrs to tackle my share of the day, I could see the sun setting. The only light I could see was somewhere far away, beckoning frantically for someone to see it.

• Nyevero Muza is a Harare based writer and poet.

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

Stanley Makuwe looks at what it means not to have access to basic services from a point of view of dead people. Through a dialogue among corpses in a mortuary, Makuwe criticizes a government system that disregards the poor, while simultaneously, exposes a rotten system that rewards unscrupulous politicians whose only concern is to fly around the world and shop at the most expensive boutiques.

“What brings you here?” an old voice asks from the top shelf. A maggot crawls on the old body’s face.

“We are all dead. That’s what brings all of us here,” bellows a young voice.

“Is that how you speak to your elders? Young men of today have no respect. That’s why you die young. Long ago no-one of your age would be seen in places like this. We were healthy and strong like oxen pulling a yoke. Look now, how many of your age do you see around here? You die before you grow pubic hair, while you still have breast milk on your noses.”

Another voice groans and says, “Thank you for starting the conversation. Anyway what brings you here old man?”

The old body clears its throat before saying, “I have no family. I divorced my wife and she went away with my son. My parents said, ‘you are now a grown up bullock, you have to graze for yourself,’ then I left their home to look for a job here in the city. You have to know someone to get a job in this country.

For me I knew no-one. I was left homeless and jobless. I slept under bridges for many years. The cold weather kicked me to death. Someone found me dead and informed the police who bundled my decomposing corpse into a metal coffin and brought it in here.

“Government people appeared on the front pages of newspapers, on radios and television talking about the things they said they were doing for the people – donations of food and clothes to the needy, building houses for the homeless, providing free medical treatment to the underprivileged. But they had no money to look after a useless old horse.”

The stench in the mortuary almost chocks the dead bodies to a second death.

“You would put them out of budget. Fuel is now too expensive. Better one old man dies than having ten BMWs grounded,” a young body with says.

“No-one has turned up to claim my body,” the old voice continues, “we are becoming overcrowded in here. Do you think the president knows we are here? He is a great man, that president of ours. He wouldn’t let us suffer. Lucky are those who died when milk and honey were still flowing in the rivers of this country. I feel sorry for those who will die in ten years’ time. Sometimes I feel you are lucky, young men. You died at the right time, when there was still space in this mortuary.”

To the body on the floor, “what killed you?”

“Nurses and doctors went on strike for pay rise. The government said they had no money because they wanted to buy bulletproof vests, handcuffs, bulletproof cars, tear gas and batons, and to train more police dogs. Apart from that, the president was abroad attending to very important matters so they had to wait for his return so he could decide how much increment the medical staff would get, if they were going to get any. I heard he wanted to return but his wife said she wanted to do her shopping so he had to wait and help her carry her shopping bags. You see, he is a busy man.”

“They held fruitless talks while we took turns to die. It started in the first cubicle. I was in the fifth cubicle. I thought by the time death got to me the medical team would have returned to work but I was wrong. I held on for a while but in the end gave up. I couldn’t wait any longer. I woke up dead one morning.”

“We are piling up. I don’t know if my family will find me in this place. Who said hell is somewhere up there?”

The doors slide open. Deafening silence fills the whole mortuary. The sound of a poorly oiled cart breaks the silence, followed by heavy foot-steps and a thud, signaling the arrival of another dead body. The doors slam shut and the sound of the broken wheels slowly fades away.

“I can see a child. Why are you here little one?” enquires the old body.

“I fell sick. My mother took me to clinic. Nurse said I was too sick and I had to be transferred to the district hospital. There was no ambulance. Father put me in our scotch-cart.” The door opens again. More bodies are rolled on the pile. Other bodies shout words of welcome before the child continues.

“When we got to the district hospital doctor said I must go to the provincial hospital. There was no fuel for the ambulance. Mother took me there by bus. People were staring at me and mother. The whole bus was whispering about my sickness. At the provincial hospital they said I must go to the central hospital. We took another bus. When we arrived there was a long queue of very sick people waiting for their hospital cards to be stamped. Mother asked for permission to jump the queue. ‘You must have brought your child early. We are all sick here,’ a man shouted at her in a harsh voice.

“Our card was stamped but not before mother paid all the money she had been left with. We waited for doctor. When he came he examined me and said I needed an x-ray for my chest. We had to wait for the next day for the x-ray department to open. When it opened we were told that the x-ray machine was not working. We went back to see doctor. There was yet another long queue. At last we saw doctor. He wrote some medication. We went to the pharmacy and we were told the medication prescribed by doctor had been out of stock for many moons,” the child’s voice pauses as a fly buzzes around her body.

“Mother broke down and cried, ‘what do you want me to do with my baby. Help my baby please. She is dying. Help her please.’ ‘What do you want us to do? It’s 4 o’clock, we are closing now,’ the woman at the pharmacy said to my mother before she shut the pharmacy doors. She had no mercy in her voice. And I am here today.”

A rat runs across the mortuary. Female bodies scream but other bodies pay no attention. Women.

“Your story, child, sounds like mine. I lost cattle, goats and chicken trying to be treated. I went to witch-doctors and spiritual healers. One of the witch-doctors told me my brother’s wife had bewitched me. He took frogs and lizards out of my chest and bathed me in chicken blood. My brother divorced his wife.

One of the spiritual healers said my uncle had bewitched me because he was jealous of my successful life. He gave me cooking oil to add to my bathing water. It didn’t help. Finally, I came to this hospital. The doctors gave me water through the veins. I was semi-conscious when I heard one of them saying to the other, ‘these are AIDS symptoms.’ Days later I was dead.

“I had money. Real money. Not a few dollars in the bank but millions that could buy me anything in the world. I spent it with women of all sizes and colours.”

“I died when I was drunk,” a faint voice whispers. His eyes are wide open, staring at the derelict roof of the mortuary. “I was beaten to death by young men dressed in green. They said I was a supporter of the opposition coming from a party meeting.”

A woman’s voice interrupts, “I was a strong member of the Women’s League. One of those women who wrap around cloaks with the president’s face printed on them.”

The voice starts singing a song of revolution.

Handei Handeiwo
Handei tinoitora
Nyika ndeyeduwo
Handei tinoitora
Ivhu ndereduwo
Handei tinoritora

(Let us go and take the country. It is ours. Let us go and take the land. It is ours.)

It is a hive of activity as mortuary attendants take turns to bring in more bodies, fresh bodies, some with blood dripping down their faces to the cold floor. The mortuary attendants pinch their noses as they walk into the mortuary. The opening of the door brings in some fresh air making the bodies feel refreshed.

“You deserve to be at the heroes’ acre, woman,” an invisible body shouts from the far end of the mortuary.

“No, I do. I was a war veteran. A liberator of my people,” an angry male voice says.

“We both do,” the woman’s voice reasons, “we must be buried at the Heroes’ acre. I don’t think our president knows we are here. The president wouldn’t allow this to happen. Someone hasn’t informed him. Do you think the minister of information informed him?”

“How can you expect him to inform you about a place he has never been before?”

“Before I died I heard from someone that he is a busy man. He has a demanding job that keeps a minister busy.”

“What kind of a job is that?”

“It’s one of the greatest jobs in this part of the world. It’s about talking the truth on radios, televisions and in newspapers. You have to be a professor to hold such a high post.”

“Someone told me the minister of information has another job in the government as a spin doctor. You see, he is a minister and also a doctor. He is too busy to inform the president about dead people rotting somewhere in a mortuary.”

“Spin doctor!” exclaims a surprised voice, “what kind of a doctor is that?”

“You don’t know?” asks another surprised voice, “a spin doctor is the president’s personal doctor. He treats him of the stresses caused by being a president.”

“Doctors of today,” says the old voice, “let people die in hospitals while they work in government as ministers of information. They have no ethics anymore. Look at that girl’s nose. It’s rotting. If things go on like this, we will march on the streets. We can mobilize all other bodies in other mortuaries. We have to speak with one voice. Our ancestors said one finger cannot kill lice. Just imagine dead bodies marching on the streets demanding fair treatment in the mortuaries.”

A huge applause.

“You have spoken, old man,” the young voice says, “your mouth has spoken. You are wise, I must admit. We must not only protest for fair treatment in mortuaries. We must also protest for fair treatment of our living families.

They have been suffering for too long. The leader of this country is taking them nowhere. If it were not for his mismanagement of the country we would still be alive. Those with no wisdom believe he is a great leader but the truth is this country has been brought down to its knees by this man. I want him out of office. How, I don’t care. As long as we kick him out. The living ones have failed to push him out. It’s now our turn, the dead, to do it.”

“I support you, my friend,” says another young voice, “if we start our own opposition party we can easily win elections just like that. People want change. They don’t care who brings the change, as long as the president goes. They are prepared to vote for anyone or anything, even if it means voting for a donkey.”

“You must be joking,” says the female voice, “who would vote for a dead people’s party?”

“Other dead bodies will vote. In this country dead people are more than the living ones. If all the dead bodies vote we can win. Imagine this country being run by dead bodies!”

“You must be dreaming in your everlasting sleep. The country would be dead too.”

“It’s dead already, killed by a living person.”

Huge applause and laughter.

Five more bodies are thrown in. The old body asks loudly, “What brings you here young people?”

“Don’t you know there is a civil war going on out there? Can’t you hear the sound of AKs and landmines?” says a bleeding body, its voice full of fury.

“Are you saying you have just died? What for? For your masters? You die while they are busy holding endless meetings in five-star hotels.”

The old body starts to weep, bringing grief to the whole mortuary. As the bodies wipe their tears from their lifeless cheeks, a thin and malnourished body is brought in. It wastes no time in making its voice heard.

“My, my, my, I wish you knew what’s happening out there. There is a drought with a mouth full of long teeth; it is biting and killing the old and the young. Our leaders said the granaries are now empty. They are surviving by shopping overseas. We, the poor, can’t afford to shop overseas. Only two days ago, before I died I heard that our very own president took his family to a far country for shopping. Him and his wife and two children took a two hundred sitter jet to fly to the far country to shop. They diverted the route of the plane so that they could use it to carry their groceries. Those who saw it returning said it was full of groceries, even on the roof, like a bus going to the village.

“We, the poor, wait everyday for death to knock on our doors. It knocked on mine. I said to it, ‘come in,’ because I had no choice. I had nowhere else to send it because it had claimed the lives of my loved ones. My children died. We buried them last week. I died this morning. Only the strong survive out there. If the civil war misses you, drought makes sure it does not, or it leaves you devastated.”

“I wish I was a government official,” a tearful voice speaks, “I heard they have a nice mortuary. I heard it’s a mansion of a mortuary. A palace. The bodies bath and dress in suits. They get the most expensive chemicals, oxygen, perfumes and three main meals and snacks in between.”

To another decomposing body, “Hey, you have been quiet. Why are you not talking? Are you happy with your dead life?”

“I listen and take information.”

“Are you a newspaper reporter?”

“No, I am a member of the government’s secret agent. The way you are talking compromises the security of the country. I am not warning you again!”

Fear grips the whole mortuary and there is dead silence.

• Stanley Makuwe is a Zimbabwean writers based in Auckland, New Zealand. His short story collection, Under This Tree & Other Stories, was published last year by Polygraphia. He is also last year’s runner up for the BBC World Service Short Story Award.

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

Brian Chikwava comments on the literature of Zimbabwe. "Thankfully, in spite of or because of the difficulties that Zimbabwe is going through, the turn of the century has seen a quiet adjustment in the publishing of fiction, giving new voices a better platform to be heard," writes Chikwava.

One can argue that great literary works are rarely about good sentences or syntax. Given a good literary mind, these are insignificances that will normally sort themselves out. More often than not, it is the pulse of the mind behind a piece of work that either turns it into a shoddy bundle of words, or a creation that will find resonance across cultures and connect people’s experiences in ways unenvisaged before. Such minds have been seen in geographically disparate corners of the world: Nawal el Saadawi in Egypt; Augusto Roa Bastos in Paraguay; Abdullah Hussein in Pakistan; Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in Kenya; Boris Pasternak in the Soviet Union; Steve Biko in South Africa; the list is endless.

Whilst this is a literary pantheon that many a Zimbabwean writer can only dream about belonging to, one hopes that perhaps an urgent pulse is entering the work of Zimbabwean writers, both established and the upcoming writers.

Thankfully, in spite of or because of the difficulties that Zimbabwe is going through, the turn of the century has seen a quiet adjustment in the publishing of fiction, giving new voices a better platform to be heard.

In this regard there has been amaBooks’ Short Writings From Bulawayo, Volumes I to III, Weaver Press’ short story anthologies Writing Still and Writing Now, of which a natural progression ought to be Writing Nervous, for it is a nervous pulse that beats beneath the face of any Zimbabwean, be it a writer or a crack lipped mother in the rural areas who knows first hand the kind of tricky relationship a child can have with its empty stomach, or a nurse in diaspora who dreads the text message from her family asking her to wire more money back to their family who find themselves increasingly unable to look after themselves in an economy ravaged by inflation, the unemployed citizen who braves the aquatic predators of the Limpopo to become an illegal immigrant in South Africa, or the firebrand intellectual who dabbled in utilitarianism of a Stalinist variety – advocating the tearing down of the social fabric and national institutions in the name of the final revolution, the third chimurenga – and now finds him/herself sitting at his/her desk; pondering the question of again cutting whatever is left of our national nose to show what we are capable of when push comes to shove. All are in a nervous condition; all are hostages. That includes the president himself, who held hostage by his own will, is nervous about the future. Nervous because although he may have seen the moral shallowness of imperialism, colonialism, global capitalism and mutations of such, far from raising himself above such moral conventions, he continues to live in a moral depravity that he makes up for by exercising brutal power over ordinary citizens. His would be a fascinating contribution to Writing Nervous.

That Zimbabwean writers of wildly differing opinions, whether inside or outside the country, find themselves moved to commit pen to paper in larger numbers, is a healthy development for Zimbabwean literature. And it is perhaps fitting and natural that such developments should be accompanied by the appearance of the above mentioned short story anthologies that have given new writers platforms to be heard. Gone are the euphoric and rather innocent days when the unknown short story writer had to look to the magazines Parade and Moto or the Sunday Newspaper supplements to cut their teeth.

Those were the days when Auntie Rhoda, Parade Magazine’s famed agony aunt, had the answers to all the citizens’ questions, from the challenges of living with alcoholic husbands to handling bad tempered mothers in law who were going through ‘…a mental pause’ (sic). Today the social pulse is a different one, the questions are bigger and perhaps true of Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe’s view of many a post colonial African country: ‘…a reality that is made up of superstitions, narratives and fictions that claim to be true in the very act through which they produce the false, while at the same time giving rise to both terror, hilarity and astonishment.’ No doubt there are still issues that Auntie Rhoda would still be able to take in her stride, but even she would probably quiver at the thought of an impending whack on the head were she to give answers that are sympathetic to one political ‘truth’ at the expense of another. Because of this, it is appropriate that some of the tricky questions be dealt with in these recent short story anthology series; the conversation can no longer be with Auntie Rhoda, but amongst the writers themselves.

Perhaps due to these and other developments, new writers have come into visibility, myself included. These include Stanley Mupfudza, Gugu Ndlovu, Andrew Aresho, Edward Chinhanhu, Chris Mlalazi and Lawrence Hoba among many.

Some have come into the public eye through the British Council’s Crossing Borders programme, amongst them, Chaltone Tshabangu, Adrian Ashley and Blessing Musariri, while from the diaspora poet Togara Muzanenhamo, Stanley Makuwe and Petina Gappah (who was recently shortlisted for the 2007 HSBC-SA PEN Literary Award along with Chris Mlalazi) are emerging. And to add an urbane and gritty realism to this cacophony of voices is a gang of spoken word practitioners like The Teacher, Manikongo, Lucius, Comrade Fatso and Mbizo who, through their performances at The Book Café poetry slams have over the years been creating another row in the choir, right behind such seasoned performance poets like Chirikure Chirikure and Ignatius Mabasa.

The names mentioned here are only a handful picked from many equally good writers. In the years to come, some will be able to tap into the national psyche and produce inspired and great works, while many more of us, will be lost in the fog of our condition. Today, with the aid of digital chatter, our perceptions of our epoch are set to multiply dizzyingly, and from this heap of words, facts, fictions, sophistries and startling lies, one hopes that something will emerge, something that will at least measure up to the past works of names such as Charles Mungoshi, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Yvonne Vera, Chenjerai Hove or Shimmer Chinodya. No doubt, the hurdles ahead are many, and the intellectual demands on the writer or poet of today are greater. Whereas yesteryear it was enough to talk of Zimbabweans’ suffering in the colonial era and during the war, today it is the fictions of liberation that must be put under scrutiny; it is time to ask harder questions, and perhaps soberly consider, creatively enquire and consider in our own different ways, such assertions as those of Czech born playwright Tom Stoppard who in reference to communism in Eastern Europe suggested that ‘…revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.’ To question continuously, put one’s finger on a nation’s pulse and at the same time hold the mirror to its collective face without flinching, one imagines, is the staff of works whose worth is not only judged by syntax or the number of adverbs.

This issue features work by some of the writers/poet mentioned here, who in their own ways, are questioning and revealing today’s Zimbabwe. In Chris Mlalazi’s story, choices evaporate, Chaltone Tshabangu revisits the hilarities of the traditional matrimonial arrangement, Nyevero Muza relives the siege, while in Stanley Makuwe’s story, the undead mothers, fathers and children of the revolution, threaten insurrection. In his poem, Mass Murdering Silence, Victor Mavedzenge (a.k.a. Lucius) is carried by tender memories. There is also some inspired poetry from the Book Café’s poetry slams on the accompanying podcasts.

• Brian Chikwava, is a Zimbabwean writer who lives in London. In 2004 he was the winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and is currently is working on a novel alongside a short story collection.

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

Babacar Ndao writes that rich countries are not concerned with the development agenda, but are interested in an agenda that aims to pursue their own interests. This means “...maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers.”

Poor global governance, the result of unequal relations, must be regulated by the institutions created to do so. This is not happening at the moment. And failure to do so may lead to terrible consequences and upheaval across the board.

Internationally, the technical infrastructure paid for by the wealthy has distanced itself from electoral politics. Further, unelected multinationals and international financial institutions dictate the direction of the world. Nationally, public institutions which should regulate unequal relations have been progressively weakened and/or suppressed by the technostructures.
Locally, market demands and globalisation are destroying families and communities.

States must regain sovereignty

Rich countries have discarded the development agenda to pursue an agenda that suits them: maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers. The rich countries have pressured developing countries to open their markets, then dumped surplus production on them with no regard for the development costs. The subsidy regime and the compulsion to open markets are fundamentally incompatible and unjust. Indeed they are tragic for African countries.

The loss of sovereignty for African states unable to refuse these conditions constitutes the principal cause of the agricultural crisis in Africa. Readjustment policies of the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, IMF), and the rules of the WTO such as EPA agreements constitute the most significant aspects of this situation.

Two constants have marked the history of West African agriculture:
- a deficit of sovereignty for several countries unable to define development policies required to improve their situation
- the terms of trade have continued to decline to the detriment of African economies.

African decision makers have been disempowered from freely following policies and programmes to which their people aspire, as a result of being forced to accept technical assistance within the framework of bilateral aid and the conditionalities attached to assistance within the multilateral framework.

Africa is the only continent in the world where the amount of agricultural and food production has decreased as the population has increased. If these trends continue, Africa will not achieve the MDG objective of halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The situation may yet get worse.

It is widely recognised that if Africa is to develop substantially, it is essential that it is able to control food production and fight poverty, since agriculture accounts for the employment of 70% of the population and represents 30% of GDP.

In addition to being an important source of foreign currency for African states, agriculture ensures essential functions such as:

- the right to have sufficient, healthy and high-quality food
- the right to a decent income
- the right to a healthy environment

However, despite its importance, for several decades there has been a crisis in agriculture caused by the unjust requirements of the Agreement on Agriculture (AsA) at the heart of the WTO. The increase of poverty combined with an exponential demographic increase (3% per year) weakens the index of poverty which varies between 72% and 88% in the rural areas and between 44% and 59% in the urban areas.

Taking into consideration the weakness of agricultural revenue, very few rural households are able to earn enough to meet their food needs for seven months of the year and many others are not able to earn enough to cover their basic needs for even four months of the year.

The economic and social consequences

The policies of adjustment, notably those connected with the liberalisation of the trade in agricultural products cause significant damage to African economies. Their introduction has marked increases in hunger, poverty, inequality, unemployment and the degradation of natural resources. They have relegated all strands of agriculture into an advanced process of decline.

The crisis and the poverty consequently generated has produced a constantly precarious and deteriorating quality of life entailing the crumbling of values. This deteriorating quality of life challenges the continued existence of the traditional societal model. On the other hand, the disruption of some of the ethical and cultural norms is prompting new strategies of survival and organisation. However, some have become the victims of the changes in cultural norms whilst others are exposed to well-known serious, social threats such as: theft, attack and criminality; begging and child labour; educational and health threats; emigration and exodus. These and so many other features are explained in large part by the increase of poverty and the deterioration of living conditions caused by politics of realignment.

The most serious danger is the exclusion of women who are primarily engaged in agricultural work. In reality, women are the last refuge and bulwark against a descent into total food insecurity. The result of subjecting the sector completely to market forces is that there is no longer the slightest security.

Illustrative of this is the situation in Casamance, in the south of Senegal, where it is the women who grow rice, and where a peace process has been initiated in a region which had been in a state of war for more than 25 years.

Before 1970 these families had never known hunger and were proud of this fact. But the liberalisation of the rice sector has meant these families can no longer survive financially. There was no longer any (financial) incentive to grow rice. Food insecurity and conflicts over land are the likely reasons for the discontent generally felt in this southern region.

The situation is precarious: Africa’s share of world trade has decreased from four per cent to one percent. This situation finds its causes in several phenomena: the limitations of national markets; the restrictions of intra-regional trade (lack of infrastructure and tax barriers) and the difficulties of access to the markets of developing countries. Bearing in mind the highly unfair competition of imported products since the opening of African markets, additional elements are the steep decline in the price of food-processing and agricultural products, and increasing difficulties in the distribution and sale of local products in the domestic markets.

Solutions and means for managing the situation

Overcoming poverty begins by ceasing to generate it. Agricultural development is no longer popular with donor countries - international development aid has fallen by a third from the 1984 level - so it is essential to invest massively in the rural economy.

These elements, which act as the fundamental basis of world agriculture and which constitute the basis of the breakdown of world agriculture, show that the solutions to the globalisation of agriculture inevitably require the reform of the liberalised system at the root of the current situation. This also necessarily requires mobilisation on an international scale to find the means of achieving feasible solutions to this crisis.

Worldwide trade requires interdependent and complementary mechanisms of control and regulation. This issue is real because in a completely liberalised market, without any regulation, a remunerative price is not assured.

It is important, for those of our countries who are at the same stage of development, that our markets should have protected spaces. We must promote the emergence and development of such markets by ensuring them the opportunity of protection from external markets but at the same time ensuring open internal markets.

International aid conditionalities of institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, EPA agreements, commercially driven agreements such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and bilateral agreements constitute restrictions on agriculture which are as serious or perhaps worse than the WTO. The quest for a peaceful and just world must bring ethics to international relations, especially within leading institutions and assure good global governance.

It is urgent to consolidate rural development. More than 80% of the world poor live in rural areas, and the promotion of agricultural growth is an essential element in all strategies which aim to help lift them out of poverty. It is most important that investments, and not just the minimum, are made in the infrastructure and in rural markets in order to promote agricultural growth.

• Babacar Ndao is with the Network of Farmers' Organizations and Agricultural Producers of West Africa (ROPPA) of West Africa. ROPPA brings together rural organisations of 12 West African countries – Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger.

• This article was translated by Translated by Naomi Robertson. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The South African government is channeling Africa’s largest-ever industrial subsidies into the Coega industrial zone complex and port, located in the country’s fourth largest city, the Nelson Mandela Metropole (better known by its apartheid-era name, Port Elizabeth). Government proponents say Coega represents sound industrial and development policy, but a growing legion of critics are labeling it a corporate welfare boondoggle in a country that does not have resources to spare.

Aside from tailor-made infrastructure, including a 20 meter deep port, the key attraction of Coega for foreign investors is super-cheap energy. Following a year of frequent brownouts in the two largest metropolitan areas, Johannesburg and Cape Town, a fierce debate has erupted over the idea of providing discounted electricity to industrial users when citizens cannot get a dependable supply at any price. Mismanagement of the state electricity company, Eskom, in the course of its corporatization has interfered with a steady supply.

The main beneficiary of Coega's cheap energy, the Canadian firm Alcan, agreed in early December to a quarter-century power supply agreement from Eskom -- the world’s fourth-largest power company -- at an extremely generous price, less than the $0.02 cents per hour that bulk industrial consumers pay. This is already the world’s cheapest electricity, but Alcan insisted on the subsidy due to volatile commodity prices, a factor that has caused consternation in prior deals the South African government made with large mining houses and metals smelters such as BHP Billiton, the Anglo American group and Mittal Steel.

Alcan and Eskom claim that the deal will bring job creation and foreign exchange earnings, and pay off for the country. Using imported bauxite, Coega’s $3 billion aluminum smelter could by 2014 produce 720,000 tons of the metal annually in one of the world’s biggest smelters. Fewer than 1,000 permanent jobs will be created in the process, however

Coega is one in a long list of post-apartheid megaprojects undertaken by the South African government. These include the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors (one of the first global deployments of a new nuclear energy technology that purports to offer new safety guarantees), the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (six vast dams under construction) which supplies Johannesburg its water [see "Making the Earth Rumble," Multinational Monitor, May 1996], and the "Gautrain" elite fast rail network that will link Johannesburg, Pretoria and the country’s largest airport. An impoverished South African majority, increasingly well organized and mobilized, is challenging these megaprojects and demanding instead that state resources be deployed to deliver basic services to the majority, on a more ecologically sustainable basis.

The costs of corporate welfare

Coega’s site will include a new port, container terminal and Industrial Development Zone (IDZ), utilizing vast public investments -- at least $1.5 billion, including a $300 million tax break for Alcan -- and enormous quantities of land, water and electricity. The new employment anticipated at the port/IDZ would be the most expensive, in terms of capital per job, of any major facility in Africa. Environmentally, the costs of the Coega projects in water consumption, air pollution, electricity usage and marine impacts are potentially immense.

The infrastructure under construction is unprecedented in Africa, and dwarfs the basic-needs development infrastructure required by deprived citizens of Mandela Metropole and across the Eastern Cape. Hence controversy has surrounded the decision-making process to construct the port and IDZ. Reports of conflicts of interest for key decision-makers cloud the project’s governance. Coega was also initially meant to represent a key site at which European industrial firms involved in arms sales to South Africa could make “offset” investments that would create jobs, so government could justify to the public its corruption-ridden $6 billion weapons purchase. These so far haven’t been forthcoming.

Socially, there are significant costs as well. Several hundred families were already displaced to build Coega’s infrastructure, and those in the area will bear the brunt of the environmental toll exacted by the project. The opportunity costs of Coega include as many as 10,000 jobs lost in economic sectors which either must close or cannot expand, including the existing salt works, mariculture, fisheries, agriculture and eco-tourism. Most importantly, community and environmental activists point to far better prospects for employment creation and socio-economic progress if resources were used elsewhere. Six years ago, the Mandela Metropole Sustainability Coalition proposed an alternative economic development scenario. The alternative strategy prioritizes basic-needs infrastructure investment throughout the Eastern Cape and, at Coega, the development of state-supported eco-tourism and black-owned small-scale agriculture and mariculture.

Of the many subsidy components of Coega, civic groups find Eskom’s new deal most worrying, given the persistent electricity shortage across South Africa and the problem of mass disconnections of poor people for whom electricity remains too expensive. Using roughly 1,300 MegaWatts, about 3 percent of the country’s total, Coega will constitute an enormous new drain, requiring expensive new transmission lines from Eskom’s coal-fired generators 1,000 kilometers away.

Moreover, South Africa’s carbon dioxide emissions are already running approximately 20 times higher than even the United States on a per capita income basis. Ironically, Environment Minister Martinus van Schalkwyk returned triumphant from the November climate change treaty renegotiations in Nairobi, claiming that "South Africa achieved most of its key objectives." Those included promoting "Clean Development Mechanisms."

By bringing the vast "ghost on the Coast" (the long-empty Coega’s nickname) to life through the new subsidies, the national government will substantially increase carbon emissions. Yet because Alcan promises to use relatively energy efficient technologies, the market-oriented New York-based group Environmental Defense has suggested that Coega be considered worthy of Clean Development Mechanism investments by large international polluters, which would permit them to continue present rates of emissions. In promoting these kinds of investments, Van Schalkvyk says that his government is sending "a clear signal to carbon markets of our common resolve to secure the future of the Kyoto regime." But there are vast problems with the new emissions trading system, and projects such as Coega show why this market should not be expanded in ways that generate new ecological problems without making a dent in overall emissions.

Captive regulation and revolving doors

From the standpoint of meeting basic needs for electricity, South Africa's regulation of Eskom and municipal distributors has not been successful. This is not only because of an extremely weak performance by the initial National Electricity Regulator -- Xolani Mkhwanazi, who subsequently became, tellingly, chief operating officer for BHP Billiton Aluminum Southern Africa -- but also because government policy has increasingly imposed "cost-reflective tariffs," as a 1995 document insisted. The key issue is whether all consumers must cover the costs of the electricity they use, or whether richer and industrial consumers pay higher rates to subsidize the poor.

The 1998 White Paper allowed for "moderately subsidised tariffs" for poor domestic consumers. (White Papers are formal governmental policy statements.) But it also stated, "cross-subsidies should have minimal impact on the price of electricity to consumers in the productive sectors of the economy," meaning industrial users should not subsidize costs for poor residential consumers.

In addition to Mkhwanazi, the man responsible for Eskom’s late-apartheid pricing -- Mick Davis -- left the parastatal’s treasury to become the London-based operating head of Billiton. Davis took the post after former Finance Minister Derek Keys gave permission for an Afrikaner-controlled industrial company (Gencor) to expatriate vast assets in order to buy Billiton from Shell. After apartheid ended, Keys became chief executive of Billiton.

Ironically, the deals that gave Billiton, Anglo American and other huge corporations the world’s lowest electricity prices came under attack in 2005 by Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises. The package Davis had given Billiton for smelters north of Durban and in Maputo, Mozambique, during the period when Eskom had extreme overcapacity, resulted in prices that often dropped below $0.01 per kiloWatt hour, when world aluminum prices fell. (Most households pay five times that amount.)

Erwin reportedly insisted on lower "financial-reporting volatility." Because the amount the foreign companies pay for energy changes with the value of the rand, every time the rand changes value by 10 percent, Eskom’s wins or loses $300 million. Erwin said the utility should work to escape from existing contracts. From Billiton’s side, Mkhwanazi replied that any change to the current contracts could be "a bit tricky for us. … We would adopt a pragmatic approach and, who knows, perhaps there will even be some sweeteners in it for us."

But the allegedly new approach was not applied at Coega, where Erwin as trade and industry minister from 1996 to 2004 had led negotiations for a new smelter. According to the chief executive of the parastatal Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Geoffrey Qhena, "The main issue was the electricity price and that has been resolved. Alcan has put a lot of resources into this, which is why we are confident it will go ahead."

Meanwhile, however, to operate a new smelter at Coega, lubricated by at least 15 percent financing from the IDC, Alcan and other large aluminum firms were in the process of shutting European plants that produce 600,000 metric tonnes between 2006-09, simply "in search of cheaper power," according to industry analysts.

The main Alcan negotiator, 49-year-old Cynthia Carroll of the United States, was recognized for her skill in browbeating South African officials when in late 2006 she was named CEO-designate at Anglo American Corporation. Breaking the longstanding tradition, dating to the era of founder Ernest Oppenheimer, of giving the top job to insider elderly male candidates, Anglo’s offer was seen as a way to better position the firm -- South Africa’s largest even though its financial headquarters since 1999 is in London -- for further international metals deals.

Coal-fired power, climate change and carbon trading

The state’s decision to provide Alcan such vast subsidies at Coega comes amidst rising elite and popular consciousness about climate change problems. For years, global rulers have avoided action on CO2 emissions, as reflected in October in Monterrey, in the wake of the July St.Petersburg summit of the G8 group of rich countries, which ignored climate change. In Monterrey, the G8’s energy ministers were joined by 12 other major polluters, including South Africa, but again, no commitments were made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Three weeks later, however, the British government released The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, which estimates climate change costs of 5-20 percent of global GDP at current warming rates. Former World Bank chief economist Nick Stern calls for demand-reduction of emissions-intensive products (the opposite of Coega), energy efficiency, avoiding deforestation and new low-carbon technology.

The key problem is that Stern and the establishment want many of these improvements to be financed via carbon trading. Likewise, in 2002, Princeton University researcher Nipun Vats and Environmental Defense – through its “Partnership for Climate Action” relationship with French aluminum firm Pechiney (subsequently purchased by Alcan) – promoted Coega as eligible for subsidies under the Clean Development Mechanism. Coega could receive such subsidies if it can show its technology is cleaner than existing aluminum suppliers, and in turn that the energy-savings smelter technology can only be profitably financed through "additional" investment resources using carbon trading mechanisms like the World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund.

In November, Alcan said it would proceed with the $2.7 billion aluminum Coega smelter thanks to vast electricity subsidies from Eskom. Within days, University of Cape Town Environmental Studies Professor Richard Fuggle -- the country’s most respected environmentalist -- attacked the increase in CO2 emissions due to Coega in his retirement speech. He described Van Schalkwyk as a "political lightweight" who is "unable to press for environmental considerations to take precedence of “development."

According to Fuggle, "It is rather pathetic that van Schalkwyk has expounded the virtues of South Africa’s 13 small projects to garner carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM, but has not expressed dismay at Eskom selling 1360 megawatts a year of coal-derived electricity to a foreign aluminum company. We already have one of the world’s highest rates of carbon emissions per dollar of GDP. Adding the carbon that will be emitted to supply power to this single factory will make us number one on this dubious league table."

Civil society begins to react

In Mandela Metropole, emerging resistance to Coega’s guzzling of water and power will add to existing popular unrest. In South Africa during 2004-05, the police counted more than 5,800 protests against government, possibly the highest per-person rate in the world. In China, with 1.3 billion people, there were 87,000 mainly rural protests, while South Africa’s population is 45 million.

Thirty years ago, in the wake of the Soweto uprising near Johannesburg, the revitalized anti-apartheid social movements known as civic associations were founded in Port Elizabeth’s impoverished townships, thanks in part to the legacy of black consciousness and community empowerment activist Steve Biko, killed by the city’s police in 1979.

Twenty years later, the assistant city engineer for hydraulics wrote a blunt memo about the prospects for imposing a redistributive tariff to help poor consumers through cross-subsidization, funded by higher prices paid by large industrial users: If such a plan "were to be implemented for industry, Coega would not go ahead."

The redistributive scheme subsequently adopted by the city does not assure low-income citizens basic electricity and water access. In other words, the perceived need to pump cheap water and electricity into Coega industries will likely sabotage government’s objectives of social justice, public health, and economic growth via municipal services.

In all these respects, say critics, the Coega port and IDZ exacerbate the apartheid economic legacy of division, marginalization and grandiose, unworkable public-investment schemes. Such ventures were traditionally grounded not in a logic of development, but instead reflected the power of special interest groups.

Civil society resistance to this sort of maldistribution is already quite advanced, but often takes the form of illegal reconnections after prolific disconnections by municipalities and Eskom. To alter policy decisions, what is needed is a more sustained campaign for radically new industrial policies as well as tough state regulation of emissions. It may be inspired by the case of Coega, which stands out as a beacon of irresponsibility and corporate welfare.

• This article was originally commissioned by
and is reproduced here with kind permission of the author. Patrick Bond is director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban: [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Negotiations between African countries and the European Union aimed at finalizing free trade deals known as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are continuing apace. As part of the process that will finalise EPA deals sometime in 2007, Eastern and Southern Africa countries have just submitted a draft EPA document to the EU. But, in this article, Richard Kamidza documents the astonishing lack of consultation in the negotiating process, claiming that in some cases even cabinet ministers don’t know the details. One of the sectors that could face the biggest battering is agriculture, already buckled by three decades of structural adjustment and rich country subsidies.

Southern Africa hosted several Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) events between September and November 2006. Of these, the 7-8 September 2006 regional conference organized by the Trade and Development Studies Centre (Trade Centre) - whose theme was ‘Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) experiences in negotiating the EPAs with the European Union (EU)’ - is my point of reference. Senior officials of the ESA configuration, the EU delegation in Harare, policy makers and civil society organizations (CSOs) attended the event.

At that meeting, the ESA-EPA draft document, which was officially submitted to the EU with a response timeframe of end of September 2006, was circulated to participants. An excited Dr Moses Tekere, ESA-EPA Advisor, remarked: “It is a wise strategy meant to outwit our counterparts in the EU…The ball is now in the EU’s court, and a timed response is likely to work in favour of the ‘happy family ESA’…”

However, this mirrors a competitive race of African configurations of wanting to be the first to reach out to the EU’s negotiating machinery in spite of limited capacity, timeframes and space to assess outcomes in light of emerging national and regional economic units and the aspirations of consumers.

But, being the first to knock at the EU negotiating machinery’s doors not only fuels pessimism in the process, but also points to a bleak future for ESA economies under a legally binding trade regime. While the ESA-EPA advisor expresses triumph and optimism on the draft, the failure to widely consult at various stages of the process has a strong bearing on outcomes, especially with regards to consumers, smallholder farmers and other small to medium-producers.

ESA-EPA intellectual leadership [1] opted for ‘text-based’ negotiations, hence compiled a comprehensive ‘wish list’ document to form the basis for actual negotiations with the EU. Its main highlights include the scope of the agreement coverage: trade cooperation, trade related issues, trade in services, fisheries, economic and development cooperation, development finance cooperation, institutional framework and dispute settlement; and the schedule for eliminating customs duties a day after the agreement’s entry into force. These provisions aim to increase production, supply and trading capacities as well as enhance capacity to lure investment and technology.

The submission of the draft has fuelled fears of negative implications and outcomes likely to tie ESA economies to Europe in an unbalanced framework. This scenario perpetuates an unjust trade regime that has the potential to undermine national and regional economies, and in the process, compromise regional integration efforts.

Various meetings of the ESA processes and lobbying missions to the EU have continuously raised the need to redress supply-side constraints including unreliable public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads, bridges and railways); weak institutional policy frameworks (fluctuating exchange rates, high inflation rates and poor fiscal measures); low labour productivity (arising from poor education, health and housing provisions); and an unfavourable investment climate coupled with inadequate resources to foster socio-economic transformation. In addition, countries have weak production structures and/or capacities.

While the above requires huge resources in order to improve the situation, many countries do not have the capacity to mobilise such resources both externally and internally due to a poor investment climate and low gross national savings (GNS) ratios, respectively. In addition, many countries have been experiencing dripping developmental assistance inflows.l

In this respect, the ESA-EPA draft text says “…every 5 years the ESA-EU EPA Council shall undertake a formal and comprehensive review to ascertain if the development benchmarks have been attained by individual ESA countries as well as determine whether EU’s trade and development policies and assistance have contributed to individual ESA countries achieving the development benchmarks.” This vindicates the prevailing fear that outcomes may fail to assist in the development of respective countries and that development may be overlooked, and in the process remain elusive to the future developmental trajectory of the respective ESA countries.

The ESA text was crafted against the backdrop of increasing pressure from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to open up their markets and let their farmers “compete” with the heavily subsidised food and other agricultural produce dumped into their economies by the EU and other industrialized economies. The same economies have been subjected to neo-liberal policies driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for over three decades, which forced African governments to dismantle public agricultural research and extension programmes and drop whatever protection and incentive mechanisms existed for their small farmers and other small-to-medium-size producers. In addition, the same African governments are then forced by the same agencies to devote their most fertile land to the growing of export commodities for markets in the North, thus pushing small farmers off their land and food production out of rural economies.

The concluded South Africa-EU Trade and Development Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) has impacted on the economies of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and other regional countries, especially on agricultural development, market competitiveness of both agricultural and non-agricultural products and policy space for future intervention in support of vulnerable sectors (such as rural farmers) and consumers.

To date TDCA exposes other regional economies (SACU and non-SACU countries) to the highly competitive EU environment which heavily subsidises its agricultural producers. It is therefore possible that products from EU end up flooding the markets of non-TDCA signatories due to porous boarders that are difficult to police, a development that leads to de-industrialisation (downsizing), de-agriculturalisation (forcing farmers off their agricultural activities), unemployment, underemployment and poverty.

EPAs are associated with huge adjustment costs relating to revenue losses. As the TDCA shows, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia and Botswana, which prior to the new trade regime were guaranteed 45, 42, 28 and 17 percent respectively of the total SACU imports are estimated to lose between R1.9 billion and R3.5 billion in revenue. This translates to falling fiscal expenditures necessary to support agricultural development, social service delivery, infrastructural development and livelihoods.

In the case of ESA, the rejected text acknowledges that agriculture supports a significant number of people (about 70% of the population) whose production is solely for household consumption with a minor role in commercial agricultural market. The text further lists areas that require assistance from the EU. What is instructive is the fact that EPAs are likely to flood ESA markets with subsidised agricultural products, a development that has future negative implications to the sector and the entire economy.

Many ESA citizens have memories of the negative implications of the neo-liberal policy project on their economies and subsequently to their livelihoods. Many economic units are now exposed to globally driven ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy agendas in addition to EPA driven global market competition. While many stakeholders through various levels of interventions hope to contribute to the outcome, it seems that the ESA-EPA intellectual leadership is now immune to such crying voices in addition to being unwilling to reach out to many noble ideas through consultation.

Knowing very well that most ESA countries are largely dominated by agriculture and agricultural related activities, failure to involve constituencies in this sector display ESA-EPA intellectual leadership’s insensitivity to the plight of smallholder farmers, other producers of agricultural related products and consumers.

To date a significant number of the population live on one meal a day. Wide consultation and deep involvement of other stakeholders and citizens is in line with the spirit of the Cotonou Agreement. Consultation is not about making assumptions on other social and economic units, but rather about direct or indirect soliciting of their views. While the ESA-EPA leadership has not appreciated the above, it is sad that an opportunity that should have facilitated ESA stakeholders and citizens inputting to the process prior to the submission of the said draft is missed. ESA-EPA intellectual leadership has less confidence in wide consultations and deep involvement. They seem to only consult those with moderate views. So in the process, they leave out the views of broader constituencies. Given this critical moment, it is thus imperative to consult even radical views, including those calling for a stop to EPAs.

Since the launch of the ESA-EPA road map in Mauritius, February 2004, the intellectual leadership has not organized a single meeting with non-state actors’, particularly civil society, a separate platform that is necessary to broaden their horizon on issues of livelihoods and survival strategies of ordinary citizens. This is not a resource-constraint weakness, for on some occasions, configurations of officials have failed to avail themselves when resources were made available. This is equated to snubbing civic body meetings and processes meant to benefit the future trade regime between Africa and EU; and to lack of ‘open door policy’ ready to embrace civic bodies’ voices – both moderate and radical, a platform that has been ably provided for by their EU counterparts.

In this respect, many campaign missions by civic bodies to the EU, have seen them directly engaging with the EU Commissioner, Director-General Trade, Director-General Development, EU Parliament and other influential institutions. However, a lot of inputs from these missions have failed to filter into the said draft because the ESA-EPA intellectual leadership has failed to open its doors for such voices, which are deemed radical. Lobbying powerful EPA institutions and structures in Europe require radical elements. One wonders why those in charge are not yet ready to accept and value such inputs.

Historical bilateral trends show EU emerging a ‘winner’, a position likely to mirror the current EPA process. African configurations need to learn why this is always the outcome. While it is necessary to appreciate the prowess of EU in defining trade relationships with its former colonies, it is equally important to harness all available resources, particularly views of non-state actors which have not filtered through.

The ESA region can improve its negotiating capacities by harnessing all available human resources, including critical voices. Many stakeholders engaging EPAs have valuable inputs, which have the potential to add value to the outcomes. Coordination of all voices, especially of critical constituencies calls for an “open door policy” coupled with expressed intent to accommodate different views. Coordination is about accountability of outcomes; reaching out to broader constituencies; and building synergies and networks aimed at ensuring positive outcomes necessary to promote pro-poor development and address livelihood needs in ways that ameliorate widespread poverty. Coordination is about soliciting other views on emerging positions deemed not yet official.

While there have been appeals to popularize the draft, one wonders what are the appropriate messages and strategies to use, and which constituencies to target given that the fourth draft has been rejected by the EU and the ESA team has remained numb about it. Its rejection filters from European civil society networks. Why the draft was not shared with stakeholders boggles the minds of citizens, especially those likely to be affected by the outcomes.

The appeal to popularize the draft raises questions including: should we focus on the weakness of the document with the view to improve the final output or to lobby its acceptance in the EU negotiating machinery? Should we focus on the inherent intellectual weakness at the ESA leadership level that fails to widely consult broader constituencies before serving the ‘menu’ on the EU’s table? Should we focus our energies on exposing those, who, all along have been seeking glory, that is, eager to append their signatures regardless of the flawed process and outcome? Should we focus our energies on intellectual ESA-EPA leadership, which is increasingly detaching itself from the reality on the ground?

The above not only raises serious challenges within all African configurations, but also points to deficiencies in synergy building, strategic alliance formations and policy driven strategies among various stakeholders aimed at concluding a just trade regime. Soliciting opinions of other stakeholders has remained elusive in the ESA-EPA intellectual leadership.

At the 21st Plenary Assembly of the SADC Parliamentary Forum, it emerged that the EPA processes have not been shared adequately with other organs of states in respective member-states despite the relevance of such institutions. Though MPs are important they are largely at the periphery of the process. From the discussions, it was clear that no sharing of countries’ positions was done. In fact, from the sentiments, most of them were not consulted and in many states EPAs are yet to be discussed at the Cabinet level. Indeed, some MPs in this Forum are Ministers who profess ignorance on the process. This development illustrates poor coordination of all organs of state, and non-state institutions in the process; and lack of intellectual supervision by those in charge with the view to ensure that all the voices are consulted.

• Richard Kamidza is a senior researcher at The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)

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

Notes

[1] Its role is to guide the EPA process, provides technical direction and is responsible and/or accountable for the outcomes.

The last summer has seen a surge in immigration to mainland Europe form some African countries. While European leaders are attempting to stop the wave, Tope Akinwande points to the hypocrisy of massive farm subsidies received by European farmers and the trade policies that make it impossible for African agriculture sectors to survive.

Like their other fellow members of the human race, Africans have migrated since the dawn of history. They have moved in response to demographic, economic, political and related factors [1]. In recent times, there has been a spotlight on African immigration to European countries. As the legal requirements for entry into Europe become stricter and more cumbersome and as opportunities of a decent livelihood shrinks in sub-Saharan Africa, its people have resorted to desperate means in order to gain access to what is generally considered to be the “Promised Land” for many Africans outside Europe. This has been ever more apparent in west Africa, where young people travel through deserts, stow away in ships, and employ all sorts of means in order to reach Europe.

How did this situation arise? In the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Africa’s future looked bright. It was the post-independence “self-determination” era laden with all sorts of opportunities; almost all of the agricultural-based African economies could meet the needs of its people. An average African had no cause to risk their life by travelling in a desperate fashion to Europe when their basic needs could be met in their country of origin.

Africans who ventured to Europe for further studies were in a hurry to return to their countries of origin as prestigious and lucrative jobs with all the accompanying benefits awaited them. Afterwards, they only travelled to the western world for business and leisure. The few African students who stayed back in Europe were considered as failures who could not find their feet back home.

However, things have taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Africans and especially west Africans - probably because of the coastal closeness to Europe - are the new “Boat People” fleeing abject poverty occasioned by lack of opportunities in their countries of origin. They are constantly in the international spotlight either being rescued by European coast guards, attended to by tourists or having their bloated bodies occasionally washed to the shores.

In the summer of 2006 – summer is said to be the preferred travel time as the sea is supposedly calmer - it was almost a daily occurrence to see demeaning images of tired and hopelessly-looking African men and women rescued by European coast guards after risking their lives to get to the Spanish Canary Islands. They used make-shift boats to negotiate the treacherous waves of the Mediterranean Sea with the aim of escaping poverty back home [2].

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 27,000 illegal immigrants have turned up in 2006 on the Spanish Canary Island off the west African coast.

While the rescued sojourners are considered to be “fortunate” to have stepped onto the shores of Europe despite the excruciating difficulties awaiting them, many Africans are not lucky enough to be intercepted mid-sea by coast guards. They perish with their desperate dreams. So far in 2006, the Spanish coast guard has accounted for 500 bodies found in the ocean around the Canaries.

Origin of the problem

Compared to the 1960s and early 1970s, Africa’s growth performance in the 80s and 90s has been very bad. The 1980s have been described as a “lost decade” [3], while the children of that era and the 1990s have been famously tagged the “wasted generation” by the Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka.

Despite the strong belief held by many Africa analysts that the economic woes of Africa are rooted in its “largely documented history” of colonialism which culminated in a façade called “independence” and the Cold War which institutionalised despotism, kleptocracy, and big-man politics, the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have made it impossible for African countries to meet the basic needs of their people.

Introduced in the 1970s to galvanise the economies of African countries, following the decline in the prices of agricultural products, SAP came with tough conditionalities such as privatisation, wage freezes, privatisation, elimination of price controls and lifting of trade barriers.

Instead of encouraging economic development, SAPs created a new phenomenon of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries who could not meet the basic needs of their people.

In its 22 June 2006 edition, The Economist in its characteristic sanctimonious manner posited that “rich countries have been generous lately, with extra aid and debt relief, giving many struggling economies a breath of air. By the end of last year, 29 countries, 25 of them in Africa, had had their debt burden eased…” The magazine goes on to wonder if “…Africa, often dubbed the hopeless continent, (is) finally taking off?” [4] For once, a magazine that has carelessly dubbed Africa as a “Hopeless Continent” conceded that “Africa itself deserves the credit for the upswing “of its economy in the past year” [5].

Like most of its counterparts in the international media, what “The Economist” failed to acknowledge is that the dividends of the so-called debt relief are easily drowned by one phenomenon - the international trade policies of the “generous” industrial nations it was talking about. The debt relief issue is like giving something out with the left hand and taking it back with the right hand.

In March 2005, the British government, who has been in the forefront of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPCI), published a detailed report of the £1.7bn it gave to agricultural companies as subsidies. At the same time, the US -though planning to reduce its subsidies to American farmers by 5 percent – gave about $9bn [6].

How on earth would African farmers compete with their European and American counterparts on the world food market? Would African governments whose national budgets are sometimes smaller than the subsidies western farmers receive be able to subsidise their farmers to “even the scores”? They will have to face incessant unrest at home while the rest of their citizens “hit the road” or set off for European coasts.

Oumar Hamadoun Dicko, Foreign Affairs Minister of Mali, could not have been more precise on the causes of the recent wave of immigration of west Africans: “Immigration is going to continue unless we address fundamental issues like the unequal terms of trade,” he says. “African farmers can’t compete and are out of world markets,” he concludes in a recent interview with United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [7]. He surely knows what he is talking about since Mali’s cotton farmers have been greatly affected by the subsidies enjoyed by their western counterparts.

According to the Malian Foreign Affairs Ministry, 4 million, or over a third of Mali’s 11.7 million people are currently out of the country [8]. It is noteworthy that the majority of these Malian emigrants are from Kayes, the main cotton-producing area of the country. They have had to leave their cotton farms to try their luck in Europe.

Monies remitted by this large Malian Diaspora have been vital in meeting the needs that the government has been unable to meet. Many Malians in the Diaspora are building schools, dispensaries, and other amenities in their regions. The Malian Ministry of Foreign Affairs concedes that annual Malian Diaspora remittance exceeds 200 million US Dollars, which is more than half of the country’s export earnings.

While a lot of talks have been going on about agricultural subsidies as the main international trade policies that have hampered trade and development in Africa, it is interesting to know that there are many other types of subsidies such as “fishing subsidies” that have not made life easier for developing countries.

Recently, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) accused Japan of paying the highest subsidies to its national fishing industry at $US2-billion dollars. The report also indicated that the 15-member European Union, China, and the United States are leading underwriters [9]. These governments give their farmers and fishing companies subsidies in the form of grants, loans and loan guarantees, equity infusions, tax preferences, and price or income support.

Thiaroye-Sur-Mer is a fishing town a few kilometres from Dakar, the capital of Senegal. A few years ago and up till the end of 2005, one could see hundreds of fishermen - both young and old - selling fish to locals and large-scale buyers from Dakar and elsewhere. Today, Thiaroye-Sur-Mer has almost become a ghost town as almost all the younger fishermen have all taken to the seas; this time not to fish but to try their luck in Spain’s Canary Islands. They sold their means of livelihood (boats, fishing nets, etc) and bought a one-way ticket on a boat to a supposed better future in Europe.

Like many sub-Saharan African countries, Senegal has been going through an excruciating SAP that has completely destroyed its economy. Its main source of income – groundnut - is no longer well-priced on the international market as many substitutes have been derived. Senegal’s fishing industry is losing its momentum as the country has been inundated with subsidised food, including fish from Europe and Asia, making it impossible for local fishermen to sell their wares at a decent rate and meet the basic needs of their families. The only way for these young Senegalese fishermen to survive and meet the needs of their families is by trying their luck in Europe. This has become a way of life in a country where monies remitted by the Senegalese Diaspora sometimes accounts for 90 percent of income in many households.

Which way forward?

With the recent wave of immigration to the Spanish Canary Island, European governments, led by Spain, have been trying to curb the immigration of Africans who are willing to risk their lives to reach Europe at all costs.

The incidents of September and October 2005 where Spanish coast guards opened fire on ill-equipped boats full of African immigrants led to the adoption of the “Rabat Declaration” on 11 July 2006 by 57 European and African countries. The Declaration enjoined the 57 signatory countries to set up an action plan that will get to the core of the problem.

In September 2006, the European Union promised to provide Mali with US$542 million over five years to control the emigration of its citizens. Mali is expected to use the money to start various projects aimed at discouraging young people from emigrating.

International NGOs are also trying to encourage young Africans to stay back in their countries. For example, the Spanish Red Cross has embarked on an awareness campaign in Senegal to demystify the notion of success attached to emigration. They are emphasizing the harsh realities.

African celebrities have also thrown themselves into the fray. One of the most successful African singers, Senegalese Youssou N’Dour is lending his notoriety and voice to the anti-emigration campaign. In collaboration with IOM and other well-known Senegalese musicians, he has recorded a single titled “Emigration” where he enjoined the youth not to abandon their country. One thing missing in this beautiful and groovy record is that Youssou N’Dour forgot to suggest alternatives to Senegalese and African youth.

Can these initiatives work? Since all the aforementioned initiatives, there have been cases of African boat people arriving in Spain and as recent as September 2006 in Malta, thus exasperating the government of the tiny country that has just joined the European Union.

As one route is being blocked, Africans perfect their “travelling techniques”.On 20 November 2006 Europa Press Agency reported how 1,293 west Africans, braving a very harsh winter, arrived in Spain’ s Canary island with many of them using well-built fishing vessels. They also travelled with enough provisions (food, winter clothing, etc. ) to see them through their journey of death. Interestingly, some immigrants devise or go back to the old routes, probably thinking that immigration authorities’ would have shifted focus away from them.

Conclusion

As I had indicated earlier on, there are a lot of initiatives to curb illegal immigration with the latest one being the first Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development between EU and the entire African continent slated for 22 and 23 November 2006. One of the expected outcomes of the Conference was the establishment of a framework for a joint collaboration between Europe and Africa to curb illegal immigration. The framework will consider major causes of immigration such as economic integration and development.

When one considers the impact of the remittances made by African immigrants - both legal and illegal - to their national economies and how it is being sadly flaunted and praised as an alternative to foreign earnings, it is not foolhardy to wonder if African politicians are really sincere and keen on curbing the flow of their citizens to the west. Why should they bother when the emigration of their citizens “relieves” them of the headache of sourcing funds to embark on development projects such as building of schools, hospitals, roads, etc. ? If they genuinely work towards stopping them from emigrating, what alternatives do they have for farmers who cannot sell their produce? Have they got any alternatives for young graduates and school leavers they are churned out in millions into joblessness and despair?

It is noteworthy that while African politicians are silently grateful for the “subsidies” they get from their citizens in the Diaspora, western politicians are not keen on stopping the subsidies they give to their citizens as their national interest and particularly political survival in their respective countries depends on keeping their farmers and citizens happy.

As long as this political deadlock is not broken, the west and Europe in particular, should be prepared to receive more and more people.

• Tope Akinwande is a Desk Officer at the West Africa Department of TEARFUND, a leading UK relief and development NGO working in partnership with Christian agencies and churches in over 70 countries to tackle the causes and effects of poverty. His views do not necessarily reflect those of TEARFUND.

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

References:

(1) ADEPOJU, Aderanti (2005): “Creating a Borderless West Africa: Constraints and Prospects for Intra-Regional Migration”. UNESCO, Paris, p12

(2) Ibis
(3) OSHIKOYA, Temitope & MLAMBO, Kupukile (1999): in “The African Economy: Policy, Institutions and the Future”. (Ed) Steve Kayizzi-Muyerwa. Routledge, London and New York, p33
(4) The Economist (22 June 2006): “Africa’s Economy: A glimmer of Light at Last?” London, p24
(5) Ibis
(6) The Guardian (23 March 2005): Editorial. London, p8
(7) See www.irinnews.org for full interview
(8) Ibis
(9) See www.wwf.org for full report

Social movements in Kenya, “want to see the WSF being transformed into a space for organizing and mobilizing against the nefarious forces of international finance capital, neo-liberalism and all its local neo-colonial and comprador collaborators,” writes Onyango Oloo. Whether this will be achieved is a practical question which will be put to the test in Nairobi this coming January.

The clock is winding down. With barely a month before the commencement of the 6th World Social Forum (WSF), social movements from Africa and around the world are gearing up to make their presence felt in the Kenyan capital where the annual event is scheduled to take place from January 20th to 25th 2007.

Indeed, there has been a flurry of activities in the host country itself. At the end of November, a bevy of organizations and movements representing various pastoralist and minority groups converged at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre to celebrate the Kenya Pastoralists’ Week. In contrast to previous outings, the 2006 edition was devoted to building up support and mobilising for the World Social Forum. Impatient with their stereotypical image as cultural artefacts used to drum up foreign exchange earnings from tourism, members of the Maasai, Samburu, Turkana, Rendille, Pokot, Yiaku, Njemps, Ogiek, El Molo and other marginalized groups (many of them from the historically ignored and systemically impoverished northern limits of Kenya) resolved to bring to the global audience offered by the WSF space, issues more relevant to their lived experience.

Among these issues are colonial era land edicts and policies which dispossessed their communities; the impact of mining and extraction activities on the environment and human livelihoods; discriminatory policies by successive governments that have guaranteed the stubborn survival of pre-colonial conditions of poverty and underdevelopment among many pastoralist and minority communities; the arrogant disregard for the concerns raised by (for example) Samburu women raped over the years by British soldiers dispatched on military exercises in those Kenyan communities; proposals on ending conflict and creating conditions for sustainable growth; the role of youth; tensions persisting with neo-colonial era settler farmers and indigenous Kenyan comprador businessmen in hiving off thousands of hectares of land while the pastoralists and minority communities are targets of state terror, evictions and denunciations and other related concerns.

The WSF 2007 may also serve as an occasion to celebrate recent victories by some of the above marginalized groups. In Botswana, the San people made global headlines in December 2006 after a court affirmed their legal claim that they were wrongly forced off their ancestral lands by the Botswana government and that they had a right to return to their homes in the Kalahari Desert. Hot on the heels of that decision barely a week later, another court this time in Kenya, agreed with lawyers for the minority Njemps community that they had a right to a parliamentary representative from their own community given the decades of exclusion and marginalization by successive Kenyan regimes, both colonial and neo-colonial.

On the other side of the coin, members of the Digo community on the Kenyan coast are fuming after a High Court judged ruled in favour of the Toronto-based Tiomin company and against seven local farmers who are opposed to the paltry compensation packages the firm was offering for displacing members of the community from the site of proposed titanium mining operations. The court also ruled that the Kenya government could immediately proceed with forceful evictions of all farmers opposed to the displacement and proposed compensation. The Tiomin issue has been a lightning rod that has led to national and international coalitions and solidarity campaigns bringing together activists in Kenya, Canada, the United States, Italy and other parts of the world.

The Yiaku people have been also quite involved in the plans for the World Social Forum 2007. They have at least two representatives sitting in the Organizing Committee itself and active in the Social Mobilization Commission.

Theirs is a unique case for cultural survival: in the 1930s, they were forcibly assimilated into the larger Maasai cluster and over a period of decades, they have effectively lost their language with less than 10 people (mostly greying elders) able to communicate in the Yiaku tongue. Today they are confined to the inner reaches of the Mukogodo Forest on the outskirts of Nanyuki town in the Laikipia District of central Kenya. But in a testimony of their grit and resolve to fight for their right to self-determination, they have joined up with other marginalized and endangered peoples in Africa and around the world and no doubt they will have compelling testimonies to share during the January global event in Nairobi.

Dwellers of the so-called “mitaa ya mabanda” or informal settlements in Kenya- from the sprawling slums of Kibera and Mathare to the lesser known Huruma, Korogocho, Mukuru, Kondele, Chaani and other slums are quite in the thick of things. The Kutoka Network is working closely with these communities to ensure a massive presence of the inhabitants of these settlements at WSF 2007. One of the highlights of their activities will be a marathon that will snake its way through the Nairobi slums to historic Uhuru Park - the venue of the opening and closing ceremonies.

Hawkers, who have of late born the brunt of municipal government and state terror in the Kenyan capital, are also organizing to participate, partly to correct the media misperceptions that they are nothing but a bunch of hoodlums working in cahoots with organized criminals to desecrate the central business district of Nairobi.

Women in Africa and around the world are busy organizing their presence at the WSF 2007 with the Nairobi-based FEMNET and the Kampala-based AWEPON taking a very conscious lead in hooking into encounters like the Feminist Dialogues to ensure an effective participation by women.

The Kenyan trade union movement walked into the WSF process rather late in September 2006, and found their way around after a couple of hiccups. At first, it was a major battle to get the phrase “right to decent work” inserted into the major principles guiding the WSF 2007 meeting because some WSF veterans objected to incorporating the name of a specific ILO campaign into a broad platform such as the WSF. At the end of the day, there was a compromise and the phrase was adopted after protracted behind the scenes discussions.

More recently, a press conference organized by the Kenyan trade union leadership cast wrong aspersions at the Nairobi-based WSF 2007 Secretariat and this created some bad blood, which was once again overcome after face to face meetings with representative of the two bodies.

Even before the arrival of COTU (the Kenyan trade union confederation) on the WSF scene, workers and their issues were very much part of the WSF process with South Africa’s COSATU part of the International Council of the WSF and OATUU head Hassan Sunmonu one of the most familiar presences at the African Social Forum council meetings. Elsewhere around the world, bodies like the Canadian Labour Congress and other trade union formations have been longtime supporters of the WSF process since its very inception.

In Kenya, bodies like the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) have worked for a long time to highlight the plight of export processing zones (EPZ) wage slaves and flower farm workers. The KHRC recently organized an international forum for shopstewards from Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and other parts of the world to talk about the issues workers would be bringing to the WSF 2007.

The Kenya Land Alliance, one of the constituent bodies of the Kenya Social Forum and a member of the WSF 2007 Organizing Committee has for the last year been mobilizing peasants, squatters, fisher folk, pastoralists and other rural folk to bring their issues on land and livelihoods to the WSF event. KLA has supported regional forums such as the Western Kenya Social Forum, the Coast Social Forum and the Central Social Forum, materially and otherwise.

Other dynamic bodies in the WSF 2007 Organizing Committee such as the Shelter Forum, Citizens Assembly and Haki Jamii have mobilized evictees, urban dwellers, the poor, the youth etc to articulate social and economic problems and suggested alternatives.

On a global scale, the World Assembly of Social Movements has held a series of meetings and exchanges on how best to use the WSF space to galvanize social movements. At the continental level, the South African based Khanya College and the newly founded Sankara Centre for Social Movements in Kenya are determined to see that the WSF 2007 event is an occasion to network and map out joint actions with other social movements from around the world.

In the same vein, an initiative coming out of Asia and Africa will be a prominent feature of the WSF Nairobi encounter, as activists from the two vast continents map out the elements of Africa-Asia Solidarity. A similar process is underway involving Latin America and Africa.

At the formal organizing level, all these initiatives, encounters and proposals have been concretized in an International Council of WSF (supported by the local organizing committee and the African Social Forum) decision to devote the fourth day of the WSF event (January 24, 2007) to solidifying joint actions and campaigns, partly to stave off lingering criticisms and perceptions that over the years the WSF has become little more than a talk shop.

With just weeks before the WSF 2007 event, it is clear that the WSF process itself is a contested ideological terrain. Some of the more activist types are struggling to ensure that WSF events transcend their depiction as annual NGO jamborees with the usual high flying suspects flitting from one seminar to the other workshop before jetting back to their familiar civil society lairs.

Social movements, including dozens in Kenya, want to see the WSF being transformed into a space for organizing and mobilizing against the nefarious forces of international finance capital, neo-liberalism and all its local neo-colonial and comprador collaborators.

Whether this will be realized is a practical question which will be put to the test in Nairobi this coming January.

• Onyango Oloo is the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum. He writes here in his personal capacity.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Dieu-Donné WEDI DJAMBA explores what reconciliation means for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Reconciliation will not only allow Congolese people as a community to know the truth about their past in order to build a better future but also will heal their wounds, writes Wedi Djamba.

Introduction

With the election of Joseph Kabila as the fourth president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the DRC started a new era. This era is the Third republic. For a country dealing with a legacy of two undemocratic regimes (theMobutu regime of 1965-1997 and the L.D. Kabila regime of 1997-2001) and two deadly wars (1996-1997 and 1998-2002) many challenges are faced by the elected president and his government. Amongst them is the reconciliation of the Congolese people. In this regard, many Congolese define reconciliation wrongly in terms of power-sharing while others define it through the words “forgive and forget”.

To achieve national reconciliation it takes more than power-sharing between politicians or the use of the words “forgive and forget”. Indeed, the DRC is emerging from two wars that affected her deeply and is also recovering from the legacy of dictatorship. During those two eras (war and dictatorship) many human rights violations occurred and many injustices were experienced by the population. Congolese people were divided and many disappeared. In this regard, many families are still trying to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Therefore, to move on from the past it is important to turn the page of the history. But first, there is a need to read this page. [1] Indeed, reading the page of the past allows for understanding the past mistakes in order to avoid them in the future. For a country like the DRC, the amnesia is the worst option because it is the best way for people to repeat the same mistakes. George Santayana [2], so often quoted in relation to Nazism and the Holocaust, confirmed this view when he said, `Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’. Consequently the DRC has to read the page of her history before turning it.

Furthermore, in the DRC, reconciliation is a process which needs to know who did what. In this regard, Alex Boraine [3] argues that transparency, accountability and truth are essential ingredients in any nation which seeks integrity, the consolidation of democracy and a culture of human rights.

Accountability

Alex Boraine argues that: “For the sake of justice, for stability and the restoration of dignity to victims, there must be accountability for the past”. [4] Indeed, all these years of the reign of undemocratic regimes and two deadly wars have left the DRC with thousands of victims but also the same amount of perpetrators. All past abuses and its victims and perpetrators has to be disclosed in order to heal the wounds of the victims and to send a deterrent message to the perpetrators.

The accountability for past abuses can be made judicially or extra-judicially. It is not possible to prosecute everybody in case of the mass abuses. Therefore, there is a need to hold those responsible for the past abuses accountable through other mechanisms such as removal from office, retirement or an obligation to apologize publicly for the wrong done. In this regard, to set up an independent commission to deal with the issue, is important.

Furthermore, accountability for the past in the DRC will draw the line between the past characterized by injustice and impunity and the Third republic that has just been born. The sentence “the recreation is over” used by the elected president, Joseph Kabila expresses the willingness to draw a line between a wrong past and the new era. And this line should start by holding accountable all those implicated in the past abuse.

Reparation

In the restorative justice perspective, reparation is defined as including any form of compensation, ex-gratia payment, restitution, rehabilitation or recognition. [5]

Reparations aim to redress injustices suffered by one or several individuals or communities. In the context of the mass past abuses in the DRC, reparations can be granted by the court through a judicial process but also by the national authority. Currently it is utopian for those victims to expect any reparation from the judicial process because firstly this involves fees which the majority cannot afford and secondly the judicial system in the DRC as noticed by Human Rights Watch [6], is in state of disarray. Thirdly, the judicial system is corrupt and was listed among the four most corrupt institutions during the transitional period in the DRC by the report of Observatoire du Code d’Ethique Professionnelle (OCEP) [7] (an anti-corruption commission set up by the state department). Therefore, the only way for the thousands of victims of past abuses to expect any reparation is through and from the government. This reparation will not change the pain suffered in the past, but will help victims to face the future.

In addition, reparations aim to restore the dignity of the victims and to heal their wounds. Indeed, in the DRC any reparation to the victims of past abuses will be an acknowledgement of their pain and a condemnation of the abuse they suffered.

The government should grant individuals reparations such as money, rebuilding of houses, free health care, free education to the children of victims, free treatment for the victims of rape or those affected by HIV/AIDS in the wake of the rape. They should also grant symbolic reparations such as building a memorial statue for those victims, or dedicating a memorial day to those victims.

Reparations will not only help victims to turn the page of the past but will also pave the way for the reconciliation process between victims and perpetrators, in particular and between the Congolese people in general.

Telling the truth

Telling the truth about terrible events is a prerequisite both for the restoration of social order and for the healing of individual victims. When truth is finally recognised, survivors can begin their recovery. [8] Furthermore, the research for truth and a commitment to truth must be undertaken by the entire nation: ordinary people, government, agencies, poets, writers, historians, academics, and whoever cares about the future. [9]

Indeed, many injustices and conflicts that occurred in the past decades left thousands of victims and divided the Congolese community as a whole. The past in the DRC is filled with plenty of mass violations of human rights - atrocities such as mass killing, rape, burning of houses, disappearance, torture or ethnic cleansing such as the conflict between Kasai community against Katanga community in 1992-1993 in Katanga province; and the conflict between Hema community and Lendu community in Ituri District between 2001 and now.

The road to reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators, or between communities, passes through a truth telling. In this regard, George Bizos [10] argues: ”It is not possible to simply forget the past, it will sooner or later come back to haunt the nation.”

Furthermore, truth telling will not only allow Congolese people to know the truth about their past in order to build a better future but also will heal their wounds. Indeed, the disclosure of the past will help many families to know what happened to their loved ones and finally to end their long mourning.

In addition, truth telling is an opportunity for those who committed any abuse to cleanse themselves of the ghosts of the past by acknowledging their wrong doings, asking for forgiveness and for the victims to forgive them. Thus, Congolese as a whole can say ‘never again’ for what happened and then turn the page of the past. To do so the establishment of a forum for national reconciliation becomes urgent.

Conclusion

This paper analysed the conditions for reconciliation in the DRC. Congolese people need to move on from the past. But they need to look back in order to move forward. Looking back has to be a national concern. This will include accountability for the past abuses, the reparation for victims of those past abuses and truth telling involving victims, their perpetrators, and all divided communities as well. Reconciliation which leads to the national unity in the DRC comes at this price.

• Dieu-Donné WEDI DJAMBA is a lawyer(Advocate)at the Lubumbashi Bar association/DRC; Independent consultant; Assistant lecturer in a College of Law in Lubumbashi/ DRC; Human Rights Activist and Writer. Tel:+243812485222;+27738362921 ; Fax:+18016727206 Email: [email][email protected]; [email][email protected]

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

References:

[1] Alex Boraine, ’A country unmasked’ ,Oxford University press, 2000,p5
[2] Alex Boraine,op.cit,p4
[3] Alex Boraine,op.cit,p8
[4] Alex Boraine,op.cit,p8
[5] Wendy Orr, `Reparation delayed is healing retarded’, in Charles Villa-Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwerd (eds), Looking back reaching forward: Reflections n the Truth and Reconciliation commission of South Africa ,Cape Town :UCT,2000, p239
[6] William W.Burke-White, “International Criminal Court, Complementarity in practice: The International Criminal Court as Part of a System of Multi-level Global Governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo”,Leiden Journal of international Law 18( 2005),p576
[7] Radio Okapi,`Quatre services de l’Etat indexes dans la lutte contre la corruption’,http://www.radiookapi.net/article.php?id=6202>,accessed 10 december 2006.
[8] Nomfundo Walaza, ’Insufficient healing and reparation’ in Charles Villa-Vicencio and Wilhelm Verwoerd,(eds) op. cit p253.
[9] Alex Boraine,op.cit, p8
[10] Georges Bizos ’Why prosecution is necessary’, in Charles Villa-Vicencio and Erik Doxtader,(eds), The provocations of Amnesty: Memory, justice and impunity, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation,2003, p5

At least 200,000 people are estimated to have died since the Darfur conflict between government forces, allied militias and rebels seeking autonomy began in 2003. Aid workers have also been attacked, and their vehicles and communication equipment stolen. Eva Dadrian writes that for international development aid to be effective, peace must be restored first to Darfur.

Throughout the Darfur crisis, Sudan has disputed accusations, accused everybody except the pro-government Janjaweed militias, played for time, pledged and promised but never delivered. It has even managed to stave off UN intervention. Darfur is entering its fourth year of conflict and turmoil and there are no more excuses to be made, say observers.

Despite calls for action from the United Nations (UN), aid agencies and human rights organisations, Africans have consistently resisted any action which would be critical of the Sudanese government, in the name of African solidarity. But patience seems to have run out even from a very complacent African Union, and not long ago, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria warned of possible genocide in the region. Now, President Omar el Bashir has until the end of the year to disarm the Janjaweed, and accept a hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force in Darfur or face the consequences.

Addressing the African-Caribbean-Pacific conference held recently in Khartoum, President al Bashir said that the situation in Darfur is “under control” and that peace has been restored in the province. In reality, the situation in Darfur is far from being "under control" as claimed by the Sudanese strong man. The rebellion continues and a new group has emerged and taken up arms against Khartoum.

Reported to belong to Darfur Arab tribes, the Popular Forces Troops (PFT) say they are fighting against the “marginalisation” of the region. It is not yet known whether they will join forces with the rebel groups that did not sign the Abuja Peace agreement. However, the PFT is reported to have made a statement saying that “Darfur Arab groups believe that Darfur people are fighting for a just cause”.

In the meantime, the only group which signed the Abuja Peace agreement with the government last May (the Sudan Liberation Army), has threatened to pull out of the deal if Khartoum-backed militias “continue to be armed and to attack civilians”. In addition, fresh fighting has erupted between the Sudanese government troops and the National Redemption Front (NRF), an umbrella group of the rebel factions that did not sign the Abuja peace agreement in May.

Sitting in Addis Ababa last week, the AU Joint Ceasefire Commission (JCC) decided that the disarmament of the Janjaweed in the war-torn Darfur region "be started immediately." That decision was made upon the assessment of a confidential report presented to the JCC by General Luke Aprezi, the commander of the AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) peacekeeping force. The report testifies clearly and without ambiguity hat the Janjaweed had recently increased their attacks. It also draws the attention of the JCC to the fact that "the re-emergence of the Janjaweed also negatively affected the security situation." Although Khartoum continues to deny it, General Luke Aprezi’s report says, “The Sudanese government continues to arm the Janjaweed."

Back in 2004, at the height of the conflict, I wrote that the Sudanese armed forces and other paramilitary units, i.e. the government-backed Janjaweed, have simultaneously targeted civilians, allegedly accused of supporting the rebellion. Despite promises and pledges from the government, the Janjaweed are still being armed and still targeting civilians. Only last month, the Janjaweed were again in action against civilians. This time the attacks took place near the Chadian borders.

Both the AU and the United Nations confirmed this recent military campaign and said that the Janjaweed militia has targeted “civilians and particularly children”. More than 70 civilians were reported killed. Western monitors have also reported that the Sudanese Air Force has also been deployed in the offensive and bombed villages along the border with Chad. No circumstances can justify deliberate attacks on civilians, or military operations that endanger civilian lives. These recent attacks were grave violations of human rights and the laws of war, and they happened despite the recent pledge by the government to dismantle the Janjaweed and honour a UN Security Council resolution that banned bombing raids in Darfur.

President Al Bashir has consistently rejected the deployment of an extended peacekeeping force on the grounds that his government is capable of maintaining peace in the region. He went as far as declaring that the presence of any UN force would be like “an invasion” or that the West is interested neither in human rights nor in the plight of the people of Darfur, but seeking to invade Sudan only so it could plunder its resources. Sudanese government officials have also warned that the war-torn province could become “a new battlefield for jihadists”.

There is no doubt that the disarmament depends on “ the political will of the Sudanese government” says Monique Mukaruliza, deputy head of the peace mission, but the pressure is building up and it appears that even Sudan’s African supporters have given up on Khartoum’s long-lasting diplomatic game.

That game is almost over. An “informal” consensus seems to have been reached by the AU, the international community and the UN to put further pressure on Sudan.

As the AU Joint Ceasefire Commission was sitting in Addis Ababa, 15 former foreign ministers wrote a proposal for Darfur. Published in the Financial Times of London (18 December 2006), the proposal, signed by amongst others: Joschka Fisher (Germany) Ismail Cem (Turkey) Gareth Evans (Australia), Erik Derycke of Belgium, Lamberto Dini of Italy, Bronislaw Geremek of Poland, Rosario Green of Mexico, Surin Pitsuwan of Thailand, Hubert Vedrine of France and Ana Palacio of Spain, says that a “fully observed ceasefire leading to a sustained political settlement would be the best way to save lives in the war-ravaged region.”

In the interim, says the proposal, the international community will need to convince President al-Bashir that his best interests would be served by allowing the “African Union peacekeeping force to be strengthened with financial, logistical and other support from the United Nations.”

The option of sanctions, the so-called “consequences” mentioned by the JCC communiqué, is clearly stated in the foreign ministers’ proposal. They reckon that sanctions would force a change of policy by Khartoum. “As former diplomats, we support one last effort to persuade Khartoum to accept the proposal for a hybrid force. If by the year's end Mr Bashir still refuses or, more likely, continues pretending to agree one day and saying no the next, he should pay a stiff price."

That price, or the consequences should first include targeted multilateral sanctions [such as travel bans and asset freezes] directed at military and civilian leaders who are responsible for the violence. The second step should be measures to target revenue from Sudan's oil sales, coupled with an embargo on the sale of equipment to that country's petroleum industry, and thirdly, steps to be taken to close offshore accounts affiliated with the government-majority party, including militias.

In addition, the International Criminal Court should up its investigations into those who order or commit crimes against humanity in Darfur. However, unless these sanctions are “multilateral” they will have no effect on the Sudanese government. Extensive diplomatic efforts by the AU and the international community are being made to persuade Sudan’s African, Arab and Asian allies to help change President al Bashir’s mind and to reach an agreement for a “hybrid” AU-UN force to be sent in 2007. Before being asked to leave Sudan, in October 2006, Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian chief, made a similar plea and called on African, Arab and Asian countries to urge Sudan to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The Addis Ababa-Abuja broad diplomatic coalition, which benefits from the support of the AU, the Arab League and the UN Security Council, has recommended a hybrid force that would combine AU personnel with financial, logistics and other support from the United Nations. The plan is 1) to strengthen the capacity of the AU monitors, 2) to provide for increased logistical support to the embattled African contingent and 3) to see the deployment of a hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force yet to be formally approved by Sudan.

Pressure is also mounting from the International Criminal Court (ICC), as Luis Moreno Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for ICC, announced that his investigation has collected enough evidence to prove “who are the most responsible for the crimes committed in Darfur” in 2003 and 2004. It was during that period that the highest number of crimes were committed, by all parties involved in the conflict. The chief prosecutor has also asked the Sudanese government to facilitate a visit by his team in January 2007 to gather information on the 14 arrests made by the GoS.

However, it seems that the people indicted by the GoS are not the same people the ICC is investigating. Under the Rome statute, the prosecutor must first assess whether the government is building the same case. Ocampo has already asked the Sudanese government for an update on their national proceedings, regarding the arrest of 14 people by the Sudanese authorities.

Furthermore, as the UN Human Rights Council is preparing to send a high-level team of human rights experts to Darfur, news reports have quoted Mohamed Ali al-Mardhi, the Sudanese minister of justice, as saying that he was “ready to cooperate with a UN fact-finding team due to investigate human rights abuses in war-torn Darfur.”

According to Al-Mardhi, “the authorities have nothing to hide” and all obstacles will be removed in order “to allow the team of experts to probe cases of rights violations in the western region”.

Collective decision-making is very well, and there is no doubt in my mind that as Africans, we have to stand for African sovereignty and reject any outside interference in our own affairs. But my question is whether in the name of that same sovereignty, we should allow our governments to kill Africans and destroy entire communities, making hundreds of thousands of people flee their homes and become refugees or IDPs (internally displaced people), facing starvation and life threatening diseases? It is indeed in the name of their sovereignty that successive governments in Khartoum have waged wars against their own people: for more than twenty years in Southern Sudan and now for almost four years in Darfur.

Observers and aid agencies continue to remind us that Security Council resolution 1706 was written under the enforcement chapter of the United Nations, therefore the UN force could intervene “regardless of what the government of Sudan wants”. But this is not, and this cannot be, the preferred option. Sudan must agree to let the hybrid AU-UN into Darfur where the humanitarian situation is deteriorating as aid agencies have announced that they had to pull out 650 staff from Darfur and Chad, because of security fears. The evacuation of the aid workers, even if temporarily, means disrupting supplies of food and medicines to hundreds of thousands of people.

Some African political analysts say that the so-called "international peacekeeping force" is a “euphemism for foreign military intervention which is destined to have disastrous repercussions for the people of Darfur and Sudan as a whole.” Let us be honest and look into the past 50 years of Sudan history. The only disastrous repercussions for the people of Sudan are the centralised, hegemonic, dictatorial, elitist and undemocratic policies of successive Sudanese governments who have ruled the country since independence.

Some observers suspect that oil is the main “motivation” behind the heightened interest of the international community and specifically that of Washington. Yet, there is no geological evidence of oil reserves in Darfur. Academics and some diplomats are behind the spread of these false reports. If one looks into the oil issue, one can see that China, Malaysia and India hold the concession rights for oil development and exploration in Southern Sudan and in the Kordofan province.

For my part, I have always believed that the fighting in Darfur should not be seen as an isolated issue, but in a wider regional context. The entire Sahel region, from Mauritania to Sudan, faces a common problem: droughts and underdevelopment that lead to a scramble over the meagre resources between nomadic tribes and pastoralists, mainly Arabs or Arabised, and African non-Arab agriculturalists and farmers. This has been the situation since the 1960s. Only sustainable development assistance to the entire region of the Sahel can help quell current and future clashes between those communities. But before sending any international development aid, peace must be restored to Darfur.

• Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media.

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

OFFICIAL CHINA WEBSITES

Peoples Daily online in English

Official website of China-Africa summit
http://english.focacsummit.org/

Xinhua News Agency website in English
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/

http://www.chinese-embassy.org.za/
chinese embassy in South Africa

UNOFFICIAL AND SEMI-OFFICIAL SITES

‘Afroshanghai.com: the African community in Shanghai and China’
Shanghai-based website anbd blog for African and Afro-American expats in China.
http://www.afroshanghai.com/

http://chinadigitaltimes.net
‘a collaborative news website covering China's social and political transition and its emerging role in the world. ...Our goal is to harness the distributive power of the Internet to advance the world's understanding of China...China's democratic transition, sustainable development and peaceful emergence in the global community’. Run by the Berkeley China Internet Project in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

China Dialogue: China and the world discuss the environment’
Edited by Isabel Hilton and based in London and Beijing it describes itself as ‘the world’s first fully bilingual website devoted to the environment’. With a joint British-Chinese board. it is part-financed by the UK Government as part a series of ‘sustainable development dialogues’[see ]http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/international/dialogues/">
http://www.chinadialogue.net/

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY

‘China Business’ - the special China section of the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business.html

Business Report - South Africa.
http://www.busrep.co.za/

THINKTANKS AND NEWS SERVICES

African Geopolitics; ‘world leaders and international experts express their views on African affairs’
‘the first bilingual quarterly on African affairs’
http://www.african-geopolitics.org/home_english.htm
also http://www.african-geopolitics.org/home_french.htm

The Jamestown Foundation. ‘mission is to inform and educate policy makers and the broader policy community about events and trends in those societies which are strategically or tactically important to the United States and which frequently restrict access to such information’.
http://www.jamestown.org/

Africa Confidential is one of the longest-established specialist publications on Africa, with a considerable reputation for being first with the in depth news on significant political, economic and security developments across the continent.

...all our contributors write for us on the basis of strict anonymity, a principle that was established from the outset in 1960 to ensure writers’ personal safety in the turbulent, early years of post-colonial African independence. Hence the newsletter’s title’.

CAMPAIGNS AND NGOs

‘Global Witness campaigns to achieve real change by challenging established thinking on seemingly intractable global issues. We work to highlight the link between the exploitation of natural resources and human rights abuses, particularly where the resources such as timber, diamonds and oil are used to fund and perpetuate conflict and corruption’.
http://www.globalwitness.org/

Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative [EITI]
The EITI supports improved governance in resource-rich countries through the full publication and verification of company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining.
campaigns.
http://www.eitransparency.org/

Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.
We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice.
http://www.hrw.org/

Friends of the Earth defends the planet and champions a healthy and just world. Active in 70 countries, Friends of the Earth has the world's largest network of environmental groups.
http://www.foe.org/

Global Timber.‘Provides information and statistics on the global trade in wood-based products, especially that from Africa and East Asia [and] insights into trade in Illegal Timber particularly in relation to importing countries such as Japan, the UK, and the USA’.
http://www.globaltimber.org.uk/

Reuters Foundation - alerting humanitarians to emergencies.
http://www.alertnet.org/

SPECIAL ISSUES

‘China in Africa’
Special issue of South African Journal of International Affairs Vol 13 No.1 Summer-Autumn 2006
ISSN: 1022-0461
see also the Institute’s website at www.ippr.org

It is hypocritical of Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa given their history of exploitative relations with Africa, says Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Prah in this interview with Pambazuka News. Kwaa Prah also argues that its futile for Africans to be pointing fingers at the West or at China. “Africans have to organise their side of the story as best as they can in their own interests,” he says.

Pambazuka News: One of the articles in your forthcoming book deals with the earliest contact between China and Africa. Many people may not be familiar with that history. Could you explain it briefly?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: It goes back to the early 15th century when the famous Chinese admiral Zheng He made seven epic journeys to various parts of the world including Asia and Africa between 1405 and 1433. During the course of these journeys he visited Africa. This was about 80 years before Columbus so it goes very far back. It is even suggested that some of the maps that Columbus used he borrowed or had antecedence in Chinese global maps of that period.

Pambazuka News: And how did that history progress into China’s relationship with Africa in terms of its engagement with newly independent African states of the 50s and 60s?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, there is a hiatus, an enormous hiatus, because of the distance and difficulty of communication and the colonial interlude which both China and Africa encountered. China went through a cycle which is not too different from the African cycle in terms of its encounter with the West and colonialism, from the period of the opium wars and the boxer rebellion, the period of about a half century which ended in 1902-03. And then there was the period before China become a republic in 1912; and the era of the warlords post 1912 to the beginnings of the Chinese revolution in the early 20s and then on from the early 20s to 1948 when China, in the words of Mao Tse Tsung, “stood up” in 1949.

Now after that China’s contact with the rest of the world especially Africa and Asia started in earnest. By the time of the Bandung conference in 1955 China’s beginnings of real contact with Africa was in the making and I’m talking about Africa proper, I’m talking about sub-saharan Africa, non-Arab Africa and that is because China’s relations with the Arab world were different and of an earlier period and so and so forth, but contact with Africa proper, black Africa or sub-Saharan Africa, starts in the late 50s in earnest and the rest is history.

Pambazuka News: So that’s a period spanning several hundred years and the question then arises in terms of how that influenced China’s current approach to Africa and policy as outlined in the January policy paper released by the Chinese government.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Yes, well, you’ll recall that there was a stage when Zhou Enlai arrived soon after or in the decade of African independence in the 1960s and visited East Africa and made the statement that Africa is “ripe for revolution”. China supported the African liberation movements but also in sharp rivalry with the Soviet Union and so the position China took often was not beyond consideration of its own tussles with the Soviet Union.

By and large China has been consistent in the sense that it has tried to help African states with infrastructure and at fairly low rates. This was particularly the case in the first two decades of independence before the cultural revolution in China itself. China did a lot to build roads and railways, to support African infrastructure and industrial plans, at a point in history when China itself was economically fairly weak.

Pambazuka News: Many have argued that the engagement with Africa in the 1950s and 1960s was more of an ideological outlook towards Africa, but that the current realities in an era of globalisation mean that China’s interest in Africa is solely commercially driven.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: I wouldn’t put it in such polarised terms that at one pole it is ideological and at the other end of the scale its all economic. I think what one can say is that it was more preponderantly articulated and expressed in ideological terms in the earlier period. It had also economic dimensions but this was hardly pronounced. Now it is distinctly more pronounced as China tries to search for markets and also to search for raw materials, in this period that is.

Pambazuka News: So do you see that as a negative and positive engagement?

Well, I don’t see it in positive or negative terms in the way that lots of people want to discuss the issues at this present time. China wants to pursue policies that are in its best interests and what we have to do in Africa is also to trade and pursue polices that are in our own interests. It’s as simple as that – all states do that.

What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to start making obstructionist [statements] or start raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa starting with slavery for centuries and continuing to the present day with exploitation and cheating with subsidies which help the European economic community to ridiculous extents that a cow in the European community gets a subsidy of $2 a day and 60 percent of Africa doesn’t get that. So we ask ourselves what is this concern: It is not real concern, it is jealousy and rivalry about Chinese inroads into Africa.

That is not to excuse the way China is also approaching Africa. China is obviously also approaching Africa from its own interests or as it perceives its interests and some of this interest is not necessary in the interests of Africa. This is something that Africa has to work out. It is futile for Africans to be pointing fingers wether at the West or at China. Africans have to organise their side of the story as best as they can in their own interests.

Pambazuka News: How should Africa go about doing that? What are some of the policy responses that are needed on the African continent?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, for a start I don’t think Africa really has any chance of doing anything in this present world without unity. That is the bottom line. Africans have to unite. Africans divided as they are have no platform for bargaining with anybody. If Africa was united today it would be a world power, poor as it is, and it would be capable of dealing with China on its own terms or with the West on its own terms. Unity is the basic pre-requisite for African advancement and for Africa to be able to bargain with China or anybody else.

Pambazuka News: One of the articles in your book, authored by yourself, is entitled ‘Nationalism, Revolution and Economic Transformation in China: Any Lessons for Africa?’ What does China’s example offer for Africa?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, you have to read my book first, that is for a start.

Pambazuka News: Give us a taster?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, I think one of the things we have to learn is that advancement in our time must be home grown. Africans have to learn to pull themselves up by themselves, one. Two, this process has to be based on their own cultural pre-requisites. It is not possible to develop Africa grounded in languages like English, French or Portuguese or Arabic for that matter. Africans have to realise that the cultural base for development has to be their own. That is not to say they should not learn other languages, no, but they must make their languages the centre of all the development efforts that they make.

Pambazuka News: China has cultural agreements with 42 African countries and 65 cultural exchange programmes in Africa. It has offered scholarships to 10 000 students and seconded more than 400 Chinese professors to African universities. Much of your work has been in the field of language and culture so what would you say are some of the issues raised by China’s cultural involvement in Africa?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: We still have to see a lot of this you know. These are projected plans, this is what they would want to do and it is very fresh. I don’t think it has left the drawing board yet and I don’t think the implementation is with us as of now. We will have to see. I would see we will have to just wait and see how it pans out and how it is implemented. It is to early day to make announcements about these plans.

Pambazuka News: When is the book due out and where can people get it from?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, I expect that the book should be out early next year, that is 2007. It should be available through the African Books Collective and bookshops in South Africa and also through the web. If you enter Casas you should be able to get the details.

• Interview conducted by Patrick Burnett, Fahamu

• Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Prah is director of The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (Casas), which is based in Cape Town. Casas was established in 1997 as a Pan-African centre for creating research networks in Africa and its Diaspora. Professor Kwa Parah is the editor of a forthcoming book Afro-Chinese Relations: Past, Present and the Future. Visit for more information.

Economic, political and security cooperation between China and Africa has grown exponentially in the last decade, presenting new opportunities and challenges for Africa. The need for Africans to understand China, and its motives for the enhanced engagement with Africa over the last decade, is now greater than ever before, writes Ndubisi Obiorah.

The rapidly evolving relationship between China and Africa is reflected in the evolution of African perceptions of China and its motives for engagement with Africa. For decades during the Cold War, the primary perception of China in much of Africa was as an ally against colonialism, neo-imperialism and Western domination, especially amongst left-wing circles. China was the alternate source to the Soviet Union of political, diplomatic and military assistance for African liberation movements. Post-liberation governments however often had to contend with Sino-Soviet rivalry for influence as well as the vexed question of Taiwan. Chinese aid, particularly scholarships, were welcomed across Africa. In the eyes of many Africans, the Tan-Zam railway project established China’s profile as a friend and ally against Western neo-colonialism and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Chinese success in building a railway pooh-poohed by ‘Africa hands’ in the West was a turning point in Sino-African relations and led to wider recognition in Africa of China's growing industrial and technological prowess.

From the 1950s, Chinese businesspeople from Hong Kong and Taiwan as well the overseas Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia established trading ties with African counterparts. Taiwan and Hong Kong were widely known across Africa by the early 1970s as sources for cheap imports of textiles and consumer goods although often of dubious quality. In particular, traders from southeastern Nigeria established elaborate trade networks with Hong Kong and Taiwan manufacturers and traders as well as with overseas Chinese businesses in southeast Asia. The increased popularity of kung fu movies and the establishment of schools of martial arts in major African cities led to relatively greater awareness of China among ordinary Africans - although often with distorted perceptions of Chinese history and culture.

Virtually in tandem with the shift in China's focus in its relations with Africa from ideology to trade, the dominant image of China in Africa by the 1990s had changed from ideological ally against colonialism, apartheid and Western domination to business partner and emerging economic colossus. The Chinese doctor or technical aid worker traded places with the Chinese entrepreneur or state corporation. The impact on Africa of China's trade with Africa and the wider world as well as the activities of Chinese businesses operating in Africa elicits diverse perceptions from local populations which deserve extensive and careful study as well as nuanced analysis. It is immensely difficult to attempt to describe popular perceptions in Africa of Chinese business or of China itself with a tolerable degree of accuracy because this is a relatively new area of scholarly inquiry and reliable information beyond anecdotal sources is hard to come by.

Perceptions among Africa's political leadership and intelligentsia of the prospects and implications of China-African engagement warrant further research and measured analysis. China's offer of trade and aid without apparent political or humanitarian conditionalities is apparently much appreciated by some of Africa's politicians (French 20/11/05).

It is noteworthy however that perceptions of China among

Africa's political leaders go beyond appreciation for 'no-strings' aid and trade. China as 'alternative' political and economic model to Western prescriptions appears to be a pervasive optic among African politicians, intellectuals, civil society and media. While the end of the Cold War brought welcome changes including the end of proxy wars fought on Africa's soil and the liberation of Namibia and South Africa, the unipolar world characterized by Western dominance that followed has been the source of much discomfort for many African intellectuals and political leaders. In this light, China's emergence as a major axis of global power is often welcomed among African intellectuals who hope that it may herald a return to global multi-polarity in which milieu Africa and the developing countries will have a greater role on the global stage than they currently do.

A Chinese model?

In a nuanced perspective on China, the senior leader of the Nigerian legislature, Senate President Ken Nnamani, in a welcome address entitled "China: A Partner and Example of Development and Democracy" during President Hu's April visit to Nigeria, describes China's 'outstanding (economic) performance exclusive of western democracy' as "the paradox of development and democracy".

Nnamani’s comments highlight the increasingly common perception in Africa of China as an alternate political and economic model to the Washington Consensus. Since the mid-1980s, many African countries have been compelled to adopt a series of 'Structural Adjustment', 'Economic Recovery' and 'Poverty Reduction' programmes often under pressure from Western donors and international financial institutions. From the early 1990s, demands by Western donors that African governments adopt economic reforms prescribed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have often been 'bundled' with so-called 'conditionalities' usually consisting of demands for 'political reforms' such as political liberalization, ending of one-party regimes, respect for human rights etc. Environmental advocacy groups in Western countries often pressure their governments to demand environmental audits and impact assessments before funding new infrastructure and industrial projects in Africa.

When African post-colonial governments began moving towards one-party states and 'African socialism' in the 1960s, they often proffered the rationale that Western models of democracy were unsuited to Africa's material conditions and to its history and cultures. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the debate raged in Africa as to whether Western political and economic models could be transported to non-Western societies, whether capitalism or Soviet-style socialism was the better model for Africa or whether African states could craft a 'Third Way' to nirvana. The end of the Cold War and the apparent triumph of the Washington Consensus led to a temporary cessation of the debate partly due to the disillusionment and intellectual exhaustion of the African Left. When donor conditionalities were introduced, some African governments vigorously resisted the political conditionalities and argued that Western democracy was unsuited to Africa's needs and would fuel ethnic conflict and instability but their dissent was increasingly muted as aid flows dried up.

Through the 1990s, it appeared that the debate had been settled for good and that most Africans, at least implicitly, accepted the thesis that political liberalization and structural adjustment would lead to economic recovery in the short term and sustainable development in the long term. By the turn of the millennium, virtually no African government openly questioned the Washington Consensus or suggested 'African alternatives'.

China's emergence as a major economic power in the 1990s despite not being a democracy or adopting economic policies typically recommended by the IFIs has become a source of great interest for both Africa's rulers and ruled. For some among Africa's contemporary rulers, China is living proof of 'successful' alternatives to Western political and economic models. The semi-colonial Western domination of pre-revolutionary China is often cited as being analogous to Western colonialism in Africa in the early-mid 20th century while China's status as a developing country in the 1950s through the 1990s is also cited as co-terminous with Africa's post-colonial experience. For many, China represents hope that another world is possible in which bread comes before the freedom to vote.

Given the democratic reversals experienced in much of Africa from the late 1990s onwards, there is a distinct possibility that some authoritarian regimes in Africa will seek to utilize China's economic success to rationalize avoiding further political liberalization and genuine democratization. Human rights advocates and democratic actors in Africa may increasingly find their traditional arguments that respect for human rights and political liberalization will inexorably lead to economic success challenged by some African governments pointing to China as the poster-child for development sans democracy. A mid-term prognosis could be some African governments invoking the 'China paradigm' to justify the adoption of state-led economic policies coupled with intensified political repression.

Virtually by stealth, the old debate about appropriate paths to Africa's development has been re-ignited by China's emergence as a major global power. The implications of this debate for advancing human rights and democracy in Africa are critical. A failure to re-establish the primacy and legitimacy of liberal democracy and strong human rights protections among Africa's intellectuals, media and civil society as the most appropriate path for Africa's development may ultimately lead to popular disillusionment with Western-inspired political and economic prescriptions that are perceived as unable to put bread in the mouths of hungry infants while communist China becomes the workshop of the world. More important than the desires of some African governments to return to political illiberality is the danger of resurgence in the old, anti-Western, anti-democratic tendency among Africa's intellectuals, boosted by China's apparent success.

It is increasingly likely that a central challenge for civil society in Africa in the next few years will be an effort to prevent democracy reversal especially an 'intellectual rollback' to the 1970s. It may become necessary to re-establish or re-validate across Africa the legitimacy of democracy and human rights per se and also as the most appropriate and effective path to Africa's development. Africa's human rights advocates may be well served in this effort by projections that India may eventually surpass China's economic progress, thanks at least in part, to a freer political and intellectual culture. As the largest democracy in the world with long standing ties to Africa, India's economic progress in the last decade especially the exponential growth of its ICT industries could serve as an 'alternate' model to China.

A human rights perspective

While China's rapidly expanding engagement in Africa is enthusiastically welcomed by African governments and some African intellectuals, China's relations with Africa's governments is often perceived among human rights NGOs and Western commentators as increasingly problematic for governance and human rights in Africa. China's increasing presence in Africa has generated a flurry of Western media reportage and commentary, often with graphic headlines, the prevailing note of which is that Chinese trade, political and security cooperation may enable repressive regimes in Africa to avoid even the relatively limited constraints on their conduct imposed by Western donor conditionalities. Elements in Africa's civil society are concerned about the potential implications of China's relationship with African governments for the advancement of human rights and democracy in Africa.

China-Africa security cooperation is particularly problematic. Chinese-made weapons are often cheaper than Western equivalents and China does not usually impose political, human rights or humanitarian conditions in its arms sales.

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 12 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. Nigerian military officials have made clear that they will increasingly turn to China for weapons to quell the revolt in the Niger Delta which traditional Western suppliers appear reluctant to provide.

In particular, China's role in the Sudan crisis, where it has supported a military regime accused of perpetrating or at the very least encouraging ethnic cleansing has cast a disturbing light on Chinese engagement in Africa (Alden 2005). China bought 50 percent of Sudan's oil exports in 2005, which presently accounts for 5 percent of China's oil needs (Pan 2006). China is accused of blocking or diluting UN Security Council efforts to effectively address the Sudanese government’s role in the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region.

Human rights concerns about China's renewed engagement in Africa must of necessity extend beyond China-Africa inter-governmental relations. Indeed, it may be argued that in the near future, the role of the Chinese private sector in Africa may come to acquire as great a significance, if not greater, than that of the Chinese government or its state-owned enterprises in Africa. Some Chinese companies operating in Africa have been accused by NGOs of violating employment and environmental rights in the communities where they operate.

NGOs in Nigeria have accused the Chinese logging company WEMPCO of discharged untreated effluents into the Cross River in southeastern Nigeria, thereby damaging the health and livelihoods of local fisher folk. The company is also accused of colluding with local officials and law enforcement to suppress protests by the local community.

Western commentators contend that China’s lack of domestic political criticism frees its government and companies in their business endeavours in Africa from “reputational risks” and other pressures that Western companies operating in Africa are routinely exposed to. Whereas shareholders of Western companies may be cautious about investing in state-led energy projects in African countries which rely on a brutally-enforced stability, such issues have little visibility to the Chinese public (Melville and Owen 2005). This presents significant challenges for human rights advocates in Africa.

A common African response?

An effective common African response at the governmental level appears unlikely for quite a while to come due to the structural weaknesses of Africa’s regional organization, the African Union. China effectively deals with Africa on its own terms via the China-Africa Cooperation Forum which is convened by China. The AU, which should lead Africa’s engagement with China, is enfeebled by the language and culture divides which still plague Africa’s regional politics.

A common African response is more likely at the civil society level where there is often a mutuality of concerns about human rights, democracy, labour and trade issues. Enhanced Africa-wide networking to develop common frameworks for responding to human rights and governance issues arising from China’s role in Africa is imperative.

What can African civil society do?

Civil society in Africa is increasingly concerned with the role of China in Africa especially the Chinese government’s relations with repressive regimes in Sudan and Zimbabwe. As China becomes a major weapons supplier to Africa's governments and Chinese energy and mining companies take up substantial stake in resource extraction in Africa, these concerns can only grow.

China's enhanced presence in Africa is primarily driven by economic considerations; efforts to develop policy levers to prompt more constructive Chinese engagement in Africa will have to proceed from China's economic interests. Accordingly, African civil society cannot adopt the conventional 'naming-and-shaming' tactics that have served it well in addressing human rights abuses thus far; 'naming-and-shaming' tactics can however be adapted to deal with Chinese companies operating globally.

As a starting point, China studies in African universities and research institutions should be encouraged by African governments, private sector and civil society. In this respect, the pioneering introduction of Chinese language studies at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria and the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa are particularly noteworthy developments which should be replicated elsewhere in Africa.

African civil society should bring pressure through the African Union for a parallel civil society forum inclusive of business, labour and consumer groups to be instituted at the biennial meetings of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. The parallel Civil Society Forum will bring together non-governmental organisations from China and Africa to enhance people-to-people relations, exchange of ideas and perspectives and to lobby their respective governments to address the Social Dimension of China-Africa relations.

African civil society should take advantage of Western concerns about China’s expanding role in Africa through ‘coalitions of interest’ with Western governments in raising concerns about governance and human rights in African countries where the Chinese government is deeply engaged with repressive regimes.

African NGOs can also work with Western NGO colleagues to mobilize threats of mass boycotts of Chinese-made consumer goods to protest China's arms exports to repressive governments in Africa.

The potential of violence directed at Chinese businesses and nationals in Africa by rebel movements who regard China as an ally of the local repressive regime is likely to compel China to re-examine its security cooperation with African governments. It may be argued that an 'all-comers-served' approach to security cooperation with African governments may not continue for much longer without significant cost to China.

African civil society should seek to highlight to the Chinese government that its activities in Africa cannot be entirely risk-free in the absence of peace and stability which cannot be secured in the absence of democracy and human rights. In particular, African NGOs can also highlight to the Chinese government that unrestrained exports of light arms exacerbate conflicts in Africa and worsen trafficking in small arms which may well end up used against Chinese companies and nationals operating in Africa. In the Beijing Declaration issued at the first China-Africa Co-operation Forum in October 2000, the Chinese government committed itself along with African governments to strengthen their co-operation in stopping the illegal production, circulation and trafficking of small arms and light weapons in Africa. African NGOs can and should take China up on this voluntarily accepted commitment.

While the Chinese government may not have to pay much regard to domestic public opinion, the Chinese government is historically very sensitive about its international image. China’s abstention on a Security Council vote on Darfur in early 2006 should be cause for some guarded optimism. This suggests that China is not totally oblivious of potential harm to its global reputation if it came to be perceived as the principal patron and protector of Africa's tyrants.

After an initial phase of snapping up resource extraction concessions, it is well nigh conceivable that China will be compelled by instability and conflict in Africa to realize that its long term economic interests are best served by promoting peace in Africa and that this is most likely to come about by encouraging representative government in Africa rather than supporting dictators. As Chinese investors move beyond resource extraction to investments of a long-term nature, they will increasingly mount pressure on their government to avoid actions or policies likely to exacerbate instability or conflict.

In the long term, it is conceivable that greater internal political liberalization within China will also result in less appetite for supporting repressive regimes in Africa.

• Ndubisi Obiorah studied international law and human rights at Harvard and Essex. He has been a visiting fellow and researcher at Harvard University, the National Endowment for Democracy and Human Rights Watch. He has served as a consultant to USAID and the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (INTERRIGHTS), London. He is presently director of the Centre for Law and Social Action (CLASA) in Lagos, Nigeria. CLASA, an independent, non-profit policy centre, brings together scholars and activists for inter-disciplinary collaboration in research and advocacy on governance, human development and social policy. [email][email protected]

• This is a shortened version of an article by Ndubisi Obiorah. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.

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