http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/304/41423.jpgThe Election Monitoring Report compiled by the Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) on the Nigerian presidential elections held on 21 April 2007.

Introduction
The idea of using mobile phones to monitor elections was developed by NMEM. We are proud to announce to the world that is was extremely successful. We also recommend that other organisations and countries study our project, and plan to use it in their own future elections.

The primary goal of the project was to use technology to give the ordinary citizen an opportunity to tell the world what really happened in their area on election day.

The spread and reach of mobile telephony in Nigeria is mind boggling: in the last four years more than 30,000,000 Nigerians have become mobile phone users.

Traditionally Eeection observers and monitors deemed credible are often foreign diplomats, bureaucrats and professionals who are sent to visit as many polling stations as they can and inform the world of their impression of the polls.

Their effectiveness is limited to the number of places they can visit in a just one day: in a country as vast as Nigeria with a land mass of 925,000 square kilometres and a population of 140,000,000; without maps or road signs to use in navigation, these foreign observers often limit their activities to Abuja, the capital, Lagos and a few major state capitals. Places like the Niger Delta with its reputation for violence and kidnapping of foreigners are no-go areas.

Most election observers especially in Africa are very conspicuous with their UN or EU branded 4-wheel drive jeeps, 'branded' t-shirts with 'observers' boldly printed on it and large ID tags around their necks.

This is often necessary for security reasons which allows them to move around freely on election day where movement is often restricted. This, however, reduces their effectiveness as people are prone to act properly when they know they are being watched, especially by foreigners.

This is why we decided to use ordinary citizens of Nigeria, all voters themselves to report back to our SMS hub on what really happened on election day from their own polling stations.

The use of ordinary Nigerians to observe and report on the election, we believe, encourages participation by people that would be apathetic as well as provide timely, accurate and impartial information on the conduct of the elections.

It is ultimately the same ordinary citizens who validate the credibility and legitimacy of the eventual electoral outcome. Our monitoring is peculiar because people knew that if they try to rig the election there could be someone behind them that may send a text message reporting the incident.

The network, and how it works
The Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) is organised by the Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) Foundation. With the assistance of Professionals for Humanity (PROFOH), another Nigerian NGO, the network started out with 54 associates resident in each of the 36 states of the country, and Abuja.

These associates were trained to recruit volunteers from their states and instruct them to forward our SMS text invitation to as many people as possible to create a nationwide spread.

Technology
The technology behind this project was made possible using a SMS hub called FrontlineSMS, developed by kiwanja.net, to keep track of all of the texts.

The system allows mass-messaging to mobile phones and crucially the ability for recipients to reply to a central computer.

Thanks to the system we could acknowledge receipt of the text (SMS) and even make specific enquiry to individual volunteers and associates in any area to confirm the authenticity of reports received.

The software also was able to alert us when a report came in from our associates or hitherto unknown volunteer allowing us to rank the accuracy of the information received.

Although the software performed brilliantly we would have loved it to have the ability to make allowance for multimedia service (MMS) as a few of our associates took pictures on camera phones and could only forward them to us via the internet.

Election Day
Election day started out for the technical support staff at 8:30am. Our first task was to send a reminder SMS alert to our associates urging them to personally go to their designated polling stations and to file their report by 12 noon.

The first SMS (text) report to come through the network was on the eve of the presidential election at 11:06pm, alerting NMEM of skirmishes between soldiers of the Nigerian army and unknown militants around government house Yenengoa, Bayelsa state.

The first positive reports started to arrive at 2pm with reports of calm and orderliness in Ibiono Ibom L.G.A in Akwa Ibom State, and also from Kano GRA, Kano state.

From then on, we were flooded with reports from Nigerians who reported as events unfold during the election.The observations below represent a mix of text messages sent in by respondent:

Calm and orderliness; Late arrival of polling materials; Absence of names of registered voters on official voter lists; Early arrival INEC officials and members of the Civil Defense Corp; Voting without proper documents and identification; Extension of voting hours to augment for late opening; Absence of polling booths for voters confidentiality; Stuffing of ballot boxes; Casting away of voting materials; Poor voter turnout; Harassment and intimidation of voters; Ill-equipped security personnel.

Our analysis indicates that extensive fraud and rigging were perpetrated by participating political parties in their areas of control. In total over 10,000 messages were received into the SMS hub.

Observer feedback
The need to readily communicate with the Nigerian electorate was the prime motivation in choosing text messaging as the communications method for our work.

Following the announcement of the presidential election result on Monday the 23 April 2007, text messages were sent out to our respondent asking for their reaction on the acceptability of the result and the president-elect.

While about a fifth of our respondents wanted the results cancelled, the majority, about 80 per cent, reacted that Nigeria could not afford cancellation and re-run. Rather Nigerians want those who are aggrieved to seek peaceful redress at the election tribunals.

Curiously, some of the respondents that reported electoral fraud in their locations believe that the President-elect should be given a chance. One message, which was typical of a number we received, indicated:

'Gov.Yar Adua is generally acceptable as President mainly because of his lack of military antecedence, relative record of transparency as Governor of Katina State and the calibre of opposition he had.'

It is our belief that with adequate funding we can educate and inform the public to take part in exit polls at future elections. Due to inadequate funding we were unable to have our associates follow up at the ward collation center, or Local Government Areas and INEC state offices, where the tallies were added up. Most of our observations were limited to the polling stations.

Sample text messages - below are a few selected messages received from our observers:

'At ward 4 and 5 of Calabar Municipality materials arrived at about 9:45am. Voting started by 10am prompt. All the security agencies and party representatives were all present and voting was conducted orderly though the electorate turn out was low.'

'Almost all result sheets diverted by PDP stalwarts and INEC ad-hoc staff on the way to wards polling stations in Nsukka Enugu State.'

'EVERYWHERE IS CALM VOTING IS ON. MOVEMENT IS RESTRICTED FOR EFFECTIVENESS OF THE ELECTION PROCESS.'

'I want to commend the efforts of INEC and for making this election come to pass in the face of every challenge.'

'Dear Mobile Election Monitor team I am sending this text from UK. There is a huge irregularity of voting at Gwande Karfa ward. In Bokkos LGC. TAKE NOTE. NAPHTALI.

Conclusions
The just concluded election and subsequent handing over of power on 29 May will mark the first time in Nigerian history that power has been transfer from one elected president to another.

Our report indicates fraud and other irregularities in the elections, and this has been collaborated by report of foreign and other domestic observers.

However, there were pockets of hope in places where elections where orderly, free and fairly conducted as earlier mentioned in this report. These area needs to be commended for their vigilance and commitment to their civic responsibilities.

We however believe that the wish of the people was honoured and the most popular candidate returned. Though the election was flawed, many Nigerians shared their views with us, and we believe that this practice will greatly assist in determining the legitimacy of this and future elections in this country. We are very happy we helped give the people a voice via text messaging.

Recommendations
The government must make every effort not to be overly partisan in the electoral process. INEC must be made totally autonomous as regards its finances, appointment of its managerial personnel and its powers, and all aspects of the electoral process must be well articulated.

The political parties must be provided with irrevocable standards and timeline to present to their candidates. The judiciary must be sacrosanct about the laws of the land and be sensitive to the integrity of candidates before clearances to run in the elections. The legislator must be pro-active in its monitoring of the electoral process, and the election commission.

The Nigerian people require more sensitization on their civic responsibility, which should not be restricted to election period only Post-election NMEM project NMEM is convinced that elections and good governance are fundamental and sacrosanct in the democratic process. As such the monitoring and evaluation of an elected government by the governed becomes essential to the process.

In developing countries like Nigeria the challenges of the lack of institutionalised agencies to monitor and ensure good governance or its access and optimal engagement by the ordinary citizens is of great concern due to the almost malignancy of the abuse of office by the political elites. Intervention in the democratic process should therefore not wane after elections but become more resolute in the delivery of democratic dividends to the citizenry.

NMEM has started a process which aims to provide Nigerians a platform to express their aspirations, monitor and evaluate the performances of the elected government and the public office holders in the bid to ensuring good governance. NMEM has created templates of enquiry regarding Nigerians aspirations and expectations of the newly elected government and public officers.

Good Governance Monitoring Project
This phase of the NMEM project has two sub-divisions and is being developed to provide Nigerians with the channels to express aspirations and expectation of the incoming government, and engage directly in the assessment of the government and the performance of the public office holders.

The essence of this phase is to check the abuse of public trust
by political office holders. Firstly, NMEM will reach out to Nigerians via the mass media for Nigerians to articulate their aspirations/expectations through SMS to NMEM computer hub. Messages will be catalogued and presented to the political office holders of respective constituencies.

NMEM hopes this will strengthen the already established covenant between the representatives and their constituencies as already contained in their manifestos.

Although NMEM is challenged by the enormity of the project, the project hopes to identify partners who would share in this commendable intervention - to ensure good governance in Nigeria as a model of true democracy to other developing nations of the world.

For further information on the Good Governance Monitoring Project please contact:

Human Emancipation Lead Project
210 Olusegun Obasanjo Way Uyo Akwa Ibom State Nigeria Telephone: +234-8777-8051 Email: [email][email protected] Acknowledgements We are thankful most especially to Ken Banks of kiwanja.net for providing the technology backbone of our system, and technical assistance, free of charge.

USEFUL LINKS
1. BBC News: http://www.kiwanja.net
3. FrontlineSMS: http://www.frontlinesms.com
4. NMEM: http://www.mobilemonitors.org
5. BBC Digital Planet:
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* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/41299.jpgAfrican people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

From the beginning of this century, the G8 started cultivating a special intimate relationship with representatives of a ‘new Africa’, in response to their courting.

It is not by accident that the German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that the further expansion of this link into ‘reform partnerships’ would officially rank among the priorities on the agenda at the forthcoming summit in Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea.

This however does not necessarily mean that it will actually happen. We have already seen the originally announced focus on Africa be overshadowed by other matters in Kananaskis, where the events in the Middle East replaced Africa as the priority, and in Gleneagles, after the bomb attacks in London; and the African representatives having once again to play second fiddle.

This time, it seems that climate change will once again push Africa out of the limelight- though its people might be among the biggest victims of the effects of unabated environmental pollution; relegating its leaders to the back benches.

But even so, the favoured African heads of state seem to feel somehow comfortable with enjoying the marginal trade-offs from sitting around the dining table with the powerful. After all, since Genoa, lunch was the minimum they got from each G8 summit. Even when that, together with a group photo, was at times the only recognition granted.

Merkel used her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos to declare that during the German presidencies of the G8 and the EU, emphasis would be on how Africa could be better integrated into the global economy.

Her personal representative at the G8, Bernd Pfaffenbach, confirmed, during a panel debate on Africa at the same Swiss Alpine ski resort, that the summer camp at the Baltic Sea in Heiligendamm would seek to enhance a partnership between the G8 and African leaders.

These declared intentions for the agenda by this year’s hosts should not appear comforting. Rather they should sound warning bells. The two priorities of further integration into the global economy and closer partnership with African leaders in the planned interaction merit the question being raised: where do the interests of the people of the continent lie?

After all, neither globalisation since the days of the slave trade, nor African leaders’ collaboration with the powerful elsewhere, whatever their political or ideological persuasion, have provided meaningful and lasting benefits for the majorities on the continent who struggle daily for survival.

Further integration of African societies and economies into the world market, a process which since colonialism was in any case much more advanced than in most other regions of the world, suggests, in contrast, even more systematic exploitation of the continent’s natural resources, and intensified expansion into local markets.

Under the current ‘liberalisation’ schemes promoted and regulated by the WTO, access for external capital to provide privatised public goods and services, as well as control over so-called intellectual property, add further to the reduction of state autonomy and local capacities to act in the interest of the people.

Privatisation does not bode well for some of the core tasks of a functioning state: namely to provide basic services in the public interest, including that of the poor; and to protect the weakest - not that the people in Africa have ever seen or experienced much of this.

Since 2001, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) became the African trademark for the kind of collaboration that the G8 and other OECD countries favour and support.

In the pipeline as a blueprint since the late 1990s, Nepad emerged as a result of a fundamentally new constellation on the continent. After South Africa – from the mid-1990s, and Nigeria -since the end of the 1990s, the two regional economic powerhouses, had left behind their pariah status. While apartheid, in the one case, and the military dictatorships, in the other case, limited the operational spheres of African regimes earlier on, the new governments represented politically acceptable - if not always praised - success stories that democratisation works.

Considered strategic regional ‘anchor countries’ for the West, these two economies make up some two thirds of the total GDP of all countries of so-called sub-Saharan Africa. Leaving aside the resource-based economies, which through oil, strategically relevant minerals and other natural assets, such as diamonds, stimulate desire for entering deals with local culprits and oligarchies, they are the most attractive potential partners to the outside world.

The South African and Nigerian heads of state Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo were the two main architects of Nepad, together with the Senegalese autocrat Abdoulaye Wade, and the support of Egypt and Algeria. As a matter of fact, all three African leaders in the triumvirate have missed only one of the six G8 summits since Genoa 2001.

But for many critical observers, including within Africa, Nepad mainly symbolises the emperor’s new clothes. It boils down to a recycling of the old conditionality-story, only now under African ownership.

Perceived as a policy of neo-liberal orientation imposed from above, it is questioned and challenged from below as a technocratic approach by elites. Or else as a local version of the Washington consensus.

According to this view, structural deficiencies and imbalances are legitimised, but not questioned. It reflects a coalition between those on the continent and abroad who benefit most from export-oriented market economies, under a trade regime, which is foremost outwardly oriented.

This might add to the relative advantages of a small local elite and the biggest among the junior players on the continent. In particular expanding South African capital, which is successfully penetrating many other African economies. But it offers little to nothing to ordinary people. They remain once again excluded from business. They are unemployed and continue to live in abject poverty.

While some of the rather more harsh critics mutter about dubious conspiracy theories, which may be unfair, or, at least, not the true intentions of some of the new African leaders, it is difficult to dismiss such analysis lock, stock and barrel.

The lack of meaningful material offers little comfort of G8 support for Nepad, which would need to match the almost euphoric welcoming statements ever since the African leaders knocked at their doors in Genoa.

In the midst of the Italian havoc, the G8 heads of state appointed individual ‘sherpas’ to team up and prepare an Africa Action Plan. Its adoption a year later, mid-2002, in the Canadian mountains at Kananaskis, was celebrated as a major break through. Although it was (dis-)qualified by moderate critics such as the then director for justice and peace at the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference as ‘hot air’ or ‘recycled peanuts’.

In contrast to such sobering conclusions, the South African president returned triumphantly with the message that Kananaskis marked a decisive moment in the birth of a fairer and more balanced system of international relations. In historical context, Kananaskis represented for him the end of the colonial and neo-colonial era. To classify this kind of daring interpretation as ‘wishful thinking’ would seem a mild understatement.

Based on such self-proclaimed ‘success stories’, African leaders used the transformation of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) directly after Kananaskis at their summit in Durban to integrate Nepad as the new economic programme of the continental body.

They thereby elevated it to an official status for all. Subsequently, in September 2002, the UN General Assembly awarded Nepad the label of being the general framework for international cooperation with Africa, thus allowing Thabo Mbeki to state, unchallenged, that Nepad had emerged as the de facto political-economic point of reference in Africa’s interaction with the outside world.

Even the sobering results of the summit in the French Evian in 2003 and the humble lunch offered at the US-summit in Georgia in 2004 served as further legitimacy for the African Nepad-troika. Although Wade was becoming increasingly less enthusiastic, and in the meantime openly critical.

Their patience was at least rewarded by the personal effort of Tony Blair, who used the UK presidency to initiate his Commission for Africa. Its report, tabled to the summit in Gleneagles in 2005, claimed to present, through increased financial support and debt cancellation, a decisive input into African development. Indeed, a substantive portion of the - already long since paid - debts have since then been cancelled for the poorest among the African countries.

The moral impetus, which is due, in part, not only Tony Blair’s personal flair, but also to the document of the Africa Commission, subtitled ‘Our Common Interest’, should however not be misleading.

As a matter of fact, the fundamental premises of the recommendations rest on the assumption that it is Africans themselves, who must be held responsible for being so poor, and who need - with external assistance - to get their act together.

The suggested reforms neither name and blame the structural inequalities ensuing as a result of historical processes, during which mainly European colonialism and imperialism expanded into Africa's backyard with devastating and long lasting consequences for the societies there. Nor do they challenge the fundamental basis of the currently existing global system and its damaging effects on African economies and people.

But even if the commission – with all due reservations – was considered a major advancement for at least temporarily promoting interest in African affairs in a wider public sphere, and also by means of the celebrity culture resulting in spectacular ‘do good’ performances (which generally excluded African artists from a fair share in the publicity); the subsequent summit of the G8 in St Petersburg in 2006 did not even pretend to follow this up in a serious way.

For the first time since Okinawa in 2000, only three African heads of state were granted the privilege to play a supporting role. Except for being some kind of exotic-cosmetic feature, the summit had absolutely nothing to offer.

According to the German government, things should be different in early June at Heiligendamm. As the stocktaking exercises on progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals suggest, much is left to be desired when it comes to the implementation of the defined targets.

African people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders – notably in cases such as the Angolan oil oligarchy or individual despots such as Mugabe – bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

It should however, at the same time, and despite such reservations, be acknowledged that a fair amount of collective responsibility and willingness to intervene in the matters of member states has fundamentally changed the political agenda of the African Union and its guiding principles.

Whilst, so far, this has had little impact in terms of necessary changes in the socio-economic structural impasses, and has failed to produce any decisive results in several cases – not least in Zimbabwe, also politically, it does affect socio-economic related factors such as security, political participation, transparency and accountability.

While a lot remains to be desired, one should not ignore the fundamental changes, which in terms of the abandonment of the hitherto holy principle of non-intervention was a direct result of the transformation of the OAU into the AU.

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as an integral, though voluntary, part of Nepad might be more tokenism than anything else. But being on the agenda marks a new chapter in African politics. In times where revolutions are not even on the distant horizon, this still seems to be too pragmatic a view, though probably realistic.

Ironically, with the new multi-polar tendencies, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and in particular China) through their bilateral partners aggressively seeking to explore and exploit the African continent with little or no concerns about ‘good governance’ - whatever this means, the gains for African economies, as measured in terms of trade balances and GDP growth, are remarkable.

Of course, this does not mean that the African economies and the local people will benefit automatically. Whether and how they might get a modest share out of the new scramble for African resources remains at this stage an open question. But it is unlikely that the G8 summit in Heiligendamm will bring this challenge any closer to a solution.

* Henning Melber was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek, Namibia from 1992-2000. He was research director at The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, 2000-2006. He is currently executive director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/1in9_41281.jpgJohanna Kehler assesses the social impact of the Jacob Zuma rape trial for women in South Africa.

On 8 May 2006, a highly politicised, publicised and, in many ways, unjust trial came officially to an end, when judgement in the Zuma rape trial was handed down.

Many will remember this day, as the ’Zuma judgement’. It sparked a wide range of responses. Anger, shock and disappointment were as much part of these responses. Once again, the justice system failed to protect a victim/survivor of rape – ‘Khwezi’, a gender and HIV/Aids activist, who had the courage to speak out, claim her rights and demand justice.

The trial raised many questions about the adequacy of the criminal justice system in ensuring equal access to justice and facilitating a fair and just trial.

It especially highlighted the inadequacy of the sexual offences legislation, which is meant to protect and not victimise a rape victim or survivor.

Moreover, the trial, while causing theoretical debates about the admissibility of a complainant’s prior sexual history into evidence, clearly showed how the introduction of a complainant’s prior sexual history, and in this particular case sexual orientation, taints the proceedings.

A year later, as many of these debates continue, HIV/Aids and women’s rights activists are still dealing with the impact of the trial. In addition to the many legal and political implications of the trial proceedings and subsequent judgement, the social impact on communities and societal perceptions continues to influence and shape the work of activists.

One of the many issues raised was that of HIV prevention, including the argument about a shower as a means of preventing HIV infection.

While this may have raised reactions from laughter to disgust, especially considering that the statement came from ‘an expert’, the former chairperson of SANAC, the long-term impact of this statement on communities and societal perceptions raises serious concerns.

The statement, as ridiculous as it may seem, is nothing less than an insult; especially viewed against an estimated 1500 new HIV infection per day.

Already challenged by the seemingly inadequacy of many of the HIV prevention efforts, activists are now engaging with communities in shower debates.

Moreover, the concepts of risk behaviour and individual responsibility, as crucial aspects of prevention, have been seriously tainted by the trial. Zuma will be mentioned as proof that it is ‘okay’ and ‘not risky at all’ to engage in unprotected sex, even though the HIV positive status of the sex partner may be known.

Similarly, the trial re-emphasised notions that a woman’s clothing is an indication of her preparedness and willingness to engage in sex; and that a woman’s prior sexual history is of relevance in determining whether or not the alleged rape did occur.

While these outcomes not only fundamentally threatens a woman’s right to personal autonomy, freedom and dignity, they also perpetuate societal beliefs that victims/survivors of rape ‘asked for it’, by virtue of ‘inappropriate’ clothing and prior ‘promiscuous’ behaviour.

Fear that this would negatively impact on the gains made towards promoting women’s rights and challenging societal beliefs which justify the continuous violation of women was confirmed in the aftermath of the trial.

Years of raising awareness and promoting human rights are seemingly lost as women’s rights activists are engaging with communities, yet once again, in debates about ‘dress codes’ and ‘promiscuity’ as reasons for rape.

Not only did the trial seem to have divided communities, it has also reinforced existing prejudices about sexual violence and about the risks of HIV infection.

Subsequently, the Zuma trial and judgement, appears to have not only helped perpetuate the status quo and justification for high incidences of sexual violence, rape, and rising HIV infection rates.

While the judgement may have found Zuma ‘not guilty of rape’, the question seems to remain as to his ‘guilt’ of ‘promoting and justifying’ rape and ‘risky sexual behaviour’ in a societal context, in which sexual violence and HIV/Aids have reached pandemic proportions.

And while the experiences in the aftermath of the Zuma trial may have raised many new questions about women’s rights, women’s realities have remained unchanged.

High incidences of sexual violence and abuse; high HIV prevalence rates and the persistent feminisation of the HIV/Aids pandemics; as well as the prevailing disrespect for, and violation of, fundamental human rights and freedoms are but some of the indicators of women’s realities.

These are further exacerbated by the lack of adequate sexual offences legislation, creating a judicial and societal context, which fails to facilitate access to justice for victims/survivors of sexual violence, and deters many victims/survivors of sexual violence from speaking out and claiming their rights.

Subsequently, perceptions such as ‘there is no justice, so why bother reporting a rape’, are likely to be further entrenched. Statistics indicate that only one in nine cases of rape are reported (MRC, 2002). These are unlikely to improve in the current judicial and societal context.

For many activists, the trial is not over yet. For many years to come we will have to respond to the seemingly everlasting impact of a trial, which not only questioned access to justice for victims and survivors of sexual violence, but also re-emphasised detrimental societal perceptions and beliefs about sexual abuse and the risks of HIV infection.

After a year of mourning after the event, it seems to be high time to remember that these are the very same societal perceptions and beliefs that continuously not only limit the impact of HIV/Aids and sexual violence prevention efforts, but also fuel both pandemics.

* Johanna Kehler, AIDS Legal Network (ALN), on behalf of the One In Nine Campaign (www.oneinnine.org.za)

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

Mahmood Mamdani analyses the underlying causes of anti-Asian actions in Uganda from a historical perspective, and the interplay of socio-economic and political factors.

I have been trying to make sense of the events of 12 April from the distance of New York and with the help of the internet and the telephone.

Some say these events are an unfortunate breakdown in law and order, best forgotten and put behind us.

Common sense, however, tells me that larger issues are at stake and, if not addressed, have the potential of fuelling further popular outrage.

The surest public indication of this is growing reference to the 1972 Asian expulsion in discussions of 12 April.

I was a teaching assistant at Makerere university in Uganda at the time of the 1972 Asian expulsion, and was among the last to leave in early November.

I had finished my O’Levels in 1962 at the senior secondary school, Old Kampala. I was one of over 20 students who received scholarships to study in the US.

The scholarships were part of America’s independence gift to Uganda. In the language of that period, I was among those who could claim to have literally eaten the fruit of independence. Certainly, without a successful struggle for independence, I would not have got the higher education that I did.

Student activist
One of my first activities as a student was to participate in the civil rights movement in the US.

In less than a year, I was among bus loads of students going from northern universities to march in Birmingham, Alabama, in the south.

We marched through secondary schools, singing songs such as 'Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?' and 'We shall overcome', and asking students to leave classes and join us.

As we moved downtown, police on horseback and motorcycles, wielding metal-studded batons, jumped at us. Scores of other students and I were thrown in jail.

Allowed to make one phone call from jail, I called the Uganda ambassador in Washington DC. 'What are you doing interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country?', he asked.

'This is not an internal affair. This is a freedom struggle. How can you forget? We just got our freedom last year', was my response. I had learnt that freedom knew no boundary, certainly not that of colour or country.

I returned home in early 1972 as a convinced pan-African nationalist, but was thrown out later in the year as an Asian.

Early in November, I flew to London and was admitted to a refugee camp. The British press was full of stories about Amin and the Asian expulsion.

Every story talked of Amin not as a dictator, but as a black dictator. With few exceptions, the British press racialised Amin. His blackness was offered as the primary explanation for his brutality.

Fresh from civil rights struggles in the American south, and anti-Vietnam war struggles in the American north, I had seen brutality in the white and was unwilling to accept this explanation.

Partly for that reason, I left London within nine months and took up my first job at the University of Dares Salaam. Although my physical being was in Dar es Salaam where both my parents had been born, my mind was preoccupied with Uganda: Why Amin? Why the support for Amin?

The years that followed confirmed that Amin was a demagogue and brutal at that. But that still did not explain the support for Amin. It was painful for me to realise that if Amin was originally popular because he had removed the Obote dictatorship, the reason for his continued popularity had to do with the fact that he, more than any other leader, had put the 'Asian question' at the forefront of the political agenda.

Every Ugandan understood in his or her guts that the secret of Asian business success lay not just in hard work, but also in a racially unjust colonial system which made it difficult for black people to enter trade, thereby confirming Asian dominance.

Handicapped in the marketplace, those aspiring to business turned to political organisation. It is through repeated political action — in 1945, then 1949, and then again 1959 — that the Ugandans were able to gain entry into the marketplace. The demand for political independence went alongside another — that for social justice for those who had been the victims of colonial racial discrimination.

A decade of independence increased this demand for one reason: it seemed Asian businessmen had been able to turn national independence to private advantage. Not only had independence liberated them like everyone else from the limits placed by colonial rule. Asian business tycoons seemed to have developed a comfortable alliance with big bureaucrats and top politicians who gave them political protection (what is today called ‘no change’) in return for lucrative bribes.

With its paan and sari shops, and cinema houses showing Bollywood movies, Kampala’s population got browner as the sun set and its black workforce left for satellite communities on the edge of town.

Pointing to this informal apartheid in a complacent post-independence Uganda, Amin asked uncomfortable questions, even if in a coarse and racist language:

'If Uganda is independent, why does its capital city look like Bombay on a Sunday?'

I realised that Amin spoke the language of justice, however crudely, and that was the reason he was able to ride the crest of a historic wave of popular protest.

I returned to Uganda in 1979 when Amin was thrown out. It is difficult to forget the shock of returning to a city where I had grown up and knew just about every street, but could no longer recognise a soul.

There were also other shocks in store. Most people I met supported Amin’s decision to expel Asians, though they disagreed on the details: the time given to wind up family and business affairs, the limits on what each family could take out, and so on.

Listening to them, I realised that even though they saw Amin as a brutal dictator, many also saw him as a nationalist. Even if they disagreed with his methods, they applauded his goal as a Uganda for Ugandans, particularly black Ugandans.

Could this new Uganda be a home for me? Determined to make a second beginning, I rejoined Makerere university. I recall the decade that followed 1979 as one of coming to political age for a second time. Even if ravaged by civil war and dictators, the new Uganda seemed a healthier society, less marked by the racial distortions of a colonial experience and Ugandans were proud of it.

As a person of Asian background, I felt more comfortable, even safer, in the new Uganda than, for example, did Asians in neighbouring Kenya. I was not the only one. The few Asian business persons I knew also seemed to realise that they were more secure in a society, where business persons were no longer a racially identifiable minority.

The new Uganda began to change under the NRM. The new president was determined to reverse the legacy of Idi Amin and return Uganda to his notion of a normal society.

Two big government-initiated changes followed. The first was the decision to return previously confiscated properties to its former Asian owners.

Asked by the Law Society to speak on the issue, I argued against a return of properties and spoke in favour of compensation. I said a return of properties would result in either absentee ownership or concentration of property in few hands, or both; in either case, it will be socially unhealthy. But the return of properties was part of a larger IMF package and it was the president’s wish, so nobody listened.

Once it faced opposition, the NRM too discovered the advantages of dealing with a business class which had few links within the country and could easily be isolated and kept on a short leash. Once again, close links began to develop between individual Asian tycoons and prominent politicians in the government, as they had in the Obote period.

The second big change was born of this corruption and was more the result of unofficial than formal decisions. Though the network of corruption focused on government departments that handled immigration and was clandestine, its effects were publicly visible.

The number of Asian residents of Uganda began to multiply, from less than 5,000 when the NRM came to power to an estimated 20,000 today. Of these, only 2,000 came from the pre-1972 generation. The largest section was brought in to service big Asian businesses which preferred to hire their core employees from outside, so it would be easier to keep them on a short leash.

Not surprisingly, the new arrivals were mainly petty traders and semi-skilled employees. The new official terminology that identified just about every person of Asian origin as an ‘investor’ could not hide this fact.

Neither was the change confined to the capital city, Kampala. It was even more visible in smaller market towns, such as Lugazi, Kakira, Kamuli, or Iganga, or other places where the number of traders of Asian origin mushroomed in just a few years from just a handful to many more.

Ominous signs
Even before the scandal around Mabira came to light, signs of rising tension were evident on the social and political landscape of Uganda.

Mabira turned into a major scandal because it symbolised a collusion between an increasingly unaccountable president and an arrogant tycoon from a racialised minority. The president had taken to treating the country as his private preserve; the grant of Mabira was simply the latest in a series of grants (of a school in one case or an information ministry facility in another) by the president, always claiming that his personal will represented the interests of ‘development’.

The tycoon too claimed to be doing the country a favour — once again, ‘development’ — rather than lining his own pockets. Mabira outraged just about everyone, from the Kabaka to the mukopi, the mwami to the muyaye.

No doubt both the political opposition and the muyaye on the street took full advantage of this public outrage. And yet, it is a mistake to hold them responsible for creating the issue and the grievance of which they took advantage. Nor was the 12 April demonstration mainly a protest about Mabira. It wasn’t, which is why public protest about the Asian question will continue even when the Mabira issue is resolved.

The Asian Question
So what is this 'Asian question'? It is a different question for different groups of Ugandans. For those in urban and peri-urban areas looking to join commerce, it has to do with the crowding of the market place by immigrant traders, even hawkers — Indian and Chinese — often entitled as ‘investors’.

For the middle and the lower-middle classes who have put their energies and assets in secondary and even higher education in the hope of securing their children a white-collar job, it is about the ease with which immigrants seem to be able to get residence and work permits at the expense of jobless nationals.

For business persons of substance, it is about unfair competition and unequal access to officially sanctioned resources and connections. All of them complain of unfair treatment, and all expect preferential treatment for nationals in an independent country. For all of them, this is a question of nationalism, of meaningful independence.

In their conscience and sometimes in private conversations, most Asian residents of Uganda realise that these grievances are just. For these aspirations are not confined to Uganda and Ugandans, but are common throughout the formerly colonised countries in Africa and Asia.

For ordinary Asian residents, it makes sense to demand that tycoons in the community respect the aspirations of ordinary Ugandans, and to disassociate themselves publicly from those who fail to do so.

All the talk about ‘the Asian community’ should not hide the fact that not all Asians have the same interest. Of particular importance is the difference between those who see Uganda as home and those who don’t.

Many of this latter group are essentially carpetbaggers (in the Asian community, they are known as ‘rockets’ that land and take off at will). Whereas it makes sense for these temporary sojourners to rely on the police for protection, such a strategy would be foolish indeed for those who see Uganda as home. This group, the Ugandan Asians, need to think of how to build a future as part of the Ugandan majority.

If we can draw one lesson from the Amin period, it is this: how the Asian question is defined and resolved will affect not only the Asian minority, but all Ugandans.

The Asian question can be defined in a racist and exclusive way, as it was by Amin, so that the fact of colour blurs that of citizenship and commitment.

Or it can be defined in a non-racial and inclusive way so that we make a distinction between different types of Asian residents in today’s Uganda, legally between citizens and non-citizens; and socially between those for whom Uganda is no more than a transit facility (the ‘rockets’), and those for whom Uganda has been a home for generations.

Wake-up call
12 April represents a wake-up call that we are dealing with a social question of national dimensions, one that will critically shape Uganda’s politics over the coming period.

For one, it is rapidly undermining the unity of the government in power. The NRM, including its MPs and members in the cabinet, are already split on this issue. Should the presidency continue to disregard popular opinion on this question, it is sure to find itself further isolated.

The more popular agitation grows, the more it will teach the electorate that democracy is less about elections than about holding those elected accountable to the citizenry on a day-to-day basis.

Political accountability has to begin with the right to simple information. Whether it is the transfer of public resources (such as in the case of Mabira) to private persons or the issue of residence and work permits to non-nationals, all relevant information must be made public, and done so regularly. The first principle of democracy is that every policy be open to public debate and scrutiny.

The demonstrations have also brought to the fore a key weakness in the opposition. Even if it has the capacity to organise demonstrations, the opposition clearly lacks the foresight and the capacity to give it direction.

The real significance of 12 April is that it has ushered in a period of open competition on who will lead the opposition to an unaccountable presidency. The cutting edge of this competition is likely to be the Asian question. More than any other, it will set apart demagogues from democrats, and pose a challenge to Ugandans, black and brown, as to whether or not we have the foresight and the capacity to forge a tolerant and inclusive society.

* This essay was first published on 28 April 2007 in the Ugandan Sunday Vision.

* Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and professor of anthropology at Columbia University. His most recent book is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (Random House, 2004).

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/302/Nigeria_41150.jpgKola Ibrahim argues that the solution to Nigeria’s hydra-headed socio-political problems lies not with the ballot box but rather with grassroots-led social and political movments from the urban and rural masses.

The contemporary histories of Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Greece and Ukraine have shown that it is independent political actions of the masses that can change the society.

The outcome of the Nigerian elections held in April 2007 have shown that the solution to Nigeria's hydra-headed socio-political problems can only be achieved if the mass of the working people of Nigeria take destiny into their hands and exercise political movement as a counterweight to bourgeois corrupt politics. Politicians cannot be relied upon to resolve the sufferings of the Nigerian working people.

To begin with, the clash within the rank of the ruling elite, especially that between president Obasanjo and his vice Atiku Abubakar, was never based on how to better the lot of the masses, who have been made to swallow the poisonous pills of neo-liberal capitalist economic policies over the past eight years.

In fact, instead, the cause of the rancour between the two is the question of succession. While Atiku claimed to have conceded power to Obasanjo in 2003 so as to regain it in 2007, the Obasanjo camp sees no reason why Atiku, who has served two terms in the presidency, should be 'criminalising’ Obasanjo for going for a third term in office.

The masses were presented with two sides of the same corrupt political arrangement and no genuine alternative. Both the president and his vice have acted together to implement the anti-poor, pro-rich policies of neo-liberalism. Atiku was the chairman of National Council on Privatization (NCP), which oversaw the privatisation of several government corporations and parastatals. Social service provisions were either commercialised or partly privatised. Meantime the masses were made the scapegoats of age-long corruption and mismanagement by the ruling elite via retrenchment, unemployment, unpaid entitlements, including pensions, and inflation.

The president demonstrated that if the nation he rules over could not manage its tertiary education, he could do better. The children of the poor masses who want a good education were told to either a pay Naira500,000 at Bells University's bursary or go to hell. At the same time, hundreds of acres of state farmlands were bought over by the president - or the Obasanjo Library. Followers boast of juicy packages which they try to protect as much as possible.

And whereas the so-called opposition wanted to present itself as an alternative, the past let them down. Nigerians forget the spree of retrenchment of the former AD southwest governments of the likes of Bola Tinubu in Lagos and Bisi Akande in Osun. All opposition groups bow before the almighty neo-liberal economic pills as advocated multilateral agencies of imperialist capitalism – IMF, World Bank and WTO.

Political action could not take into cognisance the plight of the poor people. In an absence of genuine alternatives, the best it could do was to use people's plight to justify their quest for power. This explains why none of them could give reasons for supporting or participating in policies that have deprived the majority. Even Obasanjo has conceded that all those who antagonise his ‘reforms’ could not provide alternatives because they all stand for the same policies.

This situation is underlined in a letter Atiku Abubakar wrote to Obasanjo in early 2006. He stated his intention to run for the presidency and praised Obasanjo for his economic reforms: retrenchment, denied entitlements, decrepit social services, looting via privatization. He promised to continue the same policies.

Neither Atiku nor the so-called opposition have suggested any alternative to neo-liberalism and market economies, rejected by the working people. Ruling class politics of survival of the fittest substitutes for radical political actions of the masses; and the masses taking the political road is feared.

Of course any concession to allow the masses to take independent political action through formation of a working people's party would lead to the diversion of the resources of the country to pro-poor policies: free education, health care, adequate salaries and pension, secure job opportunities and better infrastructures. As these could only be achieved by the stopping corruption and privatisation of national wealth, they would spell doom for corrupt ambitions.

Therefore, the ruling politicians and their estranged counterparts in the so-called opposition - which some elements of the media has wrongly tagged progressives - continue their ruinous politics. These same estranged politicians participated actively in the electoral fraud of 1999 and 2003. Many of them played major roles during the dark days of military absolutism. For instance, Obasanjo was the first head of state to plunge Nigeria to the abyss of debt and economic dislocation. Atiku was head of customs and excise, which was fraught with corruption. The masses, meanwhile, are cajoled with such hollow terms as the rule of law and respect of electoral wishes. But to expect these individuals to genuinely involve working peoples in the political process is an illusion.

The election outcome clearly indicates the futility of relying on any section of the ruling class for a political breakthrough for the people of Nigeria. While the estranged ruling class tried to use mass pressure to force the main ruling PDP party to concede to some of their demands, the ruling class maximised the constitutional flaws and illegitimate rights to authority through for example control of the INEC, the armed forces and part of the judiciary to ensure they did not lose power. Although the majority of voters were disenfranchised by the political machine of the ruling PDP through rigging and violence, the estranged opposition could not mobilise the masses to come and vote.

It is foolhardy for anyone claiming to be from a left-wing background to believe that any political gain can come by the people attaching themselves to the estranged section of the ruling class without undertaking independent, democratic, mass-based and radical political activities.

Many so-called civil society organisations - many of which derive their grants from the imperialist agencies in the West on the basis of maintaining the status quo - continue to be lethargic; instead of seeking to build a political platform of the working people of Nigeria that will seek to dismantle the stranglehold of the capitalist ruling class on our economic and political lives.

It is important to draw out lessons from last week’s farcical general election for the working masses.

First, given the present constitutional and political arrangements, the corrupt capitalist ruling class will continue to recycle itself in power, irrespective of mass opposition.

Secondly, confining the masses within a neoliberal economic framework will continue to deprive the masses of the political will to undertake independent political action.

Thirdly, in order to breakthrough this quagmire, the masses must build a fighting political alternative that is economically and politically different from corrupt opposition politics, and democratically organised from the grassroots to the national level.

Fourthly, it is erroneous for the leaders of working class organisations to believe that by confining themselves to so-called civil or legal means, that they can assume political control. Only by taking to the streets, along with other mass political actions, can they force the ruling class to abdicate power. And political alternatives must be linked to the daily struggles of the masses for democratic rights, including the right to free and fair elections.

For these reasons, mass organisations and their leaders must reject last week’s nonsensical general elections. They must immediately call for the reconstitution of the electoral body, a re-run of all elections, and convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. This should draw its membership democratically from mass organisations: trade unions, market men and women associations, student movements, civil societies and ethnic nationalities, which shall reconstitute the political and economic agenda of the country.

And this must not mean supporting other corrupt politicians. Rather it is a step towards building a mass struggle that will culminate in the reconstitution of the country in favour of the working masses.

Civil society organisations and social movements must come together and call the people to the street to take their destiny in their own hands. They must convoke a general summit of all pro-working peoples organisations, to be spear-headed by the trade unions, with the aim of forming a working people's party that will serve the interest of the masses.

I propose a week of political protests around the country to include mass processions, leafleting, rallies and mass meetings as soon as possible. The masses must fight for a democratic socialist Nigeria, where the resources of the country are used not in the interests of the already rich few, but in the welfare interests of the masses.

* Kola Ibrahim is a student activist from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, email: [email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/adetokunbo-borishade.jpgAdetoku… Borishade calls for an African centered curriculum in the new Liberia that is inclusive of gender and ethnic diversity.

It amazes me that the more things seem to change, the more they remain the same.

African educational systems appear to be the only ones on the planet that do not teach their students in accordance with Africa's own cultural values and perspectives.

At a time when Liberia’s education system is staggering under the burden of physical reconstruction, this topic might appear insignificant. The ministry of education is stretched thin doing all it can to recover.

However, there are some things so serious and fundamental to Liberia’s future progress that they need to be undertaken slowly, thoughtfully, deliberately and collaboratively.

I believe that one of those considerations is the development of an African culture-based curriculum that includes, values, and supports the diverse range of potentialities presented by females and people from the 16 or more indigenous ethnic groups in Liberia.

This is not a popular subject because as Africans we believe that we are the only people in the world who do not have a history, belief and philosophical system worthy of study or even discussion.

Therefore, I understand that discussing it openly creates animosity. However, there are some things that are so important that they need to be said anyway. My commentary aims to get people thinking, talking.

Talk about things remaining the same. As far back in Liberian history as 1881, Edward Wilmot Blyden, who was at that time President of Liberia College, laid out an educational programmme for the Africa-centred instruction of Liberian students and for youth throughout the African continent.

Over the course of his lifetime, 126 years ago, Dr Blyden spoke, wrote, and preached that the elements of genuine and permanent progress in Liberia and the rest of Africa are found in teaching African students about the true history and culture of African people and the contributions Africans have made to world civilisations.

As one of the original fathers of pan-Africanism, he dearly wanted to live long enough to see positive change in the slavish thinking and situation of Africans worldwide. This is the man who inspired generations of continental and diaspora Africans, including Marcus, W.E.B. DuBois and Kwame Nkrumah.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/302/41130b.jpgIn 1989, the late Dr Mary A.B. Sherman reminded us of the dialectical relationship that exists between education and the society it serves. This message was the focus of her keynote address at the 21st Annual Conference of the Liberian Studies Association in 1989. Dr. Sherman eloquently pointed out the evolutionary and synergistic processes involved with educating a society:

'Education originates from that society, contributes to changing it and is, in turn, changed by the society.'

Liberia’s beloved educator went on to reflect on the three forces that shaped education in Liberia:

'The emigrant ethnicity, the influence of Christian missions, and the intersection of values.'

Dr. Sherman’s reference to education as an agent of social change strongly implies that one role of education is to keep in step with a constantly changing world by preparing students to meet new challenges and to develop new visions and expectations.

Dr Elwood Dunn (2006) recently spoke of Liberia as being 'heavy with history' that 'cannot be wished away'. Dr Dunn suggests that we study the historical dynamics of the founding of Liberia in the 19th century:

'Africa and Africans were abased and debased. Those touched with a bit of European culture were considered charged with elevating the culture-less Africans.'

Dr Dunn set forth three critical questions focused on: national identity; national purpose; and national mind-set or culture.

Inspired by the ideas and words of the three scholars cited in this article, I propose four suggestions.

First, Liberia’s educational system needs to get in step with the ever-changing world academically, socially, culturally, and philosophically.

Second, Liberia’s educational system desperately needs to cease perpetuating notions of African inferiority.

Third, Liberia needs to develop a curriculum that includes and values females as well as the contributions Africans have made to this world for hundreds of thousands of years. There is no reason why, in this enlightened age, Liberians are taught to value and valorise everyone else besides themselves.

My fourth and final suggestion is that these three building blocks combined just might form a cornerstone of Liberia’s substantive renewal, out of which can develop a national identity, national purpose, and national cultural pride.

'Momie may have, Daddie may have,
But God loves the child that has his own.'
- African American proverb

Now it is time for Liberia to begin catching up and getting in step with international changes that are 21st century realities. We need to pay attention to the educational systems in other so-called developing countries that are making great strides at national independence.

Some Asian countries, for example, direct their students’ education to serve the interests and needs of the nation.

As a result, those countries are increasingly able to control their natural resources because they have mathematicians, chemists, engineers, and technical experts skilled in applied science, mining, manufacturing, and building industries.

Those countries are harnessing the power that still resides within the core of their people’s ancient cultural ideals and philosophical doctrines to stride forward.

We need to take a sharp look into the statement made by Kim Il Sung, President of North Korea, when he claimed that they were able to quickly jump ahead in their nuclear missile technology program by using 'indigenous knowledge'.

My question is why is Liberia not developing and harnessing the tremendous sources of power and indigenous knowledge that reside within the Liberian people, instead of paying out scarce resources for foreign knowledge that does not fit African culture and environment?

'If you are not bought at home,
You will not be sold in the market.'
- Liberian proverb

Up until now, Liberian educational and social realities consist of alien cultural values and notions of African inferiority that are taught to students, who in turn teach it to their children and grandchildren.

It all began in 1822 when repatriated Africans from America arrived in Liberia. According to Dr. Sherman (1989), the repatriated Africans were imbued with the idea that they were on a 'Christianizing-civilizing mission'.

They were led to believe that they were returning to Africa 'to spread the light of the gospel and of civilization' to the 'heathenish' Africans in Liberia.

Sherman relates how, during the early nineteenth century, the Christian missions isolated the indigenous Liberian children from their parents for the purpose of instruction lest they become 'corrupted'. Indigenous Liberians fought to preserve their culture and societies by placing their young ones into Poro and Sande Societies.

Despite these efforts, the ruling class in Liberia perpetuated discriminatory practices against Liberian masses based upon a misguided, false notion of superiority since they were mixed with non-African blood and/or had contact with Western culture. But I would like to know: if Liberians believe they are inferior, by virtue of their Africanity, how can this possibly gain respect from other nations?

'Lion rules the forest
Because Lion babies are taught it is their birthright.'
- African proverb

It is unimaginable that in the 21st century Liberia’s educational system does not teach even one class in Africana or Liberian studies. Nor does it value the cultural and social experiences of its indigenous populations.

Liberian students are not taught anything about their own civilisations, culture, and history. But they know all about everyone else’s.

Liberians are not taught that Africans walked this earth for tens of thousands of years when there was no one else but them.

They are not taught that Africans are the parents of all humanity and that Africa is the cradle of all world civilisations.

Nor are they taught that African people have made more contributions to world civilisations than any other group of people on this earth.

The Liberian curriculum does not include the historical activities and cultural contributions of its people prior to European and American contact.

These are facts that are validated and documented even by many of the greatest European scientists. Learning this information is a birthright, not just some useless privilege.

The people of other cultures know more about Africans than Africans know about themselves.

African history books in Liberia and elsewhere begin with the coming of Europeans. I would like to know: if Liberians teach their students that their Africanity makes them so inferior; that there is nothing about themselves worthy of study, then how can they be expected to rule an independent nation once they grow into adulthood?

'The house of the King,
Once burnt, is more glorious.'
- Nigerian proverb

When something precious is destroyed and rebuilt, the beauty of the new version always surpasses the first. Dr Sherman’s words are more significant now than they were in 1989:

'A clear understanding of Liberia’s place in the international economy, definition of national purpose, and reformulation of the goals of education would be a good starting point as we look to the 1990s. Unless we confront the realities growing out of our past, we can not have clear directions for the future.'

The sharp questions posed by Liberia’s beloved educator are more applicable today than when she spoke them eighteen years ago.

'What is the new international order that we would like to see? How will Liberia fit into it? How can she reduce the external dominance –economic, cultural, and psychological – which impinge on her? How can her hidden potential be released? Can we create a new society, new individuals? Are there indigenous values we would need to preserve and foster to promote these ends?"

I conclude by pointing out that Edward Blyden’s words continue to echo through the annals of time, calling for us to create positive psychological, cultural and social change in the midst of world events that are speeding ahead while we lag behind.

But just as we choose to fall behind, we can also choose to surge forward. Just as we are knowledgeable of the problems, we are also knowledgeable of the solutions. All it takes is the courage to make the right decisions.

We need African minds creating African solutions to African problems within the parameters of African culture. If we are serious we will make the necessary changes now that will ensure a glorious future for the new Liberia.

Blyden, Edward W. (1881). The Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans.

Dunn, D. Elwood (2006). 'Liberia and New Beginnings', The Perspective, Atlanta: Georgia, September.

Sherman, M. Antoinette Brown (1989). 'Perspectives on Education in Liberia'. Unpublished manuscript. Ithaca-New York: Cornell University.

* Adetokunbo K. Borishade is based at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
Contact: [email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/ken_banks.jpgKen Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, explains the idea and history behind FrontlineSMS – a technology that was used by an organisation, Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) to monitor the Nigerian elections.

An idea is born
The FrontlineSMS concept came rather suddenly a couple of years ago during one rainy Saturday evening in Cambridge, UK, a long way away from the country that inspired it. The idea now seems like an incredibly simple and obvious one, but it took its time to dawn on me.

A few months earlier, in the autumn of 2004, I was working in South Africa and Mozambique with a South African NGO, Resource Africa, on a contract with the oldest international conservation organisation in the world – Fauna & Flora International.

We were looking at ways national parks could better communicate with local communities – something which has traditionally been rather problematic – and the project I was working on at the time had a specific technology angle.

I was already working on another mobile phone project. With SMS usage just beginning its astronomical climb, it seemed like an obvious tool to consider. Things were beginning to happen back in 2004, but it was early days in the mobile revolution, particularly in developing countries. So, as a starting point in the solutions evaluation process, local companies were asked to put in tenders to help develop a service, and existing services were trialled and tested.

There were two specific issues which, several months later, became central in the thinking behind FrontlineSMS.

Firstly, everything we were looking at was web-based. This was fine for a parks authority, and fine for this particular project. But I’m always looking for ease of replication and scale, and I didn’t see the perfect solution as being a purely web-based one.

Secondly, everything we were looking at was one-way – top down if you like – and I had trouble with this. The parks could send stuff down to the community, but the community voice was silent. After a short period of research and evaluation, a trial was started with a web-based service. For me these two external issues remained unresolved.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/302/41128b.jpgFrontlineSMS, which finally addressed these shortfalls was launched in 2005. It was the first text messaging system to be conceived, designed and written firmly with the needs of the non-profit sector in mind.

Up until then, the majority of systems did not take into account the nature of non-profit work, nor the specific conditions – financial and physical – which many work under. Since the non-profit sector isn’t considered fertile ground for most for-profit companies, this wasn’t surprising. The software was picked up by a number of news sites, and trials began. Most were small-scale grassroots initiatives, however, and little news got out to the wider community.

But then came the Nigerian elections…

In African election terms, it doesn’t get much bigger than the Nigerian elections. Two months ago, back in February 2007, I was contacted by the Human Emancipation Lead Project (HELP) Foundation, a Nigerian group interested in establishing a team of volunteer election monitors to report on their forthcoming presidential elections.

HELP are a non-profit group of young professionals in Nigeria, advocating for social change through good governance. Their goal is to encourage the Nigerian electorate to participate in the electoral process. Since 2005, HELP has been in the forefront of employing available mass communication technologies in their work.

According to the group, the 2007 elections presented a 'vital opportunity to truly change the cause of things for good for the common Nigerian by ensuring that a transparent and acceptable general election is conducted'. With the proliferation of mobile technology in Nigeria, the group chose SMS as their communications medium.

Their initial search for a software and hardware solution led them to a series of mobile guides published by MobileActive, a global network of people, tools, projects and resources focused on the use of mobile phones for activism, campaigns, and civic engagement.

One of the guides specifically deals with elections and voting, and FrontlineSMS was featured in the guide as a tool worth considering. Two months before the presidential elections were due to be held, HELP contacted me and asked for kiwanja.net’s help.

As with many organisations looking to use text messaging for the first time, they were confused over issues of available solutions, short codes, licenses to operate, costs, applicability and ease of adoption. As an organisation with little or no budget, all of my services were offered for free. I still need to work on that business model!

HELP installed FrontlineSMS onto a single machine, obtained a phone and a new SIM and began their tests. There were local elections planned in the weeks leading up to the presidential elections, and they were to be used as a dry run. During the testing process I was in occasional contact with their team, but I generally left them to it. FrontlineSMS is designed to be a simple, works-out-of-the-box solution and require little or no support. Other than a couple of emails and the odd call at 3 o’clock in the morning, HELP managed to take the software and run with it with little help. The local government election monitoring was a success. The main event now loomed.

Next was the launch of a website – – where HELP promoted their work under their 'Network of Mobile Election Monitors of Nigeria' (NMEM) banner. The site’s primary purpose was to encourage the general public to register as volunteers, and tell them how they could engage in the process. Individuals registered their mobiles by texting their name, location and polling station to the new NMEM election monitoring hub. Each volunteer was then registered on the FrontlineSMS system.

On election day itself the volunteers were asked to send in two reports – the first to contain details of when the polling station opened, voter accreditation and the ballot box delivery times. The second was due when the polls closed and was to contain information on the result, counting processes, turnout and general conduct. Things were slowly falling into place.

Up until now, I was generally oblivious as to how things were going in Nigeria – I was just quietly getting on with my other work at Stanford. The first news I received that things had gone so well was an email which landed in my inbox around midday on Tuesday 17 April, which came with an accompanying press release. HELP were now ready to monitor the main election, and it was just four days away. The press release was for immediate circulation, so I put on my PR hat and started shooting mails off to my various friends, contacts and acquaintances in the social mobile world. One wrote for the BBC.

On the Thursday morning I woke to find that I’d missed seven calls on my UK mobile. On checking my email, I realised that the calls were from the BBC World Service. I also had an email from one of the BBC website technology editors. After some frantic conversations, I provided them with contact details for the Nigerian team. I could answer the BBC’s technical questions, but the real story was NMEM’s and I was keen for them to have the chance to profile their work themselves.

For the rest of the day I watched as more and more sites picked up on the story, hoping that the BBC would manage to make contact. Friday was the last chance – once the weekend passed it would no longer be a story. Perhaps, more importantly, if the BBC did manage to get the story out then suddenly there was much greater potential to recruit infinitely more volunteers.

I got up at 6am on the Friday morning – 2pm in the UK – in case the BBC had mailed and needed any final information. I needn’t have bothered – the story was already up.

The next time I spoke to HELP was on the Saturday, just after the polls closed. Despite general disquiet about the overall election process, they were very happy at the response to their call for volunteer monitors.

What’s more, FrontlineSMS worked exactly as they hoped. A result all round – after all, this hadn’t been attempted in Nigeria before - and was maybe a first in Africa?

HELP are now working through their data which will be presented to EU monitors and other monitoring groups. Sadly, in this particular case, problems with the electoral process are already well documented.

In their initial report, released a few days after the polls closed, NMEM commented:

'As has been highlighted by both local and international observers, the elections in Nigeria leave little to be desired.'

However, amidst the widespread report of fraud and rigging there were pockets of hope. In communities like Ibiono Ibom in Akwa Ibom State, 80 per cent of the SMS received indicated calm, orderliness and a free and fair exercise.

The same was indicated in reports from Kano GRA in Kano State, and Ward 3 & 4 in Calabar Municipality of Cross River State, among others. We believe that these communities should be identified and commended as an encouragement to others to imbibe fair play and transparency in subsequent elections.

It should be noted that most international observers were trained and equipped to spot and report in places where things did not go as they should. They were further sent to major urban areas where most of the heavy rigging took place.

Our observers, on the other hand, were instructed to report on everything, both the good and the bad. As a result, we documented many remote, rural communities where polls were orderly, materials arrived on time and polls were relatively free and fair.

In total, over 11,000 messages were received from the volunteer monitors, a great response.

NMEM are now looking at how SMS can be used to engage Nigerians in the everyday political process.

For its part, FrontlineSMS was just a tool in the process. It doesn’t do anything on its own, but it does empower. It was NMEM who had the mission, NMEM who had the passion and NMEM who had the commitment to drive their vision forward. NMEM also found FrontlineSMS, and they took the software and ran with it. Anyone else can do the same.

Kiwanja.net believes that all non-profits, whatever their size and wherever they operate, should be given the opportunity to implement the latest technologies in their work, and actively seeks to provide the tools to enable them to do so.

* Ken Banks is founder of kiwanja.net.

www.kiwanja.net
www.frontlinesms.kiwanja.net

* Please send comments to [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/301/violenceagainst-kids.jpg“Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you you
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you”. [Khalil Gibran, The Prophet].Dikpak Naker on why it is not OK to beat your children.

The other day I was talking to a colleague who is an activist for preventing violence against women. When I asked her if she beats her child, she responded, “I don’t batter him but if he gets out of line, I won’t hesitate to use a slap”. Her response astounded me and led me to start my own experiment of asking friends and colleagues the same question. The pattern continued. Most adults responded by saying that in moderation, beating children was a useful way of guiding their behaviour. Some added qualifiers such as, it has to be part of a larger disciplinary approach or only as a last resort. Nevertheless, many adults felt justified in using violence against children in the guise of controlling their behaviour. Even those that had seen the corrosive effect of the dynamics that lead to violence from a man to a woman, responded with a question of their own: what is wrong with beating children to teach them how to behave? Some asked in genuine bewilderment, while others simply because they couldn’t comprehend relationships with children that does not involve the adult asserting power over children.

Many of us have had years of experience in which we have learned that adults should control children around them and that in that enterprise, beating them is necessary. Most of us have witnessed children being slapped, shouted at and humiliated in the name of ‘discipline’. Perhaps you have survived a childhood where being beaten, silenced and intimidated was normalised and made acceptable by the prevailing value system. If that was the reality you grew up in, why would you come to think otherwise? Why would you abandon everything you have known, to learn a new way of relating with children? Why wouldn’t you ask, with genuine incomprehension, what is wrong with beating children to teach them how to behave?

If you are reading this, it is likely that you may have some personal or professional interest in the issue. Perhaps you work for a child-centric agency where all the literature or prevailing culture declares that beating children is wrong. You may have read the conclusions from the UN Global Study on Violence against Children or many other similar documents that conclude the same thing: that beating children, regardless of what you call it, is wrong. If you are not convinced by the rhetoric that you may have encountered in the usual documents or literature produced by civil society organizations, you are probably not alone. Maybe you do not want to risk your job or appear uncouth by articulating a dissenting point of view in certain circles. This piece is aimed at you. If you have been asked by people who live in your community about what is wrong with beating children, and not been fully sure what to think, this piece is aimed at you.

What I am about to argue is not new. However, what I hope may be compelling is that it emerged from children themselves. Ultimately if you are interested in creating a better world for children, who better to ask how to do that, than the children themselves and the adults who care about them?

We did exactly that in Uganda. We went to five diverse districts, from east to west, north to south. We asked 1400 children and 1100 adults, in many different ways about their thoughts, feelings and experience of violence against children. We asked boys and girls, younger and older, children who were in school and those who weren’t. We sought out children who were living in rural and urban areas, orphans as well as those living with their parents. They said many things about violence against children (see but above all, unanimously they said two things; the violence against children was too much, and that it did not teach children anything except fear and shame.

Ninety eight percent of the children said they had experienced physical violence, a third of these children said they experience it at least once a week. Approximately one in eight said they experience violence on a regular basis from people that are supposed to take care of them; their parents, teachers, neighbours, older siblings, relatives and community members. When children were asked how this violence makes them feel, the response ranged from rage to resignation. In this confidential space, away from the watchful eyes of adults whose approval they needed, not a single child said being beaten filled her with pride or a sense of being loved or cared for.

That may surprise you. After all, have we not trained our children sufficiently to swallow what Alice Miller, the famous pro-child psychologist calls the ‘poisonous pedagogy’; that being beaten is for your own good? It was not unusual for some children to begin that defence in focus group discussions and soon abandon it when they found that we were not there to change their mind. We were there to simply listen and learn from their views. Once the ‘defence’ was deemed unnecessary, authentic feelings and thoughts emerged.

We learned many things about violence against children through this study. The first thing we learned is that children think of violence against them in a very different way than adults. Adults focus on the act while children focus on the experience. What that means is, when an adult is beating a child, they think of it as an isolated incident that is over when the physical act is over. But children learn the fear and the shame of the incident and how the act makes them feel about the person who commits it against them. They learn that people bigger than them can treat them unfairly without there being consequences for the abuser. In an important way, they learn about the nature of power in intimate relationships and that whoever has more of it, prevails. Children learn that the best way to protect themselves from the abuse is to have power over people. We are all familiar with the consequences of that lesson when these children become adults and acquire power.

Secondly, when adults were asked why they beat children, a majority said to guide children and to teach them how to behave. Yet rarely did the adult take the time to talk with the child, discuss what they had done wrong or explain their error. If they did, they are more likely to use an alternative to a beating as a form of punishment. When children are beaten for reasons beyond their comprehension, they rarely learn what was wrong with their behaviour and they certainly don’t learn how to behave better.

Thirdly, adults severely underestimate the emotional response their violence provokes in children. When children feel humiliated, their reaction can range from fury to depression. Because most children do not have the option of expressing their feelings, it ends up being stored within them, wreaking terrible havoc in storage. Children violated over a long period of time can victimise others, behave anti-socially or just withdraw from developing their identity. They may feel hopeless and some may become suicidal. It affects their performance at school and it affects their self-confidence. It affects who they are likely to become.

Fourthly, despite the fact that beating of children is common, more than half of the adults were not sure that beating was creating a desired change in behaviour. Many admitted that often they beat children out of frustration rather than a carefully thought out strategy to teach children something. Many times children are beaten because they are children rather than because of their actions.

Finally, when children’s dignity is routinely insulted they lose trust in adults who make them feel that way. They outwardly learn to fear and internally resent the adult who inflicts violence on them. They develop ways to cope with the violence rather than spend that energy developing their intelligence. They become much smaller individuals than what they could have been.

As we reflected on these things, it became clearer to us how diverse societies have come to legitimise violence against children. The only way we can sustain such patent injustice in our intimate relationship is by refusing to empathise with the child. How else could we live with another human being on a day-to-day basis, while deep in our hearts knowing that we regularly do them injustice? After all, that is the oldest trick in the book for dominating another group of people. We learned about other blatant ways in which adults ignore the evidence in front of their eyes. If beating taught anything to anyone, none would need to be beaten twice or at least repeatedly, and yet that is what continues to happen to children.

Most importantly, we learned from children that beating children is not a harmless vice that parents succumb to and we can turn a blind eye to. The violence has powerful short-term, and profound long-term consequences, not only for the child but also for the entire community (perhaps even entire countries). For these and many other reasons, beating a child is counter-productive. It does not achieve the aim of changing behaviour. It does not help the child learn what was wrong with their behaviour. It undermines their confidence and contributes towards the child learning to trust you less. If you are interested in helping children learn, beating them is the last thing you would want to do.

If you are still reading this, I presume that you are willing to ask the deeper questions. If I can be presumptuous, I would like to ask you the following. How might your possibilities as an adult be different, had you not been beaten and shamed as a child? I wonder what you might have been, had you not been humiliated as a child. Would you persist in believing that it has done you no harm or would you be honest enough to see the injury it might have caused you? Wait! Don’t answer just yet. Let it circle in your head and come back to it when you are about to fall asleep at night…just when you are entering that intimate space and maybe in deeper touch with your heart, and then, answer to yourself as honestly as you can.

* Dipak Naker, Co-Director, Raising Voices

* Please send comments to [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/301/firestone-child-labourers… England celebrates its 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, plantation workers in Liberia are trapped in a time warp of monumental proportions. They exist in the parallel universe of multinational corporate checkmate, where the prize goes to the highest exploiter. Robtel Neajai Pailey exposes the plantations of Firestone Rubber Company in Liberia.

Emmanuel B. is 30, a slender five foot three, and a slave whose piercing brown eyes tell unspeakable truths. He’s not the kind of slave we’ve seen in the collective imagination of 19th century plantations in the deep South of the United States. No, Emmanuel is a modern slave in 21st century post-conflict Liberia, and Firestone Rubber Company his unyielding master.

Like many workers on Firestone’s largest rubber plantation, Emmanuel was born in Harbel, has lived in Harbel all his life, and will most likely waste away in Harbel. Previously a student in Gbarnga, Emmanuel has ambitions to return to school, but those are pie in the sky dreams considering his family has no means of supporting him. As Westerners drive around in their heavy-duty SUVs propelled by another type of black gold—Firestone tires—Emmanuel wakes up at the crack of dawn to tap raw latex from 800 rubber trees daily. His clothes are tattered, and his shoulders covered in red puss-infected blisters from carrying buckets full of raw latex suspended from an iron pole to the Firestone processing plant two miles from his tapping site. For Emmanuel and his fellow tappers, a 5 a.m. start is the only means of filling their daily quota. Some have even begun to use their children to complete the herculean task.

Emmanuel sat perched like a statue, surrounded by green shrubbery and tall eerie splotched rubber trees one afternoon last December. He was taking a break, and had just finished tapping a record 800 trees when I spotted him while driving on a winding road on the Firestone plantation. He was gracious enough to demonstrate what a tapper does from sun-up to mid-morning. With a pitchfork suspended in the air, Emmanuel extended his long wiry arms to ease the raw latex out of the trees and into small red cups that catch the white liquid. The drip drip drip of the white coated liquid was almost as laborious to witness as Emmanuel’s daily task...another 799 trees to go and only five hours left. If workers don’t fill their quotas, their wages are reduced by half.

I visited the Firestone Rubber plantation for the very first time in December 2006 while on a research fact-finding mission for my dissertation. I decided to take a break from high browed academic work, and visit the sprawling modern day encampment I had heard so many horror stories about. It’s what I imagined the South to look like during the centuries of chattel slavery in the United States, with the hustle bustle activity of plantation life and the accompanying strokes of exploitation. As my brother-in-law, Christopher Pabai, and I pulled into the one million acre—and constantly expanding—plantation, we were welcomed by an ungodly stench, a stench I can only compare to the smell of rotten cheese. Not just ordinary rotten cheese, but the kind that has been drenched in burning oil, steamrolled on a conveyor belt, and neatly packaged for non-human consumption. That’s what raw latex smells like when it’s being processed. Rather than wearing masks to protect their noses from the assault, the plantation workers ingest the foul stench day in and day out. It took all my willpower not to retch all over Firestone’s perfectly manicured lawn or lush green golf course that senior management frequents while on hiatus from their back-breaking overseeing.

Believe it or not, the foul stench is the least of the workers’ worries.

While England celebrates its 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, plantation workers in Liberia are trapped in a time warp of monumental proportions. They exist in the parallel universe of multinational corporate checkmate, where the prize goes to the highest exploiter. Firestone has been playing the chess pieces of Liberia’s rubber slaves since the company signed a concession agreement with the Liberian government in 1926 to lease one million acres of land for six cents per acre—an abominable exchange given the astronomical dividends garnered from rubber sales then and now. In 2005, Liberia’s transitional government signed another concession agreement for an extra 37 years of rubber slavery. Rubber is Liberia’s largest export, and Firestone its largest international corporate exploiter, I mean employer, to date. The country and its people have paid a high price for the asymmetrical relationship.

In March 2007, the Firestone Rubber Company, a subsidiary of the Japan-based Bridgestone Corporation, won the Public Eye Global Ward for its social and ecological sins which demonstrate the shady side of pure profit-oriented globalization. The award was bestowed upon Firestone precisely because of the slave-like conditions on the plantation in Liberia. Workers live in dilapidated mud huts and are forced to seek the aid of their children in the strenuous and dangerous task of extracting latex from rubber trees. The deliberate and strategic use of children is against international laws including ILO Conventions, American and Liberian labour laws.

Since the plantation opened in 1926, company housing, mainly single room mud huts with no electricity, running water, or toilet facilities, has never been refurbished and updated to modern safety standards. Firestone’s plantation workers and their children toil under the same slave-like conditions they have endured for the past 80 years. The children’s labour usually includes cutting trees with sharp tools, applying pesticides by hand, and hauling two buckets on a pole, each filled with more than 30 kg of latex. Every day, these child laborers have to work long hours and are thus denied the right to basic education. Access to the company run schools is further impeded as parents must present a costly birth certificate in order to register their children.

Violation of child labour laws is only one among a long list of indictments against Firestone. According to Friends of the Earth USA, discharge from the company’s rubber processing plant has contaminated the adjacent Farmington River and other waterways, killing once vibrant ecosystems and polluting communities that depend on river water for drinking, bathing, and fishing. Furthermore, plantation workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and compounds on a daily basis while tapping. The merciless exploitation of Liberia’s people and natural resources by Firestone is directly linked to the nation’s impoverishment as the raw materials produced in Liberia are sent elsewhere for processing, thereby shutting out the possibility of added value. If a processing plant is built in Liberia, it could revolutionize the way rubber is used within a continent in dire need of manufactured goods such as condoms in the heyday of Bush’s conservative AIDS funding policies.

Clear violations of the law prompted a legal complaint filed in November 2005 against Bridgestone Corporation and Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, LLC by the International labour Rights Fund (ILRF), a member of the Stop Firestone Campaign which is an advocacy coalition launched in 2005 to highlight Firestone’s exploitative undermining of Liberian labour laws. The 35 plaintiffs either have been or are currently child labourers on the company’s rubber plantation in Liberia. They describe their lives as “trapped in poverty and coercion.” The plaintiffs have brought their case to a U.S. court since Liberia’s legal system eroded during 15 + years of civil war and strife. The case is currently ongoing.

The ILRF, along with its Stop Firestone Coalition partners, demands that Firestone:
- provides workers with basic rights, including a living wage and the freedom of association;
- ends all child and forced labour and assigns achievable quotas;
- adopts health and safety standards; stops exposing workers to toxic compounds and chemicals;
- improves housing, schools, and health care centres to provide safe and comfortable facilities;
- ensures public disclosure of revenue and all types of foreign investment contracts;
- stops releasing chemicals into the environment and redresses all environmental damage; and
-publicly discloses the identity and quantity of all toxic compounds that it releases or transports.

Liberia’s Minister of Labour, Kofi Woods, a long-time human rights activist/lawyer and a major catalyst for the Stop Firestone Campaign, has been in rounds of renegotiation sessions with Firestone representatives recently in Washington, D.C. Because of his list of demands—which are reminiscent of the Stop Firestone Coalition demands—Firestone representatives stormed out of the meetings in March 2007. Go figure. Woods and his cohorts are what I imagine African legislators should be like, uncompromising and unyielding when it comes to corporate social and ethical responsibility. Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction agenda will be null and void without a reconfiguration of the concession agreement with Firestone. After all, any post-war scheme involves a drastic revving up of the national economy, and given Firestone’s economic entrenchment in Liberia, it will need to refashion how it deals with Liberian workers, thereby increasing employee profit margins.

History challenges us to stay on a forward moving dialectic of change. The Firestone example shows us that an ironic distortion of that dialectic is taking place right under our noses. Slavery ain’t dead, it’s manufactured in the rubber we use daily. We owe it to Emmanuel and his comrades on the Firestone Rubber plantation to change the course of history, to make a clean break from modern-day slavery and its peculiar 21st century manifestations. We owe it to ourselves.

For more information on the Stop Firestone Campaign, visit

Listen to Robtel Pailey's interview with Liberian Minister of Labour Kofi Woods and activist Ezekiel Pajibo about the role of Firestone tyre company in Liberia in this weeks [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/300/kennedy-5-shackdwellers.jp… the past month the Durban shack dwellers movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, has been systematically harassed and criminalised by the local police and municipality. Five Kennedy Road members of Abahlali have been arrested and detained. The five have been released on bail following a twelve day hunger strike. Raj Patel provides a brief background to the recent events and the response of the shack dwellers.

Unwanted and derided by their municipalities, the billion people who live in the world's shacks and slums are used to being called criminals. But the minute they stand up to such accusations, the minute that the poor reclaim their dignity, the state rains violence on their heads.

This is what members of the KwaZulu-Natal-based Shack dwellers Movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, have discovered since they began their struggle in 1995. It has been confirmed, unnecessarily and brutally, in the past month. Five members of the movement, all from the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban, are now recovering from a twelve day hunger strike, after their incarceration in the city's notorious Westville Prison. The plight of the Kennedy Road Five illustrated the South African government's new plan to deal with the emerging politics of the poor: criminalise it.

The story begins on 15 February 2007. While out for a training jog, Thina Khanyile, a resident of the Kennedy Road settlement and a marathon runner, was attacked. His watch and shoes were stolen and he was stabbed eighteen times. He would have died had not a passing truck driver from the settlement picked him and brought him home, where help was called.

In the words of the Kennedy Road Development Committee, the democratically elected organisation representing shack dwellers from the settlement, this is what happened next:

'On 18 February a well known and dangerous criminal living in the settlement told people in the community that Khanyile's attacker was in the Kennedy Road settlement. Those people restrained the suspect without causing any hurt to him and sent for Khanyile. Khanyile recognized him as the man who had almost killed him. At that point some people in the community began to assault the man who we now know was Mzwakhe Sithole from Ntuzuma.'

The committee continues:

'Members of the Safety & Security sub-committee in the Kennedy Road Development Committee immediately called the police. They called the police because even though there are such bad problems with most of the police here we still have to go to the few good police officers for serious cases like attempted murder and murder. When the police arrived the man looked to be fine. The crowd of more than 50 people all saw the police assaulting the man with kicks and punches as he walked to the van and climbed inside.'

Khanyile then tried, twice, to register a case against his attacker. Nothing was heard from the police until Human Rights Day on 21 March 2007. Nine residents were arrested at 3am. They were told that Sithole had died a week after his arrest and that they were being arrested for his murder. After a two day women's protest, five people were released. And then another person was arrested. Among the five who were charged was Khanyile himself, together with Cosmos Nkwanyana, S'thembiso Bhengu, S'bongiseni Gwala, and M'du Ngqulunga.

According to Police Supt Vincent Mdunge, the Sydenham police had rescued Sithole, who had been 'seriously assaulted', and 'because of the seriousness of the situation, he was taken through to the police station for safety reasons'. One week later, according to the police, Sithole died right outside the station after a successful escape.

Five members of the Kennedy Road Development Committee who the police allege were involved with the assault now stand charged with murder. It is they who were until recently behind bars and who, on 1 April, decided to go on hunger strike to bring attention to their plight, and to the open repression of democratic, but non-state-authorised, organising in Durban.

The Sydenham police, under the command of Senior Superintendent Glen Nayager, remain adamant that they are serving the causes of justice. The police's story, just to be clear, it this: Sithole was assaulted so badly that five residents of the Kennedy Road settlement are now charged with his murder. On the other hand, a week later Sithole was spry enough to break out of a high-security holding facility at Sydenham Police Station, to which he had been taken 'for his own safety', only then to drop dead just outside the gates, where Nayager and his men rushed to save him but, alas, too late.

'It's the same lies as they told under apartheid', said one shack dweller, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal. Shack dwellers offer another story. They point to the fact that, other than Khanyile, the other arrested men are all key members of the Kennedy Road Development Committee, an organisation that has been systematically targeted by Spt Nayager.

Shackdwellers observe that one of the arrested men, M'du Ngqulunga, was only himself detained and charged after claiming at a protest the following day that the arrests were political. Local residents also recall the history of arbitrary arrests of shackdwellers by Spt Nayager, and the number of shackdwellers who have been brutally beaten by the Sydenham Police. They also note that Spt Nayager's arrests are always accompanied by tirades of political abuse and public promises to drive the 'Red Shirts' -the ANC's name for Abahlali baseMjondolo - out of this area.

The hunger strikers' statement asserted that they were political prisoners protesting their wrongful arrest and demanding their immediate release.
Their refusal of food was the only way, they claimed, of asserting their dignity and withholding their consent to their imprisonment.

When Anglican Bishop Ruben Phillip visited the hunger strikers, he told journalists that he was deeply moved and humbled by their courage and conviction. He also said that he feared for their lives, especially those of the two who were seriously unwell when the hunger strike began. During this visit, M'du Ngqulunga explained that Nayager had personally tried to force him to shout ANC slogans while he was detained in Sydenham but that he had refused.

The community twice tried to march on Sydenham Police Station in protest at the arrests. The first march was broken up by the police. Spt Nayager illegally banned the second march but, at a meeting with Abahlali leaders held under pressure from a vigorous protest, eventually conceded that the law unequivocally allowed for 14 or fewer people to legally present him with their demands.

The community-delegated representatives were able to present him with their memorandum, which included documentation of incidents of racism, theft of photographic evidence, threatening journalists, and ignoring 'real crimes against shack dwellers but acting as though it is a crime for shack dwellers to speak for themselves'.

Finally, on Friday 13 April, the Kennedy Road Five got their bail hearing. The Investigating Officer, whom Nayager openly boasts about giving orders to, had been pushing a hard no-bail line. But pressure from the protests, the media, the church support and the river of red T-shirts running through the corridors of the court had softened the prosecutors. By 10am, they were ready to make a deal, but the bargain was still hard.

Bail was set at R5,000 (US$700) per person. For penniless and unemployed people, the sum was preposterous, and only made possible through a series of generous donations. On top of that, the prosecutor claimed that she had information from the Investigating Officer that the 5 were planning to intimidate the witnesses. Because of this, they could not return to their homes or their community. So they have been banned from their homes and their communities, from the places where they might find work, and where they would volunteer their time in their democracy.

This banning order, in which they are specifically restricted from particular urban areas on the pretext of 'health and safety', but on the grounds that were they to return there they would engage in politics, is a rather direct throwback to Apartheid-era tactics. The five, having spent a night in hospital on a drip, are now homeless. They are unlikely to be convicted - fifty people saw Sithole alive and well as he entered the police van. But the state's attempts to smash poor peoples' organising have escalated. The wanton use of police and judiciary to silence the poor augurs badly for social movement organizing in South Africa.

* Raj Patel is a sisiting scholar at the Center for African Studies, University of California at Berkeley. Perhaps more to the point he once had his camera stolen by Superintendent Nayager (see .)

* Listen to the [email protected]

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/300/showzimgov.jpg Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist and revolutionary activist currently based in Cape Town. She is known for her role in the women’s movement in Zimbabwe. Ronald Wesso spoke to her on 18 March following a week of unashamed and escalating brutality visited on the opposition by the Mugabe regime, a month before Zimbabwe's 27th year of independence.

RW: Shereen, where do we begin if we are talking about Zimbabwe today?

SE: I think that today I would begin with a woman by the name of Grace Kwinjeh, the deputy secretary for international relations in the Tsvangirai MDC, but also a women who is part of the broader women’s movement in Zimbabwe. A women who was beaten, tortured and denied medical assistance. That is what freedom has translated into in Zimbabwe, and that is where I would begin.

RW: Does her experience mean women have been specifically targeted in the spate of state violence we have seen?

SE: Women are always targeted. They are targeted differently depending on what the political economic and social context is. Our society is deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. During the liberation war, women's bodies were used as part of the struggle. That struggle was by no means equitable.

In the 1980s when the state went into moral panic about the freedoms women had gained after independence they targeted 'women as prostitutes' in something known as Operation Clean Up where any women out after 6pm was arrested. Now 27 years later, women are being targeted for being women and political activists. The violence is sexualised, that is why they can be called 'Tsvangirai's whores'.

Gender-based violence against women is more acute where, as in Zimbabwe, traditionalist patriarchal values persist. This is not only due to a value system which treats women as being in some way lesser people than men, and thus not worthy of the protection of the law. It also arises directly from a certain proprietal attitude.

As male 'property' women are not treated as actors in their own right. Hence the epithet 'Tsvangirai’s whores' directed at female members of the opposition by state agents and Zanu PF supporters, implying that they are merely acting on behalf of a man, motivated by considerations other than their own desire for change or political activism.

Furthermore, sexual violence perpetrated upon women is perceived not so much as an assault on the woman herself, but an attack on the 'property' of the 'owning' male. Combined with traditionalist attitudes towards sexuality and virginity, there is a perception that sexual violence perpetrated upon women members of the opposition is viewed by the perpetrator as a particularly effective way of attacking and humiliating male members of the opposition. The resultant social disruption is extensive.

RW: I take from what you are saying that the clampdown is on the opposition but that it’s also important to understand it as a clampdown on women specifically. Let's talk about Gukurahundi, which can also be understood as a clampdown on opposition with an ethnic dimension - the targeting of the Ndebele people. Would you argue that it was also a violent attack on women?

SE: Gukurahundi was an early example of the extent Zanu PF would go to in order to stifle dissent and opposition. Gukurahundi means 'the early rain which washes away the chaff'.

And yes, gukurahundi is the euphemism used for the actions of Mugabe's fifth brigade in the Zapu areas, the Ndebele provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands during the 1980s. An estimated 20,000 civilians, mostly Ndebele, were killed or disappeared and have not been accounted for to this date. It was vicious and violent.

As Yvonne Vera’s Stone Virgins testifies, it was played out across women’s bodies in very particular ways: rape, brutality, the ripping apart of women, of people and families and communities. Gukurahundi is part of the same continuum that leads us to the events of the last month.

RW: Speaking about Murambatsvina. You spoke about how today and in the past violence was deployed to demobilise and repress women. In the public discourse on today’s events and on Gukurahundi this aspect is played down or left out. It is seen respectively as an attack on Ndebeles and the MDC. Murambatsvina is understood as an attack on the urban poor. Was there a dimension of targeting women?

SE: Look. Murambatsvina was specifically aimed at ‘cleaning up the filth’ and in this instance the filth was people staying in structures for which there had been no legal permission to build. The way this thing played itself out was that the majority of people in the front-line of feeling and dealing with the effects of Murambatsvina were women and it saw the displacement of an estimated 700 000 people.

Women and children are the most common victims in situations where organised violence and torture become prevalent and are frequently the first victims in civil conflict. They are also the most greatly affected in cases of internal displacement. Mrambatsvian was no different.

RW: What is the purpose of all this violence from the state’s side?

SE: The purpose of this violence is about clinging to state power at all costs.

RW: Okay, so given all that, can you see a positive purpose and role for state power?

SE: As long as a minority make decisions on our behalf then we cannot be free. The decision making and enforcing apparatus this minority uses is the state. The state apparatus and way it is conceptualised needs to change radically.

I’m going to go back to women. If one looks at the experience of women in Zimbabwe and one looks at the role of the state in relation to women’s lives the state has never had the interests of women at heart. Women have actually never been considered full citizens of Zimbabwe. They are only considered citizens when the state has something to gain. For example, in March 2007 the state held a celebration for international women’s day under the theme of ‘stop violence against women', on the grounds that they had passed a domestic violence bill. This is interesting and intriguing, given that at the exact same time you had women being detained and tortured by the very same state.

RW: Let’s talk a bit about the MDC that has been placed so centrally in these events. What do you think of the MDC?

SE: The MDC was born out of a dynamic process of social justice activism. Many of the people who are in the MDC came out of the trade unions and civic structures, when people realised that the prevailing energy could be turned into some kind of power, some kind of counterforce to the Zanu regime. That is how the MDC was born. The MDC came to prominence on a wave of popular support in that they provided an alternative.

But I think things did not continue in that spirit, with a commitment to true democracy, to a struggle that is guided by principles of freedom and alternatives. There is no sound articulated strategy to fight for change. True change. In very real ways the MDC have adopted the political culture of Zanu.

So it would seem that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Does the MDC offer a viable alternative? We should be clear about what the MDC is and what its policies are. While the word 'democratic' in the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change evokes pleasant feelings, some of the party’s policies are rooted in neo-liberal ideology.

In fact, what needs to be happening now is the building of a mass movement, linking the struggles by women, workers, residents, traders, Aids activists, students, disability rights activists, debt cancellation activists, the rural poor to start defining the content of the change we want. That means a movement that fights for a new political, economic and social order.

RW: Shereen, let us move the discussion away from the dramatic events of the last few days, as well as the drama of Murambatsvina and Gukurahundi. Let us talk a little bit about what some call the normalcy of everyday life in Zimbabwe. Life expectancy for men in Zimbabwe is now 37 and for women 34. What does it say about normality and everyday life?

SE: I read something about Zimbabwe the other day:

'Yes there is tension in some places, but for the majority life goes on normally. And unfortunately within that "normality" is a gross amount of struggle.'

What is normal? And what is abnormal?

I think that in Zimbabwe right now the lines are incredibly blurred. People find ways to continue and to survive, brutally. Perhaps surviving is resistance. Is that normal or abnormal? What does everyday life look like given life expectancies of 37 and 34?

Inflation is at 1700 per cent at the moment. If you go into the shop today and pay 40000 Zimbabwean dollars for something, the next day it could cost 65000 dollars. Not many people are earning salaries that keep up with inflation. The strikes by teachers and doctors are indicative of that. Everyday life in Zimbabwe is for many a life of struggle, hardship and deprivation. A life of brutality, without the basic things that you need to be human.

But there is something else that is very interesting about everyday life in Zimbabwe. You can arrive at Harare international airport and drive into town and you will see luxury cars everywhere. You will see BMWs. You will Mercedes Benz’. You can go to restaurants and have the best seafood. In the face of all this deprivation you have the consolidation of a very small elite. There are flows of money outside of the formal economy that means that people are making money from the current situation. And for such people it is not in their best interests that anything should change.

RW: All of this happens against a backdrop of a Zimbabwe that’s actually at war in the DRC. What is the importance of that?

SE: It’s interesting that you pick up on the DRC because I think that Zimbabwe’s involvement in the DRC was yet another watershed in the spiral downwards. In 1998, the war veterans under the leadership of Chejerai Hilter Hunzvi basically held Mugabe hostage and demanded a pay out for war veterans, which the budget of the country could not sustain. In the same year Zimbabwe sent troops into the DRC even though financially it was not viable. But it is common knowledge that the elite network of Congolese and Zimbabwean political, military and commercial interests seek to maintain their grip on the main mineral resources, diamonds, cobalt, copper, germanium.

RW: Which of course raises the question of Zimbabwe’s place in the continent and the world, its political and economic relations with other countries. Let’s approach this through South Africa’s role. What do you think South Africa's role is? And what do you think of the many calls on SA to intervene?

SE: It is imperative for the South African government and SADC to take action to hasten an end to the oppression of the Zimbabwean people. The existing softly-softly policy of quiet diplomacy to encourage internal dialogue has failed. One needs to listen to the call by Desmond Tutu and civil society organisations in southern Africa for intervention. The Mugabe regime needs to know that it can no longer rely on the unconditional support of the South African government.

RW: What would an intervention from SADC and South Africa look like?

SE: Mugabe must be called to task. He must be called to account. If he is not, all African leaders are as guilty as Mugabe.

For a start they need to explicitly condemn the violent actions being undertaken in the name of Zanu PF and the Zimbabwean government. End all defence force, security and intelligence collaboration. Cease supplies of all military hardware. Cease to roll over all loans. Respond sympathetically to asylum requests. The argument that it is wrong to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign country is no longer sustainable. Without international intervention against apartheid, the struggle for liberation in South Africa would undoubtedly have taken longer and been even more bloody.

RW: I want us to talk about art and culture. Zimbabwe still has the highest literacy rate in the SADC region. The Harare International Arts Festival (HIFA) is in the world’s top ten. And the recurring theme of Zimbabwean art through the ages is the transformation of a human being into a beast. I just want you to reflect a little on that side of Zimbabwe.

SE: Interesting. Zimbabwe is rich in cultural production, pottery, textiles, jewellery, carvings, baskets, sculpture, music, theatre, writing. There’s some really amazing work that is being done. I think that the transformation of human being into beast in something that in some ways Zimbabweans know about intimately. If cultural production is about a critique of what is happening at a socio-economic and political level, then that is what is going to be woven into cloth or chiselled out of stone. Human to beast.

HIFA is an annual international arts festival that encompasses five main disciplines: music, theatre, fine arts, dance and the spoken word. HIFA began in 1999 and since then has taken the Zimbabwean and Southern African arts scene by storm. The Festival showcases the best of Zimbabwean performances and fine arts while at the same time staging and exhibiting the most exciting and creative international and regional performances.

HIFA 2007 is dedicated to artistic expression that has meaning and purpose for a community that is facing challenging balancing acts every day. It is a time to show that in Zimbabwe in 2007, the arts express our desire to make life better for ourselves as individuals and as a diverse community; a time to show that HIFA and artists recognise the paradoxes faced by Zimbabweans each day as we step out on to our own personal tight rope.

Most of all, it is a time to show that creativity surrounds us and makes us smile each day- HIFA 2007 is a celebration of all the small-scale acts of creative heroism that give magic, enchantment, existentialist ideals to ordinary things.

RW: So Shereen, how do we get from beastliness and brutality to humanity and tenderness?

SE: Chirukure Chirukure in his poem 'Smoke, Dust, Tear-gas' hints at this:

'in the heavy, belching clouds of dry dust there in your tired, barren patch of rocky land you could still tender the grey, shrivelled crops, weeding the way to the starving family’s future...in the crude, suffocating thunder of tear gas, there in your tense neighbourhood turned into battlefields, you could still see the damp, blood-soaked secret paths, tenderly shuttling to give direction and inspiration to the cause ... in the perfume, tobacco, alcohol and laughter fumes, there in the extensive, excited victory celebration parties, your eyes could stretch beyond the beaming rainbow knowing that out of the brutality, there is the humanity, that this is only but a seed germinating...'

RW: Are there such spaces for the creation of this humanness in Zimbabwe, or at least in the process of creation?

SE: I think the spaces have to be created. They are not just delivered to you on a platter. People are creating the spaces. Women are creating the spaces. There have been a number of women who have been very involved in the 1980s and the 1990s who because of political and social and economic reasons are now scattered around the region. Who have reached out to each other in order to create those spaces to see what possibilities can spring from that. So spaces have to be created, and they will be.

RW: Is this the Feminist Political Education Project?

SE: Yes

RW: So tell us a bit more about it.

SE: The Feminist Political Education Project in some ways was born out of shared experience and friendships. Shared experience within the women’s movement and within the National Constitutional Assembly [NCA] across the MDC and friendship, in that the women who came together to form the project were friends.

They understood the urgent need for something. In 2003 we didn’t know what that something was, but we agreed that as an alternative to the way that the mainstream malestream works we would come together as a very loose network. We would not consolidate as an organisation. We would pool our skills and resources and come up with interventions based on what was happening at a particular time in the country and create spaces for women to come together both to share and reflect but also to think through ways of doing even in the limited room that exists in Zimbabwe right now to organise and to do. And so we have been working since 2003. The Feminist Political Education Project is a space of hope.

RW: Apart from the Feminist Political Education Project are there any other projects or groups or movements that you would urge people to join and build?

SE: I think the Zimbabwe Social Forum is an important space in the struggle against globalisation and in building mass based resistance on the ground. You know, that’s important. I think Zvakwana is important. SW Radio is important. Many formations that are contributing to the dreaming of a new dispensation.

RW: What are the prospects for Zimbabwe Shereen?

SE: This last week has been a watershed. Things may get worse before they get better but things are going to come to a head either way. People outside and inside the country are preparing for that. They are consolidating networks to come with strategies and I think that the pressure is now on. It’s a different game.

RW: What would true freedom and democracy look like?

SE: A Zimbabwe that confronts its various pasts and names the violations its peoples have suffered; freedom would look like a space to look at the militia in the eye and say, ‘you violated me’. It would be a chance to talk back to the commercial farmer, for all those years of exploitation and abuse. To be able to point a finger at the minister and the war vet and ask: 'why?' It would allow for a woman to define the Zimbabwe she wants to live in. Is that not what democracy is about? A chance to be listened to. And be heard. An acknowledgement of the pain endured? A piece of land to call one’s own would go a long way. Space to be a citizen. Speaking on our own behalf. Defining our own futures. Ukuba ngumuntu – muntu. To become people. Our personhood restored.

* "Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist and activist
* Please send comments to

Issa Shivji continues the debate on the creation of a 'United States of Africa'. Drawing on past experience and present initiatives of regional cooperation in East Africa, he suggests that the economic focus should be at the level of production – capital and labour, rather than on trade. Politically, it should be people-centred rather than state-oriented.

The African Union has set the stage for a critical debate on pan-African unity. This has deep resonance with the nationalist struggles that ushered in Africa’s independence. At that time, the defining theme and rallying cry of the nationalists - from Nkrumah, Nyerere, Banda to Babu - was pan-Africanism. African nationalism by definition, they argued, could not be anything other than pan-Africanism.

The current pan-Africa debate presents an opportune moment for the continent to confront some of the key challenges facing it, among which is imperialism. African nationalism was born in the struggle against imperialism. It could only be sustained as long as it remained anti-imperialist.

Today, few of our countries can claim to be truly independent. We have no power to make the most basic of our own decisions. Our sovereignty is sold to the highest bidder. Our foreign policy is aligned with the super-power. Our laws - ‘made in the IMF’ - are thrust on our parliamentarians. The multinationals wring out of us outrageous concessions in agreements, which are ‘top secret’, even from the elected representatives of the people.

The current quest for pan-African unity must acknowledge the threat, and not shy away from the challenge posed by imperialism. As globalisation, an even more vicious form of imperialism, engulfs us we need to return to the roots of our independence: the great post-war nationalist movement which resulted in the independence of more than 50 African countries.

Today, as we sink deep into the uncharted seas of globalisation, and let the shylocks and sharks of the global market devour our resources and dictate our policies, our societies are being torn asunder along various parochial fault lines of ethnicity, race, region and clan. If ever there were a time to rekindle the dream and vision of pan-Africanism, then that time is now.

Even as Africa trails its focus on pan-African unity, one sees reason for hope and promise in continuing efforts towards regional integration. There are deep historical underpinnings behind the quest towards regional unity. Pan-Africanist visionaries such as Nkrumah and Nyerere foresaw the dangers of becoming independent alone.

Mwalimu was for instance prepared to delay the independence of Tanganyika if the four East African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar) could do it as a federal unit. The ongoing efforts towards regional integration must therefore be weighed in the context of pan-Africanism.

In East Africa, the heads of state have already decided to revive the East African Co-operation and a treaty has already been agreed. Consultations have now been initiated seeking the people's views on the creation of an East African federation.

The East African Community, the predecessor of the East African Co-operation, collapsed in the 1970s under the strain of state differences and bitter rivalry among vested interests.

This time round, one hopes that the lessons have been learnt and that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. The objective must be to place cooperation on a firmer foundation by adopting better and durable approaches to the issue of unity.

As Africa moves towards consolidating pan-African unity, there are lessons that can be drawn both from past experience and present initiative towards consolidating regional cooperation in East Africa.

The old cooperation was characterised by two major thrusts. On the economic plane, it was trade centred. While on the political plane, it was state driven. Its overall approach was economic rather than political.

A useful lesson to the pan-African vision is that economic unity needs to be based on a complementarity of structures. Countries can only cooperate when the issue of economic unity is approached politically. For instance, a common approach to fixing the prices of agricultural exports or repayment of debts can be a genuine basis for cooperation. This requires political decisions.

In the case of East Africa, the structures of production in the three countries were competitive rather than complimentary. Being export oriented economies, the three entities exported almost similar agricultural crops. They competed in wooing the same investors to invest in import-substitution industrialisation. The three countries were thus rivals in the international market rather than cooperators, which rendered their unity fragile.

The pan-Africa enterprise can draw three vital lessons from the East African experience. First, the approach should be explicitly political. Second, on the economic plane, the foundation of unity should be at the level of production – capital and labour; rather than trade. Thirdly, on the political level, it should be people-centred rather than state-oriented.

Another region where forging genuine cooperation can greatly support the pan-Africa vision is in the Great Lakes region. Within a larger political grouping, it is perhaps easier and more feasible to control civil wars which have spilled over into border wars between countries in this region. A project resulting in peace in this region would dramatically boost genuine pan-Africanism and bring the dream of African unity closer.

Pan-Africa unity can provide space for increased interaction especially in areas such as human resource development to benefit countries in need. Countries in re-orientation such as Rwanda for instance could benefit from the talent pool available in other countries in much the same way as happened in the 1960s when Nigeria sent many of its magistrates to support Tanzania’s judiciary.

The same could be applied in higher education. Rwanda is in the process of rebuilding its university. UK universities are fast bidding for donor funds to send their teams of experts, advisors, professors and so on. Such opportunities should be consciously used to create practical ways of cooperation rather than being left to be manipulated by big powers. Such cooperation and assistance among ourselves would be mutually beneficial and in the interest of the ideal of African unity.

Cooperation at every level – regional or continental – must provide an enabling framework for the involvement of civil society and other stakeholders. The rationale is simple. Cooperation at all these levels is too important to be left to heads of state alone. The immediate area heads of state identify for cooperation is defence and security, mostly their own of course.

Left to their devices, states can break unity either owing to pressure from international powers or narrow visions of local vested interests. Africa’s people must therefore not leave the pursuit of pan-African unity to their states and politicians. Only when Africa’s people are united can pan-African unity be sustained. They must widen their horizons to take into account new conditions and possibilities.

While, indeed, we must have sufficient will and sentiment to promote African unity, we must at the same time be prudent to protect and enhance our national interests. However, both these – pan-Africanism and nationalism – should be placed in the larger interests of the majority, and not succumb to narrow factional motives, or the greed of groups and classes. The interest of the large majority – the popular classes – should be the litmus test.

African unity as an expression of pan-Africanism is not only a desirable vision for Africa at this stage of our development, but a necessity. It is a necessity because left on our own, we are likely to become - and are increasingly becoming - pawns on the geopolitical and military chessboard of the imperial powers, under the hegemony of the most militarised and ruthless superpower in the history of mankind.

• Issa G. Shivji was, until his recent retirement, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam where he has been teaching since 1970. He has authored over a dozen books and numerous articles. His books include Class Struggles in Tanzania (1976), The Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989) and Not Yet Democracy: Reforming Land Tenure in Tanzania (1998).

• Please send comments to

Grace Kwinje’s personal experiences under the blows and batons of Robert Mugabe’s men.

'I will go before the King, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.'

Esther 4:16 HARARE - 'What sort of woman are you Grace Kwinjeh?' 'Who do you think you are?' 'What are you trying to prove?' Questions asked by more than five baton stick wielding riot police officers as they beat me up on that fateful day at Machipisa Police Station in Harare on 11 March.

This was round one out of many.

Yet it was about the woman in me. It was about me as a woman and what I stand for or represent.

Each blow epitomised what they feared and hated in my defiance against them. This translated into the most brutal assault or dare I say attempted murder on me, on my person, my being; that woman in me.

I did not respond I stood still and took each blow as it came. I did not cry. I did not beg for mercy. None of the comrades present on that day cried or begged for mercy, none denounced the party or tried to negotiate themselves out of this horror of horrors that will never be erased from our memories.

Neither will the physical or emotional scars ever heal. No amount of therapy can heal what we went through on that day.

Sekai Holland a 64 year old grandmother was called a 'whore', 'Blair's whore' to be precise. 'No I cannot be Blair's whore he is my son' she said. How dare she respond thus?

Associate herself with the defiled Tony Blair? And so Sekai was danced on, interestingly by another woman. 'Iri hure raBlair rinoda varungu,' translates to 'this Blair whore loves white men'.

Sekai married for 40 years to an Australian was severely assaulted several times. She broke a leg an arm and three ribs. Why because as a journalist she made the double 'choices' of marrying a white man and belonging to the opposition; for that she had to suffer.

She had to be punished for going against the 'norm', the 'expected' by ZANU PF.

That woman in her was under attack verbally and physically. Her age? Not an issue.

The two young women we were with were not spared. The young 'whores' according to the officers had to be taught a lesson.

Together with Sekai and myself we were beaten on the buttocks. 'Rovai mazigaro' 'beat up the big bums' they shouted.

My black beret fell off and I got a beating for my blond hair. 'Hure rekuHoliday Inn rovai.' 'A Holiday Inn prostitute beat her up.' 'Look at the color of her hair.' The 'sins' were many. I colored my hair blond in protest after Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede denied me a travel document on the basis that it was a 'state security document' and not a 'right.' I was slowly being rendered stateless in my own country.

And so as is the case too in opposition politics the attack on us women was more on our sexuality, we were assaulted, humiliated, demeaned in whatever way they could think of.

Comically again, amongst us victims were some of the worst male philanderers, but the issue with them remained political, exposing the misogynistic character of our society.

We were treated this way because we are women and nothing else.

As I reflect on, I do not regret the woman I am and the hard choices I have to make.

It is for these that in my life I have often been persecuted, socially, sexually or mentally and this time I have paid an insufferably heavy price that has left deep scars on my body and soul.

I challenge oppressive systems in all their forms not just to do away with Robert Mugabe's injustice, but also primitive actions by those in our midst that still place us women in the odd position, of being underdogs even in the struggle for a democratic and just society.

It is a double battle for both our political freedom and emancipation, none of which can be achieved without the other, otherwise it's a half-baked revolution, similar to the one we got at independence.

Zimbabwean women in politics have stories to tell. Opposition politics?
More stories.

Over the past months I have seen myself in and out of jail on various dubious charges mostly to do with organising and leading illegal demonstrations.

Once I was placed in solitary confinement at Rhodesville Police station for 48 hours. The aim here I suppose was just to traumatise me. As I sat there in that cell on my own I was afraid.

Afraid of many things to do with being tortured, raped or even being killed. By the grace of God I came out not touched.

A female freedom fighter can be killed at any time. In the wee hours of 12 March the military police came for me at Braeside Police Station, where I had been dumped half dead already, the night before.

A search for me by family and friends was in full scale at this time.

I was in a cell with two other women. One of them was actually nursing and praying for me as I was in great pain and bleeding. We heard the sound of cars outside. Foot steps then the jail door opened.

The officer in charge, Makore pointed at me and said 'uyu Kwinjeh' to four military intelligence officials. I held on to the two women I knew I was in danger.

Once again in the fence of Braeside police station, I was tortured by the officers. They said they had been given orders to kill and not negotiate with civilians. This was not a joke because by this time comrade Gift Tandare's body lay cold somewhere.

May his soul rest in peace. I did not know this. The rest I leave to God and his mercy for me on that night.

They asked me all sorts of questions as they beat me with short 30 centimetre really painful baton sticks. I fainted several times but each time they got me up and tortured me.

Until in the end I could not stand that is when they asked me to remain seated and stretch out my legs and they beat the soles of my feet. How I got back in the cell I do not know. All I know is my life was spared.

They stayed on vigil outside the fence waiting for further 'instructions'. Thank God some officials from the Lawyers for Human Rights found me before the 'instructions' came the next day.

And then it was drama after drama. Released to hospital under riot police guard; then no charges; re arrested while trying to leave the country then back to hospital under riot police guard.

Eventually with Sekai Holland we made it for medical treatment here in South Africa.

I thank the sisters and brothers for the solidarity that came in the form of prayers, demonstrations, night dresses, cake, books, fruit and water.

Above all for taking the risk of being associated with this kind of woman, by visiting us at the Avenues Clinic in full view of the police and CIO operatives.

I will end with a quote from Paolo Coelho's The Zahir, 'I don't regret the painful times; I bear my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed by tears.' And so the woman in me will fight on. Aluta Continua!

* Grace Kwinje is the deputy secretary for international relations in the Morgan Tsvangirai-led Movement for Democratic Change.

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

As we approach the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide we should not only remember the horrors that took place, but focus our attention on the failure to halt the developing genocide in Darfur.

April marks the 13th anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda during which approximately 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days. When celebrating the anniversary of this horrific tragedy let us take a moment to remember those who were slaughtered so unmercifully. More attention should be focused on how to prevent future heinous crimes to occur in Africa and elsewhere.

‘Never again’ – an international commitment or a rhetorical sound bite?

After the horrors of the holocaust, the international community drafted the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and pledged 'never again' to such evil. The United Nations was founded with the objective that humanity should be spared the scourge of war forever. The pledge proved empty as numerous heinous crimes followed. In fact, civilians in Africa bear the heaviest brunt of acts of terror, civil wars, violent suppression of political opponents and criminal violence.

The most glaring and heinous examples of the failure of civilian protection in Africa are the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the war in the DRC between 1998 and 2003, which resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with over 3,400,000 persons displaced from their homes and an estimated 4 million killed and, the Darfur conflict that started in 2003, with estimates of deaths ranging from 180,000 to 400,000. At least 2,000,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes and are displaced in Sudan or in camps in neighbouring countries. These cases are particularly relevant: they happened in our lifetimes and continue to happen now.

Never say never again?

They are a tragic part of Africa’s contemporary history. One may easily say that 'never again' has lost its meaning. While Rwanda was supposedly the scar on our conscience that would be the last incident of mass atrocities allowed to occur, it provided a foreshadowing of things to come. That is true especially in Africa where, despite leaders’ pledge to never let another Rwanda happen again, they have not demonstrated the will to exercise the African Union’s right to intervene to stem gross human rights violations in a concerted or consistent manner.

Even if there is controversy about the definition of genocide in Darfur, there is little doubt that despite the hair-splitting of the proper description of the unfolding tragedy, there is a developing genocide in Darfur which is being met by a similar reaction or lack of action from the world community. Equally, the current situation in Zimbabwe - where the state is oppressing its own people - is another case for the agenda of actions to end this cycle, and move us to finally realise the call of 'never again'.

As 7 April has been designated by the UN as 'international day of reflection on the genocide in Rwanda', the profound sense of 'never again' should be reflected in the prevention or action in the event of of heinous crimes and other violations of human rights. Prevention of such crimes through swift and effective action will send us a clear message. Maybe, thus inspired, we can someday make 'never again' more than a mere slogan.

In so doing, responses to protect civilians would immensely benefit from President Paul Kagame’s sagacious words:

'Never again should the international community’s response to these crimes be found wanting. Let us resolve to take collective actions in a timely and decisive manner. Let us also commit to put in place early warning mechanisms and ensure that preventive interventions are the rule rather and the exception.'

To achieve the broad goal here expressed will certainly take more than rhetoric. Political commitment must be expressed, not only in establishing the required mechanisms but also in triggering them to act when action is required.

The case of Darfur aptly demonstrates the futility of establishing legal regimes which cannot be effectively utilised. In providing for intervention in internal affairs of member states when massive human rights violations are perpetrated without action from the government concerned, or when the government itself is involved in such atrocities, the Constitutive Act of the African Union has codified an important principle of international law. This principle as holds that while states have the responsibility to protect their citizens in recognition of their sovereignty, the default responsibility falls upon the international community, in this case the AU, which can intervene to forestall atrocities.

The cases of Darfur and Zimbabwe are the latest in a string of similar situations to pose unanswered questions to our rhetorical commitments. It is one thing for the silence to be ruptured for lack of preventive mechanisms. But our deafening silence in the face of continuing atrocities is quite another. Empty diplomatic gestures without concrete action in places like Darfur long recognised as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is a damning indictment of the international community, in particular the leading nations at global and continental levels.

As the world commemorates the commencement of the tragic events of 1994 in Rwanda, our leadership and those who shape opinion and policy must rethink our commitment to a world and continent free of human suffering, a continent committed to furthering the aspiration of a peaceful world, a world in which human life and dignity are embedded in state policy and interactions between nations. This would allow us, when necessary, to discard parochial notions of sovereignty and to act accordingly when another Rwanda or Darfur threaten.

To achieve this, we must bring together the institutions and collective powers we have established to construct a world in which ‘never again’ means what it should.

* Joseph Yav is a lecture at the Faculty of Law, University of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. He is also the executive director of the Centre d’etudes et de recherche en droits de l’homme, democratie et justice transitionnelle/Centre for Human Rights, Democracy and Transitional Justice Studies. Email: [email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The idea of a United States of Africa is the visionary outcome of a Pan African Unity. Gichinga Ndirangu presents the case for a United States of Africa and points out some of the major stumbling blocks that need to be overcome before Nkrumah’s dream of a united Africa becomes a reality.

At the upcoming African Union summit in Accra, Ghana, a proposal seeking to establish a continental union government will be debated. Accra is a symbolic, if not significant host for this debate. It was here that Ghana’s founding father, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first pitched for Pan African unity in his famous exhortation that Ghana’s independence counted for less unless, and until, the entire continent was liberated. It was Nkrumah’s view that in the absence of forging a common united front, Africa would remain shackled to neo-colonialism.

It was the period preceding the re-launch of the African Union in 2002 which witnessed renewed debate on Pan African unity. Libyan strongman, Muammar Gaddafi, then an intractable opponent of western imperialism, challenged African leaders to unite across common purpose and chart their destiny unshackled by the West. Gaddafi rooted for increased trade amongst Africans, the creation of common continental institutions including a federal government and the free flow of persons across borders. At its relaunch in Durban, the African Union took the sails out of Libya, reaffirming its commitment to the Pan African vision without unveiling a specific roadmap. The leadership of some of the continent’s key leaders – South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, Algeria’s Bouteflika and Senegal’s Sane Wade – initiated instead the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which was seen as an attempt to develop a policy framework towards a unified vision on Africa’s development and bolster, in part, Pan Africanism. NEPAD’s vision was, however, restricted, being more intent on resource mobilization than on its vision for Africa’s social and political cohesion. Conversely, this year’s proposal for a union government revisits the attempts to consolidate Pan African political, social and economic integration and establishes important benchmarks in laying out a renewed vision for continental unity.

The hope, though not assured, across Africa, is that this year’s debate will move the pan-African vision of Nkrumah beyond its fifty-year stagnation. There is no doubt that this is a debate whose time has come, not least because the union government proposal finally reaffirms the quest for uniting Africa’s people across a common thread of shared values and joint purpose. Within the debate, there are many critical voices that claim to welcome the idea of African unity but caution that the hour for Pan African federalism has yet to come. In addition, Afro-pessimists within the ranks of the African Union are driven by the zeal to consolidate national sovereignty and regional hegemony rather than an outright rejection of the Pan African vision.

While hopes are high, consensus on this proposal will take time and effort given the disparity in positions as well as the high demands that will be placed upon each State to realize a union government. The AU proposal wants the union government created as a transitional arrangement preceding full political integration under the banner of the ‘United States of Africa’. This transitional arrangement implies that realizing the actual Pan Africa vision calls for more work, consultation and buy-in. Even then, the transitional vision is bold in its intent and envisions the establishment of parliamentary and judicial systems, common continental financial institutions and standardized monetary policies and procedures, among others. It is these preliminary propositions that Africa’s leaders will be called upon to give thought and focus to at the June summit in Accra.

After many years of internecine conflict within and between states, the need to harness Africa’s potential around a unity of purpose is a necessary and overarching imperative. At the heart of it, the proposal for a union government must be directed towards Africa’s transformation through creative and well-thought out strategies that advance integration and not the isolation or balkanization of any country or region.

The proposal should be used to catalyze developmental policies and programmes that are people-centred and rooted in the finest of African traditions, culture and values. The ideal of a people-centered and united Africa is one that must be welcome and advanced. It is also a prerequisite in an increasingly globalized world that has demonstrated the value in consolidating shared interests that drive policy formulation and implementation.

Not limited to political union, the proposal for a union government will also delve into the concepts and realities of potential economic integration. Colonialism bequeathed on most African states economic inequality and social inequity which have stifled the integration of Africa’s economies to the world market. Intra-African trade has been constrained by weak policy and institutional support at national and regional levels and internal structural limitations, which have narrowed the scope of exploiting the continent’s economic opportunities to the fullest extent. While economic integration has been a key but elusive priority for Africa’s leadership since the onset of political independence, what has been lacking is the handiwork to take this goal beyond the realm of conjecture and optimism. In 1963, the Organisation of African Unity unveiled a proposal to establish a continental African common market that was expected to coalesce into a Pan-Africa community straddling the economic, social and political spheres. Both the Lagos Plan of Action and the 1991 Abuja Treaty that established the African Economic Community (AEC) spoke to the need for such an African economic union. While this level of ambition has not matured to its full intent, the African Union has continued to look upon the various Regional Economic Communities (RECs) as essential building blocs in the quest for continental economic union.

Yet within the current arrangement, there is growing concern that Africa is spreading herself thin and wide in negotiating multiple trade arrangements, which stand to undermine her own development priorities. The common view is that there is limited scope to fully harness the potential of regional integration granted that new concessions are being exerted by Africa’s trading partners.

The African Union views deepening regional economic integration as an important pillar in Africa’s structural transformation. Given the complexity of regional integration in Africa, there is widespread concern that the undue emphasis on trade liberalisation in the ongoing negotiations with the European Union (EU) and other trading power houses could scuttle rather than consolidate economic integration.

The truth is that trade and trade liberalisation are not an end in themselves but a means to help the continent respond to its development challenges. The ongoing trade negotiations between African countries and the EU have shown the complexity of consolidating economic ties amongst African countries which are already pressured into negotiating with the EU under new configurations outside their natural and traditional economic groupings. The regions currently negotiating with the EU have been severely disrupted by overlapping membership to different negotiating configurations. As a result, there is a risk of countries undertaking trade commitments with the EU to the detriment of their traditional trading partners with whom they may have different agreements at the regional level.

In today’s new global economic dispensation, there are few alternatives to economic integration as a strategy in promoting sustainable socio-economic development. It is obvious that only by closing ranks within the framework of continental level initiatives like the African Economic Community and the African Union can Africa avoid further marginalization.

The union proposal acknowledges that African governments have made determined efforts towards consolidating regional economic blocs with the active support of the AU. But the history of consolidating continental unity is limited by many factors including the lack of political will, limited awareness among a large segment of Africa’s population and increased dependence on external assistance.

The African Union must, therefore, work towards providing an appropriate framework, which strengthens partnership between national governments, peoples’ representatives, civil society and other stakeholders towards promoting the continent’s economic and social development.

A union government will, on the one hand, secure the continent’s interests while, on the other, assert its due role in global affairs and build on the continent’s collective capacity to influence world affairs from a position of unity and strength. But, the current proposal could halt in its tracks if debate is merely confined to the hallowed halls of the African Union without active buy-in from Africa’s people. Since 2002, the AU has renewed momentum towards more effective and accountable governance structures. The next frontier in consolidating continental unity must involve making concerted efforts at the national level to develop institutions and processes that will advance the desired new continental architecture and which are rooted in peoples’ popular participation. The debate must include the voices and perspectives of a wide range of Africa’s people through the involvement of key institutions such as national and regional parliaments, civil society organizations and the media. This participation will broaden and deepen the debate that is, ultimately, about the people of Africa

* Gichinga Ndirangu is a consultant with the African Union Monitor.

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

Fikile Vilakazi of the CAL gives a brief overview on the lack of 'good political governance on homosexuality' in Africa and the role of the Coalition of African Lesbians in combating the criminalisation of lesbians and homophobia in African societies.

Africa is a continent that is comprised of 53 states with only one state, South Africa that protects the rights of people who are in loving relationships with other people of the same sex and/or same gender. The South African constitution is the only constitution in the African continent that has a bill of rights that condemns discrimination on the basis of one’s sexual orientation . Otherwise, most countries in Africa are governed by penal codes that condemn homosexuality with penalties ranging from imprisonment, life sentence and even death sentence in some cases.

The lack of good political governance on homosexuality is an artefact of colonialism and apartheid that plagued the continent in the previous centuries. Colonial leaders introduced the idea that homosexuality is a sin and is a western import. This notion was filtered through the minds of African people and its leaders to an extent that most African people alleged homosexuality to be foreign, un-African and sinful. Post-colonial leaders promulgated colonial laws like penal codes to continue to condemn homosexuality and thereby betray African people who are in same sex and same gender loving relationships.. This has resulted in horrific political governance on issues related to sexual orientation, gender, gender presentation and sexuality in the African continent. This has contaminated African jurisprudence and constitutional law and produced shocking and limited legal and political judgment on this matter.

The consequences for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people has been and continues to be bloodcurdling. In most African countries, lesbian and gay people have been arbitrarily arrested and detained; assaulted, extorted, raped, beaten and even murdered simply because they self identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex. In Cape Town, South Africa, Zoliswa Nkonyana. In 2005, a young black lesbian woman was stoned to death by a gang of boys in front of her house and most lesbian women continue to experience hate crimes in the form of rape and assault. In 2006 in Zimbabwe, a group of lesbian women were beaten badly by a group of men. In the same year, a lesbian woman in Mauritius was sent to a mental hospital by her parents because there was no way that she could be lesbian and therefore certified her to be mentally ill.

In Uganda, police raided unlawfully a house of a transgender woman and arbitrarily detained her friend and brutally violated her rights to privacy and dignity by undressing her in front of group of policemen to prove whether she was a man or a woman. In Kenya, a lesbian couple and a gay friend were arrested and charged with an act of homosexuality and impersonation with a possible sentence of 14 years imprisonment. In Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana and other parts of Africa people of the same sex continue to live and fear and at the mercilessness of the criminal justice system that has a duty to ensure full compliance with penal codes. The situation is horrific. There is just nowhere to run to and find refuge and freedom to be.. There are no legal and political remedies at a local level that can assist in this situation

In attempting to address this situation, the Coalition of African Lesbians has an advocacy project that is directed at working with the African Commission to expose human rights violations against sexual minorities in African countries and call for remedies and the commissioners to hold African governments accountable to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and other International Human Rights Instruments that some African states have signed and ratified

Research on the existence of homosexuality in Africa..

The other challenge that is facing Africa is lack of knowledge and documentation on the existence of homosexuality in the continent. There is very little written work on the experiences, both positive and negative of people who are in same sex and same gender loving relationships. Most anthropologists and hi/herstorians that have written about this work have selectively hidden information on the subject. Those who have managed to expose these relationships in a good way have not been free from harassment and prejudice.

The experiences highlighted above get lost in time due to lack of effective documentation and research. Most researchers are afraid to write about these experiences due to their hostile political and legal environments. Most written work is from scholars who are often distances from the real experiences of lesbian and gay people. The exercise therefore remains purely academic with less social result and impact.

In responding to the phenomenon, the Coalition of African Lesbians also has a project directed at promoting creative writing and researching the lives of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women in the continent. This is a research project that will be conducted by lbt women themselves and CAL hopes to produce a book at the end of 2007,that will collate different experiences of lbt women in Africa.

The Coalition also aims to provide capacity and skills sharing opportunities for lbt women in order to build leaders that will take the struggle for the rights of sexual minorities forward. This happens through CAL’s annual Leadership Institutes and local country workshops and strategic international conferences, seminars, institutes and dialogues..
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Challenging homophobia and patriarchy through feminism

The Coalition of African Lesbians acknowledges that the experiences of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are not separable from those of other women in the continent. Whilst lbt women face a specific struggle against homophobia, the commonality between and among all African women is the struggle against patriarchy and all its forms and systems. The African tradition and culture has for centuries promoted and overstated the superiority of men at an expense and compromise of their women counterpart. The notion of African values is framed and rooted in a system of male dominance in society. This thinking and ideology informs religion and culture and women remain on the receiving end of the system. Lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are not immune to this challenge. One of the reasons lbt women get raped is still to prove that women’s bodies are for men and anything that continues to challenge that phenomenon is persecuted by society.

It is against this background that any intervention that seeks to address the challenges facing lbt women need to realise that their struggles are not just about their sexual identity, but about the fact that they are also women and other things as well. We need a holistic approach to address inequalities against women in society. The commonality of all our struggles is the inequality and the injustice that we endure. It is against this background that CAL has committed itself to unite in the struggle against patriarchy and building feminist leaders that will wage the struggle to the end.

About CAL

The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) was founded in 2003 as an independent, non-profit organisation with a membership comprising organisations in Africa that work to support the struggle of lesbian women for equality. It is the first non-governmental organisation in Africa to work on the equality of lesbian women at a continental level.

The founding process was endorsed at a seminar in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, in the last week of August 2004. The seminar was hosted by the Rainbow Project and Sister Namibia and attended by twenty-five representatives of lesbian organisations, as well as a number of individual women, from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia.

At this gathering the participants developed the vision, objectives and structure for the organisation. After lively discussion and debate they unanimously adopted African radical feminism as the foundational philosophy for CAL.

Aims and Objectives of CAL

The principal objectives of CAL are:

1 To advocate and lobby for the political, sexual, cultural and economic rights of African
lesbians by engaging strategically with African and international structures and allies;
2 To eradicate stigma and discrimination against lesbians in Africa;
3 To build and strengthen our voices and visibility through research, media and literature and
through participation in local and international fora;
4 To build the capacity of African lesbians and our organisations to use African radical
feminist analysis in all spheres of life;
5 To build a strong and sustainable lesbian coalition supporting the development of national
organisations working on lesbian issues in every country in Africa;
6 To support the work of these national organisations in all the foregoing areas including the
facilitation of the personal growth of African lesbians and the building of capacity within their organisations.
The Lesbian Equality Project

CAL currently manages one project called the Lesbian Equality Project. The project covers (1) Direct lobbying and advocacy with the African Commission, (2) Research on the experiences of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women in Africa, (3) Creative Expression to enable lbt women to express themselves through creative means like writing, singing, drama, photography and visual activism, and lastly (3) Capacity Building through Leadership Institutes and local country workshops to enable lbt women to advance advocacy and activism in their own contexts.

* Fikile Vilakzai is the Director of the Coalition of African Lesbians based in South Africa.
For further enquiries: Tel: +27(0) 11 487 3810/1, Fax: +27(0) 11 487 2332
E-mail: [email][email protected]

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

As Nigerians move towards elections that mark the first time one elected civilian government has handed over to another, Chippa Vandu provides an historical overview of military and civilian rule in Nigeria and assess the probable outcome of the April elections.

As a nation, Nigeria has come a long way. 1999 was meant to be its year of hope—the return to democratic rule after a decade and a half of military dictatorships. Of all military rulers in Nigeria’s history, only one voluntarily gave up power to a democratically elected government. His name was Olusegun Obasanjo and the year was 1979. General Obasanjo became a military ruler by chance in 1976, having inherited the seat of power when the then Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, was assassinated in Nigeria’s second bloody coup. Obasanjo handed power over to the democratically elected Shehu Shagari, who was toppled in a bloodless coup by Major General Muhammadu Buhari in 1983. Then began the decade and a half of military dictatorships that saw General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), General Sani Abacha (1993-1998) and General Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998-1999) rule Nigeria..

Olusegun Obasanjo once again ascended to the highest office in Nigeria in 1999 filled with expectations. The exceedingly corrupt government of one of his predecessors—the late Sani Abacha—had all but destroyed the semblance of civil society in Nigeria. Together with his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo set out to work, promising to take Nigeria where military dictatorships had always prevented it from reaching. Four years went by and the government was re-elected for a second term. All this while, there were reforms in the banking and financial sectors of the economy, with the country literally settling its huge debt problem. The government, it appeared, had also solved the perennial problem of fuel shortages, which were common during Sani Abacha’s era. A mini telecommunications revolution also took place in Nigeria, with the birth of GSM telephone networks.

Technocrats were brought into government, some of who excelled at what they did. But to most Nigerians, events were far from rosy. Corruption remained endemic and special agencies were created to deal with it. Even then, it remained a part of daily life. From those who sat at the apex of power, to the janitors in government ministries, everyone expected to be settled—Nigeriaspeak for bribed—for simply doing his or her job. And, while the Nigerian government spoke of impressive economic growth, a concurrent increase in population (and corruption, of course) made for an almost unperceivable improvement in the life of the average man or woman on the street. And there lay the paradox—the desire by Nigerians for change, a government that was promising change, but change that was simply too slow to be perceivable.

Democracy, it appeared, had come to stay—or so Nigerians thought. Sometime in late 2005, the Nigerian presidency silently began pushing for the nation’s constitution to be amended to allow Olusegun Obasanjo run for a third term in office. Opposition to this amendment grew like wildfire, with Obasanjo’s deputy being one of the most vocal opponents. Good enough, the amendment failed as it was thrown out by the Nigerian legislature in May 2006. Without a doubt, this came as a surprise to Obasanjo, who accused his country’s media houses of being vile and insensitive for the manner in which they went about reporting about the third term agenda. And one person in particular whom Obasanjo never forgave was his deputy—Atiku Abubakar. In months to come, Abubakar (who by the way happened to be very much interested in contesting the presidency) was to be frustrated to the point of political suicide.

Abubakar was expelled from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the behest of Obasanjo. At the PDP national convention in December 2006, Obasanjo picked an obscure governor—Umaru Musa Yar’Adua—as his likely successor. Yar’Adua’s health became the subject of media speculation in Nigeria. When he had to be abruptly flown to Germany for treatment during one of his presidential campaigns, it became clear that all was not well. The media, it appeared, was right in stating that Yar’Adua’s frail state of health was a cause for concern. Yar’Adua remains the presidential candidate for the ruling PDP.

Atiku Abubakar’s expulsion from the ruling PDP did not in anyway weaken his desire to contest the presidency. In late 2006, he became instrumental in the formation of a new political party called the Action Congress (AC), which eventually nominated him as its presidential candidate. But Olusegun Obasanjo, not wanting to have any of that, began what may be termed a calculated campaign to ensure that Abubakar was not allowed to contest the presidency. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) published a list of corrupt politicians in February 2006. Top on the list was Abubakar, along with other politicians who, though corrupt, also happened not to be friends of the president.

Though he won a couple of court cases over corruption allegations brought forward by Nigeria’s corruption watchdog, Abubakar was eventually given the final blow when the Nigerian electoral commission omitted his name from the list of those eligible to run for the office of the presidency. Furthermore, in the third week of March 2007, the Nigerian Senate indicted both Abubakar and Obasanjo for mishandling petroleum technology development funds. The Senate further recommended that they both be referred to a disciplinary committee (i.e. the Code of Conduct Bureau) for further action. Calculated as it seemed, this was to partly to ensure that Mr. Obasanjo erased all hopes of extending his tenure beyond May 29, 2007—the stipulated handover date. The Senate indictment literally put a full stop to Abubakar’s political ambition—at least, for the time being.

Two things appear certain when Nigerians begin voting in a couple of week’s time: it has become close to impossible for Mr. Obasanjo to extend his stay in office as he had once hoped. However, by selecting Umaru Yar’Adua as his successor, Obasanjo believes he has found a wall of refuge that would eventually protect his interests after he ceases being Nigeria’s first citizen. Secondly, Abubakar will most likely not run for the presidency, even though the slimmest of chance still exists that the courts might rule in his favour.

With Abubakar out, Yar’Adua’s main challenger becomes Muhammadu Buhari—one time military dictator and presidential candidate of the All Nigeria’s People Party (ANPP). While it is most certain that the ruling PDP will do all in its power to rig the elections in favour of Yar’Adua, an easy victory cannot be guaranteed. Unfortunately, some of the brightest candidates—like Pat Utomi of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) party—have weak political bases. Thus, at the end of the day, most Nigerians will practically be compelled to choose between mediocrity and mediocrity. Such is the life of the game called politics.

It would take nothing short of a miracle from the heavens to stop the ruling PDP from producing the next president of Nigeria. In other words, Nigeria’s next president would most likely be the very man chosen by the incumbent president. Despite being labeled honest, Yar’Adua’s frail health should be a cause for concern. If the man who intends on becoming the next president of Nigeria has to keep running to Germany to be resuscitated each time his health starts to fail, one could only be left wondering what sort of message that sends to the very people he intends to govern. But then, all through Nigeria’s delicate history, there have always been two sets of rules—one for the upper class and another for others. Shattering this barrier could be but a first step towards creating the sort of society that would treat people for what they are—human beings. In this regard, the next government of Nigeria is already failing.

* Chippla Vandu is a Nigerian research engineer with an interest in governance, history and philosophy. He currently resides in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and blogs at

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

Combining personal interviews with women living in the slums of Nairobi and local NGOs and published research, this essay argues the West should continue to bear the brunt of the blame for underdevelopment in Africa.

Just on the outskirts of Nairobi, one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest slums sprawls out alongside a hill and down into a valley. Amongst the sea of corrugated tin roof tops, flags designating communities wave along with clouds of kicked-up dust that never seem to settle. Waves of heat emanate from above the slum and warp the Nairobi skyline in the near distance. A train just manages to push itself along the British built rail leading to Uganda, but for close to a million people, the tracks have ended here.

Kibera is not without contradictions but in some respects, it has better living conditions when compared to the smaller but more notorious Korogocho slum a several kilometers away. As if to deliberately antagonize residents, the lap of ultimate luxury sits atop the same valley and just touches the crumbling rail. Italian conifers are tall, kept neatly trim and conceal the razor wire and broken bottled lined walls of a multimillion dollar villa owned by former President Moi. Within the very heart of Kibera, guides parade tourists about eager to gage a level of poverty previously unknown to them and snap an occasional photo when deemed appropriate. Basic commodities such as water are sold at three times the price than in the city. Korogocho is similar, but few Westerners (including international NGOs) rarely venture into its urban jungle.

It would appear that the real value of life in societies deeply rooted in injustice is secondary to those who initially sowed the seeds. Along the road and next to the Kibera entrance is a large billboard with a picture of an affluent family in a modern kitchen eating a brand name chicken, a biting reminder of an unattainable lifestyle for the near million living in the slum. And one has to wonder what would inspire President Moi to settle within a stone’s throw to abject poverty on such a scale? Is it just fatalism that anchors Kibera’s residents? Such questions are passim throughout Africa and the world for that matter. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in what Pinnacle Relief co-founder Joshua Kungu Nguujivi of Nairobi said,” Poverty is three-folded. One, the white man brought poverty to Africa and then taught the black man handout mentality. Two, African’s are lazy. If Africa is to be helped, we are not going to change through handouts, IMF, or the World Bank. We are only going to change if the West is honest with Africa. Three.” I, for one, believe the West should and continue to bear the brunt of the blame for the “underdevelopment” in contemporary Africa.

Plutarch wrote that the inequality between the poor and the rich is the oldest and most fatal affliction in any society. Given the disparaging conditions and the extreme inequalities throughout modern African history, one has to question what forces brought about such afflictions. While ignoring its own protocols, the West sets unattainable standards on Africa as its laws impinge development. According to Joseph Sitiglitz, former Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, if a country doesn’t respond to certain criteria, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will suspend aid. This includes funds from donor countries. In other words, and according to an article by Ignacio Ramonet (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2005) if Sweden donates funds to build schools, the IMF will suspend aid money because the allocated IMF loan budget didn’t take into account extemporaneous expenses such as teacher salary and maintenance. Another example is the UK’s Jack Straw (Le Monde, February 23, 2006) who wants Africa to follow Europe’s lead on Kyoto but fails to recognize Europe’s and Canada’s own dismal implementation of the protocols.

The West has a contradictory and in some respects, an epistemic love affair with intellectualizing the co-existence of the haves and the have-nots. In the 19th century, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism and Daniel Ricards and Robert Malthus’ horrid pragmatics did their best to explain the devil’s waltz. Later on, Herbert Spencer introduced social Darwinism which effectively further eschewed responsibility. His was not surprisingly eagerly adopted by American business elites such as John D. Rockefeller, themselves masters of exploitation. Incidentally, one may speculate if Diego Rivera intentionally painted Lenin’s face in his Rockefeller center mural to provoke the industrialist’s skewered belief system. Not surprisingly, the mural never saw the light of day, but the act itself has engendered a posthumous life.

Like the manipulating and cunning Richard III, the West has continuously wrangled its hands in the accumulation of riches, prestige and most remarkably, a seemingly frivolous play of power and pride at the expense of millions, past, present and future. The fate of the continent was and is in the hands of ignorant politicians and corrupt businessmen. In 1975, Dick Clark, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa made the statement, ”I knew nothing about Africa. I had not been there, had not studied it and wasn’t particularly interested…(Gleijess, 2002).” The West brought along with its colonies a macabre stage, and a disinterested wider audience, to Africa. Having laid the groundwork of silence, the West’s involvement today is in many respects, just as horrendous as Leopold’s Congo. It would seem to me that the colonization of the past has taken on another face (globalization), a veritable costume change for the third act, but just as sinister and perverse as the amputated hands that nevertheless continue to decor the set.

In order to understand why colonialism and imperialism should bare the burden of the blame for Africa’s woes, one doesn’t have to look that far into the past. From slavery, to the establishment of indentured state servitude, to second and third class citizens and outright racism, to the underdevelopment of infrastructure, the West’s efforts to thwart Africa is like an orchestrated and finely tuned looting machine. Fascist colonial states united with the Catholic Church and business savvy individuals worked hand in hand during the 30’s and 40’s to “de-Africanize” and separate Africans from their roots (Rodney 1972, 273). This in turned encouraged internal strife and further pitted local communities against each other, sometimes without the direct involvement of the “white” man. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ,The River Between, demonstrates how colonial influence, not the colonies themselves, separates two communities through heritage and tradition of polytheism and circumcision to Christian ideals and Western education. The novel’s protagonist, Waikayi, is forced to negotiate and comprise the two systems and perhaps symbolizes African’s modern dilemma of living amongst opposing forces, contradiction and changing times. The reader, however, is left to wonder whether or not the adoption of Western thought and Christian belief is so much the issue since it is not revealed whether or not there is a veritable comprehension of what those systems are, how they operate, and how they can integrate into a traditional based society. If anything, the colonial education system sought to create a class hierarchy by delegating low skilled labor to Africans, thereby, stunting development while promoting the worst form of alienated individualism without regard to social responsibility (Rodney 1972, 280). This system of exploitation continues today. In the 1980 “Perambulator” album, Fela Kuti sings that after acquiring a colonial education and 35 years of service, the black man remains without property and prosperity, at best he has a bicycle, “if he no tire, dem go tire am, dem go dash am one gold wrist watch, 35 years of service all im property one old bicycle.”

The French were at the forefront of subjecting African society within the educational construct and today they continue to rewrite their own history despite facts that point to its devastating affects. On February 2005, the French National Assembly passed a law requiring public schools to recognize, in particular, the positive role of the French colonies in North Africa. The basis of such a law and its deliberate attempt to force the educational system into recognizing its authority is not consistent with the freedoms of speech they profess to adhere. After much protest and a year later, Jean-Louis Debre, President of the National Assembly, said in an interview by Patrick Roger (Le Monde, January 27, 2006), “I would like the political message to be clear, precise and without ambiguity. It is not a law that can carry judgment on historical fact. It is not legislation that should dictate scholarly content.” The words positive role were subsequently removed, but the efforts set into place has severely damaged the French image, particularly in former French colonial states.

The decolonization of Africa set another scene en route, and during the 1940’s, Africa became an amalgam of wider aspirations and greater possibilities. Whereas the colonial states previously sought to draw distinctions among people under its rule by defining them into categories, post-colonial Africa saw a fragmented but steadily growing and unifying movement engaged in revitalizing local belief systems. Eventually, the distinctions and separations indoctrinated by colonial rule became impossible to manage and somewhere along the timeline, decolonization inevitably involved a transition from an empire into a free-for-all global market system (Cooper, et al. 1999 ). But to whose benefit?

Since 1980, social and health macro-economic indicators have eroded and eradicated a middle class. Coup d’etat upon coup d’etat and the resulting mass exodus of refugees seemed to have blurred already contingent international borders. Impoverished “democratic” states without infrastructures are forced onto the world economy whether they like it or not. The resulting destabilizing factors are numerous; the establishment of macroeconomic and ultraliberal cadres, extreme privatization, incoherent structural adjustment programs, disguised social plans, exploitation of labor, unstable prices of raw materials, commercially disadvantageous measures, outright fraud, multinational interventions, debt explosion, lack of vision, and arms trafficking. There is no real independent African state in the political sense and the independence of the 1960’s has evolved into a twisted mass of citizens, managers, factions, and military leaders, all striving for upward mobility through any acquisition of power by any means possible. African state heads behave more like presidents of a consular administration of a company than of a nation. Pierre Franklin Tavares (Le Monde Diplomatique, Jan. 2004) writes how in Liberia, multinationals and state officials orchestrate ethnic conflicts to obtain and conserve commercial lumber interest. Elf president Loik Le Floch-Prigent negotiated deals with UNITA while simultaneously financing MPLA 200km outside Nairobi, the East African Standard officially claimed 221600 acres belonged to Kenyatta, 114600 acres to Moi and 31600 to Kibaki. In essence, half of all arable land in Kenya is controlled by 20% of the population. And in an interview by Jean-Christrophe Servant (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2004), Rou Kimani, head of the Mungiki association of the Mau-Mau inheritors of the Rift Valley, protesting the land appropriation says “A lot of us are foreign in our own country.” The Mau-Mau fought the colonists and today, the Mungiki are fighting Del-Monte and their national and international political emissaries.

Many are exasperated by any Western involvement and view the altruistic aims of occidental organizations with disdain. The United Nation’s attempt at establishing human rights initiatives and setting deadlines for this goal is viewed by many as an excursion into contempt. According to Joy Samake, a businesswoman in Sierra Leone, “…the United Nations has failed to create conditions of peace. This organization was founded by whites to regulate their problems after WWII. It has not been able to adapt to the needs of Africa and developing countries (Lobo, 2006).” The West and many of its enterprises has a duty to be honest with Africa but continues to fail miserably. Oxfam just recently criticized Tony Blair’s Africa Commission Report for not living up to its promises, and worse, actually ignoring many of its own appeals. Though the IMF debt has been written off in many of the developing countries, conditions tied to the waivers makes for unjust trade policies that further stunt growth potential in already fragile and emerging markets.

Everywhere, everyone is fighting for a share of the cake. The EU is currently forcing the overture of unfair industrial free trade in Africa while offering no substantial cuts in agriculture. There is something to be said when an orange from Spain in an upscale grocery store in Nairobi is cheaper than those produced in the country. But the disaster is more deeply rooted than economics and trade because these apocryphal institutions (Bob Geldof), continue to deny the African a voice in a global arena supposedly erected in their honor. Child soldier turned rapper, Emmanuel Jal, who learned how to fight at the age of eight and whose experiences in Sudan are unimaginable to many, is considered a musical prodigy in Kenya and in many parts of Africa. He was denied greater audience in Live8 because he hadn’t sold the minimum requisite number of albums set forth by the organizers. He was instead allowed to perform a few minutes on a stage in Cornwall, far away from the crowd drawing venues at Hyde Park. It would appear that Geldof’s Long Walk for Justice ended at the ticket booth.

Black or white, the human condition in Africa is at odds and I truly believe the policies of the past (including pre-colonial conflict) have fomented the environment in which many are forced to live today. Africans are obviously not without their share of hatred and exploitation that has furthered exasperated the despair from within. Like the West, the condition of life and its values in respect to heritage and culture is a contentious affair between the haves and the have-nots. But according to an article by Jeevan Vasagar in the South African Mail & Guardian, the attempt to bring the two closer is slowly advancing, at least on the surface level. On March 5, 2005, Arrisal Ag Amdagh, a powerful chief in Inates, Niger liberated en masse, his 7000 slaves. Slavery in Niger was only declared illegal by the state in 2004 but the practice remains prevalent throughout the region. However, Amdagh claims it was his religious convictions of Islam that forbids enslaving fellow Muslims that drove him. The fate of the former slaves remains questionable, faced with no prospects, no land and no income, they find themselves in a state of liberated limbo. Amdagh’s sudden abolitionist gesture, according to the article, means he now stands a better chance of receiving humanitarian aide given the drought and lotus attacks that had just recently devastated his crops. Self-interest, genuine or not, knows no color but wears the same mask.

In the meantime, a group of women in Kibera have organized themselves along with local NGOs to find solutions where and when Kibaki’s government and tied international donor aid has failed to deliver. Progressive micro-finance initiatives by the likes of Africaid have helped expedite concrete steps to a better life. Circulating minimal funds for the likes of 38-year old Mary Khasa means more than just generating an income, it also means being able to survive in conditions most of us abhor. She was able to purchase a sewing machine and material, and rent a booth. She is closely followed by Africaid who assist managing her small enterprise. Her success is relative, but essential, because it provides a hope to those that have been repeatedly forgotten, cast aside, and left to fend for themselves under the auspices of multi-million dollar villas and nonsensical commercial interest and tasteless advertising. It means people are turning away from the international and government policy and looking at themselves and those in their immediate surroundings for help and reliance. More generally, it means the West and the powers-to-be continue to fail Africa.

Works Cited
Cooper, Fred. Decolonization in Africa: An Interpretation. Afrikaner Encyclopedia: 573.
Gleijess, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa 1959-1976. NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002: 331.
Lobo, Ramon. 'Une paix boiteuse a Freetown' Courrier International, Issue 799, February 23, 2006: 31.
Rodney, Walter. Education for Underdevelopment 1972: 273, 280.

* Nikolaj Nielsen is currently pursuing a masters degree in journalism as part of a programme commissioned by the European Community; Erasmus Mundus Master's of Journalism. He specialises in conflict and war reporting and study at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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

The war in Sierra Leone has been over for five years. However for thousands of amputees 'their personal battles with trauma have exponentially and vicariously intensified as the years have passed'. The amputees’ experiences and nightmares are more emotional and psychological than physical.

The decade long harrowing civil war endured by Sierra Leone might be over as far as the Sierra Leone government and top United Nations emissary Carolyn McAskie responsible for peace-building are concerned. The latter states: 'The war has been over for five years the peace has held, I think that’s a gold standard...there is still a lot to do though.'

President Ahmed Tejan Kabba has publicly told the nation his government is overwhelmed by national priorities. He is therefore unable to address the individual needs of his people therefore they must begin to help themselves.

However for the thousands of amputees living in this tiny nation barely the size of Maine this is an impractical and impossible task. Their personal battles with trauma have exponentially and vicariously intensified as the years have passed. The amputees’ experiences are more emotional and psychological. They suffer a nightmare than their physical wounds can communicate.

Presently, the government is busy with its pending presidential and parliamentary elections just a few months away, and the routine of running the machinery of government.

However these elections are not going to be curative for the thousands of Mamsu Thoronkas and Tamba Ngaujahs that are still languishing in the mundane and elusive wilderness of Sierra Leone, plagued and handicapped in destitution and despondency. They cannot fend for themselves in a country where unemployment is astronomical and finding a job and a home are extremely difficult.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/297/40501_1.jpgThe disturbing and graphic poster images of mutilation and amputation germinated from the seeds of the 1991 civil war that were sown in the eastern border town of Bormaru.

Sierra Leone shares close proximity and commonality with neighbouring Liberia. There, the demonic and diabolic foetus of dehumanisation and shocking brutality were born. Although the rebels, who migrated to Liberia to execute heinous crimes with the aid of Charles Taylor of Liberia, were discounted by the government as mere rabble rousers.

But facts have proved quite the opposite as warnings of possible violence were ignored. Although the Government assured the nation that the dire situation was under control the truth was that innocent and peaceful Sierra Leonean civilians would encounter a bizarre and innovative barbarism seasoned with surgical nightmares.

The psychology behind the amputation of limbs, tongues or ears is a terror wedging campaign to instil phobia and panic on the government and all its citizens. In a previous election the people had voted overwhelmingly for President Kabba. Since they used their hands to vote, dismembering their limbs would prevent them from casting another ballot for a democratic government. Rebel propaganda of fear and panic was to impose their will on the people of Sierra Leone, just like terrorists across the world.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/297/40501_2.jpgMamsu Thoronka - 41 year-old trader, shown in the pictures is among thousands of amputees living in Freetown, Sierra Leone today. She is struggling to support her family of six children on her own. Her husband is in a transition into another relationship and is distant from the family. Welfare services do not exist and no form of help comes from the government:

'On 22 January, 1999 when the capital city Freetown was attacked by rebels, I attempted to take refuge in a building to escape the vengeance of the rebels. But they found me, and put my hand on a table and ready to cut it off with a machete like a butcher would sever animal meat. I begged for mercy asking them to respect God and me being His child.

They told me to point to God with my right hand which they also tried to chop off. They tried three times but failed, the hand of God probably helped or saved me. I still can’t use three fingers on my right hand. The rebels said, “I should get another hand from President Kabba, who has several hands to spare.” I was in agony and the thought of death crossed my mind. I was later taken to hospital but the doctors too had fled for their lives. Freetown was infested with hundreds of corpses scattered all around its perimeter. My dangling left hand held by a film of skin had begun to decay. It took a week before I was able to see a doctor who treated only my wounds.

My husband is still distant, I’m sure he has another wife without my knowledge. I persevere to support my children by buying produce like palm-oil in the countryside to resell in Freetown. My responsibility is too much for me. I cannot afford to pay school fees for my six children, as school fees are beyond my reach. I’m appealing for help from the international community, as my two oldest children have dropped out of school.'

But with her resilience and tenacious spirit Mamsu refuses to give up her fight for survival or self sufficiency. She continues cross border trade between Guinea and Sierra Leone. In Guinea goods are cheaper. But a recent embargo put on Guinean goods could paralyse her main source of livelihood. She still sells vegetables and beans to enable her to buy clothes and household necessities for her large family. Goods and services are now being sold at cut throat prices upcountry than in Freetown. She rears a few chickens for subsistence and sometimes sells some.

'Rebels have threatened to end our lives. They say, if government will not stop talking about amputees and the rebel atrocities that created them, they will get rid of us all. I fear the advent of another war.'

For Mamsu the welfare of her children is paramount in her mind. She is not seeking vengeance or retribution towards her assailants (rebels). She has offered forgiveness to them, despite the institution of the War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone to help bring justice to people like Mamsu. 'I want someone to take care of my children', she prays.

'The former rebel fighters are being well looked after with skills training and free education for their children. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission said, we amputees should get a pension but we have seen nothing.'

A Norwegian charity that helped house her. There is discrimination against amputees at all levels. 'I cannot cook for myself; I have to direct my daughter Bonki to do the cooking for me. When my children run into disagreement in school their peers tell them, “Your mother is a half-person.” It is so demeaning and painful for me since I’m a victim of mere circumstance. We amputees are really discriminated against in Sierra Leone.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/297/40501_3.jpgTamba Ngaujah has a similar story to tell the world about his destitution and abandonment by the society that he once served. He had enlisted in the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces (RSLMF) to defend his country against all internal and external aggressions, serving his country diligently and honestly to the best of his ability.

While other soldiers deserted from the army, he stayed on to defend his country and people. It was during his line of duty that he was captured by the rebels, at the beginning of the war in 1991. Tamba suffered double amputation in captivity, becoming the first among thousands of amputees. After surviving his ordeal he was kicked out of the Wilberforce barracks where he lived in the military quarters during the heavy rainy season when massive flooding is common. His condition did not prevent the military officials from evicting him from his living quarters.

He is now homeless languishing on the streets with his family parading as beggars. No plans have been made to provide him with alternative accommodation. He is appealing to the international community at least to provide him with shelter considering his current status. Help for amputees is a deplorable and pathetic situation and in fact does not seem to be moving at all.

Despite the numerous NGOs in the country, aid is slow to reach the amputees. Even the Human Rights Declaration and The Truth and Reconciliation testament does not seem applicable to them, although a recent UN assessment gives the country high marks for keeping the peace.

What we do to the least of those among us, we have done it to our creator. How long will this peace last that is held by a thread? A nation that does not take care of its disabled or less fortunate subjects is doomed.

A comprehensive reading of the Sierra Leone civil war and its effects on ordinary people can be found in my book: Harvest of Hate- Stories and Essays: “Fuel for the Soul” - published by Publish America 2006. Visit: to read an extract - Harvest of Hate- Mary’s Saga.

*Roland Bankole Marke is a Sierra Leonean writer living and writing in Florida, USA. He is the author of three books: Teardrops Keep Falling, Silver Rain and Blizzard and Harvest of Hate; Stories and Essays – “Fuel for the Soul.” His work has appeared in several publications including World Press.org and Free Press.org. Reach him at [email][email protected]

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/297/07march_slavery.jpgIn marking the abolition of slavery, Kali Akuno calls for reparations from Britain, the US and 'numerous corporate enterprises'. He asks that the world recognises the role played by Afrikans in liberating themselves from slavery and in particular the Haitian revolution, 'the seminal historic process that ended the slave trade'.

Much is being made in England and throughout the English speaking or so-called anglophone world about the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire and its breakaway colony, the United States of America.

Hollywood and the monopoly sector of entertainment capital have marked this anniversary with a major feature film, Amazing Grace, about the life and works of William Wilberforce.

What should Afrikan peoples throughout the world make of this fanfare? While commemorations, public discussion, and the issuance of statements of 'regret' - not formal apologies, all must note the difference morally and legally - are being offered for the monumental crime against humanity are positive, they are by no means an adequate response to this crime.

In the 200 years since the cessation of the slave trade within the English speaking empires, suffering and exploitation of Afrikan people within these territories have not abated, only changed in form.

Where slavery once structured the ruthless exploitation of Afrikan people, neo-colonialism is now the order of the day. The central question underlining these commemorative activities is what forms of restitution, redress, and reparations should be offered to Afrikan peoples throughout the world by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the numerous corporate enterprises built by the capital accumulated from the slave trade sanctioned by these states?

Reparations are just a starting point, the necessary first step, towards the elimination of the ongoing legacies of the slave trade and slavery for Afrikan peoples. If Afrikan peoples do not press the demand of reparations at these commemorative events, then we will allow them to serve as justifications for their ongoing denial.

The legacy of Afrikans liberating themselves from slavery must also be redressed. Specifically, the Haitian revolution, and the seminal role this played in ending the slave trade. The moral appeals of Quaker and Methodist abolitionists aside, it was the success and spreading appeal of the Haitian revolution throughout the Afrikan diaspora that forced British and American colonisers and capitalists to end the slave trade in order to stop fuelling the fire for liberation fanned by the Haitian people.

The denial of this fact perpetuates the dehumanising white supremacist myth that Afrikan people did not, and could not, play a decisive role in their own liberation. Its denial also serves to distort our understanding of historic processes, particularly those of revolutionary transformation.

The determinant force in the liberation of Afrikan people, then as now, is the self-organisation of Afrikan peoples themselves. It is not the efforts of liberal do-gooders or those non-Afrikans that stand in genuine and concrete solidarity with our cause.

Distortions of this logic lead to aid initiatives with the premise that Afrikan peoples must be saved from themselves, not that imperialism and neo-colonialism have to be totally and utterly destroyed.

The conclusion therefore is that Afrikans and genuine revolutionaries everywhere must seize the opportunity being provided by the 200th anniversary commemorative events to address the ongoing legacies of slavery, the slave trade, colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism and to fight, without compromise, for reparations for the heinous crimes committed against our people to build the fortresses of the British and American empires.

*Kali Akuno is the national organiser of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He can be reached at [email][email protected]

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

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