In May elections, Ethiopian voters made their mark for change, but shortly after the elections the government declared a state of emergency, banned demonstrations and declared victory. Makeda Tsegaye questions why the international community has chose to remain silent about these actions. "Why is the hotly contested election in Ethiopia not getting even one third of the attention that the former Soviet Republic of Georgia received via popular media such as CNN and BBC, which reported the event live from the small European nation? Is it because what is expected from a poor black African nation is nothing but starvation and war?"

Despite being Africa’s oldest independent nation, endowed with adequate natural resources and massive social capital, most people in the world associate Ethiopia with grotesque starvation and war. Indeed, these two unfortunate episodes have easily caught the attention of popular media such as CNN and BBC and the international community. But why is an equally important but rather positive episode not drawing as much attention?

On May 15, 2005, for the first time in the history of the country, some 25 million Ethiopians turned out to vote in the country’s historic parliamentary and regional assembly elections. The huge turnout was prompted by the participation of various political parties who presented an alternative political and economic agenda to people desperate for a change. International observers, including former president Jimmy Carter and his team, and the European Union team led by Ms. Anna Gomez, monitored voting in some of the polling stations. The observers admired the general discipline and peaceful participation of the public, while at the same time highlighting some of the irregularities in the polling stations that they visited.

It is important to note that Ethiopians’ participation in the election, which was characterized by remarkable discipline and peaceful attitude, occurred amid the ruling party’s unconstitutional, illegal and intimidating acts prior to and during the election, including harassment and detention of supporters of the opposition parties mostly in the rural areas. It was these unlawful and clearly undemocratic acts by the ruling party that prompted Human Rights Watch to describe the election as a ‘hollow exercise’ in some parts of the country. Nevertheless, taking advantage of this window of opportunity, Ethiopians have made their demands for a better life and better future clear in an unprecedented way. One week prior to the election, the peoples of Ethiopia demonstrated their support for the opposition parties in the most disciplined and constitutionally approved manner. They repeated the same discipline and peaceful demand for change during the May 15 elections. On the other hand, the opposition parties reported to the National Electoral Board major irregularities in many rural polling stations where their observers were barred whilst expressing their optimism in other areas. What followed this remarkable process is at the crux of this piece.

A day after the election, the ruling party declared a state of emergency in the capital and ordered a month-long ban on demonstrations. Shortly after this announcement, they claimed victory using the state controlled media while admitting defeat in the capital, although votes were still being counted. Worse yet, the National Electoral Board decided to announce results piecemeal, as opposed to publishing provisional results from all constituencies on Saturday May 22, 2005 as originally planned. The National Electoral Board, which is not entirely independent, failed to provide an explanation for the delay. Unsurprisingly, the delay in vote counting elicited major concern amongst the public, especially in light of the ruling party’s repeated claims of victory. In fact, some delayed results appear to have reversed previous results which had been reported in favor of the opposition parties. In the face of all these atrocities, the peoples of Ethiopia could not peacefully protest and defend their votes due to the month-long ban imposed on them by the ruling party. These undemocratic actions of the ruling party are apparent to representatives of the international community within and outside the country. In addition, in March 2005, the international community witnessed the expulsion of three American Civil Society Organizations, namely International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute and IFES that had been working with the National Electoral Board for not more than two months.

The following questions, therefore, remain: why has the international community chosen to be silent? What are the world’s most democratic nations saying about the ruling party’s unconstitutional and undemocratic measures to tamper with people’s votes? It was quite encouraging to see the European Union‘s press release on May 25, which tacitly condemned the ruling party’s undemocratic and illegal use of the public media, and manipulation of the electoral process in general. How long will it take the US to effectively react to the ruling party’s decision of banning post-election demonstration besides “monitoring the situation closely"? Surprisingly, the best resolution that the 21-member Foreign Ambassadors group could come up with on May 22 was to say that "we ask all political leaders to engage in constructive dialogue.” Are we still talking about political parties? Isn’t it clear that Ethiopians have already expressed their will for a change in the most responsible and peaceful manner? Isn’t democracy about responsible citizens exercising their democratic rights to positively change the course of development and governance in their own country? Or is this version of democracy considered a luxury when it comes to Africa?

What happened to the unwavering support that the peoples of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia enjoyed in their contested election of November 2004? Why is the hotly contested election in Ethiopia not getting even one third of the attention that the former Soviet Republic of Georgia received via popular media such as CNN and BBC, which reported the event live from the small European nation? Is it because what is expected from a poor black African nation is nothing but starvation and war? Would this not be a good opportunity for the global proponents of democracy to demonstrate that people’s peaceful protest can bear results irrespective of their geographic location in the world? Or is this not considered an option at all for Africans ‘whose fate is predetermined as eternal misery and oppression’?

At this historic moment in the lives of many innocent, hardworking and peace-loving Ethiopians, the world owes those starving children, battered mothers and frustrated farmers a REAL answer.

* Makeda Tsegaye is an Ethiopian woman with a Masters degree in International Peace Studies (with specialization in Economic Development and Peace) currently working for an international development agency in Nairobi, Kenya.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), recently launched in Nairobi, Kenya. In this article, Yassine Fall, an economist and President of AWOMI, reflects on its significance in the context of the 42nd Africa Day and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

Today we commemorate the 42nd anniversary of Africa Day. The Africa Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) is using this day to organise a number of events to launch the anti-poverty campaign and disseminate its messages.

The year 2005 is indeed a year of key international events in the battle against growing poverty, inequalities and exclusion, the increased burden of work and a lack of rights for millions of impoverished women. It is now 10 years since the Beijing Conference and its Platform for Action to which almost all governments in the world signed up, but did very little to implement. Africa Day is being celebrated in a context where many of its children, in particular its girls, have either never been to, or have dropped out of, school. This is the year when the Education for All target was supposed to be met but it still remains a distant dream for many countries and communities of girls.

This September's UN General Assembly will also commemorate the 5th anniversary of the UN Millennium Summit and Declaration. The assembly will review whether the world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals and discuss again what actions must be taken.

The Millennium Project (MP) Report was launched in January this year. Among many strategies and interventions, it proposed debt cancellation and increased development assistance for poor countries; funding initiatives on violence against women; improving the availability of reproductive health services; providing substantial support to small-holder farmers; the abolition of user fees for poor people; and increased public sector social spending in poor countries.

These recommendations certainly mean a lot to Africans living in poverty, who would like to use this day and the GCAP process to send a message to those who make decisions that affect their lives. The MP recommendations represent a substantial step forward to reassessing debt sustainability combined with debt service payment, cost recovery, increased development assistance, user fees and the budget ceilings which have been set by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSP). The PRSP, developed under the framework of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Debt Relief Initiative (HIPC) spearheaded by the IMF and World Bank (WB), is implemented in most developing countries, and in particular in Africa, as the centrepiece of development assistance.

The content and process of the PRSP are laid down by the Breton Woods institutions, which then claim that all these reforms are owned by the governments and their people. But let's ask some questions. Who develops the conditions governments must meet before they can access HIPC funds? Who sets up the framework for maintaining macroeconomic stability along with its cohort of policy instruments? Without exception, these include "low-inflation-rate fundamentalism", market and trade liberalisation, the privatisation of water, and limiting social expenditure, such as on health and education. Who actually has a say in reviewing the content of PRSPs? Who determines the success or otherwise of the market-oriented reforms implemented by governments, without which there is no inflow of development assistance from bilateral donors? The answer is the IMF and the WB. Africans living in poverty would indeed like to use the Africa Day celebrations to speak sincerely with these institutions.

In parallel with the MP report, global civil society launched its own GCAP campaign at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2005. The campaign calls for 100 per cent debt cancellation, trade justice, democratic governance and increased development assistance as promised by rich nations.

The question is how we use the symbolism of Africa Day to ensure that this campaign delivers tangible results. Will this campaign be another big initiative from a few well connected civil society organisation leaders or will it change the course of history? Does this campaign have the ability to develop a large and participatory movement that will put so much pressure on world leaders that they have no alternative but to seriously address the issue of poverty and give priority to the interests of the most impoverished women and men? Will this campaign be willing for once to do business differently and change the practice of power hijacking, so much decried around Africa? Will it put men to one side and provide space to the voiceless women and youths who are more articulate than many of those who claim to speak for them? Will GCAP be willing to democratise the selection of national representatives, because some of the NGO selected to represent GCAP nationally do not have the mandate to speak for the others at home? Will this campaign engage in genuine policy dialogue about home-grown African issues instead of borrowing soft topics from GCAP's Northern partners -- which leaves the campaign unable to criticise the rich countries which provide it with its means of survival? Is GCAP willing to put the feminisation of poverty and human rights at the centre of its campaign?

The African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights (AWOMI), recently launched in Nairobi, Kenya, with over 300 women from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, would like to ensure that these questions get positive answers. Rural women, women from informal settlements, young women, women activists, NEPAD representatives, women in government and parliamentarians all participated in the AWOMI launch. They engaged in intense dialogue with leading members of government and international journalists. The Africa GCAP facilitators were invited but did not think it was important enough to attend. They missed one of the biggest and first meetings where women from all over the continent spoke about poverty, governance, international development, financial architecture and their human rights. They expressed their anger and disappointment at their leaders and recounted moving experiences of lives lived in poverty every day. This would have been a great opportunity for GCAP to learn about indigenous African women, which they were unable to do during their first meeting in April in Kenya.

In addition to adopting transparent processes and including the voiceless, Africa GCAP must use this day of celebration and the days ahead to tackle national governance policy issues more courageously. Furthermore, civil society's demands for trade justice must be GCAP's first demands because trade injustice is the most suffocating challenge for poor countries. They are asked to make all the sacrifices over tariff removals, privatisations -- including of essential services -- and the opening up of their markets while rich countries tighten their protectionist measures.

GCAP needs to have a clear position over international and trade institutions and corrupt governments. The PRSP, which is a recycled name for structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), has, like SAPs, failed to deliver its promises of poverty reduction and debt relief and this must be said clearly on Africa Day. Countries and poor people, in particular women and children, have paid tremendous costs and made huge sacrifices to implement enhanced structural adjustment facilities and growth and poverty reduction policies. However, the only visible growth has been in the figures that declare it. Poor farmers are asked under this framework to choose between health, education for their children and agricultural extension support. This is the evidence that impoverished women would like to see highlighted today.

Hungry women would like to ask how can they access reproductive health services when they have to pay user fees. How can HIV positive women be asked to support cost recovery when they suffer from malaria? In the village of Guerew in Senegal pregnant women are asked to buy a mosquito net for two dollars as a condition for receiving prenatal care. If they refuse they risk joining the long list of women who die when giving birth. Women in the slums of Korogocho and Kibera in Nairobi, and Ganaw Rail and Mbeubeuss in Senegal with whom I work say they have had enough of the PRSP football game between the so called donors, the IFIs and their governments that is mortgaging their lives. Rural women are demanding a stop to the comodification of agriculture and the privatisation of farm lands.

The message on debt cancellation is critical but it is seen as insufficient by the women's organisations and leaders who met under AWOMI. They would like the messages of this Africa Day to demand, on their behalf, debt repudiation and reinvestment of the financial resources in the priorities identified by poor women. They also suggested that any new indebtedness projects be discussed nationally and with poor people. They would decide together with the government whether to agree to the projects after examining the borrowing conditions, the relevance of debt and the investment objectives. Indebtedness would only be acceptable if it was justified by the pressing need to provide the essential services which are increasingly subsidised by women's labour. Africa GCAP would also need to be more courageous and address overseas development assistance from the point of view of reparations for slavery and colonisation, and the recent stealing of medical experts including doctors and nurses by rich countries from poor African countries who need them most.

All these questions were eloquently articulated by women community leaders and young people with evidence and clear justification. They must be echoed by GCAP, which is missing a lot by ignoring them. GCAP will succeed or fail according to how much room and decision making power and leadership it gives to those who pay the most for and suffer the most from poverty and ill conceived policies. They have very little to lose and therefore must lead the voices to be heard on Africa Day in the fight against poverty.

* Yassine Fall is an economist and is President of AWOMI = African Women Millennium Initiative on Poverty and Human Rights

* Editors' comment: Given that the loose alliance of more than 70 organisations in some 20 countries has only recently formed, and that this is the first time that such an extensive pan-African alliance has come together, some patience is needed to ensure that the alliance works in the most effective way possible. The criticisms expressed here by the author are not necessarily those shared by Pambazuka News. But in the spirit of encouraging constructive discussion on how this unprecedented alliance can develop effective oppostion to those external forces that have, for so many years, determind social and economic policies in the region, we invite comments and reactions from readers. Please send to [email protected]

Current economic policies mean that those not able to join the global marketplace are considered disposable, or as the World Bank has previously termed it, the “unintended and regrettable consequences” of adjustment policies. Recent commitments to improve Africa's situation within this context provide reasons for both optimism and pessimism ahead of a G8 summit in July, which will show whether leaders of the industrialized world are serious about improving the health of all Africans.

In Zambia, a woman named Chileshe is dying of AIDS. She was infected by her now dead husband, who once worked in a textile plant along with thousands of others but lost his job when Zambia opened its borders to cheap, second-hand clothing. Resorting to work as a street vendor, he would get drunk and trade money for sex - often with women whose own husbands were somewhere else working, or dead, and who desperately needed money for their children. Desperation, she thought, is what makes this disease move so swiftly; she recalls that a woman from the former Zaire passing through her village once said that the true meaning of SIDA, the French acronym for AIDS, was “Salaire Insuffisant Depuis des Années” (Schoepf, 1998).

Chileshe’s is one of four stories we used in a report that has just been published by Canada’s Centre for Social Justice (Labonte, Schrecker & Sen Gupta, 2005b) to dramatize the health impacts of transnational economic integration (‘globalization’). It is a composite, like the stories used in the World Bank’s 1995 ‘World Development Report’. The Centre for Social Justice report, which grew out of a contribution to the first ‘Global Health Watch Report’ (forthcoming in July at directly challenges the elite religion of neoliberal, market-oriented economic policy, as promoted by agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Drawing on an extensive research base, we describe the causal pathways that link globalization to unequal and deteriorating health outcomes by way of increasing inequalities in access to the social determinants of health, and policies that tilt the economic playing field even more steeply toward the rich countries.

Sometimes, the impact is straightforward, as when public spending cutbacks combined with onerous debt repayment terms mean that governments opt for “cost recovery” in health care or water and sanitation. This process played a role in Chileshe’s story. As part of a structural adjustment program attached to loans from the International Monetary Fund, Zambia imposed user fees, cut health staff and reduced the salaries of those who remained – just at a time when the AIDS epidemic was surging out of control.

In other cases, the causal pathways operate less directly, by reducing economic insecurity and magnifying inequalities. The same adjustment program required Zambia to open its borders to second-hand clothing in 1992. Its domestic clothing manufacturers, valuable though they were as providers of employment, could not compete with imports of used clothing with zero production costs. Within eight years, Zambia’s clothing and textile industry all but disappeared, along with 30,000 jobs; large numbers of previously employed Zambian workers were thrust into the informal, ill-paid and untaxed underground economy. The World Bank called these “unintended and regrettable consequences” of the adjustment process (Jeter, 2002). For classical economists, the market was working as it should: consumers get more and cheaper stuff, and inefficient producers are driven out of business. For the losers and the left-behind, the consequences can be deadly. Zambia’s required privatization of state enterprises eliminated a further source of revenues that might have been used to support social programs, such as education and health care.

The Zambian government is trying to undo some of this damage. But like many other governments, it is hampered by the rich world’s failure to cancel more of the developing world’s crippling debt, or to provide it with the resources it needs to sustain its peoples’ health. Writing about another African country, journalist Ken Wiwa noted: “You’d need the mathematical dexterity of a forensic accountant to explain why Nigeria borrowed $5 billion, paid back $16 billion, and still owes $32 billion” (Wiwa, 2004).

Not until 1996 did the rich world respond collectively with the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries or HIPC initiative. This has freed up more money for health and education. But much of the HIPC countries’ debt will remain unpaid and uncancelled at the conclusion of the initiative, most of the world’s poor live in countries that are not eligible for HIPC and the price of debt relief is often more privatization and trade liberalization, now dressed up in the rhetoric of poverty reduction strategies.

Development assistance is by no means a panacea. At the same time, a wealth of experience now exists on how to make aid work for basic needs, if the political will is there on the part of donor and recipient countries. The most authoritative estimate is that meeting the Millennium Development Goals’ 2015 targets, most of which are health-related, would require an additional $60 – $120 billion a year in aid from the industrialized to the developing world. This would represent a doubling or tripling of current aid flows, but hardly a formidable sacrifice: less than the cost of 57 Big Macs per Canadian per year, or 43 Big Macs per German per year (Schrecker, Labonte & Sen Gupta, 2005a). The cost would also be a fraction of what the United States spends on its armed forces, or of the value of the tax breaks that the richest Americans and Canadians have received in recent years.

Reasons exist for optimism. Both the UN Millennium Project, which generated the cost estimates we have quoted, and the UK Commission for Africa were emphatic about the need for more development assistance and more effective ways of using it. In the words of the UN Millennium Project, “Even if we don’t know everything about such challenges, we know enough to achieve the [Millennium Development] Goals. Moreover, the necessary interventions are utterly affordable” (UN Millennium Project, 2005). Partly because the British government has placed African development high on the agenda, this July’s G8 Summit may represent a turning point for population health in Africa, and elsewhere in the developing world.

A minimal “health equity agenda” for the Summit (Labonte & Schrecker, 2005) includes not only clear timetables for aid increases tied to comprehensive strategies for improving population health, but also expanded debt cancellation, acceptance of development-friendly trade policies such as special and differential treatment (SDT), and explicit acknowledgment that human rights – including the right to health – take precedence over trade and financial liberalization. In addition, because of the importance of capital flight in undermining African economies, the G8 must quickly ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (which would provide for repatriation of assets illegally shifted offshore) and pressure other industrialized countries, as well as offshore financial centres, to do the same. To the credit of the UK Commission on Africa, it was emphatic on these points.

Unfortunately, reasons also exist for pessimism. The Millennium Project and the UK Commission were less emphatic in acknowledging the need for fundamental redesign of the international economic order. Canada’s finance minister, who was a member of the UK Commission, is making breathless speeches about how Africa needs “a strong indigenous private sector to create jobs” and must “improve the business and investment climate … building entrepreneurial and marketing skills, domestic capacity and improving access to finance” (Goodale, 2005). This language suggests a development policy triage in which people not strong, young, or lucky enough to make it into the entry levels of the global marketplace (like Kenya’s call centres; see Lacey, 2005), or predatory enough to establish business alliances with foreign corporations, are considered disposable. In the discourse of growth through entrepreneurship those Africans who are already seropositive, or at highest risk for HIV infection because of their economic vulnerability, become invisible.

By the end of the July Summit we will have a much better sense of whether the industrialized world is serious about improving the health of all Africans, or whether the best it can come up with is selective and targeted policies that represent only incremental departures from a past posture of ‘Fatal Indifference’(Labonte et al., 2004).

* Ronald Labonte ([email protected]) and Ted Schrecker ([email protected]) are, respectively, Canada Research Chair and Senior Policy Researcher at the Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa, Canada. ‘Health for Some: Death, Disease and Disparity in a Globalizing Era’ by
Ronald Labonte, Ted Schrecker and Amit Sen Gupta is available from
[email protected]

References

Goodale R (2005). Comments at UK Commission for Africa presentation, Washington, DC, April 19; transcribed from audio webcast at http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/policy_themes/docs/g8book.pdf .

Labonte R, Schrecker T, Sen Gupta A (2005a). A global health equity agenda for the G8 summit. BMJ 350:533-536.

Labonte R, Schrecker T, Sen Gupta A (2005b). Health for Some: Death, Disease and Disparity in a Globalizing Era Toronto: Centre for Social Justice, 2005; http://www.socialjustice.org/pdfs/HealthforSome.pdf

Labonte R, Schrecker T, Sanders D, Meeus W (2004). Fatal Indifference: The G8, Africa and Global Health. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press/IDRC Books.

Lacey M (2005). Accents of Africa: a new outsourcing frontier. The New York Times, 2 February.

Schoepf BG (1998). Inscribing the body politic: AIDS in Africa. In: Lock M, Kaufert P, eds. Pragmatic women and body politics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

UK Commission for Africa (2005). Our Common Interest. London: the Commission, March; http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/report/introduction.html

UN Millennium Project (2005). Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. London: Earthscan; 2005; http://unmp.forumone.com/eng_full_report/TF1mainreportComplete-highres.pdf .

Wiwa K (2004). Money for nothing - and the debt is for free. The [Toronto] Globe and Mail, 22 May:A19.

Fifty years after the first Afro-Asian meeting in Bandung in 1955, leaders from these regions met again to re-establish a spirit of co-operation. The meeting took place at a time of increased trade between countries of the South and when many African countries are starting to adopt “go east” policies. But will the vision of Bandung mean new trade rules based on equity and protection of weaker trading partners?

At the recently concluded meetings in Jakarta and Bandung to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first Afro-Asian meeting in Bandung in 1955, the President of Indonesia observed: “ It took fifty long years for this Conference to happen, but Asia and Africa have finally assembled here again.” Reflecting on the achievements of the first Conference (which was attended by, among others, President Soekarno of Indonesia, President Nasser of Egypt, Prime Ministers Chou En Lai and Jawaharlal Nehru of China and India respectively), the President of Indonesia went on to ask:

“Why did it take 50 years - a lifetime - for Asia and Africa to reconvene, after the success of the first Summit in 1955?

We must ask: Does the Bandung Spirit mean the same in 2005 as it did in 1955? If the Bandung spirit has served us well over the years, how can we adapt that spirit to today’s circumstances? And we must ask: now that Asia-Africa spirit is reconvened in great numbers and with robust confidence, how can we make it relevant? Relevant to us, and relevant to the world?

Against this note of expectations, it must be observed that the very fact that the Conference took place - and in a modest if not practical way succeeded in outlining the broad contours of political, economic and social cooperation between the two regions - is an important development. Only time will tell whether the Conference has succeeded in shifting the colonial and therefore contrived patterns of linkages from North-South to Africa-Asia and to South-South.

There can be little doubt, however, that trade and investment ties between Asia and Africa are growing at a faster pace than between North and South. The combined share of Africa and Asia in world trade since the 1990s has risen markedly, from about a fifth to over a quarter of world total. Secondly, trade among developing countries has become the most dynamic component of international trade. In the decade of the 1990’s, for example, trade among them grew at an annual average of 11 percent, by far exceeding the 6 percent growth in world trade. As a result, the share of intra-developing trade has expanded from a modest 8 percent to over 13 percent of the total over the same period. More than 40 percent of their exports of agriculture and manufactured products are now destined for each other’s markets. In consequence, the structure of their trade has altered dramatically: whereas two decades ago, primary commodities accounted for nearly 75 percent of their exports, they now account for less than 30 percent. Even for Africa, there has been a modest rise in the share of manufactured goods.

If Africa’s trade with Asia were to continue to grow at similar rates over the next two decades i.e. at just over 10 per cent annually, a massive diversification of Africa’s trade structure is likely to take place. This will not only significantly lessen its dependence on traditional markets of developed countries but also more importantly, re-orient its trade towards the more dynamic markets of Asia. It is therefore not surprising that an increasing number of countries in Africa are designing strategies and polices to take into account this prospect. Zimbabwe’s “Go East” policy, now reportedly under consideration by other countries in the region, is a good example of this trend. They are grounded in emerging complementarities induced by rapid growth in import demand from Asia and growth of Asian SMEs-led investments in Africa.

It is equally true that much of the expansion in trade, investment and technology transfers is autonomous i.e. market-driven and concentrated in a few sectors and countries. If the benefits of such expansion are to be widely shared, it will in all likelihood require much greater attention and involvement of the policy-makers of the two regions. If the emerging trends are to lead to more fundamental and qualitative changes in economic relations, a structure and a system of cooperation will have to be built away from donor-inspired frameworks of EPAS, AGOA and the like.

Regional and inter-regional efforts at cooperation have so far largely focused on the mutual gains from closer economic relations. Without greater commitment and efforts on the part of the political establishments of the respective continents, however, economic cooperation will, in all likelihood, continue to remain below the potential warranted by their complementarities. The New Strategy of Afro-Asian cooperation must accordingly be based on sustained political commitment to ensure its progress and implementation. This includes as close a harmonization of positions as possible in global negotiations on matters of environment, social justice, reforms of global institutions, international trade, investment and other development issues. At the national level, where the primary impetus for greater cooperation must be nurtured, greater effort needs to be made to raise awareness about the political importance of Afro-Asian cooperation.

Arrangements for improved Afro-Asian cooperation must perforce take into account the striking changes that have taken place in the global economic and political environment over the past fifty years. Many of these changes warrant new approaches and engagement of new actors in driving cooperation: for example, the role of technology, of the private sector and in particular the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), improved communications and the need for larger markets in the wake of new integrated production and distribution systems all need to be given considerably greater weight and attention than was the case fifty years ago.

The dramatic transformation of many economies in Asia has altered the scope for mutual cooperation distinctly in favor of increased inter and intra–regional cooperation. The emergence of ASEAN, China and India, among others, as important players on the global scene is beginning to reshape economic geography and the quality of trade relations as they intensify their cooperation with each other and with other developing countries. Likewise, rapid growth and demand for the products of Africa has spurred the interests of business and the investment community in Asia to forge fresh links with Africa.

The real challenge before the Afro-Asian policy-makers is to ensure that patterns of Asian-African trade does not replicate North-South linkages: it must, for example, be informed by new trade rules in which the fruits of value chain are equitably distributed; in which dependency of debtor-creditor relationship is largely absent; in which rules of origin encourage investments and technology transfers at source; and in which the weaker trading partners are protected. It is possible to conceive of a new paradigm of economic relations. But is the political leadership in the two regions really prepared to implement the vision of Bandung?

* Chandrakant Patel is the editor of the Seatini Bulletin. Seatini is the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (http://www.seatini.org/) The latest edition of the Seatini Bulletin, ‘50 years after Bandung, Asia-Africa summit adopts a new pact’, contains a series of articles on the recent Bandung Summit. For more information and subscriptions, contact SEATINI, 20 Victoria Drive, Newlands, Harare, Zimbabwe, Tel: +263 4 792681, Ext. 255 & 341, Tel/Fax: +263 4 251648, Fax: +263 4 788078, email: [email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The onslaught of the biotech industry is a modern day scramble for Africa, with genetically modified crops being promoted as the miracle cure to hunger and poverty with little analysis of their long term impact. The people of Africa and their governments must show solidarity, ask questions, and act.

The scramble for Africa is getting hotter today than it may have been during the Berlin Conference at which she was partitioned. The partitioning of Africa sowed the seeds of discord and conflict that we are reaping today. Today, certain concepts have been painstakingly constructed and foisted on the continent. And this has been done in order to have Africa so compromised that she would simply just beg to be colonised once more. We are talking about the onslaught by the biotech industry on the innards of this continent.

The siege is on. Many people imagine that the pressure on Africa to accept genetically modified grains or other crops as food aid ended with the widely known case with Zambia in 2002. That emblematic case rightly showed that every country has the sovereign right to determine what type of food to eat, irrespective of whether it is purchased in the market or is donated as aid. And it demonstrated to the world that the predicted catastrophe of Zambians starving never happened. The country thereafter recorded food surpluses, besides the fact that in the heat of the crisis the shortage was limited to sections of the country and there were supplies in other regions of traditional crops like cassava and millet that simply needed to be procured for the needy areas.

Genetically engineered food has been presented as the ultimate weapon against hunger in Africa and the world. This is also seriously suggested in the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), meaning that this may be the direction efforts will be concentrated in the years to come. African leaders have largely been co-opted into thinking this way because they are warned that since the so-called Green Revolution train left Africa standing at the station they should not miss the gene train. It has been noted that the Green Revolution required extensive chemical and equipment inputs and although food production increased in some areas, small scale farmers were marginalised, the environment took a beating and on the aggregate hunger was boosted in the world.

The next major push has manifested in the presenting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered cotton (Bt Cotton) as the solution. This cotton variety, which has been engineered to withstand certain pests and to be suitable for use of certain herbicides, has been planted in India, Indonesia, South Africa, etc. The biotech industry touts these as huge successes, but there are many reported cases where farmers have recorded lower yields, and have gone into debt. The manifold cases of failure of Bt Cotton are so well documented that we may not need to go into details here. Suffice to say that industry’s underhand push and shove has been vividly illustrated in the bribery scandal that rocked Indonesia where a prominent biotech industry bribed as many as 144 serving and retired government officials in order to have approval for the commercial cultivation of the variety.

Last year, some governments in West Africa pledged to embrace this same variety of cotton. The next point of call of the proponents of Bt Cotton is Tanzania. All these efforts have been made under the direction of the USAID, one of whose major goals is promoting the spread of GMOs in the world and pointedly working to "integrate GM into local food systems."

The push into Tanzania gathered momentum in 2002 when USAID began meeting with Tanzanian scientists to describe the potential of engineered foods. Some of these USA advocates were also the architects of the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Nigeria in 2004 for a biotech programme managed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria.

The interesting thing about the Tanzanian case is that although cotton production was suspended in the southern part of Tanzania because of the spread of redball cotton disease in 1968, the country is currently experiencing cotton production surpluses. When this is coupled with the record low cotton price in the market, it becomes hard to see what arguments could be pushed for the genetically engineered variety of cotton.

Barring a change of heart, the government of Tanzania has already buckled under intense pressure and the country is set to join Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Burkina Faso and Kenya in conducting confined field trials (CFT) for genetically modified crops. These so-called field tests will eventually open the nation’s doors to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

As already noted, food aid is one of the main vehicles for putting GMOs on the platter of the world. Do we call that charity? Not so. One issue about some of these food aids is that citizens in the recipient country may not even know that their country receives food aid. In 2003 Nigeria received 11000.6 Metric Tons of soy meal as food aid from the United States, under the US title “Food for Progress”. Taking into account that around 60% of soybeans in the US is genetically modified we strongly suspect Nigeria has been receiving GM products without any prior information to the Government, and with our population completely uninformed on this. In 2004 the country was billed to receive 10,500 tons of rice.

People around the world have been vocal is calling for caution in the introduction of genetic engineering in food crop propagation. The biotech industry with their powerful lobby has stoutly resisted compliance with the precautionary principle enshrined in the Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety. The precautionary principle as the name implies requires that countries apply caution when considering or opening doors to bringing GMOs into their environment. One of the reasons for this is that the safety of GMOs has not been unequivocally proven.

The biotech industry thrives on subverting the ability of people to protect themselves and their environments. They do this through deliberate contamination and illegal release of genetically modified crops into the environment. In fact, when environments are acutely contaminated, nations have no option but to legalise the illegality. Many suspect that this may have been the case with Brazil. Also, many reports from North America show that when conventional and organic farms are contaminated by genetically modified neighbours, the innocent farmers are made liable and are forced to pay compensations to the polluter instead of the other way round. This is cowboy justice.

The argument usually put forward as a response to the insistence on caution is that GMOs have not harmed anyone. But how can we know that GMOs have not harmed anyone if there are no serious studies on the populations consuming it? How do we prove damage to human health when there is little or no serious research over the toxicological, long term impacts of GM food? How do we know whether an allergy is caused by a GM crop where adequate tests have not been developed to prove the link between the GMO and the allergy? The large number of questions existing over the risks of GM crops clearly show that the world is not ready for its release until the questions are properly answered.

An example of this need is the attitude of the European Commission, which is about to start new studies to examine the potential “cumulative long-term effects” genetically modified (GMO) crops might have on human and animal health in the longer term. This is coming eight years after the EU first allowed biotech crops. If the European Commission is now commissioning such studies, it shows that we still have a lot to learn from the risks of GMOs. And if that is the approach taken by Europeans, we have every reason to pause and think.

But, the biotech industry is like a bull set loose in a china shop and needs all the controls possible. Recent reports of contamination of food supplies with illegal varieties should worry everyone. We refer to the case of Latin America where corn varieties with StarLink which are not authorised for human consumption have been found in food aid sent there in 2002 and also in 2005. Where they cannot deny the presence of the illegal grain the response of the biotech industry has been that the illegal corn is okay for consumption. No apologies.

Africa received huge quantities of corn from the USA as food aid. From reports Africa was the top worldwide recipient of US corn as food aid in 2004. Three African countries, Angola (62.400 MT), Tanzania and Burundi (28.000 MT) were among the top five. Other African countries included Uganda (20.900 MT), and Kenya (13,600 MT). We recall here that after the refusal of GMO grains by Zambia and Zimbabwe the shipments of food aid to these countries in 2003 and 2004 dropped to zero.

The push continues even though proponents like the USAID recognises that GM corn sent to Africa as food aid “would be expected to perform poorly in African growing conditions” and is “not well suited for planting” . Despite this, the maize keeps coming to Africa. If one country rejects it, it is channelled to another.

We have many reasons to worry. Another reason is that the industry does not have GMOs under control and the risks to health and environment are unknown. A few weeks ago it became public that an untested experimental crop, from Swiss agrochemicals multinational group, Syngenta, called Bt10, has been illegally planted from 2001 until 2004 in the USA. This illegal variety contains antibiotic resistance marker genes, which the British Medical Association recommended not to commercialise due to the potential risks for human health. The EU, Japan and South Korea have already protested against this and are taking measures to test the grains in order to isolate and destroy the illegal variety. All Syngenta could say is that their 1000 tons of Bt10 food entered the EU accidentally. Initially Syngenta had claimed that Bt10 and Bt11 (an already commercialised variety of GM cron) were virtually identical, and therefore there were no risks, but later on it was verified as false since Bt10 contained antibiotic resistant marker genes, while that was not the case with the Bt11 type. What other areas have confused the biotech industry?

What measures are taken by our Governments in Africa? Africa continues to be the biggest corn food aid recipient, not only of grain, but also corn soy blend and cornmeal. Are we going to continue to let our population be at risk and consume these GM products?

Genetic pollution is not comparable to oil or other environmental pollution. Chemical pollution may finally dissipate after a thousand or so years, but genetic pollution on the other hand grows exponentially with time. They simply do not diminish. The problem expands.

With the huge contamination of the world’s corn and soya stock and the risk that it may become irreversible, the biotech industry is now seriously working on commercialising GM wheat and rice. Indeed it is reported that China may release GM rice into the market in the next year. With the bulk of rice in Nigeria coming from Asia, it is a matter of time before GM rice from China floods our supply lines. This is inevitable, unless something is done, and quickly too.

Just to think about all this makes us feel really scared about the food that is placed on our plates, and the seeds that we may be planting. If we blindly follow the biotech agri-business path we are bound to find that all traditional food crops will be genetically engineered in no time and as we have seen already, when the plague hits, the chance of recovery will be slim.

This is the time for everyone, Nigerian, Tanzanian, Togolese, Camerounian, or Swazi to stand up and defend our collective right to live in dignity and to choose what seeds to plant and what foods to eat. We cannot afford to place our future in the hand of an industry that has lost control of its Frankenstein. Our governments, if they represent us, must begin now to ask questions, and to act. Tomorrow will be too late.

* Nnimmo Bassey is Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action and Friends of the Earth Africa GMO campaign co-ordinator. An ERA/TWN African Conference was held 21-23 March 2005 on Genetically Modified Organisms in Lagos, Nigeria and drew the attendance of over 50 participants from 16 countries. It focussed on the enormous and unrelenting assault and the real threat of a GMOs invasion of Africa. The conference brought together civil society groups, government representatives, scientists and academia from Nigeria, Africa, and from Asia.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Issa Shivji examines the possibility of Federation of the Great Lakes Region consisting of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. Such a federation, he states, would boost a genuine Pan-Africanism and contribute towards peace in the region.

The East African Federation is again on the horizon. The timetable is out. The Federation that was much talked about over forty years ago by the nationalist leaders may just come to fruition but under very different conditions. All the peoples of East Africa must debate these new conditions. This time around we should not leave it simply to the states and politicians to unite us. Only if we unite as a people, can we ensure a sustained unity. And as a people we have to widen our horizons to take into account new conditions and possibilities.

There are two new conditions that I would like to raise. First, the original four countries – Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar – which were supposed to be part of the Federation in the early 1960s have contracted to three as Tanganyika and Zanzibar are now Tanzania. As we know, the Union question itself has been a subject of much discussion among us. Do we need to resolve this issue as we enter the Federation?

Secondly, the number of potential members of the Federation has expanded to five. Rwanda and Burundi have not only shown interest but want very much to be part of the process right from the beginning. This is a welcome sign. But we have to go beyond.

We have to think in terms of a Federation of Great Lakes Region (FGLR). The Federation of Great Lakes Region would include the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are many very good reasons why we should think in terms of a greater federation.

The DRC shares longest borders with at least four East African countries, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It is the richest country in Africa holding the world’s biggest deposits of copper, cobalt and cadmium. DRC has seen no peace as its riches are coveted by imperial powers. Even neighbouring countries like Uganda and Rwanda did not spare DRC. The wars in DRC invariably spill over to the neighbouring East African countries whether this is in the form of hundreds of thousands of refugees as in Tanzania or armed conflicts as in Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.

Both peace and prosperity in this part of the world depend strategically on peace, stability and prosperity in the DRC. It is not possible to secure peace without the DRC being part of a larger political entity.

Within the FGLR, Tanzania can play a stabilizing role while at the same time helping to curb what looks like territorial ambitions on the part of Rwanda. The Great Lakes Region is becoming one of the most militarized zones in Africa as Western powers (including, unfortunately, South Africa) continue to pump arms into the region. Within a larger political grouping, it is perhaps easier and more feasible to control civil wars which have been transformed into border wars between countries.

Within the FGLR, given different sizes and resources of the countries concerned, co-operation is likely to be complementary rather than competitive. First, no single country within FGLR has the potential of becoming a political or economic hegemon, unlike, for example, if DRC were to be sucked into the Southern African orbit. Secondly, culturally we can build on the common linguistic foundation of Swahili as the language is widely spoken in the Great Lakes Region. Thirdly, the uneven industrial development among the potential members of FGLR is not as intense as to pose a threat to a mutually advantageous development. Fourthly, the great lakes, the railways and the harbours on the Eastern seaboard provide an excellent web of transport both within the region and with the outside world. Finally, at this stage, a larger federation which includes DRC is to the mutual advantage of both the East African countries, as traditionally categorized, and the DRC.

As a matter of fact, such a project resulting in peace in this region of Africa would dramatically boost genuine Pan-Africanism and bring the dream of African Unity closer.

Finally, the FGLR would be formidable enough to protect itself from the ravages of imperial exploitation while at the same time pausing no expansionist or military threat to its neighbours.

Conversely, an East African Federation as presently conceived with Rwanda-Burundi in and DRC out, has the potential of dragging in the relatively peaceful East African countries into DRC/Rwanda/Burundi conflicts, in the process weakening both East Africa and DRC. Truly, history has not left us much choice: we either federate and create hopes for peace and prosperity or consume ourselves in incessant fratricidal wars.

The vision of FGLR is feasible. Will our leaders rise to the occasion?

* © Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

April 27 was Freedom Day in South Africa, a national public holiday to remember the first democratic elections held in the country eleven years ago. Celebrations took place country wide under the theme ‘Building a South Africa that Truly Belongs to All’. Ronald Elly Wanda visited South Africa last year. Here he reflects on his experiences and concludes that the country has a long way to go before it belongs to all of its people.

Earlier last year I was ill-fated for I missed an opportunity to meet up with some of Africa’s contemporary divas at Hammersmith’s world famous Shepherds Bush Empire (formerly Apollo theatre) in West London. Amongst the divas assiduously imported from rhythmic South Africa were two of my favourites; culturally electrifying Yvonne Chaka Chaka and politically inspirational and poetically soothing Miriam Makeba, the woman whom perhaps every right-thinking African school boy at some point tunefully fell for. Noticeably absent was Brenda Fassie owing to her poor health, she died three months after the event. She will be sadly missed by all who enjoyed her ecstatic and care-free style of music. The festivities were hosted by Republic of South Africa’s London consulate to honour the country’s 10th anniversary under Black rule and as a democratic state.

January of 2004 saw my first visit to South Africa or Azania, a place chock-full of political history and also social ills resultant from the devilish apartheid system. I had other prior rendezvous in Durban and later in Johannesburg, but as a political spectator I couldn’t resist the temptations of comparative politicking to try and weigh whether what the English professors have painted in their thrilling lectures and engaging books was actually anything closer to reality. I am not implying that what the armchair professors have reported are entirely wrong, but that it is sometimes qualitatively functional to hear the story from those who actually went through it. After all, Simeon Strunsky the essayist perhaps had me in mind when he remarked that “people who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library reading Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subways”.

My journey from London Heathrow to Johannesburg had been a fat circus right from the start. Day one, I missed my flight, due to Expedia’s (the internet travel agents) late communication to Virgin Atlantic who subsequently mishandled my E-ticket, not to mention the usual airport pressures.

Having spent a soporific night under the inept hands of Virgin Atlantic, I arrived at Johannesburg as scheduled. I was swiftly welcomed by the wonderful southern comfort (the weather not the drink!) that made me forget all about the horrible wintry English weather that I had left behind for the pitiable London inhabitants. Johannesburg airport’s layout, capacity and organisation are impressive and capable of giving one a counterfeit impression of having arrived in Amsterdam, Berlin or Venice and not geographically south of mother Africa.

Johannesburg, commonly referred to as the ‘city of gold’ is Azania’s biggest commercial centre; it is largely white and quite well to do. My stay at Sandton district was necessitated after a lengthy exploration that left me exhausted and disappointed in failing to find a place to stay in Johannesburg amongst “abantu” (people).

The neighbourhood of Sandton city (formerly Down-town) where I briefly resided boasts about everything that Soweto does not. Large and spacious houses, public parks which are not accessible to the general public, shopping malls, corporate headquarters, hotels and a large tax base to support ample amenities and services. Sandton city’s residents are predominantly white but one can find a few and occasional blacks who are considered better - off aka “Rand-lords”.

I didn’t have to walk very far from my transient residence to notice the huge electrified wall fencings that were supervised by Sandton’s very own police force. They reminded me of London’s city police, who keep watch over London’s fiscal constituency and are known for their brutality against ethnic minority communities. For a minute or so onward, I permitted my mind to wonder what it would have been like for me as a young black person or for that matter a black South African or just a black African caught by these largely white “heavy weaponry carrying” police force. Word has it that during the Apartheid regime the white dominated police force here when dealing with black people, were known to have employed a policy of “shoot first then ask questions later”. How times have changed, I thought to myself.

As elsewhere in Africa, the changes in South Africa came after a long and bruising fight by the people. Through liberation struggles, the working class, black women and the student movements amongst other groups of people fought a bitter war to liberate black people from the slaving system of apartheid. The outcome in South Africa was that Nelson Mandela in 1990 was released having spent 27 long years in prison, South Africa had its first ever democratic election that saw black people voting for the first time in 1994. Expectedly and unsurprisingly, Mandela and the ANC (African National Congress) won the elections overwhelmingly and Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected president. Having served his full term he was succeeded by the country’s vice president Thabo Mbeki in 1999, whose mandate got renewed in the middle of last year by the South African electorate.

Eleven years on, it is often common to come across books and discussion papers written by European and American armchair professors of African politics on how well South Africa is doing. I mean you walk into a library or a political or social forum and all you will see is; “The End of Apartheid”, “The fall of Apartheid”, “The politics of Apartheid”, “Mandela”, “Waiting: the White South Africans”, “The concise History of South Africa.”

I might upset some readers, but I am of the view that there were many concessions made in the run up to the political transition of 1994. Mandela and other leaders who led the liberation struggle abandoned the “real” fight for the people, that of social justice and equality of opportunity. For instance, the laws in South Africa today are formally ‘colour-blind’ and in some cases even promote affirmative action in favour of black people; however from what I saw in Soweto, and in Durban, the country remains an inequitable society. United Nations research has also categorised it as still amongst one of the most unequal in the world. Indeed, not so long ago a government minister was quoted as saying: “South Africa is sitting on a social time bomb”, clearly reflecting the concerns of the majority of poor black South Africans.

It is clear that the ANC has abandoned its core roots and energy - the poor people. The ANC party was born socialist but later adopted capitalism and endorsed the neo-liberal agenda, whose fruit we know is exploitation of the people. The ANC’s economic policy emphasis on market liberalization and tight government control on spending has meant that the working class and poor who are mostly black South Africans have to bear the cost of its conservative economic policy.

I recall one prominent South African panellist during a seminar in London that I chaired, noting that: “Post Apartheid policy makers drew all the wrong lessons from ‘international experience’, and hence have prepared to amplify rather than correct apartheid capitalism’s main economic distortions”.

The compromises made by the ANC government since 1994 has not delivered higher living standards and its systematic ideological conversion has pronounced many people who are already poor into further poverty. My former tutor Professor Heather Deegan in her book “The Politics of the New South Africa” agreeably notes that: “When it comes to education, the legacy of apartheid is still evident in many places. Many children continue to study under the tree, in dilapidated buildings and without appropriately trained teachers. Some schools are hollow shells without even the most basic equipment and few textbooks.”

For if we are to truly judge whether present day South Africa is democratic or not we need to look at the primary essence of democracy. The essential aspirations of democratic ideals are that decision ought to be taken by the people. Secondly, this means that the mass of the people should have some say in what they are going to be, and not just told what they are. Thirdly, this decision should be genuinely the peoples; it should not be manipulated by propaganda, misinformation and irrational fears. And fourthly it should to some extent reflect the peoples considered opinions and aspirations. In my view none of the above tenets are apparent in present day South Africa. This is because the only way we are going to fully realise democracy in Africa is when collectivism prevails, in other words a government by the people for the people.

In this light, it is easy to comprehend the argument of two amongst many of Mbeki’s critics, Professors Dani Nabudere and Patrick Bond – who have articulated that the persuasive powers of the World Bank and IMF - are partly to blame for the fact that a decades old liberation movement disappointed its constituents entirely reasonable aspirations within months of coming to state power.

The exchanges I received whilst in Soweto were enough to make me defend the view that the poor men and women in the townships have got no reason to be cheerful - in spite of ten years of Mandela and Mbeki neo-liberal regimes. For the poor are still poor and the Rand-lords as in Sandton are still getting richer. The liberation struggle ought to continue, free enterprise ought to be dejected whilst collectivism encouraged in order for Africa to fully realise egalitarianism. After all in terms of natural resources Africa is the richest continent in the world. Why are its inhabitants incessantly in poverty?

* Ronald Elly Wanda is a Political Scientist based in London, UK.
[email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

From colonial resource exploitation to the negative impact of rampaging neo-liberalism, Africa has always followed behind the experience of Latin America. With general elections due to take place in late October in Tanzania, Issa Shivji asks why the candidates aren’t talking about how the country is going to avoid recent Latin American experiences with the Washington Consensus?

Latin America in the third world is a good barometer of what follows and what to expect in Africa, particularly in relation to economic policies. Being in the backyard of a superpower, Latin America’s experience tends to be more severe and so is the anti-imperial resistance of its people. The experience of imperialist-generated military coups that we had in Africa during the first two decades of independence was preceded by a similar wave of militarism in Latin America. US-supported Mobutus and UK-Israel supported Idi Amins, were pale shadows of the suppression, torture, and disappearances of the CIA-installed Pinochets.

The pillage of the resources of the DRC, the former Congo-Zaire, is a mirror image of the century old pillage of the timber, oil, mineral and other natural resources of Latin America by imperialism. Now that imperial powers have turned their attention to the African oil in West Africa, Sudan and possibly the Eastern seaboard, we may well be on the way to repeat that tragic episode in Latin American history. God forbid.

In Africa, our leaders tend to cower before our imperial paymasters. Somehow we seem to be so impervious to lessons of history, both our own and others’, that we tragically repeat it. Important substitution industrialization was tried out in Latin America long before we experimented with it. It failed. Yet we didn’t learn from Latin America’s failure. The free market and privatisation policies worked out by the IMF, the World Bank and US Treasury called the “Washington consensus” has been on in Latin America for some time now. The policy prescriptions of the IFIs (International Financial Institutions) for Africa were virtually carbon-copies of those imposed in Latin America.

I once downloaded some of the IFI-generated policy papers for Argentina and found that they were so similar to those for Tanzania; you only had to change the country name and currency denomination!

Argentina became the star of the Washington consensus. The IMF held it up as a showpiece. Water, electricity, telecommunications, gas, post office, the national airline and many other state companies were cut up and sold off within years. Foreign investment flowed in at the rate of US$800 million a month. The GDP grew by 10 per cent. Ten years into the reforms, Menem, once a populist president of Argentina, now wholly taken in by the “Washington Consensus”, went to the US declaring that his country had pulled off an economic miracle: hyperinflation had been brought under control, corruption was reduced and everybody was happy. The Argentinian middle class deposited their pesos in dollar accounts, thanks to easy convertibility.

Then came the great crash in 2001 as banks could no longer honour deposits and billions of dollars flowed out at a faster rate than they had flowed in. Within 5 days in July (2002) alone, 2.6 billion dollars left the country. By 2002 the GDP had fallen by 21 per cent, a performance similar to the depression years of the 1930s. Even middle class professionals, including engineers and bankers and white collar workers found themselves with begging bowls in the street. Some attempted to commit suicide while, once passive, society-women were out demonstrating in the streets banging their fancy, but empty, pots and pans. Governments changed every week. The ‘Washington’ baby collapsed like a pack of cards. Argentina threatened to default on its $141 billion foreign debt. The IMF pumped in more billions which came through the door and left through the window in the form of capital flight and debt servicing.

The rise and fall of the neo-liberal experiment in Argentina, which reduced a once prosperous country to economic ruins, thanks to the “Washington consensus”, made a great impression on the South American continent. A wave of backlash against the free market and privatisation set in. Left presidents have been elected in a number of countries through popular vote, the best example of which is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The American-backed attempt to overthrow him did not survive. He was out of the state house for two days but was literally reinstalled by massive demonstrations of the poor – the “wretched of the earth” - from the slums of Caracas. But the rich and middle classes did not give up. The imperialist media kept instigating and middle class opposition was mobilized to call for a referendum to overthrow Chavez. In August 2004, Richard Gott reported:

“To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States.”

In a recent speech Chavez finally declared.

"I am convinced, at this stage of my life - I am now 50 years old - after six years as a president, after nearly 30 years of political struggle, since 1997, when I had the idea of taking an oath from a small group of fellow countrymen, soldiers, to create the first nucleus - there were only about 5 of us then - of what later became the MBR-200 [Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200] ... after many readings, debates, discussions and many travels around the world, etc., I am convinced, and I think that this conviction will be for the rest of my life, that the path to a new, better and possible world, is not capitalism, the path is socialism, that is the path: socialism, socialism…Capitalism leads us straight to hell.”

The experiences of Latin America are passing us by in Africa. Our intellectuals and leaders continue swearing by the “Washington consensus” whereas we should be learning from history.

In this election year, we should be taking stock of the last twenty, particularly the last ten, years of neo-liberal reforms. In taking stock we should not only critically examine our own experience but also the experience of other continents which have gone through a very similar process. Regrettably none of this is happening. The so-called free media does not even report of such experiences like Argentina. Instead, editorial writers are busy positioning themselves to curry favours from the establishment. Some of them are more establishment-minded then the establishment itself.

Our aspirants for “serving the people” , for that is the cliché politicians use during the election season, are talking little of ‘service’ or ‘people’, and more about preserving “the good” done by the third phase government. But why don’t we also learn from the bad of the first, the second and the third phase and, indeed, from the effects of the global hegemony of neo-liberalism elsewhere?

Aren’t Argentina and Venezuela relevant to our people? Shouldn’t our aspirants be telling us what they have learnt from those experiences and how do they propose to avoid the Argentinisation of Tanzania?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

* Please send comments to

In this keynote address to the Toronto Armenian Community on the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Gerald Caplan explores the ‘solidarity of sorrow’ between the Armenian, Jewish and Rwandan genocides. What these three genocides have in common transcend their differences and all people who believe in justice should work together for genocide prevention, he writes.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots in the spring rain.

T. S. Eliot wrote these haunting, unforgettable words in his epic poem The Waste Land. This was 7 years before the Armenian genocide, which we commemorate on April 24 and which we have no evidence Eliot was touched by. It was 21 years before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the 2nd World War, during the black heart of the Holocaust, which we commemorate on April 19 and which Eliot could hardly have conceived only 2 decades later. And it was 72 years before the genocide in Rwanda, the great genocide of the late 20th century, occurring almost exactly half a century after the world, emerging from the nightmare of Hitler, vowed Never Again. April, when the lilacs bloom again.

The 20th century has gone down in historical infamy as the Century of Genocide. I'm sorry I don't know whether the 1904 genocide by the German army of the Herero people of south-west Africa (now Namibia), the first genocide of the last century, also took place in April. But we do know that the near-genocide of the Fur people of western Sudan has now entered its 3rd April with little respite and no adequate international intervention. We also know from Rwanda and Darfur that Never Again has been trivialized as so much rhetorical bombast by public figures on public occasions, sound and fury signifying little. We now know that unless major strategic or economic interests are at play, if nothing is at stake beyond mere human life, on however massive a scale, then the accurate description of the state of our times is Again and Again and Again.

What we also know, I'm afraid—and this is an equally dismaying observation---is that for a very large number of those descended from victims and survivors of the genocides of our time, the precise concept is in any event NOT Never Again. It's that never again will OUR people be the victims of such a calamity.

I am honored and humbled to have been asked to give the keynote address on this historic occasion. But I also feel outraged and almost morally defeated—as you all must surely be--- that the central message of this 90th anniversary remains the relentless effort to persuade our own government in Ottawa, the Government of the United States, and—I single it out for reasons that I'll try to make clear---the government of Israel, to perform a simple act of justice. We must continue to insist that each of them officially recognizes that in 1915, a classic genocide, wholly consistent with the definition set down 35 years later in the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was deliberately inflicted upon the Armenian people living in Turkey by the Turkish government and army and their proxies.

It happens to be among the several terrible ironies of this humiliating situation that Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-born Jewish lawyer who coined the word genocide and almost single-handedly pressured the United Nations into adopting the Convention in 1948, cited the annihilation of the Armenians as a seminal example of genocide.

I have asked myself why I was selected for this role today. I assume my good friend Aris Babikian, well-known to you all as a community representative, played a key role in this decision. I'm very sorry family matters have prevented Aris from being here today. For those who may not know, I want to tell you that in my view, Aris Babikian is the best single ambassador that the Canadian Armenian community has. NOT because he never stops lobbying anyone with the slightest power and influence about the injustice of non-recognition, although that is true. But because he is THIS community's link to OTHER communities who have shared comparable tragedies. In fact, I regret to say frankly, in my experience Aris is one of only few Armenian Canadians who have shown a genuine interest and who has reached out to such other communities.

And that's why I believe I'm here. Because like Aris, I believe in the solidarity of sorrow and the solidarity of victims.

My own special focus is Rwanda. For various reasons, I came to write a long report, a history, in effect, of the Rwanda genocide. Called "Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide," it documents the organized slaughter in 1994 of perhaps 800,000, perhaps a million - no one yet knows for sure - Rwandan Tutsi and thousands of pro-democracy Rwanda Hutu, and the complicity in or indifference to this genocide by members of the international community. When the report was published, I found myself unable simply to walk away and begin new and unrelated pursuits. I feared that the memory of the genocide, only 6 years after the tragedy, had already almost vanished, assuming any but a bare minority ever knew the truth about it in the first place beyond a few horrific TV images.

Working from my home, I founded an international voluntary movement called Remembering Rwanda, dedicated to commemorating in 2004 the 10th anniversary of the genocide. (The 11th anniversary, on April 7, passed with barely a murmur; I doubt many outside Rwanda knew of it at all.) From the start, I particularly sought out the support and cooperation of Jewish and Armenian organizations.

I had two reasons. I instinctively believed that the solidarity of victims would be obvious to these two communities above all, so that the simple fact of shared victimhood would lead their survivors and descendants to rush to support each other. And I believed (as someone who has always been involved in political action for social change) that for good practical reasons of increased influence, the more of us that we could unite in a common cause, the better for us all.

Despite my long years in the political trenches, I seem to have been stunningly naïve. Of course we found some support. A number of prominent Jews in North America, Europe and Israel lent us their names. A few prominent Armenians did the same. Aris managed to get the agreement of several international Armenian organizations to use their names as well, but I believe that I only ever spoke to a couple of their members in total. During last year's three-day commemoration in Toronto for the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, Aris alone showed up on behalf of the Armenian community. I can tell you how gratified the Rwandans were by his presence. In the dozens of other cities throughout North America and western Europe where commemorations took place, sometimes a few known Armenians were involved, sometimes none at all. Why should this be? I asked a number of people. The bottom line always seemed to be a preoccupation with the Armenian genocide to the exclusion of any other.

This is of course understandable. We naturally all feel most strongly the loss of our own family and kin. But beyond that, the Armenian people, like the Rwandans in certain ways, still must cope with the special burden of official denial. They are assaulted by the harsh reality that the Turkish government to this day refuses to acknowledge the crime that was committed and lobbies incessantly against recognition of the genocide by other governments. I know that this insult continues to drive the Armenian community.

Nevertheless, I must tell you frankly that I found the general disinterest of Armenians in the Rwandan genocide to be not only morally disappointing but from your own point of view, politically short-sighted.

As for the Jewish communities of the western world and the government of Israel, with notable honorable exceptions they failed to respond in a positive manner. I believe that most of the western Jewish and Israeli establishments were more or less indifferent to the Rwandan genocide.

In regard to the Armenian genocide, I must report that these same elements were in the vanguard of denial.

I fully understand that these are very sensitive and delicate matters, and it's much easier not to raise them at all. But that would be running away from uncomfortable truths carrying important lessons. I want instead to try to talk about them as carefully as possible. I'm sure the fact that I'm Jewish- wholly non-religious, even anti-religious, but yet Jewish to my core - complicates the issue considerably. These are thoughts I have tried to work out for several years. Today seems to be an appropriate forum for articulating them.

On the walls of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, are inscribed one of Hitler's more intriguing statements. In 1939, just before he launched his aggression against Poland, triggering the Second World War, Hitler explained that he was dispatching special death squads to Poland that would deliberately slaughter large numbers of Polish men, women and children. But he wasn't remotely concerned about the reaction. "Who, after all," he asked, "speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" In other words, he was saying, with sufficient shamelessness, you could literally get away with murder, even murder of the ultimate kind. For the past eight decades, a series of Turkish governments and their supporters have largely confirmed Hitler's cynical insight, as they have denied the very existence of the genocide and attempted to undermine all attempts to have it recognized.

As it happens, in recent years their bullying and intimidation tactics have increasingly failed, as a growing number of countries have officially recognized the genocide. But to our shame, Canada has not, the United States has not, and Israel has not.

One year ago, the House of Commons in Ottawa voted to recognize the genocide by a large margin, 153 votes to 68. But the entire cabinet voted against the resolution, citing the need to maintain good relations with Turkey. So the bizarre situation in our own country is that the Canadian House of Commons recognizes the genocide of the Armenians, but the government of Canada officially does not.

In the United States, although George Bush promised recognition in his first presidential campaign, he soon enough reneged in the face of joint pressure from both Turkish officials and significant Jewish-American organizations, such as the highly influential American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. This is not often widely discussed publicly. But it's perfectly familiar in American political circles since Congress too has been convinced by this same tenacious lobby to reject resolutions calling for recognition. This lobbying effort was hardly unknown, having been documented last year by the Israeli daily Haaretz among other sources.

I should also stress that on the other hand, and as one would have hoped and expected, prominent among those publicly calling for American government recognition of the genocide were a significant number of Jewish Americans. They included Holocaust scholars, rabbis and community leaders, all of whom had concluded from the evidence that there was absolutely no question that a classic genocide had been inflicted on Turkey's Armenians.

The cooperation between Turkish officials and these Jewish American organizations naturally reflects Israel's own position on the question. That position is an adamant refusal to acknowledge the 1915 genocide, regardless of the evidence. In fact so strongly has this policy been maintained by a series of Israeli governments that it is, unfortunately, fair to say that rather than indifference, rather than the passivity of the bystander, Israelis, with a few notably courageous exceptions, have taken active measures to undermine attempts to safeguard the memory of the Armenian genocide. One of these, I'm afraid, has been to deny that a genocide ever occurred. Here we have the most appalling irony of them all: that those who consider that denial of the Holocaust is tantamount almost to a 2nd Holocaust, have now become deniers of the genocide of the Armenians.

The motives of this almost Orwellian stance are, however, clear enough. There are two.

The first, and the better-known, is based on Israel's determination to maintain a strategic alliance between itself and Turkey in the Middle East. Israel's vital interests are deemed to be at stake here, not to say it's very survival. This is an understandable and easily defended position. But it's a position that places realpolitik and national strategic interests ahead of ethics, ahead of the solidarity of genocide victims, and ahead of Israel's self-declared claim to be a different kind of nation, indeed a "light unto the nations". This is a position that says that even the common fate of genocide cannot take priority over Israel's perceived self-interest.

But this leads to the 2nd reason for Israel's refusal to recognize the genocide, one that I find far more difficult to understand or to share. It is precisely the refusal to accept that the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, or the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, or the Holocaust and any other human catastrophe, can be equated in any way.

As the Jerusalem Post editorialized a decade ago: "There is nothing in history like the Holocaust. It was not even JUST a genocide." The Holocaust must be seen as transcendent, as being in a separate category, from all other presumably "ordinary" genocides like the Armenians'.

I want to say again that these are remarkably sensitive issues, frankly uncomfortable and difficult to discuss. They are felt passionately and unforgivingly by many. For many Jews, both in Israel and the western world, recognizing other genocides somehow diminishes the singularity, the uniqueness, of what Hitler did to the Jews of Europe, and on this uniqueness they are uncompromising. Nothing, they declare, can compare to the Holocaust. It is incomparable. It is unprecedented. It is unique. It is even, in the actual words of two scholars determined to end any possibility of further debate, "uniquely unique".

The significance of this debate has been described by one Israeli scholar this way: "From Auschwitz came two people: a minority that insists it will never happen again, and a majority that insists it will never happen to US again."

This is a helpful way to frame the debate. It points out that the lesson of the Holocaust, or at least the implication, can be seen as either particularistic or universalistic, as either a unique episode in human history applicable only to the Jewish people or a grotesque reflection of the potential capacity of human nature for depravity. Of course every event in history is unique and unprecedented in certain ways, and beyond question some aspects of the Holocaust are literally unique, that is to say, nothing else like them had ever happened before or indeed since. But the same, alas, can be said of aspects of both the Armenian and Rwandan genocides.

I believe that what the Armenian, Jewish and Rwandan genocides have in common transcend their differences.

For what all three have in common is that in each case, a cabal of conspirators set out explicitly and deliberately to exterminate all the members of the target group for the simple reason of WHO they were, not what they did. What all have in common is a demonstration that whether Turks in the circumstances prevailing in 1915, or Germans in the context of Nazi Germany and World War 2, or Rwandan Hutu in the ambience of the 100 days after April 7, 1994 - in each of these circumstances, ordinary Turks and ordinary Germans and ordinary Rwandans perpetrated crimes that no one would have thought them - or any other human being - capable of. I believe that in advance, few of them would have believed themselves capable of such a descent into barbarism.

For that reason, I consider that I too am capable - under unfathomable but feasible circumstances - of perpetrating similar crimes. For that reason, I see in the Holocaust a universal and not a particular lesson.

I see that any people anywhere may suddenly become the victims of unspeakable atrocities.

I see the solidarity of sorrow, not the competition of victims.

I see that all racism, all bigotry, all hatred, all anti-democratic behaviour must be opposed without compromise.

I see the need to fight for the rights of the oppressed and the victimized wherever in the world they may be.

Let me conclude with a quote from an article written in 1918 by a man named Shmuel Tolkowsky. Tolkowsky mattered. He was secretary to Chaim Weizmann, then the leader of the world Zionist movement and later the 1st president of the State of Israel. The article, written only three years after the genocide of the Armenians, was called "The Armenian Question from the Zionist Point of View". It is reproduced in a recent book given to me by Aris Babikian called The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, written by an Israeli, Yair Auron.

"We Zionists look upon the fate of the Armenian people with a deep and sincere sympathy," Tolkowsky wrote. "We do so as men [he meant humans], as Jews, and as Zionists. As men our motto is…'I am a human being. Whatever affects another human being affects me.' As Jews, our exile from our ancestral home and our centuries of suffering in all parts of the globe have made us, I would fain to say, specialists in martyrdom; our humanitarian feelings have been refined to an incomparable degree, so much so that the sufferings of other people - even alien to us in blood and remote from us in distance - cannot but strike the deeper chords of our soul and weave between us and our fellow sufferers that deep bond of sympathy which one might call the solidarity of sorrow. And among all those who suffer around us, is there a people whose record of martyrdom is more akin to ours than that of the Armenians?"

Today I would add: "Or that of the Rwandans?"

So I hope that Armenians, Rwandans and Jews, and all women and men who believe in justice and a better, more equitable world, will work together for genocide prevention, will work together to end the terrible calamity in Darfur, and will work together to ensure that when we meet again 10 years from now, we will commemorate together the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, mildly comforted that, at long last, the entire world will finally have come to acknowledge the terrible, indisputable reality of your history.

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Through the life and work of Yvonne Vera, Shereen Essof and Daniel Moshenberg challenge Pambazuka News readers to see a different Zimbabwe, not the one of nationalist desire, but rather the one in which the national project of Zimbabwe is a project of its women, not alone but at the core.

It is April 18, 2005, Independence Day in Zimbabwe. Twenty-five years ago today, Rhodesia disappeared. Where did it go? What happened on that day? Twenty-five years ago, today, the policemen shouted, “Move back! Move back!” … at least according to Yvonne Vera, in her early story, “Independence Day”, a story which cites the women and children lining the streets to see “The Prince from England”, “the Prince, sent by his mother the Queen.”

In that story, Vera makes her readers see the day, that day twenty five years ago that we know will be monumentalized in perpetuity in that place called Zimbabwe. It is a day of flags and freedom. A day in which everyone who is no one who is on the streets is marked by the forced separation of themselves from anyone who is anyone, from the Prince to the Prime Minister. It is a day in which the national markers of `Zimbabwe’ become visible. It is a day in which a man “celebrates Independence properly: with cold beer and a woman.” It is a day in which men use women as men so often do and “when he was through he sent her home.” It was a day in which the State used women to line the streets, to dance at the stadium, and to wave flags. In the end, “in the morning she saw miniature flags caught along the hedge: the old flag and the new.” It was a day when promises were made, it was a day when people were told “everything would be changing soon. Jobs and more money. Land and education. Wealth and food.”

On Thursday, April 7, 2005, Zimbabwean feminist novelist, activist, artist and storyteller, Yvonne Vera died. Yvonne Vera wrote stories of Zimbabwean women. She brought to the surface their voices and narratives and how they are positioned within the postcolonial context. She articulated women’s struggles, historical and current, in the violence and intensity of survival in the everyday. In so doing, Yvonne Vera engaged in a powerful and courageous critique of the nation-building project in Zimbabwe. Her fiction, always historically embedded and materially astute, offers Zimbabweans a vision of an alternative nation, built on the foundations of often-repressed memories and stories.

Yvonne Vera insisted on looking into and accurately evoking the face and mask of betrayal. She described patriarchy: the ways in which colonialism violated women and the ways in which a patriarchal state betrayed ‘its’ people, those who had fought for so long for freedom. She described the ways in which so many men betrayed `the people’, the women and children, to whom they had pledged trust. She wrote of violation after violation, and of the extraordinary hope and forgiveness that seemed to always mark survival, most often of women. While much of her work focuses on the liberation struggle or the period just after Independence, it remains painfully relevant on this Independence Day, twenty-five years ‘later’.

On this Independence Day, in the current global context, Zimbabwe is often represented as invisible or mad. Vera’s five novels and numerous short stories challenge the readers of Pambazuka News to read a different Zimbabwe. Not the one of nationalist desire, but rather the one in which the national project of Zimbabwe is a project of its women, not alone but at the core. In this tale, women are not invisible nor meek nor timid nor a problem nor a pathology nor victim nor, finally, a means to a good celebration. In this story, Zimbabwe is Zimbabwean women.

In her writing Vera insists that no national independence comes from military forces or nation-states declaring, ‘it is over’, as occurs with depressing results at the end of her collection, ‘Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals?’ Rather, as she states at the end of her final novel, ‘The Stone Virgins’, the “task is to learn to re-create the manner in which the tenderest branches bend, meet, and dry, the way the grass folds smoothly over this frame and weaves a nest, the way it protects the cool, livable places within – deliverance.”

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The continued increase in HIV/AIDS infections across Africa and its disproportionate impact on women have a lot to do with unequal power relations in society. Until inequality is recognised and addressed, it is likely that AIDS will continue to persist, writes ANGELA KYUNGU.

Today, AIDS is acknowledged as a global crisis and in Africa it is the biggest health problem for healthcare workers, policy makers and ordinary citizens. Managing and coping with the reality of AIDS is a never-ending struggle.

It is evident that “the medical and social policy writing, political rhetoric, media representations and public debates around AIDS ignores, sidelines and misrepresents women” who are more vulnerable to the disease than men. “The discourse also repeats the common erasure of women, treating them as differentiated ‘people’ as if their gender were invisible and unimportant. The AIDS discourse also reproduces culture definitions of women as incarnations of sexual danger, biological power and victim-hood” (Squire, 1993). These representations of women in the AIDS discourse serve to construct the experience of AIDS for women.

These factors are reflected in many African countries where the discrimination of women begins at birth. As they grow up, they are socialised into caring roles of cooking, taking care of the home, looking after the siblings, among other household duties. In education, the boy child is schooled whereas the girls get married and do not inherit property from their parents. If the girl child went to school, she would later have to drop out in order to go through the passage of rites, which, in many African countries, involves female circumcision.

There is a lack of recognition for women – as individual beings – as they are more often categorised as ‘prostitutes’ or ‘vehicles of transmission’. They are placed in a precarious position as their role is defined in terms of their potential to infect another person rather than in terms of their own needs. Women are referred to as vectors transmitting HIV to men, or vessels for its transmission to the next generation. Their recognition as women therefore does not exist. This continues to undermine their efforts to create any meaningful changes geared towards their empowerment in life (Squire, 1993).

Currently women constitute 58% of those infected in Sub-Saharan Africa. In almost every country in the continent, the prevalence rates are higher among women than men. The transmission of AIDS among young women is more likely to occur between the ages of 15-44. This is the case as most women are not screened for the HIV antibodies when they attend maternal child health care, as there are no facilities available and no trained personnel to carry out these tests especially in rural areas. It is also the case that 50% of pregnant mothers go to Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs’) most of whom are not tested for AIDS. With unhygienic conditions, for example, unsterilised equipment and no gloves used, it is inevitable that the number of infected women continues to escalate.

It is also the case that women’s professional lives are more likely than men to include working in services such as childcare, social work, teaching and health care. Many women also perform important health educational roles, both in the public and community services. Due to this factor women need to be aware, and put into practice what they learn about the AIDS transmission as a measure of protecting themselves from the infection. They need access to comprehensive services covering contraceptive and reproductive advice; including information on ‘safe sex’ as well as caring for AIDS infected children and partners (Honigsbaum, 1991).

Another major factor that can be used to explain the high prevalence rate in the number of females infected is that of female circumcision. This is referred to as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This is a common traditional cultural practice that has in recent times come to be associated with the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa. It includes “traditional doctors” who use unsterilised equipment to carry out their ‘activities’ therefore making females more prone to AIDS. It is estimated that over 100 million women in Africa have undergone the practice with many ethnic groups, from the East to the West Coast of Africa, being victims. Other activities carried out are those such as ritual cleansing and healing which involves bodily cuttings or puncturing as well as tribal beauty marks and tattooing (Gatei and Onyunga, 1999).

Debates around the origin of AIDS have sparked considerable interests and controversy since the beginning of the epidemic. This has not helped solve the problem; instead it has raised more questions in relation to its origin and rapid spread. In 1993, the World Health Organisation estimated that over 10 million people were infected with AIDS, and that a third of this population were women. Ten years later, more than 40 million people were said to have AIDS (and these were the reported cases only).

It is also reported that more than half of Africa’s population live under the poverty line. With traditional practices still being carried out, gender discrimination still prevailing, lack of proper treatment for most of the infected, among other important factors such as education, the problem still continues to prevail. AIDS prevention therefore is not simply a matter of “infusing large amounts of international aid, educational outreach or even condom subsidization. Until the “global, national, and community antecedents of chronic inequality are recognised and meaningfully addressed” (Craddock, et al: 2004) AIDS will continue to persist across much of Africa and the number of infected persons will continue to rise.

* Angela Kyungu is a gender studies student at Northampton University in the UK but originally hails from Kenya.

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Sources:
Craddock, S. et al (2004) HIV and AIDS in Africa – Beyond Epidemiology, Oxford: Blackwell.
Gatei, M. and Onyunga, P. (1999) Partner – Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium, Vol. 5, No. 2 p. 2-3.
Honingsbaum, N. (1991) HIV and AIDS a cause for concern, London: Saxon Printing.
Squire, C. (1993) Women and AIDS Psychological Perspectives, London: SAGE Publications.

Can Africa’s history of undemocratic and authoritarian states be overcome? WAFULA OKUMA says hard work and commitment lie ahead, but that there is cause for optimism. “With a rich enabling environment, proper political leadership and institutions, a vibrant civil society, and well-meaning and appropriate international support, it would be just a matter of time before the people of Africa start reaping the fruits of democracy,” he writes.

The awarding of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Professor Wangari Mathai, has widely been considered as an acknowledgement, in part, of the role the civil society has played in the democratization of Africa. Presently there are at least 12 retired presidents in Africa who had completed their constitutional terms and handed over power peacefully after elections. Last year witnessed elections in Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia in which long-serving presidents were replaced in elections won by candidates from the ruling parties. Although some commentators have noted a trend towards incumbent presidents being replaced by their chosen heirs, this has not meant a step back in the democratization process in Africa. Interestingly, as the cases of Zambia and Malawi have proven, the preferred candidates of the departing presidents have turned against them after ascending to the high offices. In democratic terms, over the years Africa has witnessed the birth of political parties, active involvement in politics by civil and religious sectors and the opening-up of some democratic spaces.

However, factors such as lack of protection of political and civil rights, prevalence of authoritarian tendencies, tampering of electoral processes, and structural inhibitions strongly supported by the ruling elite indicate that democracy is far from being consolidated on the continent. Other factors that are undermining democratic consolidation are ethnicization of politics and the decay of the State, corrupt and egoistical leaders who have an addiction to power and patronage that only undemocratic governments can guarantee, lack of national ideologies and a national platform of democratization, disunity and disorganization of opposition parties and “pro-democracy” forces, popular lethargy to democratization, and other factors that comprise an enabling environment. Political realities from countries such as Kenya have proven that multipartism does not automatically ensure democratic consolidation, nor does the holding of multiparty elections bring about development and political stability.

Democracy, sometimes used as a euphemism for “good governance,” is now seen as a key ingredient for economic development, a guarantor for peace, and a value that is crucial for the integration of the continent. However, the building of democratic societies depends on the existence of a leadership that understands and embraces democratic ideals, political institutions that will be repository and guarantor of democratic values, and civil society and international actors playing specific and clearly defined roles. Furthermore, a certain enabling environment must prevail.

The Role of Leadership in Democratic Transitions

In order for genuine democracy to flourish in Africa, there must be leaders who are committed to democratic ideals and practices. A daunting challenge facing Africa is how it can get “good leaders” who are committed democrats.

Poor leadership is also exhibited by how badly opposition political parties in Africa are led - an indication of the lack of leadership qualities among those vying to assume the reigns of State power. In view of poor leadership among opposition parties and the unwillingness of the ruling elites to open up the political space for all the major contestants for State power the success of democratic transitions will have to be placed in the hands of a new generation of political leaders. These leaders must have a clear understanding of democracy, make commitments to its ideals, and acquire experience in practicing it through political processes such as party politics. This in essence is a call for leadership training. The future of Africa will depend on leadership with training, integrity, honesty and high moral character.

These leaders will be dissimilar to the present crop that desperately seeks to feel intellectually superior to the masses, believe that they alone have access to ideas that will make the world a perfect place for the masses if they sheepishly follow their ideas, yearn to be makers of history, and have a tendency to substitute their ambitions for leadership, their wishes for ideas and their ideas for truths which others must live by.

The Role of Civil Society:

Civil society is regarded in many countries as the foundation of liberty, agents for promoting political values, and advocates for social justice, democratic participation and good governance. Civil society can play an important role in both democratic transition and consolidation if they remain voluntary, self-regulating, autonomous of the State, and subscribe to sets of common rules that guide and regulate their activities.

In its advocacy role, civil society can act as channels through which citizens articulate their interests, particularly in situations where political parties are weak, disorganized and “represent factional politics rather than competing ideologies” (Dicklitch 1998). Besides being advocates for alternative policy agenda, civil society can also advocate for social change by exerting pressure on the State to make structural changes and to produce policy outputs that enhance societal interests.

However, the role of civil society, like that of political parties, in the democratization process can be impeded by dependence on external funding, hostile governments, and cleavages such as ethnicity, religion and gender bias that characterizes African politics.

The Role of International actors

Although international actors, particularly the donor community, have played a significant role by putting pressure on recalcitrant national elite to make “democratic” concessions, it is also noticeable that foreigners have had their own agendas. The heavy reliance of opposition parties and civil society on foreign support does not augur well for the introduction and consolidation of democracy. This is particularly so because this relationship is creating a dependency syndrome that is detrimental in the long-term, as the democratic values and practices that will eventually be introduced and consolidated will be reflective of those of the foreign interests that supported them. In terms of promoting their own agenda, western donors and patrons seem to be obsessed with elections and adoption of capitalism as conditions for continued financial hand outs. This concern is reflected in how democracy has been used as a “Trojan Horse” for international capitalism, by including “free enterprise” in the package of demands for “pluralism.”

The international donor community, mainly influenced by neo-liberalism, has linked democracy to capitalism on the assumption that only capitalism can limit State power and enhance democratic values (see World Bank, 1996). There are other specific concerns on capitalism’s relevance to, and prospects in, Africa.

First, history has shown that the perversion of the African State has not been confined only to government but also to the market, which is heavily regulated by the government and where formerly highly placed government officials have used their positions to gain footholds. Second, capitalism in Africa, and in other parts of the Third World, has a history of supporting and being tolerant of dictatorship. Third, on a continent like Africa where capitalism is a parody, it is inconceivable to leave key economic decisions to the market forces. Corruption has perverted the market to the extent that graft, intimidation, misuse of public offices for economic gains, and manipulation of market rules for political expediency ensures that a few powerful individuals dominate the market and owe no accountability to the public at large. Lastly, capitalism has a history of allowing a few powerful individuals to control and reap maximum benefits from the market.

The importance of an enabling environment:

The poor enabling environment that has hamstrung the introduction and consolidation of democracy in Africa has historical roots. Colonialism, and later neo colonialism, not only failed to cultivate a political culture which can sustain democracy but also installed inhibitions in the political structures that have been reinforced by power hungry ruling elite. Capitalizing on the poor understanding of their citizens’ political and civil rights, and eager to please western donors and patrons, African leaders have shown no genuine commitment to engaging in substantive democratic practices. Furthermore, no effort has been made to define a type of democracy that fits in the African context and reflects the people’s realities. This means that before we prescribe the societal conditions that need to exist for democracy to be introduced and consolidated, we must first clarify the type of democracy that is appropriate and can survive in the African context.

Creating an enabling environment for democracy to flourish will partly entail political education of the leaders and the masses on the meaning and the practice of democracy. A commonly and universally accepted definition of democracy must be arrived at so that the people know what to expect from the ruling and opposition parties, civil society, the international well-wishers/supporters and others involved in the promotion of democratic ideals. Likewise, leaders should also know what to expect from the ruled and the standards they are being held under. The people in Africa must first agree on the types of societies they desire and, more importantly, agree on their national political values; in the process deciding whether democracy is one of them. It should be noted further that establishing a lasting democracy requires a civic virtue - a civic education of a kind that brings people to understand both the rights and the obligations of citizenship.

State restructuring:

Kwesi Prah (1996) points out that despite the existence of “the will for democratic dispensation . . . in Africa,” there is also “the need for adequate and appropriate institutions, established and respected procedures, accepted conventions and forms of social conduct through which democratic practice can be consistently implemented in the running of the country.” The present African States are colonial creations that are by nature totalitarian, oppressive and undemocratic. Colonial States in Africa were inherited and strengthened by the African leaderships that took over power at the end of European colonialism. By the late 1980s, the States in Africa had not only become more repressive but also burdensome to the people. It is absolutely necessary that African societies that seek to transform themselves into democratic ones must abandon the existing colonial/neo-colonial State structures and practices that are still intact.

Prah argues that “the best institutions and operational rules of democratic organization will amount to little if politicians do not use them in good faith. While the field for the exercise of democracy needs to be kept level at all times, the ground also would need to be (accessible,) accepted and respected by all parties.” In particular, African bureaucracies, that have become mere appendages of the ruling parties that are used to frustrate and harass the opposition and promote the interests of the ruling parties and elite, must be immunized from politics and transformed to serve democracy.

However, it is not only the colonial institutions that need to be eliminated or transformed. Prah notes that throughout the history of colonialism, there was a steady erosion of traditional African institutions by colonial institutions. While some of these traditional institutions and practices were not “totally annihilated,” most were “severely weakened.” Some of these surviving traditional practices have proven to be obstacles to the democratization and modernization of the African State. According to Prah, democracy cannot flourish in Africa “where vested interests, possibly legitimized by corrupted notions of ‘tradition,’ still control key instruments of the state.”

Building the capacities of political parties:

In promoting democracy in Africa, there has been little emphasis on building the capacities of political parties, particularly those in the opposition. Instead, the focus has mostly been on multiparty elections and in particular the number of political parties, how regularly elections are held, and voter turnouts. This in turn has resulted in electoral politics becoming the central focus for the opposition parties, foreign interests and political analysts. By overstocking on the elections, little investment has been made to strengthen the institutional capacities of opposition parties to enable them to be viable contenders for power or to be effective agents for installation of democratic societies.

Prospects for Democracy in Africa

All things considered, what is the prospect for democracy? In assessing the prospects for the consolidation of democracy in Africa, Christopher Clapham and John Wiseman prescribed a “minimalist end of the (democratic) spectrum” which essentially entails “political contestation for public power (invariably between political parties).” I do not subscribe to this view as it calls for giving Africans half-baked bread because it is better than nothing. Despite the pitfalls for introducing and consolidating democracy highlighted in this essay and elsewhere by other scholars of African politics, I am optimistic, like Joel Barkan, that democratic transitions in Africa will continue moving forward rather than backward.

Barkan points out the following as factors that are assisting the transition in moving forward. Firstly, the legalization of opposition parties and the holding of multiparty elections have guaranteed a stake for the opposition and signaled the end of one-party states and monopolization of power. Secondly, the civil society, free press and the opposition have opened up considerable political spaces that are only bound to grow. And thirdly, there is a growth of “anti-regime hardliners” and “transition-seekers” among the national political elites who are still predominantly “patronage-seekers.” However, the prospects for democratic transitions are dimmer in some African countries because political spaces are limited by ruling parties that are dominant political organizations. Furthermore, the ‘transitions’ are being orchestrated “from above” and supported by civil society that is relatively weak and urban based.

While acknowledging the high prospects for democratic transition and consolidation in Africa, we must also point out that it is a daunting challenge not only to develop and to preserve full democracy but also to introduce it. It is an uphill effort that will require enormous political will, national discipline and sacrifice, and vast financial expenses. But with good planning and careful introduction, full and genuine democracy will definitely flourish in Africa in the near future. With a rich enabling environment, proper political leadership and institutions, a vibrant civil society, and a well-meaning and appropriate international support, it would be just a matter of time before the people of Africa start reaping the fruits of democracy.

* Wafula Okumu is the co-editor, with Paul Kaiser, of ‘Democratic Transitions in East Africa’ (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishers, 2004)

Bibliography:
Barkan. Joel. “Protracted Transitions Among Africa’s New Democracies,” in Democratization, vol. 7, no. 3, Autumn 2000.
Beetham, David. “Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Democratization” in Prospects for Democracy. Edited by David Held. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Bienefield, M. “Structural Adjustment and the Prospects for Democracy in Southern Africa” in Debating Development Discourse. Edited by D. B. Moore and G. J. Schmitz. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
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CHRISTINA CLARK argues that in order to fulfil the protection promises made under international legal instruments, UNHCR and the Government of Uganda should allow refugees freedom of movement and the choice to live where they feel most secure – whether in rural settlements, or urban centres.

UN agencies, NGOs and international legal documents often refer to unaccompanied young people displaced by conflict as “the most vulnerable category of an already vulnerable population". As such, they are often deemed to be in need of ‘special protection’. While assumptions of vulnerability should not necessarily be accepted at face value, it is the responsibility of refugee-hosting governments and the international community to fulfil their international protection commitments. However, unaccompanied Congolese young people in different refugee contexts in Uganda consistently report inadequate protection and assistance.

The Ugandan government’s refugee policy, condoned and upheld by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), is that refugees must be in designated rural refugee settlements in order to receive protection and assistance. This policy is based on administrative ease and the belief that refugees inherently pose security threats, rather than on the best interests or wishes of refugees themselves.

Upon arrival in a settlement, refugees are allocated a plot of land, some basic hand farming tools, initial food rations and domestic items. They are then told to construct their own mud hut and begin to farm for food. As part of the government’s self-reliance strategy, refugees’ rations are cut each month to encourage self-sufficiency in food. Refugees who decide for a variety of reasons to live outside of designated rural settlements are deemed ‘illegal aliens’ and subject to punitive action by Ugandan authorities. Some refugees in Kampala have been given exceptional leave to remain in the city, if they can prove their ability to sustain themselves or their families. This means that the legality of refugees' status in Kampala is based on an arbitrary determination of socio-economic status, rather than principles of freedom of movement or other rights.

Unaccompanied minors (UM) are designated as a particularly vulnerable category of refugees by the Ugandan government, UNHCR and NGOs. As such, they are fast-tracked through the refugee determination system and sent to rural settlements as soon as possible. Those who decide to remain in Kampala or ‘self-settle’ in border areas are left to their own devices.

UNHCR will not assist UM outside of settlements, even if they have very good reasons for choosing to live elsewhere (such as, psychological grief associated with massacres in camps and better employment prospects in the city). Seemingly because of fear of territoriality and turf wars, international organisations are also reluctant to get involved. Local organisations that help ‘vulnerable’ Ugandan young people, such as street children and girl mothers, do not feel they can provide assistance to refugee UM. Many think that specialised refugee organisations are/should be taking care of these children/young people.

This means that UM in Kampala often provide for themselves and their younger siblings, while some rely on adults, often Congolese refugees, to provide shelter. While many of the latter are described by the young people as ‘good people’ and in some cases young people congregate around such figures, even when they live elsewhere, there is a huge potential for economic and sexual exploitation. For example, one of my key informants had been taken in by a Congolese family and slept in the living room with about 10 other people. She was subject to unsolicited sexual advances by an adult member of the family and was afraid of being raped. When I reported her protection issues to UNHCR, the protection officer replied that UNHCR could not intervene because the young women had refused to go to a refugee settlement.

However, once UM arrive in refugee settlements, many feel that assistance and protection are no more than empty promises. Like other refugees, they are required to become self-sufficient, farming for food even if they have come from urban, pastoralist or fishing backgrounds. All of the over 100 young people I interviewed in Kyaka II refugee settlement in western Uganda reported that they had never received a visit from government and UNHCR staff. As a 16-year-old unaccompanied male said: "Those people there have no pity for refugees. Even when I came here, I was in very bad condition. They gave me the forest and told me to farm. If I hadn't found the family I am staying with, I don't know what would have happened."

A community services officer admitted that the three staff members allocated for follow-up on ‘vulnerable’ populations were inadequate for Kyaka II settlement, with a population of approximately 10,000 people spread out over hilly terrain. Refugee young people are also disappointed with the poor medical care and lack of educational facilities in the settlement. As one young man who had been living informally in the border area of Bundibugyo before being convinced to come to the settlement said, "When I arrived, I saw life was worse."

In order to fulfil the protection promises made under international legal instruments, UNHCR and the Government of Uganda should allow unaccompanied young people, as well as other refugees, freedom of movement and the choice to live where they feel most secure – whether in rural settlements, or urban centres. This would also contribute to their ability to provide for themselves, consistent with the self-reliance strategy. Unaccompanied refugee young people will also be better protected if they have more direct access to decision-making fora in which they can make their concerns heard. As one young woman eloquently argued, "Even if there isn't material assistance, at least they could talk to us. But they don't want to see us. They ignore people and make them wait for days. Sometimes we see that we are like animals. But, they should be treating us like people."

* Christina Clark is a Commonwealth Scholar at the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. She also volunteers with Fahamu. This article is based on 7 months’ field research in Uganda for her doctoral thesis on the political roles of displaced Congolese young people in Uganda.

* Please send comments to

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is exposing the deadly consequences of gender inequities, writes CHINUA AKUKWE. Practical solutions are needed to a problem that will only get worse if nothing is done.

The UNAIDS report on the HIV/AIDS pandemic highlights the growing rates of infection among women worldwide. Women now account for nearly 50% of all individuals living with HIV/AIDS. However, in Africa, the situation is more ominous. Almost 57% of all individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Africa are women. For Africans ages 15-24 living with HIV/AIDS, women account for 76% of all infections. In South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, young women ages 15-24 have rates of infection that are between three and six times that of their male peers.

The so-called feminization of AIDS appears to be in full swing in Africa. The key question is whether African leaders and elite are ready to make hard choices that would slow down the rate of infection among women. I briefly review these choices. The key is to focus on practical solutions to a problem that can only get worse if nothing is done.

First, are African leaders and governments ready to mount a comprehensive and sustained information, education and communication campaign against risk-behaving practices of men that put women at risk of HIV infection? I am not aware of any African country that is currently implementing a sustained, nationwide campaign against sugar daddies, the use of large sums of money by male clients to encourage sex workers to engage in unprotected sex, the rape of young girls by school teachers, the molestation of young girls by family members and the molestation of street children. African men who have disposable income are at the root of sexual networking in various communities that spread HIV, according to the UNAIDS.

Second, are African leaders and governments ready to address cultural practices that may put women at disadvantage in the fight against HIV/AIDS? These practices include lack of proactive opportunities for women to discuss sexual mores and risks with their husbands, cultural expectations of subservience in sexual matters, the culture of wife inheritance after widowhood, and, the lack of property rights for widows or single women even when they have to take care of small children.

Third, are African leaders and governments ready to invest for the long term on female education? According to latest data from the World Bank, 45% of women ages 15 and above in Sub-Sahara Africa are illiterate. While 94% of boys are enrolled in primary schools only 81% of girls are in school. For starters, primary and secondary school education should be free in Africa to allow young people, including girls, to have a head start in life.

It is also important for African women to have increased access to university education, especially those from poor families. However, to ensure quality education for African women, African governments and rich nations such as the United States and other Western democracies should provide increased, targeted development assistance for Africa. Rich nations and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should provide comprehensive debt relief for Africa with a major condition that significant portions of the savings from debt relief should go toward social welfare programs such as the financing of education initiatives for girls and young women.

Fourth, are African leaders and governments ready to create enabling environments for empowering African women? Limited economic choices and opportunities constrict the capacity of African women to negotiate safer personal behaviors, including sexual relations. Although African women are major sources of economic wealth in many rural parts of Africa, these women have limited control over their generated income due to cultural taboos and traditional practices. African governments should end cultural practices that deny women the right to benefit from their toil and labor. It is also important for African governments to create micro-credit facilities for enterprising rural women so that they could become stable, small-scale entrepreneurs and accumulate disposable income. Women with disposable income are likely to make better personal choices for themselves and their children.

Fifth, can African leaders and governments create political space for women? Unlike many official statistics that cite token numbers of national ministers and top government officials that are women, I believe that in order to fight AIDS, women must be in decision making organs in local and state governments throughout Africa, and also have leadership roles in key national government institutions such as the ministries of finance, national planning and justice.

In addition, African women should be in decision making positions in civil society, local chambers of commerce and local youth organizations that directly interface with the grassroots. It is important to state without equivocation that female representation in national cabinets in Africa should go beyond the obligatory “Ministry of Women or Gender Affairs.”

Sixth, are African leaders and governments ready to create the necessary legal climate and framework that protects women from discrimination and lack of due process? UNAIDS estimates that more than 50% of African countries do not have laws against discrimination of individuals living with HIV/AIDS.

In Africa, according to the UNAIDS, the fear of a HIV test by women, including pregnant mothers, is the beginning of wisdom, since negative societal consequences and an uncertain future may lie ahead if they test positive. For women living with HIV/AIDS, the prospect of dealing with family, community and government indifference and sometimes hostility, can be insurmountable. Legal reforms on rape, sexual molestations, domestic violence, favors-for-forced sexual relations, property rights, and ownership of business are crucial in the fight against feminization of HIV/AIDS.

Seventh, are African leaders and governments ready to invest in public health services that are friendly and accessible to women? National spending on public health services is low in Africa, about US$30 per capita, according to the World Bank. Women face formidable challenges in accessing public health services for conditions such as sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis that are important facilitators of HIV transmission. Privacy and confidentiality is rare in African health institutions, according to the UNAIDS. Societal stigma is common when women become linked to sexual transmitted diseases. In addition, fear of violence may keep women from utilizing HIV preventive services or even showing up for AIDS clinical care, according to the UNAIDS. It is important for the international community to support African nations that seek to implement female friendly health systems and programs.

Eight, are African leaders ready to position gender issues as a major priority of international development assistance? Declarations, statements and formal speeches about gender issues must be coupled with specific policy and program initiatives to end gender inequities in Africa. African leaders, continent-wide institutions and the civil society should make gender equity a cardinal feature of their relationship with bilateral and multilateral agencies.

There is a tendency to point to token appointments of women to prominent positions as celebratory signs of progress on gender issues in Africa. While this is important, the focus should be on hundreds of millions of African women who toil away anonymously, unsung and uncelebrated despite their significant contributions to the economy of the continent.

In particular, African governments should make ending gender inequity a top priority of their partnership with donor agencies. A good measure of serious commitment is the proportion of resources requested by African governments to deal with gender inequities in proposals sent to donor agencies. National budgets should also reflect increased resources devoted to ending gender inequities and creating income-generating opportunities for women.

Nine, can African leaders lead the fight against sexual violence against women. Official, societal and personal silence on sexual violence against women is deafening in many parts of Africa. In particular, perpetrators target female teenagers in some parts of Africa, thereby potentially setting off a chain of events that may leave the young women not only emotionally scarred for life but also the ever possible risk and danger of HIV/AIDS.

To end sexual violence, African governments would have to deny perpetrators of sexual violence, political, economic, legal and social sanctuary. Zero legal tolerance against sexual violence should be enforced and perpetrators subjected to the long arm of the law. Women should be encouraged to come forward with cases of sexual violence and the society should treat them with compassion while the legal system runs its course.

Ten, African leaders and governments must win the battle against widespread poverty in the continent. Poverty is a major reason why individuals, including women, knowingly engage in high risk behaviors that facilitate the spread of HIV. Feminization of HIV/AIDS is closely intertwined with poverty and harsh living conditions.

African leaders and governments should create opportunities for poor women to escape poverty through sustainable macroeconomic policies that improve their vocational skills, provide access to literacy programs, provide incentives for self-employment and allow them to accumulate capital and properties.

Rich nations, including the United States, should work closely with African leaders in this regard. Comprehensive debt relief, increased access to trade for African farmers and businesses, and comprehensive micro-credit programs are also critical policy issues that rich nations can assist African nations as part of a comprehensive fight against poverty.

Conclusion

Efforts to end the feminization of AIDS in Africa must be African-based and African-implemented. For the African woman at the receiving end of HIV/AIDS, the solution lies principally in changing societal beliefs and practices within her family, community, country and the continent.

The solution to gender inequities lies in the capacity of African governments to confront societal beliefs and practices that wittingly or unwittingly put women at risk of physical, emotional and mental harm. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is exposing the deadly consequences of gender inequities. As the toll of HIV/AIDS mounts in Africa and the epidemic gradually assumes a feminine connotation, every policy maker in Africa should work toward the end of all practices that prevent African women from becoming full partners in the titanic struggle ahead. Any serious advocate for comprehensive AIDS remedial efforts in Africa cannot afford to watch from the sidelines the increasing feminization of AIDS in the continent.

* Chinua Akukwe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Constituency for Africa, Washington, DC and an adjunct professor of public health at the George Washington University, Washington, DC. He has written extensively on HIV/AIDS and development issues in Africa.

* Please send comments to

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. UNAIDS (2004). AIDS Epidemic Update: 2004. November. Geneva, Switzerland: Author. Available at the UNAIDS website, www.unaids.org This is the latest update on the global AIDS situation and is dedicated to the feminization of AIDS. Data used in this article are available in the PDF format of the update under the following sections and pages: INTRODUCTION, pages 2-6; WOMEN and AIDS, pages 7, 9-17 dealing on issues such as gender inequities, problems with accessing preventive and clinical care, power imbalances, fear of violence, lack of property rights, cultural taboo about discussing sexual mores and risks with husbands; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, pages 19, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 on issues that affect women in Africa and how it impacts on the spread of HIV.
2. UNAIDS (2004). 2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. July. Geneva, Switzerland: Author. Available at the UNAIDS website, www.unaids.org This document released during the Bangkok AIDS conference in July 2004 contains series of information on the epidemic. The PDF format includes an executive summary that also discusses continued discrimination against women and the lack of enabling legislation that outlaws stigma and discrimination against individuals living with HIV/AIDS.
3. World Bank (2004). African Development Indicators 2004. Washington, DC: Author. This is widely considered the authoritative database on Africa’s development. Data cited in this article are found in pages 320, 322, 323 on healthcare expenditure per capita, illiteracy levels and primary school enrollment. The female economic situation in Africa is shown in page 330 of the document.
4. Chinua Akukwe, Melvin Foote (2001). HIV/AIDS in Africa: It is Time to End the Killing Fields. Foreign Policy in Focus, April.

What exactly was the role of the Catholic Church in the Rwandan genocide? NDAHIRO TOM, a Rwandan human rights commissioner, paints a picture of deep historical and political complicity and calls for the Church to restore its credibility by contributing to the process of justice.

Why do they eat my people as they eat bread? (Psalm 14)

All over Rwandan hills, valleys and mountains, thousands of crosses mark mass graves of genocide victims of 1994. During the genocide, many Tutsis were massacred in or around places of worship, including Catholic churches – paradoxically, in a country which was the most Christianised in Africa, with Christians representing more than 80% of the population. Catholic bishops in Rwanda have sometimes claimed that all Rwandans believe in God. (Kinyamateka, No. 1614, January 2003, pg. 6) There are hundreds of churches and chapels everywhere and almost every day followers repeatedly recite the prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven”, pleading with the Father to deliver them from evil (Matthew 6:13). From where, then, did the malevolence at the root of the genocide come? How and by whom could it have been overcome? Part of the answer to these questions is the Church and its members.

According to Jean-Pierre Karegeye, a Jesuit priest, genocide is morally hideous, an evil expressed in forgetting God, and hence a new form of atheism. Karegeye asks several pertinent questions which merit consideration: “Christians killing other Christians? How could Rwandan Christians who manifested commitment to their faith have acted with such intense cruelty? How did ordinary people come to commit extraordinary evil…? Does the sin of genocide disturb the relationship between God and the perpetrators in official Catholic Church discourse? How can we explain the strange situation of priests involved in the crimes of genocide who are still running parishes in Western countries? Why are they protected by the Vatican against any legal proceedings?” He concludes: “The Church’s attitude towards genocide seems to suggest that the hierarchy of religious values is not usually in proportion to the hierarchy of moral standards.”

Generally, in Rwanda, the leadership of the Christian churches, especially that of the Catholic Church, played a central role in the creation and furtherance of racist ideology. They fostered a system which Europeans introduced and they encouraged. The building blocks of this ideology were numerous, but one can mention a few – first, the racist vision of Rwandan society that the missionaries and colonialists imposed by developing the thesis about which groups came first and last to populate the country (the Hamitic and Bantu myths); second, by rigidly controlling historical and anthropological research; third, by reconfiguring Rwandan society through the manipulation of ethnic identities (from their vague socio-political nature in the pre-colonial period, these identities gradually became racial). From the late 1950s, some concepts became distorted: thus democracy became numerical democracy or demographic.

The philosophy of ‘rubanda nyamwinshi’ a Kinyarwanda expression, which politically came to mean ‘the Hutu majority’, prevailed after the so-called social revolution of 1959 ignored the basic tenets of democracy. In my view, recurrent genocides in Rwanda since 1959 were meant to maintain the ‘Hutu majority’ in power, by killing the Tutsi. Distributive justice became equivalent to regional and ethnic quotas; and revolution came to mean legitimised genocide of the Tutsis.

Church authorities contributed to the spread of racist theories mainly through the schools and seminaries over which they exercised control. The elite who ruled the country after independence trained in these schools. According to Church historian Paul Rutayisire, the stereotypes used by the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government to dehumanise Tutsis, were also spread by some influential clergymen, bishops and priests, before and after the genocide. The Catholic Church and colonial powers worked together in organizing racist political groups like the Party for the Emancipation of the Hutu (Parmehutu).

Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Dévelopment (MRND) was the party which in the mid-1970s had introduced and institutionalised policies of racial discrimination which they termed “équilibre éthnique et régional” (ethnic and regional equilibrium, a quota system). The Church fully supported the quota system, but on 30 April 1990, five Catholic priests from Nyundo diocese broke the silence. In a letter to the Church’s bishops in Rwanda, they called the quota system ‘racist’ and urged that it was high time “the Church of Jesus Christ established in Rwanda proclaimed aloud and tirelessly” to denounce it, since it constituted “an aberration” within their Church. They maintained that the only sure justice in schools and employment was the one which only took account of individual capacities, regardless of people's origins, and that it was on this condition that the country could have citizens capable of leading it with competence and equity.

In conclusion, they said: “The Church should not be the vassal of the secular powers, but it should be free to speak with sincerity and courage when it proves necessary.” The authors of this letter were Fr. Augustin Ntagara, Fr. Callixte Kalisa, Fr. Aloys Nzaramba, Fr. Jean Baptiste Hategeka, and Fr. Fabien Rwakareke. All but the last two were killed during the genocide.

Within the Catholic Church, this discriminatory policy had long been in the seminaries. According to Fr. Jean Ndolimana, the enrolment of Tutsis in the Nyundo diocese was limited to 4%. On the school card, every seminarian had to indicate his father’s ethnic group. Instead of condemning those who were against the racist system, instead of playing an important role in institutionalising injustice by convincing their congregants to accept a morally reprehensible policy, Church leaders should have spoken out against racist discrimination. Regrettably the Church took the side of the political regimes, and thus was unable to exercise its prophetic role. It did not denounce political and social injustices, nor did it condemn the first mass killings, nor those which followed.

It is difficult to describe the position taken by the institutional Church just before and during the genocide. It is appropriate to take note of a declaration made by some “Christians” who met in London in June 1996: “The church is sick. The historical roots of this sickness lie in part with the “mother churches”. She is facing the most serious crisis in her history. The church has failed in her mission, and lost her credibility, particularly since the genocide. She needs to repent before God and Rwandan society, and seek healing from God.” This diagnosis offers a good summary of the situation. The Church lacks a sense of remorse and therefore cannot repent; hence its active involvement, in my view, is the last stage of genocide – denial.

Twenty-nine Rwandan Catholic priests, from Goma, Zaire, wrote a letter to the Pope in August 1994, demanding that the Rwandan government should allow all refugees home and then hold a referendum to determine the country’s political future. The authors of this letter had no good programme for the country. All they wanted was to hold in contempt the Pope’s acknowledgment of the genocide. As early as 15 May 1994, the Pope had declared that the massacres in Rwanda were indeed genocide.

The priests wrote to the Pope: “Everybody knows, except those who do not wish to know or understand it, that the massacres which took place in Rwanda are the result of the provocation of the Rwandese people by the RPF.” These priests, contaminated by the genocidal ideology, placed His Holiness the Pope in the category of “those who did not wish to know,” to cover up their own shortcomings and those of the government they served.

Accepting failure is a virtue. Even so, it is difficult for institutions like the Catholic Church that are known to command respect world wide – above all when such institutions, have been party to policies of racial discrimination and genocide. The Church decided to adopt silence and slander as defence mechanisms. The question is why the Vatican has accepted or tolerated such tendencies.

The call for remorse and repentance still seems unnecessary and problematical for the Catholic Church. In March 1996, Pope John Paul II told the Rwandan people, “The Church... cannot be held responsible for the guilt of its members that have acted against the evangelic law; they will be called to render account of their own actions. All Church members that have sinned during the genocide must have the courage to assume the consequences of their deeds they have done against God and fellow men.”

Had this been accepted and done, it would have helped to end a culture of impunity that has characterised Rwanda for more than thirty-five years. This could have been an established warning to anyone who harboured the archaic racist ideology. It could have acted as a deterrent to foreign mentors, warning that continuation of such politics contravenes the principle of natural justice and is liable to be punished by law. Thirdly, it offers the only premises on which durable reconciliation; rehabilitation and reconstruction could take place or be cemented.

I chose to write about the Catholic Church and the genocide in Rwanda because I would argue it was the only institution involved in all the stages of genocide. As a layperson, it is astounding to hear about the “love, truth and trust” that the Church has achieved in a country where genocide took more than a million lives in just a hundred days, and to see the institutional Church protecting, instead of punishing, or at least denouncing those among its leadership or in its membership who are accused of genocide.

There is no doubt that throughout the history of Rwanda, Church leaders have had ties with political power. The Church was also involved in the policy of ethnic division, which degenerated into ethnic hatred. In order to succeed in its mission of uniting people, the Church in Rwanda and elsewhere must examine its attitudes, practices, and policies that have too often encouraged ethnic divisions.

Church leadership should both be on the side of and be perceived to be on the side of justice and the victims of injustice rather than on the side of genocide perpetrators and deniers. The Church must remember what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his April 1933 essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question”.

As he wrote, one way in which Churches could fight political injustices was to question state injustices and call the state to responsibility; another was to help the victims of injustice, whether they were church members or not. To bring an end to the machinery of injustice, he said, the Church was obliged not only to help the victims who had fallen under the wheel, but also to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself.

Since justice is an unavoidable integral element of the process of reconciliation, the Church should be among those asking that the perpetrators of genocide be brought to justice. If the Church contributes to the process of justice, unity can be re-established among Rwandans, in general, and among Christians, in particular. It is the only way that the Church can restore its credibility, and thus be what it is called to be: a witness to faith, hope and love, to truth and justice. Only in this way will the Catholic Church in Rwanda be able to help save the people of Rwanda –all the people - from future suffering and bloodshed.

* Ndahiro Tom is a Commissioner of Human Rights in Rwanda. This article is a shortened version of a longer article sent to us by the author. Please write to [email][email protected] for a copy of the longer version.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Related Links:

Lessons from Rwanda:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/11/news/eddallaire.html

Pope John Paul II was much loved in Africa and traveled widely on the continent. But the outpouring of grief at his death should not eclipse the way in which the Catholic Church dealt with the genocide in Rwanda and its position on the the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

"He stood for truth and promoted respect for human dignity by speaking against social injustice in the world," wrote a contributor from Zambia. "He always said nothing but the truth and he was fighting war, poverty and terrorism better than no one else because he was trying to unify all faiths, which is the root of all the problems the world is facing," said another from Senegal. "I remember his visit to Nigeria during the regime of the late General Sani Abacha. During one of my country's darkest moments, he managed to bring hope to a populace badly in need of it," was what a Nigerian writer expressed. These were just a few of the many comments posted to the BBC website in the days after the death of Catholic Pope John Paul II. As millions streamed into Rome to get a glimpse of their icon as he lay in state, it was clear from these comments and the overwhelming media coverage that the tens of millions of Catholics on the African continent were in deep mourning for the loss of their spiritual leader.

The Pope was a well-known face in Africa and perhaps it was the fact that he traveled widely that people felt closer to the head of their faith, even loved him for his willingness to show solidarity in often difficult circumstances. He traveled extensively on the continent, visiting 13 times. He took a pragmatic view towards the sometimes uneasy tension between traditional beliefs and the Catholic faith, broadening the base of Catholic worship on the continent. The estimated 100 million Catholic worshippers in Africa will remember him for expressing concern about Africa, denouncing abuse of power and corruption, calling for human rights to be respected in Sudan, appealing for tensions between Christians and Muslims to be relaxed and calling on Nigeria's former military regime to free political prisoners and respect its citizens.

The overwhelming majority of voices on the BBC website were positive, but his role on the African continent does not come without criticism. One of these criticisms was with regards the Rwandan genocide, which this week marks its 11th anniversary. "The Pope was a man of double standards," wrote Thomas Nyambane from Nairobi, Kenya. "He failed to apologise to Rwandese, Africans and humanity in general for the role played by the Catholic church in the Rwanda genocide. Why did he go ahead to protect and even call for the release of the Catholic bishops and fathers who were directly involved in the genocide? We all know of the fathers and bishops of the Catholic church who lured Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be killed in churches."

Last year, as part of our commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Pambazuka News carried an article on the role of the Catholic Church in the Rwandan genocide (http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=150). As one of our contributors wrote in response to a letter defending the Catholic Church: "The collective responsibility of the Church goes well beyond the despicable actions of certain of its members. It was Catholic missionaries who created the false stereotypes of Hutu and Tutsi in the first place, which led to the unbridgeable chasm between them. It was the Church, through its control of the education system, that brainwashed all Rwandans into believing their destructive ideology. It was the Church that made Rwandans believe that ethnic identity was paramount. It was the Church that effectively co-ruled colonial Rwandan with the Belgians. It was the Church that gave moral legitimation to the Hutu dictators who ruled the country after independence."

The response went further to say: "Throughout the 100 days, the Church as an institution failed utterly ever to condemn the genocide, indeed ever to acknowledge that there WAS a genocide happening before its very eyes, not to say with its cooperation. Never did it demand that the genocidaires halt their targeted killings. Nor, after it was over, did the leaders of the Church in Rwanda ever acknowledge their corporate responsibility or apologize for their complicity and/or passivity. As for the Vatican, while it has acknowledged that certain bad apples existed, it too has consistently denied any institutional responsibility."

It is perhaps not surprising that despite the vast international media coverage of the death of the Pope, there has been virtual silence about the role of the Catholic Church in the Rwanda genocide. While rivers were engorged with the bodies of slaughtered Rwandans, the media were either silent, or, at best, portrayed the conflict as merely another typical example of tribal conflict that, in their view, characterizes the continent of Africa.

It is in the area of the fight against HIV/AIDS that the Pope garnered the most criticism for his failure to endorse the use of condoms, seen as crucial in stemming the epidemic. Critics contend that the Catholic Church, with its vast resources and wide access to communities, could have played a crucial role in fighting the epidemic, but had instead chosen to go against the realities of the continent through its ban on contraceptives – and at the same time lending support to the Bush campaign against contraceptives. Not only was the Pope’s stance against contraception seen as representative of a bygone era, but it also undermined the realization of the right of women to have control over the own bodies. This, critics argue, has not only had a negative effect on the struggle for women’s equal rights but has also perpetuated the unequal status of women in society and thus further contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Again from the BBC web site: "One should not forget the millions of HIV victims, most of them Africans. Had the Pope blessed condoms and family planning programs instead of preaching a rigid and damaging dogma, he certainly could have saved many more souls. Wasn't that his job?"

The Editors
Pambazuka News

'I am glad they have banned it.' So said a colleague who walked into my office the day after the news of the play’s banning by the Media Council.

‘Why?’ I asked her very quietly.

‘Because now we can clearly see what we are up against. How dare you women celebrate your womanhood, condemn sexual oppression, and the abuse of women’s bodies. And you not only dare to do this, but in public also? What? You look at it from their point of view. Don’t you know that your vaginas are dirty, obscene, distasteful, vulgar and evil? Don’t you know that these ‘things’ no matter how much they suffer should be kept private? Haven’t you yet understood that the only ones who can talk with authority on these matters are men who think that way about you and women who think that way about themselves? Really you women, where do you get the nerve to talk about vaginas in public? Don’t you know this is not how ‘respectable’ women behave? You have embarrassed good women everywhere. Our cultures are sacrosanct. They should never be questioned or challenged. You who have done so are morally corrupted’

We laugh.

So is it our cultures or our religions we are worried about?

Well both. We should safeguard our African Christian, cultural values against the surge of western immorality!

So when for example, the Christian religion says we are all made in the image of God (every single part of our bodies that is), it means that it is wrong for us to refer to the vagina as vulgar, dirty and distasteful, because we are denigrating the image of God?

Well no, because culturally this is how we refer to these parts of the body.

Oh, so it is wrong for us to challenge these socially constructed practices, even though we may be dishonouring God in adhering to them?

Well, yes. In this case yes. We think.

Which case is that? The case in which the issue touches on the rights of women of course. In those cases, we always refer to that which sits comfortably with patriarchal notions of what a woman’s place should be. Women are used to this (even those who were opposed to this play). They have steadfastly challenged patriarchal cultural practices and norms. They have gone to school, own property, left abusive marriages; some have even chosen not to marry. But now many of them turn and point the finger on those who dare to challenge the last and most insidious bastion of patriarchal oppression. The notion of women’s bodily integrity and autonomy; the idea that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone to do with as she chooses is so scary to so many of us, that we quickly hide behind some of the very defence mechanisms we have so long challenged. Culture. African cultural values.

I think that we should be very careful how we fashion our arguments. For hiding behind cultural relativism has been the very tool used to stamp our oppression in the past. We pander to racist and sexist stereotypes about what African culture is when we do this. We paint a picture of this fossilised, immovable, intolerant, reactionary, monolithic culture. Let us also not forget that in the past these arguments have been used to safeguard dictatorial regimes. Concepts such as human rights, democracy, and gender equality were all once referred to as ‘western and alien concepts’. So whilst we Africans were stuck in oppressive, repressed, dictatorial, cultural systems, the west was showing us the way forward? What absolute garbage. The fact of the matter is that the oppression and exclusion of peoples, on the basis of race, gender, and ethnicity and so on is a universal practice, which each society justifies with slick explanations of culture, religion and what have you. And just as it has been practiced in every society, so has it been resisted.

‘Corruption of our values by western immorality is one of the biggest challenges of our time’ So said the good Minister of State for Information Dr Nsaba Buturo in his press briefing statement. I am sure he believes it. But really some of us think that compared to the subjugation of our economies to the west, this is a stroll in the park. But there you have it. This is where the Minister concentrates his energies. And not very well one might add. Well let’s look at subscription TV and what it frequently beams into our homes. No bans there. Let’s look at all the salacious print media that is around for everyone to see? No ban there. What about all those watering holes dotted around the city, which feature goodness knows what. No, no ban there. What about the corruption that is endemic in our society and which denies so many their right to basic social welfare? Nope. No moves there either. Has he managed to get all those government officials and employees who have abandoned their children to at least pay child support? Last I heard, that was not on his radar. In fact no action anywhere except for where some women want to stage a play called The Vagina Monologues. Ahh.

Of course we have heard from a number of those who have seen the play and condemn it as pornography from the west. I cannot argue with their experiences, it is pointless to do that. Because in doing so, I silence them; relegate them to the back of beyond; as somehow completely unimportant. Their view is important, and they can exercise their right to stay away. I hasten to add, that several others have seen the play, myself included and have been liberated by it. Our views and experiences have simply been ignored and silenced by the bully boy tactics of some of our ministers (whose backgrounds we are all really keen to know) and their cronies.
The play has a different effect on different people. It is as simple as that. And in that sense this play is no different from any other.

‘The message is good but you should have packaged it differently’ some now say. Hello? Have you been on the moon? What have women’s organisations been doing all these years? 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Seminar after seminar. Tree after tree chopped down, to produce report after report which presents these issues to fit comfortably with people’s sensibilities. And where are we? As I write this, these reports sit, gathering layers of dust in a number of people’s offices. In the meantime, the crisis escalates (this is by the government’s own reckoning).

‘Say it in vernacular!’ Others scream. They throw this as the biggest defence against staging the play. Well, as I recall, a number of this same group argued for ‘gender sensitive language’ in the drawing up of the 1995 Constitution. This principle document now uses ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘woman ‘and ‘man’ as the case warrants. Why did they do this? Language they argued, is patriarchal in nature. It is socially constructed and it reflects societal, cultural norms. Quite right too. And by the same token I say that any language that refers to the essence of womanhood, the vagina (by that I mean, that which distinguishes a woman from a man) in ways that are derogatory should be questioned and challenged. Not protected and defended.

And then there are the ‘Pastor’ Sempas of this world. With them, one should waste as little energy as possible. So I will not bother much, except to say, that someone from police please enforce the ban and throw this man in jail. He has been reading at will, the very excerpts from the play that were banned by the Media Council for all and sundry to hear. And boy does this man shout! ‘The bandit is enjoying this!’ laughed members of the cast as we listened to him read the script on the radio a few days after the play had been banned (He actually reads quite well). But here’s the thing. This man has had the opportunity to read the book from cover to cover. And having done so, he has arrived at his own conclusions about the play. Fair enough. But what he then seeks to do is to deny others the same opportunity to make up their own minds, by calling for the play’s ban.

Well this is after all in keeping with the tradition in the wave of charismatic churches that is sweeping this nation. Any man (for they are usually men) who can shout beyond a certain decibel, can set up a ‘church’. And in this so called church he is free to preach what he chooses in the name of God. Many a wealthy lifestyle by our ‘Pastors’ has been funded from the proceeds of the congregation’s sweat. ‘Bring no coins here!’ they shout. ‘God only wants notes!’ They expect absolute obedience from their followers. They tell the congregation what to think, do and say – some even whom to marry. They have killed their congregations in Kanungu, and have hoodwinked women into believing they are carrying miracle babies in Kenya. They hold night vigils for ‘healing’ and ‘curing’ the sick of HIV/AIDS to exorcisms. The term ‘Born Again’ becomes the new mantra and license to engage in some of the most iniquitous and scandalous behaviour imaginable. But no matter. If people choose to go to these churches, I do not have the right to stop them. I recognise, and respect their right to do it. That they do not extend me the same right to watch the Vagina Monologues is neither here nor there. One of us has to be principled.

Incidentally someone called up on one of the TV stations to ask the ‘good Pastor’ Sempa, why his church is littered with used condoms every time he has night prayers. I have never seen anyone look as pitiful as did this man. Actually for a moment he looked like a frightened mouse. But only for a moment. For this man is nothing but a slick performer if you like that sort of thing. Quickly he regrouped and hid behind a barrage of slanderous attacks on Isis-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (a co host of the VDay Campaign in Uganda). This is a very morally upright man of God after all.

I regret very much the government’s handling of this play. But I also know that you cannot keep a social movement down, certainly not through actions such as these. Those in power forget very quickly that the generation of ideas, their examination, debate and dialogue are the hallmarks of a democratic society. Drunk with power, they use the long arm of the state to silence people in ways that are so transparently unfair and unjust (and incidentally very highly immoral). And they plant a seed that germinates quietly underground. You cannot suppress ideas, just because they upset your sense of propriety. And then to lean on the apparatus of the state to do this is so outrageous and in the long term highly damaging. Leaders who pander for cheap popularity at the expense of principled governance, lose very quickly, the respect even of their most ardent supporters. For intrinsically, deep in the recess of their sub consciousness echoes that tiny but persistent voice: Today, it has been the turn of so and so. Tomorrow, might it be me? Don’t take my word for it. Let us examine our histories very carefully.

The positive side to all this, is that this play and the issues it is trying to raise has reached a wider audience than would ever have been possible had the state not interfered in the way it did. ‘You mean these ministers and all have banned the play? Ahh then there must be something good in it for women!’ Radio stations, email list serves, arguments, counter arguments, discussions in living rooms, on matatus, in the market place, with parents, children, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, it is everywhere. Young people have been exposed (as it were) to the hypocrisy of the older generation. They have watched as scoundrels, wastrels, wife batterers, runaway dads, swindlers, idlers, extortionists and playboys have formed a most unholy alliance with men of the cloth to see this play banned. And they have watched in utter disbelief, those in the women’s movement, who have joined this band of merry men. It is the pedagogy of the oppressed, we try to explain. Oh no it is not, say they. It is downright dishonesty, opportunism and immorality.

But all that is by the by. The play is banned and that is all that matters now. Or is it?

* Sarah Mukasa is Programmes Manager for the East and Horn of Africa at Akina Mama wa Afrika

* Please send comments to

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has amended the Constitution to allow for multi-party elections in September. Mubarak’s firm grip on power, however, means that he is unlikely to face a serious challenge. Rather, writes Joel Beinin, the future of Egyptian politics will depend on whether popular political initiatives are capable of building a social movement for change.

President Husni Mubarak’s unexpected announcement that Article 76 of the Egyptian constitution will be amended to permit a direct and competitive vote in the September presidential election has captured the attention of the international and local media and political classes. The substance of the proposed constitutional amendment, announced on February 26, remains undetermined. While the president will not run unopposed in a single-party referendum, as he has done on four previous occasions, a multi-party contest might not end his 24-year rule. Past multi-party elections for the parliament have been plagued by voter intimidation, fraud and other dirty tricks intended to pad the ruling National Democratic Party’s majority.

It is far from clear that Mubarak’s decision heralds the birth of genuine electoral democracy on the Nile. Moreover, focusing on top-level political maneuvering misses the pressure from below that has played a significant role in forcing this concession from the regime.

For the last several months, a disparate collection of burgeoning movements among several sectors of Egyptian society has converged upon one message: opposition to the status quo. Since December 11, 2004, the Kifaya (Enough) movement has organized three demonstrations demanding that Mubarak step down and that he refrain from handing off the presidency to his son, as happened in Syria and in the “democratic” US-allied monarchies of Jordan and Morocco. Kifaya activists have collected well over 1,000 signatures of public figures on a petition calling for a direct and contested presidential election. Members and supporters of the Ghad (Tomorrow) Party have loudly protested the incarceration of their leader Ayman Nur. Human rights activists have continued to criticize the regime’s arbitrary roundups of Islamists in response to the October 7, 2004 terrorist bombings in the Sinai resort of Taba. Workers have engaged in long strikes protesting the business-friendly policies favored by Mubarak -- and, even more so, his son Gamal. In covering these developments, the non-governmental media have gone well beyond previous limits on freedom of the press.

Since 1952, no Egyptian head of state has been targeted directly in this manner. A taboo has been broken, and there is no telling where these popular movements may lead.

A strike against privatization

Some 12 miles north of Cairo, 400 textile workers at the Qalyub Spinning Company, a branch of the ESCO conglomerate, have been conducting a sit-in strike since February 13. They are protesting the government’s sale of their mill to a private investor because they believe private-sector management will not maintain the levels of wages and benefits they have achieved since ESCO, like most other significant Egyptian manufacturing firms, was nationalized in the early 1960s. The strike began because the government and company management failed to deliver on promises to provide an adequate early retirement package in response to a shorter ten-day strike in October 2004.
Privatization of the public sector has long been strongly supported by Washington, as well as Egypt’s creditors at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Fearing social unrest, the Mubarak regime delayed the recommended privatization measures for years before moving with relative vigor to sell off state-owned enterprises in 1993. Despite several bitter wildcat strikes and indications that privatization was contributing to a greatly widened gap between rich and poor, that state passed over 100 factories into private hands between 1993 and 1999. In May of 1999, the International Monetary Fund declared itself satisfied that Egypt was finally heeding its advice. But the selloffs stalled as the economy stagnated. The sale of the Qalyub Spinning Company is part of a renewed wave of privatization. Textiles, one of the largest and perhaps the most storied of Egyptian industries, have been targeted because the sector has been in crisis since the 1970s due to competition from east and southeast Asia.

The first step in preparing firms for privatization is reduction of the labor force. The six ESCO mills employed some 24,000 workers in 1980; they have been reduced to 3,500 by a combination of attrition, a hiring freeze since 1987 and five waves of early retirement packages, the last in 2000. At ESCO’s Bahtim facility, the administrative offices, garage and spinning mill were all sold to a private investor without any obligation on his part to employ the workers who previously worked there. The striking ESCO workers believe that the long years they have worked in the mill -- many have 20 to 30 years seniority -- entitle them to continue working there rather than being replaced by new workers who will undoubtedly receive lower wages and benefits. Basic monthly wages now range from 250 Egyptian pounds ($43) to 600 pounds ($103) a month -- below the poverty line at the lower end of the scale.

The Qalyub Spinning Company workers believe the state is divesting itself of valuable assets without due process -- and at bargain-basement prices. Gamal Shaaban, a skilled worker with 23 years seniority, asked, “With what right was the sale [of this mill] conducted?” The workers own 10 percent of the firm, but they were not consulted about the sale. “Muhsin Abd al-Wahhab al-Gilani [the CEO of the public-sector holding company that owns the mill] agreed to the sale. Was the company his property or the property of the people?”

Muhammad Gabr Abdallah, a night supervisor with 28 years seniority at ESCO and a spokesperson for the workers, led a tour of the mill and explained that in 1999 the company was valued at 60 million pounds. In 2003 the government invested 7 million pounds in capital improvements, including computerized spindles. It then concluded a three-year lease agreement for 2.5 million pounds a year with a businessman named Hashim al-Daghri, expecting that he would buy the mill. Before the lease expired, the mill was sold to al-Daghri at the steeply discounted price of 4 million pounds.

The ESCO workers are highly conscious that their strike questions the fundamental direction of Egypt’s economic strategy. Not only are Gamal Mubarak and his entourage of US-educated economists and business tycoons intent on introducing more free-market policies, but in December Egypt also concluded a trade agreement with the US creating seven Qualifying Industrial Zones where foreign and domestic factory owners will be free to pay structurally lower wages. Rashid Muhammad Rashid, the new minister of industry who is associated with the younger Mubarak, attempted to parry nationalist criticisms of the agreement by claiming that the zones would revitalize the struggling textile sector. Indeed, the Qalyub facility is not the only mill on the auction block. Gilani announced on February 25 that the Delta Spinning and Weaving Company is up for sale.

“Ask the government”

Because of the political importance of the Qalyub strike, activists from the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services in Helwan have supported the workers. Journalists from al-Ahali, the weekly of the legal left National Progressive Union Party, and the open-minded English-language al-Ahram Weekly have written sympathetic accounts. The new English-language weekly, Cairo, published an equivocating report that nonetheless contained more information than is commonly available in Arabic.

In contrast, Ibrahim Nafie, chief editor of al-Ahram, made it known that he was not enthusiastic about covering the strike in the quasi-official, Arabic-language daily. The workers have received no support from the state-sponsored Federation of Spinning and Weaving Unions. Federation spokesman Ali Muhammad Mansour agrees, however, that ESCO cannot pay the workers an adequate retirement package. Early retirement packages have been an integral but controversial component of Egypt’s privatization schemes. The downsized workers first receive a lump sum, which the state encourages them to invest in a small business, and then a monthly stipend that is often much less than the pension they would have received had their factory remained state-owned. Workers have long complained that the stipends are too low to meet the rising costs of living. In the severe downturn that has afflicted Egypt’s economy since 1999, the limited appeal of the lump sum payment has also diminished. The ESCO trade union representative resigned because he did not want to bear any responsibility for the packages on offer to the Qalyub Spinning Company employees.

ESCO’s management is equally aware of the import of the strike. Sitting at his desk below a poster of the shrine of the Kaaba in Mecca, the manager of the mill, Sayyid Abd al-Fattah, an ostentatiously pious Muslim with a large prayer scar on his forehead, evaded direct answers to questions put to him by a group of journalists. He complained that the workers were “pressuring” him and the private investors to accede to their demands. To buttress his claim that the current strike and the one in October 2004, for which three days’ wages were deducted from workers’ pay checks, were illegal, he pulled the text of the New Labor Law (Number 12 of 2003) out of his desk drawer and quoted the appropriate sections. It is almost impossible to conduct a legal strike in Egypt, as this requires the approval of the government-controlled trade union federation.

The striking workers have proposed three options to the ESCO management and the government. They want their mill to remain in the public sector. If that is impossible (as is likely since the contract of sale has already been signed), they want the workers to be permitted to transfer to other mills of the Egyptian Holding Company for Spinning and Weaving, which manages all textiles firms in the public sector. If they cannot be transferred, they want to receive “reasonable” early retirement packages. The third option is the sticking point, because while 10 percent of workers’ monthly wages are deducted for retirement benefits, the company has not paid its matching 20 percent share into the retirement fund since 1992. Consequently, the retirement fund is not able to pay out an adequate retirement package. Abd al-Fattah was asked if the company’s failure to prime the fund was not as illegal as he asserts the strike to be. He responded, “Ask the government.”

Political Islamists

The 287 workers at the Egyptian-Spanish Asbestos Products Company (Ora Misr) in Tenth of Ramadan City, one of six satellite communities built by the state to ease population pressure in greater Cairo, have been on strike since November 20, 2004. The owner of the factory, Ahmad Abd al-Azim Luqma, is known as a member of the Muslim Brothers -- an illegal but semi-tolerated Islamist party widely considered the largest and most organized opposition force in Egypt. The workers assert that he arbitrarily fired 52 workers after the Ministry of Labor Power closed the factory because of health code violations. Luqma has also refused to pay the workers’ wages since September. They claim he intends to sell the plant’s stock of raw materials and to evade paying the fine the government has imposed on him and the compensation due workers for health damages.

The Muslim Brothers have a long history of breaking strikes and opposing militant trade union activity going back to the 1940s, when they clashed with communists in the textile center of Shubra al-Khayma, north of Cairo. The Brothers continued to oppose the left during the 1980s and 1990s. But in this period the Brothers-Labor Party alliance adopted a more pro-labor stance, though this did not necessarily lead to pro-labor practices. Since the 2001 death of Adil Husayn, a former communist who became an Islamist and a leader of the Labor Party, the Brothers have returned to their traditionally pro-business stance.

At Ora Misr, the workers’ factory-level trade union committee is supporting their strike, although their trade union federation is not. The government, although it is no friend of the factory owner, has not acted decisively to break the impasse.

Some suspect that the government is highly strategic about when it chooses to confront the Muslim Brothers. The regime knows the extent of the Brothers’ popular support, and, for that reason, its leaders are periodically arrested. But an all-out assault on the Brothers carries many political risks in an already unstable political situation.

Muhammad Mahdi Akif, who assumed the mantle of general guide of the Society of Muslim Brothers just over a year ago, has announced that the Brothers will support a fifth term for Husni Mubarak on the grounds that the Qur’an says that Muslims should obey their leader. This is a political maneuver designed to persuade the government to legalize the society -- a long-sought goal. Liberal-minded leaders of the Muslim Brothers -- those now in their fifties who joined during the Islamic upsurge of the 1970s -- objected vociferously and publicly to Akif’s statement. The organization is deeply split, and it is unclear if it can maintain its historically tight discipline.

A different face of Islamism was evident at the February 22 press conference called by Human Rights Watch to publicize its report on the mass arrests and torture of at least 800 residents of the northern Sinai town of al-Arish following the Taba terrorist bombings. Eight women from al-Arish -- wives, mothers and sisters of those incarcerated -- attended the event. They call themselves salafis -- a reference to the era of the Prophet Muhammad and the first four caliphs. Salafis believe that Islamic faith and legal practice should be derived solely from the example of this first period in Islamic history. One woman, speaking in a polished Cairene accent, announced her name and related the tales of several of her imprisoned male relatives. She said that her brother, who has been in jail for 18 years, urged her to speak out strongly against the regime. Otherwise her husband, who was arrested without a warrant or a judicial order after the Taba bombings, and is being held without charge, would remain in jail for 18 years as well. She then sharply and directly attacked Husni Mubarak using language rarely heard in public.

According to Human Rights Watch, Egyptian authorities are holding as many as 2,400 people without charge following the sweep in the coastal town, despite having identified only nine people as having a hand in the Taba attacks. On March 4, some 50 women in al-Arish demonstrated against the continuing detention of their male relatives and shouted anti-government slogans. Police intervened and closed off the area.

American-style opposition

Members of the Ghad Party, which embraces pro-US, pro-free market policies, have shouted slogans and hung banners out the windows of their headquarters in Talaat Harb Square, a major Cairo intersection, on numerous occasions since their leader was arrested on January 29. Nur, a wealthy, aristocratic lawyer, was arrested on the rather ridiculous charge that he forged signatures on the petition to found the party. Some believe Nur was jailed because he published a draft of a new constitution with far more substantial changes than Mubarak and his acolytes are now discussing.

The Ghad Party proposed abolition of the emergency laws in force since 1981, limits on the nearly dictatorial powers of the president, and a limit on the number of presidential terms in office. These demands echo those of other parties and influential individuals. In other words, in contrast to the largely formalistic “national political dialogue” that convened at the end of January, Nur and the Ghad Party put some of the substantive political issues facing Egypt on the public agenda. Although still incarcerated, Nur has announced he will run for the presidency. He is the most credible candidate who can be put forward by the legal parties. One of the apparent devils in the details of Mubarak’s “bombshell” is that parties the regime does not recognize -- like the Muslim Brothers -- will not be allowed to field a candidate.

There is little doubt that Husni Mubarak will win even a relatively free election, assuming that he runs, because the political, media and educational infrastructure for a viable democratic political system does not exist and cannot be installed by September. A similar scenario would likely apply if the father contrived magnanimously to withdraw his name from the race in favor of the son. Consequently, the future of Egyptian politics will not be determined by the amendment of the constitution.

Rather, it will depend on whether these popular political initiatives are capable of building a social movement for change. While such a movement has not yet coalesced, challenges to the regime by human rights activists, workers and other marginalized strata show no sign of abating and are becoming increasingly sharp. Ahmad Sayf al-Islam, the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, assisted Human Rights Watch in its investigation of the al-Arish detentions. At the HRW press conference he accused the government of breaking into his home and stealing his laptop computer for a second time two days earlier. Sayf al-Islam’s exceptionally bold public statement addressed itself to “tyrants, pharaohs of Egypt” and concluded, “the fish starts rotting from the head. Don’t you smell the rot of our fish?”

* Joel Beinin is a professor of Middle East history at Stanford University and an editor of Middle East Report. This article was originally published in Middle East Report Online (http://www.merip.org/). It is reproduced in Pambazuka News with permission.

* Please send comments to

Zimbabwe is not the only country in Africa where the issue of land is of crucial importance. Across Africa, conflicts over land have been at the heart of centuries-old political struggles. In Kenya, resistance against colonial rule was crystallised through struggles over land, writes Odenda Lumumba. The Giriama, the Maasai, the Kikuyu, the Nandi and the Luhya and Pokot reacted violently to colonial land dispossessions and the struggle over land continues to this day.

The manner in which individuals or groups in Kenya hold, use, occupy, possess or have access to land since colonial rule to the present is a history of how land lies at the heart of many potential and violent conflicts. This assertion is based on the fact that the word conflict as used in this paper is very fluid: referring to debate, contest, disagreement, argument, dispute or quarrel; a struggle, battle or confrontation; a state of unrest, turmoil or chaos over land. Going by this definition I submit that land related conflicts in Kenya are a common, everyday occurrence. Indeed, land-related conflicts in Kenya stem from colonialism, which not only imposed alien land tenure relations in Kenya, but also introduced conceptual, legal and sociological confusion in the traditional tenure systems then prevailing in traditional Kenyan society before the advent of colonialism.

The colonial regime in Kenya proceeded from a land-related conflict assumption that customary land tenure systems were inimical to modern imperatives of agricultural development or indeed to the then colonial settler economy. Henceforth, colonialism embarked on three events i.e. expropriation of land through a process of alienating large tracts of land and dispossessing indigenous people of their land, imposition of English common property law and transformation of customary land law and tenure. These three processes are the beginning of the land-related conflicts that Kenya has experienced to date.

Precisely, the land-related conflicts became prominent when Kenyans of African origin were crammed into native reserves from 1926 and were exacerbated when the process of individualization of tenure in the reserves in the mid-1950s started with a deliberate aim to completely transform African communal tenure relations into individualized land holdings. When the colonial regime realized that individualization alone could not solve the land-related conflicts, it enacted the Registered Lands Act, whose purpose was to provide the legal framework for the extinction of claims to individualized land based on African customary land law. The land-related conflicts in Kenya continue to be pronounced because both the economic and legal frameworks upon which the relegation or intended extinction of customary land rights was based have failed the test of time. Land relations in many parts of the country are still actualized on the basis of customary law, even where such land is registered under Registered Land Act. Communal tenure systems are still very much part and parcel of the social and economic fabric between and within ethnic societies in Kenya.

Thus, the land-related conflicts are prevalent due to the fact that the instrumentality of English/Common law has failed to socially engineer an irreversible movement from communal tenure to individual tenure. Neither has the jurisprudence developed by the courts of law succeeded in extinguishing customary land rights. The bottom line, therefore, is that land-related conflicts in Kenya are a persistent issue that must be comprehensively addressed by the ongoing National Land Policy Formulation Process. For there are many problematic aspects to it that require clear discussion from a policy point of view. The land policy will, however need to address practical aspects of the nature and effects of land-related conflicts as opposed to purely theoretical or academic perspectives.

The land policy shall have to clarify the many legal questions that have gone begging in this regard. And in so doing the wide structural inequities between the 'land-haves' and the 'land-have-nots' as a major cause of land-related conflicts shall have to be addressed. This aspect is paramount as long as agriculture remains Kenya's economic mainstay. Especially remembering that, of the total land area of 587,900 square kilometres that comprise Kenya's landmass, 17.2 per cent is of high and medium potential while the remaining over 80 per cent is arid and semi-arid.

Land and conflict: actors and processes involved

The land developments discussed above were to have far-reaching implications for the African natives in Kenya. Land being at the centre of Africans' survival and a major force of production to white colonial settler economy, it sparked off sharp social, economic and political inequalities, which in turn led to numerous land-related conflicts, of which the Mau Mau independence struggle was the main one.

Many Kenyan communities starting with the Giriama at the Coast, the Maasai in the sprawling savanna land of Kenya, the Kikuyu in the Central highlands, the Nandi in the Nandi escarpment and the Luhya and Pokot in the western highlands reacted violently to the colonial land dispossessions. Underlying alienation of land was a policy of exploitation and oppression against the colonized communities who were 'herded' in reserves to create room for intensification of agriculture by the settlers using forced native labour. These policies generated land-related conflicts that have an indelible mark on the future of Kenya.

The result of 'herding' African communities in the reserves was massive landlessness, especially in those parts of the country that were in settler agricultural and other allied economic activities. Landlessness, quite understandably, led to poverty, discontent and eventually open land-related conflict. That is how organized political dissent by Africans against whites and white rule started to loom. The essence of this dissension was the deterioration of life due to mounting land pressure, overstocking and soil degradation in the reserves, which spurred the whole country into the liberation struggle (the land and freedom struggle).

At independence, the government was faced with the land-related conflict of how to settle the landless and displaced people. Obviously, people wanted the land for which they fought; yet the government was faced with the need to sustain the economic development then, which was a predominantly settler economy. The conflict situation was exacerbated by the fact that the government did not abrogate the colonial legacy but instead retained policies and laws inherited from the colonial regime with regard to land ownership and use. The land settlement schemes further generated land related conflicts in Kenya because most communities did not get back their land, given that in granting independence, the British government made sure that the rights and interests of the settlers who opted to stay in Kenya were safeguarded.

Secondly, even the lands that were availed for redistribution to the landless Africans were at the market place under the policy of "willing buyer, willing seller." This arrangement only aggravated land-related conflicts because those communities who lost their land under the then communal/customary tenure further witnessed their customary land at independence being individualized to those who could afford it at the market place. This was a further entrenchment of land-related conflicts which forty years after independence still manifest in the form of land clashes of 1990s and the current simmering land-related conflicts in form of historical land claims throughout the country.

Resettling the landless through settlement schemes or process has further generated land-related conflicts because since the 1970s the government reverted to a system of Settlement Fund Trustees, which due to corruption and mismanagement has generated further conflicts in settlement schemes where the squatter problem has been used to settle the politically correct individuals leaving squatters conflicting over the very lands that was meant for their settlement. Since the settlement schemes were not sufficiently addressing the landless problem the government encouraged purchase of land through the land-buying companies and farming cooperatives by the landless pooling resources together. The land-buying companies and farming cooperatives have increasingly contributed to land-related conflicts because they have been badly abused by politicians as a means of swindling land-hungry peasants. This process was supposed to facilitate the subdivision of the purchased land among the members in accordance with their respective shares. But more often than not the contributors towards the intended purchase have been cheated out of their money, hence massive land-related conflicts. The government intervention to cause subdivision of land among members and the issuance of title deeds has dragged on, leading to further land conflicts.

The land-related conflicts have involved all manner of actors at different times, at around independence and immediately after independence in the 1960s the land issues activated the ethno-regional conflicts that saw the polarization of politics between Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) and later Kenya Peoples Union (KPU). These land-related conflicts reemerged in the early 1990s as Kenyans pushed for multi-partyism and continue to simmer during the constitutional debate. Indeed land-related conflicts and the stalemate over concluding the constitutional review process is a conspicuous feature of the country's failure to address the land question, which lingers on in the executive and devolution provisions in the new draft constitution.

The other important link to land-related conflicts is the mortgage institution and how it relates to rights of access to land. In Kenya individualization of land was and is meant to enable the registered proprietor to offer his title to a financial institution in return for credit. Thus, lenders stretching from banks, finance houses, and building societies have been forced into land-related conflicts with defaulters in the effort of realizing their security upon default. The rural people are engaged in protracted land related conflicts with financial institutions resisting being disinherited because they argue that the policy of the mortgage institutions was ill-conceived from the very outset in that the peasants whose land was offered as security did not have any entrepreneurial skills or experience in credit management to guarantee the possibility of the mortgage institution realizing their security upon default. So serious is the land-related conflicts out of the land mortgages that the state has been forced to intervene to stem the obvious effects on social order, but up to now the state legislative and administrative actions have failed to resolve the problem.

The other land-related conflicts in Kenya manifest themselves through what is commonly known as the human-wildlife conflicts. Kenya adopted an ambitious wildlife management and conservation arrangement through gazettement of large tracts of community lands as national parks, national game reserves and conservancy sanctuaries. In the process. communities are excluded from such lands, which are managed as public trust lands under the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). But given that most of these lands have eaten into grazing rangelands of pastoralist communities and agricultural lands of crop agricultural communities, permanent and potential land related conflicts occur between communities contingent to wildlife areas and the KWS as an agent and directly between human beings and wildlife. The use of ecologically sensitive areas such as forests and riparian reserves is emerging as another major cause of land-related conflicts between conservationists and beneficiaries of illegal and irregular allocation of such lands for political patronage.

The other land-related conflicts arise and concern the extraction and mining of mineral resources in varied areas of the country the major ones being experienced are from the coast - the salt mining, titanium mining, ruby mining and further inland the gold mining, sapphire mining, fluorspar mining, and limestone mining up in the hinterland. The conflicts are mainly because the government has excluded legislatively mineral resources from land rights of communities contingent to mining areas. This deplorable scenario does not answer the concerns of sharing of benefits from mining and mineral resources.

Away from natural resource utilization and benefit sharing land-related conflicts there are also numerous land-related conflicts arising from land dispute resolution mechanisms. In Kenya our courts are clogged by land conflict related cases, which have held back development endeavours. Land Dispute Tribunals are also clogged up with land-related conflicts, which are waiting arbitration.

The latest land-related conflicts arise from the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land ('Ndung'u Commission'). The commission in question was set up to inquire into corruption surrounding public land dealings from I962 as a cut-off date selected by the Commission up to December 31, 2002 when the appointing NARC government came to power. The Commission, which took nine months to investigate into the scams, inquired into protected lands for environmental, conservancy and security reasons i.e. covering forestlands, national parks, national game reserves, sanctuaries, wetlands, marine parks, protect security lands for police, prison, military and state houses and lodges; public lands for settlement schemes; public lands in townships, municipalities and cities; and public lands held and set aside for use and carrying out the mandates of State Statutory Bodies (Parastatals) ranging from provision of all manner of infrastructure, research and development public purposes. The land-related conflicts arising from the exercise of this Commission are first and foremost the government's belated release of the Commission report under suspicion of an effort to doctor the report.

In a nutshell the actors in the land-related conflicts in Kenya are the public sector, private sector, civil society and the community sector. Thus in a number of highlighted land-related conflicts all interface as victims and perpetrators. In terms of processes they range from legal, policy and institutional frameworks put in place for economic, political and social development, which appear to have failed the test of time.

The conclusion flowing from this discussion of land and conflicts in Kenya are that:
- The land tenure regimes inherited from colonial rule are still a major source of land-related conflicts which need to be revisited in order to address cases of historical injustices that manifest themselves in the form of squatters, absentee landlordism, land clashes and all manner of lingering land claims.
- Building capitalism on the basis of disputed land rights in Kenya is a major drawback because while we have succeeded in integrating 10% of Kenya economic and political elites into western type of ownership of property we have failed to address the plight of the majority Kenyans who live below poverty in an assumed pool of labour, both actual and reserve labour. The Kenyan example of going through land conflicts occasioned by individualization of land ownership is a pointer to other African countries that individualization of tenure per se does not produce miracles to development and eradication of poverty. So much reflection is required to overcome this quandary of spurring economic growth and development.
- Vesting land rights through the law does not resolve land-related conflicts or historical injustices and obstacles to development simply because the law is in place to protect what was unfairly and illegally taken away from Africans by colonialists and even fellow Africans at independence.
- Customary land rights cannot be transformed into individual land rights successfully by simple adjudication of land rights as a legal and political process without appraisal of ecological and traditional land use system in varied areas of the country.
- New land dispute resolution mechanisms need to be thought-out to address too many land disputes to ameliorate future land-related conflicts, without resorting to multiplicity of land law systems that are in themselves an obstacle to development.

* Odenda Lumumba is National Co-ordinator for the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA)

* This is an extract from a paper 'Land-related conflicts in Kenya: policy and legal implications', presented at a conference in December 2004. The African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) has just released proceedings of the conference on "Land Tenure & Conflict in Africa: Prevention, Mitigation, and Reconstruction", held in December 2004 which is available on the web at It includes papers on Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, as well as overview papers on customary land tenure, Oxfam GB's work on land rights in Africa, human security-centred approaches, and the work of UN-Habitat and UNEP.

Pambazuka News was founded as a platform for social justice in Africa. Since its establishment in December 2000, the newsletter has sought to be a vehicle for commentary, debate and information for those committed to the cause of social justice in Africa. The newsletter is now 200 editions old. This article explains the history of the newsletter, its future plans and contains a listing of messages in support of the newsletter.

>>>>>

Today, more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s 600 million people still live on less than $1 a day. Two hundred million go hungry every day. This year at least a million Africans, most of them young children, will die of malaria. More than 28 million Africans, many of them young children, are living with HIV/AIDS. Forty per cent of children never go to school in Africa – the only region in the world where the number of children out of school is rising. Malaria, HIV/AIDS and preventable maternal mortality are estimated to kill one million people per year (or 2,800 per day) in Africa. Add to these the numerous ongoing conflicts, each claiming hundreds of thousands of lives every year and there may be justification in characterising Africa as a wasteland of conflict, disease and poverty.

Africa continues to be portrayed as the object of pity, a ‘basket case’, a 'scar on the conscience of the world'. Charity, not justice, governance, not self-determination, appear to be the watchwords of the West. Although the Blair Commission on Africa report calls for 100% debt cancellation instead of debt relief, the fine print makes clear that such cancellation of debt remains, as ever, conditional. Africa faces once again an externally driven agenda for social development that combines a narrowly defined programme of privatisation with a broadly defined program of globalisation – the recipe of structural adjustment programmes and poverty reduction strategy papers that have become so tediously familiar over the last two decades and which, many would claim, have exacerbated the destitution of the region.

But as Nelson Mandela so aptly put it at a public rally in Trafalgar Square, London, in February 2005: ‘Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural, it is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.’

And that encapsulates the basic premise upon which Pambazuka News was founded - to be a platform for social justice in Africa. Since its establishment in December 2000, Pambazuka News has sought to be a vehicle for commentary, debate and information for those committed to the cause of social justice in Africa.

The newsletter came into existence in response to the demands of human rights and other civil society organisations in Africa where access to the internet – and in particular the worldwide web – was limited, slow and expensive. Fahamu, the organisation that publishes Pambazuka News, and whose mission it is to put the technologies and the resources of the internet at the disposal of the movement for social justice in Africa, responded by providing a service which summarises each week current contents from key websites, lists, and other materials sent to the newsletter for publication. In addition to these summaries, we commission and publish editorials on key issues related to social justice in Africa.

Over the last four years, we have provided a regular stream of information for social justice organisations. The email newsletter now has a subscriber base that exceeds 15,000. Pambazuka News is widely forwarded and reposted, and it is estimated that the newsletter therefore reaches between 60-70,000 people on a weekly basis. This number excludes those who read the newsletter online at (receiving more than 250,000 visits a month) or at Allafrica.com where the newsletter appears in full each week.

Responses from our readers and supporters tell us that we’re doing something right. Pambazuka News, writes one supporter, acts as “a confluence for scholarship and activism that does neither sacrifice the rigour of analysis not the optimism of commitment”. Another reader writes, “Information is power and when you send to us the news it is like you send to us some power, the power to know what's happening”. Lastly, we are told from the DRC that Pambazuka News “allows militants for a better Africa to find and proclaim the conditions of that politics on the basis of fidelity to the daily defense of peoples' rights, people's resistance to inhumanity and thus to the fidelity to the equality of humanity”. You can read the full responses below.

Since our beginnings we have been enthused by the way in which information from the newsletter has been used to advocate, lobby, inform, educate, debate and change. We are proud to have been associated with a variety of advocacy efforts, including the ongoing campaign for the ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and an earlier campaign for freedom of expression

There is much work that needs to be done to optimise the power of information. We plan to expand our readership with French and Arabic editions of the newsletter. Internet access is still extremely low in Africa and we would like to produce audio versions of the newsletter for broadcast via local radio stations. We also hope to expand our use of SMS services to reach those without internet access. This year we have already begun producing a series of ‘social justice readers’ on peace and security, regional integration, gender, trade, debt and the millennium development goals. You can help support us and make these plans possible by donating at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/donate.php

To mark the 200th edition of Pambazuka News, we have published a collection of editorials that appeared in the newsletter during 2004. ‘African Voices on Development and Social Justice’ can be ordered directly from the publishers (see details below) for only US $15. If you can’t afford that, you can always read the editorials for free at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Pambazuka News has been successful because of our readers. So a big thank you and congratulations to you all on this 200th edition.

COMMENTS ON 200TH EDITION OF PAMBAZUKA NEWS

1. I consider Pambazuka News an indispensable source of news and analysis for anyone interested in Africa. I've enthusiastically recommended it not only here in Canada but to all my contacts and listservs around the world. It's an invaluable service, and I never fail to put aside time for it each week. I'd be lost without it. – Gerald Caplan

2. Thursday evening/Friday morning is Pambazuka time. A weekly source of information and inspiration, offering a wealth of facts and a variety of opinions on a wide range of relevant issues. Pambazuka News has become a regular part of my intellectual diet in office, through which I access insights into African affairs otherwise difficult to obtain. I am particularly proud to have the honour to be associated as one of the active contributors to this truly African discussion forum. It offers me a forum to share my analyses and views with thousands of committed activists, who all have the people of Africa at their heart and in their mind. - Viva Pambazuka!" - Henning Melber, Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala/Sweden

3. On the occasion of the 200th edition of Pambazuka News, I must congratulate you all for your continued commitment and dedication by giving the readers excellent analytical editorials and information, not merely related to Africa, but relevant to the rest of the world, also. – Reggie Gomes

4. I find the Pambazuka News extremely well done. It contains a lot of interesting reading and useful information. Please continue! - Bosse Hammarström

5. I would like to congratulate the editorial team of Pambazuka News on the important land mark of reaching 200th edition. The online magazine has become required reading and a reliable reference point, but above all a very useful forum not just for those who are interested in social justice and social change in Africa but those directly engaged in the struggles. It is an interface between, to paraphrase a Philosopher not often quoted these days, Karl Marx, 'those who interpret the world' and those who have taken up the challenge of 'changing it'. A confluence for scholarship and activism that does neither sacrifice the rigor of analysis not the optimism of commitment. Aluta continua. - Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

6. Congratulations on reaching the 200th issue of Pambazuka News. Being in the publishing business, I know what it means not only getting material to publish but also getting it right and disseminating it in time to beat the deadlines. All people interested in African issues must, as I do, find Pambazuka News an indispensable resource for clear, concise and engaging discussions as well as background analyses to contemporary African issues. Now that we have published Pambazuka’s editorials for 2004 (African Voices on Development and Social Justice), it is an added resource for researchers and activists wishing to keep up with events. Pambazuka News is to be congratulated for a job well done. - Walter Bgoya, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania.

7. Bon Anniversaire, I'm glad to wish to Pambazuka News many, many good things and a long long life in cyberspace - Your work is very important for me because I have some difficulty to have real information about the human rights situation in the world and you give me more opportunity to express my point of view and to know what others are thinking. Information is power and when you send to us the news it is like you send to us some power, the power to know what's happening. I'm from a French country, but the effort I make to understand what you write and to say what I want to tell makes me so happy, it's a good exercise!!! May God bless all staff of Pambazuka news. Kisssssssssss from Kinshasa in DRC (the heart of Africa) - Christy-A. Masamba

8. There is no richer source of breaking information and analysis about Africa than Pambazuka. Thanks for your 200 gems, they are required reading at our Centre for Civil Society in Durban! - Patrick Bond, director, CCS (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs)."

9. Pambazuka News is for me a real site of a politics from the point of African peoples, from a distance from African states; it is a site which allows militants for a better Africa to find and proclaim the conditions of that politics on the basis of fidelity to the daily defense of peoples' rights, people's resistance to inhumanity and thus to the fidelity to the equality of humanity. The site allows people to read the infinity of situations facing African peoples in view of sorting out possibilities of the ways out. – Ernest Wamba dia Wamba

10. We have found Pambazuka to be an invaluable source of commentary and news about Africa from an African point of view. We are proud to be associated with your initiative and wish you every success in the coming years. - Sarah Hobson, Executive Director, New Field Foundation

11. On March 31, Pambazuka News will release its 200th edition. Their staff deserves a hearty congratulation. Published by Fahamu, the substantive well-written weekly e-newsletter unites civil society across Africa with coverage of regional policy and politics, plus development, gender and human rights issues. Pambazuka means arise or awaken in Kiswahili. Pambazuka now has over 15,000 subscribers across Africa and around the world. If you are a social entrepreneur in Africa--or work on African issues--you should be reading this free newsletter. - Michael Chertok (http://www.socialedge.org/socialsector/)

POEM READ OUT BY HUGH BAILEY, UK MP, AT THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF ‘AFRICAN VOICES ON DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: EDITORIALS FROM PAMBAZUKA NEWS 2004’

Albert and Elsie Ramsbotton
Went to Scarborough for the day.
A cold wind blew along the beach.
The sky were overcast and grey.

The place was about as miserable
As a seaside place can get.
Their hands were froze, the pubs were closed,
And their fish and chips got wet.

“I’m right fed up with England,”
Said Albert to the wife.
“Let’s take a package to the sun
And see a bit of life.”

They’d only been abroad before
On a weekend trip to Bruges
And that were not to broaden minds
It were more for fags and booze.

It were Elsie’s life ambition
To see a wild elephant
So they safaried to Malawi
Although it broke the bank.

And as they drove around the place
On their big game package tour
They saw the animals had lots to eat
But the people were very poor.

A beggar boy called Cholo
Showed Mrs. R. his stump.
“Get out of it!” said Mr. R.
He gave the lad a thump.

But Elsie’s heart were tender.
She overcame her fears.
“Take this,” she said, “a crust of bread.”
Her eyes were filled with tears.

Then up jumped little Cholo
And this is what he said,
“I want a proper breakfast.
“You can stuff your crust of bread.”

“The bugger’s got no manners,”
Said Albert, quite put out.
He turned bright red. He grabbed the bread.
The little lad got nowt.

But, like us all, the Ramsbottoms
Were kindly folks at heart.
They never thought perhaps they’d got
The horse behind the cart.

When they got home to Yorkshire
Albert went out to get some beer
So Elsie put on t’telly
And this is what she heard:

The news from Africa was bad.
The people had no food.
A church group were protesting
But it wouldn’t do much good.

The vicar guy went on and on
About basic human needs.
It were all above her head
About GMOs and seeds.

But one thing stuck in Elsie’s mind
About the rich world’s aid.
We’ve lent so much to Africa
It’ll never be repaid.

Pambazuka News had summed it up.
With a two liner from a hack,
“For every pound we give to them
Our banks take two pounds back.

Now Albert and Elsie Ramsbottom
Are trying to work out
What death disease and refugees
And life are all about.

So this story has a moral,
Although it’s rather strange you see,
The people who have got to change
Are really you and me.

Hugh Bayley MP
(After Alistair Beaton)

ORDERING INFORMATION FOR ‘AFRICAN VOICES ON DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE’

SPECIAL PROMOTION FOR PAMBAZUKA NEWS SUBSCRIBERS

Readers in Africa can obtain a copy of the book from Mkuki na Nyota Publishers (see below) for US$ 15.

Subscribers elsewhere can buy the book for UK Pounds 10 (normal price 17.95 pounds) for a limited period ­ until 30 April ­ provided you can prove that you are a subscriber to Pambazuka News. You must quote the words "Pambazuka News Subscriber Offer" and include your email address (so we can check whether you are a subscriber) and send your order to [email][email protected]
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