The man who failed to cross his Rubicon, the architect of total onslaught and the leader of apartheid up until 1989, was buried on Wednesday. Curiously, PW Botha’s death has resulted in some surprising statements – including from President Thabo Mbeki – on how he contributed to the downfall of apartheid. Liepollo Lebohang Pheko gives her views.

The news arrived last week that the former president of Apartheid South Africa PW Botha had died, aged 90. Many people’s recollection of Mr Botha was of a mercurial man of iron will and a short fuse. For the younger generation he is the man who refused to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. However, for most of the African population recollections are more brutal, more sinister and altogether more harrowing.

The outpouring of grief has thus left me aghast at the rehabilitation of Botha into an anti-Apartheid icon. This, coming on the heels of the acres of column space dedicated to Adrian Vlok’s foot washing (Former Apartheid law and order minister Adrian Vlok washed the feet of Revered Frank Chikane as a show of remorse for his sins under apartheid), leaves hearts sore and emotions high.

One of the worst things about the reconstruction of Apartheid as a social construct rather than a colonial, imperial struggle like any other in Africa is that it places the perpetrators on par with the oppressed. In so doing it removes the culpability of the oppressor, thus revising a vicious and deliberate holocaust into an unfortunate misunderstanding which we all suffered and were equal victims of. This is completely false.

A profoundly disturbing feature of this dispensation is the indecent haste with which the African majority is expected, if not ordered, to forgive, forget and to move on. We are denied the right to grieve, to demand answers, to be angry, to be skeptical.

I am not a psychologist but I suspect that this fast tracked pseudo-healing is going to bear us bitter fruits. Anybody who has ever tried to live in denial is bound to trip up on the mountain of issues swept under the carpet. We deserve to be in the moment of our truth and face the reality of our pain, our anger, our loss and all our suffering.

Against this backdrop, moves to honour Botha are on a par with honouring any Nazi leader of the Third Reich. The Jewish holocaust has not been forgotten and even we who had no culpability in its architecture or doing are reminded of its significance by the victims. We deserve the same remembrance of self, of how we were brutalised, of the many children unborn because of Botha’s policies, of the bodies lying in unmarked graves buried on his watch, of fathers who never came home and of mothers who died of heartbreak. We deserve to recall the heroes slain in 1960, 1976 and all the years before and since then. We deserve to mourn and celebrate every drop of blood shed.

As the government made overtures to honour the dishonourable with a State funeral at our expense, yet another opportunity was missed to leave a priceless legacy of truth and self-knowledge to our children about the authentic heroes of the African liberation struggle.

As Botha is buried, I will spend time reflecting on the state of my country and all its contradictions. I will ponder on how a simple issue of freedom became so tied up in narrow class and white capitalist interests. I will think of new stories to tell my children about exile, identity and sacrifice, about what a truly African vision of this country looks like. None of my oppressors will be in that vision.

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

During the struggle for Kenyan independence, the Mau-Mau controlled over 50 newspapers and many printing presses, setting up libraries in liberated territories in forests and cities, writes Shiraz Durrani. It’s facts like these, he says, which are largely buried in an information system inherited from the colonial era, a system which fails to serve the majority of African people.

“Silence in the library”

Perhaps the best way to understand the contradictions facing libraries in Africa today is through a story. It is only when social contradictions are accepted and understood that attempts can be made to resolve them. And resolve them we must, if libraries and information are to play their part in creating a new Africa where there is justice, democracy and development for all. The story is “silence in the library”:

“Nyanjiru wakes up at 4 am; a water debe on her head, she walks for an hour and a half to the nearest stream. Then she climbs back from the river to her home, picking dry wood on the way for fire; she arrives home three hours later to start the day's other work: crying children to be calmed with bits of left over food, chicken to be fed and watered; then to start digging her half acre shamba in the hot, burning sun. This is the daily routine for a peasant.

And then there is Kamau. Kamau pats his dogs fondly as they surround his new Volvo. This is his daily ritual. He realises that the gates are not open yet and hoots loudly. Where is Mutua? Does he not know that today is the library board meeting and he has to report early? They are to discuss library regulations. He has prepared a long list of ‘don’ts’. As Mutua opens the gates, Kamau speeds out, the silent sound of the Volvo soothing his mind. He starts thinking about library rules. Yes, users must be controlled. Only last week he found a fellow eating mandazi in the library. How can that be allowed? Kamau had him thrown out. The first rule is going to be about eating in the library. And then of course ‘Silence: silence in the library’”.

In such an atmosphere works the modern librarian. Inside the stone walls of the library, in total peace and calm among the well preserved volumes, the liberian is oblivious to the ruin and chaos of hunger, starvation and mass exploitation outside.

The contrasting lives of Nyanjiru and Kamau can be found anywhere in Africa. Their activities are taking place within miles of each other and on the same day. Yet the two are so removed from each other that they may easily be on different planets or in different historical ages.

The library is a concrete structure inaccessible to Nyanjiru, and Nyanjiru as a library user is unacceptable to the librarians. For Nyanjiru there is no time to waste, no compromises to be made. All her labour and thoughts are to satisfy her family's basic needs: food, clothing and shelter. Anything that helps her in this work, she accepts with open arms and mind. Anything that prevents her from acquiring what she needs, she will fight. Her information needs are clear - she wants information which will help her to support and protect her family.

On the other hand is the library service - set up during colonial days, with a colonial vision, through ‘assistance’ from a colonial, neo-colonial ‘mother’ country. A mother whose very touch brings death. “Silence please; please, silence in the library”.

Silence, in spite of Nyanjiru’s dying children; silence, in spite of Nyanjiru’s twenty hour working day; silence, even though Nyanjiru's hard labour fails to fill her family’s stomachs. Nyanjiru knows no library. No library wants to know Nyanjiru.

The story of Nyanjiru and Kamau highlights the key need in Africa today: development – development of people, resources, industries, agriculture, art, culture… But “development” does not take place in a vacuum. In order to develop, people and societies need relevant information and knowledge in a number of fields such as science, history, geography, history, technology. Yet, under capitalism, information and knowledge and the very process of learning and education have become commodities to be bought and sold on the “open” market. Those without resources to purchase information end up having no access to it. The irony is that even those who produce information often have no access to that information which is taken from them, copyrighted, patented, repackaged, and sold at prices which the original producers cannot afford.

Thus peoples, countries and societies have been forced into “un-development” and inequality by the economic policies and practices of international finance and transnational corporations using the mechanisms of international financial and political control, such as the IMF, WTO and the UN.

But are these issues that should concern the library profession? Some say it is not our “business” to get involved in “politics” as we are professional people, not politicians. But if we accept that Africa needs a second war of liberation – economic liberation this time – then we need to accept that no liberation can be successful without appropriate information vision, strategy and tactics as well as trained information activists. This is the lesson from the major revolutions in the world. This is also the lesson from Africa’s long history of wars against colonialism and imperialism. And this is where we find a relevant social role for African librarians and information professionals and activists today.

The first requirement for liberation from an inequality imposed on Africa is access to information about the real reasons for poverty. Yet the information and communication systems created by the departing colonial powers were not expected or equipped to put this information before people. They were merely tools for a small, rich elite to impose its world outlook and culture on the poor and exploited majority of people. Post-independence systems and policies have made no fundamental change in this colonial-inspired information framework. We urgently need to seek a role for the information profession that is relevant to the needs of Africa in the 21st century.

An important task for Africa is to document fully the achievements, successes and failures of the anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Information about these can arm us for current and future struggles. This has not been fully documented. But if the history of African struggle for political and economic liberation is poorly documented, the struggle for African information liberation is even less well documented and understood.

It is not a matter of general knowledge, for example, that during the Mau Mau war of liberation in Kenya, the combatants controlled over 50 newspapers and many printing presses; they set up libraries in liberated territories in forests in cities, ran an efficient information collection system, and created their own distribution network, using “traditional” and modern methods available to them. This complex communications system was created and managed by activist librarians and information workers who were active not only in the information field, but in the larger political and social fields as well. Their experience, if fully documented, can help us find a relevant role for the information professional in Africa today.

And yet today, we tend to follow blindly the “Western” model of public library services which actively seeks to remove politics from information theories and practices. This model has not been successful in the “West” itself to provide information to all, particularly to those politely referred to as “socially excluded”. Yet we in Africa have not fully challenged this situation. It is only by subjecting our current policies and practices to a vigorous challenge that new and relevant theories, policies and practices can emerge.
Opportunities for information liberation

Just as in the political field, so in the information field, there are major developments when social contradictions are at their sharpest. It is at such key points in history that opportunities arise for making revolutionary changes in the way information and politics are organised. Colonial Africa has had a number of opportunities to change its societies for the better and serve the needs of the majority of people.

One such opportunity was in late nineteen fifties and early sixties which saw achievement of political independence in many countries. It was a time when foundations of the old colonial world were being destroyed and those of new free societies were being laid.

Many activists had the vision of a society where all would have free access to information and knowledge created by the work of all. It was a time of immense change and high hopes for a just, equitable future after decades of colonial oppression and exploitation. This was the time when people did influence events in a major way, underscoring what was said at the World Summit for Information Society (2003): it is “people who primarily form and shape societies, and information and communication societies are no exception”.

But the opportunity at independence to challenge the very basis of social organisations such as libraries was lost. Library services continued to function on the same basis as under colonialism, targeting their services to the elite, although now this included some more people and became “multiracial”. Class divisions, which formed the real divisions in the society, were deliberately played down, and racial, “tribal” and other “divisions” were brought into prominence. An information service operating in the real interest of people would have ensured that this “information blind-spot” was removed and the question of who the library actually serves would have been resolved in favour of the majority of working people. Thus an information service using resources from all but serving a few was developed. This situation has more or less continued until today.

But today, there is another possibility for change. Changes at a global level in the last 25 years now present Africa with another opportunity to make a fundamental shift in the way societies are organised – and in the way information services are organised. If managed correctly, we can make the transition to a people-orientated library service that did not take place at independence.

A key requirement for development of Africa is a redrawing of the “information map” to reassess our information work. We need to assess the relevance of the sources of information we provide to the people and to review whose point of view such information reflects. We need to look afresh at the form and content of information in our libraries and look at what languages they cover. We need to see if the information is targeted correctly and review how outcomes are monitored. Our information needs to reflect Africa in a new perspective and reinterpret its history from the point of view of African working people.

The world-view that people are daily presented by the Western media needs to be challenged for African people to see themselves as equal partners in a global context. An alternative vision and view of the world needs to be made available to every African. No people can develop under a situation of daily images of their own powerlessness and inadequacy, where facts about their exploitation are hidden and their suffering is shown as resulting from their own fault. In order to build our self-confidence we need to see the world from our own perspective in which the “other” is just that – the other.

Collection building

An important area that needs to be addressed urgently is the collection policy and practice of African libraries. Again, this is not the forum to go into this in detail, but the following needs to be addressed:

- Material from African liberation struggle. The enormous amount of oral and written material generated during the long history of African struggle against colonialism needs to be collected, documented and made available. Developments in information and communications technologies make this task easier than it was some years back. Part of this process is the need to get back from colonial countries the vast amount of African documents, material culture, and archives stored in London, Paris and other colonial capitals.

- Documents of the Pan African movement need to be included in the above, as do material on slavery whose effects Africa has not recovered from even today.

- Documentation on the policies and activities of organisations and leaders active in the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movements (before and after independence) need to be made available through every public and University library in Africa. These should include organisations and leaders in every African country. For example, films on Lumumba and other anti-imperialist activists need to be collected or commissioned.

- African libraries seems to be flooded by material from a Western, imperialist point of view. There is a need to actively collect material from an alternative, people’s, point of view. This should include material on the World Social Forum (WSF) as well as on the people’s anti-globalisation movements.

- Material from a Pan-African and internationalist perspective. African libraries need to collect material from other African countries, organise a translation service to make material available to all, and promote major regional African languages throughout the continent (e.g. Kiswahili, Arabic, and Yoruba).

- Collections on social and economic development. Experiences on development in other parts of the world needs to be made available to African planners, teachers, lecturers, extension workers and others as a way of disseminating it to people. Thus experiences from China, Cuba, Venezuela and India should be actively collected.

* Shiraz Durrani is a Senior Lecturer, Information Management, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University. He is the author of the book “Never be Silent: Publishing and imperialism in Kenya, 1884-1963”. Durrani formed the African Progressive Librarian and Information Activists’ Group (PALIAct), a partnership with a group of progressive African librarians and information workers. PALIAct seeks to develop people-oriented information services decided upon by workers, peasants, pastoralists, fisher people and other marganilised individuals and groups whose information needs have not been met. It involves working in partnership with other professionals and service providers.

* This article is a shortened version of a paper presented to the XVII Standing Conference Of Eastern, Central, & Southern African Library & Information Professionals (SCECSAL XVII), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 10th- 14th July 2006 (http://www.tlatz.org/scecsal2006/) The full length paper is also to be published in Journal of Pan African Studies. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Scholars and intellectuals are faced with stark socio-political choices, writes Henning Melber. Do they side with those maintaining the status quo in unequal societies or do they demand the right to engage in social struggles?

This essay argues for the need for a permissive postcolonial socio-political system allowing for dissenting views, including manifestations of critical loyalty through the articulation of dissenting views, and concludes with an appeal to opt for such a socio-political commitment.

The virtues advocated are considered as ingredients in the promotion of a human-rights-focused and development-centred culture conducive to socio-political as well as economic progress of the people. This view follows the notion advocated by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In the introduction to his collection of lectures on Development as Freedom he maintains: “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”. He points out that freedoms of different kinds are linked with one another. They include political freedoms, social opportunities, and access to economic resources.

Political regimes in many of the African societies lack recognition of such contributing factors or even deny them. Instead, all too often, the political environment has militated against freedom of thought and expression.

Honesty and Betrayal

“Where there’s no fight for it there’s no freedom. What is it Spinoza says? If the state acts in ways that are abhorrent to human nature it’s the lesser evil to destroy it.”

These were the thoughts of Yakov Bok, the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer, while being carried to his bitterly-fought-for trial to prove his innocence after a long and excessive ordeal under torture and dehumanisation in the prisons of Czarist Russia.

As a victim of anti-Semitic hatred, he refuses to compromise with a regime that violates his human dignity and self-respect, but even more so his profound sense of justice. Malamud created his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a monument to civil disobedience, guided and motivated by a strong belief in humanism.

Those in control over social power have often considered the Yakov Boks of this world as a threat to their hegemonic rule, not in their individual capacity but mainly reduced to the anonymity of faceless ‘masses’ representing social movements. In contrast to this tendency towards an impersonal reduction, those considered as scholars and intellectuals are often perceived as a danger on the mere grounds of their individual capacities. They are viewed as individual ‘risks’ in the sense of being potential opinion-leaders able to contribute to, if not actively shape, public opinion and debate.

It would be a gross misunderstanding, however, to conclude that scholars and intellectuals are by nature or preference a critical counterweight to authoritarian or totalitarian rule or any other forms of abuse of power. Instead, the ‘intelligentsia’ has all too often been of strategic relevance in supporting such power structures for the sake of their own benefits.

Members of an educated elite have frequently been advocates and protagonists, if not architects and masterminds, of oppressive structures, and many more have even been among the silent supporters of such systems and their devastating results. To be educated does by no means protect one from turning into an ideologue or a perpetrator of crimes against humanity of the worst kind.

Far from being noble creatures, scholars and intellectuals are often tempted to serve political aims for their own gains. Honesty and integrity, supposed to be among the core values of intellectually ethical behaviour, are abandoned or neglected for more profane rewards than respect. Those who uphold their principles despite lack of material recognition are a rare species. Opportunism reigns. This is also true for the postcolonial era of southern African societies, some of which had to fight long and bitter wars of liberation at high costs to achieve sovereignty – only to deny their citizens the right to practise freedom in a democratically comprehensive way.

Decolonisation processes all too often displayed cases of a striking metamorphosis by individuals. Being social revolutionaries initially, claiming to represent the ‘povo’ or masses, they ended up as relatively high-profile representatives of a postcolonial establishment placing their own gains above earlier principles.

These members of a new elite have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of former liberation movements now in power. After seizing legitimate political control over the state, they turned their liberating politics of anti-colonial resistance into oppressive tools under the guise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans. Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive of aiming to occupy the political commanding heights of society against all odds – preferably forever – at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic living conditions for the once colonised, now hardly liberated (and anything but emancipated) majority.

The Struggle Within the Struggle

Scholars in politics include all too often the prototype of the sell-out intellectuals already lambasted by Frantz Fanon for their role in the decolonisation processes of the late 1950s, whom he accused of joining the liberation movement only to secure a slice of the cake shared after independence among those in control of the party in power.

Almost half a century ago, the Martinique-born psychiatrist and political revolutionary, who had joined the Algerian liberation struggle, presciently described in his manifesto The Wretched of the Earth the internal contradictions and limits to emancipation in anticolonial resistance and organised liberation movements. Writing at a time when the Algerian war of liberation had not even ended, Fanon prophesied the abuse of government power after attainment of independence and in the wake of establishing a one-party state. In a chapter entitled “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” he predicted that the state, which by its robustness and at the same time its restraint should convey trust and calm, foists itself on people in a spectacular way, makes a big show of itself, harasses and mistreats the citizens and by this means shows that they are in permanent danger.

He continues by criticising the abuse of power exercised by the party, which:

"…controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline. The political party, instead of welcoming the expression of popular discontentment, instead of taking for its fundamental purpose the free flow of ideas from the people up to the government, forms a screen and forbids such ideas."

The growing blending of party, government and state among the liberation movements in power indicates a very similar development in the post-apartheid era. The specific constellation based on the use of force to gain liberation from undemocratic and repressive conditions like those that prevailed in the colonial societies of southern Africa was hardly favourable to the durable strengthening of humanitarian values and norms. As part of abolishing anachronistic, degrading systems of rule it created new challenges on the difficult path to establishing sound and robust egalitarian structures and institutions, and in particular to promoting democratically-minded people. But independence without true democracy is still far from being liberation.

Criticism as Loyalty

The governments of postcolonial states in former settler societies such as Namibia and South Africa are, in contrast to the previous minority regimes broadly legitimate. Hence there is no justification for a right to generalised resistance to the state authorities as implied in the arguments concerning the colonial order. Notwithstanding this necessary clarification, a similar guiding principle of legitimate dissent from the state authorities’ controlled and enforced views should be advocated for an ethically motivated civic behaviour in the postcolonial societies of today.

In the context of a political culture committed to the values and virtues of pluralism in a liberal democracy, critical voices should not automatically be associated with disloyalty to the existing system. After all, this has been one of the aims of a struggle against the totalitarian regimes previously in place – to abandon the intolerant authoritarianism shaping the colonial societies under minority rule and to allow for a variety of views. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the common and accepted understanding of many of those in control of political power in post-apartheid societies, who seem to feel mainly “accountable to themselves”, as the scholar Ken Good phrased it. He had spent most of his academic life in Southern Africa until he was - 72 years of age and after lecturing 15 years on the campus of the University of Botswana - declared a prohibited immigrant by the Head of State Festus Mogae, allegedly for his criticism of the government’s policy of forced removal imposed on the Bushmen.

While most of the existing political orders are able to claim – in contrast to the preceding minority regimes – a more or less democratic legitimacy, they often fail to recognise the difference between its formal and moral dimensions. In other words: the mere fact that one is formally entitled to take certain decisions and actions on behalf of others without further consultation on the basis of (at times dubious) election results, does not necessarily and always justify such decisions or actions from a moral or ethical point of view.

Rapid social transitions have an impact on those involved in the transformation, which affects them in a direct way. Once moving into the seats of power, the effects of being alienated from people at the grassroots whom political office bearers claim to have represented since the ‘struggle days’, should not be underestimated. It requires a high degree of (self-)critical reflection and assessment to protect oneself from not being moved further and further away from ‘the masses’.

With reference to democratic South Africa, this process has been described by a local observer quoted in an article in the Guardian (16 May 2001) thus:

“The pace of change is such that individuals cease to live in real time. Human journeys that under normal circumstances take decades, if not generations, are completed in a few years, if not months. So the prisoner becomes president; law-breakers become law-makers; armed guerillas become arms dealers. The person who slept on your floor only 10 years ago, after a wild party, is now a government minister with an entourage.”

With the change a growing degree of intolerance often emerges, which considers dissenting views as unacceptable. As a recent South African study by Gibson and Gouws on the degree of (in-)tolerance diagnosed:

“For most South Africans, the idea of putting up with their political enemies is distasteful and/or foreign. And indeed, most South Africans have political enemies they dislike a great deal, and these enemies are perceived as quite threatening. The combination of disliking a group and feeling threatened by it is a powerful source of political intolerance.”

With reference to earlier processes of transition from colonial minority rule to formal political sovereignty under African governments in other parts of the continent, the backlash which often occurred, had been described as a return to repression by Hydén and Okigbo in a chapter to a volume on Media and Democracy in Africa:

“It became clear quite early on after independence that the new nationalist governments were not comfortable with the idea of challenges to their policies. Arguing that the new nation-states could not afford bickering over what is right or wrong, these leaders did their best to suppress opinions other than those favorable to their own stance. The political leadership was ready to bar others from using the public realm, exceeding the efforts of the colonial state in this regard. Political space in this public realm could only be used at its pleasure and permission to do so could be revoked at its sole judgment. The most significant change was the transformation of the discursive realm from being civic and cosmopolitan to becoming parochial and local.”

As part of the historical legacy, those who were fighting against institutionalized discrimination and oppression under totalitarian structured societies tend to resort to similar mechanisms of control once in power themselves. They are tempted to marginalise those who beg to differ or are perceived as different from the accepted norms under the newly imposed discourse of nation building.

Choices for Commitment

African societies and the social forces operating under the given constraints imposed by state control – similar to forces within other societies the world over – face the challenge to achieve and maintain a maximum of independence of thought as a precondition for the realisation of citizenship. It is important to note that such criticism of repressive policy is shared by some of those in established and responsible positions within the currently emerging continental African bodies of relevance. In his keynote address to a conference organized mid-2004 in collaboration with the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda did not mince his words. Having worked as a legal expert on the drafting and conclusion of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (adopted in 1981), Jallow stated:

“Good governance is not only about majorities; it involves the protection of all, including minorities such as those in the opposition. The right to free speech and dissent rests on the existence of an independent private media – both in print and on radio, given literacy levels in Africa. The establishment of independent civil society organisations and the creation of the democratic space for them to operate effectively must be nurtured to diffuse the over-centralisation of power and authority, empower the ordinary citizen and thereby reduce the risks of abuse of centralised authority. Governments should relentlessly strive to ensure the realisation of all categories of rights and freedoms for all without distinction.”

As scholars and intellectuals we have socio-political choices to make. We have to decide if we are merely guided by our petty bourgeois class interests to enhance our relative privileges in a given power structure and social hierarchy by siding with those executing social control and maintaining economic and/or political power within the grossly unequal societies of southern Africa. Alternatively, we can opt for committing class suicide as Amilcar Cabral had suggested (and practised), although this sounds rather crude (and highly idealistic) in the era of postcolonial re-established social hierarchies.

Instead, demanding the right to engage in social struggles as academics might be a more realistic point of departure – and difficult enough to practise. Like any other members of society, scholars and intellectuals are faced with bigger choices. These are about more than how best to ensure their narrowly defined self-interest of academic freedom in cosy niches of institutions of higher learning. Academic freedom in its true, wider sense is related to and is about fundamental aspects of human rights and development. And it’s up to us, if we accept the challenge and decide to fight for such interlinked goals. The question remains: Which side are we on?

* Acknowledgement: This is a shorter version of an article based on a plenary paper presented to the 24th Biennial Conference of the Southern African Universities’ Social Sciences Conference (SAUSSC) on “Human Rights and Development” (University of Botswana, Gaborone, December 5–7, 2005) and published in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, May 2006, pp. 261-278. Please consult the original publication for the full text with detailed bibliographic references.

* Dr. Henning Melber was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000) and Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden (2000-2006), where he is now the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (www.dhf.uu.se).

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

Through his writing, Rafael Marques de Morais has exposed the corruption of the Angolan government, the tragic impact that diamond extraction has on the lives of local populations and the abuses committed by the industry’s private security companies. The speech he gave when accepting the Civil Courage Prize can be veiwed at this link.

The civil war in Angola ended in 2002. In this speech, given at Harvard University, Rafael Marques argues that the peace agreement signed in April 2002 has failed to promote democratic values or engage citizens in public affairs. Elections that the government promised the people since 1999 have not materialized. Instead, Angola is undergoing a process of commercialization as a substitute to democratization, writes Marques.

It is a privilege for me to be here at Harvard, a center of intellectual and scientific excellence. I am here simply as a student to have a conversation and share some ideas about Angola.

I am also in the US to learn from you about the merits of an open-minded and uncompromised debate about democracy, international relations and solidarity.

Currently, preparations are being made for the registration of voters in Angola, as a major leap forward towards the holding of elections in 2007, 2008 or 2009. There have been hints of elections ever since 1999.

These elections would be the second ever held in the country. The only other ones, the 1992 general elections, led to war breaking out again.

What is at stake at the moment is whether holding elections could be a measure of democratization for Angola or not? That is the first of several questions to be asked.

After a devastating 27-year conflict, a military peace deal signed in April 2002 has not been fostering the promotion of democratic values in society and engaging citizens in public affairs. Angola has been described as a “state without citizens.” Despite recent promises of increased transparency, accountability and democratization, little has yet been accomplished to bridge the gap between the rulers and the ruled. The underlying causes of this situation are many and interlinked. Political power is highly centralized and some would argue that historically this power was further consolidated through the control of resource flows by three institutions – the Presidency, the National Bank and SONANGOL, the national oil company.

The reality is of opportunity, but for whom? For those who hold power and sway, it means dividends from the privatization of the state, according to the hierarchy in the regime. For outsiders, it means a rush to promote their economic interests, cut new deals or explore new market opportunities.

This prompts the second question. What does the present situation mean for the majority of Angolans? Put in a different way, is the country just open for business or is there some scope for democracy as well?

What are the prospects of change, defining a new future for Angola? This is the third question I shall try to elaborate on as part of this conversation.

Electoral Democracy

The first indication of democracy in the country would be the establishment of checks and balances in the state institutions, as well as their openness to public scrutiny. This is essential for the process of nation-building,

To demonstrate the absurd contradictions of the system, justice is still administered through the former colonial Portuguese Penal Code of 1886. Portugal itself has reformed the Penal Code a number of times since then.

Many of the state institutions have not been altered to fit the new political system. For instance, the office of the Attorney-General is still governed by a one-party Marxist-Leninist law (cf Law 5/90, of 5 April) to safeguard not democracy but the “socialist legality”. This office is, by law, under the presidency and the President of the Republic gives direct instructions to the Attorney-General, which must be complied with in accordance with article 5, clause 2, of law 5/90.

Unfortunately, this situation, which is unconstitutional, cannot be challenged in court. The Constitutional Court, which is required to safeguard the Constitution, has not been established since 1992. Three members of the Constitutional Court are supposed to be elected by a two-thirds majority of Members of Parliament(article 135, clause 1b). The ruling MPLA does not have such a two-thirds majority and has found it risky to bring up the issue because it might wake up the opposition.

So far, the judges of the Supreme Court, appointed by the President of the Republic, perform the duties of the Constitutional Court in violation of the Constitution. The vice-president of the Supreme Court, Mr. Caetano de Sousa, is also currently the head of the National Electoral Commission, appointed by the President of the Republic.

On July 22, 2005, the Supreme Court decided that the President has been performing interim duties since 1992, the year he failed to win in the polls. Back then the second round of the presidential elections never took place because war broke out again. As such, none of his periods as President count. So, after 25 uninterrupted years in power, he can run again for three more consecutive periods.

Another important aspect to take into account is the effectively subordinate role of the National Electoral Commission, which also includes opposition members, in relation to the Inter-Ministerial Commission for Elections, all of whose members come from the MPLA government.

And why does the opposition not rally behind the issue? As I speak, the 220 parliamentarians, whose constitutional mandates expired 10 years ago, are lavishing upon themselves luxury cars of their own choice from a special budget of over US$16.5 million which they granted to themselves.

Moreover, some of the main opposition parties represented in Parliament, like UNITA, PRS and PLD, also hold ministerial portfolios in the government and the due privileges. That’s how the patronage system works. The political opposition becomes part of the problem and not of the solution.

Along with the control of the judicial power by the political powers comes control of the State media, which comprises the only radio and TV broadcasters with national coverage and the only daily newspaper in the country. The Minister of Information, from the MPLA, also heads the National Radio of Angola. I worked for the state media, and I can say from experience that there was more room for some innocuous criticism 12 years ago than there is today. These media outlets only reproduce the orders of the political establishment.

The six privately owned weekly newspapers, as critical as they are, remain ineffective in expressing the thoughts and wishes of the majority. They circulate almost exclusively in the capital, Luanda, at an average price of US$2.50 for a 24-page tabloid, which is too expensive for the average citizen. Altogether these papers only print up to 25,000 copies per week, while there are over four million people living in the capital alone.

Both the judiciary and the media are fundamental to the exercise of democracy, one by upholding the rule of the law and the other to serve as a vehicle for freedom of expression. But they are, in fact, instruments of partisanship.

Moreover, the regime has produced a state class, in which figures of the ruling MPLA accumulate wealth rapidly by robbing the state coffers. That’s how the President’s family, without a record of labour, has amassed a vast fortune and is a major shareholder in the telecommunications, banking, mining and other most profitable enterprises. Other high-ranking families of the regime are also entitled to such fortunes.

These brief examples illustrate that the time of peace is being used neither for serious institutional reform nor to establish a proper transitional platform to a fully fledged democracy. To put it simply, there are no functioning institutions for the formal democratic participation of citizens.

How can elections change this state of affairs? The absence of a transitional mechanism, to mitigate abuses of power, leaves little room for peaceful change and risks a showdown between the government and the people for lack of alternative and buffer institutions.

The Power of Oil

Any change will put at risk not just the ruling party, but the business interests of the state class, who are the partners for foreign governments and enterprises in oil, diamonds, construction, etc. Foreign interests fight for privileged access to the state class.

The interests of the Presidential family in remaining in power, to safeguard their business interests, coincide, for instance, with the US policy to ensure stability and safeguard a continuous flow of Angolan oil into the US. By 2007, Angola’s oil output is forecast to surpass 2 million barrels a day and continue to increase until 2010.

The international view of Angola has been narrowed down to business interests. Angola is undergoing a process of commercialization as a substitute to democratization.

International pressure has mainly been self-serving and the call for good governance has focused more on issues of transparency and an improved climate for foreign investment than on poverty alleviation and democratization. Countries with a strategic interest in Angolan oil, especially China, have been willing to provide Angola with concessional, oil-backed loans, which carry no conditions on improved governance.

In the past, the US led Western countries in fomenting guerrilla warfare in the country in the name of a global fight against communism while, at the same time, allowing Cuban soldiers to guard Chevron oil facilities. Then it switched sides to annihilate the guerrillas in the name of helping to achieve peace and democracy.

Such international leverage in the country’s affairs has robbed the people of external solidarity in the fight for change. Reality shows that it is all about access to the country’s natural resources and profitable dealings. In 2005 Angola could boast the highest rate of growth in Gross Domestic Product in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) area (if not all of Africa), according to IMF figures. In stark contrast, Angola has some of the worst poverty levels in Africa. Last year Angola was ranked 160 out of 177 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index. According to the statistics, 67% of the population lives below the poverty line. Of those living in rural areas, 90% are estimated to live below the poverty line. Illiteracy and infant and maternal mortality rates are very high. The shares of the government budget allocated to health (4.4% in 2006) and education (3.8%) are lower than average in the SADC area and have declined steadily since 2004. In general, there has been a bias against spending on initiatives to improve broad-based primary education and primary health care.

In principle, elections will not provide people with alternative choices because the political opposition is either incorporated into the system, tamed or too marginal to have the resources and the ability to make itself known to a wider audience. This explains why the pressure for elections from civic organizations and society at large has gone quiet.

Thus the holding of elections will by no means be a measure for democracy. The regime has already prepared itself for an eventual alternative, which it calls an agenda of national consensus. From time to time, when pressure mounts, it takes it out of its pocket to lure people into an idea of broad dialogue to give a new direction to the country.

For there to be a space for democracy, Angolans have to find a more balanced and sustainable way of dealing with the openness to foreign investors, which is used as an international public relations tool to re-legitimize the regime and dodge the pressing need for dialogue on the country’s situation.

We must be forceful in explaining that one issue must not obscure the other. We must have them both, and democracy should be a priority to establish the rule of law that turns the institutions of state into the safe keepers of transparency, fair competition and greater safety for foreign investments. Currently, businesses have to rely on powerful individuals for protection, but sooner or later this will come to an end.

Prospects of Change

As a citizen, I always wonder why my political leaders always prefer to take the most difficult and treacherous routes of war, violence, corruption and denial to govern the country?

My country is drifting towards a political dead end. The growing detachment between the rulers and the ruled, in the formation of the state class, can only lead to profound resentment and an unpredictable outcome.

Dialogue and compassion are not new ideas, but that’s what Angolans have always needed most from their rulers, and been denied.

There must be the political will by the regime to open up and allow the establishment of a “state of citizens” as the best option to avoid the perils of anarchy, for its own good and because time is running out.

Thank you to the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program and its co-sponsors. And thanks to the Northcote Parkinson Fund for sponsoring my trip here as part of the Civil Courage Prize.

• Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan journalist and a human rights activist, is the winner of the 2006 Civil Courage Prize.

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

Elections are due to be held in Nigeria in April 2007. Emman Ozoemena points out that as the elections get closer, “it is important to note that there is need for key actors to learn how to manage contestations for power in such a way as to ensure that the nation comes out of this season unscathed as one indivisible entity that cares for the poor and excluded in our society.”

For those who can hear very well, the drumbeat signaling the 2007 election is increasing in tempo each passing day. The signs of impending elections, usually characterised by electioneering campaigns and political activities are in the air across the country. For most citizens, the ubiquitous posters of aspirants, media appearances, and visits to communities by vote-seeking politicians are indicators for the approaching elections. Just like the hoofbeats of horses in war times, the harder the noise, the more obvious it is to see that it is yet another election year.

In the midst of all this, some die-hard pessimists and non-tough minded optimists (and if you may merchants of crises) are busy inventing webs and spins that cast doubts over the possibility of elections next year. Some months ago, new fears crept into the nation’s political circles under different euphemisms. They were crafted by professionals who know how to stalk fear in the system.

Just after the third term imbroglio failed the Interim National Government (ING), a hoax surfaced on the nation’s political scene. Like any political currency, speculations trailed this hoax while denials and counter-denials followed. What made it rather curious was that the alleged purveyors of the ING option were men not given to idle talk. Take Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, for instance. He was associated with the ING idea. He is a serious minded fellow, though he later vehemently denied being involved with the ING option. I believe no progressive politician would ever fall for such an inane thought as ING. Then enter Chief Sunny Okogwu, the avid public commentator. He was also reported to have canvassed for the ING idea in media reports. Aside from the two, swarms of voices joined in the debate for desirability or otherwise of ING in Nigeria.

But then, just like a well orchestrated drama, the focus shifted to the imbroglio in the Presidency leading to PTDFgate. This further polarized the polity into three identifiable camps namely ‘President Obasanjo Supporters’, ‘Vice President Atiku Supporters’ and the ‘Obasanjo-Atiku Must Resign Campaigners’. The EFFC Report that followed PTDFgate jolted the political landscape with every politician “taking cover” for his life as Mallam Nuhu Ribadu led an anti-graft commission, releasing damming score cards on public officials whom we elected to keep public trust.

Finally, we have the current impeachment spree that now looms over some states. Chief executives and the lawmakers are slugging it out with the Judiciary waiting in the wings to either remain the unbiased arbiter or be consumed in the ambition of its members to climb to the exalted seat of acting Chief Judge without due process. There is a daily increase in the number of political actors, NGOs and campaign organizations who have reportedly made their positions on the issue public.

But, then we should ask; what is at the heart of the issue? What do the people of Nigeria want? Does the posturing of the political class and/or the power elite represent the heartbeat of the citizens? Are there verifiable indicators that Nigerians are ready for elections in 2007? Are members of the political class laying booby traps to truncate the process? The fear being expressed by many is that if care is not taken, the ghosts responsible for failure of the nation’s electoral process in the past may be back to foist on us once again the “never-ending transition programme”.

It is important for us to ask ourselves where we want to be six months into our journey to democracy. This question is becoming a stark reality given the events of the past weeks, which have stirred up the collective indignation the citizens. What expectations would the 2007 elections deliver for the electorate? The questions are endless. As we review the emerging scenarios in the country, it is important to know that there is no choice facing the country other than for us to make up our minds that it is the process of democracy in action.

A similar situation happened in the United States of America between 1963 and 1973 - “the decade of tensions” in American history, similar to the civil war year during the 19th century. Owing to the unfortunate assassination of President John F. Kennedy in May 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson took over as President for the remainder of Kennedy’s term. When the term ended in 1964, Johnson contested as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and won the election. The United States Constitution allowed him to run for two terms of four years each in his own right. So though Johnson was eligible to run again in 1968 presidential election, within the ruling party, the Democratic Party there was an intractable internal crises. Some wanted the President to seek re-election, while others thought otherwise. The camps within the party were divided amongst supporters of Johnson and his ardent opponent Senator Eugene McCarthy, who decided to put up strong resistance to the president’s dream for a second term.

As power elites within the party impressed on President Johnson to break his silence on the re-election bid, he responded in an unprecedented way by backing down on his ambition for a second term. Instead, he lined up behind another candidate for the top job, the brother of JFK, Senator Robert Kennedy. With this development, Robert and McCarthy had to slug it out at the Democratic Party’s convention in 1968. But then Robert Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angles by a young Syrian Immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan while on a victory party after the California primaries. The Johnson camp reached out and produced another candidate, Hubert Humphrey, the vice president at the time.

The Democratic Party lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon, the Republican Party candidate. Nixon had previously lost the presidential election to President J.F Kennedy in 1959 in a narrow victory. Most historiographers have rightly described this period as the “season of tempest” in American history.

Are there lessons to learn from the American experience in managing an open political field? For those who take time to study democratic movements one thing that stands out is that election years in which an incumbent president is not seeking re-election, are usually tension soaked.

For the purpose of this treatise, we must explain the “Open Field Phenomenon”. This is when an election year involving the incumbent president or president who has served out his or her term and who is therefore barred by the constitution from running in another election. When attempts to amend the 1999 Constitution failed on May 16, the presidency of Nigeria technically speaking became open beginning from May 27 2006. Naturally, this created a scenario where contenders for the Presidential race worked hard selling their programmes and manifestos to Nigerians. The political firmament was filled with new tensions arising from struggles for space by a legion of aspirants. This could be rightly described as politics of succession.

Nigeria is standing at a critical stage in her political development. The outcome of the 2007 elections will impact greatly on the nation’s ability to develop a democratic culture. The army of aspirants at the national and state levels aspiring to run for elections are indicative of renewed interest and faith in the system by the people, and a strong indication that democracy is on course in Nigeria. The incumbent president and 58% of current governors are not candidates for the elections. Fresh hands are taking part in the contest.

Add to this that the number of aspirant state governors have considerably increased from the number in the 1999 and 2003 elections. With the expanded space, do we assume that aspirants now have more platforms to run from, or do we assume that they would want to operate largely from the point of aligning themselves with the winning political party? There is the temptation to ask why most aspirants want to run on tickets of the ruling party. The bandwagon effect of “join the winning party” is a common phenomenon which demands our attention.

We are then posed with the challenge of how to resolve the internal crisis and leadership tussle in the parties. The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition parties are all factionalized and crisis-ridden. How this impacts on the polity ahead of 2007 is open to conjecture. Even the newly registered political parties, which their leaders initially were operating as private estates, are not exempt from internal bickering.

There is no doubt that political parties in Nigeria operate poor internal governance mechanisms. The leadership exercise power arbitrarily, excluding members on key decisions. This is one area that requires serious work by the political class and the electorates, if we want democracy to grow in the country. Party leaderships must be accountable to their members if democracy will be deepened in Nigeria. Without mincing words, most parties were built on faulty foundations with no binding principles and ideology. This type of hollow politics concomitantly translates into what we have today, politics driven by desire for power, not issue driven politics that seek to either provide leadership or alternative and credible opposition. If anyone dared conduct a survey on the nation’s political class on the core ideology of governance, chances are that the result would be zero.

What emerges in the media is that most aspirants are yet to come to terms with what constitutes campaign issues, especially around development and the core expectations of the people. It was funny hearing some aspirants to the presidency simply muttering the trite cliché: “If elected I shall continue with Mr. President’s economic reform agenda”. I chuckled listening to a front runner presidential aspirant saying that he intends to be committed to President Obasanjo’s economic reform agenda, as if the Reform Agenda is a magic wand that would sway votes to his side.

As we get closer to the 2007 elections, it is important to note that there is a need for key actors to learn how to manage contestations for power in such a way as to ensure that the nation comes out of this season unscathed, and as one indivisible entity that cares for the poor and excluded in our society. There are several lessons to learn from the US political history of the late 1960s as we approach 2007 elections.

• Emman Ozoemena, a Public Policy Analyst is based in Abuja. He can be reached on [email][email protected]

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

Dieu–Donné Wedi Djamba considers the options of bringing lasting peace to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He argues against the appointment to a high government position of the two militia leaders who committed atrocities during the civil war. He points out that such a move will not either bring unity nor peace in the DRC.

Reverend Bongani Finca argues that when states are drowning in conflict and there is a general breakdown of the rule of law, gross abuse of human rights occurs with a resultant loss of human life and other acts of injustice. [1]

Tina Rosenberg, the Pulitzer Prize winner, writes that “A country’s decisions about how to deal with its past should depend on many things: the type of dictatorship or war endured, the type of crimes committed, the level of societal complicity, the national political culture and history, the conditions necessary for dictatorship to occur, the abruptness of the transition, and the new democratic government power and resources”. [2]

It is against this background that the political situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ought to be assessed. The DRC has just come out of a civil war that is reported to have killed more than three million people. That war left thousands of people displaced, and despicable atrocities were committed. However, a peace agreement was signed, in 2002, between the government, the rebels groups (MLC and RCD), the militia group (Mai Mai), civil society and the political opposition.

At the end of this transitional period, which started in July 2003 with the formula 1+4 (one President with four vice-presidents), Congolese people are focused on the second round of the presidential election which will see the incumbent Joseph Kabila opposing his challenger Jean-Pierre Bemba, and the provincial and local elections which will take place on the 29 October.

But while all the attention is focused on the elections, one of the decisions taken on 2 October 2006 by the transitional government in the name of the peace process threatens to undermine future justice in term of accountability for those responsible for grave human rights violations.

Indeed, in the name of peace, two Ituri ex-militia leaders, Peter Karim of Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes (FNI) and Mathieu Ngudjolo of Mouvement des révolutionnaires congolais (MRC), both accused of killing, rape, and using child soldiers, have been appointed as colonels in the national army.

But the Peter Karim and Mathieu Ngudjolo cases are not the only ones in this regard. Several similar cases are to be counted. Indeed, last year four ex-militia leaders were appointed generals in the national army, as IRIN noticed. [3]

Are all these appointments helpful for peace and reconciliation in the DRC? Through this paper, I will analyze the consequences of these cases in terms of accountability for those responsible for grave human rights violations.

Accountability for those responsible of grave human rights violations.

The ICTJ recommended that the government stop appointing the ex-commander militia ‘suspected of participation in massacres and other war crimes’ to the national army and instead to prosecute them. [4]

To add his voice to this issue, Juan Mendez, the President of the International Center For Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and United Nations (UN) Secretary General special counsel, declared that if the DRC wants a lasting peace, the country should not appoint individuals into the army when there is irrefutable evidence that those individuals have committed grave atrocities. [5]

But in the case of the last appointment, Adolph Onusumba, the Congolese Defense Minister argues that the objective of these nominations is the pursuit of peace. [6] The term of peace has a broad meaning, but in the context of a post-conflict situation such as the DRC, the term peace raises a couple of questions:

What is peace? Does that mean peace for the woman who was raped? Does it mean peace for the man who saw his wife and/or daughter being raped? Where is peace for those who witnessed their families being slaughtered and their houses burnt to the ground?

For the victims of war in the DRC, ‘peace’ means positive peace, one in which justice is addressed, human rights are respected and people live without any fear (as opposed to a negative peace such as a ceasefire, which is negative because it stops the war but does not address other issues) [7]. And this ‘peace’ has to be based on the concept of justice. There is no peace without justice. But this justice has to be taken into the transitional justice perspective .

Describing transitional justice, Alex Boraine, chairperson of the ICTJ and former deputy chairperson of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) said: “…transitional justice offers a deeper, richer and broader vision of justice which seeks to confront perpetrators, address the needs of victims and assists in the start of a process of reconciliation and transformation.” [8]

Responding to the appointment of the two militia leaders, Joel Bisubu, deputy director of Justice-Plus, a Bunia-based human rights group, said that people who kill and massacre Congolese should not be rewarded with high positions. [9]

The Defense Minister argued that the recent appointment of the two militia leaders was made by the government as a strategy to pacify the troubled northern-east district of Ituri. [10]

If all these appointments are a strategy for the government to lure all these militia out of the bush, then it is welcomed. However, that does not mean that those who committed atrocities during the war should not be held accountable. In this regard, the Defense Minister has publicly stated that the government is determined to work with the International Criminal Court to help bring war criminals to book. [11]

If the objective, however, is to protect war criminals from facing the law, then this strategy has to be condemned. It will send the wrong message to the victims of the war. It will further undermine any reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators, for the victims will feel betrayed by the government.

Joseph Yav Katshung argues that accountability for human rights violations is an important instrument in breaking the cycle of violence and impunity and is an indispensable component of the process of healing the wounds. [12]

Reconciliation can begin when the need for reparation is acknowledged and acted upon. The response by former victims to these initiatives can increase the potential for greater stability and increase the chances for sustainable peace. [13]

Conclusion

The DRC is making herself ready for 29 October and the second round of presidential elections and local elections.

But this challenge is not the only one she faces. Among those challenges are the restoration of peace and reconciliation after the war, which is reported to have killed more than three million people and increased HIV/AIDS infections.

The aim of this paper was to attempt to explore the challenge facing the DRC of how a post-conflict government reconciles an ethnically divided country. Further, I have attempted to show that appointing militia leaders who committed atrocities during the civil war to high governmental offices will not bring unity, peace and reconciliation in the DRC.

• Dieu-Donné WEDI DJAMBA is a lawyer (Advocate)at the Lubumbashi Bar association/DRC; Assistant lecturer in the College of Law in Lubumbashi/DRC; Human Rights Activist; Writer; Currently fellow in Fellowship Programme in Transitional Justice co-organized by the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in collaboration with the University of Cape Town(UCT) in Cape Town, South Africa. Tel:+243812485222 ; +27738362921 ; +27216862044 Email: [email][email protected] or [email][email protected]
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

References

[1] Bongani Finca, ‘They treat the wounds of my people cheaply’, in transitional justice and human Security, (2006) pp56
[2] Tina Rosenberg ‘After word: Confronting the Painful Past’, in :Martin Meredith, coming to Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth,1999,pp330
[3] IRIN:News:’Great Lakes: Le CITJ exige de poursuites judiciaries contre les ex-chefs de milice en RDC’,pp2
,Accessed 10-1-2006
[4] IRIN,op.cit.pp1
[5] IRIN,op cit pp 2
[6] IRIN,DRC:Two miltia leaders appointed army colonels,pp1 ,Accessed,2006-10-13
[7] Professor Jannie Malan used the terms “negative and positive peace” during the course session for the fellowship in Transitional Justice(2006) in Cape town/South Africa.
[8] Alex Boraine, ‘Definiting Transitional Justice:Tolerance in the search for justice and peace’, in transitional justice and human Security,(20006),pp22
[9] IRIN,op.cit pp1
[10] IRIN, ibid. pp1
[11] IRIN,op.cit.pp1
[12] Joseph Yav Katshung,’DRC:Healing the wounds of war through reparations’, in Pambazuka, pp1 ,Accessed,2006-08-26
[13] Alex Boraine,op.cit.pp30-31.

Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank which has promoted microcredit for millions, loans to women too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. He is the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for “…efforts to create economic and social development from below.” But there is more hype than substance, says Patrick Bond, behind the claim that micro-credit schemes have been effective in poverty alleviation. There is ample evidence to challenge the claims for the alleged benefits of micro-credit programmes.

What sort of dogmatic free-market ideologue would use poor people’s (often socially-constructed) desire for credit to justify shrinking the already beleaguered welfare policies of wretched Third World states?

Consider this outlandish claim: ‘I believe that “government”, as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a “Grameenized private sector”, a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.’

Grameen is Bangladesh’s ‘barefoot bank’ specializing in group loans to low-income women. And the Vanderbilt University-trained economist who made that statement, Muhammad Yunus (in his autobiography Banker to the Poor), just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yunus immediately announced to a Dhaka press conference: ‘Now the war against poverty will be further intensified across the world. It will consolidate the struggle against poverty through microcredit in most of the countries.’

Yet this seemingly benign, three-decade old attempt to foster entrepreneurship amongst impoverished women has attracted intense grassroots – and also professional – criticism.

Not surprisingly, the establishment press loves Yunus, nearly as much as do Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Financial Times made this argument, backed by no evident research: ‘Microfinance has played a central part in Bangladesh's success in reducing poverty by almost 10 percentage points over the past five years, to 40%, a rate that puts Bangladesh on track to meet its Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015.’ Moreover, ‘Grameen's business model is in rude health.’

The Wall Street Journal profiled Yunus on its front page five years ago: ‘To many, Grameen proves that capitalism can work for the poor as well as the rich,’ having ‘helped inspire an estimated 7,000 so-called microlenders with 25 million poor clients worldwide.’

Yet looking more closely, the Journal’s reporters - including the late Daniel Pearl (senselessly beheaded by Islamic extremists) - conceded the prevalence of Enron-style accounting. A fifth of the bank’s loans in late 2001 were more than a year past-due: ‘Grameen would be showing steep losses if the bank followed the accounting practices recommended by institutions that help finance microlenders through low-interest loans and private investments.’

A typical Grameen gimmick is to reschedule short-term loans that are unpaid after as long as two years, instead of writing them off, letting borrowers accumulate interest through new loans simply to keep alive the fiction of repayments on the old loans.

Not even extreme pressure techniques - such as removing tin roofs from delinquent women’s houses, according to the Journal report - improved repayment rates in the most crucial areas, where Grameen had earlier won its global reputation amongst neoliberals who consider credit and entrepreneurship as prerequisites for development.

By then, even the huckster-filled microfinance industry felt betrayed: ‘Grameen Bank had been at best lax, and more likely at worst, deceptive in reporting its financial performance’, wrote leading microfinance promoter J. D. Von Pischke of the World Bank in reaction to the WSJ revelations. ‘Most of us in the trade probably had long suspected that something was fishy.’

Agreed Ross Croulet of the African Development Bank: ‘I myself have been suspicious for a long time about the true situation of Grameen so often disguised by Dr. Yunus’s global stellar status.’

Several years earlier, Yunus was weaned off the bulk of his international donor support, reportedly $5 million a year, which had until then reduced the interest rate he needed to charge borrowers and still make a profit. Grameen had become ‘sustainable,’ self-financing, with costs to be fully borne by borrowers.

He had also battled backward patriarchal and religious attitudes in Bangladesh, and his hard work extended credit to millions of people. The secret was that poor women were typically arranged in groups of five: two got the first tranche of credit, leaving the other three as ‘chasers’ to pressure repayment, so that they could in turn get the next loans.

But at a time of new competitors, adverse weather conditions (especially the 1998 floods) and a backlash by borrowers who used collective power of nonpayment, Grameen imposed dramatic increases in the price of repaying loans. And it is here that Grameen Bank’s main philosophical position – ‘We consider credit as a human right’ – was reduced merely to an argument for access, not affordability.

In that regard, Yunus is entirely different from all the rights-based social movements which have demanded ‘rights’ in terms of free lifeline access to healthcare, education, housing, land, water, electricity and the like.

‘Microcredit is an almost perfect case of a phenomenon that has come to characterise much of development assistance - a widening gap between reality and propaganda,’ argued microfinance consultant Thomas Dichter in a SA Institute for International Affairs publication, ‘Hype and Hope: The Worrisome State of the Microcredit Movement’: ‘Much of Africa offers an infertile context for borrowing as the only customers available to the poorest are other very poor people. In such infertile economic contexts, the people at the bottom are by definition the ones who “need” credit the most, but can do the least with it.’

Dichter continued, ‘In part because of what has been aptly called “microfinance evangelism”, the prospect of significant returns from microcredit made available to solid enterprises has become less likely. This is because those who can really leverage a small loan are not the poorest or the most destitute… An additional limitation is that many microcredit clients are reduced to “copycat” behaviour, everyone selling the same thing, and more sellers saturating the market as more microcredit is made available. In this sense, expanding microcredit can actually lower incomes.’

What about the impact Yunus has made on his home turf? In Bangladesh, according to Dichter, ‘Microcredit is such a common development intervention that many people borrow from one project to repay another. In that context, even if a woman borrower increases her volume of sales by 100% say from 10 bunches of bananas to 20, she is still limited by her inability to add any value to what she sells, limited by her low skills, and the copycat pattern that almost always prevails at the low end of the informal sector.’

Although criticism of Grameen ‘is still a minority view’ and Yunus performed ‘miracles’ in rolling out credit to the masses, according to Munir Quddus, who chairs the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Southern Indiana, the hype needs more investigation than apparently was given by the Nobel committee: ‘The very nature of setting up groups leaves out the very poor who would be perceived by fellow members to have no ability to generate income and therefore high risk.’

Quddus continues: ‘Others have pointed out that micro-credit simply deepens the exploitation of the women since the rates of interest charged by the bank in real [after inflation] terms are quite high; consequently, credit often worsens the debt situation and gives the husbands even more leverage.’

Gaining leverage over women – instead of giving them economic liberation - is a familiar accusation. In 1995, New Internationalist magazine probed Yunus about the 16 ‘resolutions’ he required his borrowers to accept, including ‘smaller families’.

When New Internationalist suggested this ‘smacked of population control’, Yunus replied, ‘No, it is very easy to convince people to have fewer children. Now that the women are earners, having more children means losing money.’

In the same spirit of commodifying everything, Yunus set up a relationship with Monsanto to promote biotech and agrochemical products in 1998, which, New Internationalist reported, ‘was cancelled due to public pressure.’

As Sarah Blackstock reported in the same magazine the following year: ‘Away from their homes, husbands and the NGOs that disburse credit to them, the women feel safe to say the unmentionable in Bangladesh – micro-credit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… What has really sold micro-credit is Yunus’s seductive oratorical skill.’

But that skill, Blackstock explains, allows Yunus and leading imitators ‘to ascribe poverty to a lack of inspiration and depoliticize it by refusing to look at its causes. Micro-credit propagators are always the first to advocate that poor people need to be able to help themselves. The kind of micro-credit they promote isn’t really about gaining control, but ensuring the key beneficiaries of global capitalism aren’t forced to take any responsibility for poverty.’

Though I have never been to Bangladesh and have only discussed these problems with Yunus once (more than a decade ago when he visited Johannesburg), microfinance gimmickry certainly did damage in Southern Africa.

For example, in 1998, when the emerging markets crisis raised interest rates across the Third World, a 7% increase imposed over two weeks as the local currency crashed drove many South African borrowers and their microlenders into bankruptcy.

The highest-profile local proponent of microcredit is First Lady Zanele Mbeki. But her Womens Development Banking project has not only financed rural women, according to the oil company BP, a supporter. It has also made ‘investments in high-growth businesses’ such as Ceasars Gauteng and ‘Siza Water Company, the first privatised water company’ in KwaZulu-Natal – both of which, arguably, are counter-examples of poverty eradication.

Next door in Zimbabwe, a $66 million flood of World Bank financing during the 1980s (in lieu of land reform) revitalised a rural microfinance sector initiated under late 1940s racist Rhodesian rule. The Bank program ultimately reached 94,000 households. But within a decade, the result was a peasant default rate of 80% in the impoverished ‘Communal Areas’ (equivalent to apartheid Bantustans).

Repayment affordability was a huge factor, since a typical lender’s overhead and collection costs represent 15-22% of the amount of a small loan, including incorporation of a 4% default rate. In Zimbabwe, servicing loans of even just a few hundred US dollars represented enormous burdens when, according to one Agriculture Ministry survey in 1989, the average net crop profit per hour of labour was just $0.15.

Michael Drinkwater’s detailed study of central Zimbabwe showed that ‘improving farmers’ access to credit has placed many of them in serious difficulties’ compounded by ‘an overzealous launching of a group credit scheme’ and the ‘doubtful viability of high cost fertiliser packages’ inappropriate for the erratic climate. ‘The increase in credit use means farmers have to market more to stay solvent... At the household level it is commonly debts not profits that are on the rise.’

To address the crisis, in 1991 the World Bank unsuccessfully promoted even more Grameen-style group credit, albeit with the caveat that ‘Zimbabwe’s experience to date with group lending has not been favourable. The organisation of groups is initially expensive and time-intensive’, and ‘major problems have become apparent.’

Not far away, in Lesotho, anthropologist James Ferguson studied a 1975 World Bank report that guided the country’s development strategy: ‘In a “Less Developed Country”, where the cash economy is on such a precarious basis, there must be [according to the Bank] “a conspicuous lack of credit for the purchase of farm inputs,” and it is obvious that “credit will play a critical role in all future major agricultural projects.”’

Rebutted Ferguson, ‘It is never explained exactly why the need for credit is so critical. It is true that most Basotho invest very little in agriculture probably due to their intelligent appreciation of the low potential and high risks of capital intensive farming in Lesotho but this is usually not a matter of being unable to obtain the cash to make such an investment. Most families have access to wage-earnings or remittances, and this money most commonly comes in large lumps which could easily be used for agricultural inputs, but for the most part is not. Yet in the “development” picture, the need for credit is almost an axiom.’

Ugandan political economist Dani Nabudere has also debunked ‘The argument which holds that the rural poor need credit which will enable them to improve their productivity and modernise production.’ For Nabudere, this ‘has to be repudiated for what it is ? a big lie.’

Even from inside the World Bank these lessons were by then obvious. Sababathy Thillairajah reviewed the Bank’s African peasant credit programmes in 1993 and advised colleagues: ‘Leave the people alone. When someone comes and asks you for money, the best favour you can give them is to say “no”... We are all learning at the Bank. Earlier we thought that by bringing in money, financial infrastructure and institutions would be built up ? which did not occur quickly.’

But not long afterwards, Yunus stepped in to help the Bank with ideological support, as it rejuvenated microfinance with a $200 million global line of credit aimed at poor women in August 1995, just prior to the Beijing gender conference.

The global justice movement’s Attac group has an excellent Oslo branch, which last week published a new book, Economic Apartheid. Its members pointed out to me that that Yunus was strongly supported by his friends in the Norwegian ruling class, including a former top finance ministry bureaucrat and leading officials of Telenor, Norway’s phone company. Telenor owns 62% of GrameenPhone, which controls 60% of Bangladesh’s cellphone market.

At a time when the centre-left Norwegian government has a high profile for partially cancelling illegitimate Third World debt and threatening to defund the World Bank, both of which are applauded by local activists, the people who make these decisions were conscious of how important it is for Norway to project the possibility of capitalism with a human face.

The question is whether they looked hard enough at conflicts generated by credit, thus negating the meaning of the Nobel Peace Prize – and not for the first time.

• Patrick Bond is director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His most recent book is Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation, available from Zed Books and UKZN Press.)
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

The issue of Madonna adopting a Malawian Child made worldwide news. Human Rights groups have protested the adoption, claiming that it is against the law for a person who is not a Malawi resident to adopt a child from their country. Adotey Bing-Pappoe deals with the issue by analysing carefully the possible pitfalls of inter-country adoption.

What is at issue?

How is one supposed to begin to un-pick the Madonna adoption issue? Is there an issue to be un-picked at all? An individual with means has adopted a child from a poor family who was living in an orphanage. What is the problem? Presumably unless one has an objection to adoption in principle, this should not cause one to lose any sleep. So why the fuss?

First, we only know about the story because it is Madonna - an ‘international superstar’. What Madonna does is newsworthy. It has provided us with an opportunity to discuss something that may have been very common for all we know. We are now able to express a timely opinion about it. But what exactly do we have an opportunity to express an opinion about?

David Banda is a one-year-old African child who has been living in an orphanage since he was two weeks old. His father placed him there because he felt he was not able to look after him. Before doing so, we can assume that he had exhausted all possible avenues of caring for his son from within the extended family. David’s grandmother supported his decision and has said so publicly. However, there is a suggestion that one of David’s uncles does not support the adoption. But was he party to placing David in the orphanage? We may want to criticise David’s father and those family members who were responsible for placing him in an orphanage but do we really have the right to? In any event that is not the issue. Additionally, one can assume that by placing him in an orphanage, David’s father understood that he was making his son available for adoption by a family based inside or outside Malawi, with all that that would entail.

Then along comes Madonna who for reasons we do not know, wishes to adopt a child. We do not know if she is willing to adopt any child or is instead committed to adopting a particular child, perhaps an African one. There are of course children in England, where Madonna is currently domiciled, awaiting adoption. Why Madonna did not adopt one of these children we cannot say. But of course the fact that there are children in England needing adoption is not a reason for someone resident in England to adopt one of them. If Madonna had tried to adopt a child in England before commencing the process of adopting a child from Malawi what was the result of that effort and why? But let us assume that she had not and that for reasons of her own, she wished to adopt a child from Africa or even more specifically, from Malawi. It could be argued, with some plausibility that to adopt a child from Africa is in some way more worthy or morally justified than adopting one from England. Children in African or Malawian orphanages are more likely to remain there un-adopted, and are more likely to have a harder time of it than a child so left in an English orphanage. Even if David had been adopted by a family in resident in Malawi, few such families would have been able to give him the material opportunities that an average family from England would be able to offer, let alone Madonna’s. Finally, life expectancy in Malawi is 39. Surely this is reason enough to justify seeking to adopt a child from an African or Malawian orphanage? In Madonna’s words, she wanted to “open up our home and help one child escape an extreme life of hardship, poverty and in many cases death". Certainly this cannot be said about children living in orphanages in England.

Undue process?

The current bone of contention is whether or not the inter-country adoption regulations in Malawi have been adhered to. Because there are no adoption agencies in Malawi, all adoptions are dealt with by the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Community Services. Penston Kilembe, director of child welfare in that ministry is reported to have said that Madonna and her husband had broken no laws. Nevertheless Maxwell Matewere, Executive Director of the child rights group Eye of the Child, appealed to the Malawian government to make sure the letter of the law had been adhered to. While inter-country adoptions are provided for in Malawian law, the rules are quite demanding. Among other things the adoption process requires not only that prospective adoptive parents must be resident in Malawi, but also that they must foster a prospective adoptive child for 24 months inside Malawi before an adoption may be finalised. The Human Rights Consultative Committee of 67 organisations went further than Maxwell Matewere and went to court seeking an injunction to halt the adoption process on the grounds that Malawi’s adoption rules were being flouted. In the event a magistrate awarded Madonna an 18-month interim adoption order which was used to allow Madonna to take David to England. The action by the Human Rights Consultative Committee is continuing with its action meaning that the legal process has yet to run its course.

But let us put aside for the moment the issue of whether or not the process so far used in this case conformed not only to provisions for inter-country adoption in England, but also to those in Malawi. Assume that all provisions have been fully complied with up to this point, and that they will be, well into the future. We may of course have a view about the legal provisions governing adoption in either country, but let us also put those aside for a moment, and concern ourselves with whether or not existing provisions in the two countries have been adhered to. If so, there would appear to be no reason for the adoption process that has commenced not to proceed to its’ final and ‘successful’ conclusion.

If however, any of the assumptions above prove not to have been met, then clearly this particular adoption will be open to contestation on a number of procedural and technical grounds. If on the other hand these assumptions hold, what then would be wrong with such an outcome, that is Madonna adopting David? Both the child and the family appear to have complementary attributes and needs. So nothing should worry us. But something clearly does worry us, and not a few of us at that.

Possible pitfalls of inter-country adoption

Adopted children who have any living parent and close relatives have to deal with why they were given up for adoption, in addition to the normal issues of growing up. Coming to terms with this involves a process of varying degrees of complexity and duration. In the case of inter-country adoptions, issues of race, class, history and culture, as dictated by circumstance may also have to be contended with. In countries where inter-country adoptions are allowed attempts are made to place children with families from the same racial or cultural background. In South Africa however, perhaps not surprisingly given its’ recent history, this is not permitted by law. In a society where one race is socially, economically, politically or otherwise predominant, it is always problematic when there are trans-racial adoptions. But people clearly have very different views of the issue. For as one commentator observed, David should not have any issues of cultural assimilation, because given his age, he does not have any culture to lose! But he will have to deal with issues of racial identity, as he grows up in Madonna’s white English world. Another unknown to us and possibly to Madonna also, is which permutation from among the following identities intends to bring him up as: Malawian, African, Black, English, or White. She apparently promised to bring David up on his father’s behalf.

In most countries prospective adopters have to show that they have the means to take care of the child they wish to adopt. Thus one has to be of the appropriate class. Now this would not normally be an issue even if there were differences of income between the family of the adopter and the adopted. David will however have to deal with something a little more acute. One of the reasons he appears to have been chosen is his poverty or more precisely the poverty of his family. To what extent will this issue be of concern, as he becomes globally aware? Madonna is not just rich, she is super rich. So there is no question of her being able to look after David in the manner to which she is accustomed. Will David feel guilty about his situation or will he just take it in his stride?

Finally, Madonna is a successful and wealthy American woman born and living in a not entirely post Imperial Britain. She is a citizen of the world’s current Imperial power domiciled in the world’s previous Imperial power. David is an African boy born and, until Madonna was given temporary custody of him and took him to London, surviving in a not so post colonial Malawi. It is possible, though not likely, that these twin facts may be totally irrelevant with respect to how Madonna treats David now or in the future. Malawi had a historically structured relationship with Britain, and has a similar one with the US, though mediated by financial rather than direct political dominance.

It would be extremely unlikely therefore, that it would be a successful and wealthy Malawian woman who would be adopting a poor English or American boy. While inter-county adoptions in America are not forbidden, in England the situation is a little different. The English “Adoptions and Children’s Act 2002 “only provides for inter-country adoption from another country into England. In the words of the Act, the section on inter-country adoption “explains the additional duties of an agency where it is preparing, assessing and approving a prospective inter-country adopter where the UK is the receiving State”. There appears to be no provision for a wealthy Malawian or anyone else for that matter, to adopt and take a child out of England. For some this Imperial-Empire axis of the relationship is one of the main sources of their disquiet.

Nevertheless others argue that even after taking all the above into account, there are not good enough reasons for this and any other ‘David’ not to be adopted by this or any other ‘Madonna’. What matters, they contend, is the care and sensitivity that she will take in bringing him up. The question is, given the structured relationship between the two countries and cultures, how sure can we be that this and any other Madonna will include issues of race, class history and culture within the ambit of their caring and sensitive upbringing?

What hope for the other Davids of Malawi and Africa?

Inter-country adoptions into England and elsewhere are in fact very rare, and make a very small impact on the 48 million children in sub-Saharan Africa estimated to be orphans, 12 million of whom have lost at least one parent to AIDS. Last year there were 313 inter-country adoptions into the UK. In the US there were 22,700, up from around 7,000 in 1990. Of the total in 2005, 441 were adopted from Ethiopia, some by their extended families resident in the US. So, even if there was a rush of Madonnas and Angelina Jolies adopting African orphans (the latter adopted an Ethiopian child last year), this is unlikely to resolve the African orphan problem.

Africa faces many challenges, and coping with orphans is not something that, as a rule, attracts the extended focussed attention of African governments. But institutional life, even in the most caring society, is difficult at the best if times, harder, if the society is also poor. Institutional life in modern day Africa must be bleak indeed. A sizeable chunk of expenditure on orphaned children in Africa comes from agencies financed externally. Madonna is one such agent. It is reported that she has pledged £1.6m to support orphanages that look after the estimated 900,000 orphans in Malawi. Given the size of the orphan problem in Africa, and the problems associated with living in institutions, is it a good idea to institutionalise the solution? One of the concerns of those who have to plan for these things are mindful of, is the impact of so many young people on the future development of Africa. How will African societies cope when so many of its population will be coming into adulthood after years of institutionalised living?

Irene Mureithi, the head of the Child Welfare Society of Kenya, is on record as having suggested that focus instead should be placed on assisting the family to look after the Davids of Africa. In some societies family credit is used to underpin and support poor and socially excluded children. As a first step, the fathers and mothers of the many Davids in Malawi and elsewhere on the continent might be supported to look after their children, using the funds made available by external agents, and one hopes increasingly from internal sources. David has a father. He also has at least one grandparent, and an uncle. Is it too far fetched to think that one of David’s relatives, if they had been provided with regular income support, would have assumed responsibility for looking after David? What benefit cost analyses have been done to see if this would not be a better way of addressing the problem, than institutionalising so many children? The funds coming into the continent to help combat AIDS and its effects might well be better spent on a programme similar to this. Finally, in addition to the extended family, a scheme such as this might be broadened to include people of appropriate standing not related to the potential adoptee. Maybe African governments and concerned others should take ideas like Irene Mureithi’s more seriously.

• Adotey Bing-Pappoe is a development economist and founding partner of Renaissance Associates LLP, a management and development consultancy

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

The Darfur conflict began in 2003, and in just three years, it has left about two hundred thousand people dead and still counting. Assodesir argues that “The situation on the ground has worsened each day with an intensification of attacks in several places obliging humanitarian organizations to evacuate their personnel leaving behind them, women and children in the hands of criminals without scruples.”

With more than two hundred thousand dead, two million refugees and a worsening situation on the ground, the conflict in Darfur presents a hard test for the African Union. The recent extraordinary meeting at the presidential level of the of the African Union Peace and Security Council, held in New York on 20th September 2006 on the margins of the General Assembly of the United Nations, did not give the anticipated result. The extension of AMIS’s (Africa Union Mission in Sudan) mandate was the only important result of the meeting. Heads of State did not succeed in convincing the Sudanese government to accept a stronger United Nations force as requested by resolution 1706 adopted by the UN Security Council on August 31, 2006.

Whereas the AU’s 7000 troops, present on a territory as vast as France, could not manage to prevent sadly famous Janjaweed from killing, looting and raping, the AU also has problems to implement provisions of its own Constitutive Act, which is devoted to the respect of human rights and dignity, peace and security in our continent.

The NGO community was enormously disappointed by the very weak conclusions of the Peace and Security Council meeting. Some days before this extraordinary meeting, NGOs presented to the 15 Member States of the Council a series of recommendations that one can summarize in four points:

- To extend AMIS’s stay in Darfur at least until the end of the year with a stronger mandate and more troops
- To support UNSC resolution 1706 authorizing the deployment an U.N troops in Darfur and to convince Sudan to agreed to this deployment;
- To denounce the plan of the Sudanese government aiming to deploy more than 15000 troops in Darfur and rather call all parties to the conflict, to respect the Peace Agreement and the ceasefire;
- To invite the international community to support AMIS until the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the greatest achievements of this meeting were the extension of AMIS’s mandate until 31 December 2006 and a hypothetical increase in its troops. Nothing was said - at least not officially - on its mandate that remains very weak and very vague. The African Union has agreed to increase its troops in Darfur but has yet to make it happen, or concretise it. The situation on the ground has worsened each day with an intensification of attacks in several places obliging humanitarian organizations to evacuate their personnel, leaving behind women and children in the hands of criminals without scruples. Today, at least 40% of the displaced people do not have access to humanitarian aid. In this situation, every one has a role to play:

A firmer and prompter African Union

Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU gives it the right to intervene in a Member State on a decision of Heads of States, in serious circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The AU has the right to do this even without the consent of the concerned State. At this moment where the situation on ground has become more and more alarming, African Union must show more firmness and must act quickly.

The following must been done without delay by the AU:

- To clearly redefine the mandate of AMIS by reinforcing it in order to provide protection to civilians and to disarm Janjaweed militias;
- AMIS must thus transform from an observation force to a true peace making force and a guarantor of human rights and dignity. To achieve this, all Member States must provide troops. African state’s plethoric armies must be finally used for something positive;
- To express clearly its material and financial needs for the deployment of a larger force and to accept all assistance suggested by the UN and other partners;
- To impose targeted sanctions on Sudanese political leaders from all parties of conflicts that violate the Abuja Peace Deal or that prevent its implementation;
- To make a clear decision in favor of deployment of UN troops in which AU must fully take part.

A more coherent and reactive International Community

The international community must be united and must speak with one voice. China and Russia must join the United States, United Kingdom, France and the European Union to pressurize the Sudanese government through comprehensive sanctions including freezing assets, arms and oil embargo, and prohibition of travel among others. At the same time, the international community must immediately support AMIS materially and financially to reinforce it and allow it to deploy across the whole of Darfur. The International Criminal Court must be more vocal in its work on Darfur and even issue arrest warrants if possible against people suspected of carrying out atrocities. The United Nations must be prepared for a robust and massive deployment in Darfur by the end of the year with the consent of Sudan. However, they must also consider a strategically strong intervention without Sudanese consent if the humanitarian situation becomes dangerously worse.

The situation in Darfur is seen as a very first test for the new AU on peace and security issues. Obviously, the AU has a paramount role to play. However, given the gravity of the situation, the entire international community must contribute. All nations of the world have the responsibility to protect Darfur populations because genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are not African business. They are odious crimes that touch the whole of humankind.

• Assodesir, a pseudonym, is an African activist engaged in Darfur

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

Peace talks between the Somalian government and the Islamic courts are scheduled to resume at the end of the month, 30 October 2006. Birgit Michaelis argues that the ordinary Somalis have suffered enough, and says that Islamic courts should bring their judicial procedures into conformity with recognized international and African human rights treaties and standards.

“I do not want to live in Mogadishu” says Ibrahim Sherif Nur, a newcomer to the Dadaab refugee camp, which is located in Kenya's North Eastern Province. It took him 20 days to flee with his family from Somalia's capital to Liboi, a border post on the Kenyan-Somali frontier. Dadaab, a complex of three refugee camps, is already hosting some 134,000, mainly Somali, refugees and at the moment there is a considerable influx of refugees as violence escalates in Somalia. Kenya is cooperating with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and may be forced to set up an additional refugee camp in Dadaab. There are more than 400,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Somalia, 250,000 of them are living in Mogadishu in war-destroyed buildings under pitiful conditions. Most of the IDPs have to beg for food.

Somalis are, by most indices of human development, severely impoverished. Any increase in conflict could create a severe humanitarian crisis in Somalia, according to one United Nations agency. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that double the 1.8 million people currently in need of urgent assistance were at risk as malnutrition rates are high in many areas. Like the humanitarian situation the human rights situation is a disaster too. Home to 10 million predominantly Muslim people, the country has been without a functioning government since the former president, Mohamed Siad Barre, was ousted in 1991.

Human rights violations under the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre

The Somali Republic collapsed in 1991 with the overthrow of the Siad Barre government, the disintegration of the state into civil war, the establishment of various and shifting warlord-controlled zones in the south, and the separation of the north-western third of the country. Major General Mohamed Siad Barre’s government originated in a military coup in 1969 after nine years of civilian multi-party government, following Somalia’s independence in 1960. His government was overthrown just over 21 years later, in 1991, by armed opposition forces based in Ethiopia. The Siad Barre government was a military-based, one-party Marxist-Leninist system marked by constant repression of opposition, clanism (clanism particularly refers to clan favouritism in political decision-making and public resource allocation), corruption and economic mismanagement.

The government was responsible for a persistent pattern of gross human rights violations, including large-scale killings by the army in the northwest, culminating in massacres and bombing in Hargeisa in the 80s; systematic torture of political prisoners by the National Security Service; arbitrary and long-term detentions of thousands of prisoners of conscience; grossly unfair trials by National Security Courts; many judicial executions; numerous political killings; and harsh treatment of prisoners in special security prisons. In the northwest in 1991, the Somali National Movement (SNM) force defeated the government forces and declared independence for “Somaliland” from the rest of Somalia, within the borders of the former British Somaliland Protectorate. In the northeast, the Puntland Regional State was declared in 1998 as a future part of a federal Somalia, consisting of two and a half former administrative regions of the former Somalia. [1]

After the state collapse in 1991 clan-based warlords and their armed militias took over and ruled the country until this June. Somalia plunged into chaos and anarchy. Tens of thousands of persons, mostly civilians, have died in interfactional and interclan fighting. The warlords and their militias are responsible for numerous human rights abuses such us kidnapping for ransom, torture, rape, beatings, unlawful killings and crimes such as theft, armed robbery, extortion, cattle rustling and piracy. The warlords’ rule led to infrastructure collapse, refugee flows and humanitarian disaster, which had exceptionally severe effects in this impoverished country. It further caused political instability in the Horn of Africa, which was affected by other armed conflicts and humanitarian and human rights crises.

The formation of the Transitional Federal Government

Numerous efforts have been made since 1991 with varied international support to try to resolve the crisis of state collapse and civil war in Somalia. But none has been successful. In 2000 a peace conference was convened at Arta in Djibouti by Djibouti’s President. The conference elected a Transitional National Assembly, which formed the Transitional National Government (TNG), installed in Mogadishu. The TNG, with a three-year term, controlled only a little part of Mogadishu and did not manage to establish a national system of administration of justice, a national army or police force. Faction fighting continued.

In October 2002 the 14th Somalia peace talks since the state collapse opened in Kenya. The “Somali National Reconciliation Conference” was sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), an inter-governmental regional grouping in the Horn and East Africa. In August 2004 members of a Transitional Federal Parliament were sworn in and Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected as President with a five-year term. Yusuf belongs to the original warlord class, which was instrumental in the destruction of the central state.

Several posts in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) are held by warlords. Still in Nairobi there was a deep rift in the TFG on the future seat of government and a deployment of peacekeeping troops by the African Union. The Transitional Federal Institutions (TFI) relocated from Kenya to Somalia in June 2005. Esteeming Mogadishu too dangerous as seat of government the TFG first settled in Jowhar and later moved to Baidoa.

Most Somalis have a strong desire for a central state but are deeply disappointed with the TFG, which is internationally recognized but does not even have Baidoa under its control. It is divided by disputes and its effectiveness must be questioned. After more than two years the TFG has failed in promoting reconciliation, curbing the power of the warlords and disarming their militias. The executive and judicial branches remain badly underdeveloped and essentially non-functional. The TFG’s omission to establish local administration left a political vacuum. A functioning public administration and judicial system are indispensable for the promotion and protection of human rights and help prevent impunity. Warlords and their militias must be held accountable for war crimes and human rights abuses. Meanwhile, the TFG is perceived within Somalia more as a faction than a national authority.

The rise of the Islamists

After the fall of Siad Barre, Islamists began to argue that the only alternative to clanism and the failed Somali nationalism is political Islam. War weariness, desperation, desire for peace and order as well as widespread poverty seems to have attracted Somalis to join the fundamentalist camp. The state collapse not only created a fertile ground for the emergence and development of Islamic fundamentalism as a major force in Somalia, it also fostered the free movement of extremist and terrorist forces. The country is a refuge for the al-Quaeda team that bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and a Kenyan resort in 2002.

Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), a radical Islamist organization, became prominent in 1991 with the objective of toppling President Barre. Its main goal was to form a strong Islamic state in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia, all countries with an ethnic Somali population. In the mid-90s, AIAI initiated attacks in Ethiopia. Islamic courts emerged in the late 90s primarily in Mogadishu and became the de facto judiciary in the capital after the collapse of the government. A Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) was formed from the amalgamation of different clan-based courts, dominated by the Hawiye.

Ideologically, the UIC and AIAI share many similarities as they both have the same radical approach: they want an Islamic state in Somalia governed by Sharia law, sustain a charity wing and the UIC has militias as AIAI once had. The former leader of AIAI, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is now the most prominent figure of the UIC representing its hard-line faction.

The takeover of Mogadishu on 5 June 2006 by the UIC was the most important political event in Somalia in the last 16 years. It removed the political class of secular, clan-based warlords, which has divided and ruled the country since the collapse of the central state in 1991. As the UIC continues to spread its influence throughout Somalia, the international community has reacted with concern since there are accusations that the UIC has links with al-Qaeda. In February this year the warlords formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) backed by the USA with the help of secret funding. The ARPCT clashed with the UIC culminating in a major battle for Mogadishu that led to victory for the UIC in June. The four-month-long strife left 400 civilians dead and 1,500 injured, according to the Dr. Ismael Jumale Human Rights Centre, a Somali NGO.

The UIC is consolidating its power and outside of Mogadishu now controls the provinces of Lower Shabelle, Benadir, Middle Shabelle, Hiran, Gelgedut and parts of Mudug and Lower Juba region. After first gaining the support of Somalis for restoring peace and stability in Mogadishu and ending the warlords’ extortion activities there is now growing fear of the Islamists’ radicalism. Many East African countries consider the UIC takeover of Somalia a threat. Ethiopia strengthened its troop presence on the Somali border.

Eritrea, hostile to Ethiopia, is allegedly supporting the UIC with arms and ammunition. There is a danger that tensions may increase and that a proxy war will take place on Somali soil. The Islamist militia has stressed it will defend the country from Ethiopian forces and is recruiting and training youth in special camps in preparation of jihad (Holy War). The UIC is also opposing a deployment of peacekeepers which had been approved by the AU in mid-September but which is unlikely to be realized due to an UN arms embargo and to lack of funding. On 24 September the Islamists seized Kismayo where the port had been seen as a possible landing point for the peacekeeping force. For the TFG, the takeover of Kismayo was a violation of a ceasefire agreed during peace talks in Khartoum, Sudan, which are mediated by the Arab League.

Human rights violations under the Union of Islamic Courts

The capture of Kismayo, where the UIC had closed down a local radio station and detained three journalists, was followed by three days of anti-Islamist protest. The initial euphoria following the UIC’s victory over the warlords has turned into fear and protest. There are numerous reports of a crackdown on the media. The UIC’s strategy of controlling ideological and political expression also leads to restrictions of the freedom of assembly. On 17 August its forces broke up a meeting in Mogadishu of the moderate Muslim group Al-Islah, which advocates dialogue between the UIC and the TFG. The UIC also curbs non-Islamist sectors of Somali society and bans political meetings.

Islamic guards are stopping minibuses to check women’s clothing and men’s hairstyles. Clothing deemed as un-Islamic is hacked with scissors. In some parts of Mogadishu, cinemas showing foreign films or international football have been raided and closed down and there is a ban on some radio stations from playing western music and local love songs. This level of intervention into private life is not well-received by Somali society. The UIC’s morality policy and the prominence of known militants within its leadership show parallels with the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Like the Taliban the hard-liners within the UIC want an Islamic Somali state where the Qur’an is the constitution and Islamic law, the Sharia, is the only source of legislation.

Sharia laws are derived from the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book, from the writings of renowned Islamic scholars and from the judicial interpretation of these writings. The rules of customary laws in the African context, including Somalia, are contained in the customs and norms of life of the respective communities, but are unwritten. Before the emergence of the Islamic courts no Sharia-based penal or criminal law was part of Somalia’s penal legislation. In recent years, several death sentences have been imposed and carried out by Islamic courts and their militias, although most death sentences have been replaced by compensation negotiated between the clans of the victim and the perpetrator according to Somali customary law.

Omar Hussein was publicly executed in Mogadishu on 2 May 2006. He was tied to a stake, hooded and stabbed to death by the 16-year-old son of the man who he admitted stabbing to death in February. Omar Hussein had been sentenced to death hours earlier by an Islamic court. A large crowd gathered to witness the public execution, with several fainting at the sight of blood gushing from his head. The teenager repeatedly stabbed the condemned person in the head and neck. He reportedly expressed happiness at his infliction of the death sentence in this way. A Sharia law of retribution, (qisas, i.e. ’like-for-like’) was applied in this capital case, after the victim’s family reportedly refused to accept compensation (diya). Such a retribution execution is unprecedented in Somalia and Somali customary law. It is also contrary to Somalia’s former penal code, which would be the basis for court proceedings in state courts. [2]

Another public execution took place in Mogadishu on 22 September this year. Abulkadir Mohamed Diriye and Mahad Osman Ugas, having been convicted of murder, were shot in a public place in the presence of a large crowd including journalists invited to attend the execution. Some of the spectators reportedly vomited after they saw and heard the bullets pouring into the convicts’ bodies. There are also public floggings for selling drugs. On 23 September, for the first time a woman was flogged by Islamist militias for selling cannabis. She was given 11 lashes. Arrested for being in possession of a small amount of the drug worth $1, she pleaded innocence while being beaten. Five men were also whipped, and the seized drugs were burned.

Corporal punishments violate the most elementary standards of humane treatment. Executions constitute the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in violation of the most fundamental right of every human being: the right to life. When carried out as a public theatre they can only serve to fuel a climate of violence and vengeance. Amnesty International categorically opposes the implementation of the death penalty, but takes no position on the introduction and application of laws based on the interpretation of religious texts, as long as this is carried out in full respect of human rights principles. These principles include the right to legal representation, the right of appeal to a higher court, the right of a fair trial and the right of those condemned to death to petition for clemency.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has commented on the application of Sharia law: “When national courts apply Sharia, they must do so in accordance with the other obligations taken by the State. Trials must always accord with international fair trial standards”. Somalia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Amnesty International calls on the Islamic courts to bring their judicial procedures into conformity with recognized international and African human rights treaties and standards. The human rights organization calls on the TFG to take steps to establish a fair judicial system throughout the country as a fundamental part of the reconstruction of Somalia.

• The author is the country coordinator for Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia of Amnesty International - German section.

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

References

[1] See Amnesty International, Somalia: Urgent need for effective human rights protection under the new transitional government, AI Index AFR 52/001/2005, 17 March 2005, pp. 2 ff

[2] See Amnesty International, Somalia: Child publicly executes father’s killer on orders of summary court, AI Index AFR 52/001/2006, 9 May 2006

This article is a response to the article entitled “How The Brain Drain To The West Worsens Africa’s Public Health Crisis” (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/37062), Jacqueline Tanaka argues that although the Gates Foundation has dedicated a significant fraction of its resources to improving the African healthcare system, what the Foundation ought to be doing in addition is to provide funding to train the African physicians.

I recently came across an article entitled “How the Brain Drain to the West Worsens Africa’s Public Health Crisis”, published on Pambazuka News 9/14/06. Many of the facts and ideas presented in the article resonated with me as I, too, have been thinking about quality of life issues in Africa. Let me introduce myself. I am an Associate Professor of Biology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, USA. I have become aware of some of the issues facing African countries through my students at Temple who are African or are of recent African descent as well as friends who are African or who have close ties to Africa. And perhaps because I am a biologist, I see things through a somewhat different lens than the author of the article.

The author, Rotimi Sankore, writes: “Resolving Africa’s public healthcare crisis will resolve most of the other issues and be a step towards isolating AIDS which can then be tackled more easily. The first step must be resolving the health worker shortages, which includes dealing with the ‘brain drain’.”

Tackling the health care issues of Africans goes beyond providing health care. To me, the issue is a larger one dealing with ‘quality of life’ that includes access to clean water, adequate nutritious food, education, and access to means of support for one’s family. These issues require political integrity and environmental restoration. The environmental restoration will, in turn, pay back by providing ecosystem services such as clean water and fertile soil, reduction of erosion and reduction of desertification. Since much of the environmental destruction is done in the name of ‘economic development’ and done by foreign ‘investors’, beating back this ‘progress’ will take vision and political will in addition to the political integrity.

But how does all this relate to the topic of “brain drain” raised by Sankore? Well, I see first-hand some of the “brain drain” - African students who come to Temple University for their undergraduate degree in the hope of returning to Africa as medical doctors. In my experience, these students have been the brightest, most talented students I have seen in my six years at Temple. Some carry a perfect 4.0 GPA through their entire four years. They conduct research with faculty often publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals as undergraduates. Clearly they are Africa’s best and brightest.

And they want to go back. So what happens? Well, if they are lucky, they get accepted into a US or British medical school as an international student. This alone requires some luck as well as a perfect academic record. But here is the rub. They will not qualify for the loans and aid that American students depend on. The African students have few resources to pay the huge tuition bills for medical school so those who manage to attend have enormous debts to pay at the end of four years. How can they possibly go back to their country and pay even a fraction of their debts on an African salary? They can’t. So, many continue through their residency, barely making a dent in their debt burden. They accept positions practicing medicine here not because they don’t want to return home but because they can’t afford not to practice here.

As for those physicians who are trained in Africa, why not ask them why they came here to practice? Chances are you will find out what the infrastructure is like for them in their country. One of my students described a clinic in her personal statement (which each student writes in their medical school application). In her words,

“The hospital was like a war zone, if not, a crowded arena wherein the medical staff had to sprint to save precarious lives. People swarmed the hospital from all walks of life and lay sprawled even on the hospital floors. The Nigerian health narrative is ugly. Glutted with poorly trained medical personnel and failing health systems, the medical environment consistently breeds short, unhealthy lives.

Death by “natural causes” frequently implies death by preventable, controllable, treatable maladies-malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis etc. In addition, the government’s nonchalance frequently necessitates that doctors go on strike just to get paid. It remains a gloomy fact that it is very easy to lose a life in Nigeria. The reality is simple and crushing – the government will not fund basic care, the people cannot afford basic care, and the medical personnel are dangerously incompetent in providing basic care.

Medical incompetence in Nigeria is a direct result of shoddy medical training. Medical schools lack adequate facilities while maintenance is permanently deferred. The faculty: student ratio is unbelievable, even then, a significant number of the instructors are inexperienced and unqualified to teach medical students. Endemic corruption in the country has permeated medical schools such that admissions into the schools can be gained through “connections”. Success in medical school can likewise be procured through financial and sexual inducements. Could it then be a surprise that patients have to plead for pre-treatment medical tests else, the “doctor” would “forget” to do so? Misdiagnoses and malpractice certainly contribute to the rampant deaths that are but signatures of Nigerian hospitals.”

Sankore argues that: “The problem seems to be that acknowledging, prioritizing and acting on the “brain drain” problem means that governments of countries that have benefited from the “brain drain” have to take responsibility, and cease their recruitment of healthcare workers from Africa.” While I agree completely with your statement that developed countries must cease recruiting health care workers from African countries, I think we need to do much more in terms of training health care workers. We need to devote some of our international aid funds to educate and train health care workers and then send them back.

This initial wave will form the backbone of an emerging African healthcare infrastructure. They will have knowledge and training in modern medical techniques in addition to the cultural knowledge indispensable for dealing with African medical problems. And if these students are given the opportunity to participate in the elite MD/PhD programs at the top medical schools (for which they are eminently qualified), they will be prepared to conduct cutting-edge research on diseases including some of the very same infectious diseases long ignored by the West.

There is plenty of work for all to deal with these complex issues. What must Africans do? They must commit resources to build a strong health-care infrastructure and they must recognize the links between health care, quality of life and environmental restoration. They must, in some cases, wrestle resources from corrupt leaders. They must demand that the resources of their motherland be shared with the people. These resources are necessary to provide the tools for health care workers to address the staggering quality of life issues in Africa.

What must the rest of the world do? We must care about the quality of life for everyone sharing the planet. And if you don’t care for the same reasons I care, you must care because you can’t run away. Whether you live in the rural sub-Saharan countryside or on a crowded block in Queens, NY you can’t escape environmental contaminants and airborne microbes. The recent recognition of extreme drug-resistant forms of TB should remind us all that we have no immunity against the rapid evolution of microbes. And guess who provided the incubator for this rapid evolution of the TB microbes? An AIDS patient with a weakened immune system. This new form of TB cannot be treated with any of our existing TB medicines, all of which are at least 40 years old. Ask yourself: how long does it take for these microbes to travel across an ocean?

Is there hope? You bet there is…all $57 billion worth in the form of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as other organizations. The Gates Foundation has dedicated a significant fraction of its resources to some of the issues discussed above. But in my opinion, they have missed the biggest factor of all. They haven’t provided funding to train the physicians. Africa needs physicians and health care workers who understand the culture…who are from the culture. We must provide this education for Africa’s best and brightest. Not because we support the “brain drain”, but because it is part of the solution. So we need to find ways to draw the attention of the Gates Foundation to the human capacity building that is required to meet the challenges all poor countries face. Healthcare is part of the problem and we can begin there but ultimately, we must deal with all of the issues: food and water, political integrity, economic development, environmental restoration and education.

• Jacqueline Tanaka, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biology at Temple University.
• Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

This article is a response to an article (entitled “The Anatomy of Zimbabwe’s Problems (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/37060) by Maggie Makanza that we published last month. Kwanisai Mafa and Netfa Freeman caution “…all Africans at home and in the Diaspora are to unite against real live enemies and beware of any diagnoses with a psychosis of denial that neglects the most pertinent aspects our anatomical problems.”

We agree with the author of this article that all is not well in Zimbabwe but she fails to objectively explain the causes of the problems in Zimbabwe. It is strange to make a statement like "Most pressure for reform appears to be coming from external rather than internal forces" without referring to the external destabilization measures of the British and US governments, the EU and certain white settlers bent on maintaining power and privilege. This is to speak of such problems in Zimbabwe as if the aforementioned have no bearing on them, or as if they do not exist. In psychology this is analogous to a condition called denial.

Zimbabwe’s problems are caused by two conflicting ideological dispositions, Pan-Africanism versus neo-colonialism. To understand this, we must remember that British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated openly that he is working with the Movement of Democratic Change in Zimbabwe to effect regime change. To achieve this objective the western secret services MI6, CIA, and others used their arsenals of alliances, networks of military bases, economic devices such as sanctions, sabotage, blackmail, and provocateurs. Equally insidious is the psychological weapon of propaganda which aims to impress on the masses a number of imperialist dogmas.

Kwame Nkrumah taught us that these are the “mechanisms of neo-colonialism”. Nkrumah told us “In the labor field, for example, imperialism operates through labor arms like the Social Democratic parties of Europe led by the British Labor Party, and through such instruments as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), now apparently being superseded by the New York Africa-American Labor Center (AALC) under AFL-CIO chief George Meany and the well-known CIA man in labor’s top echelons, Irving Brown.”

Philip Agee, former CIA operative and author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, confirms this when he revealed that “…the successes of revolutionary movements in Ethiopia, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Grenada, Nicaragua and elsewhere brought ‘cold warrior’ Democrats and ‘internationalist’ Republicans together to establish in 1979 the American Political Foundation (APF). The foundation's task was to study the feasibility of establishing through legislation a government-financed foundation to subsidize foreign operations in civil society through U.S. non-governmental organizations. Within APF four task forces were set up to conduct the study, one for the Democrats, one for the Republicans, one for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and one for the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).”

Agee describes how this effort developed mainly into the U.S Agency for International Development now doing overtly what the CIA used to do covertly to advance the neo-colonial agenda of the West. The psychological denial around Zimbabwe consistently avoids such facts. The author asks, “Why has the pro-democracy movement not been able to capitalize on many reported failures of the ZANU PF government?” Could it be because this not a legitimate movement? Nor is it for democracy.

Neglected by psychological denial in the anatomy of Zimbabwe’s problems is the fact that the trade union “movement” in Zimbabwe, which spawned the so-called Movement for Democratic Change, is in line with recommendations from a 1998 European Union study on Zimbabwe. These recommendations call for Mugabe’s removal specifically by systematically building up NGOs and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) as alternative centers of power, supported by fostering strikes, demonstrations, urban unrest, food riots and carefully engineering dissension within the ranks of the government, the ruling party and the country's armed forces.

The blatant violation of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty is inherent in the anatomy of Zimbabwe’s problems. No other word better describes omission of this fact than the condition of denial.

Surprisingly the author who is a member of a liberal organization, Zimbabwe Social Forum, has lost faith in the parliamentary system, and says that “the continual use of the ballot under the present circumstances can only be described as sheer madness.” What other means is the author advocating? Imperialism tells us that western democracy and the parliamentary system are the only valid ways of governing. Zimbabwe has been using this model to run elections since its independence every five years without fail.

It is wrong to say that people lack energy and suffer from inertia to fight the regime. The only democratic means for regime change is through the ballot box. We know, however that the leader of the main opposition in Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai is on record as suggesting that if Mugabe does not want to go they will remove him violently. He has been exposed through meetings in London and Montreal, Canada in what was more than likely a plot to assassinate President Mugabe and stage a coup d'état.

The leader of MDC has been globetrotting calling for the isolation of Zimbabwe through economic sanctions. While the western governments are fooling the world that these are “smart sanctions” targeting only government and party leaders, so-called progressives abet this misnomer by blaming Zimbabwe’s ailing economy on Mugabe and ZANU- PF.

These so-called progressives neglect to consider that these sanctions openly oppose “any extension by [international financial institutions] of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe" and in addition oppose any reduction or cancellation of debt. It is dishonest denial to suggest the anatomy of Zimbabwe’s problems can be determined without conceding to these facts. The ordinary person is suffering because of these sanctions.

If ZANU PF were intolerant of the opposition, MDC would not be in parliament. Most mayors and councilors in urban centers are MDC. MDC legislators head most parliamentary portfolio committees. This demonstrates that people in Zimbabwe have the capacity to choose the leadership they want. ZANU PF knows that urban centres are MDC domains. MDC knows well that rural constituencies are ZANU PF strongholds. The majority of the Zimbabwean population lives in rural areas. The author is not correct to say that rural folk have been used and then “abandoned” after elections. Since independence, government has embarked on many developmental projects in rural areas to improve their lives. Most of the major dams were built in rural areas for irrigation and fisheries.

Most rural areas have benefited immensely from the government rural electrification programs. Schools and clinics have been built and recently the government is building major referral hospitals in all districts. Every farming season the government dispatches tractors to rural folk for tillage but the major challenge has been fuel, a need mostly impeded by foreign versus domestic challenges.

There are so many government community empowerment programmes underway in rural areas. Seed packs and fertilizers are given to the rural folk and new farmers for free by the government. With these things is it not also a denial to say rural people are being neglected?

However, the author is right when she says, “the opposition has worked on the false assumption that no one supports ZANU PF.” Tsvangirai and his controllers have seen that they cannot dislodge ZANU PF through the ballot box. That is why they are trying to create the “necessary conditions needed for combustion to happen” so that they can violently remove the government. Tsvangirai even asked President Thabo Mbeki to cut all lifelines to Zimbabwe including trade routes, electricity supply and fuel. Any leader with people at heart would not ask for the continued suffering of his own people until they vote him into power.

On the land issue, the author needs to do more thorough research about the history of this question in Zimbabwe. There is nothing poor or chaotic about the land reform programme. What solution could have been better to address the racial land imbalance maintained by the “willing buyer-willing seller” clause? Who was willing to sell land and who, in a new nation of mostly poor Africans, was in a position to buy it?

An honest analogy for the anatomy of Zimbabwe’s problems is more like a gang taking control of a family’s’ house. Only after being forced by the family to relinquish control in part, the gang then co-opts certain family members to badger the rest into infighting while the gang ransacks the house and from outside, standing in front of their glass homes they throw stones. Our call to all Africans at home and in the Diaspora is to unite against real live enemies and beware of any diagnoses with a psychosis of denial that neglects the most pertinent aspects our anatomical problems.

• Kwanisai Mafa is an Electronic Resources Librarian at Zimbabwe’s Midland State University and Chairman of the Ujamma Youth Farming Project in Gweru. He can be reached at [email][email protected] Netfa Freeman is the Director of the Social Action & Leadership School for Activists at the Institute for Policy Studies and an organizer with PALO, the Pan-African Liberation Organization. He can be reached at [email][email protected]
• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

Manuel Paulo argues that Angola has unparalleled opportunities, “but it also faces major constraints and challenges, which if not properly managed could have extremely damaging consequences, indeed, cancelling out the opportunities available.” He points out that for a successful consolidation of long-term sustainable peace to exist in Angola, the economy would need to be diversified first.

The rhetoric in Angola has been that the coming of peace brings with it the opportunity to create a strong economy and society in which the entire population will share the benefits of Angola's huge mineral wealth. Indeed, Norway, Chile and Botswana provide evidence where sustainable development has been built on the basis of mineral wealth. In Angola, however, oil companies tend to voluntarily invest large sums of money into social investment programmes, with little developmental impact on the country, and it appears that the primary purpose of these programmes having more to do with public relations motives than any real commitment to meaningful advances for the local greater populace.

The country has unparalleled opportunities, but it also faces major constraints and challenges, which if not properly managed could have extremely damaging consequences, indeed, cancelling out the opportunities available. Firstly, to ensure implementation of a rigorous application of modern procurement system which would limit opportunities for corruption, there must be a capable workforce as well as an operational legal system. Secondly, there should be efforts to boost development in the country as a whole. Failure to improve the business climate outside the oil sector will continue to result in large-scale urban unemployment. Such a situation would worsen urban poverty and allow frustration to simmer, especially among the youth. The latter nowadays turn to alcohol to contain their frustration at not being able to find a job. Lack of jobs for the youth may well be an ingredient for violence or indeed criminal activities to thrive.

It is safe to say that a promising future for Angola and Angolans will require the development of an independent judicial system, a neutral civil service and strong state institutions, which will require more than the current superficial social investment programmes from the international oil companies. Oil on its own will not lead to increasing Angolan economic and social indicators from its current levels. Sustainable employment creation in Angola can only come from broad-based economic development that goes beyond an oil sector, which provides very few direct jobs. In the medium term, large numbers of jobs will only be generated by large government public works programmes aimed at rebuilding the country’s shattered infrastructure, and in the agriculture sector.

International oil companies currently investing in the Angolan oil industry are required to engage in a process known as Angolanisation, a process common to most developing oil producing countries. This process requires foreign oil companies operating in Angola to staff their local operations mainly with Angolans, ostensibly to benefit to a greater number of Angolans. However, the beneficiaries of Angolanisation are predominantly foreign educated Angolans because ordinary Angolans who attend local state schools are unable to compete on an equal level with Angolans who were trained abroad. In addition, most international oil companies operating in Angola have admitted that there is a fierce competition for skilled Angolans amongst international oil companies, let alone the state. This means that competent workers from already fragile and under-performing state institutions are lost to international oil companies - placing the government in a disadvantaged position when trying to attract qualified personnel for its already weak public administration. International oil companies are also in a stronger position to attract well-educated Angolans due to high remuneration, and better working conditions they offer. The government on the other hand, is unable to pay the sort of salary, training and benefits that international oil companies are offering.

This is a short-sighted strategy since the Angolan authorities should see diversification of the economy as a decisive factor in the successful consolidation of a long-term sustainable peace. Additionally, failure to revive the non-oil economy (that provides jobs and sources of income for ordinary Angolans) will result in popular discontentment and continuing high levels of social inequality a potential source for future popular discontent. This situation is seemingly not of concern to international oil companies, because their goal is the formal one of presenting acceptable statistics to the government on their compliance with the process of Angolanisation.

It is well known that the oil industry is not an engine for job creation. The industry is capital-intensive and after half a century of oil production in Angola, the industry employs only about 19,000 Angolans. Only 50 percent of engineers are Angolans and in certain types of technical jobs such as drilling and well servicing the proportion is even lower, which is low by any industry standards (IPEDEX 2003). The government should establish a more supportive regulatory framework and a fund that permits improvements in education and training, and allows apprenticeship schemes and many other economic activities independent of government to thrive as a way to diversify the economy. Subsequently, the country’s substantial oil earnings could be a major source of investment in a National Training Fund to the necessary human resources to unlock other sectors of the economy that generate more jobs than the oil industry.

Nevertheless, many would argue that, oil funds are not an easy – nor necessarily an appropriate – solution to the problem of diversifying the Angolan economy. However, the proposed National Training Fund would require the government of Angola to set up a legal framework to govern it, in order to avoid the problems the Venezuela Oil Fund experienced. In order to address possible allegations and suspicions of cronyism and patronage, the government should open its books to a leading external auditory firm to monitor the Fund management of the resources.

One way to fund the Oil Fund would be to make it compulsory for international oil companies to pay a quota for each expatriate they have in the country. The quota is a way to encourage oil companies to recruit locally, and the quota would vary from exploration to production phase. The benefit of such an initiative is that all spectra of Angolan society would have a stake in the development of Angola, and international oil companies would not be accused of creating another elite in Angola under the Angolanisation programme. The government would also be able to address the lack of human capacity to effectively manage the revenue generated by the country’s resources. This will be a way of facilitating addressing Angola’s severe shortage of professional personnel.

Oil Funds have been into place in Norway, and Kuwait for decades. Colombia, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, and Chad have also embraced such funds. These funds have several purposes such as keeping money out of the economy to avoid ‘Dutch Disease’ and other problems associated with large inflows of money into an economy that cannot absorb it; or saving revenues for future generations. However, in the case of Angola a National Training Fund financed by oil revenue could be used as a mechanism to introduce a comprehensive Angolanisation Programme that goes beyond the oil industry.

This paper has shown that there are constructive ways in which international oil companies could contribute to Angola’s development not by creating another elite within its Angolan workforce or instituting systems of patronage. Instead, all efforts should be direct towards ensuring that the wealth the oil industry brings benefits all Angolans. The National Training Fund proposed above could be decisive to address the weak capacity and lack of professionals for the oil industry, and help Angola to diversify its economy.

• Manuel Paulo is a PhD Candidate at Middlesex University Business School, Fellow on Angola at Chatham House.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Assis Malaquias suggests that it is premature to suggest that positive peace is a reality in Cabinda. The Memorandum of Understanding which was signed by the Angolan government and the separatist group on 1 August 2006, “establishes five key pillars for ending the conflict in Cabinda: amnesty for rebel fighters, cessation of hostilities, the demilitarisation of the Cabindan rebels, reduction in the number of Angolan soldiers in the province, and integration of the Cabinda rebels in the Angolan military and government.”

After four decades of conflict, Angola welcomed a new era of peace in the aftermath of the death in combat of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and the implosion of the once formidable military organization he created. The post-colonial conflict between Savimbi’s UNITA rebels and the governing MPLA gained international attention for several reasons: the global contexts associated with it (the Cold War and the international political economy of oil) the nature of the players involved: global powers (the U.S. and the former Soviet Union), sub-imperial powers (Cuba and China), regional powers (apartheid South Africa and the former Zaire), and national actors (Angola’s nationalist movements: FNLA [1], MPLA [2], and UNITA [3]) and the issues at stake (ethnicity, ideology, race, and resources, to name a few).

But the conflict in Angola was unique because it involved two parallel civil wars: one on the mainland among the nationalist liberation movements and their external backers, and the second between the post-colonial state and a separatist movement in Cabinda – the northernmost province of Angola situated on the Atlantic and separated from the mainland by a strip of D.R. Congo territory. Half of Angola’s 1 million barrels of oil per day originate from Cabinda.

The first conflict ended in 2002 and the second in 2006 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Angolan government and the separatist group. This agreement established five key pillars for ending the conflict in Cabinda: amnesty for rebel fighters, cessation of hostilities, the demilitarisation of the Cabindan rebels, reduction in the number of Angolan soldiers in the province, and integration of the Cabinda rebels in the Angolan military and government. The Memorandum was the first step towards establishing a new relationship based on a “special status” for the province that include some form of political and economic autonomy without compromising the country’s territorial integrity. For the Angolan government, the end of the conflict in Cabinda has opened the door for exploration of the province’s massive onshore oil reserves.

The length and intractability of the conflict is a direct result of the colonial past and, more specifically, the process involved in creating the colony. Present day Angola, as is the case with most modern African states, is a European creation of the forcible merger of various peoples and territories into a Portuguese possession. Unsurprisingly, Angola also experienced some post-colonial instabilities associated with the demands of some pre-colonial formations to reestablish their independence after the collapse of colonial regimes. In Cabinda, these instabilities were fueled by the inability to agree on mutually acceptable formulas to divide post-colonial power and wealth. Cabinda is Angola’s richest province. In addition to major offshore and onshore oil reserves, it also has large diamond, gold, and uranium deposits. Despite its resource endowment, Cabinda’s population of 300 000 endures similar levels of poverty as elsewhere in Angola. This contradiction – poor people in a rich land – is critical in understanding why demands for independence find resonance among the province’s population, at least in the post-colonial era.

There is also a more historical argument for independence based on the 1885 Treaty of Simulambuco. This treaty – establishing the territory as a Portuguese protectorate – represented Cabinda’s rulers’ attempt to protect their territory from the “Scramble for Africa.” In other words, the rulers of Cabinda voluntarily chose to place their people and land under the protection of the devil they knew – Portugal, with whom they had contacts since Portuguese explorers first reached the Congo in 1482 – rather than become a colony of another European power. Cabinda’s fears were based on the fact that Belgium’s King Leopold wanted an outlet to the Atlantic for his extensive land holdings in central Africa. Cabinda remained a protectorate until 1956 when Portugal joined with Angola into a single colonial administrative unit.

As the 1960s began, Portugal’s colonial presence in Angola was jolted by the beginning of armed opposition by several nationalist groups. FNLA, MPLA and, later, UNITA were formed with the objective of liberating the entire Angolan “nation” from Portuguese colonialism. In 1963, FLEC [4]emerged as another liberation movement whose main objective was more narrowly focused on the liberation of Cabinda. But its military presence was mainly symbolic as the bulk of the fighting that took place in Cabinda was carried out by MPLA from its bases in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville.

The Portuguese colonial regime collapsed in 1974 partly due to the armed resistance in its colonies, including Angola where, ironically, Cabinda was one of the main battlegrounds. The new regime in Portugal quickly put in motion a decolonization process that eventually devolved sovereignty to its former overseas possessions. But since Cabinda had been incorporated into the Angola as an administrative unit it could no longer regain the sovereignty it gave up to the Portuguese in 1885. It was not recognized as a separate entity for purposes of decolonization; it was now an integral part of Angola and received independence only in that broad context. As far as Portugal was concerned, in 1974 Cabinda’s interests were represented by the three nationalist movements who considered the territory to be an integral part of Angola. For many in Cabinda, however, decolonization was incomplete unless their pre-Simulambuco status was re-established or the Simulambuco status quo was maintained. For colonial Portugal since the mid-1960s and Angola since independence, Simulambuco as a legal claim was trumped by an even more powerful reality – oil. The discovery of oil and the beginning of explorations in 1954 irreversibly changed Cabinda’s position within Angola and made its demands for independence harder to seriously consider.

Still, Portugal’s completion of the decolonization process in 1975 did not dissuade FLEC from continuing its armed struggle for independence, this time against Angola. In fact, FLEC made a lukewarm attempt – with the assistance of Mobutu’s Zaire – to seize power in Cabinda during the disordered and violent process surrounding independence. The attempt failed because MPLA, with the help of Cuban troops and Soviet weapons, was able to expel Mobutu’s troops from the country and seriously curtail FLEC’s ability to develop as a credible military opponent. Indeed, for the duration of the civil war, FLEC was unable to pose a threat against major economic interests in the province. Militarily subdued, FLEC settled for a minimal-intensity conflict against government troops interrupted by the occasional headline-grabbing abduction of foreign oil workers. Since FLEC never posed a significant threat to the mainland government, MPLA could focus its military attention on its more powerful rival UNITA which, since the 1980s with the help of South Africa, had penetrated Cabinda.

In the aftermath of the 1992 elections fiasco and the reigniting of the civil war after a short pause, and with UNITA seriously threatening to overthrow the government, the governing MPLA escalated its military presence in Cabinda to protect its main source of revenue. The deployment of 15 000 troops further reduced the FLEC’s military options. As a result, and partly because FAA [5] were focused on eliminating UNITA’s military threat on the mainland, FLEC was able to survive for another decade. In the aftermath of UNITA’s collapse as a military force in 2002, however, FLEC’s potion became completely untenable as FAA’s formidable power could now be shifted to Cabinda. It was, therefore, just a matter of time before Cabinda’s separatists were confronted by the same stark choices UNITA faced in 2002: defeat on the battlefield or a negotiated end of hostilities. The Memorandum of Understanding clearly suggests that Cabinda’s political and military forces have opted for the latter.

The Memorandum has silenced the guns in Cabinda. Does this mean that peace has finally been achieved? Yes, but only in a negative sense, i.e. there is no longer active, organized military violence taking place in Cabinda. But peace cannot simply be described in terms of absence of war. It must also be conceived more positively in terms of social justice. In other words, the elimination of physical violence is an insufficient condition for peace. Peace also involves the elimination of structural violence defined as social injustice. For Cabinda, the issue of social justice revolves around oil revenues and how they are (mis)used. As the main producer of oil in the country, the inhabitants of Cabinda justifiably expect a level of economic development commensurate with their contributions to the national treasury.

This expectation is yet to be met. Worse still, Cabindans are able to see how oil revenues have been used by national ruling elites to accumulate fabulous personal wealth that is then flaunted through conspicuous consumption. To a lesser extent, oil revenues are also used to provide comfortable lifestyles for foreign oil workers.

In sum, it is premature to suggest that positive peace is a reality in Cabinda. The end of the long conflict must be seen simply as an opportunity to create the conditions necessary to achieve that ultimate goal. Oil revenues can facilitate the attainment of peace if they are used to improve the living condition of the people. Failure to do so will continue to fuel deep-seated grievances and risk reigniting conflict.

• Prof. Assis Malaquias is the Associate Dean of International and Intercultural Studies & Associate Professor of Government St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY USA
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References:

[1] Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (National Front for the Liberation of Angola).
[2] Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola)
[3] União Nacional para Independência Total de Angola (National Union for Total Independence of Angola)
[4] Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (Front for the Liberation of Cabinda Enclave)
[5] Forças Armadas de Angola (Angolan Armed Forces)

Mouhamadou Tidiane KASSE argues that the implementation of neo-liberal policies and strategies in Africa, which have culminated today in globalisation, resulted in the feminisation of poverty on the continent. “Liberalisation began by hitting social services. Women were to suffer the most from the effects, due to tradition and their social position.”

Today, two concepts stand together. They work in parallel, but also together, since, inevitably, the two situations they encompass feed off one another. Since the beginning of the 1980s and the implementation of neo-liberal policies and strategies in Africa, which culminated today in globalisation, the feminisation of poverty has become an irreversible, downward spiral. Among other consequences of this situation, the 1990s saw the spread of Aids in Africa begin to take on a feminine character.

Just as poverty becomes more feminine, Aids also takes hold of it. In the first decade after its appearance, the disease was mainly rife among men, but now it has seen its distribution reversed to the detriment of women. Of the 25 million people living with HIV in Africa (out of 37.8 million globally), 58% are women. The proportions are the same for the 9,000 people who contract the virus every day in Africa.

The feminisation of poverty and its effects on women’s health are preventable. Neo-liberal policies paved the way for this when they began taking control in Africa from the 1980s onwards. The Economic and Financial Recovery Plan (EFRP) of the 1970s was followed by Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in the 1980s, and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in the 1990s. This semantic shift shows the successive failures of these policies that were set up by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which both locked Africa in an endless spiral of poverty. All these policies have today resulted in globalisation, which has moved the continent’s fragility up one level, with the same disastrous effects. What previously happened merely at a local level, within States, now takes place on a global scale, transcending borders and state sovereignty.

The template for today’s tragedy was drawn in the 1980s. Liberalisation began by hitting social services. Women were to suffer the most from the effects, due to tradition and their social position. The decision to make access to education more and more expensive led to girls falling behind. Twenty years later, millions had to be invested to provide them with an education to make up for the effects of this disaster. At the same time, mortality rates among mothers and children went well beyond being scandalous and the reduction of these rates is today one of the development goals of the new millennium. All this is happening in such a way that it looks like one is emptying a barrel in order to refill it again. And this is serious when human lives are at stake.

Survival strategies

The findings of a study entitled “Les familles dakaroises face à la crise” (“Families in Dakar confronting the crisis”) were worrying for the years following the implementation of liberal policies: “It is in fact wage earners in the private sector who are most acutely affected by the crisis of the 1980s. Among men, the unemployed make up 13.7% of industry. In construction, the figure is 14.3%, it is 4.6% in the private service sector and production and 9.1% in business. The agricultural and fishing industries have been hit the hardest by unemployment (18.8%).

“But the situation is all the more tragic for women, whose level of unemployment is 21.6% in industry, 15.0% in the service sector and production and 19.2% in business. The higher levels of unemployment among women are so acute that many have had to state that they are housewives after looking for work in vain. The figures given for women are therefore low estimates for female unemployment.” (Cf. Les familles dakaroises face à la crise – Ifan, Orstom, Ceped - 1995)

The continued process of world trade liberalisation has created a context of economic and social disintegration, with women suffering the most in Africa. In the two-tier societies that are being set up, the effects are piling up at the end of the line. Here, women are the final – and weakest – link. Girls are being deprived of an education, ruining their futures through teenage pregnancy, and wives are experiencing all manner of marital violence (latent or visible, codified or not by society), which is exacerbated by poverty and the absence of life’s basic necessities.

The survival strategies women have employed, through becoming involved as workers in production or industry, do not stand up to new deprotection laws. Factories close or streamline their staff and imports kill off whole sections of production they invest in. Today, female traders in Africa have to go ever further to compete with Asian products that are flooding into markets. As one Senegalese woman put it, “In the 1980s, I used to go to Gambia. When the 1990s came, I had to go as far as Nouakchott and Las Palmas to develop my business. Today, you have to go to Dubai, Taiwan and Hong Kong to compete with the markets that have been established where we are. Especially with the Chinese. Investment is more expensive, journeys are longer and difficulties are greater when it comes to reconciling our role as pillars of the family and our economic functions. In the group of women with whom I organise alternate trips and shared purchasing, we spend hundreds of millions of francs on business each year. But because we work informally, because we do not offer the guarantees deemed necessary, the State will not support us and banks will no longer offer us credit.”

So, laws do not work in women’s favour and the social environment even less so. Natalie Domeisen, of the ITC International Trade Forum, is quoted as saying: “Do women encounter added difficulties when trying to expand their trade through exports because they are women? This is precisely the fundamental question societies should be asking themselves and should be agreeing upon in order to speed up change. For small businesses, access to finances, market information and training is essential. Women who are involved in exports have, however, fewer opportunities to access the support networks that a good number of their male counterparts have. The type of assistance they need is also different. Most businesses belonging to women are part of the service industry, and the main way of developing these businesses is by setting up networks with a view to creating a client base.”

Life and health

The great majority of women, however, are far from these concerns of market dominance. Instead, daily concerns revolve around health and survival strategies. One major concern today is that millions of women do not have access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth that could save their lives. For example, only 53% of births in developing countries take place with the assistance of a qualified person (a doctor, midwife or nurse). With the poor nutritional condition of women before pregnancy, due to healthcare that is inadequate, inaccessible or too expensive, not to mention the lack of hygiene and care during labour, there has been a huge increase in dangerous pregnancies.

Beyond the failures of national policies, globalisation has turned healthcare into a market area, and drugs into a market good. The debate and conflict between countries in the South and the North in relation to the Agreements on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), under the framework of the World Trade Organisation, have been instructive in this regard. Supported by the patents they hold, drug multinationals have been opposed to certain products being made in countries in the South, where local industry could do this job in order to reduce accessibility costs and improve the health of populations. The issue made the headlines in 2000, when thirty-nine drugs companies undertook legal proceedings against South Africa for allowing its population access to low-cost drugs, particularly anti-retrovirals. In April 2001, they withdrew their action when African States raised their shields by sticking to safeguards. The agreement on TRIPS requires WTO member governments to ensure, over a period of twenty years, copyright and patent protection for various new products, including pharmaceutical products. Without the consent of the inventor, no one can use, make or sell a particular product during this period. In the meantime, Aids is killing people – and particularly more and more women. The 2005 UNAIDS data for sub-Saharan Africa shows that 58% of infected adults are women.

To end this pandemic and slow down its effects, anti-retroviral treatment required, at one point, 600,000 CFA francs per month (around 1,000 dollars; the costs have been reduced since then and the drugs are even free in certain countries thanks to public spending). Yet it would have been possible to produce generic drugs locally, thus reducing costs. In India, a pharmaceutical group set the price of ARV’s at 600 dollars (per person, per year) for African governments. However, between the rights of patent holders and the right to life for millions and millions of people, it was necessary to reach a contentious legal decision. Brazil had to face attacks from America for adopting a law that authorised local production of anti-retroviral drugs such as AZT, which helps to prevent transmission from mother to child.

With the mobilisation of countries in the South, ethics took precedence over profit. And after threatening South Africa with sanctions at a point when the country was wrestling with American pharmaceutical companies, President Bill Clinton signed a decree to change American intellectual property laws applying to the distribution of drugs to counter HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa. This decree forbade anyone from lodging a complaint to the WTO in order to block the wishes of sub-Saharan African countries to produce or obtain drugs to fight Aids.

The market logic that is taking hold of healthcare relates to the fact that this sector is an enormous source of revenue, in terms of drugs, the provision of healthcare, laboratory materials, etc. And up until now under the WTO, the precedence of the right to healthcare over patent rights has not yet become a reality. Even if small gains have been made, the United States remains tied to the idea that a wider agreement on property rights could tomorrow be extended to the diseases that generate much higher profits for laboratories.

In effect, even if the debate has focused on diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and Aids, medical research on these three most deadly pandemics comes to less than 5% of the total budget for research at the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But to make concessions in this domain is seen as a threat to making a tidy profit. A case in point is the sale of drugs that are threatened by the arrival of generic drugs between now and 2007, which is valued at 50 billion dollars – 17.8 billion of which go to the American companies Merck and Pfizer.

This is how some people’s billions are the source of other people’s misfortune. According to the current logic of globalisation, world trade rules control national policy. We are witnessing the loss of sovereignty and international agreements are directly influencing public policy. In social services such as healthcare and education, finance ministers determine what is invested and what is undertaken according to the standards of international financial markets. The wild logic of economic gain thus takes precedence over the necessities of social well-being.

In Mali, for example, the fight against malaria has at its disposal neither the necessary financial means nor an adequate institutional policy. The national programme is only one of the areas of the Prevention Division of the National Health Directorate, and has a budget of 1.5 billion CFA francs per year. And to put to work even the slightest of action, many steps need to be taken to move it along (cf. Panos News, forthcoming). Yet, according to the United Nations’ 2005 report on the Millennium Development Goals, malaria destroys a million lives each year, mainly women and young children – consequently slowing down economic growth by 1.3% per year. And 90% of these deaths take place in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 2,000 children are lost to this disease every day. Mali is among those countries where this disease is still endemic, and requires prevention and constant funding.

Since the 1980s, African countries have done nothing but put up with this. But do they have the means to resist? The partial failure of the last WTO ministerial summit in Hong Kong in December 2005, which was supposed to close the Doha Round after the Cancun stage in September 2003 (which also failed), was due to the mobilisation of countries in the South against a process that places them in an endless trap. But the resistance over cotton, where the reserves of countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, on top of other issues, are not enough to stop the machine called globalisation. The WTO is but one structural framework to have ended in failure. Meanwhile, the process continues according to its own dynamics, led by multinationals.

Resistance from civil society, through the mobilisation of the anti-globalisation movement, remains a very weak obstacle, whose consequences have struggled to take root in wider society. And in this movement, the proportion of women remains very slight. In the demonstrations of the African Social Forum, the female component is still very marginal. It is less a vehicle for reflection on resistance and alternatives to globalisation than an appendix to the changes that a being sought. We continue to debate what we put up with (physical violence, mental violence and so on) rather than the solutions women hold and the tools to give them impetus to act.

In the current climate of the feminisation of poverty and the feminisation of disease, the vicious circle is growing and affecting more and more women, and at the same time is closing in them as part of a continued process that is making precariousness more widespread. Page (2000) writes: “The subordination of women in African society, in the face of the HIV/Aids pandemic, is leading to premature deaths and the break-up of millions of families across the whole of the [African] continent. The fact that this in turn is creating a generation of rootless and traumatised children will have grave consequences for the future stability of many countries in Africa. While we concentrate solely on preventing infection and caring for those who are dying, we are neglecting the opportunity to prolong the healthy and productive lives of Africans who are HIV-positive, particularly mothers with children of a young age.” The logic of globalisation does not want this process to end.

•Mouhamadou Tidiane Kasse is Coordinator of Flamme d’Afrique, a daily newspaper published by IPAO and ENDA on occasions of meetings of social movements.
•Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) has aggressively extended its authority beyond Mogadishu to vast areas of southern Somalia. One consequence has been a sharp increase in the number of refugees entering Kenya. Glenn Brigaldino describes Somalia as a state that only exists on paper, including maps. “It is most favourably described as a desolate and impoverished place, where a traditional society wildly fragmented along clan allegiances struggles to secure a livelihood.”

One evening in early 1988, my Ugandan friend Samuel Opondo and I were sitting on the porch of my house in Hargeisa, Somalia. “You know what...” he started, “…this place is not Africa. I will cut it off from my map of Africa and push it into the ocean.” It hardly seemed like an odd idea. African expatriates in Somalia are frequently irritated at being called “African” by average Somalis, who seem to consider themselves above non-Muslim Africans, especially if those who are noticeably dark-skinned. It struck me as ignorant behaviour, given that so many Somalis are illiterate, can perhaps recite but hardly read the Koran and in their daily lives, often appeared to be Muslim only in name. Today, Sam’s outlandish idea may well have genuine merit as an analytical insight, notably his reflective after-thought that “…by the time Somalis are ready for this century, we will be well into the 21st.”

We all know that Somalia in 2006 is a state only on paper, including maps. It is most favourably described as a desolate and impoverished place, where a traditional society wildly fragmented along clan allegiances struggles to secure a livelihood. To most political observers, it is a violent and unwelcoming semi-desert zone, of obscure “strategic interest” where perpetual clan disputes and warlordism reign on the remnants of a failed state.

At the best of times, life in Somalia was hard and troublesome. As these times slipped into decades of misrule and anarchy, an entire generation grew up with no exposure to notions of social order and development. Instead, they became embedded and often actively engaged in the break-up of whatever social order existed. Sadly, most Somalis today are accustomed to a seemingly natural state of perpetual clan rivalries, political violence, human tragedy and socioeconomic collapse.

In a recent article for Towardfreedom, an independent online source for democratic debate, I have explored in some detail the current political context in Somalia from an international perspective.[1] The situation remains in flux. Although the US-backed warlords are no longer “calling the shots”, the quest for political control is far from resolved. It seems only a question of time until the now dominant Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), led by Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), based in the town of Baidoa of interim President Abdullahi Yusuf begin to battle it out for sole control. External players continue to sponsor their preferred Somali ally.

Eritrea and Arab countries are siding with and delivering weapons to the UIC, while the authoritarian Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawi backs the TFG, including with troop deployments into Somalia, with unofficial, tacit support of its US pay-master.

More players are about to enter the scene as an African Union endorsed plan for an African peace-keeping force of some 8000 is being seriously considered, with the first contingent of Ugandan troops reportedly already in Baidoa. [2] It seems only a matter of time until outright war breaks out between the two opposite factions, regardless of periodic peace-talks in Sudan and the involvement the African Union.

While the prospect of such a conflict is deeply troubling, most analysts would be at a loss to formulate any peaceful and democratic scenario in a country that is no more, perhaps never was and in any case, consists of an entire population marred by decades of political violence, poverty and social erosion. At best, it is only possible to make a half-informed guess as to what future lays ahead for the young generation in Somalia.

From an early age, Somali children face hardships and disadvantages in terms of health and nutrition. In addition, kids in Somalia have little opportunity for carefree play and when they do play, they do so without many toys. While in most countries, the importance of play and stimulating toys is acknowledged as an important factor in child development, Somali children tend to have few such toys available to them. There are of course creatively assembled self-made toys, as made by children around the world. But apart from sporadic attention to specific children’s’ needs, investment in kids tends to be an alien concept in Somalia, at best thought of as a secondary need. [3]

In the Somali context, successive generations of parents have grown up in similar conditions, where attention to early-childhood development is virtually non-existent. In the absence of the necessary social stability to allow for continuous years of formal education and under conditions of protracted gender inequality, investment into the future well-being of children becomes an afterthought.

It should come as little surprise that kids emerging as youths from such circumstances, are readily available to be recruited into the omnipresent clan, gang, or militia-groupings and associations that have flourished in Somalia. It is hard to imagine many ordinary Somalis making a decent living from farming, handicrafts, trading or animal herding.

The take over of Mogadishu by the hardliner Islamists of the UIC has perhaps had one major effect upon the population living under their rule: for the first time in living memory, social and political order seems a realistic proposition. It would seem that not all has been bad since the UIC has taken over. Indeed they have moved in remarkable ways to re-establish a degree of normality that is a new experience for many, if not most Somalis. Random acts of robbery; extortion and petty crimes have decreased. The once infamous piracy business off the Somali coast, that repeatedly caught international attention, has been quelled.[4] In late August the first commercial ship in over a decade called port in Mogadishu. The airport has been re-opened: another vital supply route for a starved country and a new regime in need of links to foreign supporters (although at least two of the arriving planes were unmarked, most likely carrying weapons for the UIC from Eritrea).

Environmentalists would be pleased to learn that the export of charcoal has been forbidden and there is now a ban on capturing and selling birds of prey to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Reportedly, wealthy expatriate Somali businessmen (probably not many women though) have descended on Nairobi, Kenya, where they hope to set up and conduct new business deals with merchants in Mogadishu. Of course, a surge of inflows of external supplies, notably food-aid relief can quickly rekindle a “refugee economy” as during the 1980s.

At that time, Somali received aid for a highly inflated number of refugees, easily 40% above actual numbers. In a country of only 7 million people, that aid translated into a sizeable portion of GDI, and combined with “regular” aid, it accounted perhaps for half of Somalia’s entire GDI. In the cold war context of that time, donors knew this but chose not to ask too much.

But if only there were not that infamous “price to pay”, which has already taken its toll on many. Several public executions have been carried out, also open for kids to attend. Suspicion of foreigners is deep-rooted and the shooting to death of a catholic nun and an international journalist are unlikely to be the last. The ban on Khat chewing, the narcotic drug so many Somali men seem to be unable to do without, has been banned, at least during the Ramadan period (a hard to enforce measure that has already sparked some protests).

Women are now being further relegated to the stone ages (some are already all veiled-up, apparently quite willingly so), and working for foreign NGOs is heavily frowned upon. Political violence has certainly not ceased, but is now far less rampant and visible. Then there is the repeated claim that in the UIC controlled parts of Somalia, training camps for Jihad recruits are being established. This is a hard to verify claim, and difficult to distinguish from planted US propaganda. But it does seem to be true that many of the defeated former militia members are being “re-educated” in camps outside of Mogadishu.

Who can tell how far such re-education goes? The most fervent “graduates” may well be those who raise their hands first when presented with the option to join obscure groupings that may or may not be linked to Al-Qaeda. Who knows?
It is suggested that the current situation in Somalia is in large part the result of US-efforts to supposedly quell the rise exactly of this kind of situation. A “CIA coup in Somalia” is said to have occurred, in the sense that “a major policy blunder by the United States opened the way for the UIC to seize power…(as) the CIA saw Somalia as a potential Afghanistan.” [5]

Thus, it should come as little surprise then that support for the UIC has deepened, not least as the scores of mostly young and idle Somali men with no recollection of living in a peaceful and productive society are readily enticed to fight for anything that resembles a meaningful cause. To them, joining militias is the only livelihood that provides any sense of security and income. The last engineer to graduate from what was once called the university of Mogadishu, must have done so nearly 20 years ago, and if not dead or in a militia himself (female Somali engineers would have been most unusual then) he lives and works now in Europe or maybe the US. The only thing usual in Somalia in living memory is the fragility of life and the constant risk of and submersion into repeated and ongoing humanitarian crises. In a recent interview, UNICEF Somalia representative Christian Balslev-Olesen noted that Somalia has become the "optimum" breeding ground for extremism because levels of malnutrition and education are among the worst in the world. He went on to say "If you have generations and generations out of school...we should not be surprised there is extremism in Somalia...”. [6]

As the internally driven and externally fuelled violence in Somalia continues to prevent any semblance of normality from taking hold, a new generation of Somalis is growing up in the midst of the previous social and political rubble.

When reading the International Crisis Groups’ well-researched and detailed account of the Somali political crisis with its countless clan facets and regional dimensions, I cannot help thinking that the report’s title “Can the Somali Crisis be Contained?” is merely a rhetorical question. [7] Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to Somalia, had it been somehow possible to implement Samuel Opondo’s idea of cutting it off the Africa map and letting it drift into the Indian Ocean. Once freed of the Siad Barre dictatorship, would Somalis have had the time and firmness of mind to find their own path to stability and peace? Perhaps Somalia today would be an agreeable island in a calm sea where adults share poems and kids run and play along the beach after school? Too good to be true, I know.

* Glenn Brigaldino is a Canada-based political analyst and commentator on international affairs. As a specialist in development cooperation, he is associated with in Germany and www.APKconsultancy.com of South Africa. Previously he has been a contributing writer for www.newtopiamagazine.net and more recently started writing for www.towardfreedom.com

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

References:
[1] Somalia, the Horn of Africa and US Troops in Odd Places, 20 July 2006, online at:

Quoting Uganda’s “Daily Monitor”, Allafrica (27 Sept.’06) reports that the recent visit to Uganda by Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi “…had been disguised as a trip on matters of ‘trade,’ was to draw a war plan for the already troubled Horn of Africa country.”

[3] While there is a good and valid case to be made that “Western” approaches to and ideas on childhood development and education should not be mechanically transplanted to other societies, I would add that there can be not retracting form demanding that children are especially vulnerable in impoverished, in turmoil societies. Securing children’s’ basic human rights are a minimum requirement for any developmental progress; a society or nation state that pays increased attention to children’s’ needs has an immeasurably greater chance to develop in peace than places where children needs are ignored or violated.
For a discussion on the context for child development in a globalized world, see:
Unequal Childhoods – Young children’s lives in poor countries, by Helen Penn, Routledge, London, 2005
[4] see: Somalia: Reported incidents of pirate attacks and hijackings off the coast of Somalia (January 2005 - March 2006) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21391236.htm
[7] Can the Somali Crisis Be Contained?, International Crisis Group, Africa Report N°116, 10 August 2006

About two million people have been driven from their homes in three years of fighting in Darfur. Aaron Tesfaye argues that the situation in Darfur is a grim reminder “of the after-effects of colonialism and hastily cobbled, post-colonial states in Africa that cannot deliver political and economic goods to their people.”

The Darfur tragedy refuses to leave our consciousness, even when newer atrocities in the world present themselves. As the genocide unfolds - more viciously now that the Peace Agreements have collapsed - the world is aware of the failures of the African Union to resolve the conflict between the central government of Sudan led by Omar el-Bashir, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) faction led by Mr. Abdul Wahid el-Nur, and its close ally the Justice Equality Movement (JEM) led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim.

Today the Bush administration seems to have opted for merely providing humanitarian assistance, making lots of "noise" at the UN, and a policy of benign neglect of the people of Darfur. It has refused to use its political and economic might to persuade Sudan to either cut a genuine deal with the rebels or invite the UN peacekeeping forces to safeguard the lives of innocent civilians. The current US stance is an indication of the closeness between Washington and Khartoum in the complex politics of oil and the War on Terror and seems to say, as in the Rwandan case, that African lives don't matter because Darfur is not Kosovo -- a European enclave.

Roots of the Conflict

The Darfur insurrection is connected to the conflict between state and society in southern Sudan. The insurrection and genocide has its roots in the complex milieu of inter-ethnic relations where ecological niches of the Fur, Zagawa, Massalit farmers, and Baqqara pastoralists were stressed due to famine and competition over space and water. But this connection between scarce resources and conflict must be understood through a glimpse of the past.

Modern Sudan is the creation of two imperialisms: Egyptian and British. Darfur was an important independent kingdom that was tacked onto Sudan by the British in 1916. Eventually, neglect by the Nile riverine elite of Khartoum led to the emergence of political protest in the 1960s and eventually to the current conflict. But two important factors added fuel to the fire. First was the venture of Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi into Chad in the 1980s with the resultant conflict over the Aouzou strip, rich in gas and other resources, and the mobilizing and arming of an "Islamic Legion" of the Sahelian "Arabs" and Turegs in his expansionist ambitions.[1]

Second was the 1986 decision of the prime minister of Sudan, Sadiq al-Mahdi, an important leader of the Umma Party, to launch an offensive to crush the secessionist Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south led by the late Dr. John Garang. This decision exacerbated the situation in the west because the Sudanese state armed with modern weapons the Baqqara and Ben Habla Fursan, "Arabs" (Janjaweed) including mercenaries from former Libyan Islamic Legionnaires of the failed Libyan expansionist war. As noted by an astute observer of Sudanese politics, it was "counterinsurgency on the cheap."[2]

These groups - along with the regular Sudanese Army - caused considerable destruction and spread terror amongst the Dinka and others in Bahr–El-Ghazal in the south. Eventually, the Baqqara and the Fursan used state-sponsorship to turn their full fury against their old neighbors in Darfur, with whom they had past conflicts. The consequence of such repression in the west was the formation of a self-defense force, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), in the Jabal Marra Mountains of Darfur in 2003, which was later joined by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The ensuing conflict has resulted in immense suffering, killing, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Darfurians, raising deep concerns in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

On April 8, 2004, due to the mediation of the African Union (AU), the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), and the Sudanese government signed a ceasefire agreement in N'djamena, Chad. This was followed by a signed protocol in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 9, 2004, by which the parties agreed to avoid a humanitarian crisis by seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict.[3] The leaders in these agreements were Minni Arkou Minnawi for the SLM/A, Ahmed Mohammed Tougod Lissan for JEM, and Magzoub El-Khalifa for the government of the Sudan. In October 2004, substantive discussions and a framework for addressing the contentious issues of power and wealth sharing were fleshed out, leading to the deployment of some African Union military personnel from Nigeria and Rwanda.[4]

The African Union presence was strengthened when the parties to the conflict convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in May 2004 to cut a deal on conditions towards a political settlement, which culminated in the signing of an agreement on a ceasefire and the deployment of observers in Darfur. This was to be followed by the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement in Nigeria in May 2006, after enabling the leading members of the SLM/A and JEM to express their support for and adherence to the provisions. But the Darfur political leaders Abdul Wahid el-Nur and Dr. Khalil Ibrahim of the SLM/A and JEM respectively, failed to show up for the signing. As a result, the agreement was signed by Minni Arkou Minnawi, a leader of the majority faction of the SLM/A, who are mostly Zagawa. This set the stage for internecine conflict.

Failure of the Darfur Peace Agreement

What were the reasons for the Darfur leaders and the government of the Sudan not signing the agreement? And what were its highlights? The answers are to be found in the practical calculations of the Sudanese state, the confluence of ethnic politics, as well as the demands of the SLM/A and the JEM. At first glance, it would seem that the Sudanese government had made substantive concessions towards peace in terms of political and wealth sharing.[5] However, in practical terms the government dragged its feet on key demands. The JEM and SLM/A leadership had a joint stand and had several demands. First, that their grievances be given full national coverage; that is, national access and dissemination of information about past atrocities via the media similar in spirit to what took place in South Africa under the "Truth and Reconciliation Committee." Second, that Khartoum provide a timetable and process by which displaced Darfurians would be able to immediately return to their homeland, be integrated, and be compensated. Third, that the supremacist Janjaweed be disarmed and demobilized.

In making these demands, the Darfur liberation movements did not represent a solid united political front, but were rife with past quarrels and mistrusts. They had different origins and varying connections with state leaders of Sudanese politics. The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and its armed wing, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), which was founded in 1989, did not acquire its present nome de guerre until 2003 when its founder, Abdul Wahid El-Nur, emerged from his exile and base in Eritrea. The SLA is not a separatist movement. Its political declaration clearly states "Sudan's unity must be anchored on a new basis that is predicated on full acknowledgement of [its] ethnic, cultural, social and political diversity . . . [and will] work with all political forces that ascribe to this view."[6] But such a platform does not preclude self-determination if the economic and political disparities continue to grow between Darfur and the riverine elite who commanded the state's resources. The SLA's position regarding the role of the mosque and state is also very clear. Its manifesto states: "Religion and politics belongs to two different domains . . . with religion belonging to the personal domain and the state in the public domain."[7]

On the other hand, the other main rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) has a different origin because it was established under the sponsorship of the National Islamic front (NIF) in the late 1980s. It is heavily influenced by and very close to the prominent Muslim scholar and Sorbonne-educated Ph.D. Dr. Sheik Hassan Al-Turabi and his Islamist supporters. Like the SLA, the JEM is not separatist, but it shares the objectives of the SPL/A and pursues the creation of a just society. But whereas the SPL/A's views on the role of religion and the state are clearly stated in its manifesto, the JEM's views are very ambiguous. Also, the JEM envisions a federal political structure for the Sudan similar to the one proposed by the National Islamic Front (NIF), allowing perhaps non-Muslim regions to opt out of Sharia law.

In any case, despite the solidarity between the SLM/A and the JEM, the astute brokers of the Sudanese state observed political and, above all, age-old competition and differences between the mostly Zagawa SPL/A and the Fur (JEM) and decided to exploit the differences. Thus as time passed and per the modalities of the agreement, Khartoum hesitated and then decided not to disarm the Janjaweed. Instead, sensing a weakened SLM/A and with the tacit indifference if not direct approval of the Minni Arkou Minnawi faction, the government decided on a military solution, attacking also the mostly Fur JEM led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim. As for the stance of the JEM, it may have opted out of the peace agreement, in part, because it did not get a green light from one of its most influential spiritual and political leaders, Hassan Al-Turabi. The regime in Khartoum also may have been motivated to scuttle the agreement because it wanted to destroy the support of the SLM/A and the JEM, particularly of the Umma Party, by creating support institutions for Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party. In such conflict, the troops of the African Union, numbering some 7000, were unable to defend civilians in the vast hinterland of Darfur because they were caught in spiralling violence between the armed might of the Sudanese state and its plural societies. The failure of the AU has emboldened the Sudanese state, which has launched a major offensive, committing tens of thousands of troops including bombers and helicopter gun ships to the region.

Failures of the UN and US: Rwanda and Darfur

On Sept. 1, 2006, the U.S. and Britain helped pass a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for over 20,000 UN troops to be sent to Sudan to take over from the AU forces. But Sudan is rejecting such a move, insisting on its sovereignty. For its part, the AU had threatened to pull its troops out by September 30 2006, unless Sudan acquiesced to the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force. On September 11, 2006, Sudan made a counter threat that the AU force could remain in the country only if they accepted Arab League and Sudanese funding.[9] The US has been quick to point out that the unfolding disaster needs a well-funded, well-staffed, and well-equipped force for peacekeeping purposes. Sudan has so far been firm in its demands. It is able to remain firm because it has powerful allies on the UN Security Council, namely China and Russia as well as the oil-producing nation of Qatar.[10] There are economic and political considerations behind the support of Russia and China, who insist on Sudanese sovereignty. Russia is now a major arms supplier to Sudan and indirectly responsible also for the tragedy in Darfur.[11] As far as China is concerned, it is a major investor in oil field exploration and development in the Sudan, and its increasing presence in Africa has to do with its insatiable demand for resources.[12]

The UN Secretary General not only clearly stated that the wholesale genocide of civilians is illegal under international law, but also expressed his fear that Darfur could be a Rwanda in the making.[13] But the Secretary General’s pronouncements rang hollow as the UN, the US, and the world were silent while 800,000 Africans were massacred in Rwanda in 1994. In fact, the US under the Clinton and Bush Jr. administrations seemed to have a consistent policy in terms of responding to genocide in Africa. In 1994, after the plane of Rwandan President Habyarimana was shot down, sowing the seeds of the crisis, the Clinton administration evacuated American citizens and left extremist Hutus to carry out their genocide of the Tutsis. The administration sat still while the bloodbath took place, with its state department spokesperson quibbling over the precise language regarding whether the killings constituted "genocide."[14]

It is widely believed that the reluctance of the US to intervene in Rwanda was the result of the shock experienced at the American causalities in Somalia in 1993, which led to a humiliating withdrawal. But Africa has no public lobbyists or public activists in the US. As a result, Rwanda was easy for the Clinton administration to ignore. Thus, while Washington insisted on a ceasefire in Rwanda and later crafted an arms embargo against the Hutu-dominated government, for all practical purposes it left the Tutsis to their fate, feigning ignorance until the genocide was over. In 1998, during a state visit to Africa, President Clinton did a mea culpa, apologizing for US inaction. The apology has been criticized as insincere as it cost nothing and Rwanda was regarded as some far-away country in Africa.

The UN was also impotent, doing nothing to stop the tragedy in Rwanda. Although the UN had peacekeeping troops in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded, its mandate was strictly limited to monitoring ceasefire violations. In fact, its force was reduced because the US feared increases in UN peacekeeping would eventually require some US troop commitment. In time, the US actively supported a UN peacekeeper withdrawal from Rwanda as the genocide was underway.[15]

The Bush Jr. administration's response in the Sudan has been no better. Although in 2004, then Secretary of State General Collin Powell acknowledged that what was happening in Darfur was genocide, no action was taken by the government. Subsequently, in an address to the UN General Assembly, President George Bush Jr. explained the US position on the genocide but had not suggested any new plans on how to stop the violence, more than a year later. In several instances between 2005 and 2006, US officials ranging from Vice President Dick Cheney to Assistant Secretary of African Affairs Jendayzi Frazer have made statements that seemed to show concern over the Darfur tragedy, but the concern has been all talk. On the other hand, the US has contributed close to $1 billion dollars in humanitarian efforts since the conflict began in the 1980s and has facilitated the Darfur peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria. However, the US has not taken "steps to directly address the worsening security situation or to protect civilians and humanitarian operations on the ground."[16]

The US response to the Darfur crisis is conditioned by its national interest in a rapprochement between Washington and Khartoum that began soon after September 11, 2001. The US ended its isolation of Sudan, which began in the 1990s due to the latter's role in hosting Al Qaeda, and the Sudan is now sharing intelligence in the Bush administration's War on Terror. The US position was given expression in July 2006, when President Bush, asked about the immediacy of Darfur, replied that the US strategy was to help "African Union forces to be complemented and blue-helmeted."[17] That is, the UN should be invited in.

But so far the Bush administration has not been willing to commit its substantial diplomatic and political muscle - essential to securing an invitation for UN deployment by Sudan. A main reason for the soft-peddling by the US may be that Sudan is a member of the conservative Arab League and usually acquiesces to its policy. The US may not want to exacerbate already strained relations in the Muslim world by forcing an Islamic state to do its bidding. In a recent "compromise," the el-Bashir government, after referring to the proposed presence of UN troops in Darfur as a "Zionist" plot to weaken states in the region, indicated its willingness to allow AU troops to stay as peacekeepers with "non-African advisers." [18]Whether the UN and the AU accept such a racist fig leaf will determine the lives of millions in Darfur.

Meanwhile Darfur has also generated internal cleavages in the el-Bashir government among "African" members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, (SPLM) of the late Dr. John Garang, who support the plan to bring the UN to Darfur. But the SPLM is also preoccupied with other serious matters in South Sudan. The Machako Agreement between Khartoum and the SPLM of South Sudan also seems to be faltering. For example, the agreement on wealth sharing, essential for the re-settlement of some 3 million southerners who live in the north, has not as yet been fully implemented, leading to some grumbling by southern leaders. The government that has been set up in Juba, the capital, under the terms of the agreement is fragile, underfunded, and at times looking towards the World Bank and donors to underwrite some projects. Finally, there has been no movement or discernable preparations, such as voter registrations, towards the national elections that are to take place in July 2007.[19]

Conclusion

The Darfur insurrection, crisis, and genocide are grim reminders of the after-effects of colonialism and hastily cobbled, post-colonial states in Africa that cannot deliver political and economic goods to their people. In this kind of struggle between the modern African state and its plural societies over the command of power and resources, Darfur is not alone. In the east in 2005, centered in Port Sudan, capital of the Red Sea State, the Beja Congress recently went on strike, demanding more power and wealth sharing. In the south, while the Machako Agreement between the state and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) seems to be holding - with the South having significant autonomy - for all practical purposes the peace is tenuous, dependent partially on the politics of the region, especially of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda. As for Darfur, as the historian R.S. O'Fahay has noted, "I believe Darfur's future lies with the Sudan - I prefer with rather than in - but it has to be with Sudan that is ruled very differently than the present Sudan."[20] How differently Sudan is ruled and how to constitutionally engineer and above all implement a new arrangement, including wealth sharing, that will augur peace and development is a challenge to all Sudanese and their friends in Africa and the world. Such a challenge begins with the acceptance of UN peacekeeping forces that will put a stop to the slaughter of the innocents.

•Aaron Tesfaye, is author of Political Power and Ethnic Federalism: the Struggle for Democracy in Ethiopia, (Lanham: MD: 2002).
•Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Notes

1.Alex de Waal, "Counter-insurgency on the Cheap," London Review of Books, August 2004, p. 2. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n15/waal01_.html
2.De Waal, 2004, op. cit.

3."Protocol between the Government of the Sudan (GoS), the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice Equality Movement (JEM) on the Enhancement of the Security Situation In Darfur In Accordance with the N’Djamena Agreement Abuja, Nigeria. November 9, 2004.

5. See highlights of the Darfur Peace Agreement.

6. Political Declaration of SLA/SLM, March 14, 2003, pp.1-2.

7. Ibid. p. 3.

8. Alex de Waal, "Darfur Violence Intensifies as Deadline for the Withdrawal of AU Peacekeepers Looms," September 7, 2006, Democracy Now!.

9. Robert O.Collins, "Darfur and the Arab League," The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, Policy Watch No. 1141.

10. Eric Reeves, "China in Sudan: Underwriting Genocide" Testimony by Eric Reeves before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission: "China's Role in the World: Is China a Responsible Stakeholder?" Aug 3, 2006.

11. See Amnesty International, "Sudan: Arming the Perpetrators of Grave Abuses in Darfur," Nov. 16, 2004.

12. Simon Henderson, "China and Oil: the Middle Eastern Dimension," The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy watch 898, September 15, 2004.

13. Lydia Polgreen, "Darfur Trembles as Peacekeepers' Exit Looms," New York Times, Sept. 10, 2006. Also see Kofi Annan's speech.

14. See Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide, (London: Zed Books, 2000).

15. See, Africa Action, Tale of Two Genocides: The Failed US Response to Rwanda and Darfur. Sept 9, 2006.

16. Ibid.

17. Eric Reeves, "Security in Darfur: Donors' Conference in Brussels Fails to Take Action," Africa Focus, July 23, 2006.

18. BBC, "Decision for Darfur Peacekeepers," Sept. 20, 2006.

19. See Human Rights Watch News, "Southern Sudan: Khartoum Reneges on Promises" March 8, 2006.

20. R.S. O. Fahey, "Does Darfur Have a Future in the Sudan?" The Fletcher Forum in World Affairs, Vol. 30; 1 winter 2006.

Ever heard of street soccer activism? In Zimbabwe, the Uhuru Collective is using soccer to fight for social justice, mobilizing residents and encouraging them to challenge their local council on rates fees.

The full story is featured on the website a Zimbabwean portal on civil society, but it’s not only the use of street soccer for activism that is interesting, but the way in which Kubatana have integrated short audio recordings into the story. The result is not only a web-based story that provides context and background, but through the power of voice conveys the story first hand through those involved.

And so you can listen to Sam Farai Monro, the co-ordinator of the Uhuru Collective, talk about what they aim to achieve through soccer activism, how commentators at the matches highlight important social concerns, and why unfair social delivery needs to be challenged.

The spoken word is not new to storytelling or information dissemination, with radio being popular worldwide. But while the potential for distributing audio via the internet is a possibility that has existed since the first websites, it has only recently become more feasible due to developments that allow easy production and distribution.

Portable recording devices allow anyone to produce high quality sound. Easy editing and mixing – previously the domain of professional sound buffs – is made possible through software packages. Giant steps taken in the ease with which one can create a personal website and upload written, audio or video content makes it possible for anyone to be heard – theoretically speaking at least.

As a result mega-industries have sprung up and there are a growing number of internet search engines that specialize specifically in audio or video files. Even giants like Google =http://video.google.com/ have been forced to add video search functionality and hosting to their services.

The new craze has given rise to its own terminology - podcasting. As defined by Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, “Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio or video programs, over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. The term podcast, like 'radio', can mean both the content and the method of delivery.”

Sadly, if you type Africa into any of the search engines listing podcasts, the returns are not very satisfactory. In Africa, low internet access and high access costs mean that in large parts even downloading email can be a problem and that’s if you even have access to a computer. Listening to audio distributed through the internet is a rarity. The podcast trend is driven by North American and Western European interest and voices.

This is not to say that it doesn’t have potential for Africa. The medium has the ability for people to get their voices heard without having to navigate the complex gate-keeping of mainstream media; it has the power to reach a global audience; and it has potential for networking and activism. Africa has made some strides in internet access and many countries are now rolling out broadband internet access – the real sweetener when it comes to internet audio and video.

Distribution of audio via the internet in Africa is in its infancy, but with growing number of broadband users and Africa’s huge Diaspora population the audience is out there. It remains to be seen whether all the factors needed for the growth of the technology will eventually lead to a culture of listening online.

If you want to start listening, here are some starting points. Broadcasting weekly out of Berkeley, California, is Walter Turner’s Africa Today programme (http://www.kpfa.org/1pro_bio/1b_afric.htm). One of his more interesting recent interviews is with the journalist Gary Younge, who is the correspondent for the London Guardian in the United States. You can hear Younge talking about his latest book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, being black in Britain, international solidarity and the oddness of living in America. “You see people walking around with cellphones and yet you still get the feeling that they think the world is flat,” Younge tells Turner.

Check out Indymedia South Africa http://southafrica.indymedia.org/ for audio and video content on what South Africa’s social movements are up to. The latest video content from the site is about a march to the Israeli embassy to protest against the recent war between Israel and Lebanon. The video shows the march with clips from speakers Sallim Vally from the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Willie Madisha of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). Also on the site are a series of audio files discussing the World Social Forum’s Bamako appeal, including an interesting speech from Samir Amin.

Further offerings can be found on the website of One World Radio Africa =http://radioafrica.oneworld.net/, which has a series of regularly updated files, the latest being a discussion on climate change. Democracy Radio =http://www.idasa.org.za, on the website of South Africa’s Idasa, includes a series of recordings on child poverty in South Africa, political party funding and the struggle for women’s rights. These recordings are dated from 2004/05 but are still worth a visit.

Africa Files produces a regular podcast called ‘Africa Files: The Pulse’, with Silence Genti as the host. You can access the programme by visiting

The Lord’s Resistance Army continues to demand that the indictments by the International Criminal Court against its leaders should be dropped. The Hague-based court had indicted Kony, Otti and fellow commanders Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and Raska Lukwiya on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to IRIN news, last week Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said the indictments should not be rescinded until the rebel leaders signed a peace deal. Joseph Yav Katshung argues that “…Not everybody welcomed these arrest warrants. On the one hand, proponents of prosecution argue that individuals who commit crimes against humanity should be punished for the sake of justice. They say that it would be unprincipled - as well as sending a dangerous message worldwide - for the prosecutor to submit to the demands of armed thugs who have been maiming, raping and killing with impunity. On the other hand, opponents of prosecution argue that the ICC should give peace a chance, as it is more important to save civilians than to judge perpetrators.”

Very often, when a country wishes to move from war to peace, various options may be tried, including trials in an international or national court of law as well as other non-punitive approaches with various names. In recent years, there has been a growing demand around the world for transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth commissions. Tina Rosenberg suggests that “…a country’s decisions about how to deal with its past should depend on many things: the type of war endured, the type of crimes committed, the level of societal complicity, the nation’s political culture and history, the conditions necessary for war to reoccur, the abruptness of the transition, and the new democratic government’s power and resources.” [1]One may add national “interests”.

Last year in October the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants of arrest for Kony and four other Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commanders - Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo - accusing them of carrying out massacres, mutilating their victims and kidnapping thousands of children to be used as fighters and sex slaves. Now, a year on, it finds itself at odds with Uganda's government, which first referred the case to it, but is now offering the rebels amnesty and protection if talks succeed. [2] This paper examines this dispute and seeks to locate the debate about peace and justice in Northern Uganda.

Defining Justice

Defining justice is a difficult task. Is it justice in the narrow sense of criminal justice, or justice in the broader, restorative, sense? Talking about “justice”, one should note that it is a flexible concept. Justice in situations of transition is not self-defining. It is about what is required and what is possible in a given situation. There are different kinds of justice: retributive justice, deterrent justice, compensatory justice, rehabilitative justice, exonerative justice and restorative justice. [3] Each has a time and a place in a given situation and no one model of justice covers all needs.

Mato Oput as Restorative Justice

It is important to note that restorative justice views crime essentially as a violation of people and relationships between people. Its primary objective is to correct such violations and to restore relationships. As such, it necessarily involves victims and survivors, perpetrators and the community, in the quest for a level of justice that promotes repair, trust building and reconciliation. It draws attention to the need to create a milieu within which all those implicated in crime come to realise the need to uphold the principles of the law, co-operating in an endeavour to discern the best way to achieve this. [4] In other words, restorative justice is concerned with resolving crime and conflicts. It focuses upon the end result (harmonious community relations) and it is characterised by community participation that involves both the victim and the perpetrator, with a view to restoring rights that have been abused.

In fact, Mato Oput, which in the Acholi language literally means "to drink a bitter potion made from the leaves of the ‘oput’ tree" is one of the mechanisms for forgiveness and reconciliation among the Acholi people in Northern Uganda. The drinking of this bitter herb means that the two conflicting parties accept the bitterness of the past and promise never to taste such bitterness again. The payment of compensation follows the ceremony. The victim or his/her family is compensated for the harm done, for example, in the form of cows or cash. Is such kind of compensation is enough to satisfy people? It is believed by many Acholi that Mato Oput "can bring true healing in a way that formal justice system cannot.” [5] It doesn't aim at establishing whether an individual is guilty or not, rather it seeks to restore marred social harmony in the affected community.

The question of using Mato Oput for gross violations of human rights: The Kony’s Case

The referral of the Northern Uganda conflict to the ICC in December 2003 and the subsequent issue of warrants of arrest for Joseph Kony and other four high-ranking LRA commanders, [6] have sparked considerable controversy in Uganda and in the international sphere.

Not everybody welcomed these arrest warrants. On the one hand, proponents of prosecution argue that individuals who commit crimes against humanity should be punished for the sake of justice. They say that it would be unprincipled - as well a dangerous message worldwide - for the prosecutor to submit to the demands of armed thugs who have been maiming, raping and killing with impunity. On the other hand, opponents of prosecution argue that the ICC should give peace a chance, as it is more important to save civilians than to judge perpetrators.

Moreover, withdrawal by the ICC would not mean the end of accountability, they argue, but the beginning of indigenous justice processes. This group prefers traditional justice to the ICC, and argues that modern justice will have a negative impact on the peace process in Northern Uganda. For them, the arrest warrants would make further peace negotiations impossible.

This is a typical case of balancing peace and justice as the trend in Uganda now, is how to use the traditional form of justice named Mato Oput instead of the ICC. Barney Afako (2002) states that:

“The unacceptably high costs of civil war have caused Ugandans to re-assess approaches to resolving conflict. Among the Acholi of northern Uganda, the bitter experience of unending conflict has generated a remarkable commitment to reconciliation and a peaceful settlement of the conflict rather than calling for retribution against the perpetrators of serious abuses… This call for amnesty was underpinned by their faith in the capacity of the community and cultural institutions to manage effective reconciliation even against the background of serious offences.

Many conflicts yield meaningful distinctions between victims and perpetrators. Yet the majority of Acholi recognize that most combatants in the LRA were forcibly abducted and have themselves been victims. This generates the realization that anyone could be subjected to the conditions that produced the perpetrators of the crimes experienced in the conflict. Combined with a profound weariness with the war and the suffering it has caused, this creates a moral empathy with the perpetrators and an acknowledgement that the formal justice system is not sufficiently nuanced to make the necessary distinctions between legal and moral guilt. As a result, most Acholi have decided to promote reconciliation through traditional mechanisms, rather than a retributive understanding of justice, to create conditions to end the war and reintegrate the community.” [7]

However, there are always tensions between the requirements of the criminal justice system and those of non-punitive approaches to gross and systematic human rights violations. Therefore, one could ask if the Mato Oput is an attempt by Uganda to justify or disguise impunity? Answering to this question one should test if this Mato Oput mechanism implies good faith.

That is true because restorative justice employs integral responses that focus upon redressing the harm to the victims, holding perpetrators accountable for their actions and engaging the community in a conflict resolution process. It is highly participative, is forward-looking and is based on values of respect for all participants and community empowerment. Is the Mato Oput designed to generate more truth, more justice, reparations, and genuine institutional reform? If the objective is to evade the State and society’s legal, ethical and political obligations to their people, it should be rejected. If not, someone could say that the purpose of this Mato Oput mechanism is just to shield some perpetrators (Kony and others). In this hypothesis, the process will violate international law and will not be in the interest of justice (society as a whole).

Therefore, the answer should be found in the design of the process itself, but also in the degree of participation, consultation, and transparency that surrounds this Mato Oput mechanism.

How to conclude?

We conclude with a quote from Juan Mendez that “We need to be careful to counter attempts to disguise impunity with fanciful adjectives. ‘Restorative justice,’ for example, is a concept that in its proper setting is valuable and does have its place in a transitional justice policy. [8] Often, however, the term ‘restorative justice’ is used to advocate some alternative to criminal justice, to honest truth telling and full investigation of abuses. When used in such a way it is no more than an attempt to justify or disguise impunity.” [9]

Suffice it to say that the paradox between peace and justice is an open question that we should all try to answer.

* Yav Katshung Joseph is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo and an Advocate at the Lubumbashi Bar Association. He is the Executive Director of CERDH, and Coordinator of the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace, Conflict Resolution and Good governance. He has published numerous articles on human rights, law and transitional justice in scholarly journals. For contact: [email][email protected] or [email][email protected] Cell: +27724342896

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

[1] Tina Rosenberg, “Afterword: Confronting the Painful Past”, in Martin Meredith, Coming to Terms:South Africa’s Search for Truth, 1999, p 328

[2] The ICC has insisted that Kony and four other LRA leaders must face justice, but the Ugandan government says it will convince the Hague-based court to lift the indictment… See UGANDA: Balancing forgiveness with justice. At: http://www.ligi.ubc.ca/admin/Information/543/Roco%20Wat%20I%20Acoli-20051.pdf
[6] See The International Criminal Court, "Warrant of Arrest Unsealed Against Five LRA Commanders," ICC-20051014-110-En, 14 October 2005, available:http://www.icccpi.int/pressrelease_details&id=114&l=en.html
They are accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda since July 2002

[7] Barney Afako, Reconciliation and justice: ‘Mato oput’ and the Amnesty Act (2002), at: http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northern-uganda/reconciliation-justice.php

[8] Miriam J. Aukerman, “Extraordinary Evil, Ordinary Crime: A Framework for Understanding Transitional Justice,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 15 (2002): 39-97; Pablo de Greiff, “The Role of Apologies in National Reconciliation Processes: On Making Trustworthy Institutions Trusted,” in The Age of Apologies, Mark Gibney and Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, eds. (forthcoming).

[9] Juan E. Méndez, “How to Take Forward a Transitional Justice and Human Security Agenda: Policy Implications for the International Community”, Cape Town, April 1, 2005