Zimbabwe, according to Chris Alden, faces multiple crises - legitimacy as the postcolonial consensus crumbles, expectations stemming from the failure of the economy and polity, and confidence in the impartiality of the institutions of the state. All of these aspects can be seen as a crisis of security. The state is increasingly repressive as it is centralised but undermined to defend the elite and its clients/ supporters simultaneously. Many see this as illogical, but it marks the ultimate if narrow realpolitik form of security where the state re-defines itself as the only element of society that needs security. It parallels the transition of the state from settler forms to the immediate (and popular) post colonial nationalist path to the incorporation of neo-patrimonial elements as an emerging economic and power bloc uses naked power as its only form of survival.

Traditionally the idea of ‘security’ has been associated with the national state, agreements between different militaries and different politicians - and it has been a male arena. What are the implications for security and identity when weak nation states are increasingly unable to make policy as power shifts to global social formations and policy is formulated through global networks and markets led by transnational corporations, multilateral financial and trading institutions, and (to some extent the ‘Aid’ and NGO community) rather than territorially-based states?

Whilst there have been sometimes successful resistance and democratisation struggles within southern Africa, this has been halting and liable to reversal. Often it has been formalistic with little empowerment of the population. Recent resistance has arisen to stabilisation programmes in which Southern regimes under pressure from Northern financial institutions and growing balance of payments constraints introduced policies abandoning service provider functions that led to breakdown of social services. Priorities moved from fulfilling popular demands to the removal of market barriers. The upshot of states losing their distributive capacity means state-society relations become highly confrontational. ‘Good governance’ breaks down under the effects of neo-liberalism leading to the disappearance of consensus, political centralisation, peripheralisation of certain groups and generalised repression.

One form of resistance is regionalisation. It is however, contradictory, as both part of and a reaction to globalisation. As the Cold War world system of two antagonistic blocs ended, security has certainly become regionalised. Economically this is reflected by TNCs dominating regional economies as the new basis of international relations.

The President of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee (linking 480 NGOs), Brian Raftopoulos, sees the fight for democracy as part of the struggle for an alternative political dispensation in Africa between two uninviting positions. ‘On the one hand there is a global superpower, espousing liberal democratic values, but policing an economic agenda producing widespread global impoverishment; on the other hand this system of global inequalities is breeding an authoritarian nationalism in countries like Zimbabwe, that demands uncritical solidarity, and in which there is no place for national state accountability. Solidarity seems to mean little more than a defensive reaction to broader geo-political concerns. While it may provide some short- term solace to regimes facing a national crisis of legitimacy, it is a grossly inadequate basis for imagining alternative futures. The real need to build up co-ordinated African positions on global inequalities has also to be based on the democratic accountability of African nation states themselves’.

There are other relevant polarities. There is a gap in perception between how Northerners/Westerners perceive their own models and practice of development, human rights etc and how others in the world perceive it - one might call this a subset of perceptions of globalisation. Western oil and strategic interests find greater stability in backing corrupt and oligarchic regimes, than in pursuing human rights. This gap is probably most advanced in the Muslim/ Arab world and has ready-made foci in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - and now the Iraq post-conflict impacts on Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But it provides anywhere a breeding ground for the authoritarian nationalism alluded to by Raftopoulos.

Other polarities include: a polarity of 'recent history versus recent amnesia'. For many Zimbabweans alive today, the colonial and settler periods are very much part of their life experience and the forcible conquest of their lands is only three generations back - very recent in most understandings of history. By contrast, most British and other European peoples have only a sketchy idea of what went on under colonial rule and its implications today in terms of 'failed' or collapsing states, skewed and inappropriate economies and state structures, manipulation of ethnic identities and authoritarian nationalism.

Within the structures of colonialism there is/was a specific intensity amongst regions/ areas/ countries that involuntarily received large numbers of settlers, especially when combined with systems of land expropriation, racial domination and imposed division - apartheid being the supreme example. But as happened in South Africa and Zimbabwe there were also the creation of diversified economies geared to settler needs, but capable of being operated by newly- decolonising (black) elites. Such elites inherited powerful centralised state apparatuses, although little political or economic power. The parallels between the way Smith and Mugabe have used this kind of state – similar to the apartheid ‘national security state’ - are oft remarked on.

The ‘national security’ strategy of the ZANU-PF elite has led to economic collapse, severe repression, flight and severe economic consequences for the region, but as yet there has been no concerted regional reaction to this in terms of security. This in turn relates to national elites being unable to formulate a path directed to human security, and largely because of their lack of engagement with and mistrust of new social forces (which of course are not themselves necessarily united or coherent).

The other states in the region, particularly South Africa, hesitate between a closed form of regional security and of opening up to world economic forces for increased and supposedly more effective linkages with the global economy. South Africa pushes a process where integrated manufacturing becomes the basis for a regional industrial strategy - an integral part of supply chains for globally competitive manufacturing processes. South Africa knows that for this to occur outside investment is crucial and highly dependent on improvements in governance which the NEPAD programme (an uneasy mix of pan-African idealism and neo-liberalism) seeks to bring about. However this whole process is marked by contradiction which does nothing to lessen conflict and insecurity in Zimbabwe and the region.

South Africa insists on 'quiet diplomacy' for regional solidarity reasons, not wishing to jump at the behest of former colonial masters. It also points to misconceptions about the extent of its power as the 'regional hegemon' saying it cannot unilaterally reorder the region. Rather it vaunts a united regional approach based on avoiding confrontation and promoting multilateralism.

Historically, divisions inside SADC had to be overcome as well as in Pretoria’s internal foreign policy discussions. Additionally, in Pretoria’s view while South Africa has necessary leverage over Zimbabwe in areas of finance, energy and oil to effect change, the economies are too closely linked to impose sanctions. It at least initially believed that its model of negotiated settlement and compromise was transferable to Zimbabwe. It also knows that it is vulnerable on the land question. Both the ANC and ZANU-PF see themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the anti-colonial struggle with any other parties being seen as tainted by association with the previous regime(s). For this reason it and other southern Africa states have been only too ready to accept ZANU-PF’s policies in some way as a Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist position in the face of global inequalities and British neo-colonialism.

Strangely, and contrary to the support given to the ANC in exile, Pretoria foreign policy has never provided support for human rights groups and other opposition forces within societies whose governments are undemocratic and/or human rights violators. This suggests reliance on notions of the legitimacy of heads of state and of sovereignty, both of which are formalistic concepts even if they are key AU positions. Taken with the support for ‘a just world order’ which means equity amongst nations there is no concern for more far-reaching restructuring of power to embrace human security concerns.

Mugabe’s charge is that the UK is attempting to recolonise Zimbabwe acts to disguise structural rather than conspiratorial processes in the world economy. It does this on behalf of a new power bloc inside Zimbabwe clinging on to power in the face of global inequalities, popular pressure from new and old social movements, but using a Cold War rhetoric that has similar although different resonances with both African and Third World elites and with landless and frustrated African and other third world populations. The contradiction of the policy of this power bloc is that it is unable to create resistance to globalisation precisely because it does not engage with its own population. Some in the Zimbabwe nationalist spectrum might well disagree given that some allege that the ‘war veterans’ are a popular social movement.

How do we shift the monopoly on security from the military, and build a framework of human security addressing the concerns of those without power, the oppressed, and those adversely affected by the current disorder, poverty, environmental degradation and human rights abuse?

How does an alternative perspective able to suggest regional, national and local policies - based on globalisation from below in order to transform the South and overcome the global organisation of inequality - get constructed? Increasingly, world and regional social fora have attempted to come up with answers involving global civil society and non-governmental organisations (not to confuse the two) stressing international humanitarian values and citizenship to counter nationhood, ‘civilisation blocs’ or geo-economic units.

Such values would include peace, promotion of human rights, and concepts of the common good as the building blocks for security, reciprocity and multilateral power centres. It would also demand that domestic security concerns need to pay greater attention to violence against women and children ignored by state agencies. It may not seem obvious when there seem more immediate concerns, but the fight against repression in Zimbabwe illustrates much of this, and involves what values postcolonial states and regions should have, their road to development, democracy and overcoming of colonial and apartheid structures, all of which pose human security dilemmas.

* Steve Kibble is Africa/ Yemen Advocacy Coordinator at the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR)

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There is much anxiety that is gripping Zimbabweans concerning the upcoming general elections at the end of March this year. In 2000 and 2002 the country’s voting population was clearly divided into those who vote for the MDC and ZANU PF. Any attempts by the smaller political parties or independent candidates to have an impact on the political process was immaterial. Those who cast their votes for the MDC did so because of the hope and change they anticipated for the greater Zimbabwe democracy project but indeed more importantly how this change would translate to their being more secure, better fed, housed, clothed and being employed.

Many of those who cast their votes for ZANU PF were intimidated into doing so and of course as I have said before, there are still those who have clung to it for the ideals that ZANU PF used to stand for and represent. Yet others have remained committed to it because of the benefits to their pockets and stomachs it has brought them.

Because the political climate in Zimbabwe today is much different from both 2000 and 2002, it is highly likely that the voting patterns and trends of the electorate will change and give a completely different picture to what we saw happen in the last general election. My greatest concern is that this election will see a very low and poor voter turnout. This would be ominous for MDC and is probably what ZANU PF hopes for. If the 2003 urban local government elections are anything to go by, then my suspicions will materialise to actuality. The highest average voter turnout in those elections was 37% in Redcliff and the lowest average was 12% in Chitungwiza and Bulawayo, the rest were between 25 and 34%. Considering that previous trends show the MDC’s strongholds to be urban locations, this does not look good for them. However, if the figures for ZANU PF’s primaries are to be used as a gauge, they too should be just as worried as they will rely on their staunch membership for votes as compared to the ordinary voter who is not involved in party politics, this time, both in the rural and urban areas.

There are many reasons that can be given for a likely poor turnout. The extent of the desecration of Zimbabwe’s socio economic state has sucked joy from most of Zimbabwe’s hardworking people and instead impregnated them with despair, hopelessness and disillusionment in the political process as a means to solve the country and everyday individual problems. People are suffering. Most can not afford to feed themselves and their families, they can not afford to pay their bills such as rent, water and electricity, they can not afford to send their children to clinics or hospitals neither can they find or afford doctors and medicines. Reserve Bank Governor Gono can brag all he wants about how much better our economy is doing, it means nothing to those who know that each day is more expensive for them to meet their basic needs. The quality of life for the greater majority of Zimbabweans has been amazingly eroded as basic necessities such as transport to work, lunch at work and recreational activities have become luxuries that are out of reach.

Other factors include the violence and intimidation people have been living with for the past 5 years. The senselessness with which ZANU PF unleashed its terror armies and used state organs such as the police and army to sustain its assault on civic society, the MDC, activists and the general public has indeed left a dent on many who suffered for sins they did not even commit. Others will be too afraid to vote and yet others will not care to vote as that particular action will not emit a different experience for them; you will get harassed whether you vote or not, so why bother.

Because of the closure of the Daily News, which had enabled news that was not ZANU PF and voices that were not ZANU PF to be regularly heard, the MDC lost a spot were it could continually visibilise itself, defend itself and send out its own messages. This did generate a perception to the general public that they are not active, are not doing anything or saying anything. People would complain that the MDC had gone silent and they would not realise that the MDC had been denied a platform by the ZANU PF to go about its business of engaging the public. Even though it’s a matter not of its own doing, it will dent the MDC. If people keep on hearing the same message over and over again they will eventually believe what they hear or will use what they hear as a basis to measure truth, especially in the absence of a different message. The consistent propaganda people have been listening to over the past three years without a counter voice has formulated in people’s minds as a basis of some-version-of-truth.

While I have always paid tribute to the MDC for being a David that challenges a Goliath (much stronger, bigger, older, more resourced and fierce looking) it is truth that it has made many blunders with its internal politics, which were heralded, to the public by their enemy’s mouth pieces. What people heard about the MDC, they heard from ZANU PF mouthpieces and so their image to the average Zimbabwean who is not in its structures is a bit disfigured by ZANU PF’s sinister exaggerations. ZANU PF on the other hand is also seriously fractured right now due to its own internal conflicts centred around the much loathed professor Jonathan Moyo and his Tsholotsho bandwagon, to add to this, they are still recovering from cheating, beating and stealing from each other at the primary elections.

Yes, ZANU PF was in power and could still pass the legislation it wanted since they had the majority in Parliament and as government were in the driving seat. It may look like there isn’t much that was benefited from having an opposition like the MDC in Parliament as unconstitutional and regressive laws that assault our rights kept on coming out of Parliament. What needs to be observed as well is that for the first time in a long time ZANU PF was continuously being challenged every time Parliament was in session. This time it was not a lone Margaret Dongo but there were over 20 MPs relentlessly debating, questioning, challenging, calling to account and speaking down at ZANU PF. This in itself is a score particularly in such restrictive and limited space. For every unconstitutional bill ZANU PF voted for, they had to work for it, some MPs actually had to be mobilised to attend Parliament so they could succeed in their endeavours. With as much contempt the ruling party has shown to the ordinary person of Zimbabwe in the past 5 years, I shudder to think what this period would have been like without the fierce opposition and pressure they got from MDC. If anything at all, more alternative voices must be increased.

This election, like in 2000, will be fought on the strength of the political parties and not on the individuals running the race. However, minimal performance and delivery by some individuals in the last parliament particularly in constituencies with strong independent candidates is a possibility. I will use my own constituency Harare Central to illustrate my point. In this case, the incumbent MP Hon. Zwizwai must not assume he will be voted back in as voters may be persuaded that having a strong independent candidate like Margaret Dongo may actually be more beneficial for them compared to having an MP whom they know little about, have seen little performance if any; have never read about him in the paper (or the Hansard for that matter) to have said anything in parliament, have never seen their constituency profiled through him at any platform. In the case of Hon. Zwizwai, it’s exacerbated by the fact that he took over from a more visible and vocal MP, Hon. Mike Auret. Hon. Zwizwai won the election with around 3,000 votes in August 2003 about the same figure (less) as votes ZANU PF received in 2000 (3, 600 votes). In 2000 Mike Auret got over 14, 000 votes. Margaret Dongo may actually make it back to Parliament in her own steam and not that of a party.

My point is, this election is not that easily predictable. Any party, any candidate, may get the biggest surprise of their life and thus must do what they need to, to show people they are the best candidate. Due to the context of the country as I have highlighted, I believe those who will vote already know how they will vote. However, I believe a lot of those we witnessed vote in 2000 and 2002 may need to be persuaded to exercise their responsibility to vote.

ZANU PF must refrain from using violence before or after the polls and must stop using delay tactics as it did in 2002 during the presidential elections and Harare local government elections. This disenfranchised Zimbabweans their right to vote. I witnessed in horror women and men being tear gassed and chased like dogs from the voting queues by riot police in Glen Norah. Such obscenities must not be repeated and must not insult the lives of the comrades who died in the liberation struggle so that all Zimbabweans could exercise the right to vote.

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Changes in the status of women are key features of globalization. Some analysts have even concluded that globalization is, in part, feminization. ‘The feminization of what?’ is the question. We are not going to try to answer this question here. Rather, we want to open discussion on how stories about women and globalization relate to the world of activism. What functions do these stories perform for the left? How do they constitute social movements and mask that civil society is not an ideal space; that inequities are often reproduced there?

The question of whether the changes associated with globalization have been aggregately positive or negative for women tends to be one around which activist and civil society politics is mobilized – and key assertions about where our global society is going and how it wants to get there are framed.

Digital divide notwithstanding, hours of web searching every possible combination of key words for ‘women and globalization’ essentially *revealed* that little to no progress of any meaningful kind has occurred over the last 100 years, and that women as a whole remain overwhelmingly powerless, voiceless and victims. The trade in colors, with the image of black and brown women as the “face of poverty”, is particularly robust.

But, can we trust these stories completely? The way power is organized tends to allow –even encourage - relatively well-resourced and socially privileged spokespersons (men and women of various colours) to use popular discourses about the affects of globalization on women. Discourses do things; they have effects. Or, more strongly, people say things in order to achieve things. They offer excuses, assign blame, win support, seize the moment, cast themselves in a particular light, and so on.

Women in the social movements in post-apartheid South Africa provide testimony to the fact that whilst they may form the mass base of the movement they most certainly are not well represented among the leadership ranks. The movements have garnered the support of thousands of poor black women and have through their political action challenged the state’s provision of basic services to the household and raised consciousness around the plight of poor women. Yet within the movements, a male, top heavy leadership speaks on behalf of thousands of poor black women while the added burden of moving much needed gender reform forward is one that falls primarily to women – often finding an uneven, even cold reception from leaderships accustomed to defining gender equality as secondary to class and race struggles.

That inequities are reproduced in civil society – from local to global - raises questions about a left that trades on taking up the plight of women, a left that looks to women’s experiences to legitimize movements, organizations – even activist careers. Commander Esther, Zapatista Army of National Liberation, highlights the contradictions:

“[A]s women, the rich man tries to humiliate us, but also the man who is not rich, who is poor like our husbands, our brothers, our fathers, our sons, our companions in the struggle, and those who work with us and are organized with us. So we say clearly that when women demand respect, we demand it not only from the neoliberals, but also from those who struggle against neoliberalism and say they are revolutionaries but in the home are like Bush.”

In South Africa, the social movements have traditionally been perceived to be the place where poor, black women coagulate to regain their self-respect, their dignity, their strength as a collective and their identity as women. However, this safe space of the movement continues to displace value and repeatedly uses the same oppressive forms of structure and organising. Thus, when women gain it may be merely as a component of other geometries of power, such as unions or civil society organizations - whose decision-making processes and well paid positions are overwhelmingly occupied by men. Some predict that if this were to continue then women will be compelled to reconstitute themselves as a group identity of women that will supplant class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization.

Still, not much is done within social movements to empower women to participate more effectively, so that they can be their own voices and be their own faces and agents of their own experience. For example, often the male leadership simultaneously co-opt women’s powerfully articulated demands for better municipal services while conceiving of and scripting women’s organizational roles as merely supportive. The commitment from the male leadership to the transformation of gender relations appears strategic and limited. As a result, women in the movements are feeling a greater sense of isolation and that their particular issues and their identities as women are being ignored. Ten years on now from the end of apartheid and there is a growing sense that women’s development in the movement - other than what they are able to achieve as individuals – has stalled.

If women consistently fail to escape the everyday indignities of discrimination in social movements, that those movements might unravel under the weight of their contradictions, is not surprising. Among the members of the now frayed and fragmented Concerned Citizen’s Forum [CCF], for example, it was a commonly held perception that, while women are at the forefront of the struggle and many occupy leadership positions in their local branches, there was no development of women in the CCF - other than what they are able to achieve as individuals - and there existed few mechanisms in the social movements leadership structure to encourage active participation of women. Similarly, to date in trade unions, the democratic rights that have been achieved by the unions for women members in the workplace are not paralleled by democratic rights for women within the unions. More insidiously, however, the values and beliefs encountered within the union structures have been of women as inherently subservient, whose issues carried less weight than those of the broader working class struggles.

Cutting into the question of women and the left where we have seems to suggest that one route out of the impass might be to play closer attention to what women can and have achieved (in terms of extracting themselves from their particular experience with a tangle of patriarchal norms and institutions) through acts of individual creativity and innovation. For example, a breaking down and breaking out – moving beyond what seems structurally or organizationally possible within existing hierarchical parameters – has long been the innovative strategy of black women – and a mode of power of the so-called ‘powerless’ more generally. Since their demands have perpetually been left out by feminist movements and movements for racial liberation, it is often individual creativity that has brought about the actual gains that translate into bargaining power and leverage in movements.

In this light, while there is little point to romanticizing the ruptures and border zones of the globalizing world, some analysts point to not yet well understood informal temporary zones and multi-centric functional networks nested within sprawling “scapes” where important social resistance and renewal takes place. That is, beyond totalizing rhetorics and hardened organizational hierarchies of the left there is an array of women’s insurgencies taking place. The widest array of which may be, to borrow Castell’s language, “practical feminists” (2000b: 200).

“Aren’t the struggles and organizations of women throughout the world, for their families (meaning mainly their children), their lives, their work, their shelter, their health, their dignity, feminism in practice…Under different forms, and through different paths, feminism dilutes the patriarchal dichotomy of man/woman as it manifests itself in social institutions and in social practice. So doing, feminism constructs not one but many identities, each one of which, by their autonomous existence, seizes micropowers in the world wide web of life experiences.”

Authors like Saskia Sassen have noted that in the global cities “[t]here is a large literature showing that immigrant women's regular wage work and improved access to other public realms has an impact on their gender relations: Women gain greater personal autonomy and independence while men lose ground.” It may be that we like our stories of women having new freedoms, of gaining ground, to be less messy. We have been trained to see as primary her exploitation in the capitalist labour market. But what if we change the lens from capitalism to patriarchy? And what if we set that picture afloat within a global left that doesn’t value women any more than capitalism does?

The organized left’s skepticism about women’s agency and what can be achieved without being organized tends to operate to script the work of ‘the struggle’ in service of ‘the revolution’ as nobler, more important, more immediately pressing. But the promise that women’s everyday lived indignities will simply evaporate once race and class issues are addressed relies on futurology as vague and discredited as Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Capitalism seems to trade on patriarchy, but so can the left.

We are skeptical about global discourses and politicized terrains that remain dominated by debates that frame women’s autonomy as something won on behalf of women. It renders invisible much of the day-to-day innovation and activity that individual women leverage to incrementally reinvent daily life. More insidiously it co-opts and confiscates the gains made by women in the everyday, attributing it to activists, organized civil society organizations and international development agencies, many of which primarily serve the interests of a narrow band of elite often organized along principles where men are able to move through the ranks leaving the bulk of women behind as shadow workers.

Many of the women who belong to social movements in South Africa often don’t restrict themselves to the work of the organization. Women in the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape pointed out that it is not only evictions that they are concerned with. They work in their communities around issues of HIV, poverty, rape, drug-abuse, accessing social grants, teenage pregnancies and access to education for their children. Yet this work is not considered as a form of activism that is altering the political landscape. Rather “strategic” interests of the left are perceived as a more evolved and informed type of activism (where most of the men congregate around) and set in opposition to “practical” issues like daily survival.

With the specter of revolution denied looming intimidating, women are called to justify and rationalize the authenticity of their interests - to stop pursuing those interests and be drawn into the diversionary web of defending them. In her seminal 1985 article Spivak asked the question “Can the Subaltern Speak?” The point was not that movements for social change can somehow ‘get it right next time’ when they speak on behalf of those who have little voice in existing architectures of power. Rather, she wanted to know when and under what conditions will the subaltern speak for themselves?
As Poet Sujata Bhatt has said:

I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said,
English is not your mother tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in any language I like?...

* Saranel Benjamin and J. Zoë Wilson are with the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability, York University, Canada. The authors would like to thank Amanda Alexander, Raj Patel and Richard Pithouse for their valuable comments. All errors remain the responsibility of the authors exclusively.

**NOTE TO READERS: the authors would like to invite people everywhere to send their experiences with gender equity in social movements to: [email][email protected] and [email][email protected] Accounts will be compiled, verified and made available to all respondents. Please note if you wish to remain anonymous.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

References

Benjamin, S ‘ “We are not Indians! We are the Poors!” : Investigating Race Class and Gender in Social Movements’ Development Update, Vol 5 No. 2, 2004.

Castells, M. . The Power of Identity. Great Britain: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

Spivak. G. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, pp. 66-111, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds. Hemel Hempstead & New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. (First printing 1988)

PAMBAZUKA NEWS No. 195’s Editorial on ‘HIV/AIDS - THE DILEMMA OF THE INEVITABLE’ by Kiiza Ngonzi, not only served as an ‘awaking bell’ for all of us Africans grappling with HIV/AIDS and its direct impact on our lives, but threw a real challenge to the strategies we are employing to combat a disease that is already devastating our populations.

Indeed, what a tragedy and an amazing puzzle it is that almost two and half decades since HIV/AIDS hit Africa, Africa continues to be devastated by this determined killer disease. In all our faces, HIV/AIDS is on the rampage, going about its business infecting and killing millions of Africans, old, young, pretty, ugly, big, small, rich, poor, educated, illiterate, urban, rural, professional, unprofessional at free will. To Africans HIV/AIDS seems so powerful that it has overcome our intellect and control, leaving us with our heads buried in the sand.

The impact of HIV/AIDS on our lives can hardly be over-estimated. By this time, there is hardly anyone in Sub Saharan Africa who has not been touched by HIV/AIDS. All of us know what it is to be afflicted by this dreadful disease, because if we have individually not been afflicted, we have had relatives, friends, or colleagues who have been directly or indirectly affected. We have seen it often enough since it killed its first victim in Uganda in 1979, and hospitalized its first patient in Zambia in 1982.

The impact on our social services is already real. Our hospitals are overwhelmed by the numbers of terminally sick and the dying, while our mortuaries and graveyards are littered with the dead.

The extent, magnitude, ravages and devastation of HIV/AIDS is best illustrated by the long term effects on our nations, reflected in the situation of African children. UNAIDS already estimates that there are as many as 11 million orphans in sub Saharan Africa, 1 million of whom are in Nigeria, 890,000 in Kenya and 780,000 in Zimbabwe. South Africa is expected to have up to 1.5 million orphaned children by 2010, while in Zambia 1.8 million children are increasingly vulnerable as HIV/AIDS continues to destroy the traditional family social safety net, causing massive school dropouts and chronic malnutrition.

The overall impact of HIV/AIDS on the African Continent is manifesting itself not only in reduced quality of human life, but dramatically reduced life spans, already believed to have dwindled to a low of 32-37 years of age, compared to an average of 57 in the post independence Africa of the mid 1970s, and 78 years of life in the Western World. This practically means that one has a period of 32 years in which to grow, acquire an education and life skills, develop a career, raise a family and contribute to national development before life terminates. How possible is this? Today, in most of our countries, every child born is assumed to have a significant chance of contracting HIV and dying of AIDS. HIV/AIDS has clearly become a national emergency in most of our countries

And yet HIV/AIDS is a behaviour disease and a human being can control its behavioral spread, and its infection. He/she can refuse to allow HIV into his/her body, and it will effectively stay away and if he/she is already infected, he/she can determine to live with it, hold a dialogue with it, talk to it, agree to accommodate it in his/her body, but ask it to give him/her time to live, to accomplish certain tasks, and together, they can plan to allow him/her to complete his/her career, plan for his/her children, build them a house. This is not possible with a motor or aircraft accident, heart disease, meningitis, cancer, TB, pneumonia, cholera, malaria, even child birth.

But perhaps it is not far fetched to say that the on-going status of HIV/AIDS in Africa is an indicator of a bigger and far deeper problem. As the saying goes, ‘the way you define a problem determines your ability to confront it’. The question is, ‘has Africa defined HIV/AIDS adequately enough to confront it head-on?’

Recently, ten 16-29-year old community outreach volunteers, comprising four females and six males with educational backgrounds of 6th to 12th Grades, spent two weeks walking about markets, schools, churches, streets, bars, taverns and restaurants of Mtendere Compound, one of Lusaka’s largest townships, trying to find out what ordinary community people thought and brought these findings:

1) Whereas most people talked to knew that HIV/AIDS is a killer disease that still has no cure, they had difficulty with its identity, its name, ‘HIV/AIDS’ (Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), which they felt was in itself a contributing factor to its un-halted spread since it is too scientific and therefore, too complicated for the majority of ordinary people to understand.

This was believed to be the reason for a variety of configured nicknames such as Uganda’s ‘Slim Disease’, and Zambia’s ‘Long Illness’ or ‘Kangundende’, which sounded like mockery and ridicule and served to increase stigma. Many said that whereas they could clearly identify other diseases with symptoms specific to them, such as coughing blood in TB or sores on the genitals in syphilis, there were no specific symptoms for HIV/AIDS apart from a variety of so-called ‘opportunistic infections’. Consequently, a lot of people were confused and resort to associating HIV/AIDS with witchcraft, while many others have given up even trying, and resolved to leave ‘HIV/AIDS as a disease like any other, made and sent by God and that if God has determined that one will die from it, it will happen’; while others still said, ‘every one on earth has AIDS; if it is your day it is!’

2) The team further found that our current popular prevention and mitigation strategies against the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS such as ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, and Condomize) and VTC (Voluntary Testing and Counseling) were themselves greatly challenged since a lot of youths strongly believe that:

i) Sex has become just like a game among young people, ‘if you don’t practice sex, then you are left out with this world’;

ii) Condoms cause cancer;
iii) HIV/AIDS test accuracy is questionable. As one 19-year old woman expressed, ‘my brother tested positive at one testing center after testing negative twice at another centre.’;

iv) Rampant/indiscriminate alcohol abuse among the youth does not facilitate abstinence or safe sex;

v) Economic difficulties take far more precedence over a disease.

3) Some cultural/traditional beliefs/practices, many embedded in male supremacy, continue to hamper ordinary people from freely and openly discussing sex with their sex partners. There was no or little evidence to show that society had come to terms with the nature and transmission of this life destroying disease.

4) Some concerned parents and elderly people be-moaned HIV/AIDS sensitization teams which come into communities, talk about the disease and are never seen checking to see if what they preached was being practiced; while yet others blamed the escalating rates of HIV/AIDS infections on indiscriminate distribution of condoms among young people, which was giving them false trust in the power of the condom and eroding and corrupting their morals.

Clearly, HIV/AIDS remains too mysterious for ordinary Africans to understand and to relate to. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a disease which is destroying life in the millions, hampers people’s ability to dream of the future, and dramatically reduces life spans, to be given tantalizing baptismal or beautiful nick names which only serve to confuse local community people, and limit their ability and efforts to combat the disease.

Indeed, we at MAPODE strongly believe that if Africa is to combat this horror disease, there is absolutely no need for people to be apologetic about it. A disease that, unlike its potential victims has no fear (is brave), is not embarrassed, not hidden, not ashamed, not shy, and has already rendered human sex a ‘life and death’ affair deserves no gentility. Therefore, Trust in love is no longer enough! There is a need to be absolutely sure of safety before one commits themselves to engage in the sex. Authentic safety is a must.

Indeed, we at MAPODE concur with Kiiza Ngozi that if Africa is to combat this horror disease, HIV/AIDS messages need to be communicated in a language best and easily understandable to us Africans who are its hardest hit victims, a task we cannot leave to others to do for us. It is high time we woke up to the truth that HIV/AIDS has also become a source of huge profits for big trans/multi-national industries, and is creating un-precedented employment opportunities for multi-lateral agencies. Therefore, left this way, chances of finding a practical solution within the near future will remain as remote as a pipe dream, a likely replica of our economies already brought to their knees by inappropriate experimental external policies. It is for this reason that we strongly feel that Africa, through its political and community leadership, working together with traditional elders, scientists, spiritual leaders and teachers, are all challenged to demystify and simplify HIV/AIDS so that our people can individually and collectively deal with it head-on rather than continuing to use kid-glove methods. Unless we are content to wait for another two decades!

* Merab Kambamu Kiremire (Mrs.), a Development Worker/Researcher is the Initiator/Director of MAPODE (Movement of Community Action for the Prevention and Protection of Young People Against Poverty, Destitution, Diseases and Exploitation), a Community-based Youth-at-Risk focused Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that implements child/youth prevention and protection programmes in Zambia and Uganda. She was one of the 6 University of Cape Town (UCT)’s African Gender Institute Rockefeller 2004 Associates. Please visit:

Every genocide is hideous, each in its own grotesque way. Searching for the origins and distinctiveness of the genocidal violence that has convulsed the Sudanese region of Darfur in the last year—leaving tens of thousands dead and perhaps a million people displaced and in danger—we must go to the remotest desert-edge settlements in Northern Darfur near the border with Chad, to the basalt stubs of mountains that march southward until they fuse in the 10,000-foot Jebel Marra massif in the center of Darfur, and to Sudan’s capital in Khartoum, far to the east.

Geography helps to explain much. Darfur is huge and distant from the capital, and events in neighboring Chad and Libya have often exerted more influence over it than the national government, whose ignorance of its western region and indifference to the welfare of its inhabitants spurred a rebellion in 2003, organized by the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

This journey will introduce us to these Darfur rebels, including members of the Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit, and Tunjur ethnic groups, who have been the primary victims of the violence; to their neighbors, the Darfurian Arabs—including the branches of the northern Rizeigat (Jalul, Mahariya, and Ereigat), Beni Halba, and Salamat—some of whom have been recruited to the infamous Janjawiid militia, the perpetrator of the worst massacres in the conflict; and to the Sudanese Government itself, which has suppressed the rebellion with brutal tactics rehearsed in the recently concluded 21-year civil war with southern Sudan.

We will see that the story is not as simple as the conventional rendering in the news, which depicts a conflict between “Arabs” and “Africans.” The Zaghawa—one of the groups victimized by the violence and described in the mainstream press as “indigenous African”—are certainly indigenous, black and African: they share distant origins with the Berbers of Morocco and other ancient Saharan peoples. But the name of the “Bedeyat,” the Zaghawa’s close kin, should alert us to their true origins: pluralize in the more traditional Arab manner and we have “Bedeyiin” or Bedouins. Similarly, the Zaghawa’s adversaries in this war, the Darfurian Arabs, are “Arabs” in the ancient sense of “Bedouin,” meaning desert nomad, a sense that has only in the last few decades been used to describe the Arabs of the river Nile and the Fertile Crescent. Darfurian Arabs, too, are indigenous, black, and African. In fact there are no discernible racial or religious differences between the two: all have lived there for centuries; all are Muslims (Darfur’s non-Arabs are arguably more devout than the Arabs); and until very recently, conflict between these different groups was a matter of disputes over camel theft or grazing rights, not the systematic and ideological slaughter of one group by the other.

As we dig through the layers of causation of this complicated war, we will come to see it as a deeply sad story about the struggles of resilient people, poor even by Sudanese standards, who have been pitted against each other by a forbidding environment, a long history of political neglect, and a ruthless national government.

>>>>Please click on the link below for the full article.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that women and children make up between 75% and 80% of war refugees and displaced persons. The concentration of women in refugee and displaced persons camps is a two-pronged issue. In the beginning, the need for security was the impetus for the women to group together. But in the absence of a peace-keeping force with a firm mandate regarding protection of civilians, as is usually the case in Africa, protection is transformed into insecurity.

Even though the majority of people in refugee and displaced persons camps are women, a patriarchal model is replicated in them and has become radicalized. In such a situation, the women are completely defenceless and deprived of all decision-making power. The social, economic and cultural bases that structure negotiations with a modicum of balance of power between men and women are totally destroyed by war. Most often, the camps reflect the disintegration of familial and social structures. The erosion of normalcy, the disappearance of the notion of parental authority, specifically maternal authority, all explain how socio-ethical codes are replaced with the only law that prevails in the camps: might makes right.

A patriarchal hegemony thrives much more easily in refugee and displaced persons camps, so that women, primarily single women (who are also referred to as “unaccompanied women” as if they were minors), are like welfare recipients in many respects. No longer producers of food, they depend on food aid, the distribution and control of which they know is based on formal and informal authority structures managed by men. Having no control of their physical safety, they must accept the conditions of those who control the camp.
The conditions of negotiation, as commonly imposed by those who control the camps (armed forces personnel, militiamen, child soldiers, UNHCR field staff and camp administrators), all contribute to the sexual exploitation of women and girls and thus to an increased risk of HIV/AIDS transmission.

The local staff of humanitarian agencies and peace-keeping forces are not innocent of this kind of abuse, as attested to by the investigation conducted by the UNHCR and Save the Children UK in the refugee camps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. According to that investigation, which specifically pointed the finger at local male staff, the UNHCR and Save the Children denounced the widespread practice of bartering aid and humanitarian services intended for the refugees in exchange for sexual relations with girls under 18 years of age.
The poverty, promiscuity and insecurity in the camps promote prostitution and pose several challenges, namely, the extent of the women's awareness of the risks they run in having unprotected sex with several sexual partners, the very high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, which are also vectors of HIV/AIDS, and lastly, the need for the humanitarian agencies in the camps to view the fight against HIV/AIDS as a humanitarian response.

One study conducted in the Rwandan refugee camps in Tanzania, established that the presence of sexually transmitted infections (STI) during unprotected sex increased the risk of HIV/AIDS infection from 6 to 10 times. Only 16% of men admitted having used condoms during casual sex, which would explain the presence of STIs in 60% of pregnant women covered in the study.

To curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS in the camps it was recommended that the UNHCR and its partners identify the gender-based causes of crimes of violence against women and girls committed in the camps so that prevention strategies can be developed. According to the UNHCR, the strategies should have as a common objective the adjustment or implementation of local practices and traditions to international standards of protection of the rights of women and girls, reconstruction of family and community support networks, the building of infrastructures and development of appropriate services as well as the documentation of incidents of sexual violence. To ensure that these objectives are achieved, camp personnel must receive gender-based training that emphasizes the relationship between HIV/AIDS, women's rights and rights of refugees and displaced persons. The training would allow for the development of appropriate strategies in the given context. To be able to ensure that women with HIV/AIDS receive medical care, it is essential to ensure that women's health workers provide services in the camps and are equipped with antiretroviral drugs.

* This is an extract from a publication ‘The Right to Survive:
Sexual Violence, Women and HIV/AIDS’. The full article can be found on the website of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights and Democracy) at the following address

* Please send comments to [email protected]

“There is an inseparable link between the protection of individual and collective human rights and democracy. The field of battle in which democracy and human rights are tested is the administration of criminal justice, which encompasses all processes and practices by which a state affects, curtails, or removes basic rights.” - Cherif Bassiouni

The focus of donor agencies or development partners today is on the Millenium Development Goals – goals which make no mention of the fundamental right to justice. A right which perhaps more than any other is repeated again and again in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and canvassed in close legal language and at extraordinarily length in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which most countries in Africa have ratified.

A right which surprised all development experts with the emphasis placed on it in the ‘Voices of the Poor’ series published by the World Bank in 2000 and which led to a number of western donor agencies moving ‘Justice’ up the development agenda and
leaving the World Bank wondering if their policy of developing the commercial courts and computerizing the courts was really hitting the spot.

As millions pour into grants and assorted loans to satisfy the demands of the legal establishment to ‘modernise’ the police continue to extort confessions, the backlog of cases in the courts grows apace, the prison numbers continue to expand and the ordinary person feels more and more powerless and resorts to taking justice into his/her own hands.

In 1998, Justice Joao Carlos Trindade, a judge of the Supreme Court of Mozambique, estimated that ‘justice’ was only accessible to 10% of the country’s population. He embarked on a two year research programme up and down the country, sitting in villages and towns, to enquire into the state of the administration of justice in the country. The South African Law Commission has also undertaken a similar study.

Both sought local solutions to local problems and their research posed searching questions about the relevance of the European justice models they inherited many years ago, a model that is expensive to maintain and applies proceedings that are both complex and unfathomable to the ordinary person for the simple reason that they are usually conducted in an alien language.

In the Congo, there was no judge or august institution to take the lead. The initiative arose from NGOs and faith-based organizations to develop mediation mechanisms for resolving disputes in the absence of any formal justice structure to adjudicate on a matter. The offices of the Catholic Commission on Justice and Peace in Bukavu and an NGO, Heritiers de la Justice, both have filing cabinets full of single page documents detailing the nature of the disputes they have resolved and the agreements reached in each, signed by the disputants to resolve it and move on with their lives.

In Jigawa State, Nigeria, initial scepticism of the Shar’ia court as an institution turned to admiration on observing the simple and fair manner in which the Sheikh dealt with a divorce matter. At the end of the 15 minute hearing, the man and woman were divorced and, heartily relieved, could return to their village, their honour intact and able to find new partners and start again.

Romanticised twiddle twaddle? Perhaps, but the point to be made here is that ‘justice’ as a development goal is not easy to quantify. As someone once said when asked how to define a ‘minority’: ‘you know one when you see one’. Justice is intuitive. You know it – you may not be able to articulate it or pass it down to cause and effect and specific intent, or even ‘outputs’ (numbers of judges trained, police equipped etc). It is multi-layered and encompasses the whole range of the human condition. Is the poor man who steals so that his family can eat more or less culpable than the corrupt functionary? The issues are complex.

The starting point for Justice Trindade, the South Africa Law Commission, the Congolese NGOs and faith-based groups and Nigerian Sheikh was: are we meeting the needs of the people we serve? Less the well off and the special interest groups who can afford the costs of the formal system – but ordinary men and women and their children in the villages?

This was also the starting point of an extraordinary meeting that took place in Lilongwe, Malawi last November to look at legal aid in the criminal justice process. The group of 120 or so people who came together could all be characterized as practitioners, whether they thought and wrote on the subject, investigated, mediated, represented, prosecuted or adjudicated - they all had long experience of the criminal justice system in their 21 respective countries from the continent.

They produced a declaration at the end that answered the keynote speaker’s challenge to concretise, give substance, shape and direction, prioritise and strategize. Above all the focus was on execution, implementation and innovation. There was practical, testing anew of what was accepted, settled and comfortable, and a questioning of whether sacred cows are sustainable. The conference explored new ways of making legal aid truly effective and expanding its nature and scope.

The main thrust of the declaration was that the definition of legal aid must be broadened to include legal advice and assistance as well as education; that this form of legal aid should be available at every stage of the criminal justice process: in the police station at interview, the court at first appearance and on first production in prison; and that it should be open to a range of other actors to provide, ie not only the lawyers, but also law students, NGOs, CBOs and faith based groups.

This may not sound revolutionary. But it will mean a great deal to the two million South Africans who will pass through a police station each year without the most basic legal advice or assistance. You might also consider whether this is happening on a routine basis in your country and cast a closer look at what is starting to happen in Malawi.

In 2000, four NGOs started the Paralegal Advisory Service in a remarkable partnership initially with prisons extending to the courts and police in 2003. Today, 37 paralegals offer appropriate legal advice and assistance on the front-line of the criminal justice system, ie in police stations, courts and prisons.

Over five years, they have grown and developed and have helped over 30,000 prisoners to represent themselves in bail applications, pleas in mitigation and conducting their own defence. They have facilitated the release of more than 2,000 prisoners who were unlawfully or unnecessarily detained. They have helped reduce the pre-trial prison population from an average of 50% to a stable mean of 22% today.

Who are they? They are ordinary people who have completed secondary education with ages varying from 20-40. Just under half of them are women. They complete a series of practically oriented training courses over 12 months and it costs around $400 per month or under GBP250 to field each paralegal.

Lawyers do not see them as a threat simply because they do not seek to compete with them but to complement their work. In Malawi with only 300 lawyers for 11 million people, there just are not enough lawyers to go round.

They aim at a working ratio of one paralegal to 100 prisoners each day. The information they provide is accurate and the service they offer is both free and appropriate to the legal needs of the person at the beginning of the criminal justice process, ie interview by police, bail, case follow up of overstayers, first appearance at court etc. They do not encroach on the specialist’s patch by holding themselves out to advise in individual cases or represent people in court. The criminal justice agencies have grown to admire their discretion and professionalism (they work to a strict code of conduct in prisons and police stations) and they have carved out a respected and valued niche for themselves – surely the fundamental test of ‘sustainability’.

Currently, outside Malawi, the programme is operating in Benin (as the Projet d’Assistance Judiciaire aux Detenus – PAJUDE) and in Kenya (the Kenya Prisons Paralegal Project – KPPP). Interest has been expressed in starting a similar scheme in Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Nepal, Bangladesh and Cook County, Illinois, USA. Like the community service scheme that originated in Zimbabwe in 1994 and is now operating in 13 countries up and down Africa and attracting interest from countries outside the continent, the Paralegal Advisory Service, made in Malawi, offers a flexible model that can be adapted to any other country with similar problems.

Between 18-25 April this year, the XIth UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice will take place in Bangkok, Thailand. This five-yearly gathering of government ministers, senior criminal justice actors and NGOs provides an important forum for keeping policy makers’ eye on the ball and not allowing them to be distracted by the ‘war’ on narcotics and terrorism. It can serve to sidestep political agendas of the day and focus on the state of our criminal justice around the world, the quality of that justice and peoples’ access to it. It is a reasonable hope that the government of Malawi will table the Lilongwe Declaration for adoption by Congress and so raise the voice of the millions of poor people passing through our police stations and prisons each year without advice or assistance.

A former Chief Justice of Nigeria wrote: “The rule of law is not a western idea, nor is it linked up with any economic or social system…As soon as you accept that man is governed by law and not by whims of men, it is the rule of law.” (Adetokunbo A Ademola). And without the rule of law, the MDGs may be attained but they cannot be sustained.

Further information is available from Clifford Msiska, National Co-ordinator, Paralegal Advisory Service, Malawi [email][email protected]; a film (13 minutes, Path to Justice, 2004, directed by Pierre Kogan is available from PRI (Lilongwe) [email][email protected]; materials on starting up the PAS are also available. The Lilongwe Declaration and conference papers are available from www.penalreform.org The report will be published in English and French in June 2005.

* Adam Stapleton is a former criminal lawyer and adviser to Penal Reform International.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

A tsunami of the sort that hit Asia will hit Africa sooner or later. It's just a question of how much sooner or later: one year, 10 years, a 100 or a 1000 years, and if it will be bigger or smaller. The impact it will largely depend on how prepared the continent, individual countries and governments will be for its consequences.

Tectonic plates on which all continents rest are continuously shifting - triggering underwater quakes and volcanoes. Global warming and melting of polar caps will also raise sea levels, increasing the chances of submersion of coastal areas. Over 30,000 earthquakes are recorded annually. On average one or two are seriously destructive to different degrees. There are 500 active volcanoes and about 50 of them erupt in any given year. More importantly quake zones change as tectonic plates beneath the continents shift. Wishful thinking will not prevent a tsunami, but anticipation, preventive measures, containment and effective emergency measures will nullify or ameliorate its consequences. The time to prepare is now.

Now that the big headlines from Asia are gone its time for sober assessment by the next potential victims and they don't come bigger than Africa. The reason is simple. Africa has the least developed infrastructure to cope with destruction on a mass scale.

Every scale of practical assessment - early warning and evacuation capacity, communications and transport network, flood defences, building safety and standards, population density of coastal cities, medical facilities, emergency relief procedures, emergency stocks of water, food, blankets etc - indicate that were a tsunami of similar scale to that of 26 December to hit Africa today, the death scale would not be around 300,000 as in Asia but between 500,000 and a million depending on what coast of Africa is hit. The number of countries and coastal cities involved will be key factors influencing the casualty rate and for sure the displaced and homeless rate will top the roughly 2 million from the Asian tsunami.

For instance, a major line of seismic activity runs along Africa's western and southwestern coast in the South Atlantic Ocean. A major quake there could trigger a tsunami that will hit the western and south western coast of Africa, including most or all coastal cities and towns in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D' Ivore, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Benin, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Angola, Namibia and parts of South Africa. This could include significant coastal cities such as Accra, Cape Town, Lome, Dakar, Banjul, Monrovia, Freetown, Abidjan, Luanda and Lagos that range in population from less than a 100,000, to Lagos which alone has an official population of 14 million. In these cities millions live within two kilometres (tsunami range) of the ocean, especially in Lagos where the estimate is at about three million. The statistics project a monumental disaster.

But a tsunami will not be the first 'natural' disaster to hit Africa. Over the past decade, between four million and six million Africans have died annually from 'tsunami' scales of leading killer diseases, malaria, HIV, TB, measles and typhoid. Malaria alone kills about 3,000 children a day in Africa. Almost double the number of Asian Tsunami victims die every month of preventable or treatable diseases in Africa. Some may feel that if the bodies were laid side by side every month for the cameras, maybe governments would wake up to their responsibilities. With all due respect to the Asian victims and their families, it is no less sad that mosquitoes strike individually and each family suffers in isolated grief.

The relevance of this here is that African governments are already failing their people in respect of preventive measures for the leading causes of death. Even in a war, such a casualty rate would be untenable.

In addition to human life that is not measurable in monetary terms, such losses to disease are bound to have an economic impact. Malaria alone is estimated by world economists to cost Africa in social and economic terms the equivalent of about $12bn a year yet it would cost only a fraction of this to contain it. This is roughly the same figure at the lower end of estimates for reconstruction in the Asian tsunami zones and twice the amount being offered in debt relief by Paris Club and G8 countries to affected Asian countries.

Should Africa then spend time and resources preparing for a tsunami that has as much chances of happening today as in 10 years time while for sure an equivalent number of projected tsunami victims are already dying every month of preventable diseases and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future? The answer is a resounding - Yes! For one thing, a tsunami would knock already stumbling economies and healthcare systems into a coma.

Preventable diseases, terrible as they are, take human life and rob Africa of her most precious resource - its people. Earthquakes and tsunamis will not only take lives, they will simultaneously concentrate and magnify the depth of misery by wrecking cities and creating refugee situations across massive urban areas. For instance, nearly three million people have been displaced by the Asian tsunami and some experts estimate that about four million would have lost jobs. That's four million more families with no income. The projected social implications for basic rights such as education, nutrition and healthcare are mind boggling not to mention social dislocation, anarchy and crime.

In Africa, the domino effect from a refugee crisis in major cities would also sink already non-existent public housing sectors. Health wise, Africa already looses the highest percentage of its trained health care personnel every year to emigration and a public health crisis is looming in major cities. A tsunami hit would massively complicate the malaria, TB, HIV and measles situation, not to mention diseases transmitted by contaminated water and malnutrition.

Economically speaking, the fact that historically, coastal cities in Africa have evolved into main centres of commerce (flowing from when slaves were transported through them and later raw materials for the same trans Atlantic routes) means that any significant mass destruction of these cities will have a multiplier effect on national economies not dissimilar to shockwaves from a nuclear bomb. Already stumbling economies will be laid comatose.

Any observant visitor to major coastal cities in North America, Japan or Australia for instance would not have failed to notice that there are tsunami warning systems and evacuation routes planned in advance and clearly marked. Australia for instance issued a tsunami warning within half an hour of the December quake. These indicate clearly that even reasonably developed economies cannot afford the potential loss of life that could be wreaked by such natural disasters. Some will argue that the pacific and Indian oceans are more prone to tsunamis. While this is true, surely it is a warning shot that the Asian tsunami travelled seven hours to east Africa thousands of miles away and killed 137 in Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania and Madagascar.

Having realised that a warning system (giving 15 minutes to 2 hours notice) could have saved at least 200,000 lives, all countries in the Asia region met in Thailand within a month of the Asian tsunami to agree on logistics for establishing an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system. The cheapest system possible will be ready by 2006 and will cost about $8m. India alone is planning to invest $29m in warning systems. Enthusiasm at the conference was so high that countries clashed over where the coordinating centre should be located with some offering more money than it would cost to establish it to secure the centre. When the Asia-wide warning system is ready, Africa will be virtually the only continent without a tsunami warning system. If other continents think it necessary to protect themselves, why not Africa? Governments and people need to be ready and on current form this will not happen.

For instance, how many governments (never mind people) know that on the 29th of January 2005 a moderate 5.5 quake occurred just North of Ascension Island a mere 1035 km (650 miles) SSW of Monrovia, Liberia. Earthquakes are devastating in part because of the element of surprise and relative unpredictability. Just two or three notches up the scale and for sure West Africa (and probably south West Africa) would now be in a state of mourning. The Asian tsunami was an 8.7 to nine on the Richter scale and travelled at roughly 500mph. Africa had seven hours yet managed to loose 137 lives despite this being sufficient time to be half way round the world. It goes without saying that it needs no further debate to make the case for a warning system.

But a warning system alone will not do. People will also need to know what danger signs to look out for, what to do, where to go and how to get there. If all houses cannot be quake proof as they increasingly are in most parts of California and Japan, there must be available public places such as schools and hospitals designed and built to withstand waves, floods and quakes. As Tim Radford, a science editor with the UK Guardian, pointed out in a recent article, "survival depends not just on open lines, wakeful authorities and an educated public, but educated planners, builders and building inspectors as well". The social and communications network needed to pass warnings on to citizens must be established and road and transport networks improved. Greek scientists have established that simply widening road junctions and roundabouts leading to higher ground would save hundreds of lives in the event of a tsunami.

Warning systems need not cost the GDP of entire countries. A Swedish company (MedDay) announced at the end of January a cheaper system based on mobile phones which Asian countries are eager to test run. According to the company it will take about six weeks to install. But this can only be an interim measure. Development of electricity, medical and other modern infrastructure are the long-term solution. African countries must get in on such preparation and preventive measures.

Until this is done, hundreds of thousands of Africans will go about their daily lives waiting to die in a 'natural' disaster. Should this eventually happen, it will be nothing short of criminal negligence and no amount of debt relief, international rescue and relief teams and foreign aid workers from international charities will be able to hide the fact that Africa leaders would have once again failed their people in upholding that most basic right of all - the right to life.

*Sankore is coordinator of CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights an NGO focussing on rights issues in Africa. Pleas send feedback to [email][email protected] and [email protected]

It’s a sign of how bad things are when even the modest proposal that everyone on planet earth gets fresh water and enough to eat is fighting talk. – Terry Eagleton

Naomi Klein aptly described the first World Social forum as “the end of the end of history”. The fall of the Berlin Wall signified the end of a utopia gone badly wrong. Thatcher and her followers were able to speak with confidence that There Is No Alternative to the barbarism of capitalism devouring the guts of most of humanity. For sometime, Fukuyama’s apocalyptic “end of history” seemed real. It became almost impossible to breathe and dream. The hegemony of global capitalism had reached maddening proportions. It is said that in 1992 Nike paid Michael Jordan to advertise its shoes, and here was the madness - he earned more than the entire East Asian industry which produces those shoes.

Then in 2001, the city of Porto Alegre, situated in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, reverberated with a fresh call: “Another World is Possible!”. The birth of the World Social Forum was a noisy affair. The force of this new possibility stood in contrast and opposition to the rigid and soulless World Economic Forum happening at the same time on the beautiful island of Davos in Switzerland. Those who took the side of the wretched of the earth looked to Porto Alegre, and those who worship the power and logic of money turned to Davos. The battle lines were drawn. Ever since, world politics have not been the same. This year will see the fifth installment of the World Social Forum return to its base after the 2004 event was held in Mumbai, India. The WSF has come to mean many things to many people: celebration of hope, new ways of doing and thinking, and the limits of resistance to capitalism in our times.

African murmurs

The 80s saw Africa saying NO! to the devastation visited upon the continent through the killer medicine of the Structural Adjustment Projects (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF, which required iron-fisted men to carry out their mission – from the safe distance and sanctity of parliament and state houses – in the name of development and democracy. To achieve this madness nothing was spared; even the anti-colonial history and memory was appropriated, as was revolution and socialism. But the African NO! was simply named “food riots”; this was a resistance which did not speak for itself and the IMF quickly worked these “ food riots” into its four-staged re-colonisation strategy, revealed by Joseph Stiglitz after his sojourner as a servant of the devil.

The call for Africa’s “second liberation” was stillborn and was appropriated into a limited desire for “multi-party democracy”. Instead of freedom from the shackles of neo-colonial bondage, multi-party democracies continued the one-way traffic of African wealth to the North and domestic suburbs where the national representatives of the system reside. In the words of the African revolutionary thinker A.M. Babu:

"It is much better for the international bourgeoisie for locals to supervise their own dependency, it lessens tensions and the real master is invincible. We are busy chopping each other’s heads through military coups and the struggle for power in order simply to prove ourselves better supervisors on behalf of international capital, and to enjoy the rewards in wealth or absolute power”.

What Babu did not anticipate was the effective utilization of democratic discourses and the ideology of development to sustain the same position in the interest of global capitalism. African leaders chose to do unto themselves what global capital would otherwise do unto them. As South Africa’s ruling party (Mandela’s African National Congress) policy ideologue put it:

"We don’t oppose the WTO. We never joined the call to abolish it, or to abolish the World Bank or the IMF. Should we be out there condemning Imperialism? If you do those things, how long will you last?"

Resistance was colonized, tamed and tailored to serve the purpose of the hegemony of money. Resistance needed to liberate itself from the party, the leader, the old orthodoxies, hierarchies and empty discourses. It was the creative power of resistance and poetry of the indigenous people of Chiapas in Mexico which gave the world the beginnings of a new language – a language which found expression within the WSF. What started in Africa as a murmur now found a name – the monster was named “neo-liberalism”. The dream returned, history could be made again. Chiapas fortified the possibility of the peoples of the world to say a collective NO! and many YESES!

In the past five years, the view that there is no one answer, no one single manifesto, no pre-determined history (as the nineteenth-century Russian populist Herzen declared, “History has no libretto”) seemed both to gain ground and drive the desire to make history afresh through trial and error, rather than rely upon the certainty of yesteryears’ political fantasies. Of course, those who held old views found new energy from the emergent global peoples’ resistance – Marx, Lenin, Mao and even Stalin occasionally reared their heads. The freedom from the burden of certainty was best articulated by one of the World Social Forum’s superstars, the French small-scale farmers’ leader and bane of agri-business, José Bové. When asked whether the Seattle gathering represented a new internationalism, Bové answered:

"There are no pre-conceived ideas. Those days have gone – thank goodness – when popular movements were slotted into theoretical constructs. Seattle showed the opposite. People came together not with any worked out theory, but to take action… far too long, theories and analysis have been shuffled around, promising change. People today have lost confidence in these theories. Seattle revealed the existence of an informal worldwide network. "

The birth of the WSF is generally perceived to have carried on the spirit of the 1999 battle of Seattle. The collective NO! saw the closure of a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) right within the belly of the beast. From there onwards the evil triad of the WTO, World Bank and IMF could only hold their meetings behind army barricades. The people of the world had won the moral high ground despite their leaders’ shameful genuflection to these institutions. The WSF gave the new resistance a space to share the new language. By and large, the forum strove to be anti-hierarchical and non-vanguardist. The WSF spoke about “space”, “reflections” and “networks of resistance”. These new discourses and praxis somehow gave expression to a movement of movements, but there were shortcomings – and deep ones, too.

If Klein was ecstatic about the first forum, by the third she was crying “highjack!”. The event had been taken over by established left-leaning political parties and the Latin American big men: Lula of Brazil, Chavez of Venezuela and the ever-presence of Castro, even in his physical absence. Perhaps the most devastating critique came from the pen of the respected radical thinker James Petras, who saw the 2002 meeting as a “tale of two forums”. One forum promoting reformism and accommodation could be found representing the established political parties, NGOs and a myriad of intellectuals, and was based in the main venue, the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC). On the other hand, there was the more radical, anti-establishment forum which occurred in hundreds of small and big meetings, circles of articulation and self-organized spontaneous conversation away from the university and media attention. Others began to argue that the WSF had become a jamboree of a motley concoction of agendas and interests, as recent greetings from one of the regular attendees shows:

"Hope you all doing well. I’m in Porto, and now joining the throngs who pretend to struggle, we the passport wielding, credit card swiping, voyager mile accumulating, cyber connected, defenders of the rights of the working class, the Dalits, the landless peoples’ rights for self-determination. I watched with glee as the internationalists were hooking up at airports, hotels, taxis. “Hi comrade, long time. Since Mumbai”. “Hi comrade, long time, since Cancun, are you going to Hong Kong. I am still struggling to get funding”. Yeaaaaa., this is the new age struggle; and I am part of it. Now that I have more time on my hands (thanks to?donor sponsored air-conditioned hotel room)…"

The biggest conceptual and organizational challenge to the WSF came from a parallel meeting, organized under the catchy name “Mumbai Resistance 2004” (MR). The critique delivered by MR 2004 was devastating (if not over-stated at times); tough questions were asked around the origins and funders of the WSF. One of the most serious charges was that the WSF is nothing but a valve and a permitted space of dissent, and does not really threaten the interest of global capital. MR 2004 pointed to the once CIA-controlled Ford Foundation as one of the main funders, and the agenda of the moderate French players, such as ATTAC and Le Monde Diplomatique, was also held up as evidence of the castrated possibilities of the WSF. MR 2004 did not mince its words: he who pays the piper plays the tune. True, more and more global South NGOs found legitimacy by association, and Northern Funders continue to determine, in particular, the African representation to the WSF. These were often the same donors who would not touch national movements and counter-hegemonic projects at a national level. Increasingly, those who have sustained and given impetus and life to the WSF find themselves outside; the Zapatistas are excluded because they are involved in armed combat, the FARC of Colombia was denied space for a press conference in 2002.

Lack of Black Voices

One of the key fault lines in the WSF activities has been the lack of a platform to build and raise the black voice and black issues. This is surprising given the fact that Brazil is home to the biggest black population outside of Africa, and racism continues to ensure that the darker you are, the lower you find yourself in the Brazilian social ladder. The lack of prominence of the black question in the global resistance, and at the WSF in particular, can be accounted for by examining the historical inequities which developed along the color line. A second factor is the historical denial of race as a legitimate area of resistance. This is partly a result of the out-dated Marxist philosophies raven with arrogant universalizing Eurocentrisms, which privileged class over any other category of exclusion.

* Andile Mngxitama is a Johannesburg based land rights activist and member of the Wewrite editorial collective. This is the introductory editorial to the latest edition of – A Journal for Black Thought. In the edition, the problem of exclusion is discussed by Radha D’ Souza and Michael Abrahams. Frank Wilderson debates the uneasy relationship between Marxism and the Black Subject, and Aziz Choudry points to how global struggles run the risk of eclipsing older struggles such as those of the indigenous peoples in places like Canada, USA and New Zealand. The promises and challenges facing the ASF are examined in a piece by Amanda Alexander and Mandisa Mbali.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

>>>>>Links to news from the WSF

- Euphoria in short supply at WSF
http://www.tni.org/archives/bello/euphoric.htm
- News and reports from the WSF
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/eventos/10.html
- Blogside at the WSF
http://dorseynation.blogspot.com/
- Updates from the WSF
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/2603.html

Statement by CSOs at the Fourth Ordinary African Union Summit of the Heads of States, 24-31st January 2005, Abuja, Nigeria

Signed by the African Network for the Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA), African Womens Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ACDHR), Center for Democracy and Development (CDD),
Pan African Movement (PAM), Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Programme(PADEAP), West African Students Union (WASU), Womens Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA), Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Agencies (DENIVA), Fahamu, ActionAid International, Oxfam GB

Summary

The fourth Ordinary African Union Summit of the Heads of States takes place at a time when the consequences of poorly financed and collapsing public health services across the continent can only be described as a public health emergency. Returning to Abuja where four years ago they committed themselves to accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other related infectious diseases, it is clear that key obstacles continue to prevent hundreds of millions of Africans from realising the right to health. African Governments and the African Union must reinvigorate the fight against the violation of HIV/AIDS and health related rights.

Recommendations

- African Governments must commit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.
- African government should ensure that treatment of AIDS and infectious diseases is provided free, reaches vulnerable groups and in an accountable manner.
- African Governments, who have to yet ratify the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, must do so. It is a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and securing measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers.
- African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005.

Situational analysis

Across our continent the health status of women remains precarious and in many instances, worsening, not only because of HIV but also because of the many unacceptable inequalities that exist in women’s health, the limited choices that are made available to women and finally, the lack of accountability for their health.
- Pascal Mocumbi, Prime Minister, Mozambique, 2003.

The majority of Africa’s 800 million citizens continue to remain locked out of health facilities across the continent. By the time the Summit opens, Africa will have lost 20 million people to the plague of AIDS. Behind them, they would have left 12 million orphans to fend for themselves. While our leaders meet, outside the doors of the Abuja International Conference Centre, 80% of the 40 million people currently living with HIV/AIDs across the world will be struggling to fight a debilitating disease that in some parts of the industrialised world is no longer a killer disease. 55% of these will be women.

By the time the Summit opens on the 24th January, 90 million African women and girls will have been forcibly circumcised or had their genitals mutilated. Between the opening and the closing Summit ceremonies, 77,000 women and girls will have undergone unsafe abortions in countries where restrictive abortion policies ensure that no standards can be maintained or monitored. As a result of this and other factors, a staggering 47/48 sub-Saharan African countries will not meet the goal of reducing maternal mortality and one in ten babies will not survive child birth due to poor and inadequate health infrastructure in Africa.

Yet, this is sadly no longer news in a continent numbed by the domestic stories of neglect, blocked access to life-saving drugs and poverty. What could be news is the scaling up of international and African public resources into expanding access to health-care services.

Expand public financing for health and education

When African Heads of States met in Abuja in April 2001, they correctly declared HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB), and other related infectious diseases (ORID) as a state of emergency. Recalling and reaffirming their commitment to all relevant decisions, declarations and resolutions in the area of health and development and on HIV/AIDS, particularly the "Lomé Declaration on HIV/AIDS in Africa" (July 2000) and the "Decision on the adoption of the International Partnership against HIV/AIDS" (Algiers 1999) they stated;
“WE COMMIT OURSELVES to take all necessary measures to ensure that the needed resources are made available from all sources and that they are efficiently and effectively utilized. In addition, WE PLEDGE to set a target of allocating at least 15% of our annual budget to the improvement of the health sector.”

Now known as the “Abuja 15% commitment” this target was seen as a critical contribution to the fight against HIVAIDS and other diseases. Shockingly, despite this public commitment, four years on many countries continue to spend less than 10% of the revenue on health. African Governments must commit in this Summit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.

New research published by the Global Campaign for Education and endorsed by UNAIDS, shows that a complete primary education makes a strong and direct impact on HIV infection rates, especially among young women. Girls with a complete primary education are 2.2 times less likely to contract HIV than those with some or no primary education. Education equips young people to understand and apply facts and gives them the status, clout and confidence to avoid unsafe and exploitative relationships. Investing in free primary education for everyone but especially for girls, is one of the most effective and urgently needed measures to fight the epidemic. Investing in secondary education would bring additional benefits. Consequently, the AU needs to give priority to free, universal and compulsory basic education with gender equity, both in its own strategies for development and poverty reduction, as well as in its dialogue with forums such as the G8.

Debt cancellation is pre-requisite for progress

The heavy external debt burden …continues to mortgage African economies and cast a shadow over our People’s’ future. To date, the proposed remedies are ad hoc.
- Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity, July 2002

A comprehensive AIDS plan for Africa would cost US$10 billion per year, yet African nations spend one and a half times this amount in debt servicing. In many countries, more is spent on debt servicing than on education and health or is received in aid grants and foreign direct investment. For the same money, the global fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis could stop these diseases and provide Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs) for the three million people living with HIV in all developing countries not just Africa.

This absurdity can only be seen from the experience of one country. Tanzania for instance, currently pays US$39 million dollars per annum in debt servicing while receiving only US$27 million in aid. It is revealing to recall that after the second world war, Germany was considered to be harshly penalised for having reparations set at 7% of its exports, yet in 2005 Tanzania is supposed to “adjust” and grow with debt servicing set at 60% of its exports.

Yet, this Summit occurs at a time when momentum has built once more around the necessity for debt cancellation. Several G8 countries have bi-laterally cancelled debts owed by African countries. In February 2005, the G7 Finance Ministers will consider proposals to underwrite debt cancellation by committing additional bi-lateral financing or by re-valuing IMF gold reserves. The benefits of this would be immense. Debt cancellation would enable countries like Ethiopia to expand access by doubling its expenditure on health and thus reaching beyond the 60% who are currently reached by health services.

There is precedence in Africa for successful re-channeling of debt relief into basic social services. At least six countries in Africa offer insight into the possibilities debt cancellation could create. In Benin for example, 54% of HIPIC relief monies was channeled into improving health programmes by recruiting health staff for rural clinics, implementing HIV/AIDS and anti-malarial programmes and improving access to safe water and increasing immunisation. Malawi has been able to allocate a 30% cut in debt servicing per year to enhance their HIV/AIDs health care system. US$1.3 million of debt relief money has been critical to resourcing Uganda’s National HIV/AIDS plan. Cameroon was able to launch a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategic plan funded to the tune of US$114 million with help from debt savings. In Niger, a special programme that focuses on rural education, health, food security and water systems has been fully financed through HIPC. This has mainly been used so far in building classrooms and rural clinics. In Burkina Faso, HIPC relief has been spent on health (33%), education (39%) and rural roads (28%).

As Jubilee Zambia coordinator Teza Nchinga notes, "Respect for the basic human rights (food, health care and education) of millions of Zambians should take priority over repayment of debts to comparatively wealthy creditors especially when capital on these debts has already been paid a number of times over." The African Union Commission must lead on behalf of African countries by aggressively demanding debt cancellation from the G8 in 2005. African Governments on the other hand, must follow the example of these six countries who have had re-channeled monies freed up from debt relief into strengthening health systems including the retention of health workers.

Industrialised countries must deliver on their aid commitments

Currently, despite the increases pledged in the UN Financing For Development Conference in Monterrey, rich countries spend half of the foreign assistance they did in 1960. If they were to meet the OECD targets of 0.7% of their GNP this would increase aid levels from US$70 billion to US$190 billion dollars. Yet, only the UK and Spain have set dates to meet these targets. 12 other countries are far from this and do not seem to be in a hurry.

Compared to expenditure on defense or domestic agricultural subsidies, this would be a very small amount. Looked at in terms of the cost to individual taxpayers, it would cost an additional US$80 dollars per person per year or put more simply, the average price of one cup of coffee a week.

G8 countries continue to prioritise aid to countries where they have geo-political interests rather than fighting poverty. Over 2004, America set aside US$ 65 billion dollars for fighting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This could have financed the exact annual budget deficit for the entire continent of Africa. Put another way, six months of US funding for the war in Iraq (US$ four billion) could have met the annual budget deficit for the global fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Yet increasing aid is only one measure, improving its quality is another. For instance, nearly 30% of aid is tied to goods and services from donor countries. In the case of the US, this figure is as high as 70%.

The quality of foreign assistance also continues to be undermined by IMF and World Bank fiscal and macro-economic models, which act to constrain expenditure on basic social services. In a study of twenty Poverty Reduction Strategies, sixteen were found to contain fiscal targets for inflation and the budgetary envelope that had not been subjected to public discussion. They were targets that had been established by the World Bank or the IMF. Last year for instance, Ethiopian and Tanzanian Governments will have to meet 85 and 78 policy conditions respectively.

The AU clearly sees itself providing leadership, monitoring states performance and accountability, advocacy with states and beyond, setting up standards, harnessing new continental initiatives, and as a knowledge hub. This clear emphasis on harmonising the plethora of new initiatives and monies that are offered for flooding Africa and which are, in many cases, confusing national plans and programmes, is welcome.

To this end, the AU must challenge the proliferation of uncoordinated initiatives such as the US PEPFAR Presidential Initiative. Bilateral initiatives such as PEPFAR may reinforce donor-driven approaches, increase the administrative burdens of recipient countries and drain resources away from existing, experienced, multilateral initiatives. Such initiatives create parallel systems where the national government using inexpensive generic fixed dose combinations and that of PEPFAR using expensive brand names. This leads to confusion of both patients and health providers.

The African Union must take a more vigorous lead in engaging the international community to deliver the Monterrey promises and improve the volume and quality of foreign assistance to Africa. It is vital that donors’ initiatives and programmes should implement nationally defined policies especially regarding access to medicines.

Improving Access to Care and Support

The major challenge facing the people living with AIDS and people affected by AIDS is the issue of access to treatment and care. The World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2003 came up with an initiative to treat three million people by 2005. This is believed to be approximately half of the estimated six million people in dire need of antiretroviral therapy. This is the popular 3 by 5.

Despite the fact that some African governments have subsidized distribution programmes, less than 1% of Africans in need of ARV treatment had access to ARVs, compared to 85% in developed countries in 2004. South Africa has committed to providing free treatment to 53,000 people by March 2004. This is a fraction of South Africa's HIV positive population, estimated to be over five million. The Nigerian government began a treatment programme to provide ARVs for 10,000 people in November 2002. At a conservatively estimated number of 3 million people living with HIV&AIDS in Nigeria in 2004, this is quite clearly inadequate.

Access to ARVs is also determined by power within and between households. Findings from CSO participatory research studies in Zambia and Nigeria suggest that intra-household power relations conspire to constrain women’s access to ARVs. Women in Zambia have a disproportionate access to ARVs (30%) despite comprising of 50% of the population. In January 2004, less than 30% of people who had access to ARVs were women in Zambia. In many families who cannot afford to have more than one person on ARV, it is the male head of household that is chosen. At another level, scanty or total ignorance of prevalent diseases, the weak bargaining position of women and the pervasive cultural endorsement of male liberty to have free and multiple sexual relationships (in and out of marriage) has escalated the distributive impact of STDs and led to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS across communities all over Africa.

In many countries across Africa the right to health is not enshrined in either the constitution or laws. It is in this context that the African Union Protocol on Women’s Rights and in particular the provisions in articles 14 and 15 significantly contribute to grounding the obligations of Governments. Yet, despite encouragement by the African Union Commission under the leadership of President Konare and civil society campaigning, only seven Governments have ratified the Protocol, a further 33 have signed but not ratified. To this end, African Governments who have not yet done so must re-commit to ratify with urgency, the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, as a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.

Class equities also affect the distribution of ARVs. Interviewed recently, a 29 year old father of three kids in Nigeria said;

“The ARV that come to the center are not given to those of us who have come out to declare our status, but to those BIG men who bribe their way through and we are left to suffer and scout round for the drug. “

Attempts to bring down the costs of ARVs are obviously the way forward. In Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe, tariffs on essential drugs have been removed. The Governments of Zambia and Mozambique have issued compulsory licensing for ARVs for their treatment programmes. Zimbabwe has also allocated precious foreign currency to a local company to manufacture generic ARVs, and is currently running trials on AZT at two of its largest hospitals. However, Zimbabwe’s lack of foreign currency has made it difficult to secure an adequate supply of drugs. In Kenya and Malawi also many public hospitals have no drugs for treatment of HIV/AIDS-related infections.

Access to essential medicines rests on African countries being able to domestically produce or source cheap drugs from southern based generic drugs industries. The AU should consider initiating dialogue with WHO, UNCTAD and the EC to explore the feasibility of establishing African centers of excellence in the producing of high quality local production of medicine especially ARVs. African states should be encouraged to influence both public and private health service providers to dispel misinformation about generic drugs being inferior to brand products, eliminate the costs of ARVs to users and actively target the rural poor with special emphasis on gender equity. Key to this will be the replication of policies that cut taxes and tariffs and promote price regulation to countries that have not already done so.

We welcome existing plans for a continental conference on the rights of people with HIV/AIDS to raise the profile of rights abuses and to chart a new chapter in the evolution of national laws and standards consistent with the spirit of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights. We call on the AU Commission to extend an invitation to People with AIDS organizations and networks across the continent to help design this process.

African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005. The AU must ensure that new trade agreements especially Trade Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), bilateral and regional trade agreements do not undermine access to medicines in Africa.

The absence of effective conditions to fight HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and polio conditions and poor remuneration of African health workers has led to an exodus of trained health personnel. Calculating the cost of training, every doctor that leaves the continent costs Africa US$60,000. This results in a staggering subsidy to G8 countries of US$500 million every year just for health personnel.

To increase access to medicines African governments should redirect aid and debt money towards investing in basic health services including retention of health workers. Donors’ initiatives should follow national medicines policies especially using inexpensive generic fixed dose combinations. The AU should advocate with states, donors and the pharmaceutical industry to decrease the prices of second line treatment for HIV.

Conclusions

As African Governments meet once again in Abuja, they must embrace the opportunity of an invigorated African Union Commission to turn words into further deeds and directly confront the state of emergency. The temptation to simply re-affirm the 2001 Abuja Declaration must be avoided in order for the costs of this Summit to be justified. Increasing domestic resourcing, improving the quality of health programmes particularly to rural communities and delivery on debt cancellation are key to preventing hundreds of millions of Africans from being denied the right to health.

Recommendations

- African Governments must commit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.
- African government should ensure that treatment of AIDS and infectious diseases is provided free, reaches vulnerable groups and in an accountable manner.
- African Governments, who have yet to ratify the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, must do so. It is a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers and stop recruiting more workers.
- African Governments must prioritise monies saved by debt relief for strengthening health systems that ensure the retention of health workers.
- African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* Useful Reading Materials
- African Union, Report of the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and other related infectious diseases. Abuja Nigeria, April 2004
- African Union, HIV/AIDS Strategy 2005-2007
- ActionAid International, Responding to HIV/AIDS in Africa, a comparative analysis of responses to the Abuja Declaration in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria & Zimbabwe, June 2004
- ActionAid International, 3 by 5: Ensuring HIV/AIDS Care for All. June 2004
- Fahamu/SOAWR, Pambazuka News 190: Special Issue on the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa: A pre-condition for health & food security, January 2005
- Oxfam International, Paying the Price, January 2005

THE LATEST:

Nearly 160 000 people have been killed by the Tsunami that hit Asia and parts of Africa on December 26. In Africa, up to 300 people are believed to have died, with northeastern Somalia the worst hit. Up to 1,500 buildings and 40 villages in northeastern Somalia were damaged by the tsunami and The United Nations is assisting 12 000 people.

THE CONCERNS:

HIV/AIDS advocates are worried that the massive outpouring of concern for Tsunami victims will suck funds away from much-needed HIV/AIDS relief efforts in Africa. They argue that the outpouring of money for the Tsunami shows that the cash has always been there but that the international political will to solve one of Africa’s most acute problems is lacking.

Apart from HIV/AIDS, there are also worries that the global attention received by the Tsunami will upstage what was supposed to be a focus on Africa in the year 2005 and take away from an urgent need to focus on the development challenges facing the continent.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that 2005 will be a year of action for Africa as the UK assumes presidency of the European Union and G8. Now the fear is that Africa will be pushed into the wings by the Tsunami disaster.

THE CONTRADICTIONS:

This week the Paris Club of creditor states approved a moratorium on the debt payments of the countries worst hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, to free up money for reconstruction. Together the countries owe $272bn and pay about $23bn a year in servicing these debts. “That part of it is ugly," Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa is reported to have said. The argument is that Africa has long been lobbying for the cancellation of its debts which take money away from much needed spending on areas like HIV/AIDS, health and education, the neglect of which claim more lives in the long term than the Tsunami disaster. Requests for debt cancellation – despite some initiatives like the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative – have largely been ignored. Now, however, within a matter of weeks, the G8 countries have shown that it is possible to solve the debt crisis.

Critics also question why the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the DRC, where the International Rescue Committee reported late last year that nearly four million people had died as a result of conflict since 1998, have not received the same kind of attention from the international community.

ESSENTIAL READING: EDITORS CHOICE

“The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry,” writes John Pilger. “Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable.” Read ‘The other, man made disaster’ at http://pilger.carlton.com/print

LINKS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4148397.stm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c1285c9d886d539b477e05f9c…
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_hiv.cfm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04357797.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1389369,00.html
http://www.halifaxlive.com/artman/publish/sudan_011005_563539.shtml
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=167

“Ntoroko is like some forgotten world. Our health unit is very poor, our roads are very poor and so are community members are very poor.”
- 22-year-old Ugandan male, Ntoroko West, 28 October 2004

Ntoroko County in Bundibugyo District lies in the far west of Uganda, bordering Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Not only is Ntoroko geographically remote, wedged between Semuliki national park and Lake Albert, but, as the young person above eloquently pointed out, it is also politically marginalised from district and central government decision-making and resource allocation. Following years of conflict between the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the Ugandan government, as well as among armed groups in DRC, Ntoroko County has experienced widespread displacement and poverty.

It is within this context of scarcity that the Refugee Law Project, funded by Save the Children, undertook research to identify the main issues affecting children in the county, to assess community responses to date and to analyse gaps in policy and programming. Using participatory, qualitative methods, a team of six researchers gathered data from refugee and national adults and children in Kanara, Rwebisengo and Karagutu sub-counties. The aim was to understand the general context for children, as well as the specific challenges and circumstances of refugee children, including unaccompanied minors, from the DRC.

Ugandan government policy requires refugees to register and proceed to rural settlements. However, many Congolese refugees in Ntoroko County have chosen not to move to Kyaka II refugee camp, 200 kilometres away, because doing so would mean abandoning their cattle, losing their livelihoods as fishers and/or reducing their ability to monitor the situation in their home communities with a view to eventual return. Although they fulfil the criteria under international refugee law, these Congolese people are denied refugee status and deemed ‘aliens’ by the government. As a result, they constitute an ‘invisible’, albeit in some areas majority, part of the population in Ntoroko County. This means that they are not taken into account in government planning for service provision, resulting in increased demand on already over-stretched education and health facilities. Such a policy indirectly penalises Ugandan residents in the area, provoking discrimination against refugees in service provision.

In such an environment of competition for resources and power, children are often left out of the equation. As one resident pointed out: “Our children are completely at risk here because in Ntoroko, as in the traditions of most fish sites, the formula is every man for himself and God for us all. How can you then say children are well here?” Children and young people lack access to decision-making and leaders are not necessarily accountable to those they purportedly represent. The majority of officials dealing with children’s issues are older males, while Ugandan nationals often speak on behalf of refugees. Allegations of corruption are also widespread. For example, one interviewee said: “We normally see a number of things coming here, but they are taken to the chairman’s home. These leaders also sell the things like books which are brought for the children to use at school.”

Given this political situation, it is not surprising that research findings reveal major barriers to accessing quality education for children in Ntoroko County, particularly for girls and Congolese children. Malaria, cough, worms and cholera are the main health issues facing children, due primarily to poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water. Child abuse, neglect, rape and defilement are widespread in the county, but response from local authorities has been inadequate, contributing to a culture of impunity.

Recognising that children are active members of communities means that child protection is inextricably linked to governance issues in Ntoroko County. Only when the child rights agenda is politicised – when power dynamics in social structures are recognised and steps are taken towards inclusion of groups traditionally marginalised from power – will we begin to address the root causes of child abuse and neglect in Ntoroko County, and elsewhere.

* Christina Clark is Commonwealth Scholar, Oxford University. She is currently undertaking doctoral research with Congolese young people in Uganda. The research summarised here was undertaken in her voluntary capacity as Research Associate with Refugee Law Project, Makerere University. The full report is available at:

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The “Twelve Days of Christmas” is a Christian tradition. It links Christmas day (December 25) with Epiphany (January 6). “Epiphany” comes from a Greek word meaning “manifestation”. In a Christian sense we think of God manifesting (or revealing) himself to humankind in his coming into the world in physical form in the person of Jesus. Hence the link with Christmas, marking the birth of the Christ child, and hence too the tradition that remembers, on the twelfth day, the coming of the “wise men” from the East to witness that miracle for themselves. The twelve days between are days of joyous celebration. On the twelfth day of course all the Christmas decorations come down and life returns to “normal”.

Christmas and Epiphany are essentially Christian festivals, but the event they celebrate is of universal significance – namely that the Creator of this vast, complex and beautiful universe loves each and every one of his children. In fact he has revealed that he has a special concern for the poor, the lowly and the suffering. (Jesus was himself a victim of power politics; he suffered an appalling injustice, and was tortured to death) There is therefore in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” a message of hope for all, and a challenge to all, to show a God-like concern for the victims of injustice and oppression. Which is why Sokwanele selected this time to run a series of features that relate particularly to some of those “at the bottom of the pile” in suffering, crisis-torn Zimbabwe.

Christmas 2004 marked the 20th anniversary of Band Aid, an international charity initiative that set out to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1984. While Band Aid celebrates their achievements in Ethiopia twenty years ago, many Zimbabweans starve today as a result of disastrous government policies. Sokwanele’s articles over the last 12 days have explored a range of ways in which food is manipulated, controlled and exploited in our country. Furthermore, we have shown that using ‘food’ as a tool for short-term gain is an established part of the ZANU PF political tradition. While this campaign recognises the suffering of people in Zimbabwe today, it also remembers the suffering imposed on Zimbabweans at the hands of ZANU PF twenty years ago. We remind those in power that Zimbabweans will never forget what has been done in the past, nor will we forget what is being done today.

The issue of food security in our nation is one that touches all of us. Our most recent articles, focussing on the impact of HIV/AIDS on farming in the rural areas, coupled with first-hand testimony from Binga, clearly show that the promise of a “bumper harvest” is a cruel deception. ZANU PF’s current policies, which set out to monopolise all aspects of food supply and use it to intimidate the general populace into voting for it, renders any such promise a total fiction.

Ida, the 73-year-old pensioner whose story we shared on Day 6 of our campaign, should be living comfortably in her old age. Her husband had worked hard to ensure that when he died, his wife would be taken care of. But Mugabe’s economy, boasting the worst inflation rate in the world, has eroded the value of pensions with the result that hundreds of pensioners like Ida cannot afford to eat today. Yet as difficult as her life is, Ida is ‘lucky’ in comparison to Belinda’s grandmother (Day 3) who is destitute and homeless. Like many other grandmothers in our country, Belinda’s grandmother found herself with the heartbreaking responsibility of looking after her tiny HIV positive granddaughter, orphaned when both parents died while she was still a baby. Without the help of a local organisation, both Belinda and her grandmother would almost certainly have died long ago.

Will organisations like this be able to continue helping once ZANU PF’s controls all NGO activities? We caught a glimpse of how many different lives were affected by one small feeding scheme in one of Zimbabwe’s cities (Day 7). In contrast, our article on Day 4 testifies to how the one institution that is totally dependent on the government for food, namely our prisons, exposes hundreds of human beings to malnutrition and a range of other diseases as a result of paltry amounts of unhealthy food being prepared and served in the most unsanitary conditions. Is this the way of our future once local and foreign feeding schemes are closed down? If this regime cannot feed a few thousand prisoners, how is it ever going to feed the hundreds of thousands – indeed millions -- of starving people who need help today?

Or perhaps it has no intention of doing so? Our articles on Days 5 and 8 speak of extensive corruption in the food supply system, and of the deliberate manipulation of food in our country for short term political gain. These policies and practices amount to state imposed starvation.

We started our campaign by saying that starvation, regardless of political or religious persuasion, is at its core a moral issue that concerns us all. We ask again today, that you put aside your own particular political allegiances, and consider what many Zimbabweans are experiencing today in that light.
And here are some of the practical things that you can do in response to that suffering:

1. Keep yourself well informed about what is really happening so you will not be taken in by the regime's propaganda. The following websites provide Zimbabwean news from a range of sources, both international and local: www.zwnews.com; www.zimonline.co.za; www.newzimbabwe.com; www.zimbabwesituation.com
2. Help others to be informed. Share this knowledge with as many as you can in whatever ways are open to you.
3. Give whatever financial or material help you can to the various local organisations that are working to feed the starving and alleviate poverty and suffering in our country. Visit www.kubatana.net for the contact details of local organisations in your area.

We thank you for your support.

* This is the last in a series of twelve features distributed by Sokwanele. To subscribe to their mailing list email [email protected] Sokwanele, which means “enough” aims to make people aware of what is happening in Zimbabwe. Visit www.sokwanele.com/ for more information. Sokwanele.com retains full copyright on its own articles, which may be reproduced or distributed but may not be materially altered in any way.

The Khulumani Support Group’s reparations case under the Alien Tort Claims Act of the USA, along with the other ‘apartheid’ cases, was thrown out on September 29, 2004 by a conservative New York judge. He found that there was no violation of the law in commercial links with South Africa – an action that has drawn criticism from the South African Human Rights Commission.

Amongst the cases thrown out was the troublesome case initiated by Ed Fagan, in which he had demanded that the South African Government and companies should pay into a $20 bn "humanitarian fund".

The Khulumani case is being taken on appeal in a process that will demand that the merits of its case are more carefully reviewed and discerned. The case is viewed in the international human rights movement as the strongest case yet in enforcing international norms in respect of the behaviours of foreign multinational companies.

The Khulumani Support Group represents both the victims of apartheid who told their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the even larger group of survivors of gross human rights violations under apartheid who did not manage to engage with the TRC process.

The Khulumani case has survived several attempts to have it destroyed. One such attempt was the request by a number of multinational corporations, supported by several governments, including the American and British, to the United States Supreme Court not to allow foreigners to file lawsuits in America for human rights violations committed elsewhere in the world. However, on 29 June 2004, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Sosa v Alverez, held that foreigners could use the Alien Tort Claims Act to institute lawsuits in the United States for human rights abuses wherever they may be committed in the world.

The Court held that "today the door is open to a narrow class of international norms" for litigants to institute lawsuits under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The Court observed, "It would take some explaining to say now that federal courts must avert their gaze entirely from any international norm intended to protect individuals." The court saw that the statute was intended, from the time of the Founding Fathers of the USA, “to have a practical effect the moment it became law." This judgment represents a significant victory for human rights globally and a milestone in the progress of the Khulumani International Lawsuit.

What are the merits of the Khulumani lawsuit? While other ‘apartheid lawsuits’ sought ‘open-ended’ redress for all black South Africans born in the country between 1948 and 1994, the Khulumani lawsuit, rather, seeks limited individual, tailored relief for identified victims from private actors – those foreign multinational corporations which violated international law and were involved in colluding with the apartheid state’s security apparatuses. With the support of these corporations, the apartheid government committed extra-judicial killing, torture, sexual assault, prolonged arbitrary detention, and multiple crimes against humanity.

It is time South Africa – government and business – treated it fairly. It represents a positive opportunity for both. Khulumani has emerged as a world leader in the struggle to advance international human rights jurisprudence – a fact that many individuals of stature and many international human rights organisations have recognised, amongst them are former Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The Khulumani lawsuit is highly significant in terms of international human rights law, in particular in the advance of international customary law and the creation of a world of greater social fairness. That is why it is lodged in New York, a city that houses both global corporations and the United Nations. It is a vital test case to ensure that any person anywhere in the world who is violated by a government or a multinational business would have access to redress.

Will our media assist all South Africans to understand the importance of the Khulumani lawsuit in this struggle for justice? Could the entire country, led by our President and by business leaders committed to corporate social responsibility, embrace this struggle and in so doing recognise the legitimacy of the Khulumani Support Group’s lawsuit?

International business was pleased by the submission of the former Minister of Justice to the presiding judge as that did not distinguish between the different “apartheid” cases. Their pleasure has been misguided. Government claimed that these cases would impede the foreign investment that is still needed to redress the legacies of apartheid. In truth, it may well be that by upholding the right of Khulumani to seek redress from those companies that broke international sanctions and knowingly aided the apartheid regime, government would build greater certainty in investors and business. As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, “addressing corporate misconduct brings confidence to consumers and markets, creating a more positive business climate – genuine foreign investors are attracted to conditions of stability where social justice and good political, economic and corporate governance prevail.”

President Mbeki has stated that the South African government is not and will not be a party to litigation against corporations that benefited from the Apartheid system. Nonetheless, at the tabling of the TRC final report, he noted that, "the Government recognizes the right of citizens to institute legal action."

President Mbeki now has the opportunity take the ‘higher ground’ and clarify or correct the affidavit previously submitted by our government to the New York court. Such a clarification should distinguish the Khulumani case from the others and support the right of redress to American courts for all those who become the future victims of bad governments and criminal businesses. After all, the Khulumani lawsuit strengthens South Africa’s constitutional democracy by acknowledging the supremacy and universality of an international rule of law that obligates adherence to behaviours that respect basic human dignity. The Khulumani lawsuit does not seek any action that is inconsistent with government’s approach to achieving its own long-term goals, including programmes of community reparation and rehabilitation.

It is also time for South African Business to come out into the open and tell South Africans and the world that it is confident of itself and its practices, that it endorses the domestic TRC process that lies behind the Khulumani case, and that it stands tall for human rights and the redress of abuses worldwide.

As Justice Albie Sachs pointed out in his keynote address at the Human Rights and Democracy Awards ceremony in Johannesburg on December 10, 2004, South Africa represents one “shining star” in a global human rights community pervaded by an overwhelming sense of gloom as atrocities continue to be perpetrated in Sudan and Zimbabwe. In South Africa, he said, we have seen “the coming together of the best in all of us”. But he also reminded the gathering that the challenge is the ongoing construction and deepening of our democracy. The Khulumani International Lawsuit presents an important opportunity to do this. What better way to present our morally ambitious country as courageous, organised and united? Good things can only follow both domestically and globally.

* Please send comments to

“Conflict is like a fire: It can keep you warm and can cook your food, but if it gets out of control, it can burn your house down.”

One thousand people die every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and nearly half of these deaths are accounted for by children under five years of age, according to a report released this week by the International Rescue Committee (see Conflicts and Emergencies for more details). The IRC says these deaths add daily to the cumulative total of 3.8 million fatalities since the crisis began in August 1998 to the end of April 2004. Far from being resolved, the volatile situation in the east of the country continues to cause grave concern, with recent reports that Rwandan troops have entered the DRC to pursue rebels it says threaten its security. Pambazuka News emailed some questions about the situation in the DRC to YAV KATSHUNG JOSEPH, Executive Director of CERDH (Centre for Human Rights and democracy Studies / Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche en Droits de l’Homme et Démocratie).

PZ: News reports indicate a higher level of sabre rattling between Rwandan president Paul Kagame threatening to pursue forces hostile to Rwanda in the DRC and the DRC government sending troops to the eastern border. Reports indicate that Rwandan troops are operating in the DRC. In May, Bukavu was the focus of violent conflict, with Rwanda fingered as having provided logistical support, but strongly denying any involvement. This time Rwanda has stated in a very clear way that they will cross into the DRC to pursue forces that threaten them. What are the circumstances and the sequence of events that have led to this situation?

YKJ: Rwanda’s goals are to neutralise the rebel groups/interahamwe based in the DRC who destabilise peace; to prevent incursions from the DRC based rebel-groups; and natural resources control, etc. The DRC goals are security of the people, resources, property and state.

I noted with surprise that barely a week after the conclusion of the international conference on the Great Lakes, where leaders of the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda expressed willingness to co-operate in matters of common concern, there has been an eruption of fresh conflict. In fact, reports are that Rwanda has re-invaded the DRC.

Rwanda has twice invaded DRC in recent years - it says to attack Rwandan rebels based there. Rwanda has consistently said it is prepared to take military action because of the threat it says is posed by the group of some 8,000 men, which includes fighters who took part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. As usually, Rwanda justified their invasion by saying that they were pursuing interahamwe who were said to have sought refuge in the DRC.

Even after signing an agreement in Dar es salaam (Declaration on the Great Lakes) in November 2004, the Rwandan president threatened to pursue forces hostile to Rwanda in the DRC. Under the peace deal, the Hutu rebels were supposed to have been disarmed but progress has been slow. For Rwanda, the deadline of demobilizing the interahamwe have passed and the DRC and MONUC failed to do so and therefore, Rwanda would like to do it by force.
PZ: How serious is this latest round of hostilities and what are the implications for the transitional government in the DRC and peace in the Great Lakes region?

YKJ: The Congolese government said 6,000 Rwandan troops had crossed the border and attacked villages. Some 2,000 people have fled in North Kivu province. As a consequence, some 10,000 troops have been sent to expel Rwandan forces from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwandan military action is unravelling tentative moves towards peace throughout the Great Lakes region and the trust between the various elements in government has thinned because, the RCD (Congolese Rally for Democracy) is seen to deal with the Rwandans.

PZ: The Great Lakes conflict involving Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi is reported to have resulted in three million deaths and more than two million refugees and internally displaced people. In the east of the country instability and the flagrant violation of human rights has continued. The scale of the human suffering is almost unprecedented and yet somehow it seems that the DRC crisis has played second fiddle to other international and regional concerns, such as for example Sudan. Why do you think this is?

YKJ: The war in the DRC has resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with over 3.4 million displaced persons scattered throughout the country. An estimated 3.5 million people have died as a result of the war. This is a figure much higher than the national population of many African countries and several times superior to the number of victims of the Rwandan, Yugoslav, Sierra Leonean and Sudan conflicts that attracted so much attention. All in all, the international response to human rights violations in the DRC was an unsatisfactory one. Even worse was the response of the African Commission. Anyone concerned with the protection of human rights should be interested in the DRC conflict which impacted so negatively on the rights of more than 50 million African people and the resolution of which constitutes a step forward in the promotion of human rights in Africa as a whole.

PZ: South Africa has played a role in the peace negotiations in the DRC but the process seems to keep on stumbling against the same obstacles. What does this say about the South African approach to establishing peace on the continent in relation not only to the DRC, but also their involvement in the Ivory Coast?

YKJ: It is true that South Africa has been instrumental in putting in place the transitional Government in the DRC and actually, facilitating negotiation in the Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). However, there is a kind of fear at some level regarding the Congolese experience. In fact, initially, people were very enthusiastic about its role in the DRC as the main engine driving the process.
Things have however changed. Firstly, there is a general feeling that it is not Congolese, or Rwandans who won the war (if the armed conflict can be considered as such), but South Africa. This is largely in economic terms. South African companies have since invested heavily in the DRC and are behind most explorations and other economic activities. Some even think that this could have been the driving force behind South Africa's fervent involvement in the process. Others are saying that South Africa simply wants to have control in Africa and it is behaving like an imperialist characterized by hegemonic ideas. To me, the South African approach to establishing peace on the continent is a good thing but the objective must be genuine and for the interest of Africa.

PZ: What action needs to be taken and structures put in place to end this latest threat to peace and secure human rights in the region?

YKJ: The Security Council urged Rwanda not to send troops into DRC but did not condemn Rwanda's action or impose sanctions on the President, as the Congolese had wanted.

Incursion of the forces of one state into another can lead to rising tensions and inter-state armed conflicts. If the conflicts are not addressed, this can affect the well-being of the population’s socio-economic development and resources might be diverted to warfare instead of human and economic development; and if the conflict is not addressed it can have an impact on inter-state trade and restrict free movement of the people.

THERAPY:

1. There is a need to Disarm, Demobilise, Repatriate and re-integrate armed groups;
2. The international community should assist with the quick implementation of the agreements signed;
3. There is a need to put into consideration/revisit the mandate of MONUC-reinforcing the capacity of MONUC within a realistic time frame to implement the Agreement;
4. Establish joint border patrols between the national armies of all countries;
5. Need to reinforce confidence-building measures and joint and regional verification mechanisms should be reinforced with continued dialogue;
With regards the internal crisis in the DRC, the transitional government brought relative peace to the country, however there still exist pockets of crisis in the eastern regions. The transitional government should be pressurized by the international community and supported to conduct elections in June 2005 as planned. Furthermore, the MONUC should assure the security in the eastern borders of the country for the disarmament of armed groups

PZ: Further comments?

YKJ: In conclusion, all states in the Great Lakes region must know that: “Conflict is like a fire: It can keep you warm and can cook your food, but if it gets out of control, it can burn your house down.”

* Please send comments to [email protected]

In the arena of post cold war democratisation in Africa, Ghana clearly hit the ground running. From the first election in 1992 that saw the transformation of Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings to President Jerry Rawlings, through the 1996 'stolen election', to the 2000 election, which resulted in the alternation of power from Rawlings' National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government to John Kuffuor's New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, the 2004 election promised all the elements of a consolidation election.

This was the context of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)-West Africa Civil Society Forum's observer mission to Ghana's election this week. Although ECOWAS deployed its own official observer mission, the leadership of West African civil society bodies affiliated to ECOWAS also felt we needed to undertake our own mission. It was a small team of ten led by Sierra Leone's civil society activist and politician, Zainab Bangura, and we deployed in five regions - Greater Accra, Volta, Ashanti, Eastern, and Northern regions. I was in the Greater Accra region with our Team Leader, Zainab Bangura, and coordinated the reports from our colleagues in the hinterland.

Although we were prepared for a well-run election, as Africans who have also 'monitored' elections in several African countries, we were on the lookout for inadequacies. In terms of the preparation and even-handedness of the electoral commission, we were not disappointed. The Electoral Commission arranged our accreditation promptly even though we applied late, it sent its officials to train us on the peculiarities of elections observation in Ghana, and the training covered a range of subjects from security to the voter register. Finally, the EC invited us to contact its officials immediately we notice anything unusual during the voting exercise.

In the period prior to the polls we also met with the leadership of the major political parties, NPP, NDC and CPP, and they all evinced a strong desire for a peaceful and well-run election. All espoused non-violence and all said that if they lost they would seek redress through legal means or accept defeat. It was apparent that campaigning also involved an element of voter education, for example in how to mark the ballots correctly, making the point that those with a vested interest can be the most committed teachers.

The parties were not without complaints, especially officials of the official opposition NDC, and these were extensively documented in a “Memorandum for Foreign and Domestic Observers and Monitors” which was shared with us by its officials. Their concerns ranged from the Voters Identification Card system, delays in disbursement of funds to the EC, manipulation of the media and biased coverage in favour of the ruling party, training of foreign mercenaries and importation of weapons and the alleged partisan involvement of President Obasanjo of Nigeria.

On the eve of the election, the NDC insisted on a meeting of all the political parties with the Electoral Commission to discuss lingering concerns about the “flawed process”. We attended the meeting as observers and it was interesting to see the manner the Electoral Commission responded to all the allegations made by the NDC, both in the way it conceded on some of the gaps noticed by NDC and in the manner it held its own grounds on other aspects of its preparations. I am familiar with many of these allegations as a Ghanaian resident and felt the EC did a good job of demonstrating its independence.

On Election Day, our team visited no fewer than forty polling stations in the Greater Accra region. It was only in one station that the election did not start promptly at 7.a.m because materials did not arrive there due to a vehicle breakdown. We made a point of speaking particularly to party polling agents and it was remarkable that not a single polling agent, particularly those from the opposition parties had any complaints to make to us. In a few polling booths with unusually large number of voters, there was some rowdiness, but by the time we brought this to the notice of the Deputy Chairman in Charge of Operations at the EC headquarters, the Commission promptly took action.

In all cases, police presence was hardly noticeable as they stood some distance from the polling officials, except when their attention was requested. Our colleagues in the other regions painted pretty much the same picture, except the Northern region where there were pockets of violence in the Bawku constituency. With respect to counting, this was done at each polling station immediately after voting stopped at 5.p.m. In a unique collaboration between Joy 99 FM station, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Ghana's largest mobile telephone company, Spacefon, results were relayed by phone to the news studio and broadcast, across the country.

What Ghanaians have managed to do with this election is prove that election management is no rocket science. It requires adequate and competent preparation, a high degree of transparency, a responsible government, which respects its own citizens and an alert citizenry ready to protect their vote. It does not matter who wins the election in Ghana as the results were still coming in by the time this was written, but the process that I witnessed was without exaggeration better than what transpired in the last US election. (Editors note: Subsequent to this article being written, President John Kufuor has won re-election for a second term.)

Yet in spite of all one has written, Ghana is not without post election challenges. If President Kufuor wins the election, he would be mistaken to interpret the verdict as a vote of confidence in his government's performance. Ghanaians still worry that their economy is too aid-dependent with sixty percent of the budget coming from external assistance and extreme poverty still stalking the land.

My own assessment listening to Ghana's proliferating FM stations and to ordinary people in my four years of part-residence in Ghana is that the legacies of authoritarian rule and the search for stability count more for ordinary Ghanaians than immediate economic gains. But this may not be for long. As long as many Ghanaians see the shadow of former President Rawlings lurking in the opposition NDC though, the likelihood of its victory in presidential election is remote.

The irony is that the NPP government has not necessarily performed creditably in ensuring the security and safety of ordinary Ghanaians, especially Ghanaians in the Northern region. The brazen murder of the local monarch, the Ya Na in Yendi District, a centre of traditional influence in the Northern region remains a major source of tension and there are those who see the NPP as responsible for this, given the prominence of major NPP figures like Aliu Mahama (current Vice President), Joshua Hamidu (former National Security Adviser and now High Commissioner to Nigeria) and Malik Alhassan Yakubu (former Interior Minister) in the conflict. Indeed, the only area that witnessed serious conflict during the election was the North, especially the Bawku constituency where Hawa Yakubu, prominent civil society activist and ECOWAS Parliamentarian was a candidate.

Equally, in terms of development, the property owning democracy and golden age of business that NPP promised Ghanaians is yet to materialise four years after it came into office. Generally, the economy is no better than where the NDC left it. Over the past two decades, market forces have dominated the economy and this trend has continued with the NPP government. The economy is reliant on the export of primary products thus making it vulnerable to the general shocks of the global economy including price fluctuations. Further, since the 1990s, the economy has been characterised by high rates of inflation, high interest rates, depreciation of the cedi, dwindling foreign reserves, excessive public debt overhang and stagnant economic growth, implementation of the government poverty reduction strategy notwithstanding. The real test of NPP's popularity will come in 2008 when Kuffuor's term expires, and the opposition parties have managed to re-organise themselves.

There are lessons too for other West African countries, especially the most populous of them all, Nigeria. It is arguable that elections in Ghana have resulted in enhanced legitimacy because the chain has remained unbroken since 1992. Having run the fourth election in an unbroken cycle, the Electoral Commission in Ghana is regarded as one of the best managed in the whole of Africa. Its Executive Chairman, Dr Kwadjo Afari-Gyan, and his fellow commissioners have become well-known elections gurus in the continent, earning the respect of peers across the board. Sitting in on one of the Commission's meetings with political parties, one can understand why. Dr Afari-Gyan demonstrated a mastery of his brief without being arrogant, entertained legitimate complaints from the opposition parties and left all with a clear impression that he was not in the pocket of any government or opposition party.

The challenge is therefore to organise an Electoral Commission that is truly independent of Government and wholly accountable to the people. The Ghanaians can help by sharing their experience with other West Africans, and since Dr Afari-Gyan is already the Secretary-General of the Elections Management Bodies in Africa, there is a platform to achieve this objective.

Also, given the plans by ECOWAS to establish a full Elections Unit in the ECOWAS Secretariat, that Unit has the specific challenge of assisting to enhance election management in West Africa, by providing capacity strengthening initiatives and strictly upholding the provisions of the Supplementary protocol on Democracy & Good Governance signed by all Heads of States in West Africa, but yet to be ratified by the majority of these leaders.

Another lesson that West African states should take to heart is the relevance of freedom of information and the vigilance of civil society. A major credit for the transparent conduct of the Ghanaian election goes to the several FM stations dotted around the country and the vigilance of CODEO - the local domestic observer mission of 7,000 people. Although some of the FM stations can be a bit over the top in the use of inelegant adjectives to describe the President and opposition leaders, they feed the public with regular, minute-by-minute updates on the elections, and in the process prevent potential problems. They also broadcast provisional election results as soon as counting is completed at the polling booth and follow this to the collation centres until final results are delivered. And, more importantly, they are encouraged to do so by the Electoral Commission. So, the idea that a result known to everyone at the local level suddenly produces another winner as it happens in Nigeria is immediately nipped in the bud.

Finally, what Ghana proves is the importance of distance between the Electoral Commission and the political leadership in any state and the confidence that comes from understanding and surefootedness. We need a better understanding of electoral geography in all of our countries in West Africa, a factor that may well be responsible for the fear of election among the contending parties in Cote d'Ivoire. Two, we should let the public nominate elections commissioners and subject them to public scrutiny before Parliament appoints them in our countries; three, we must fund the electoral body direct from the Consolidated Account without any interference from the ruling Government; four, the electoral body must be supported by an independent bureaucracy, not the regular civil service, and finally, we must ensure that the electoral law promotes independent candidacy and proportional representation rather than winner takes all mentality in our countries where diversity should be celebrated.

In all of these areas, Ghana is light years ahead of many West African states but that is really where the greatest hope lies. Here is a country that was a complete basket case in the early 1980s and many never thought it could recover from its abysmal state. It also defies political science theory up to a point, in that the people are still poor but they value democracy. Barely two decades later, Ghana is an example and a beacon of hope for the rest of Africa. African states' permanent transition too may yet lead to transformation and I believe that if the chain remains unbroken in many of our states, we will improve electoral legitimacy.

* Dr Kayode Fayemi is Director, Centre for Democracy & Development, in Nigeria. This article is reproduced with permission of CDD.

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* Click on the link below for press statement by the West African Civil Society Forum on the Ghana elections.

For the international community to intervene decisively in a particular conflict, it is always better if a clear picture of good guys and bad guys can emerge. Anything less and the world dithers. Most decision-makers take an 'innocent until proven guilty' approach to ruling parties and rebels.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to give easy answers. At times, all the protagonists are unfit to rule. What can the international community do then? That is the fundamental problem in Côte d'Ivoire today.

Until last month, an uneasy ceasefire held between the government and rebel troops, who seized the northern half of the country in 2002. Despite the presence of UN peacekeeping troops the Ivorian government broke the détente by bombing rebel positions. In the process, nine French soldiers and an American aid worker were killed. In retaliation, the French army destroyed most of the Ivorian air force.

Recently, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo, a welcome first step but not enough to end the cycle of violence in what was once regarded as the most stable country in a very unstable region. Before mediators can find a solution, they must understand the depth and complexity of the country's leadership crisis.

The present crisis began to take shape in 1993, when the country's first president, Felix Houphoüet-Boigny, died after 33 years in power. Under his reign, Côte d'Ivoire became the most advanced economy in West Africa. As the world's top cocoa producer, the country was able to afford a modern capital and an impressive network of roads. Foreign investment and a policy welcoming migrant labour from neighbouring countries were part of the country's success story.

During the boom years, millions of economic migrants from all over West Africa settled permanently in Côte d'Ivoire. With time they acquired Ivorian citizenship and their children were born in the country.

By the time Houphoüet-Boigny died, Côte d'Ivoire was on the verge of implosion. The winds of democratisation were sweeping Africa. Prices for the nation's major crops, cocoa and coffee, were dropping, the currency, the CFA franc, was devalued. National debt had risen to unsustainable levels and unrest gripped the country.

Former finance minister Henri Konan Bédié succeeded Houphoüet-Boigny. To bolster his power base and exclude rivals from contesting for power, Bédié promoted a new concept of 'Ivoirité' (Ivorian-ness), which sought to distinguish between 'real' Ivorian citizens and foreigners.

Hidden behind this question was the issue of land ownership, entitlement to what was left of the riches of the country and access to political power. Due to their geographical proximity and cultural links to countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, the burden rested (and still rests) on people from the northern part of Côte d'Ivoire to prove that they are not foreigners. In the past few years identity cards have been denied to a lot of people on the basis of their Malinké sounding names. Consequently, during the last elections a substantial number of northerners were disenfranchised.

Alassane Ouattara became the flashpoint of this politics of exclusion. He draws much of his support from the north. He served as prime minister in Houphouët's last government and was, with Gbagbo, the most popular rival to Bédié. Being a Muslim of Burkina Faso descent, Ouattara's Ivorian citizenship has been contested by Bedié and Gbagbo's governments. This has effectively barred him from being a presidential candidate.

In December 1999, Gen. Robert Guéi toppled Konan Bédié in a coup d'état. Despite promises to the contrary, Guéi stood as a candidate in elections that also barred Ouattara from participation. Guéi declared himself the winner, but was forced to flee by popular uprising. Laurent Gbagbo, long an opponent of Houphouët's ruling party, took power as the presumed winner of that flawed election. Ouattara called for fresh elections, but Gbagbo refused. Fighting erupted between Gbagbo and Ouattara supporters.

Instead of conciliation, Gbagbo continued to stir ethnic division. He financed and armed the Young Patriots, a party militia that has staged violent demonstrations, attacked foreigners and is accused of extra-judicial killings of opposition party organisers.

Within two years, rebel soldiers from the north rose against his government and succeeded in cutting the country in two. Rapid deployment of French troops stalled the conflict, but neither side has shown willingness to compromise. Both sides have broken the Marcoussis peace accord brokered by the French as well as the Accra II and III agreements. Gbagbo continued to re-arm and failed to follow through on pledges to reform electoral and citizenship laws.

French troops and political pressure were without doubt instrumental in stopping all-out civil war. But as the former colonial power, France does not have the profile of a neutral party. Through state media propaganda, Gbagbo effectively used the destruction of the nation's small air force in November to whip up anti-French sentiment among the population and divert international attention from his abrupt violation of the cease-fire.

Left alone, the country will return to war, which will have devastating consequences for the region. Fresh elections are necessary, but many issues must be settled first.

Given their track record, it seems unlikely that either Gbagbo or Guillaume Soro of the rebel forces will lay down their arms unless the international community imposes its will. Elections must be organised by a body that is broadly accepted as neutral but is forceful enough to insist on fair play. Unless the elections are free and fair, the conflict will start again.

Ouattara and Bédié are planning to join forces and contest the elections together, with Bédié running as president and Ouattara as prime minister. Bédié pledged to serve only one term and hand over to Ouattara. An alliance between Ouattara and Bédié, a Christian, is capable of defeating Gbagbo in a fair vote and would help diffuse the threat that southern Christians perceive from a northern Muslim running the country.

The first step to effective outside mediation is recognising the extent to which all players have acted in bad faith so far. Grand corruption went unchecked under Bédié, who celebrated his outrageous fortune with champagne and caviar. He also fathered the present politics of exclusion. Gbagbo has stirred ethnic tension, continually delayed implementation of the peace accords, unleashed the violent Young Patriots and pumped out hate speech on state media. He is not committed to a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. As for Ouattara, although he could have diffused tensions and relinquished control of his party to someone with less problematic nationality, he led his party to boycott elections even though this was a bad political move.

The northern rebel forces, who remain tainted for having tried to violently seize power, have no political experience or party organisation able to assume leadership. Moreover, the government has accused them of being backed militarily by Burkina Faso.

Given this background, the best option would be to bar Gbagbo, Bédié, Ouattara and Soro from politics. Indeed, judging from previous actions, Gbagbo's government will try everything to prevent the elections from taking place in the face of the Bedié-Ouattara alliance or will simply bar Bédié from being a candidate.

An interim government must therefore take over and lead the country to internationally supervised elections.

* Véronique Tadjo is a writer and artist from Côte d'Ivoire. A former lecturer at the University of Abidjan and author, her latest novel, Reine Pokou, will appear next March in Paris. This article was first published in e-Africa, an electronic journal published by The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). It is reproduced here with permission of SAIIA. (http://www.saiia.org.za/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s…)

* Please send comments to [email protected]

As an open space that brings together social movements, civil society organisations, community based organizations, academics, activists and individuals, under the rubric 'another Africa is possible', ASF is in many ways, a living manifestation of this new fangled Pan-Africanism that has so begun to preoccupy our governments. It is a powerful new movement that can exploit the endless opportunities that exist to begin the process of real development - shifting genuine power and resources back to Africa and entrenching our autonomy and self-determination.

But as we meet to begin to chart ways forward, we must also raise questions about the identity of this Pan-Africanism that is represented this week in Lusaka, and whether in its narrowness, it is in fact ignoring a powerful partner for African development?

The diaspora - Africa's biggest 'aid' donors How wide is the definition of Pan-Africanism at the ASF? If you take African civil society, is it merely civil society in Africa, or is African identity a key factor in defining this entity? In which case space and time become relevant. Surely, the Pan-Africanism that is represented this week cannot be complete, with the old and new African diasporas (both by-products of the very globalization being critiqued this week) glaring absent.

The absence of the African diaspora in all its complexity is partially due to historic factors. Despite the massive contributions the diaspora has been making towards development in Africa, there are still very few structured partnerships with African civil society, community forums and social movements. The diaspora tends to organize itself around identity structures (involving home towns, ethnic groups, alumni associations, etc), formations frequently viewed as regressive and conservative by civil society and social movements. Instead, there has been a tendency amongst African civil society, community forums, and social movements to be more focused on Northern NGOs and agencies.

The absence is also due to a lack of awareness of the dramatic role the African diaspora plays in development. There is need for the ASF to recognise, legitimise and support the self-help efforts of African diaspora groups in contributing to development in their regions of origin in Africa. This will acknowledge the long tradition, going back to the slave trade, of self-help by the diaspora in supporting Africa's development. More recently in the post war period, working in partnership with identity based groups from their villages, home towns, ethnic groups, diaspora organisations have enabled people to take control of their lives.

We should understand the diaspora's historic and continuing contribution to Africa through the transfer of five forms of capital: social (networks, trust), intellectual (skills), political (advocacy), cultural (food, music) and financial (investment, remittances).

Remittances, one element of this diverse diaspora capital pool, has become highly visible and is beginning to form a key discourse of development, with some even calling it a 'new paradigm' of development. But it is not new. There has always been a history of internal remittances in every country, people going to the capital city or from a poorer area to a more prosperous area, or to a neighbouring country and sending money to those relatives they left behind. Globalisation has given this phenomenon a huge dimension. According to the 2004 World Bank Global Development Finance, at $93 billion, remittances now exceed the flow of aid, and are second only to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a source of external financing. In the African context, over 9 years $28 billion dollars was sent through Western Union alone to Nigeria (Earlier this year at the G8 Summit - a State Department official was quoted as saying that Nigerian diaspora sent $12 billion - this would be about 5% - 10% of GDP. The Bank of Ghana tracked $1.3 Billion between 2002 and 2003, and in Lesotho remittances represent 28.7% of GDP.

Diaspora/African Government Partnerships Increasingly there is recognition of the diaspora as Africa's biggest 'aid donors'. In recent years, some proactive governments and the diaspora have begun to meet to chart a way forward on socializing, not just remittances, but the whole range of capital the diaspora contribute. The Government of Ghana has highlighted the key role that the Ghanaian diaspora does and can play in national development. The Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), the policy framework for supporting growth and poverty reduction in the short term, identifies the Ghanaian diaspora as a potential source of funds for the GPRS.

Shortly after the turn of the Millennium, the Ghanaian government also held a 'Home Coming Summit' for investment and other exchanges. The Summit was attended by 1600 members of the Ghanaian diaspora. Since then Ghanaian Embassies and foreign missions have tried to help Ghana's diaspora to direct their resources through more formal channels for national development. Examples include the 'A Dollar a month for Ghana' initiative by the High Commission in Sierra Leone, the 'Five Pounds No Balance Police' initiative by the High Commission in the United Kingdom to purchase basic tools for the Ghana Police Service.

Northern NGOs - partnership or cooption? African governments are not the only ones seeking partnerships with the diaspora. Multi-lateral and international agencies have also begun to see the diaspora, and particularly their remittances, as a 'new paradigm' of development. There is obviously no 'newness' in the paradigm of development, but what there is are recently launched attempts by various multilateral and international agencies to 'capture', 'shape', 'control' and 'regulate' remittances for their own purposes, and many times over the heads of those making the contributions. The International Development Committee (IDC), which scrutinizes the work of DFID, the UK government's department for International aid, recently produced a report 'Migration and Development: How to make migration work for poverty reduction': In an otherwise useful report - this sentence stood out and concerned us at the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD):

'(Northern) NGOs and private sector organisations have a role to play too, employing their expertise so that migrants can remit more productively, at the same time getting in at the ground floor of a good business opportunity' (p.120)

There are two parts of that sentence that are loaded. What does it mean by remit more 'productively'? And what does it mean by good business opportunity?

None of us should be against organisations assessing the global environment and seeking to avoid possible threats, whilst capitalising on opportunities. This is natural. But if in seeking to capitalise on a new opportunity, mainstream players once again co-opt and begin to take away real power from people in the developing world, as they have done in the last 30 years, then there is cause for concern.

Such concern was raised at the experts meeting - 'Bridging the Gap: International Migration and the Role of Migrants and their Remittances in Development' organized by Dutch NGO, Novib. Around 40 participants, gathered, many of them carrying out specific advocacy programmes for diaspora/migrant workers originating from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Key objectives of the meeting were to gather issues related to migrant remittances and its role as a tool in development; to formulate recommendations to improve polices and practices around remittances, including workable mechanisms to ensure inclusion of migrants diaspora in policy-making processes around this 'new paradigm' of development. AFFORD posed specific questions to the conference: * who frames the questions around remittances? Those who make the contributions or the multilateral and international agencies who see a 'new' paradigm of development? * Why are the diasporas who are central to this contribution considered 'marginalised' in discussions? * If the relationships involved in remittances are ultimately between the diasporas who remit, the host country they remit from and the homeland country they remit to, where do international NGOs and others add value to this process? * In the research that is badly needed to understand the impact of these remittances, whose capacity will be strengthened - those of the diasporas and their beneficiaries in the South or those of international agencies - who have placed themselves at the centre of this process? * Why did Novib take the lead and place itself at the centre of a conference aimed at bringing together diasporas? * In support of and empowerment of southern initiatives, how has Novib sought to build upon a similar initiative launched in Amsterdam last December by AfroNeth, a Dutch based African organisation, seeking to mobilise and connect the African diaspora in the Netherlands for development purposes in Africa? * Finally, Novib, will take forward some of the outcomes of this meeting to the corridors of power in the EU and elsewhere, why? Does this not disempower diaspora/migrant groups further?

Beyond AFFORD's questions, others were also provoked. For Peter Payoyo from the Philippine Seafarers Assistance Programme, 'the mention of an AfroNeth initiative brought to my mind the Bohol Conference which took place in the Philippines in October 2003 (co-organized by two Novib partners, the AMC and PSAP, together with other NGOs and the Philippine Ministry of Labour).' He openly wandered whether the Novib Experts Meeting would build on the accomplishments of this initiative?

Payoyo's post-conference paper ('Bridging the Gap...a Critical Synthesis') raised further questions, which I will quote at length, given the important points being addressed:

'The immediate position of Novib is furthermore to be seen in Novib's involvement in certain key policy processes that the Meeting was also appraised. Novib was notably a member of the Inter-Agency Remittances Task Force, an international steering group which was set up in the aftermath of the International Conference on Migrant Remittances held in London in October 2003. The other members of the Remittances Task Force, led by the World Bank and the UK's DFID, include the ADB, ILO, IOM, UK ONS, WSBI, CGAP, and the EU. Novib is the only agency that may be considered as "non-governmental" in the context of the composition of this Task Force. Allusion was also made to Novib's involvement in the formulation of an EU-wide 'Directive on Migration and Development' to be released in early 2005.

'There was unease. It was uneasiness about a probable self-anointed mission on the part of Novib to directly represent civil society views and positions in the EU and in the World Bank-led Task Force, as well as in the other fast-multiplying global fora on migrant remittances. This unease was not assuaged by the closing remarks of the Meeting organizer, who called on migrant organizations to unite and get their act together, and flatly denied that Novib was out to grab a space that was reserved for civil society actors, in this case, the diaspora organizations from the developing world.

'In this light, AFFORD's keen observation that Novib's forays into the arena of international remittances could lead to the further disempowerment of migrant groups must be seriously considered and reflected upon. The conceptualization of the "Expert Meeting" as well as the process of selection and exclusion involved in the invitations to Meeting have already revealed a glaring bias against migrant groups and migrant advocates who can claim no expertise in the "new" field of remittance flows, an esoteric field in international development policy that is presently defined not by Novib, and certainly not by the 'diasporas' themselves.

'In a polite gathering, there is no need to insist on something that the host chooses to avoid. So it was that AFFORD's questions, chewed or eschewed by participants who smiled through the proceedings, remained unanswered.'

Peter Payoyo is right. For AFFORD the answers to these questions are important because they go to the heart of how we should all see issues of organic development or non-development. Arguably remittances historically are a form of engagement through which diasporas have sought to respond directly to the needs of their home communities, while avoiding:

a) Their governments (at both ends), b) International/multi-lateral agencies c) And while subverting traditional development paradigms.

That diasporas choose this form of engagement is a powerful comment in itself. By voting with their feet in this way, they are registering dissatisfaction with existing models of development. Remittances are thus an implicit critique of the development models which people in the South are confronted by. Through remittances diasporas have lit a beacon about the agency and resources of ordinary people from the South.

Conclusions: Shifting power to South In recognition of the massive contributions being made by the diaspora and in the drive to more effectively socialise this contribution (particularly remittances), African governments and Pan African institutions like the African Union have begun seeking partnerships with the diaspora. More problematically, as has been pointed out above, multi-lateral and international NGOs have also begun the same process. However, allies on the ground such as civil society groups, community forums and other social movements represented at the ASF have been much slower in recognising and developing such partnerships with the diaspora. The ASF and the participants attending this week need to be challenged to understand and engage with the diaspora and the way it contributes its various forms of capital.

The diaspora has been working, has been learning and building its capacity to contribute to Africa's development. It has shaped its own priorities in response to partners on the ground in Africa, and in response to the wider context provided by governments (at both ends) and the international development sector. It has guarded its autonomy and self-determination jealously. Through its contributions it dispelled the myth that Africans don't have agency, transferred genuine resources, particularly to the rural areas, and has provided an implicit critique of mainstream development models. Its presence enables profound questions to be raised - around issues of Pan African identity, around issues of development, and around issues of partnerships which seek to shift genuine resources and power to Africa, rather than disempowering those partners.

These are issues, some of which are already at the heart of the work of ASF this week. Will the ASF finally rise to the challenge of the diaspora and how we develop new equitable partnerships for Africa's development? Will it finally anchor the civil society movement in Africa along some clear principles and recognise the importance of identity?

Another Africa is possible. But we have to be proactive and seize the opportunities.

Onyekachi Wambu Information Officer, AFFORD (Thanks to Peter Payoyo of the Philippine Seafarers Assistance Programme for permission to quote from his Paper 'Bridging the Gap: International Migration and the Role of Migrants and their Remittances in Development - a Critical Synthesis')

The railroading through Parliament in November 2004 of the NGO Bill means that the government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) has now completed its strangling of three basic freedoms. Freedom of association has now joined freedom of information (the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act - AIPPA - shut down the only independent daily newspaper) and freedom of assembly (the Public Order and Safety Act - POSA - makes any gathering subject to police permission and scrutiny) in the oxygen tent in line with the GOZ strategy of shutting down all independent voices and democratic spaces. By contrast, the government sponsored Youth Militias (Green Bombers) operate with impunity.

ZANU-PF's strategy for survival and retention of their ill-gotten assets is a holistic strategy of repression with mutually reinforcing elements. Increased militarisation sees military and security sectors immune from the law and occupying increasingly prominent positions in the intelligence, provincial administrations and electoral authorities. Secondly the regime has used its presidential powers to amend the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act allowing police to detain without formal charges opponents of the regime, supposedly to counter corruption. Thirdly the judiciary is almost completely compliant, as shown in its confirming most of the contentious legislation. The neutralising of the judiciary has important knock-on effects in areas like press and media freedom and intimidation, information starvation, freedom of the opposition to assemble and be heard, politicisation of the police, further land 'resettlement', human rights violations, show trials of the opposition, politicisation of governmental-controlled food aid, public order and the like.

The NGO Act bans foreign funding for political governance, human rights and anti-corruption work and effectively proscribes international NGOs from carrying out such work. It makes registration of NGOs subject to arbitrary authority under a government-controlled NGO Council and provides severe penalties including shutting down NGOs and imprisoning staff for contravention of the Act. Very wide-ranging definitions leave much to ministerial dictate and arbitrary decision-making from both formal and informal government structures.

It is unclear how much the Act will affect the churches in Zimbabwe; government assurances that they will be fine if they stick to 'religious matters' contrast with the police closing down meetings held in churches to discuss the Act. The Act went through despite its running contrary not just to the Zimbabwean constitution, but also to several regional and international rights conventions that Harare has signed up to, and despite its likely economic impact given the numbers employed in the NGO sector and its effect on foreign exchange and tourism (what is left of it).

The NGO Act, the Electoral Amendment Act as well as legislation to provide payments to collaborators (non-combatant forces in the 1970s liberation war) are all in the context of the forthcoming parliamentary elections. These are set for March 2005 although the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is currently suspending participation until the conditions for a free and fair election are met, although it will be meeting in late November to review this. The combined legislation will severely limit any check on the government, make illegal non-governmental funding for civic and voter education, ensure government control of the electoral process and support from a potential opposition force of 'collaborators'.

It is widely believed that 'a dirty dozen' of NGOs already named in the newspapers and mostly operating within the human rights arena were the primary target although the bill would affect all NGOs. This would include the national Constitutional Assembly, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and Transparency International Zimbabwe.

For a local journalist, although the immediate target are indeed NGOs (foreign and national) the wider context is of control of black, particularly rural, Zimbabweans to ensure not just obedience but the impossibility of thinking any other way than in channels laid down by ZANU-PF and of destroying the MDC. A peace activist described the strategy as - 'the regime attempting a scorched earth policy in terms of social formations. While it wants to hold elections so as to appear democratic it wants to prevent thought, communication, information, and analysis.'

The act has been on the way since 2000 when the GOZ saw then the result of civil society lobbying in the rejection of the government's draft constitution in a referendum. It was given additional impetus by Zimbabwean civil society providing much of the evidence for the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights report on Zimbabwe finally submitted to the African Union to outrage from Harare at being criticised by fellow Africans (far harder to bear than from the West). The GOZ is convinced that NGOS are a front and money conduit for the MDC who are themselves a front for Tony Blair - a position hardly helped by the Blair statement in July 2004 in the UK parliament that he was working for regime change in Zimbabwe.

In fact the act could be said to be already in operation before its official date. A climate of fear and arbitrariness around NGO work has existed for some time with local ZANU-PF activists and youth militias feeling free to determine who is allowed into 'their' area whatever local governors might say. Work permits (TEPs) for outside NGO staff are being refused almost as a matter of course. To see how the proposed NGO Council would look, says a local human rights activist, we should examine the workings of the supine pro-government Media Information Council.

The Act has served its purpose of dividing and confusing civil society as to the best response to the legislation - pretending it is not happening, ignoring the plight of others and carrying on programmes as much as possible, seeking friendly 'godfathers' inside ZANU-PF, relocating and/ or shutting down in Zimbabwe. The use of repressive divide and rule tactics make the NGOs the latest in a series including the judiciary, the media, the churches and farmworkers and farmers.

Internationally and regionally the GOZ has divided or silenced critics with even the limited sanctions regime ineffectual, despite their renewal in Europe in February 2004 and in the USA. The GOZ control strategy appears to be to survive until the elections, despite the likely gap in food supplies and then to get an African 'free and fair' verdict which would take the heat off, challenge the international community to lose interest and give it a strong hand in post-election negotiations with the MDC. This would also give Mbeki a vindication of 'quiet diplomacy' even though Harare is in undoubted breach of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) electoral protocol it signed up to in Mauritius in August 2004.

Who is then standing up to the government on the NGO bill? Foreign embassies are not able or not willing to say much. NANGO, the Zimbabwe local NGO umbrella body presented a forceful case to the Parliamentary Portfolio committee examining the bill, but is unable to affect the strategy. Whilst rights-oriented Zimbabwean NGOs protest, the churches appear busy defending their own territory and interests, but not those of wider civil society. International development NGOs who are mostly Western do not wish to be painted like their governments as part of the plot to 'recolonise' Zimbabwe. Despite the brutal expulsion from Harare in October 2004 of a Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) fact-finding and solidarity delegation to Zimbabwe, the South African government appeared keener on criticising their fellow Alliance members than the Mugabe regime. Some regional churches and NGOs have provided critical support for Zimbabweans but have been unable to persuade their governments or ruling parties to make much beyond the occasional muted criticism as happened in Botswana.

However it does appear that the confidence of the ruling party in its hold on power has run into a number of problems even if they are unlikely to result in any other electoral scenario but ZANU-PF maintaining its electoral hold including enough seats to change the constitution. Its propaganda is subject to massive public scepticism in relation to the supposedly improving economy -the public does not believe that inflation is going down in light of its own experience. Some of the first wave of settlers who seized land are in turn being thrown off their land so that the elite can have it (breeding a kind of sans culotte bitterness). Economically, the crisis of production and livelihood continues - a systematic process of de-professionalisation and de-capitalisation. A very significant proportion of professionals, such as doctors, engineers, educationalists and financial managers have sought employment elsewhere. Despite rumours of its demise, the parallel market is up and running again with the rate against £1 being roughly Zim $14,000. A much -vaunted accommodation with the IMF is no more likely than returning foreign investment. 99% of the population live with an income less than the poverty datum line, mitigated only by remittances from the 15 to 25 % of the population living outside.

The cabinet decision to expel COSATU showed the South African public its contempt for the neighbours and indeed for court orders against the expulsion. COSATU was mobilising itself and civic groups in the region to "seal entry points into Zimbabwe for four days" from December 4 to 8.

Internationally, parliamentarians were horrified by the treatment of MDC MP Roy Bennett - who physically attacked the Minister of Justice after endless taunting from him, and was sent to prison with a sentence of hard labour. The not guilty verdict in the trial of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai for treason showed how threadbare the case was, according to a lawyer observing the trial. The latter said that although there was no case to answer, the judge with a vestige of professional self-respect, but allegedly a recipient of a farm under the fast-track land reform process, prolonged the trail as long as possible so that the state could tie up Tsvangirai in a lengthy legal process.

The government appears to have little strategy or resources to deal with an expected food gap between January and March, although it has loudly proclaimed that it will be self-sufficient - to widespread disbelief - and does not need NGO or World Food Programme help. Nor does the refusal to allow in British media organisations to cover the cricket in late November show Harare in a good light.

The debate on whether free and fair elections can be held or not is critical, for the coming months. Some form of transitional administration, with international (UN, AU, SADC) support, will be needed. But how can such a transitional arrangement be brought about? In the end the whole system of neo-patrimonialism and endemic corruption presided over by the regime needs root and branch change. The authoritarian mindset has little ability to think alternatives other than repression and blame on outside conspirators. In the words of the Crisis in Zimbabwe NGO Coalition 'Slurs, verbal abuse, violence and intimidation may win arguments, but they can never reconstitute, heal or rehabilitate societies. NGOs may be closed, elections may be rigged, newspapers may be bombed and millions starved, but it will never kill the people's love for liberty.'

* Steve Kibble is Africa/Yemen Advocacy Coordinator for the Catholic Institute for International Relations.

* Please send comments to

The upcoming third edition of the African Social Forum (ASF), from 10-14 December in Lusaka, Zambia, faces as one of its challenges the broadening of the forum to make it more popular than it has been up until now by enabling movements which do not appear on the African or international scene to express their voices and concerns.

"A popular Forum in 2004 would constitute an important condition for the successful organisation of the World Social Forum in Africa in 2007. This third edition would make it possible to examine the stakes of such a perspective and bring out together the visions and objectives that could be pursued for 2007," says a briefing document on the upcoming Lusaka meeting on the ASF website.

The ASF has taken place annually, since Bamako in 2002, as a prelude to the annual World Social Forum.

At the first forum in Bamako in 2002, over two hundred social movements, organizations and individuals from forty five African countries established the 'Bamako Consensus', that endorsed the Charter of the World Social Forum to build a different world.

Under the theme "Another Africa is Possible", participants undertook analyses, shared experiences and heard testimonies on wide-ranging economic, social, political and cultural matters affecting the African peoples. The ASF identified a number of recommendations and proposals for activists and networks to include in their work, and a steering committee was put in place to move the process forward.

At the second ASF meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a final statement was issued detailing how past and present economic policies implemented by African governments had failed to improve the lives of ordinary Africans. The Forum concluded that only a dynamic civil society organised in strong and active social movements "can and must challenge the neo-liberal political economy of globalization". The consensus was for the need to build a new African state and society, where public institutions and policies would guarantee cultural, economic, political and social rights for all citizens.

Following the Bamako and Addis Ababa Forums, a process of consultations have taken place around Africa to find a way of effectively exposing the current social, political and economic injustices for better government and state action. These have resulted in various regional forums designed to create a platform for interest groups of civil society to discuss issues together relating to social, political and economic justice.

The ASF has in the past faced criticism that it is dominated by wealthier NGOs at the expense of less well resourced social movements, whose members face constraints in terms of their ability to travel to and participate in such events. But the counter argument has also been made that activists need to get involved before they express disappointment at the outcomes of the meetings.

The ASF briefing document issued ahead of the upcoming Lusaka meeting explains that as a space for "discussion, reflection, mutual consolidation and democratic debate", it is important for Africa that the Forum continues to be the instrument of the growth of African social movements and of "vigilance in relation to the policies conceived and implemented on the continent".

The document also notes that the world has experienced major upheavals in the last two years, linked to American policy with regards the 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq.

"The effects of these upheavals on the African peoples are not negligible and aggravate the effects of the liberal policies implemented on the entire planet over the last twenty years. Already the aggravation of several conflicts, the growing presence of foreign military forces and the increased grip on the petroleum and mineral resources of the continent are perceptible."

As a result, the document notes that it is necessary to review the situation and that the Forum "must allow a better understanding of the new stakes and the outlining of alternatives and resistance strategies which the African social movement will try to promote for the benefit of the peoples of the continent."

Other priority areas and themes for discussion at the forum include the question of sovereignty in relation to external influences, the future of peasant farming in light of WTO and regional trade agreements and the question of Pan-Africanism.

For the first time at the ASF meeting in Zambia, a youth camp will be established where participants will be charged with developing an African youth council, an African youth communication line and a follow-up to the resolutions to the ASF council. The youth camp is intended to develop a youth movement within the ASF.

* Compiled by Patrick Burnett, Fahamu. For more detailed information, please visit http://www.africansocialforum.org/english/fsa2004.htm

THIRD WORLD NETWORK WEB SPECIAL ON ASF

Third World Network-Africa, the Accra-based advocacy organisation, will have a dedicated page on its website www.twnafrica.org to report the forthcoming African Social Forum (ASF) which starts in Lusaka, Zambia on December 10, 2004. The four-day event will bring together hundreds of activists and organisations campaigning on human rights, gender, race, the environment, trade, and many other issues. The website will present regular news and features from the African Social Forum, and will also welcome contributions and reactions. For more information, please contact Emmanuel.k.Bensah at [email protected]

* Background reading from Pambazuka News on the African Social Forum

- Living the alternative: Background to the World Social Forum and the African Social Forum
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=139
- Another Africa is possible
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=12669
- ASF condemns US aggression
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=12705
- The African Social Forum
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=11315
- Putting the ASF in order
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=19930
- In search of deeper dialogue beyond Addis and Bamako http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=19929