South Africa is a country with a poor human rights record. This is an understatement. We are a country trying to make right the wrongs of that history - this is also an understatement. But the task is difficult because we come to it scarred by the legacy of our colonial and apartheid history, by the consequences of the systematic denigration and dehumanisation of the majority by the minority. Colonisation laid the foundations of many of the ills that beset our society, apartheid perfected and legislated this base, and even claimed god's blessing for it. We play out still what we did to each other, and learnt from each other, before 1994, no matter which side we fought on (or even if we thought we weren't fighting on any side at all!).

Balanced against our Constitution, our strengthening economy, our increasing global stature, our beautiful country and its wonderful people lie some horrible truths. We have a very high rate of rape and sexual abuse. We have the highest rate of rape homicide in the world (Martin, L, 1999, reporting on her research at the Salt River Mortuary). We have an extraordinarily high rate of family murders. Violence within our communities is endemic. Our HIV crisis is deepening, depleting the economically active population and leaving increasing numbers of children without adult care-givers. Millions of South Africans live in deep poverty, and we have one of the highest (and growing) gaps between the “haves” and the “have nots”. All over South Africa, children are taking turns to eat. Within this context, children are increasingly vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and neglect.

We say that children are our future. The fact is, they are also our present, and their future (and ours) is shaped by present reality. If we are truly to become a whole and humane society, we have to give the next generation a better shot at it. We have to proactively put in place and resource a national agenda which redresses our horrendous past and levels the playing fields. We have to ensure a country “fit for children” (one of the many international promises we have made) - and in so doing, create a country fit for all of us. We know this - why else have we ratified several international conventions which commit us to the protection and promotion of the rights of children?

We have a golden and possibly never-to-be-repeated opportunity of giving that next generation their chance, their shot at it. We have this opportunity because we are currently formulating a new dispensation for children. We are poised to put into place a Children's Bill which will provide the framework within which children will be born and raised for the next 20 to 30 years.

We need this Bill to achieve a great deal, because we know that, in the end, prevention is better than cure, and it's cheaper in every way. We need a Bill which:
- articulates and legislates our international obligations to protect and promote the rights of children;
- places great emphasis on primary prevention and early intervention;
- provides a framework and the means of supporting families to raise physically and emotionally healthy adults;
- enhances the capacity of communities to take greater responsibility for vulnerable children;
- ensures the availability of appropriate, trained and resourced early intervention services; - maintains tertiary-level intervention services for children for whom there is no alternative within their homes and communities - which must include services to facilitate healing and rehabilitation;
- ensures the protection of the most vulnerable children - those living in poverty, those living in violent and abusive homes, those who are disabled or chronically ill, those affected by HIV, those living and working on the street.

If we put our resources and energy into building the capacity and wherewithal in families to raise children who can and will become self-sustaining and productive members of a peaceful, just and democratic society, we will truly fulfill the promise of our young democracy. This means they must have access to nutritious food, shelter and warm clothing, primary health care and education, irrespective of the ability of their parents to provide these things. If we put our resources into developing and maintaining good systems for identifying children and families at risk, and give additional support at that point, we increase the possibility that the family will be able to provide the basics for their children, thus preserving the family and decreasing negative effects of being taken into care.

If we are creative and more flexible (although no less careful) about where we place those children for whom it is impossible to remain in their family homes, the chance of them growing up in an environment conducive to future happiness is greater.

And if we put our resources into a criminal justice system focussed on restorative justice, victim empathy and rehabilitation, we reduce the number of children who grow up shattered by rape and sexual abuse, by violence in their homes and communities.

What will it cost? I have no idea, although I know that it will be expensive. But we have to try to afford it. Sound prevention strategies can cost around nineteen times less than failure to prevent abuse, neglect and exploitation. A study undertaken in Michigan came to this conclusion after considering factors including birth weight, infant mortality, special education needs, protection services, foster care, juvenile and adult criminality, and social services (Caldwell, R: Child Abuse Prevention: Michigan's' Experience, 1992). We cannot claim to be unable to afford it when the medium and long term advantages will save us so much in financial and human terms.

As the Children's Bill moves through Parliament in August, we urge all concerned to think very carefully about what is put into place, and what we can and cannot afford. We have the opportunity here to make right the wrongs of our traumatic past, and to facilitate an environment for healing and recovery. I trust we are brave enough to do it.

* Carol Bower is Executive Director of RAPCAN

* Please send comments to

Introduction

One of the central features of the Zimbabwean crisis, as it has unfolded since 2000, has been the emergence of a revived nationalism delivered in a particularly virulent form, with race as a key trope within the discourse, and a selective rendition of the liberation history deployed as a an ideological policing agent in the public debate. A great deal of commentary has been deployed to describe this process, much of it concentrating on the undoubted coercive aspects of the politics of state consolidation in Zimbabwe […]

However the manner in which the ideological battle has been fought by ZANU PF as a party and a state is of particular importance in trying to understand the ways in which a beleaguered state is attempting not only to extend its dominant economic and political objectives, but also its "intellectual and moral unity, posing all questions around which the struggle rages not on a corporate level but on a 'universal' plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental group over a series of subordinate groups." (Gramsci 1971: 182.)

For the manner in which Mugabe has articulated the Zimbabwean crisis has impacted not only on the social forces in the country but also on the African continent and in the Diaspora. Such an ambitious political outreach demands that we view the Zimbabwean state as more than a 'simple, dominative or instrumental model of state power,' but as a state with a more complex and multi-dimensional political strategy. (Hall 1996:429; and Hall 1980.)

In this multi-dimensional strategy, the state has monopolised the national media to develop an intellectual and cultural strategy that has resulted in a persistent bombardment of the populace with a regular and repeated series of messages. Moreover this strategy has been located within a particular historical discourse around national liberation and redemption, which has also sought to capture a broader Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist audience […]

Moreover in articulating this ideological strategy the ruling party has drawn on deep historical reservoirs of antipathy to colonial and racial subjugation in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and Africa more generally, and on its complex inflections in the Diaspora. Thus the Mugabe message is no mere case of peddling a particular form of false consciousness, but it carries a broader and often visceral resonance, even as it draws criticisms for the coercive forms of its mobilisation. […]

Nation and Race.

In Zimbabwe the state has a monopoly control over the electronic media through such laws as the Broadcasting Services Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Through such instruments the ruling party has been able to saturate the public sphere with its particularist message and importantly to monopolise the flow of information to the majority rural population […]

Thus, as a report on the ways in which Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) delivered views on the nation in 2002, concluded: “ZBC's conceptualisation on "nation" was simplistic. It was based on race:

The White and Black race. Based on those terms, the world was reduced to two nations - the white nation and the black nation and these stood as mortal rivals. The black nation was called Africa. Whites were presented as Europeans who could only belong to Europe just as Africa was for Africans and Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. (Gandhi and Jambaya 2002: 4.) […]

For the Mugabe regime the emergence of the opposition MDC in 1999, was a manifestation of foreign British and White influence in Zimbabwean politics. This construction of the opposition thus placed them outside of a legitimate national narrative, and thrust it into the territory of an alien, Un-African and treasonous force that 'justified' the coercive use of the state in order to contain and destroy such a force […]

Having discursively located the opposition as an alien political force, the full coercive force of the state was brought to bear on those regarded as 'unpatriotic' and 'puppets of the West'. Deploying elements of the police, intelligence service, army, the war veterans, party supporters and the youth militia, the ruling party has inflicted enormous damage on the personnel and structures of the opposition […]

Nation, History and Culture.

Scholars have observed that the writing of history has often been used to 'legitimate' the nation- state, both in an attempt to 'naturalise' it as the central principle of political organisation, and to make it the 'subject and object of historical development.(Berger, Donovan and Passmore 1999:xv) In Zimbabwe there has been clear evidence of this process since 2000 in particular […]

As part of the attempts to revive ZANU PF's political fortunes in the 2000 general election and the 2002 Presidential election, the ruling party placed a strong emphasis on reviving the narrative of the liberation struggle in general and the heroic roles of ZANU PF and Mugabe in particular […]

In this narrative of liberation, a common African history and Pan Africanist solidarity, the land has played a determining role as the key marker of a common struggle. It has formed the centrepiece of the ruling party's construction of belonging, exclusion and history. The official discourse on the liberation struggle has been marked by the translation of a multi-faceted anti-colonial struggle into a singular discourse designed to legitimate the authoritarian nationalism that has emerged around the land question since 2000. (Hammar, Raftopoulos and Jensen 2003.) […]

During the 2002 Presidential election this liberation rhetoric was accompanied by a cultural programme that saturated the public with liberation war films, documentaries and dramas, promoting ZANU PF generally and Robert Mugabe in particular, while also carrying strong messages against whites. […]

Amongst the most damaging aspects of the telling of this national narrative through a series of dualisms (black/white, British/Zimbabwean), and compressions of the various aspects of the anti-colonial struggle into a single field of force, has been the enormous loss of complexity of the colonial encounter. The complexity of the settler-colonial period (not least of which included the changing relations between the black elite and different settler regimes) has been flattened into a Mugabe/Blair colonial encounter. (White 2003:97.) While the demonisation of Whites has served the needs of authoritarian nationalist politics in Zimbabwe, it has prevented a more creative, tolerant and difficult dialogue on the European influences in the making of Zimbabwean identities […]

The On-Going National Question.

The Mugabe government has worked hard to generalise its model of resolving the national question, based largely on the model of land reform through violent land occupations, articulated through a Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist discourse. Moreover in this model the human rights question and the democratic demands of civic groups are dismissed as an extension of Western intervention, with little relevance to the 'real issues' of economic empowerment […]

In South Africa the Zimbabwean debate has taken on a particular resonance, not least because of the apparent popularity of Mugabe amongst many South Africans. On a broader level there are many aspects of the history and politics of Zimbabwe that resonate in the current South African context. (Phimister and Raftopoulos 2004: forthcoming; Southall 2003; Melber 2003.) Zimbabwean commentators close to the ruling party have not hesitated to 'shame' the South African government into taking more Africanist political positions […]

Moreover the 'spell' of anti-imperialism and the resonance of the race debate in Zimbabwe, has found a broader canvas for its articulation in the diaspora. In addition to cementing the support of other liberation movements in Southern Africa, ZANU PF has actively cultivated linkages with a few black civic groups in the US, UK and Australia in an attempt to build Pan Africanist solidarity around the Mugabe project. […]

Conclusion

A decade ago I wrote an article on 'Race and Nationalism' in Zimbabwe. In re-reading the piece in recent weeks what strikes me most about the analysis, apart from an underestimation of the potential for a revived nationalist project by the ruling party, was its strictly national focus, which even then was a limitation of the article. In 2004 it is impossible to confront this subject meaningfully without addressing the broader reach of its effects at both regional and international levels. Mugabe has not only defined the national project around a selective reading of nationalist history and an exclusivist construction of the nation, he has also sought to ensure that this message resonates in other black struggles both regionally and internationally […]

ZANU PF has set itself the task of establishing a hegemonic project in which the party's narrow definition of the nation is deployed against all other forms of identification and affiliation. In this project the media and selected intellectuals have been used to provide a continuous and repetitive ideological message, in order to set the parameters of a stable national identity conducive to the consolidation of the ruling party. As Zimbabweans listen to the radio, watch television and read the daily newspapers, all controlled by the ruling party, they are being 'informed' about what it means to be a 'good Zimbabwean,' and a 'genuine African'. They are also being told who is the 'enemy' within and without and advised to confront such 'enemies' with ruthless exclusion if necessary. For the present this political assault has seriously closed down the spaces for alternative debates around citizenship and national belonging.

* These are excerpts from a paper by Brian Raftopoulos, Associate Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe entitled Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwean Politics, presented at the University of Edinburgh's Centre of African Studies International Conference on 'States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa' in May 2004. A complete version of the paper will be published in a forthcoming volume. Please see for further information. For a list of references please click on the link below.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

From the slave trade era of the 15th century to the crude oil era of the 20th century, Nigeria's natural resource history has been fraught by a systemic cartel of merchants whose primary agenda was in the amount of natural resources they could garner from the country. In their exploitative ventures they raided whole communities, introduced internecine wars and conflicts, and ignited a raging fire of habitat degradation and fragmentation.

Historical records tell of the fact that the plundering of African natural resources fuelled the industrial revolution of Europe. Energy demands in the 20th century brought on the search for crude oil wells worldwide and Nigeria was not left out. From 1956, when the first oil well was successfully drilled in Nigeria, scrambling for Nigeria's resources by the Europeans took on a new dimension.

The oil boom era of the 1970s saw the downward plunge of the agricultural sector. There was a complete paradigm shift from the nation's then agrarian culture to an oil driven culture, moving ultimately from renewable natural resources to un-renewable resource trade. From the 70s through to the early 80s we witnessed a drastic drop in local food production. Importation rates of foods and finished products increased dramatically and our foreign debt escalated rapidly, bringing the economy to a crisis. During this period, from 1958 to 1983, we recorded $101 billion in estimated oil revenue earnings.

A plethora of environmental problems exist as a result of the oil trade. Communities where certain resources are harvested - in particular oil and gas - bear the impact of exploration and exploitation, while gains are shared to other areas that contribute next to nothing to national oil revenues.

In addition oil communities are impoverished and lack basic social infrastructures and amenities. One region in Nigeria which has borne the brunt of natural resource exploitation is the Niger Delta. This region played a key role in the country's economy in pre-colonial and colonial times and still maintains a primary position in present crude oil trade.

The Niger Delta: The Battlefield For Resource Control

The Niger Delta has featured in global discourse as a region plagued by non-violent demonstrations, violent protests and intra communal wars over resource control. The source and underlying causes of agitation in this region must be clearly understood by the global community in evolving effectual management strategies.

Agitations within this region take root from early colonial trade relations with the British incursion into the area. They made treaties with vulnerable communities, plundered resource capital and introduced a subservient cultural pattern. Communities only benefited by giving-up their farmlands in exchange for ridiculous gifts. In those days, resistance came through such visionary leaders like King Jaja of Opobo and Nana Olomu. These leaders, as recorded by Nigerian historians, led their people in the struggle to rescue their natural economy from the greedy control of the British who had devised a “divide and rule” machinery of control over the people.

Control over the natural resource capital of the Niger Delta people is mirrored presently by the operations of the oil multinational companies, who defraud whole communities of their livelihood sources, paying ridiculous monetary compensation in exchange for a devastated coastal ecosystem.

The oil companies make up the largest industry in the Niger Delta region. Despite this, unemployment levels are still high, especially in the rural areas where oil and gas reserves exist. In this region exist oil well reserves (17.9 billion barrels) and gas wells (3.4 trillion m3), contributing about 80% of federal government revenue.

Despite this vast coastal wealth, GNP per capita is below the national average of US$280. Pollution of coastal corridors and wetlands is a recurrent disaster. Gas flaring has become a notorious pollutant of the local communities of the Delta. Oil spills and gas flaring have destroyed whole fishing communities, reducing needed fishery resources, terrestrial vegetations and compromising the health of local people in and around oil installations.

Nigeria's resource base includes a vast network of rivers, floodplains and a rich rainforest network, with vast deposits of minerals. However about 95% of natural forest cover has been lost to deforestation, leaving 5% contained in the Southeast region. While dams upstream are a constant headache and threat to the rich coastal biodiversity, deforestation ravages the teeming rainforest ecosystem.

The Nigerian Government And The Challenge Of Sustainability

In a country where agriculture accounts for about 40% of GDP and oil production and exports (exporting over 2 million barrels/day) ranks 6th world wide, government's management structure and environmental action plan is essential to maintain balance and reduce abuse. The question here is what has been the role of the Nigerian government in the management of its natural resources?

To attempt an answer, one can say that even though the legal framework and institutional structure for natural resource management is firmly established, it still lacks the strength and drive which natural resource management deserves.

Government response to environmental problems and the nagging problem of unsustainable resource exploitation has been rather slow. Compromises in deals with multinational companies have crippled the implementation of “goodwill” national policies and laws. The management structure at best is fragmentary, and there exists similar government agencies carrying out the same functions, often times leading to conflict between government agencies and stakeholders.

A satisfactory environmental condition would mean developmental projects and resource utilization meet with clearly stated developmental benchmarks, whose implementation is sustainable. For projects to be considered sustainable as contained in Agenda 21 of the Rio declaration three key aspects of development must be integrated into project planning and implementation: economic growth, social equity and ecological integrity.

Historical trends in the Delta have shown that industrial activities in the Delta have negated this all-embracing principle, in the scramble for resources. Indigenous people, their laws and customs have often been sidetracked. Sustainability must therefore be redefined in this region and companies' licenses to operate must be revoked when found guilty. The country does not lack policies and laws, but the gap is in its implementation and policing of resource utilization.

Resource depletion has far reaching multiplier effects and its importance is underscored by communal agitations and high national poverty statistics. It is instructive to evolve stringent measures to “checkmate” the eclipse of our collapsing life support systems. We can't afford to put new wine into old wine skin.

The issue of local content has to do with the active participation of the local indigenous people in decision-making processes. Local people are the best managers, they have over the years evolved methods and approaches in natural resource management that have preserved certain classes of biodiversity and we need to learn from them.

For sustainability, they must be integrated in all developmental issues, especially those that impact on their existence. In ensuring active participation of local stakeholders in project management and development, ideals of Community Based Resource Management (CBRM) can be adopted. A case is in promoting indigenous protected areas. In the Southeast region several lakes and forests exist, designated by local nomenclature as sacred areas. Indigenous laws and customs have protected biodiversity in these areas over the years and we can start by integrating and institutionalizing these areas into our system of protected parks or areas.

True federalism and sustainability can only be obtained by ensuring that the needs and aspirations of local communities are first considered before economic gains. Trade-offs are necessary to maintain equilibrium in developmental conceptualization, and in respect of sustainable development, social equity cannot be overruled, but rather sustained.

Africa and the Way Forward

The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) could through its review mechanism ensure that African countries comply strictly on the issue of indigenous active participation in decision processes. But the question we must ask is: how sincere are participating African countries on moving the ideology of NEPAD forward? Can NEPAD be a panacea to our dependency on western donors, who dictate the tune of our development? Or would we be strong enough as a people to wield the weapon of resource control and management by Africans to the hungry western world?

We must evolve strategic alliances with other African nations to find long lasting solutions for the management of Africa's vast bank of natural resources. The question of capacity building then arises. Capacity building in natural resource management would mean a network of indigenous people who are able to exchange needed information and technology without barriers. In addition would be the function of resource tracking: we must insist on predetermined certification of forest and coastal land goods and services, which could serve as a monitoring device for products obtained from these ecosystems.

My concluding thought on sustainable natural resource utilization and development in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, is in our corporate realization that for us as Africans, our greatest weaponry against the incursion of the developed economics is our bank of natural resource capital.

It's time we as a race refuse the lies of the western world and shun greed and mismanagement of both human and natural resources. We must encourage all Africans to imbibe the culture of proper management of our contested heritage. This must be clearly understood and articulated by the current crop of leaders as they promote the African Union through its NEPAD initiative.

* Eno Deborah Anwana’s major interest is the sustainable management of Africa's vast wealth of natural resources by Africans. Since 2002 Anwana has worked in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria on a MacArthur funded project focusing on the wise use of natural resources and sustainable development. Anwana is affiliated with Nigerian's foremost environmental NGO called The Nigerian Conservation Foundation, a membership based NGO.

* Please send comments to

Participants in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Seminar on “Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press”, held in Windhoek, Namibia, from 29 April to 3 May 1991, declared: “Consistent with article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation and for economic development.”

This “Windhoek Declaration” marked a highlight in the so-called second wave (of democratisation) on the continent. Ironically, it was also at Windhoek - almost thirteen years later (end of February 2004) - when Zimbabwe's Minister of State for Information and Publicity signed a co-operation agreement with his Namibian counterpart on closer collaboration, including a planned joint weekly newspaper on regional issues.

In an in-depth interview offered to the local state-funded newspaper “New Era” (5 March 2004), he praised the Presidents of both countries “as two leaders that have remained steadfast, committed, not only as nationalists but also as Pan-Africanists, and as global leaders”. He urged both countries to pursue the common task of “doing justice to the kind of solidarity that was born during the liberation struggle, and which must be upheld today and in future”.

He further identified the following common challenges: “We are here to cement these historic bonds and ties, and look at the new challenges that we are facing, as we in particular begin to consolidate the economic objectives of our liberation struggle, and identifying the critical role of information, information not only in terms of the press, the print media, but also the electronic media and other multimedia platforms that are new, that are being used and that are accessible to these generations that may be prone to losing the bigger picture of the essential story.”

The Honourable Minister was not always using such language. As a Zimbabwean scholar still abroad he stated at a Conference on Robben Island as late as February 1999 that “it would be a mistake to justify the struggles for national liberation purely on the basis of the need to remove the white minority regimes from power and to replace them with black majority regimes that did not respect or subscribe to fundamental principles of democracy and human rights (…) ruling personalities have hijacked the movement and are doing totally unacceptable things in the name of national liberation. Being here at Robben Island for the first time, I am immensely pained by the fact that some people who suffered here left this place only to turn their whole countries into Robben Islands.”

Only three years later, in March 2002, he - now in a ministerial rank - praised the results of the Presidential elections in his country as an impressive sign “that Zimbabweans have come of age that they do not believe in change from something to nothing. They do not believe in moving from independence and sovereignty to new colonialism, they do not believe in the discourse of human rights to deepen inequality.”

Rhetoric of such calibre has earned Jonathan Moyo the label 'Goebbels of Africa'. This is certainly too demagogic itself, given the historically unique dimensions of German holocaust to which the Nazi propaganda minister relates and associates with. But name calling of this kind documents the degree of polarisation and level of dissent in the Zimbabwean society today. The current clamp down on the independent media in Zimbabwe is certainly neither exclusively nor decisively the result of a personal vendetta by a previously progressive scholar.

Jonathan Moyo is just one - though admittedly due to his track record notably exotic - example of relatively high profile calibre representatives of a post-colonial establishment seeking own gains by populist rhetoric covering up their selfish motives. They have become part and parcel of a set of deep-rooted anachronistic values within a system of liberation movements in power. After seizing legitimate political control over the state, these turned their liberation politics under the disguise of pseudo-revolutionary slogans into oppressive tools. Their “talk left, act right” seeks to cover the true motive to consolidate the occupied political commanding heights of society against all odds preferably forever - at the expense of the public interest they claim to represent in the light of deteriorating socio-economic conditions of living for the once colonised and now hardly liberated (and even less emancipated) majority.

Sadly enough, it was the same Jonathan Moyo, who at an early stage of the sobering post-colonial realities in Zimbabwe offered courageous and sensible analytical insights into these processes. While being a Lecturer at the Department of Political and Administrative Studies of the University of Zimbabwe, he presented thought provoking and painful reflections on the liberation war (chimurenga) with all its dubious ambiguity.

Read this from a paper in late 1992: “There can hardly be any doubt that the armed struggle in Zimbabwe was a pivotal means to the goal of defeating oppressive and intransigent elements of colonialism and racism. However, as it often is the case with protracted social processes of a conflict with two sides, the armed struggle in this country had a deep socio-psychological impact on its targets as well as on its perpetrators. (…) For the most part, the armed struggle in this country lacked a guiding moral ethic beyond the savagery of primitive war and was thus amenable to manipulation by the violence of unscrupulous nationalist politicians and military commanders who personalized the liberation war for their own selfish ends. (…) This resulted in a culture of fear driven by values of violence perpetrated in the name of nationalism and socialism.”

Nowadays, the erstwhile critical scholar represents the same mindset he had questioned. According to a news report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), he used a press conference on 30 April 2004 in Bulawayo to threaten, “there was enough space in Zimbabwe's prisons for journalists caught dealing with foreign media houses”. As “terrorists of the pen” they would be targeted next. The report quotes the Minister as saying: “President Mugabe has said our main enemy is the financial sector but the enemy is media who use the pen to lie about this country. Such reporters are terrorists and the position on how to deal with terrorists is to subject them to the laws of Zimbabwe.” This is tantamount to paranoia and indicative for the recent efforts to censor even private communication.

As the mere distribution of and access to information can be damaging to the security interest of those represented by the Minister, the next onslaught is directed against the private ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The state owned telephone-company announced early June 2004 that ISPs had to enter new contracts stipulating that they as service providers prevent or report to the authorities anti-national activities and malicious correspondence via their telephone lines. If they fail to do so, they will be liable, i.e. penalised.

This follows earlier appalling interferences resulting in the closing of independent newspapers and the imprisonment or expelling of journalists on a systematic scale. The government and its executive branches are eager to emphasise that this repression is in compliance with the existing (and for such purposes enacted) laws and hence fully within “legality” (which, of course, is a far cry from legitimacy). This simply shows that the “rule of law” can apply in the absence of any justice. It is the strategy of the ban that constitutes the rule of law. It does not even spare government friendly media productions and displays the intolerant, all-controlling nature of the system.

One prominent example is the banning of the live broadcasted television production “Talk to the Nation” in mid-2001, which was sponsored by the National Development Association (NDA). The explanatory statement by an official of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) is a remarkable example for the “innocence” of a totalitarian mindset: “Live productions can be tricky and dangerous. The setting of the NDA productions was professionally done but maybe the production should not have been broadcast live. You do not know what someone will come and say and there is no way of controlling it.”

Along such an understanding, media operating independently or beyond direct control of government were increasingly hampered and closed down, as the prominent example of the Daily News showed. On an alleged breach of a legal clause under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), the Media and Information Commission (MIC) has now in June 2004 closed The Tribune for at least one year. Its publisher, himself a former ZANU-PF MP, was reportedly suspended earlier on by the ruling party for “disrespecting” ZANU-PF top structures as he had denounced AIPPA in his maiden address to parliament.

It therefore does not come as a surprise that the latest annual overview on the state of media freedom in the Southern African region by the Media Institute of Southern Africa - issued on the World Press Freedom Day (26 April) - records more than half of all 188 media freedom and freedom of expression violations in 2003 among the ten monitored countries in Zimbabwe alone.

International agencies committed to the freedom of press and the professional ethics of independent journalism are in agreement that the situation in Zimbabwe is intolerable. It prompted the Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute (IPI) on 18 May 2004 in Warsaw to adopt the unanimous decision “to retain Zimbabwe's name on the 'watchlist' of nations that are seriously eroding media freedom”. And the Board of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) condemned at its 57th World Newspaper Congress in Istanbul early June 2004 the “attempts to silence independent media”. At a meeting in Windhoek during early June 2004 a total of 24 newspaper editors from eight countries in Southern Africa organised in The Council of the Southern African Editors' Forum (SAEF) suspended its Zimbabwean wing.

The narrowing down of the post-colonial discourse to a mystification of the liberation movement in power as the exclusive home to national identity and belonging finds a corresponding expression in the increased monopolisation of the public sphere and expressed opinion.

Amanda Hammer and Brian Raftopoulos, co-editors of a recent volume on “Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business” summarised this in their introduction as “efforts to control or destroy the independent media and to silence all alternative versions of history and the present, whether expressed in schools, in churches, on sports fields, in food and fuel queues, at trade union or rate payers' meetings, in opposition party offices or at foreign embassies.”

Such desperate initiatives to enhance control signal at the same time a lack of true support among the population, who otherwise could be allowed to speak out freely. The repression of public opinion beyond the official government propaganda is therefore an indication of the ruthless last fight for survival of a regime, which has lost its original credibility and legitimacy to an extent that it has to be afraid of allowing a basic and fundamental principle of human rights - the freedom of expression.

* Dr Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) between 1992 and 2000. Before studying Political Science and Sociology he was trained as journalist (1971/72) and sacked from the local German newspaper in Windhoek (1972) for disputes over political and professional-ethical reasons. He joined SWAPO of Namibia in 1974. This is the shortened introduction to the forthcoming “Media, Public Discourse and Political Contestation in Zimbabwe”, published in the “Current African Issues” series with The Nordic Africa Institute.

* Please send comments to

Ongoing coverage of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok is bewildering to those who are familiar with the current political battles in the HIV/AIDS arena, and no doubt disheartening or annoying to those reading from a distance. The AIDS industry is in full swing: government forces delivering glittering generalities; actors and ex-presidents discussing their "outrage" while eating five-course dinners in Bangkok hotel penthouses.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide some context and much confusion. Some, like Doctors Without Borders or Partners In Health, push a consistent line that demonstrates their commitment and closeness to the poor who suffer from HIV and its related social pathologies [1, 2]. Others seem to care more about winning New York Times headlines than about the implication of what those newspaper stories will have for the poor. The American Foundation for AIDS Research in Manhattan, for example, produced a report that should have provided an evaluation of Thailand's generic production facilities within the context of technical suggestions and cross-border comparisons with other nations' production centers; instead the report was publicized in a manner divorced from its technical minutiae and left the impression that generic medicines from Thailand would kill millions [3]. This, in a context where the US AIDS Czar Randall Tobias is looking for any means to undermine generic manufacturing and return to an oligopoly system in the pharmaceutical industry [4].

The heavy focus on drug access at the conference does, however, serve as one piece of good news, in spite of the fact that many believe it is "distracting" from other matters (an issue I will deal with later in this article). The fact that the discussion is not about whether antiretrovirals can be used in poor countries, but about how to get them there, is a marked shift from previous years. But that is not to say that efforts like the WHO's "3-by-5" Initiative (three million people gaining access to antiretrovirals by 2005) are not being undermined [4]. The battles will continue over this and related initiatives, but what are the rest of us to do as we watch the actors and ex-presidents deliver glittering generalities? What positive outcomes can come for the poor when the wealthy of Manhattan produce statements of "outrage" while consuming pad thai in the security-fenced sector of Bangkok?

* Please click on the link below to read the full article. Comments can be sent to

“Democracy is an ideal that I would like to live for, it is an ideal that if necessary I am prepared to die for”-Nelson Mandela.

It is an intriguing and powerful message that has sunk into the African Union that there is now a growing understanding that the political leadership alone cannot determine the continent’s destiny. People need to be masters of their own destiny. Top-down approaches emanating from the razzmatazz of summits without the people will not change the face of Africa. Today there is rich body of literature emphasizing the rights based approach to development grounded in ownership and effective participation by the intended beneficiaries. The African Union cannot afford to remain an exception to the norm.

The third summit of the African Union held in Addis Abba, Ethiopia in the second week of July 2004 saw African leaders opening their arms to the effective formal participation of the wider civil society organizations (CSO’s) in Africa and the Diaspora by approving the Statutes of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). The establishment of ECOSOCC under the provision of Articles 5 and 22 of the African Union Constitutive Act is a confirmation and assurance that popular participation in the activities of the African Union (AU), as enunciated in the African Charter for Popular Participation, is a prerequisite for its success.

The ECOSOCC process is a historical opportunity for the formulation of a new social contract between African Governments and their people. Involving CSO’s in African Union endeavours is a positive move and is a way of involving ordinary citizens of Africa in decision and policy-making processes of issues that concern their daily lives.

More to this is that involving CSO’s is key considering the role they would be expected to play as watchdogs of their governments and that CSO’s have the ability to reach out to grass root level people in African communities.

* Please click on the link below to read the full article. Comments can be sent to

The history of pastoralists' development reads like the afflictions of the biblical Job. Institutions after institution have conjured strategies that would be comical if their consequences were not so tragic. A respectable east African country thought that the best way to "develop" pastoralists was to "integrate them with the rest of society". It spent good million after good million building social halls in arid lands. Come weekends, the good government would host the "community" to a disco and western films. Needless to mention, the discos remained empty and the films exclusively patronised by pre-adolescent primary school boys. This was an Islamic culture yet no one thought of or gave due consideration to appropriateness.

Another government thought that Texan style ranching was the solution to "pastoralist problems", problems that pastoralists themselves did not know about. The consequence was the hiving off of huge pastureland by elitists at the expense of millions of patoralists to whom land ownership is as bizarre as owing a star (it is inherently everybody's). The reduced pastureland and interrupted livelihood came with their bedfellows; conflict over reduced resources (land, water points, etc) and chronic livelihood insecurity. It's a pity no one ever asked pastoralists whether they wanted "development" in the first place. It is a shame there was (is) no mechanism for reviewing and condemning the actions of the said government as they unfold.

To be fair, these are extreme examples of how wrong we, development professionals, can be and how long we can persist even when all evidence points to the fact that the idea was awfully faulty at inception. The noblest of humanitarian interventions is undoubtedly relief. Since its inception (in its modern familiar form) during World War I, humanitarian relief has redeemed masses from certain starvation, epidemics, massacres and annihilation.

But for all its noble intentions, relief is rife with the self-delusion that plagues community development and national economic development (remember the integrated rural development projects and the structural adjustment programmes?). Self-delusion seems a rather strong a term, but what better term explains the irrational adoption, defence and continued implementation of programmes, practices and policies that do not have the interest of the communities at heart? What is happening?

Relief programmes have become arenas for posturing and muscle flexing. Agencies compete for "visibility" while the needs of disaster and war victims are glossed, sometimes ignored. There are programmes strategised and implemented for their "visibility value" at the expense of less glamorous, potentially more effective programmes. Surveys and statistics thus become tools for validating an organisation's position rather than methods of identifying community needs and programme impact.

The sentiment of us-versus-them is unashamedly overt. Ask an implementing agency a simple question such as "how many refugees do you serve per day?" and your head will hurt from the complexity of the answer you get. Separately ask two donor agencies, in the same relief operation, how many beneficiaries their dollar (or yen) reaches and the variance is astounding. With a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Dafur, the subsequent stampede of humanitarian organisations in but a matter of time.

African governments have agreed to a peer review mechanism through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Isn't it a pity we, humanitarian organisations, have not instituted one?

It would be a gross inaccuracy to say that nothing (good) goes on in relief programmes. We do a lot of good. The desperately poor survive in cases where they would have certainly perished without the desperately needed interventions. Opportunities are created where none existed before the relief agencies came.

What is contentious is the mandate we have found convenient to ignore. When we ask governments, corporations and individuals for money, we promise that we shall serve the poor with it, and serve them in ways that embraces humanity (remember the equality, empowerment, rights, participation mantra?). Our reports say that we are serving the poor with other people’s monies (often giving accounts of sterling performances). It is the gap between this promise and practice that is embarrassing.

It is a pity that in this day and age, we hold planning meetings for refugee operations with but token representation of the displaced communities. Inevitably, our plans allocate more resources to our conveniences (accommodation, transport, security, remuneration, technical support etc) than to actual basic refugee services (food, shelter and clothing). We make policies that convenience us (working five-day weeks, no working weekends, no entry for refugees into our offices, etc) with impunity.

The greatest betrayal yet, is the tacit collusion of silence. We dare not speak of the ills we perpetrate "in the interest of the organisation". And many an employee has lost his/her job for questioning organisational methods. This reasoning reeks of conservativism and fear of the very positive change we keep harping about. For how else do we work better without honestly critically analysing how we work now. A peer review mechanism would force us to analyse this.

Alternatively, a simplistic acid test would be to candidly ask oneself; Are we serving the less fortunate that we promised to serve in the way we promised to serve? If your answer is yes, sleep easy. If this note sounds idealistic and out of touch with current realities, then therein is the problem. Humanitarian work is meant to be idealistic and out of touch with reality. How else do you explain the actions of humanitarian founders and leaders?

* Job Ogonda is an experienced Development Professional with expertise in Programme Management. He has eight years experience in programme cycle management at community, national and Africa regional level. He has a wealth of experience in coordination/management of relief/emergency, sustainable development/livelihood programmes and advocacy/policy processes.

* * Please send comments to

Reading Nigerian newspapers online often requires a huge dose of patience lest you do severe damage to the computer staring you in the face. Doing this alongside an unrelenting assault by those I call Reaganistas in the US requires a greater dose of restraint to avoid jail on grounds of committing grievous bodily harm. While not unmindful of what they say about speaking ill of the dead, I believe we do need a balanced perspective in these times of effusive praise and fawning adulation for Reagan.

I have been confounded by the unbalanced, uncritical and shallow tone of many articles on Reagan in the Nigerian newspapers and frankly stunned by at least two editorials in our more enlightened newspapers. Unlike op-ed articles, newspaper editorials ought to be more reflective, balanced and restrained in their judgment. Not so for the ones I have read.

Reagan has been credited with ending the Cold War; others have attributed as his greatest attributes the fact that he paid little attention to detail, got to work at 9 a.m., took a nap in the afternoon and retired at 5.p.m. He was not an insomniac like Nigeria's president, so the argument went.

To another set, it was the vision thing - a man of few beliefs - low taxes, less government, strong nation, who focused on them all like a beam and regained greatness for his country. And not to be accused of lop-sidedness, some feebly acknowledged that he may have plunged his country to its greatest economic recession in a period of unrivalled expansion and did not care much for African-Americans. Perhaps some of this is true, they may even all contain aspects of truth, but they are not the whole truth about Ronald Reagan's presidency. We may never agree on what the whole truth is, but we should also not let Reaganistas intimidate us into silence. Now, what, in my view, is Mr Reagan's record?

On the Cold War, I am not aware of any definitive documentary evidence that apportioned sole responsibility to Mr Reagan for ending the Cold War. Sure, if symbolism were the sole basis of the collapse of the Soviet Union, soundbite platitudes like Soviet Union is the “evil empire” or “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, might have sufficed, but discerning observers certainly knew that the Soviet Union of the 1980s was a deflated and declining power primarily on account of bad governance.

The fact is that most of what Mr Reagan did, such as the INF Treaty, was more a continuation of Mr Carter's policy rather than a rejection. However, some in the Reagan administration as well as right wing academics deliberately exaggerated the Soviet Union's power in order to get their “Star Wars” and padded contracts for America's military industrial complex. As James Schlesinger, jnr, America's erstwhile Defence Secretary said of Star Wars, “it was nothing but a collection of technical experiments and distant hopes” which Mr Reagan treated “as if it were already a reality.”

Even with this, partisan observers can only argue that Mr Reagan merely accelerated what was, at best, inevitability. As we grapple with the return of the Cold War under someone who thinks of himself as a clone of Mr Reagan, we should ask ourselves if the so called war on terror is not another agenda foisted on the country and the world by actors driven by dogma rather than common sense.

On his “voodoo” economics of low taxes, small government and strong nation, ask David Stockman, who was his Budget Director. In his book, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman had this interesting sentence about Reagan's supply side economics, “If the Securities and Exchange Commission had jurisdiction over the White House, we might all have had time for a course in remedial economics at Allenwood penitentiary.”

The deficit ballooned from $79 billion to $179 billion in his first year in office alone. He talked often about tax cuts, but eventually raised taxes through excise duties, but no, these were not taxes, they were merely “revenue enhancers”. By the time he left government in 1988, few would agree that American government was smaller than it was when he assumed office in 1980.

But for me as an African, my biggest yardstick for judging Mr Reagan's place in history was his foreign policy. A man not given to moral leadership, strategic thinking or deep introspection, he quickly embraced the false distinction drawn by his UN Ambassador, Jean Kirkpatrick, between “totalitarian” (left wing) and “authoritarian” (right wing) dictatorship, a thesis which soon provided the basis for crushing left wing despots whilst embracing right wing dictators and “constructively” engaging the apartheid government in South Africa became the first test of this thesis.

Soon, Reagan's CIA Director, William J. Casey began his assault on nationalist movements deemed to be close to the Soviet Union by providing financial and military support to their opponents. From Renamo in Mozambique to Unita in Angola, and from the Contras in Nicaragua, who Mr Reagan described as the 'moral equivalents of the American founding fathers', to the Mujaheedin in Afghanistan, Mr Reagan utilized proxy wars to sow the seeds of today's terror around the world in the name of fighting communism.

Even the New York Times mildly opined in its obituary, “The Reagan Doctrine…was to have lasting repercussions in the fight against terrorism”. And, those who want to know about the right wing dictators, who benefited most from Reagan in Africa should ask Liberians about Samuel Doe, the Congolese about Mobutu Sese Seko, the Sudanese about Nimeiry and the Somalians about Siad Barre - four countries which received 80 per cent of US aid to sub-saharan Africa under Reagan.

It is hardly a coincidence that Africa's most virulent and unrelenting post Cold War conflicts have occurred in these four countries. In my view therefore, Reagan failed the test of greatness as far as foreign policy was concerned and he was largely absent without leave in his domestic policies.

I don't begrudge Reaganistas for their efforts at pushing Reagan as a saint, and I have taken the daily assaults on American television with extra-ordinary equanimity - afterall, I am a stranger in this land - but I resent half baked analyses by my own compatriots that fail to advance our knowledge in any way.

Of all the obituaries I have read here on Reagan, allow me to quote at length Professor Thomas Cronin, McHugh Professor of American Institutions. According to him, “Americans evaluate the greatness of a President on criteria that are over and above popularity and re-election. Did Reagan expand opportunities for all Americans regardless of race, gender or income bracket? It is my view that Reagan has not enlarged the equity factor nor the educational opportunities for most Americans”.

On the global scale, he continued, “President Reagan was lacking in moral leadership, an essential quality for greatness. He was too late, too little, and too lame when it came to human rights at home and abroad.”

There is no doubt that Reagan admirers can quote others who hold contrary views and they reserve the right to do that. I might even agree with them that he projected and injected boundless optimism of America's greatness, which affected and infected his people during his time in office, but when it came down to it, Reaganomics left Americans with a deficit that succeeding generations will continue to pay, sowed the seeds of terror through his Reagan Doctrine, promoted irresponsibility and incompetence in government and showed a clear hostility to equality among the races. Now, this may be a harsh judgment but I hope it allows Reaganistas to at least acknowledge that the jury is still out on Reagan's greatness, and we should all await history's judgment on him.

* Dr Fayemi is Senior Visiting Scholar in African Studies at Northwestern University, Evanston, USA.

* Please send comments to

In 1998 what became known as Africa’s World War erupted in the Great Lakes Region, with the DRC acting as the battlefield for a host of African countries. What followed was four years of extraordinary violence and a death toll that some put in the millions. Since 2002 a peace of sorts has prevailed, but the fall of Bukavu in Eastern DRC in late May seemed to put this on shaky ground. Pambazuka News emailed questions to Joseph Yav Katshung, Executive Director of CERDH (Centre d`Etudes et de Recherche en Droits de l`Homme et Démocratie), to find out more about the situation in the DRC.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What is the aftermath of the failed coup attempt in Kinshasa and the crisis in the east of the country? What did actually happen and is a clearer picture beginning to emerge as to the circumstances of events and the forces at play?

JYK: As may be recalled, the coup attempt took place in early June 2004. This however must be seen within a greater context. Before this, in late May, the city of Bukavu (East of DRC) fell to rebels, who are RCD dissidents, Laurent Kunda and Mutebusi who are said to be supported by the Rwandan government. A few days later, they withdrew back into Rwanda taking with them property looted from the city. It is reported that the rebels committed extensive human rights violations, notably rape, torture and killings of innocent civilians.

The following week, Eric Lenge, a Major serving within the special presidential guard (Garde Speciale de la Sécurité Présidentielle), appeared, at 2.30 that morning, on national television accompanied by about 20 soldiers and announced that the transition process was suspended forthwith. He also asked civilians to stay in their homes for their own safety.

They later went to the Tchatchi military camp where they were surrounded by security forces. About 8 of Lenge's men were arrested. The rest, including him, managed to escape arrest. Rumours had followed that Joseph Kabila, the transitional government President had been killed. Soon thereafter, Kabila appeared on national television as an attestation that he was alive and that the transitional mechanism was still in place. The security forces were tracking down Lenge and his men.

Azzarias Ruberwa, one of the four Vice Presidents, who is considered to have links to Rwanda, was suspected to have been behind the coup attempt. This has however not been confirmed. In all, the coup attempt has had a negative impact within the fragile transitional mechanisms. The little trust that was building within and among the government functionaries who belong to former warring parties has plummeted. The army has also seen far reaching changes within its high ranks.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What impact will these recent events have on the transitional process and the build up to elections next year?

JYK: Despite the hope it has inspired in the DRC and elsewhere, the current institutional framework, which is supposed to prepare the country for the promised free and open elections to be held by summer 2005 at the latest, remains very fragile. It is not easy to say with exactitude what will be the actual effect of these events. But one thing is for sure; the trust between the various elements in government has thinned.

In terms of the peace process, there should be mechanisms, including building of trust and an environment in which democratic elections can be held. It appears that there are certain elements who are keen to stall the process.
Cumulatively, the various incidents in the country such as the coup attempt, though isolated, may have the effect of undermining the process. Clearly, elections cannot be held under the current situation.

One reason that may be informing the current reticence is that if elections are held, it is unlikely that it will provide for a dispensation that ensures that the leaders of the various factions have a high office. For instance, there cannot be four Vice Presidents. What then will happen, will those who lose out stay in government? It is possible that the fear of losing such lucrative positions in the transitional government is behind efforts to slow or stall the march towards democratic elections.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Much has been written about the tensions between the DRC and Rwanda? Have the reasons for these tensions been dealt with and how much of a factor do Rwanda - and Uganda for that matter - remain in the DRC, especially in the east of the country?

JYK: It is evident that Rwanda is largely behind the instability in Eastern DRC. A number of reasons inform the stance taken by Rwanda to support rebellion in this region: Initially, after the genocide, Rwanda justified their invasion by saying that they were pursuing genocidaires from the Habyarimana government who were said to have sought refuge in the DRC.
Afterwards, their continued stay, incursions and support of rebels is justifiable by a different, yet subtle set of reasons.

First, The RPF government has conceived of its role in the region as that of a leader. Rwanda aspires to be a regional powerbroker and leader. These hegemonic aspirations necessarily presuppose a belligerent stance against its neighbours.

Secondly, and most importantly, is the question of territory. As a small country, Rwanda sees a major problem if the Banyamulenge who live in eastern DRC have to go back to Rwanda. It is therefore a question of territory. Before the genocide, Rwanda was, and still is, one of the most densely populated countries on the continent. Owing to displacements in the genocide, land is a major issue in Rwanda.

Thirdly, it is for economic reasons. Rwanda is involved in the plunder of resources in the DRC: diamonds, coltan, gold and timber. This was partially the reason why, having come into the DRC with Uganda as allies, they later fell out and engaged in armed combat in Kisangani. Rwandan citizens are said to control vast economic interests in eastern Congo. Rwanda considers that it has an obligation to protect its citizens in the DRC.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: We read a lot in the press about the role and hard work of South Africa in brokering a peace deal in the DRC. But there has also been criticism from some quarters that the South Africans have papered over some issues, with the danger that the peace deal will not last. How do people in the DRC see South Africa's role and where have the South Africans gone wrong?

JYK: It is true that South Africa has been instrumental in putting in place the transitional government. 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.

Secondly, South Africa, which should be concerned about the process they helped put in place, has not taken a stand on the incursions by Rwanda, and Rwanda's continued plunder of resources in the DRC and the commission of human rights violations against Congolese citizens. Congolese currently do not understand the role of South Africa anymore. South Africa seems to be eating from both tables: it gives the impression to Kinshasa that it is committed to the process yet maintaining a cozy relationship with Rwanda. They have failed to condemn the activities of Rwanda in eastern DRC.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What is the human rights situation like in the DRC at present?

JYK: There has been little change in the human rights situation in DRC even after the transition process started. There are still massive violations of human rights: killings, rape, torture. This is particularly prevalent in eastern DRC. In Kinshasa, the unrest resulting from the attempted coup also brought with it violations, involving government security forces and members of various former rebel groups. The socio-economic aspects of life have equally not ameliorated. Salaries have gone unpaid, the health and education sectors are in bad shape.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: To what extent does the DRC still suffer from the legacy of history in terms of slavery, colonialism and the Cold War and to what extent are the DRC's richness in natural resources a contributing factor to the present day situation of the country?

JYK: DRC's fate is linked to the Leopoldian legacy and imperialism of former colonial masters. The DRC is a victim of its own abundance; looters have, over the years come and gone, having enriched themselves. Leopold, who considered DRC his personal property, then Belgians who plundered and left the country in a situation in which it could not govern itself.

This opened the door for looters who have plied the country at their will. The effects of the Cold War are still reverberating. The American support of Mobutu entrenched a despotic leadership that has seen the deterioration of the country, so rich yet so poor and at war with itself. Kabila, though initially with good intentions to remove Mobutu, soon fell into the same grave of plunder and misrule, especially after those who supported him to remove Mobutu. Uganda and Rwanda staked their claim to the riches of the DRC. This led to the war between Kabila and rebels supported by the two. Then they came in themselves. Cornered, Kabila sought help from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. The visitors on their part started to plunder to finance the war initiative. Then come South Africa.

It appears that all who come to the DRC, ostensibly to help her from its troubles, have their own reasons for doing so, the riches! Those who come to mourn and to condone with the DRC are, in the process eying, through their 'tears' what to take home with them!

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How to end impunity in the DRC?

JYK: That is a question. The raging war that began in 1998 caused hundreds of thousands of deaths among the civilian population and led to scenes of extraordinary violence. The International Criminal Court has announced that it will formally take up the Congolese case, but it will be unable to prosecute more than a few of the key figures responsible for the crimes committed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one of the civilian institutions that emerged from the peace talks, is a different kind of instrument that focuses on forgiveness rather than punishment. We are therefore looking for a mechanism to address this issue.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* This is a review based on the publication Manufacture of Poverty, produced by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (http://www.khrc.or.ke/viewdocument.asp?ID=46)

As you enter Kenya’s Export Processing Zones (EPZs) you enter a no-man’s land: a tax free zone where over 90% of the finished products are directly exported. Every day tens of thousands of Kenyan workers, over 70% of whom are women, clock in and out. Even more queue up on the off-chance of being given work.

The EPZs were established to attract foreign investment, create jobs and diversify exports. However many argue that this goal has been pursued to the detriment of Kenyan workers, as investments have not translated into real improvements for workers and communities. To the contrary there is substantial evidence that basic human rights are being abused and that low wages and long hours are contributing to a continuous and increasing cycle of poverty.

Based on these observations and reports from workers, a number of organisations joined together under the lead of Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC). They carried out research into the sector and worked to build up a picture of labour conditions and their subsequent effects. They identified some of the long term social consequences and concluded that the industry is in actual fact ‘Manufacturing Poverty’ – hence the title of the campaign and report that was launched in February 2004. The overall objectives of the study were to: analyse changes in national labour laws; assess the affect of purchasing practices; and capture the experiences of workers.

Export Processing Zones – what are they?

EPZs are characterised by industrial parks controlled either by a customs administration or an EPZ authority. Imports are duty and tax free and all processed products are directly exported. The trend was started by the creation of the Shannon Free Zone in Ireland, a zone that now boosts over 100 international manufacturing companies. It was the success of this first zone that encouraged many countries to create their own EPZs in the hope that the incentives would encourage industrial development.

Kenya first experimented with the concept in the early 80s and established the EPZ programme in 1990 following the enactment of the EPZ Act. Under this Act, companies are offered financial incentives including a 10 year corporation tax holiday, subsidised credit and exemption from import tariffs. In addition they are guaranteed simple company and legal procedures and a reliable infrastructure.

In return the Kenyan government hoped that the programmes would generate jobs, transfer technology and diversify the range of exported products.

The programme did not really take off until the United States introduced the African Growth and Opportunity (AGOA) Act in May 2000, followed by AGOA II in 2002. The Act allows greater access for imports into the US, than is available to any country without a Free Trade Agreement with the US.

In 2003 there were 37 gazetted zones in Kenya and 69,000 operational export-oriented enterprises, employing over 35,000 Kenyans. Of the 54 enterprises surveyed by Kenya Human Rights Commission only 26% had any degree of Kenyan ownership and this ranged from 4% to 100% ownership.

Certain industries dominate in the EPZs namely those that are labour intensive, but that produce relatively low value products such as garments. In 2002 59% of the EPZs were in the garment industry and 79% of exports were to the US.

In 2003 the total turnover was 15,801 million Kenyan Schillings (KSh), a 5 fold increase from 1999. The exports valued 13,273 million KSh and the total domestic expenditure was 5,085 million KSh.

The reality

The sector has recorded profits and been labelled as one of the fasted growth areas in Kenya. But what is the reality for the workers?

At the beginning of 2003 workers went on strike in the EPZs in Nairobi and Athi River. With a new government in place they were optimistic that conditions would improve if their concerns were pushed forward. Amongst other issues they demonstrated against subsistence wages, sexual harassment, summary dismissals and poor health and safety standards. At the time even freedom of association was limited and the unions not recognised. The Minister of Trade described the strike as a ‘barbaric act of hooliganism’ and with no legal backing, the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (COTU) distanced itself from the strike.

Without a definite forum to address their industrial disputes many workers were dismissed for taking part in the strike. Conditions remained unchanged and new workers employed. After some time many of the initial workers were reinstated although those who had joined a union were not considered. One worker described his experience: ‘I was selected by the workers to represent them, a thing that was not appreciated by the management. I knew a lot so I was restricted from associating with fellow workmates….all leaders were put on one line… and we were told not to talk to one another’. After the strikes when he reapplied, his application was rejected and he has also been denied outstanding pay.

Following the strike the government called for freedom of association but by the beginning of 2004 only eight companies had accepted trade unions in the EPZs.

Working hours and remuneration

Average monthly wages in EPZs range from 3800 Ksh for basic tasks including sewing and tailoring tasks, to about 6000 Ksh for jobs such as quality control. At a minimum of 120 Ksh per day, this ensures that the majority of Kenyan workers, will continue, along with more than half the worlds population, to struggle to survive on less than 2$ a day. This does not even take into consideration the poverty threshold for a family and many of the workers have insufficient to provide for the basic food, housing, and medical needs of their immediate families.

In order to supplement their income workers often rely on being paid overtime. However many reported that despite the fact that they were frequently forced to work overtime they often do not get paid for it. Some said that their log-out cards are punched while they remain in the factory and others explained how overtime is not paid if it is used to meet targets. This violates Kenyan law which stipulates a 45 hour working week and overtime payment at 1.5 times normal wages.

The unpredictability of hours and the fact that many workers are only employed on a casual basis is one of the main problems that the workers cited. They have little job security and are often requested to come to the factory every morning to check whether there is work. This places a high socio-economic strain on families and communities.

Health and Safety

Many factories in the EPZs have their own clinics where staff are sent to be treated for minor illnesses. In many cases it materialised that these clinics are run by untrained staff and are not able to meet demand. For example at Athi River there is only one clinic serving 13 factories. Most workers are not given sick leave and they have to buy medicines prescribed by the factory clinics. Workers also reported that even when injured at work many factories deduct hospital transport costs from their salaries. There were many reports of poor sanitary conditions in the factories and a lack of protective equipment or training for handling chemicals and machinery.

Before the 2003 strikes many women complained that factory clinics carried out compulsory pregnancy tests and then laid off all who were found to be pregnant. As most factories do not provide any form of statutory maternity leave in women take the absolute minimum time off but still have no security that they will get their jobs back. No factories have any form of child care provision adding to the burden placed on women with children.

Sexual harassment

While over 70% of the workforce in EPZs are women the management is still male dominated and at the most senior levels dominated by non-Kenyans. Many women reported cases of sexual harassment. Most felt that they had no choice but to agree to the demands of their male supervisors, as those that refused suffered verbal abuse and humiliation. Many claimed that on refusal they were moved to more difficult tasks for no extra pay or were forced to work through breaks.

What protection do these workers have?

One factor contributing to the mis-treatment of workers is that they are afforded very little protection under the main legal instruments. AGOA demands the protection of workers’ rights but does so without the mechanisms for effective enforcement. The EPZ Act refers to workers in relation to their numbers and stipulates that EPZs must keep records on the number and ranking of employees. It is however silent on the rights of workers.

In addition certain Kenyan laws have been exempted from application in the EPZs. For example there was a ministerial exemption regarding the Factories Act therefore avoiding the possibility of a factory inspection. This was only reversed in May 2003 but at the time of writing it was unclear as to whether inspectors have been allowed into the EPZs.

Recently there have been further changes in the law that add to the insecurity faced by workers. Of particular concern is the introduction of retrenchment. This allows employees to be laid off with at the discretion of their employer with no minimum financial compensation and no union involvement.

Factory and Purchasing Practices

Another contributing factor stems from the pressure put on factories to meet tight deadlines and respond to inconsistent ordering practices. In many cases it is impossible for factories to predict the amount of work they will have which has led to a culture of subcontracting and reliance on casual labour. The risks are continuously passed down the supply chain and the consequences borne by the factories and ultimately the workers.

Penalties for late completion are high. Frequently factories are required to ship the late goods at their own expense and future orders are often cancelled. Such penalties impact on profit margins and encourage factories to cut labour costs. Short lead times are met through night shifts, overtime and hiring more casual workers. Due to the unpredictability of demand casual workers are forced to come to the factory every day to check whether there is work - often resulting in a wasted visit.

Manufacturing Goods or Manufacturing Poverty?

The Kenyan government has gone to great lengths to create a conducive and enabling environment for investors, often using low labour prices as a selling point. Understandably perhaps there is a fear that Kenya will lose out to neighbouring markets if it does not offer competitive conditions. For example 14% of the exports under AGOA are from the Kenyan EPZs compared with 36% from Lesotho. But what is the long term impact for Kenya?

The civil society campaign does not aim to paralyse the industry or jeopardise foreign investment. However it seeks to ask whether the industry is profitable from a social as well as an economic perspective. The economics including the transfer of skills, the sustainability of the industry and the percentage profits that are re-invested in Kenya requires further study. On the social side however it is clear that the EPZ model falls far short of the mark. The evidence shows that the conditions for workers are exceptionally poor: instead of leading the way and institutionalising good working conditions, the EPZ companies aim for the bare minimum and often fail to attain that. In the process human rights abuses are institutionalised and there is no consideration for the knock on effects. Wages are insufficient to allow workers to move out of the cycle of poverty and long unpredictable working hours allow little scope for workers to contribute to the development of their communities.

Responsibility lies with various sectors. It is up to consumers and shareholders to demand ethical working conditions and for parent companies to ensure that international standards are met at all stages of the supply chain. This includes implementing realistic deadlines so that subsidiary companies are not forced to cut corners and contract out. The Kenyan government must ensure that national and international standards are met and that trans-national agreements benefit both the investor and the local economy. Finally it is essential that workers and civil society organisations monitor the situation and inform themselves of their rights and duties. Only in this way can changes be implemented that break the cycle of poverty.

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On 19th April 2004, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced receipt of the referral of the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The referral, transmitted to the office of ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in a letter signed by DRC President Joseph Kabila, requests that the Prosecutor investigate allegations of crimes falling within ICC jurisdiction, (namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes,) if committed anywhere in the territory of the DRC since the July 1, 2002 date of entry into force of the Rome Statute of the ICC. But the ghost of impunity continues to haunt the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) despite the referral of the situation to the ICC.

By means of the letter, the DRC asked the Prosecutor to investigate in order to determine if one or more persons should be charged with such crimes, and the authorities committed to cooperate with the ICC. After receiving several communications from individuals and non-governmental organisations, the Prosecutor had announced in July 2003 that he would closely follow the situation in the DRC, indicating that this would be a priority for his Office.

Since then, the Office has continued its work in analyzing the situation in the DRC, especially in Ituri. Following various procedures and in accordance with the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor will now proceed to determine whether there is a reasonable basis to initiate an investigation in respect of the situation referred. The Office of the Prosecutor will therefore assure itself of the basis for an investigation under the Statute and examine the modalities for such an investigation, in order to reach an informed decision.

The Congolese Dilemma

Since 1998, the DRC has experienced horrific armed conflict in which impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity has been, and continues to be, the norm. Attacks against the civilian population, killings, and use of sexual violence continue to be committed in the East. These crimes will not stop as long as those who commit them are not held responsible for their acts. Accountability for those responsible for serious crimes is essential if the DRC and the region are to make a transition to a durable peace. Therefore, we salute the initiative of the DRC to refer its situation to the ICC in order to put an end to impunity.

But although the ICC may be an answer to crimes committed in the DRC, what will happen to crimes committed from 1998 to July 2002, a period that is beyond the scope of the ICC? While the DRC's ratification of the Rome Statute allows the ICC to try crimes committed after July 1, 2002, there is no mechanism to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the gravest crimes committed during the five-year war and put an end to impunity.

The national justice system is unable, due to its current state of disarray, even with massive help, to address past crimes perpetrated in the DRC since 1998. The ICC is also not competent because of lack of jurisdiction to deal with these crimes. Thus the necessity of possible justice mechanisms to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes committed prior to the entry into force of the ICC Statute.

Furthermore, the current transitional period in the DRC is particularly marked by the creation of several institutions “purported” to support “democracy”, among which is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This TRC would consider political, economic, and social crimes committed from 1960 until 2003 in order “to establish truth and help bring individuals and communities to reconciliation.”

But one question remains: Is the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the DRC meant to end impunity or to cover up gross violations of human rights committed in the DRC? The response seems to be known in advance, since one individual suspected of involvement in human rights abuses was appointed to the executive committee of this TRC.
The ghost of impunity continues to haunt the DRC and the important thing now is to look at the challenges in addressing impunity for the horrific crimes that have been committed in the DRC since 1998. If not, the impunity for these atrocities will sends the message that such crimes may be tolerated in the future.

Therefore, the question arises as to how possible it is to establish an International Criminal Tribunal beyond the borders of the DRC, to include the Great Lakes Region for crimes committed in the DRC since 1998?

* Yav Katshung Joseph is executive director of the CERDH (www.cerdh.tk)

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Only the ideologically twisted would deny Ronald Reagan his due. He was a wildly successful president, accomplishing a remarkable amount of his agenda.

He entered office in 1980 determined to block advancement for black Americans, to halt the sluggish march towards equality for American women, to make America walk tall again by beating up tiny poverty-stricken nations, to allow insatiable greed and ruthless personal ambition to reap lavish rewards, to fire up the economy through trillions of dollars in defense expenditures, to invite industry to desecrate the environment, and to legitimate a morality in which any means justified his ends.

Notwithstanding his unparalleled laziness, ignorance and immersion in fantasy, in all these areas his administration triumphed, a splendid role model for conservatism in the modern world.

The new values were never in question. This was conviction politics. One of the very first acts of the Reagan administration was to cast the only vote against the World Health Organization's code of ethics on feeding 3rd world babies with instant formula prepared with contaminated water.

The world was Ronald Reagan's movie set. History will debate his role as the man who ended the cold war. But as president, death was the Gipper's co-pilot. Morning in America meant that the United States could aggress around the world at whim, recklessly flouting both American and international law, disdaining such outmoded liberal constraints as honesty, legality, democracy and resolutions of the United Nations. The multi-faceted immorality of the Iran-contra scandal was one direct consequence.

Under him was assembled a team of bellicose conservative cold warriors---CIA director Bill Casey, Oliver North, and an entire semi-secret team of ex-CIA agents, ex-Pentagon officials, fascist Cuban exiles, professional killers and international drug traffickers. State terrorism was the order of the day. The Reaganites organized a succession of secret wars and open attacks on very small nations who paid an appalling price for the unswerving principles of conservatism.

The first target for violent regime change was Nicaragua (population 3 million), in the process causing unspeakable horror as well to hundreds of thousands of Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans whose soldiers the Americans trained in the finer points of torture. He then sent the Marines to Lebanon (population 3 million) to demonstrate that Americans could go wherever they damn well chose; 241 of them died in a widely predicted attack on their barracks. A subsequent CIA plot to assassinate a Muslim leader allegedly linked to the attack didn't quite work out; it missed its target but caused collateral damage to 280 dead and wounded Lebanese bystanders.

Two days after the Marines were blown up, needing to show that no one pushed the US around, Reagan ordered 7000 US troops to invade Grenada (population 95,000), a Caribbean island about 3/4 the size of PEI. As in Lebanon, CIA intelligence proved somewhat faulty: 19 American soldiers were killed and 115 injured, some by "friendly fire". For this gallantry and valour, 8612 US army medals were awarded, some to soldiers who never left the States.

In besieged Angola (population 8 million), Bill Casey of the CIA teamed up with the South African apartheid government he so admired and succeeded in making that country, like Nicaragua, a total basket-case, while tens of thousands of Angolans perished miserably. In the Persian Gulf, an American destroyer attacked without provocation or reason a regular commercial Air Iran flight, killing 290 people; no American apology or reparations have ever been offered.

At home too, conservatism worked its magic. Poverty bloomed. 14 million more Americans lived below the poverty line when he retired than when he was elected. Almost one in four American children in 1988 lived in poverty. The enforcement of civil rights for blacks in housing, voting, employment and education almost ground to a halt. Serious reactionaries were appointed to courts at every level to entrench the rights of the privileged for generations to come. The President travelled to Bitburg, Germany, to lay a wreath at the grave of SS soldiers who, he explained, were victims of the Nazis "just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps". He was a great friend of Israel's extremists and the powerful Jewish-American neoconservative elite adored him.

The old Gipper never lost his faith in Gipperish. Almost his last act in office was to ask Congress to increase the swollen defense budget by another $5 billion and cut the same amount from child nutrition programs and medical insurance for the aged and the poor.

His country loved him. The tributes and tears flow. His truths go marching on.

* Gerald Caplan is a commentator on public affairs

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We representatives of some of the largest continental organisations and national networks headquartered in several African cities, bringing together women's organisations, labour, researchers, development and advocacy NGOs across Africa note that a pre-occupation with domestic issues and international security priorities have displaced the capacity of the G8 to meet it's obligations to Africa in 2004.

Two years after the Africa Action Plan was announced, G8 commitments to Africa appear buried beneath an avalanche of inaction on core areas such as HIV/AIDS, poverty eradication and debt. Africa's cheque remains unsigned and un-cashable in spite of obvious need and progress by the African Union and member-states to meet their obligations to Africa's poor and marginalized.

We nevertheless call upon the G8 to do the right thing in 2004, by announcing a comprehensive debt cancellation strategy for heavily indebted countries; greater market access for African commodities; an end to World Bank/IMF conditionality and delivery on the Africa Action Plan. Should these actions be taken at the upcoming G8 Summit on the Sea Islands, it would dramatically change current trends and create conditions for the determined pursuit of the Millennium Development Goal's in Africa.

Debt Cancellation

Noting the emerging consensus within the G8 on the need for debt cancellation for Iraq and that current debt relief mechanisms are unable to address debt sustainability among several African Countries, we call on the G8 to announce debt cancellation for heavily indebted countries in Africa. If there is one obstacle that stands in the way of Africa meeting the millennium developments goals and assuring basic human rights for its citizens, it is the odious debt that strangles public expenditure and domestic economic growth.

In many African countries, significant resources are being diverted away from basic social services into debt repayment obligations. Broadening access to HIPC for African countries such as Somalia, Sudan and Liberia for instance and deepening the relief, is a step in the right direction but a miniscule step. HIPC countries' sustainability criteria needs to be broadened beyond its narrow link to exports and relate more to poverty and government expenditure on basic social services. The cost of servicing debt continues to be a major source of state failure in Africa. Prioritising only collapsed states and states that have clearly become important to the war on terror for the G8 is short sighted and could open the door to future crises.

The G8 must ensure that all future calculations of debt sustainability for poor countries are linked to the Millennium Development Goals. In addition, the G8 must commit an additional $2.3 billion to ensure that all HIPC countries are brought down to the agreed 150 per cent debt to exports threshold.

Trade Justice

The G8 must address the systemic imbalances in current trade agreements which continue to prop up a multilateral trading system that undermines economic growth and poverty alleviation. Current reform of these agreements would help even the playing field and advance Africa's economic interests. At the World Trade Organisation (WTO), emphasis must necessarily shift away from expanding the trade agenda in favour of addressing existing asymmetries.

The G8 must therefore commit to dropping demands on expanding the WTO agenda to include new multilateral rules on the Singapore Issues. The recent proposals within the European Union to reduce domestic subsidies and open up market access for products of export interest to developing countries can create a firm basis for progress on the Doha Development Agenda.

All G8 members must rally support for this proposal and submit tangible and time-bound commitments on reduction of domestic and export subsidies including all forms of export credits that have a subsidy component. The G8 needs to take greater leadership in injecting political momentum towards realizing the objectives of the Doha Development agenda.

The G8 must make trade count for Africa by addressing World Bank/IMF trade liberalisation conditionality, the dramatic fall in the value of Africa's primary agricultural exports, current G8 tariffs on Africa's exports including non-tariff barriers that continue to discourage processing and value-adding of African commodity exports.

HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis AIDS continues to undermine Africa's development, adversely impacts on the provision of health services and constraints food security and agricultural productivity particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa which has been most affected by the epidemic. Access to affordable life-saving medicines and policy flexibility on intellectual property rights is a pre-requisite in the fight against AIDS. This G8 must go beyond empty promissory notes and support the Global Fund on fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis by increasing funding to enable WHO meet its target of placing 3 million people, predominantly from sub-Saharan Africa, on ARV treatment annually over a five year period. The G8 must also not unnecessary fetter African countries keen on using available flexibilities on parallel importing and compulsory licensing to avail affordable life saving medicines.

Continental Integration

Despite the failure so far of the G8 to live up to its promises regarding support to important African initiatives, African States have embarked on an ambitious programme of continental institutional renewal with the formation of the Peace and Security Council, pan African Parliament, African Court of Justice and the African Peer Review Mechanism (2001-2004). Progress continues to be made on all these fronts.

Nevertheless, a lot more remains to be done by our leaders to enable poor and vulnerable citizens to inform their governments' priorities and trade offs of national and international policy making. As the G8 meets African leaders, we call on the latter to commit to deepening democratic practise and public accountability across our continent by supporting on-going initiatives and strengthening institutions that enhance democratic culture and principles.

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A young East African University friend of mine, who in response to my suggestion that he ought to be more gender sensitive, just boasted: “I was born and raised to be an African 'man' so I will remain as such, why change a cultural habit of a lifetime?” I was stunned. His response was a clear indication that a significant number of men, boys and even women of African descent still think gender is a female preserve that they have little to do with. This can be partly attributed to the forces of masculinity, a socially force-fed emotional and physical masquerade which often thrives due to 'cultural' and 'biological' influences that make it necessary for men to assume certain roles but not others.

At the 48th session of the Commission for the Status of Women in New York a key topic of discussion was indeed the role of men and boys in gender equality. Despite this, the tireless efforts of inter-governmental initiatives to adopt UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security as far back as October 2000 have only just begun to emerge in practice. So how effective can an initiative to bring men and boys aboard the gender agenda be at translating complex policy into practice? And why is the role of men and boys in gender equality so crucial to peace and security?

Even at the cusp of a new millennium it is mostly men who wield political power at the national, regional and international policy-making level. This is certainly the case within post-conflict nations such as Eritrea where a considerable female frontline combatant and civilian population is now disproportionately represented within government. This hinders women's ability to engage in situations of ensuing, fully fledged and easing conflict.

The United Nations system itself epitomizes a male-dominated structure where men still occupy many high-level posts. So it becomes imperative to train and to gender -sensitize divisions such as the Department for Peacekeeping Operations on issues relating to peace and security before they embark on field missions.

There are still men and women within African civil society who remain oblivious to the existence of policies on gender, peace and security, which could change gender relations between and among men and women. Aside from this, putting early socialization and education at the grassroots level into practice could make a poignant impact, enabling men and boys to engender peace and security and not to threaten it. It is solely by doing this that African civil society can begin to deconstruct the flawed inter-cultural link between wars and masculinities.

Some questions still remain. How much of an effect has and will such practices have at the grassroots level and is there a sufficient amount of advocacy, training and capacity -building available to facilitate the inclusion of men and boys in this process?

Nowhere is such a question more appropriate than in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of Africa's most horrific scenes of post-conflict gender based violence have occurred. People now refer to the persistence of such violence particularly in Bukavu and South Kivu, as the 'war within a war'. What is devastating is that that judicial, government and civilian attitudes within these areas are still locked in a belief that such grotesque acts of inhumanity form a part of traditional male practice. The ramifications are often detrimental to society and the economy, causing a dearth in income, forced migration, community level trauma, mistrust and a collapse in rural and urban kinship structures.

Although local NGO's have the capacity to identify and to overcome the impact of gender based violence on women, there doesn't appear to be a great deal done to sensitize male perpetrators, the military and judicial officials towards gender aware post-conflict reconstruction methods.

So in both policy and practice the role of gender in peace and security matters within Africa becomes increasingly important. The extent to which it is understood and implemented at both levels remains fraught. It is inevitably only the joint desire of men and women to create a culture of peace and gender equality within their communities that could sensitize civil society and governments towards such a goal.

We must not and indeed cannot speak of the importance of gender in peace and security without acknowledging that men and boys must be a part of its construction. Gender equality without men and boys is in fact like a skeleton without a spine. Socializing and educating the very men and boys who pose as our fathers, brothers, sons and friends could help demystify the cultural myths binding war and masculinity. This would then reduce the threat of further violence during armed conflict immensely, enabling men and boys to play a pivotal role in fostering peace and security and disabling their desire to violate the human rights of women and children whose lives are made difficult by the uncertainty of ferocious armed conflicts.

* Mebrak Tareke works for International Alert.

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* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

Blinking my eyes to adjust to the bright African sun as we made our way through traffic from the Entebbe airport to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, I looked out the window and asked, “What are those?”

“Coffins,” the driver replied. “Because of AIDS,” he added, in case it wasn't obvious why the wooden boxes were displayed along the roadside with other goods for sale, things I recognized, like furniture, iron gates, tiny bananas, and the reddest tomatoes I had ever seen. The year was 1995, I was a naïve American grad student, and this was my first introduction to Africa.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic had hit Uganda with a vengeance. The infection rate peaked in the early 1990s, with a national prevalence rate of about 15% in 1991 and more than 30% of the population in some urban areas infected in 1992. It is now estimated that a million Ugandans have died from HIV/AIDS, leaving twice as many orphans behind, and more than one million are currently living with the disease. The wrath of the disease dealt a devastating blow to the country and its development efforts. But there was a growing market for coffins.

Yet, already by 1995, Uganda had distinguished itself as the first country to deal with the epidemic head on. A high level political commitment to action, constructive involvement of civil society including religious authorities, and excellent public information campaigns - among many other factors - all contributed to help the country stem the flow of the epidemic. In 1995, when coffins lined the road, the national prevalence rate was 18.5%. Within a few years, the rate dropped to one third of that number.

One element of Uganda's success in preventing infection has been a public information strategy known as ABC - Abstinence, Be faithful, and use Condoms. The key to the ABC strategy was to promote all three together, recognizing that no one type of behaviour change could work perfectly. The ABC model has been widely recognized internationally, and adapted for use in other countries around the world. The journal Science recently reported that it has been almost as successful as a vaccine in Uganda.

This is not to say that the battle is over. Few people living with HIV/AIDS have adequate access to anti-retroviral therapy that could prolong their lives, permitting them to participate in the workforce and care for their families. An estimated 25,000 babies are born HIV positive each year in Uganda. The situation of children orphaned by AIDS remains dire. Stigma and discrimination are still prevalent despite the best efforts of the government and AIDS advocates. And discrimination continues to make women most vulnerable to the disease.

While Ugandan activists agree that more must be done to treat people living with HIV/AIDS, they continue to stress the importance of prevention. Many analysts caution that it would be ill-advised to rely too heavily on the success of the public information campaign. Some even query whether the ABC strategy was really responsible for the decline in prevalence. A 2003 baseline study on knowledge, attitudes, and behavioural practices found that high-risk behaviour is still very common in Kampala. And recent data indicate that rates of infection could be back on the rise.

There can be no disputing that the scale of the problem in Uganda remains alarming, and that urgent action is required to save lives and prevent the epidemic from further eroding the country's development efforts. Thus, perhaps the most difficult challenge facing Uganda now is to build on the success of the past decade. Even if Uganda and its donors meet their target of providing ARVs to 100,000 people in the next five years, Dr. Coutinho of The Aids Support Organisation predicts twice that number could be newly infected. This is no time for complacency.

Many hope that the US$15 billion President Bush pledged last year for AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean might go a long way towards solving the problem. The money (known as “Bush money” in Ugandan parlance) finally started to reach 14 countries including Uganda last month, from the President's Emergency Fund for HIV/AIDS Relief. But it is not that simple.

In fact, while grateful for all the money available from international donors, many Ugandans I spoke to on a recent visit to the country were already skeptical as the Bush money took so long to start trickling in, and they were not convinced that it would necessarily be put to most effective use.

Organisations such as the US-based Centre for Health and Gender Equity and Physicians for Human Rights have expressed numerous concerns about the Bush administration's strategy for using the money, as spelled out in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief: US Five-Year Global HIV/AIDS Strategy.

For starters, the process of developing the strategy was a closed one and key stakeholders were excluded. What's more, the administration has been widely criticized for following ideological and fundamentalist religious beliefs rather than evidence-based recommendations.

This is perhaps most evident in the strategy's excessive insistence on abstinence only, rather than a holistic ABC approach. The strategy focuses on abstinence for youth and being faithful within marriage, and emphasizes that condoms are only to be made available to and in the 'vicinity of' so-called high risk populations such as prostitutes. Potential funding for B and C approaches is further constrained by the United States Global AIDS Act of 2003, which limits prevention funding to 20% of the money allocated and mandates that one third of this be spent on abstinence-until-marriage strategies.

But this approach runs counter to the fundamental premise underlying the ABC strategy. As Dr. Coutinho explains, even though approximately 60% of his patients do embrace abstinence, they do not always do so perfectly. For example, someone may well remain abstinent for ten months, decide to have sex again, and then return to abstinence. For this and many other reasons, it is crucial to keep the C in the equation.

According to the Centre for Health and Gender Equity, the strategy also fails to guarantee that those most at risk will be provided access to comprehensive sex education information such as complete information on male and female condoms, frank discussions about sexuality, guidance for negotiating safe sex, etc.

Some NGOs in Uganda say they have sensed a rolling back of the space available for public information on AIDS prevention and sexuality, particularly information targeting youth. Though this is not directly tied to the Bush money, they do see a link. For example, much of the Bush money is earmarked for faith-based organisations. While all agree that religious institutions have a crucial role to play, some fear that this could lead to churches taking over much of the work that secular NGOs now do. This is especially worrying given that some churches have strong positions against condoms.

Many Ugandans are also familiar with other Bush administration policies (including domestic policies focusing exclusively on promoting abstinence outside marriage and ignoring or even opposing contraceptive and condom use, as well as the global gag rule). As a result, they fear there may be 'a change in the winds' towards more conservative public health policies informed by evangelical interests.

Numerous other serious concerns have also been raised with respect to the Bush money. One is the failure of the US to contribute its proper share to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Another is the fear that funds will only be available for purchase of name-brand drugs. This will be a decisive factor in how many people receive treatment, as the funds available are finite and name-brand drugs can cost four times more than their generic counterparts.

Even beyond the Bush money and public health policy, Christian Aid recently issued a report decrying a 'dangerous drift' - encouraged by the US and the UK - of diverting aid funds in Uganda and elsewhere to the war on terror. Nearly a quarter of Uganda's social services budget in 2002 went to fund military operations in the North to fight the LRA (which has been added to the US terrorist list). Yet the report also found that the war and militarization of the area is actually contributing to increased spread of HIV in the region.

I recently took the Entebbe-Kampala road again on one of my frequent trips to Africa. My heart sank as soon as we drove out of the airport parking lot, quickly dashing the excitement I felt about returning to Uganda that had peaked during the breathtaking landing on the shores of Lake Victoria.

I confided in my fellow passenger - a Tanzanian law professor on his way to the same meeting I would be attending - how this stretch of road, my first impression of Africa, is branded in my memory together with coffins. Recalling the devastation that poverty and disease had wrought on the country in the mid-1990s, he sympathized. But he reminded me that Uganda had worked hard to slow the impact of the epidemic, and that things are actually much better today. Together, we looked anxiously out the window - not at the emerald green landscape, but at the roadside merchants and their wares. Together, we breathed a sigh of relief when we didn't see any coffins.

Ugandan AIDS advocates continue to work tirelessly to battle the epidemic. For example, Dr. Coutinho has suggested an improvement on the ABC strategy - adding a “D”, for determine and declare, to encourage people to get tested and be open about their status. The international community - including the Bush administration - should continue to rely on evidence, rather than untested strategies motivated by fundamentalist ideology. This may be the best way to keep the coffins off the road until we get to V for vaccine, and Z for zero.

* Sara Rakita is a consultant who travels frequently to Africa.

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* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this article was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

Throughout history, international trade has generated considerable controversy. While conceding that some trade was imperative, Aristotle observed that trade was disruptive of community life. Until the 19th Century, most European powers viewed trade as a form of undeclared warfare. Their objective was - and still remains - the maximization of benefits accruing to themselves and minimization of those accruing to rival nations. The weapons of choice in this warfare were import barriers.

The idea of trade as a mutually beneficial activity only gained currency and political momentum following David Ricardo's elaboration of the theory of comparative advantage in 1817. Today the free trade doctrine reigns supreme. Trade negotiations - at multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral levels - all focus on reduction and eventual elimination of trade barriers (a kind of disarmament treaty).

The removal of trade barriers in rich countries can accrue certain benefits for impoverished countries. But this can only occur when the economies of underdeveloped countries are accorded the right space to respond first and foremost to the fundamental developmental needs of these countries. Rapid import liberalization imposed on underdeveloped countries via structural adjustment programmes has more often than not intensified poverty and inequality.

The IMF, the World Bank, and most industrialized country governments are strong advocates of trade liberalization. In the case of the two Bretton Woods institutions, advocacy has been backed by loan conditions which require countries to reduce their trade barriers. Largely as a result of these loan conditions, poor countries have been opening their economies much more rapidly than industrialized countries. Average import tariffs have been halved in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and cut by two-thirds in Latin America and East Asia.

Problems with Trade Liberalization

The popular view is that trade liberalization is an outcome of negotiated trade agreements. But, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) emphasizes that the principal vehicles for trade liberalization are the conditions attached to IMF and World Bank loans. That is, the IMF and World Bank disburse loans as, or when, borrowing governments comply with conditions, including trade-related conditions that are sometimes part of Structural Adjustment Programmes. The work programme of the Doha Agenda have been incorporated in IMF and World Bank SAPs for years.

Trade As If Nothing Else Mattered

Economists' training prepares them to build and have unshakeable belief in models that have not been successfully challenged. But they are not very well trained in how to rigorously verify their policy relevance for specific contexts. The models are often deployed on the assumption that they are relevant to a specific context without the benefit of supporting justification.

The assumption of applicability is perhaps the most widely deployed, yet unstated, auxiliary assumption used in economic policy analysis. It is especially concerning models dealing with underdeveloped countries where many of these assumptions below are routinely violated - especially those based on smoothly mobile labour and capital, complete and functioning markets, and perfect information flows.

Regional Integration and Regional Trade Agreements

Integration is once again a concept so much in vogue. The promoters of economic globalization are using it to justify the unprecedented expansion of the power of transnational corporations. The underdeveloped world, especially Africa, is being constantly reminded that it has to be integrated into the world economy if it is survive. The validity of this position will be examined briefly at some later stage. Integration means different things to different people. For some, it is an all-embracing union of contiguous countries and includes both economic and political areas. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union are perfect examples of this type of integration. For others, it is agreement among a group of countries to remove various kinds of trade barriers. In between these two extremes lie numerous types of arrangements. In all these arrangements, the overarching concern is the formation of a body with a common purpose, usually to increase human welfare.

Integration in Africa has been driven by two competing forces - one internal and the other external. Internal impetus to integration of African economies has been provided by the realization that the continent has over the centuries suffered wanton exploitation of its natural, material and financial resources at the hands of imperialist forces. The global economic arrangement since the 15th Century has defined for Africa its place in the international economic division of labour - to produce and export primary commodities in line with its perceived comparative advantage. Value adding by way of processing, manufacturing, packaging, branding etc. is left to industrialized countries. In other words, Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce.

The motivation for internally-driven integration derives from the following expected benefits:

- More efficient use of the region's capital, labour and natural resources, which are often less than optimally utilized nationally and has been exploited extensively by the industrialized countries.
- Developing the market, so that instead of fighting and bending backward to be 'granted' access to the markets of Europe and North America, Africa can begin producing first and foremost for its own markets.
- Reduced Costs of transaction within the region, as a result of reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers. This reduces monopolistic profits and leads to efficiency gains.
- Training effect, as national producers are gradually exposed to the regional market before the world market, since it is easier to compete in the regional market than in the global market. This could be a stepping stone to the outside world.

External interests also push for regional integration in Africa but for different reasons. The overarching motivation for externally-induced regional integration is to maintain the historical division of labour that assigns Africa the role of green field that feeds Northern industry with raw materials. Below are characteristics of externally-driven integration:

- High-tech, Low-value ghettoes: With the increasing demands for higher wages, improved working conditions and environmentally sound production methods, many transnational corporations are increasingly looking at Africa as possible sites for the assembly of their high technology exports such as electronics, auto and engineering products.
- Raw material reservoirs: In order to keep feeding the Northern industries with the necessary raw input, it is in the interest of industrialized economies to secure the source of minerals, agricultural commodities and other natural resource-based inputs. As it is cheaper to deal with a bigger entity with uniform policies and procedures than individual states with differing policies and often changing political moods.
- Entry points for multilateral negotiations: As resistance to many issues fronted by industrialised countries in the WTO intensifies, the North finds it easier forcing the issues through regional fora.
- Captive markets: Trade and trade negotiations are about accessing markets. Expansion and securing of African markets rank very high in the scheme of corporate interests in industrialized countries. It is the essence of integration of Africa into the global economy.

Cotonou Agreement

Perhaps the most important trade agreement outside the WTO agreements is the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) and the European Union (EU) relation under the Cotonou Agreement signed in June 2000. As a successor to the Lome Convention, which had guided these relations since 1975, the Cotonou Agreement has the following new characteristics;
- It breaks the solidarity of ACP countries by creating regional differentiation through negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
- It introduces reciprocity.
- It seeks to be WTO compatible (Indeed, the EU proposals are WTO-plus).
- Creates uncertainty and confusion among Least Developed Countries.

AGOA

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), though not a trade agreement, deserves serious attention for its destructive effect on Africa's economy. The eligibility criteria undermine policy autonomy of African countries. Some of the worrying items in the criteria include:
- US strategic interests clause (War against terrorism).
- Rules of origin
- Free Trade Areas with SSA
- Monitoring and review
- Study on improving agricultural practices in Africa (GMOs?)
- Elimination of restrictions to US investments

*Oduor Ong'wen heads the SEATINI Office in Kenya, in which this article was first published. For more information and subscriptions, contact SEATINI, Takura House, 67-69 Union Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe, Tel: +263 4 792681, Ext. 255 & 341, Tel/Fax: +263 4 251648, Fax: +263 4 788078, email: Email: [email][email protected], Website: www.seatini.org

We need to raise awareness of the need to redistribute the world’s resources, embracing the principle of sharing at all levels of society.

The current world economic system doesn't work. A world ruled by financiers and economists with no regard for human suffering or ecological damage is not sustainable. Unfair trading practices, set up by the World Trade Organisation and the G7 squeeze the third world to a point where famine and war are the result. When I think about the ever-worsening situation in the Third World I am reminded of an incident one summer in my childhood.

My sister and I went to stay with our aunt and uncle on their farm. When we arrived my uncle and aunt told us that the field of kale behind the farmhouse was full of caterpillars. Excitedly, we ran out into the field to look at them. Every leaf of every kale plant was covered in caterpillars, big ones, small ones and tiny ones.

As the days passed, the army of caterpillars marched across the field towards the house. They ate every leaf of every plant, leaving a forest of skeletons in their wake. Big fat caterpillars walked over the smaller ones, squashing them as they went. And when they reached the edge of the field they crawled towards the house, up the walls and in through the windows. We shut the windows. The caterpillars crawled over the gutters, up the roof and down the chimneys.

Everywhere we looked there were caterpillars: on the walls, the ceilings, under the chairs, in the bedrooms, the bathroom, and the toilet. They stuck to the walls and ceilings of the house, turned into chrysalises, then never hatched. Every one of those caterpillars died.

As I look at the world today I see the caterpillar metaphor in action. The rich crush the poor, with bombs, wars, crippling interest rates on loans and unfair trade. I see desperate poverty, leading to population explosions, and I see the destruction of the environment on a par with the caterpillar’s destruction of their field of kale.

Just as the caterpillars destroyed their source of sustenance, so we humans are destroying our environment. We are destroying the very source of the air we breathe: the tropical rain forests. Our rich, like the big fat caterpillars, get richer and fatter while our poor, like the small thin caterpillars, are crushed to death or left with nothing to eat.

But all, fat and thin, rich and poor, are crawling towards eventual self-destruction.

But there are other models in the insect kingdom. Both ants and bees base their success on co-operation; the sharing of duties and resources to build highly successful communities. Ants that live in the topical rain forest co-operate not only with each other but with every aspect of their environment. Bees also work together co-operatively. Some would say that the bee model is regimented and smacks of communism. But the model merely demonstrates that sharing benefits both the community and the environment.

Part of the human race knows that sharing is the responsible way forward: the part which created the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the hundreds of organisations that attempt to mitigate the disastrous consequences of unjust economic policies.

Even the World Bank was originally set up with a view to ending world poverty. But the problem with the world at the moment is that we do not have a queen bee, a head ant, a co-ordinating centre; in other words a world government. World power is in the hands of financiers, under the auspices of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. These institutions dictate the terms of trade and protect the interests of the West, to the detriment of the rest of the world. The world deserves better than this.

The Brandt Report (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/News/PressReleases/files/pr_africacom_brandt_bac…), for example, puts the needs of the world’s people first. It is the blueprint for a world government. Every member of the world’s society needs food, clean water, a roof over their heads, health care and education. The Brandt Report makes clear that we need to share responsibility for the world’s resources and the environment.

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in his book ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, explains in great detail how the current world economic situation evolved and what is wrong with it. The foundations of the current world economic system were laid by the United Nations in 1944 at Bretton Woods, in the US. Those present discussed how to rebuild war-ravaged Europe and as a result they set up an International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development of Europe. This later became the World Bank. They also set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to maintain world economic stability, so that there would be no more world economic depressions. As Joseph Stiglitz points out, these were good and worthy ideals at the time.

Over the years the power of the World Bank and the IMF, under the G7 (the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the UK) grew and grew until they had economic dominion over the whole world. The World Trade Organisation was created, to set the price for third world exports, mainly raw materials and crops. The price for these commodities has fallen constantly ever since, making it harder and harder for these countries to repay the interest on their loans.

The economic system created in 1944 in the spirit of remorse and idealism, developed into a global economic network with a stranglehold over the third world. A world governed by financial institutions is not, and cannot be, a stable, sane or healthy world.

In the 1980s the World Bank and the IMF really began to squeeze the third world. It was during this period that Reagan and Thatcher came to power and began to promote the doctrine of monetarism and the free market economy. The IMF, the World Bank and the US treasury came to an agreement called the Washington Consensus (representatives of Third World countries were not invited to the meeting). They called for Capital Market Liberalization, i.e. forcing third world countries to open up to imports which they could not compete with, while using import tariffs to protect their own vulnerable industries.

The 1980s also saw the introduction of the iniquitous structural adjustment loans by the World Bank and the IMF. These loans were tied to so many conditions that third world governments were forced to cut back on essential spending, such as education and health programmes. This, over a period of decades has led to a worsening of health in the third world. Twelve million people now die of preventable diseases every year, and of these the largest number dies from dysentery and diarrhoea.

Since the people affected by diseases live in some of the poorest countries of the world, there is no incentive for the world’s pharmaceutical companies to put money into research and development of new drugs or vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies play an important part in Western health schemes, carrying out research and developing new medicines. But since they are inextricably linked into the current world economic system, which is driven by the profit motive and competition with each other, they feel that they are forced to gear their research towards finding drugs to treat the diseases which affect the developed world: cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc., drugs which they can sell at a profit. Only ten percent of research money worldwide is devoted to ninety percent of the world’s diseases.

The current world economic system is failing the majority of the world’s population. Profit-driven research will always be geared towards the development of drugs to treat the diseases of those who can pay. A world system based on sharing would look at need, rather than profit – as the driving force behind research.

A World Government based on the principle of sharing would share responsibility for the health of the world population, direct research and development towards all the diseases which affect the world, not just those that affect the West.

A world economic system based on sharing would want to share responsibility for the health of the world population. A world economic system based on sharing would want to preserve ancient knowledge of traditional medicine, share responsibility for protecting rare medicinal plants, for growing and harvesting these plants and making them available to all those in need.

The current economic system exploits the environment shamelessly, leading to its destruction. We are destroying the world’s tropical rain forests, an invaluable and irreplaceable source of medicinal plants.

Sharing is not just about sharing resources. It is also about the sharing of knowledge, both the high tech knowledge of the developed nations, and the detailed, intimate knowledge of the environment of the people who inhabit it. The current global economic system exploits both the environment and the people who live in it. The emphasis on profit denies all other values, such as traditional knowledge and respect for the environment. This is extremely dangerous, and if it continues will lead to complete ecological destruction, followed by the death of a large proportion of the human species. We need a world government to instil in everyone the necessity of sharing responsibility for the environment.

Sharing the world's resources, knowledge and responsibilities is the only way for the human species to survive. The infrastructure for such sharing is already in place. All that is required now is a shift of consciousness on the part of human kind, away from the idea that competition should be the basis of our economic system, towards the idea that sharing would be of benefit to all.

* Mohammed Mesbahi is the Chair and Founder of a London-based organisation called Share the World’s Resources (STWR). This article was submitted to Pambazuka News by email.

* Send comments on this article - and other events in Africa - to [email protected]

There are so many pessimists about Africa around the world that it seems there is nothing Africans can do that can change their mindsets. Otherwise how does one explain a very common question that any talk of Uganda in many circles outside Africa still prompts: Idi Amin. The fact that Idi Amin was booted out of power in 1979 seems to have passed many people by! On seeing my name tag, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan African Movement, Uganda at a huge international conference, only two years ago, a delegate came to me at Tea Break and asked: How is Idi Amin? He seems quiet these days!

I had grown accustomed to these daft questions so I gently broke it to him that the Field Marshall had been out of Uganda for sometime, lodging in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, since 1979. I thought the questioner would walk away quietly in diplomatic embarrassment but he shot another question at me: so what does he do these days? Since he could not get the message it was my turn to walk away from the embarrassing conversation.

But the Afro pessimism is not just from outsiders. So many Africans; many of the educated elite class who are allegedly supposed to know better, are guilty of the same pessimism about Africa and Africans. A religious fundamentalist acquaintance even tried to convince me that our woes were because of many sins that we have committed and unless we return to God in penitence there can not be any respite from our multi legged afflictions, from AIDS to bad governance. I asked him if our disobedience to his God is worse than that of any other peoples on this planet and he was adamant that it was. So if Africa is to continue to suffer all these problems what will God do to those who enslaved us, colonised us and continue to rig the international rules of trade and commerce against us with the active collaboration and grotesque submissiveness of our leaders who are really dealers.

Of course blaming the victim is not a new trick from those who benefit from any system of oppression and exploitation. That is why many of our leaders assume the mantle of ‘father of the nation’ (who does no wrong) as soon as they enter state house and with time they become theocratic asking us to return to God in order to be governed well. They become the chosen ones by God but somehow God’s message is not for them but for the poor hapless citizens. Didn’t colonialists and Slave dealers before them declare their murderous enterprise as ‘civilisation’?

However as the Late Walter Rodney once declared Africa has an incredible capacity to surprise both outsiders and the natives. Amidst all the gloom and doom we see flickers of hope and rays of sun shine here and there, keeping hope alive that our peoples have it within them the capacity to change their conditions for the better. Outsiders can and may help but the duty is that of Africans.

While not denying the challenges we must also put our victories in perspective and build on those good practices of things that work in Africa by African efforts.

South Africa has just concluded its third post apartheid general elections without the much-predicted mass violence especially in Kwazulu Natal. Even Chief Buthelezi is reaching his sell-by-date and is no longer capable of destabilising the democratic order.

Yet just ten years ago there were all prophets of doom about the inevitable catastrophe that a post apartheid South Africa will become. Enemies of Africa now say the ANC has won too much votes and that is supposed to be dangerous for democracy. Does that mean that Tony Blair whose party has a overwhelming majority in the British parliament without overwhelming votes across the country should have shared it with his Liberal and conservative opponents?

Another unsung development is the decision by President Sam Nujoma and SWAPO that finally this term is his final and final term. No more tinkering with the constitution to prolong the rule of one person.

The system should be able to cope with the exit of its founders, veterans and pioneers and move to another person and another generation.

Africa’s enemies will be further proven wrong if and when the same message echoes from Kampala, Harare, Addis Ababa and Asmara. President Thabo Mbeki has made the same declaration in Pretoria as indeed President Kagame (though he still has many years ahead) in Kigali. We have to help those who have seen the light beyond state house and also help those who are yet to that there is more to enjoy outside of it instead of remaining prisoners to power. Some leaders like Eyadema (who is beyond the pale of any democratic pressure) we have to pray to the ancestors to fastforward his recall to the higher house. The next phase in the very painful transitions in many African countries will require being liberated from our liberators.

Let us keep hope alive, Afrika Yetu!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.

The Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konaré condemns the assassination of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, during an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Saturday, 17 April 2004.

The Chairperson stress once again that the killings of Palestinian leaders will incite more violence and undermine any prospects for dialogue and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. More importantly, such actions which are illegal and in violation of international law, only serves to compound the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity and despair, especially among the already brutalized Palestinian population.

The Chairperson, once again, calls on the international community, including in particular, the Middle East quartet of the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union, to intensify their efforts to relaunch the peace process in the Middle East and to encourage the Parties to revert to the implementation of the proposals for a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the Palestinian problem, in line with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, and in order to guarantee the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to statehood.

Addis Ababa, 19 April 2004

The whole of last week was rightly dominated by events in memory of the victims of genocide in Rwanda.

Everybody, whether they meant it or not said: 'Never again'. One just hopes the 'Never again' is not like that echoed after the Jewish holocaust. It was a cry of shame and guilt that in practice worked out as 'never again to Jews' but open season in other areas or other peoples.

The Zionists have had no hesitation to visit holocaust on their Palestinian victims since 1948. They have continued till date because the USA, its principal Patron, and its allies are prepared to look the other way and actively encourage Israeli crimes against humanity as 'self defense', 'incursions', or 'retaliations against Palestinian Gunmen'.

Since 9/11 Bush's America has Israelised its own political and military strategies. In Iraq its capacity for occupation is being built by Sharon's experts. Therefore Israeli genocide against Palestinians is now part of the global 'war on terrorism'.

The big powers internationally refused to do anything as the Rwanda genocide went into full swing because the unwritten post second world war statute of limitation on genocide meant 'not against Jews' anymore, otherwise how does one explain the repetitions of genocide since 1945 in different areas of the world?

But because of cold war (and the cruel logic of protecting 'our bloody crooks') or in order to derogate international responsibility consequent to the Geneva convention on Genocide, they changed the terms to 'ethnic massacres', 'civil war' or now the more fashionable, 'ethnic cleansing'.

It was a very big struggle in 1994 to get the world to accept that what was happening in Rwanda was Genocide because the USA and some of the European countries especially Britain that are now trying to outdo each other as 'the best friend of Rwanda' did not want to accept their international obligations that would have necessitated direct military intervention to stop the genocide.

There was vicarious guilt by many African states too, largely conditioned by regimes who were like the kettle calling the pot black. After the genocide a new guilt about their inaction has set in that makes them largely uncritical of Rwanda's government.

The guilt is by no means limited to extra African powers. Even across Africa the huge official diplomatic and political good will towards Rwanda now has been mostly due to four factors.

One, guilt about African inaction on the Genocide. Two, many predicted that the RPF would not last long in power but it has proven them wrong and showed itself a real force to be reckoned with. Three, many African leaders really envy President Kagame for the kind of tight control he has over his government and country. Four, there are many especially civilianised generals in Africa who are genuinely mesmerized by the military prowess of General Kagame.

Therefore from initial doubts and suspicion the RPF government is now in danger of becoming too respectable in Africa. The consequence of this universal rehabilitation both in Africa and internationally is that a post humus statute of limitation on genocide is being imposed on Africa.

We shout 'never again' in Rwanda and are silent on other genocidaire activities on this continent. What is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan is genocide that is understated as 'civil war', 'Militia violence', or ‘rebellion’.

The world is so desperate for an end to the 'Southern Sudan problem' that it is not prepared to confront other structural problems of marginalization of Sudanese peoples. Darfur is one of the historically marginalized areas of Sudan whose interests are not protected by the largely military treaty agreed between the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army/ Movement.

Yet another error as is common with many peace agreements across Africa (except South Africa) is where priority is given to military formations and those groups that have no armies are supposed to just put up or shut up. It is not by accident that the Darfur liberation efforts took military form as the agreements in Naivasha were being drawn up.

The logic is clear: Our claims can only be credible if we show a capacity to threaten everybody. The Government of Sudan has previously fuelled the conflict by proxy but now it is direct through its allied Arab Militias in the region. It had kept up the pretence that what is happening in Darfur is a kind of local 'tribal conflict'.

But it was a kind of local battle in which the Arab militias have had the support and active encouragement of the Khartoum government to kill, maim, rape and destroy the local population of Darfur who are mostly of African origin.

For Genocide to occur the ideology must exist. The Arab militias believe in their innate superiority and consider the African population as inferior peoples fit only as beasts of burden, to accept Arab or Arabised supremacy without question. The other condition for genocide to take hold is willingness of the government to let this happen with impunity or even encourage it actively.

Lastly, genocide succeeds because the international community refuses to act. All these conditions hold for Darfur. The government of Sudan bombs the people indiscriminately and the Arab militia kill from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, house to house. Like their slave raiding ancestors, they arrive on Camels and horses to wreck havoc on Darfur's defenceless citizens.

People of Darfur do not have to lose another one million people as in Rwanda before we wake up. The dead are already in the thousands and the displaced are almost three quarter of a million. If the UN and the powers that be cannot act what about the new African Union constitutive act of Union that specifically identified genocide and other crimes against humanity as a basis for intervention?

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.