Alain Leveque makes a case for the Rodrigues Island's self-determination from Mauritius

Three hundred years ago, men and women in flesh and bone, were kidnapped from their villages in Guinea; trapped and captured like animals in Senegal; ripped from their families in Mozambique; herded aboard slave ships in Madagascar, and shipped across the Indian Ocean to this part of the World. Those who survived ended their days labouring like beasts of burden for foreign masters. They would never see Africa again. To the rest of the world, these unfortunate individuals lend a human face to the dark-end of a fading history; to us Rodriguans, they were much more – they were our great great … grand fathers and mothers.

Historical Perspective

To get to the inmost heart of our liberation struggle from Mauritius, it is sufficiently important to briefly revisit Rodrigues’ timeline. There are differing versions of history. We have the slave-driver’s version according to the slave-driver; we have the slave’s version according to the slave; we have the versions of those who see world conquest as Jus ad bellum (just cause for war) and the versions of those who do not. From this hazy distance, when we search for a truth buried somewhere in a dead past, among so many other diluted, distorted and deformed half-truths – we can only take a leap of faith.

The name Rodrigues was eponymously plucked from Diego Rodriguez, a Portuguese sailor whose brief visit in 1528 heralded the coming of the Europeans. There is some evidence that Chinese Mariners, Arab and Malay traders, and Pirates may have stumbled on the island as far back as the tenth century. No record of any indigenous population exists. By 1638, a council on nearby Reunion Island was already administering Rodrigues as a French possession. It remained a French colony until British troops stormed the island in 1809. It was then governed as a separate British territory until May 30, 1814, when its administration was transferred to Mauritius.

During the Second World War, 300 of our compatriots, my father among them, from our tiny active population, supported the British in Tobruk and El Alamein.
Yet, in March 1968, we were bound to Mauritius against our will, and marooned in the colonially imposed ‘forced marriage’ of unitary rule. Having offloaded Mauritius, the British in Rodrigues simply packed their bags, shot their dogs, and took off.

In effect, we became the whipping boy, left behind at the mercy of new masters, to foot the bill for the transgressions of others.

Our history has been one long painful struggle against non-consensual governments: from French possession, French colony, English possession, dependency of the colony of Mauritius, ‘district’ of Mauritius, to Island region of Mauritius today.

Neo-colonial labels replaced colonial tags; alien masters took over from foreign rulers, but for our people – the dysphoric cycle grinds on: Adieu l’esclavage – Bonjour l’esclavage (farewell slavery – good morning slavery.)

Political Domination

By 1960, the decolonization of Mauritius and Rodrigues islands had already been decided. When subsequent negotiations and constitutional conferences were held in London and Mauritius in 1961, ‘65 and ‘67, Rodriguans were deliberately excluded. The pretext was that we did not have any political parties or organizations.

During that epoch, the ultraconservative Mauritian party, PMSD (Parti Mauritian ‘Social Democrat’), had been running a campaign of scaremongering, along ethnic lines in Rodrigues. Besides promises of freedom, its leader, Duval, had managed to convince our people that the Devil and his Dam would descend on Rodrigues after the British pulled out. Not surprisingly, in their first contact with the ballot box in 1967, an overwhelming ninety-eight percent of Rodriguans voted against being attached to Mauritius. Sadly, the express views of our people did not take precedence over the urgent conspiracy to annex our homeland.

Of note, in 1967, Rodriguans were not offered a choice between freedom and colonialism; we had to face the horns of this dilemma: British colonization or Mauritian occupation … a foreign ruler or an alien master. Not too dissimilar to Indochina’s quandary: Japanese occupation or French colonization.

Rodriguans did not wish to continue living under a British heel, anymore than we craved the prospect of living under a Mauritian one. And we certainly did not fancy the idea of uprooting our families, leaving the bones of ten generations of our ancestors buried in Rodrigues, to sail into exile in foreign lands. Nonetheless, in those blood-curdling days in Mauritius, people were dying in the streets; we feared being carved up next. The chilling reality of the times saw many discard their possessions, homes and lands, to escape to Canada, Australia, France, England, South Africa and other parts of the World. For some, this still cuts close to the bone.

In 1968, before the ink was dry on a unilaterally drafted Independence constitution; baton-wielding police hoisted the Mauritian flag atop Port Mathurin under a cloud of tear-gas. Rodriguans became unwilling Mauritian citizens overnight. On occasions when our stout-hearted brothers and sisters resisted, British troops were summoned to put down our protest.

Admittedly, after the British left in 1968, our hands were not cut off. All the same, Rodrigues was reduced to a Mauritian fiefdom, where marginalization soon became institutionalized. We found ourselves with higher unemployment, higher cost of living, higher infant mortality, higher primary education drop-out rate and lower literacy and living standard than Mauritius. Discrimination, domination and exclusion became the norm. Today, force majeure continues to buttress the status quo.

In 1976, a separate ministry was set up to deal with Rodrigues’ specificities. So far, only a handful of ‘moderate’ Rodriguans, with their wings clipped, have ever been co-opted to this portfolio. What’s more, no Rodriguan has filled this post in the past ten years, and the likelihood of it ever being different, seems remote. Mauritian politicians arbitrarily choose the minister for Rodrigues and politically-appointed Mauritian bureaucrats govern Rodrigues by proxy – irrespective of our votes.

In 1991, when Rodriguans, had the temerity to demand more control over their own affairs, a token island Council was put in place to placate them. Fellow travellers and party hacks were handpicked and allowed to make recommendations on local matters. But, when the Council, though toothless, began to fuel nationalist pride among those with ‘ideas above their station’ – it was unceremoniously disbanded in 1996.

In 2001, following a long sustained struggle, the idea of Autonomy for the ethnically diverse people of Rodrigues, was first mooted. Finally, 170 years after the abolition of slavery, far reaching devolution from the centralized rigidities of Mauritian control came into sight … albeit briefly.

In 2002, after much fanfare, after the spin-doctors had recited their precision-tooled sound bites, after the pig-headed and the big-headed had had their photo opportunities – ‘Autonomy’ arrived. The names were changed from Island Council to Regional Assembly and from Councillors to Commissioners. A few buildings were erected here and there, a few factotums got to fly to Mauritius, there to sit, silent and still, on government back-benches and a plague of introduced Chameleons overran Rodrigues. That was roughly the extent of it.

Mauritian ministers continued to micro-manage our affairs and we got to elect the lackeys who run their errands. The central government retained all legislative and executive powers and practically everything else. Eventually, even its rusted-on supporters had to concede that our promised ‘Autonomy’ was a dud.

When we peek one inch beyond the chic sophistry, we see one people still ruling another, not only without that other’s consent – but against its will.
Loie sans partage (absolute rule) is alive and well in Rodrigues; it can be seen any day of the year, flexing its muscle and beating its chest in Port Mathurin.

At the risk of belabouring the obvious, one cannot consider limited administrative discretion to be Autonomy, anymore, than one can seriously consider a piglet to be an elephant.

The colonial legacy of authoritarian bureaucratic dictatorship was never dismantled in Rodrigues – it was reinforced. External bureaucratic-warlords command and our people obey without question. The chief of police, the judge, the minister for Rodrigues, all the principal heads of department, all the lawyers, all the policy makers, all those who actually govern Rodrigues – all come from Mauritius.

When our Creole language, in which is stored the experiences and struggles of our people, is spurned in our Assembly – when seventy percent of our people are disqualified from political office, because they do not speak a foreign language –
when half-nourished, half-educated and half-free schoolchildren are forced to learn three languages – when there is a dearth of educational material on our African culture in a curriculum designed for us, by others – when our children mimic cultures, beliefs, languages and traditions dissimilar to their own, in order to validate their sense of self-worth – when our civil service which represents ninety percent of our educated, is effectively gagged from political discourse – when our people speak of Independence in tentative muffled whispers, for fear of government spies – when everything is controlled by external forces, there is no freedom … only domination.
Constitutional guarantees of no ruling caste, of no second class citizens, of consent of the governed to govern, seem to apply to all, except in respect to Rodriguans.

The Rodriguan citizen is like a beleaguered character, hopelessly trapped inside an eternal nightmare of suppressed resentment, being forced to watch helplessly, as his culture crumbles into dust.

Mauritius speaks of human rights at the United Nations, pledges solidarity with SADC (Southern African Development Committee) and the African Union – yet retains its own Colonial Dominion. The double-edged morality is staggering.

Self-Determination

Much water and much blood have flowed into the Indian Ocean, since our brothers and sisters in Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Comoros, Africa, Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius were freed (at least in theory) from the wretched web of Colonialism.
But for us Rodriguans, the on-going ignominy of Mauritian Occupation still haunts our daily lives.

In the 21st century, the island of Rodrigues, one of this regions’ last remaining manifestations of Colonialism has become the ‘sick man’ of the Indian Ocean, forever bonded to an artificial welfare drip, and still begging a foreign kleptocrat to let us go.

It is argued that because on May 30th 1814, Britain dubbed Rodrigues a dependency of the colony of Mauritius, and administered it as part of the island of Mauritius, it automatically became an integral and indivisible territory of Mauritius. Therefore, any dismemberment of territory before independence would have been illegal under international law.

If we follow this line of reasoning, then we also recognise that all colonially-imposed arrangements are forever binding on all future generations. And when this thinking is extended retrospectively, then, Mussolini’s 1936 laws could still be cited today, as justification to go on bedevilling the lives of Ethiopians, forever.

During Mad-Dog-Morgan’s governorship of Jamaica, looting and rape were the arrangements of the day. As one would reasonably expect, when Morgan the pirate left, his arrangements left with him. The British themselves snatched Rodrigues from the French at the point of a bayonet hooked-up to a gun; likewise, any arrangements they made during their rule became null and void – the very minute they left.

There was never any 11th Commandment, which accorded Britain divine-right to bequeath our lives, our lands and our country to Mauritius, for time without end.
Our people were not Mauritius’ or anyone else’s private property. We were not cattle to be handed over from one master to another to another.

Unitary rule was part and parcel of British colonial policy. As a result, despite underlying divisions among different geographical ethnic groups, territories were artificially forced into a unitary state. For example, New Zealand was administered as a dependency of the colony of New South Wales; islands of the Caribbean were grouped together willy-nilly; Seychelles was administered as part of Mauritius;
There were plans afoot to group all British East-African colonies under a federation. And it was only the selfless vetoes of India’s leaders that saved Burma from being administered as part of India. Unfortunately, Rodrigues did not have a Ghandi, or a Jinnah or a Nehru; we had Duval, demagoguery and double-cross a go-go.

The simple truth, however unpalatable, is when colonial rule ended in 1968, the island of Rodrigues had a population, and that island belonged to that population, and was not up for grabs.

On March 12th 1968, there should have been two proud islands, side by side, in free association, both celebrating their freedom. Alas, there was pride on one side of the Indian Ocean and humiliation on the other. On the gloomy anniversary of that miserable day, some Rodriguans still hold a minute’s silence … and remember.

The flaw in the dismemberment argument is that it is predicated on the false premise that Rodrigues was a legitimate territory of Mauritius prior to Independence. This was never the case. Mauritius never discovered a terra nullius Rodrigues; it never captured Rodrigues by conquest; the British never wrested Rodrigues from the French in 1814 simply to give it to Mauritius; Rodriguans never surrendered their individual sovereignty and their territorial integrity to a ‘Pax Mauritiana’ – Moreover, the Rodriguan nation never consented to be part of, or governed by Mauritius.

State sponsored propaganda, unremittingly repeated and embedded in school children as fact, is extremely difficult to unlearn. The untainted truth is Rodrigues was part of the British Empire until 1968; today, it is an annexed country under Occupation.
It is no more a territory of Mauritius, than Hercules is a son of Zeus.

Whether Britain gifted Rodrigues to Mauritius in 1968, as it gave Eritrea to Ethiopia or whether Mauritius opportunistically annexed it, is neither here nor there.
Whatever deal, whatever collusion took place between Britain and its Mauritian colonial minister, without our consent was illegal and immoral.
It was akin to a departing pirate rewarding his faithful slave, with a slave of his own.

It was the shameless advancement of one country’s territorial ambition at the expense of its neighbour. Mauritius added 130,000 miles of our EEZ (exclusive economic zone) to its territory, and our people lost their homeland and their dignity.
The United Kingdom, Mauritius and the International community clearly understand this, as I do, as you do, as we all do … It was wrong then – It is wrong now!

In 1968, our economic or political unpreparedness should never have been used as an excuse to deny us our independence. Mauritius should have been granted its own independence separately, as Northern Rhodesia was. Rodrigues should have been placed under the guardianship of the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, as a non-self-governing territory. A pan-African commission or UN special committee for self-determination could then have put together a long term plan for Independence.

Under a mutually agreed-upon constitution, with suitable opt-out clauses, we could even have remained in free association with Mauritius, rather than being perpetually entrapped in the existing abomination, euphemistically known as ‘Autonomy’.

If historical debts, legal or at least moral responsibilities, abrogated in 1968, are made good to some extent, past injustices can be belatedly rectified. We remain hopeful.

It is not our lot in life, to be perpetually governed by other people. We did not accept non-consensual rule from France; we did not accept it from Britain – we will never accept it from Mauritius.

Ethnic Dilution

The majority of Mauritius’ 1.3 million population are descendants of Indian indentured labourers, mainly from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, brought by the British to meet labour shortages on Sugar cane plantations; whereas, ninety-five percent of Rodrigues’ forty thousand strong population are direct descendants of African slaves.

We are as distinct, as say Mexicans and Kenyans. This ethnic heterogeneity differentiates the one island from the other.

Rodriguans are not an indigenous group or an ethno-national minority seeking piecemeal internal self-rule; we are a separate people with a fervent aspiration to self-determine our future. Our case for full sovereignty is an exceptionally strong one. More to the point, we can never give up our homeland – our forefathers paid too dear a price for it!

Until recently, Rodrigues’ small maximum carrying capacity (approx.50,000) and its geographical isolation, have managed to preserve its cultural identity to some extent. However, the past few years have seen Mauritians, in ever-increasing numbers, being fast-tracked onto crown land in Rodrigues. If this trend (or government policy) continues, it is a mathematical certainty that it will dilute our ranks to a moribund minority. Much like mixing thirty bottles of beer with one bottle of lemonade – the lemonade disappears.

Once our culture, traditions, language, and way of life are gone; once we have lost our identity as a people; once our claim for sovereignty has been forever extinguished – we would have become a nation of semi-Slaves and half-repressed Serfs, stuck at the bottom-end of a Mauritian vertical class structure.

The once proud people of Rodrigues would have been reduced to a motley mob of untouchables, straw hats under the arm, bowing and scraping in the demimonde of Mauritian ghettos or eking out a living on the mountain ridges in Rodrigues.
We could never again aspire to be anything more than just half a people; we would be forever playing catch-up to other cultures. As a people, we would be dead.
For Rodriguans, this is an existential challenge. If we do not meet it, if we wait for the time that must come, we will surely follow the Dodo. This, I do not believe – I know.

Conclusion

The common Portuguese name Rodrigues (son of Rodrigo) was poorly chosen for us, by old masters, in evil times. Faced with being branded with it forever, even the brotherhood of Goblins, Gnomes and Gremlins would be reaching for the AK47. Seriously though, ‘Rodrigues’ is an old relic, fossilized in another era, clearly disconnected from and incompatible with the essence of our people. And not to mention, the blood-spattered images of Portugal’s brutal savagery in this region, which the name evokes – It is time for our generation to give it (Rodrigues) back to history.

We have lost a country – our body politic is being trampled underfoot; the stench of humiliation is everywhere; cultural oblivion looms large, and yet, we are still blighted by a small clique of bloated puppets and ‘well-assimilated’ latter-day Uncle Toms, wanting us to accept foreign domination.

Strangers overseas, who we do not vote for and cannot remove, design our electoral systems and electoral boundaries, decide our laws, taxation, tariffs, decide our health, education, foreign and economic policies. Strangers, decide our children’s future –
Strangers decide – Strangers have been deciding for the best part of 300 years.

It is time – we decided! For, we too, have a brain and a backbone. Yes, it is true! We too, have dreams and hopes of our own. It is time to cut the neo-colonial umbilical cord sharply adrift, to take active steps to decrease dependence on others, to believe that if we reduce our wants and work hard, that self-reliance is possible and indeed desirable.

It is time to stop depending on built-in assumptions, on ideas and systems that have been partly responsible for our ongoing subordination. It is time to try other ideas, other approaches, perhaps invent new ones which better adapt to our circumstances.
It is time to stop imitating others and trust in ourselves – for who we are, has worth.

Rodriguans are a resilient people. I say this, because contrary to popular belief, it is our people who have worked the land and fished the seas and kept farm animals and kept this small economy afloat – generation after generation. We have done it before, we are doing it now – we can do it better. Let’s not hesitate to continue drinking from the old well (the land and the sea), until the ghost of globalization arrives with the magic potion.

It is time to dump the usual too-poor, too-small, and not-yet-ready arguments. They are like bad records that have been played over and over again. They are intended to shackle rather than liberate. Fortunately, oppressed people the world over have ignored them, otherwise most islands in the Caribbean, Indian, Atlantic and Pacific, much of Africa and Asia, and possibly half the planet would still be under some form of colonial rule today. In any case, how large and how rich would a country need to be, for its people to qualify for their freedom? Moreover, who would decide? Our leaders must re-connect with the poor and dispossessed in this country, re-establish links with our ethnic kin in Africa, re-organize our people at the grassroots and demand that which was stolen from us in 1968 ... our Country.

Let us not be discouraged by the indifference of a dog-eat-dog McWorld, let us not dither, let us steel our resolve and demand our Independence. Let us speak of it proudly in every home, in every church, in every bazaar, in every fishing-post, on every farm, on every street-corner, on every bus and wherever or whenever our people meet.
Our task will not be without sacrifice, but if we turn our back on Independence now, we condemn our children to another 300 years of foreign domination. The alternative is simple: struggle or eternal subservience.

Our people have been the human Guinea pigs for some of the world’s most cold-blooded social experimentations. We have been at the painful-end of the whole monstrous gamut of Slavery, Colonialism, neo-Colonialism and ‘civilising missions’ of Missionaries. Despite the inhumanity, the degradation, the indignity; despite the loss of our grand African names, our sense of self, our traditional African clothing, our beliefs and our relationships with our kinfolk in Africa – we have already forgiven and moved on.

Perpetual domination is not a destination to where we want to lead our children, or as the late Pope John Paul II used to say to occupied people everywhere “you are not what they say you are; let me remind you who you really are …”

Our people have undergone a long-enough apprenticeship to be free. The time has come for us to climb out of the abyss of serfdom and view the world through our own eyes. As children of this flying planet, it is our incontrovertible right to self-determine our own future; let us exercise that right and reclaim our heritage in the human family.

With this firm wish warming our hearts, with our heads held high – let us brace ourselves to face a hopeful future with fortitude.

Vive Rodrigues … Libre

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

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Or, more importantly, would as many people stop to smell a rose by a different name? In an open letter to Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth, published yesterday, the suggestion was made to rebrand all the forms of Ubuntu as different editions of the distribution.

Renowned Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o give his views on the unrest that has engulfed Kenya since last month's disputed elections.

Writers must sometimes feel like the Greek prophetess Cassandra, gifted to see the future but fated not to be believed.

What is unfolding in Kenya could as well have been lifted from my novel Wizard of the Crow where the ruling party and the opposition parities engaged in Western-sponsored democracy become mirror images of one another in their absurdity and indifference to the poor. The picture of men and women burnt down in a church where they had gone for refuge still haunts my mind. A child running away from the fire was caught and hurled back into the flames.

One of the few survivors was quoted as saying: "But they knew me; we were neighbours. I thought Peter was a friend - a good neighbour. How could Peter do this to me?" I had heard the same puzzled cry from Bosnia. I had heard the same cry from Iraq. I had heard the same, same words from Rwanda: "We were neighbours; we'd married into each other. How could this happen?" And now I hear the same cry from Eldoret North in my beloved Kenya. For me this burning of men, women and children in a church is a defining single instant of the current political impasse in Kenya.

And this must be separated from accusations and counter-accusations of rigged elections by the contending parties. Rigged elections is one thing - it can be righted by any mutually agreed political measures - but ethnic cleansing is another matter altogether. What is disturbing is that this instant seems to have been part of a co-ordinated programme with similar acts occurring in several other places at about the same time against ordinary members of the same community.

Ordinary people do not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to kill their neighbours. Ethnic cleansing is often instigated by the political elite of one community against another community. It is premeditated - often an order from political warlords. Or it may be the outcome of an elitist ideology of demonising and isolating another community. Either way the aim is to drive members of the targeted community from the region.

Premeditated

Frantz Fanon, the intellectual visionary of the Third World, had long ago warned us of the dangers of the ideology of regionalism preached by an elite whose money can buy them safe residence in any part of a country. A single instance of premeditated ethnic cleansing can lead to an unstoppable cycle of vendettas - a poor-on-poor violence - while those who tele-guided them to war through the ideology of hate and demonisation are clinking glasses in middle-class peace at cocktail parties with the elite or the supposed enemy community.

This crime should be investigated by the United Nations.

If it is found that a political organisation has run a campaign on a programme that consciously seeks to isolate another community as a community, then they ought to be held fully accountable for the consequences of their ideology and actions. It is often easier to blame a government when it is involved in massacres. This is as it should be. A government must always be held to higher standards, for its very legitimacy lies in its capacity to ensure peace and security for all communities. But what about if such a massacre is inspired by a programme of an opposition movement?

This ought to receive equally severe condemnation from all and sundry, for being in opposition does not give an organisation the right to run on an ideology of isolation and hate targeted at another community. An opposition movement is potentially a government of tomorrow. A programme that such a political organisation draws while in opposition would obviously be the programme they'll try to implement when in power.

That's why such acts must be condemned even when they are clothed in progressive, democratic-sounding words and phrases. I therefore call upon the United Nations to act and investigate the massacres in Kenya as crimes against humanity and let the chips fall where they may. For the sake of justice, healing and peace now and in the future I urge all progressive forces not to be so engrossed with the political wrongs of election tampering that they forget the crimes of hate and ethnic cleansing - crimes that have led to untimely deaths and the displacement of thousands.

The world does not need another Bosnia; Africa certainly does not need another Rwanda.

*Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Director of the International Centre for Writing and Translation, at the University of California Irvine.

*A version of this article first appeared in BBC World Update on January 10 2008

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

Peter Adwok Nyaba critically analyses the struggle by the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement within the context of African liberation

“… [the] drive for African unity in our times requires a popular mass-based, Africa-wide political movement whose central goal is political and economic unity of African people..” K K Prah [2006]

Introduction

Before we proceed to define what African liberation is, there is need that we perceive and agree on the definition of who is an ‘African’. It would be a fatal mistake to assume that anybody on the African continent today including those who deny that identity is African. On the other hand it will equally be serious a mistake bordering on ignorance of history to perceive that people of the African descent domicile outside the continent e.g. in the Americas, Europe, Asia or Oceania are not Africans. What then is the criterion for classifying or categorising one as an African?

The Africans are the only race in the last one thousand years that has been raped, brutalised, denied its humanity, commoditised, exported like goods, its natural resources stolen by Europeans and Asians, its societies torn apart, their social bonds disrupted and compartmentalised into colonial territories. The history of the African people and people of African descent has in short been that of tremendous tribulations at the hands of nearly all the other races. No human race has gone through such a legacy and possesses such historical indignity.

An African therefore is one who or whose ancestors have gone through this experience and heritage. Black colour, although a characteristic feature of many of us, does not alone define who is African. It is the legacy of sustained dominance, exploitation and enslavement that really defines the African and people of the African descent domicile elsewhere in the world. This sustained societal domination has created a sense of belonging and other realities of its own but it is more among the African Diaspora that the urge to solidarity and identity consciousness in more evident.

On the continent this sustained domination worked negatively in many instances. It subverted the African confidence in them and created syndromes of inferiority, self-hate, and lack of self-esteem to paraphrase Prah. And many others prevalent today even in our societies e.g. the practice of skin bleaching, hair straightening or simulating the or anything European or Arab, are manifestations of this self-hate. It is in this context that we want to discuss the African liberation in all its dimensions socio-cultural, political and economic.

African Liberation

Let’s now attempt to define ‘African liberation’, what are its parameters and which social and political forces pursue this liberation struggle? In the context of decolonisation African liberation has been seen as process leading to independence from European colonial rule. Although that may be a significant aspect of it, African liberation is a socio-cultural and political process for self-rediscovery, self- re-humanisation and return with dignity into human history. Colonialism and dependence on Europe removed our people from history. Liberation essentially is the return of the African people on the continent and in the Diaspora back into history such that they take their rightful place in the course of human development. This process in the final analysis must translate into transforming the oppressive reality by which the Africans have been submerged in for centuries. Its main parameters are social and cultural emancipation, political independence, economic vibrancy, unity of the African people on the continent with their kin and kith in the Diaspora.

The oppressive reality the Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora find themselves is the reality of neo-colonialism – maintaining colonial relationships through diplomatic and economic strings which perpetuates economic exploitation and the robbing of the continents natural resources through such institutions as the Lome Convention [I, II, III & IV], the Cotonou Protocol -2000, which has perpetuated African’s dependence on the European Union. Europe continues to exploit the Africans through such agreements made by African leaders who never cared for their people. It is relationship in which Africa suffers capital flight to Europe, America and Asia to the tune of billions of dollars per year with a corresponding pauperisation of the Africans as manifested in the Human Development Indices of most of these countries.

A synoptic view of the African political landscape reveals astounding reality of conflicts, civil wars, famine, preventable diseases, and many other epidemics. Fifty years of flag independence most African countries find themselves in fiscal deficit which must be covered by donors – a sad reminder that it is ‘not yet uhuru’. They are unable to feed their own people or provide the minimum of life requirements as a result the Africans risk their lives fleeing away to become voluntary slaves in Europe, the Middle East and America. Africa is witnessing a brain drain to the West and this works negatively for Africa’s development.

In historical perspective, African Liberation and the struggle thereof is not something new. It also didn’t start with the struggle for decolonisation in the fifties and sixties. The process started against the European and Arab aggression many centuries ago. We may have to remind ourselves of the struggles against European slave merchants on the Atlantic coastal areas of Africa; against the Arab slave expeditions along the Indian Ocean coastal areas of East Africa and in the Nile Valley across the Red Sea. Africans played heroic roles against this human tragedy.

The Africans also didn’t accept lying down on their stomachs the European colonialism after the Berlin Conference 1884. We may have to remind ourselves of the Mahdi’s uprising against the corrupt Turco-Egyptian state in northern Sudan. It is a matter of fact many of participated albeit as slaves in the war against the European power. The defeat of the Italians at Adowa in 1895 by the Ethiopians under Menelik II is a vivid reminder that African people always cherished freedom in their lands.

The struggle for freedom as manifested by decolonisation of Africa was long drawn out against European colonial administration. It also included the political, military and diplomatic actions against Apartheid in South Africa which ended in the majority rule in 1994. The situation in South Africa had been describes as ‘internal colonialism’ – in which the dominant political class, representing the social, economic and political interests of the predatory white racists captured the state and used it to dominate, oppress and exploit the majority of the citizens. This internal colonialism was more vicious and ruthless than the European colonialism.

Social and political forces for African liberation

The Africans struggle for freedom started in earnest with the process of decolonisation. This struggle took different forms ranging from negotiations [Lancaster talks] for countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania [British East Africa], Nigeria, Ghana, Cameron [British West Africa], Senegal, Ivory Cost, Mali, Niger [French West Africa] among others; to revolutionary armed struggle as it occurred with the Portuguese [Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau] and French colonies [Algeria] or with armed struggle against internal colonialism as in the case of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Eritrea and Southern Sudan.

The unfortunate outcome of this struggle for freedom and independence was the confirmation of Africa’s division in the images of its former colonial masters and the perpetuation of their respective zones of influence. Africa emerged divided and fragmented after decolonisation. Nearer home in Sudan, the Acholi, Madi, Kakwa, Masaai, Zaghawa, Azande, Beja, Anyuak just to mention a few find themselves today divided by the colonial borders of the countries surrounding the Sudan. The situation is the same in many regions of Africa.

The attempt in Addis Ababa in 1962 to forge African unity in formation of Organisation for African Unity (OAU) quickly turned into leadership club, which affirmed the colonial division of Africa. It became a ‘unity’ of African leaders to perpetuate the colonial legacy of oppression, marginalisation and political exclusion of sections of their citizenry. The first phase of African liberation therefore faltered. The result of this ‘false start in Africa’ is the present crisis in which the continent is embroiled. Conflicts, civil wars, military coups, economic depression, refugees, internal displacement, are all symptoms of a serious error of judgement of our independence leaders. There is no African state that has not had a military coup, civil war, tribal wars and conflicts, etc.

African liberation is therefore a struggle against neo-colonial state. It can only occur in the context of a continental movement to which the Africans in the Diaspora may subscribe to. A continental movement which involves all the social and political forces united in their different and variegated political parties and organisations, associations, and unions. A ‘Pan African Movement’ capable of capturing the aspirations of the African people and unite them in solidarity with one another and with the African Diaspora. The Africans may borrow a leaf from the Pan Arab Movement and solidarity in terms of its form and structure but with a different social and cultural content.

Is the Sudanese people part of the African Liberation?

We in Southern Sudan are emerging from a half century struggle against the politics of racial domination, exclusion and marginalisation. The Sudanese political situation resembled apartheid in South Africa and Namibia and qualified as a case of ‘internal’ colonialism. In this context the dominant political class, representing the social, economic and political interests of the predatory Jellaba, captured the state in 1956 and used its different parameters to politically exclude from power, marginalise dominate, oppress and exploit the majority of the citizens.

Disenchanted with the historical role played by the Jellaba in slavery and slave trade, the people of Southern Sudan, had always remained suspicious and never accepted the political dispensation that ensured Arab hegemony over the whole country. The call for ‘federation’ by Southern Political elite in the nineteen fifties didn’t come out of the blues. It was anchored in the belief that the Jellaba would not accept the concept and principle of power sharing in a unitary state. The people of Southern Sudan had to fight two wars to win the exercise of their inalienable right to self-determination. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement has now made it a constitutional right and therefore a victory for all the Sudanese people.

The relentlessness with which the people of Southern Sudan pursued their political objectives played a fundamental role in the awakening of the other marginalised and oppressed Sudanese particularly those of the African stock in central [Nuba and Funj], western [Fur, Masaalit, Zaghawa, among others] and eastern [Beja] Sudan. It is worth mentioning that hitherto many of these people, submerged by the oppressive reality they lived were ensnared into the false belief that professing Islamic Religion and speaking Arabic language [culture] was tantamount to being Arab hence superior to their brethren in the South. They therefore fought bitterly and fiercely to brutalise and dehumanise their brother and sisters in Southern Sudan.

The Southern Sudan influence is manifested in the wars in Dar Fur and Eastern Sudan. This has shattered the myth and falsehood that northern Sudan was homogeneously Islamic and Arab. Yes many of them, indeed most of them, are Muslims but they are not all Arabs. As a matter of fact even those who call themselves Arabs are indeed not Arab but a hybrid race – children born to Arab fathers by African mothers. It now can be said that the Africans in the Sudan have awoken to the reality of their collective oppression. They have therefore taken up the mantle for their own liberation suggestive of their conscientisation i.e. they have correctly perceived of their submersion in the culture of oppression and therefore the need to transform that oppressive reality. Like Southern Sudanese they have now enrolled in the process of their total liberation and emancipation.

Having said that, it goes without saying that we in Southern Sudan, as well as our brothers and sisters in other parts of the Sudan, who subscribe to the definition of the African, are indeed an integral part of Africa and its liberation. It may not be a late realisation because looking back into the sixties, one of the liberation fronts established by Southern Sudanese was Azania Liberation Front, something anchored in the South African experience.

The liberation process in the Sudan now helps highlight the nature of ‘internal colonialism’ I allude to above but more importantly highlights the perennial conflicts that run across African between the Arabs and the Black Africans in Dar Fur, Chad, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Mauritania. These are conflicts to which many African leaders would prefer to squint from or fudge under the carpet of diplomacy as they flirt with Arab leaders like Gadhafi. A pan African Movement should confront this reality head-on to bring the Arab to accept the Africans as their equals.

This brings me to the recently established African Union and the proposed United States of Africa. What kind of United States of Africa including the Arabs? Going by the Arab’s attitude towards the Africans it will be like a union between the slave and his/her master/mistress. The United States of Africa is not an instrument for African liberation. Instead United States of Africa led by Mohamar Gadhafi is another was of perpetuating Arab hegemony in Africa particularly when viewed in the context of their lukewarm response to the war in Dar Fur and lack of support for the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005).

What should be done?

As part of the liberation process we need to embrace democracy and democratic principles of political organisation and action as tools for liberation. As a matter of fact this requires a high level of political awareness, consciousness and organisation. Africa has been so much segmented and partitioned that their primary conscious knowledge of themselves is their immediate clans or lineages. Even where the same ethnic community has been divided by the colonial borders people remain oblivious to the fact that they are one and the same people. We need to get out of this clannishness and look at the wider picture embracing our destiny as a people.

This discussion forum which has just been inaugurated in my opinion is a conscious attempt to start engaging ourselves in bigger issues that concern the destiny of the Africans on the continent and those of the African origin. This is a process of conscientisation which of necessity must be followed by mobilisation and organisation at every level of our society. This is because liberation will not come until we have internalised some of these issues like construction of a continent-wide political movement whose main goal the political and economic unity of the African people. Borrowing from the European theatre it is the political and economic unity that will really bring an end to the endemic wars and conflicts on the African continent.

In Sudan, we have been absorbed by our own massive problems. This has prevented many of us from engaging in regional and continental issues. The present dispensation which allows Government of Southern Sudan and the SPLM to have offices in the regions must be used to widen our contacts with our neighbours to increase cooperation in solving cross border issues, increase trade and unhindered movement of our people and their goods. The establishment of regional associations and unions of academicians, students, youths, women and political parties will accelerate this process. The movement for African liberation and unity must be two-ways traffic across the colonial borders with the ultimate objective of making these borders irrelevant in the lives of our people. This will eventually lead to the deconstruction of the colonial state and the final unity of our people.

The perpetuation of the neo-colonial state as a diplomatic as well as a reference of sovereignty was a major failure of our leaders. It is this attitude to the colonial state that witnessed the death in its infancy of the East African Community in the sixties. It is hoped the recent attempts to revive this important regional body and more particularly the joining of Burundi and Rwanda will help pull the peoples of these countries together. We are of the opinion that regional institutions of cooperation and economic integration should be stepped up and buttressed as a means of strengthening our economies to achieve genuine liberation.

The neo-colonial state, we in a misnomer, call nation state did not address the concerns of the vast majority of the African people for social and economic development. The current crisis on the continent may be attributed to the failure of the African leadership. Looking round the continent there are many failed or collapsed states. Their economies are in shambles and their people are daily escaping to other areas. Africa is experiencing a plight of its people this time voluntarily to become slaves in developed economies. This situation necessitates a second round of African liberation.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the Sudanese people are an integral part of the African liberation. But it is only those Sudanese who recognise and accept the fact that they are part of the African heritage I talked about above. The SPLM being the vanguard of the struggle of our people for the last twenty four years must continue to play this role more vigorously now than before.

The SPLM must become the rallying point for all the Sudanese in the south, east, west and north. It must engage in genuine democratic discourse and build viable, transparent and accountable relationship between the leaders and the masses of the people. It must punish clannish behaviour of some of its leaders and cadres; it must rid the government and society of corruption, nepotism, favouritism and all elements of bad governance.

The SPLM in its effort to transform into a popular mass-based political party in the Sudan must adopt methods of political organisation and action which are democratic. It should be a link between the Sudanese and the other Africans and the African Diaspora. Its departure point must of necessity incorporate a ‘firm cultural vestiture which strengths and roots African national consciousness in our cultural and historical belongings’ [Prah]. In this way the SPLM will be part of the process of uniting the ranks and file of our people across the colonial boundaries.

The Sudanese struggle for liberation, social justice, freedom and democracy is therefore part of the African liberation. We must therefore transform ourselves into conscious mass [Pan Africanist Movement] and agent of Pan Africanist ideals in this way we will have participated in the liberation of Africa.

* Dr. Peter Adwok Nyaba is the author of The Politics of Liberation in South Sudan: An Insider’s View

* This article is taken from a talk delivered by the author at Juba University on November 17th, 2007

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

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/336/45420sank.jpgAs the Charles Taylor trial continues, African historian Carina Ray looks at the possibility that Taylor was complicit in Sankara's assassination.

In January 2008, after much delay, the trial of former Liberian president, Charles Ghankay Taylor, is scheduled to begin at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Taylor faces an 11-count indictment for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other violations of international humanitarian law. These charges stem from his involvement in the atrocities committed during Sierra Leone’s armed conflict dating back to 1996, and more specifically his support of the main rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), headed by Foday Sankoh. The brutality of the war and its direct toll on the civilian population are most visible today in the thousands of amputees throughout Sierra Leone whose limbs were hacked off in a bid to stifle civilian resistance through fear. While Taylor’s path of destruction arguably came to its apex during the war in Sierra Leone, his history prior to that also deserves our scrutiny since we know his much longer record of wanton destabilization in West Africa is precisely what allowed him to wield so much power within the RUF.

In particular, Taylor’s return to West Africa from the United States in 1985 and the events that followed deserve our attention. Taylor arrived in Ghana after escaping from a prison in Boston, Massachusetts where he was being held pending extradition to Liberia on embezzlement charges levied against him by the Doe regime. Ghanaian authorities eventually jailed Taylor twice for his increasingly subversive activities. By 1987, however, he had arrived in Burkina Faso. The approximate timing of his appearance in the country coincided with the assassination of President Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, on 15 October 1987.

While it is commonly accepted that Burkina Faso’s current head of state, Blaise Compaore, ordered Sankara’s assassination after their once close relationship soured, for years people have also been linking Taylor to the assassination. In 1993 Liberian economist, S. Byron Tarr, published an article in the respected academic journal, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, on the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group’s (ECOMOG) intervention in the Liberian civil war (1989-1996). Therein Tarr gave the most detailed account to date of Taylor’s movements prior to Sankara’s assassination. According to Tarr, in 1987 Taylor approached the Burkinabe embassy in Accra to ask for assistance in overthrowing the Doe regime in Liberia. The Burkinabe ambassador to Ghana, Madam Mamouna Ouattara, a Compaore loyalist, appears to have solicited Compaore’s assistance in getting the Ghanaian authorities to release Taylor into Burkinabe custody. This was facilitated by the fact that Ghana neither wanted to hand Taylor over to the Americans nor to Doe, and so Rawlings apparently released him to Compaore who had come to Accra as part of a mediation process Rawlings had undertaken to resolve the mounting disagreements between Sankara and Compaore. Tarr, notes that “Not long after Taylor was delivered to Compaore, Sankara was murdered.” In exchange for Taylor’s assistance in carrying out Sankara’s assassination, Tarr suggests that Compaore provided assistance to Taylor who was in the process of organizing the guerilla war that would eventually lead to the overthrow of the Doe regime. Crucially, Compaore is believed to have introduced Taylor to Libyan president, Muammar Qaddafi. Taylor and his recruits subsequently traveled to Libya where they underwent guerrilla training and formed a strategic alliance with Qaddafi who supported his desire to overthrow the Doe regime. The training he gained there was critical to his ability to launch the Liberian civil war in 1989 from his base in Ivory Coast. This general version of events has been echoed more recently in articles that have appeared in several other forums, including the Liberian Democratic Future’s (LDF) on-line newsmagazine, The Perspective, and The Liberian Mandingo Association of New York’s website.

It must be pointed out, however, that this version of events has been called into question. Ghanaian political scientist Eboe Hutchful who serves as the executive director of the Accra-based NGO, African Security Dialogue and Research, has suggested that his Ghanaian informants dispute the idea that Ghana released Taylor to Compaore; rather they contend that he was taken to the Ivorian border and released there. From Ivory Coast he is said to have made his way to Burkina Faso, “where the Libyans introduced him to Compaore,” rather than the other way around. Moreover, Hutchful suggests that Sankara may have already been killed by the time the Ghanaian authorities released Taylor.

The striking aspect of each of these sources is that they treat Taylor’s possible involvement in Sankara’s assassination as a side note. To date, the question of what role he played in organizing and carrying out Sankara’s murder has not been the focal point of investigation. In March 2006 the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Sankara’s family has “the right to know the circumstances of his death.” Any attempt to shed light on these circumstances, therefore, must seriously consider whether Taylor was involved in the assassination, and if so, to what extent and under whose direction.

*Carina Ray is Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University in New York City, where she teaches African and Black Atlantic History. She is also a monthly columnist for New African magazine.

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

* Please click on the link for the article notes

Pius Adesanmi puts Nicholas Sarkozy to task on France's foreign policy towards Africa

Dear President Sarkozy,

Happy new year. This is my second letter to you since you became the principal resident of the Elysée. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I wrote my first letter to congratulate you on your election to the presidency of France and to offer a few mots de sagesse on how to successfully negotiate the intricacies of your new station. Your actions since I wrote that letter are clear indications that you agreed with some of my propositions and disagreed with others. That’s fine. That’s the essence of democracy. You must be able to disagree with me on occasion. There are certain aspects of that first letter I now wish to renounce. I wrote that letter as an African patriot who knows the history, language, and culture of France very well and who hates the uses to which those things were put in places like Indochina, Algeria, Madagascar, and so many places where your people displayed unsurpassable brutality. I wrote as someone who hated the France that participated in slavery, the France that colonized, the France that civilized, the France that tortured, the hypocritical France that still despises “le Black” and “le Beur” while parading Thierry Henry and Zinedine Zidane as its finest gifts to humanity in recent times.

I hated this France until very recently. Now I’ve seen the light! Like Doc Gynéco, I’ve fallen in love with the France of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the France of Charles Pasqua, the France of you, my brother, Nicolas Sarkozy. I take back every negative thing I’ve said, written or thought about my beloved France. Those were my days of ignorance. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! I have now washed myself clean of the blight of my uncivilized African origins. I no longer have any trace of the jungle left in me. I sleep and dream every day of my brand new Gallic ancestors. And as you know, I do not just speak French, I speak le Français de France, le Français du Français, le Français français just like brother Léon Damas of Guyana. You and I can now speak of our common heritage, our common history, our culture, and our civilization.

On the basis of our new, unimpeachable bond, I want to commend you for the valiant efforts you made to ensure that our compatriots, who were recently found guilty of child kidnapping and trafficking in Chad, were returned to us to serve their prison terms in Paris. It beats me that those uncivilized Africans would actually imagine that we would allow French criminals to serve jail time in Africa! Unimaginable. In N’Djamena of all places! Isn’t it insulting enough that dignified French criminals had to suffer the indignity of passing through an African judicial system and being treated like ordinary African criminals to boot? Imagine the emotional and psychological toll this treatment must have had on our criminals. I hope you will put pressure on the Chadian president to consider paying compensation to our criminals.

Really, these are times when I regret that we still haven’t found a proper replacement for my brother, the great Charles Foccart. There just will never be another Monsieur Afrique like him. He was a great man. He knew his Africa; he knew his Africans. They were like his children. When Charles Foccart handled Africa on behalf of La République, Africans were very well behaved children. Things would never have degenerated to a point where a whole Président de la République personally had to travel to Chad to secure the release of our criminals. One phone call from Foccart and Idriss Déby would have pissed in his pants. For more than three decades, Foccart raised and nurtured the boys who served us so well: Etienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma, Abdou Diouf, Paul Biya, Omar Bongo, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Mathieu Kérékou, Dennis Sassou Nguesso, Modibbo Kéita and so many others. Even Mobutu Sese Seko, who belonged to the Belgians, knew that his bread was buttered only when he recognized Foccart’s authority. Every family has a black sheep. Our black sheep in those days was Thomas Sankara who consistently misbehaved and reared his vegetable head on our path. Foccart arranged for him to be disciplined by Blaise Compaoré…

This brings me to my next point. In less than one year of your Presidency, you’ve visited Gabon, Senegal, Chad, and a few other places in Africa. In Senegal, you gave that great speech but Africans have reacted to it with characteristic ingratitude. No surprise here. They were never grateful for the civilization we took to them anyway. My point, however, is that you’re fraternizing too much and too frequently with Africans. It is one thing for us to make them happy by calling them partners in the Francophonie, it is another matter entirely if your behaviour begins to create the erroneous impression that the said partnership is, for us, anything more than the productive partnership between the horse and its rider. We must never forget that they are still subjects of our vast neocolony. Familiarity breeds contempt. We already have unpalatable consequences of your trips to Africa on our laps…

You have spent almost two precious decades of your public career waging a jihad against the immoral and amoral effects of the black and beur presence in our clean, pure, and intrinsically moral Aryan cities in France. You and I agree that every single problem of moral decadence and degeneracy one encounters in Paris, for instance, is attributable to the presence of those undesirable, hungry racaille from West Africa and the Maghreb. Just look at what they have turned neighbourhoods like Barbès and Belleville to! They are dirty, do not speak French, grow Islamic beards, wear Islamic foulard, marry too many wives, have too many concubines or “deuxieme bureau”, have too many children who drain our sécurité sociale. I’m not going to talk about your predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who complained, justifiably, about the “noise and odor” of these unwanted folks who invade our territoire national.

Of these undesirable attributes, polygamy, concubinage, and marital infidelity are the most alien to our pure, Christian, civilized Western culture. They are the most formidable indices of the primordial immorality of these people. This explains why your jihad against immigrants and sans-papiers has consisted in trying to demonstrate that they are just too steeped in their immoral and amoral cultures to be able to integrate fully into our civilized society. How does one expect a Malian or an Algerian not to have a harem of wives that makes a single family look like a football team? It’s their culture, not ours. How does one expect a Gabonese or a Togolese, who pretends to have only one wife, not to have a string of concubines scattered all over Paris? It’s their culture, not ours. How does one expect them not to cheat and lie? It’s their nature, not ours. The sacrosanct essence of marital vows, so fundamental in our culture, is completely alien to Africans and Arabs.

Given these incontrovertible facts, I’ve been trying to understand recent developments in your own life that are completely at odds with our culture. I am not talking about the much-publicized divorce between you and Cecilia. Divorce is the Siamese twin of marriage in our Western societies. The problem I have is with the time line of events. The mathematics is not working. No matter how one cuts it, slices it, spins it, the inevitable scenario is that you were seeing Carla Bruni – that stunning Italian model, your current girlfriend, and future Madame Sarkozy – long before you divorced Cecilia. Now, that looks awfully lot like you were cheating on Cecilia, lying to her. That looks awfully lot like you had a girlfriend or a concubine or a “deuxieme bureau”. At some point in this time line, you had a loose form of polygamy going on. Now, you have spent an entire career explaining to the world that such behaviour – the idea of polygamy, concubinage, deuxieme bureau, marital infidelity, etc – is alien to our pure Aryan culture and can be found only in the immoral and amoral cultures of folks from West Africa and the Maghreb. Do you see my problem now? Already, some mischievous African immigrants, who have resisted full cultural integration ferociously for a very long time, are now saying that if Sarkozy’s lifestyle is emblematic of Western culture, they won’t mind integrating at all! It seems to me that you are degrading our culture by making it look like the culture of Africans.

In my search for explanations, I have come up with a brilliant thesis. Since your degenerate behavior of rotating droits de cuissage (conjugal duties) between Cecilia and Carla is completely alien to our culture, you must have caught the virus during your frequent trips to Africa. I think you caught what Americans call jungle fever. Definitely, Africans are to blame for your behavior. Since you know their history so well – as your Dakar lecture reveals – you must know that the pages of our colonial library are littered with the ghosts of Europeans who ventured into the Dark Continent - the white man’s grave - and were physically and metaphorically eaten up. Those who did not die lost their minds and their souls to the degeneracy of Africa. Something about the environment, the mosquitoes, the heat, the humidity, and the incomprehensible roar of jungle drums destroys the moral compass of Europeans who venture into Africa. In your own case, you went to Africa, lost the purity of our culture, and came back a lying, quasi-polygamist, two-timing … (let’s leave the four words that would have followed to Americans).

I am trying to start an NGO in Paris. Our aim will be to sensitize our compatriots to these things and to ensure that no future President of France will ever set foot in Africa. The risks aren’t just worth the gains. This, I hope, will be my contribution to my new home, my new culture, my new society, and my new country: France!

Yours in Francophilia,

Pius Adesanmi

* Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and Director, Project on New African Literatures ( at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Apart from his academic work, Dr. Adesanmi publishes opinion articles regularly in various internet fora. He runs a regular blog for The Zeleza Post ( www.projectponal.com

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

The first pan-African satellite worth $380M is due for launch this week and is considered a turning point for the development of the continent is the sectors of new technologies and telecommunication. The project was co-financed by continental and regional banks.

Patrick Bond asks the question: With Jacob Zuma's election, shall we see a significant change in South African neoliberal policies?

Congratulations are due Jacob Zuma – apparently far more Machiavellian than even his arch-opponent since 2005, Thabo Mbeki – and the tireless band of warriors from the Congress of SA Trade Unions, SA Communist Party and African National Congress Youth League who kept his political life support on when everyone else declared him dead.

But after his election as ANC president on Tuesday, the disintegration of his voting bloc is not far off. As Brian Ashley of Amandla magazine explains, Zuma commands “a broad coalition of disgruntled elements within the ANC. A period of political instability awaits. The 'dreaded' two centres of power have materialised and given rise to a lame duck President.”

This is promising indeed, after 13.5 years of unrelenting neoliberalism mixed with triumphalist nationalism (often, in turn, flavoured with 'Breshnevite Marxism', as the ANC's left discourses have been termed in rare moments of autocritique). Indeed amongst the general public, there is a widespread conviction that a new balance of forces within the ANC presages a genuine left policy turn. To make this impression more palatable to bourgeois society and those near-mythical foreign investors, a seductive – yet incorrect - line of analysis also arises now to explain the logic behind Zuma's landslide victory. The first period of ANC rule (1994-2001) required 'macroeconomic stabilisation', so the argument goes, and subsequently a 'developmental state' with a strong welfarist bias has been under construction. Hence Zuma's victory will not change anything, really.

Actually, Zuma's huge (nearly 20%) margin reflected not a heroic new ruler, but rather a ruling regime out of touch with the misery experienced by its mass base, no one denies. The SA Police recently revealed that the rate of social protests has risen from 5800 in 2004-05 (when it would have been the world's highest per person, I reckon) to more than 10 000/year since, and no doubt even higher numbers will be released for 2007/08 given the long public workers' strike.

Zuma wasn't an instigator of more than a few of these, such as when disgracefully in May 2006 he let his rape trial devolve into an orgy of misogyny, with effigies of his victim burned outside the courthouse. No, indeed, the grassroots protests were largely against the ANC's neoliberal economic policies, prior to and after Zuma's firing as deputy president in mid-2005 in the wake of his friend Schabir Shaik's conviction on corruption charges.

Zuma was subsequently harrassed no end by Mbeki's vindictive state. This meant that at the ANC conference and in the words of commentators, the angry rumble from below was readily channeled away from structural critique of neoliberal nationalist rule, and into the song Umshini Wami ('Bring me my machine gun'). The prodigious venality of the Zuma-Mbeki squabble threw copious amounts of toxic dust high into the air, blinding most to what's really at stake here: class struggle, to borrow a worn but potent phrase.

Indeed the tone of the internecine battle with Mbeki was sufficiently vicious as to require cries of 'unity' immediately from both camps immediately afterwards, as well as from Zuma's speech on Thursday afternoon. But like much that happens in this party, the lovely rhetoric concealed yet more brutal power plays.

The other major ANC vote – for 80 positions on the ANC National Executive Committee – confirmed that the Zuma majority took no prisoners, leaving Mbeki's most trusted allies in the political wilderness. Although six cabinet ministers were elected in the top 20, those who lost their NEC places and are now ANC outsiders include some formidable names: Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (who replaced Zuma), Mbeki's top state official Frank Chikane, his top political advisor and hatchet man (and Minister in the Presidency) Essop Pahad, Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, the man who served as ANC chairperson until Monday, Terror Lekota, the head of the Mbeki's office at ANC headquarters Smuts Ngonyama, and Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqkula (formerly SACP chairperson).

The top vote-getter was veteran and often flamboyant populist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (ex-wife of Nelson), who gets counted out as irrelevant by the mainstream media periodically and makes comebacks worthy of the Zuma camp.

There really has been a change of the guard. But is it a move left? SACP intellectual leader Jeremy Cronin - who was #5 in the ANC vote – offers this spin about the party's ideological direction. The ANC conference just complete witnessed a “deepening and consolidation” of the progressive trajectory already underway, says Cronin. Hence under a President Zuma, “There would be no dramatic U-turn” on matters already under contestation: Pretoria's tight monetary policy, chaotic credit market regulation, and the liberalised trade and industrial policies which have killed a million jobs. For those like Cronin, the recent revival of the “National Democratic Revolution” is already undermining the neoliberal bloc within the ANC.

Is it? In reality, many on the centre-left – Cronin too - have been rather lukewarm about the Zuma campaign, because as national deputy president starting in 1999, Zuma was nowhere visible with workers and the poor (or women, needless to say) pulling against Mbeki and the other weighty neoliberals: Trevor Manuel (finance), Alec Erwin (trade/privatisation), Tito Mboweni (central bank governor), Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi (public service) and Sydney Mufamadi (local government). Of these, only Manuel retained an NEC seat, voted in at #57 after having been #1 in the 2002 vote.

In his first speech to the ANC as its president, Zuma himself intoned that there was “no reason why the business or international community or any other sector should be uneasy.” Quite so; after all, a mealy-mouthed Zuma made this clear last month in closed-door meetings organised by officials of two New York banks, Citi and Merrill Lynch, which are themselves making the world markets rather uneasy with their financial shenanigans.

Still, even Manuel, in a Mail & Guardian interview last week, condemned the private outsourcing of state services, something he himself has promoted harder than anyone since 1996 as keeper of the ever-tightening SA fiscus, notwithstanding that this 'New Public Management' technique is the root cause of many a fierce protest. Bizarrely, Manuel even endorsed the core legal argument put forward by the Soweto left-left in constitutional case earlier this month against Johannesburg Water (whose policies were products of Paris-based Suez's eco-social engineering during a failed 2001-06 outsourcing), namely, that the key water problem for the poor is the inordinate access that rich people enjoy at a too-cheap price.

With such rhetoric in the air these last few days, South African society does indeed feel like a 'post-Washington' semi-liberated zone. Free marketeers, who still run many a Pretoria ministry's policy units and finance departments, have had to hunker down.

But like so much other 'talk left walk right' activity here, that's precisely where the problem of seduction emerges, in illusions that Zuma's long and winding road to the country's presidency in 2009 (when Mbeki must retire) will generate conditions for social change along the route. We all witnessed how most of the US progressive movement fell flat on its face in 1993, suckered by Bill 'Slick Willy' Clinton – whose defeat of an elite incumbent (George Bush Sr), rural roots, home-boy humility, traditions of Southern patriarchy (and promiscuity) and apparent empathy for ordinary people presaged Zuma's own character flaws – and I think this is probably going to be the fate of a large portion
of the SA centre-left.

South Africa's left-left forces don't buy it, though. No one from the new social movements believes that a small increase in anti-poverty grants and other social wage improvements – amounting to less than 3% of GDP over apartheid-era stats – represents more than tokenistic welfare. With a 14% increase in electricity prices set for next year, and privatisation of 30% of generation capacity also on the cards, any suggestion of expanding basic services runs up against a contrary, commodified logic.

And then looking at the vast ($60 billion) spending planned for what amounts to a small herd of white elephants – 2010 soccer stadiums, big dams largely for mining houses, dicey nuclear power plants, aluminum smelter co-investments, speedy trains for the rich (who won't use public transport) and the rearmaments craze replete with corrupting German, French and British weapons dealers – it is hard to see anything 'developmental' about this crony-capitalist state.

Because of this week's momentous events, though, the centre-left's hard reality check lies a couple of years away, after Zuma takes power (if he is not in prison for bribe-taking, a distinct possibility, according to the National Prosecuting Authority in a statement on Thursday) and reverts to his militarist roots. Those who are championing his cause now may have reason in 2009 to renew their disgust at what we thought was 'Mbekism' – as Ashwin Desai has termed local neoliberalism - but can soon be renamed Zumism. We could well see the deepening of macroeconomic policies that do not deliver 'stability' (the currency has crashed four times since 1996 after all) but instead one of the world's highest current account deficits (trade shortfalls and financial outflows) at 8% of GDP, and hence repeated hikes in interest rates to draw in global financial assets, which are in turn making the credit-saturated middle-class scream in pain.

Unless I'm mistaken (and I really hope I am), there's simply no basis for believing Zuma is lying to Citi, Merrill or his audience when he says none of Mbeki's economic policies will change. So the root cause of the rebellion against Mbeki's malgovernance of the ANC – which is described too often as haughty style but which is grounded in a commitment to a haughty new class apartheid socio-economic structure – will reassert itself within weeks or months.

Only then will South Africa enjoy the possibility of a fully liberatory, post-Mbeki set of politics, not personalities, as the far-sighted left-left makes common cause with serious comrades in labour and the Communist Party, egged on no doubt by increasingly angry feminists and other democrats. This week's Polokwane theatrics will be looked back upon as a bit of distraction, at that stage in the making of South Africa's real history.

* Patrick Bond directs the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal:

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

From ‘Eco-Friendly Business Education’ to ‘Turning Waste into Gold’, full details of the winners of the 1st Pan African Prize for Entrepreneurial Teachers have now been officially announced. In addition to a top prize of $10,000, three winners were flown to an international conference on Financially Sustainable Education in South America to receive their awards and share their experiences.

Families who sponsor visits by overseas relatives to Britain will first have to pay a bond, expected to be £1,000, under new immigration proposals out this week. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, is also to outline plans to cut the duration of tourist visas from six months to three months and make the visa regime for business travellers to Britain more flexible.

Tajudeen to Africa and EU leaders: Who is fooling who?

In spite of all the controversies and mountains of news reports the final outcome of the Africa-EU Summit in Lisbon is nothing if not an anti climax. The joint declaration signed by the 67 leaders promised to be a new partnership that will propel both continents to ‘a new, strategic level’ which will forge ‘a new and stronger partnership that builds on their new identities and renewed institutions , capitalizes on the lessons of the past and provides a solid framework for long term cooperation’.

Why should the EU and Africa be looking for a new partnership when the much touted NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) has been in existence for the past five years?

Why are the same African leaders who claim that NEPAD is our economic blue print and the AU our political means of achieving its aims signing new partnerships? Why should other regional blocks who claim to support African initiatives using all kinds of carrots and sticks to induce us to sign new ones while making ritual commitment to support ‘African solutions to African problems’.
The Yoruba have a saying : ‘ Enia meji ki pa adanu iro, bi eniti an tan o ba mo o ye ki eniti ntan’ ni o mo’ (i.e. two people cannot both lose out on a lie, if the one being deceived does not know it is a lie , at least the deceiver should know it is a lie). The irony of Lisbon is that one is not sure who is fooling whom?

What is so new about this promised partnership which was dictated at all levels by the EU? It should rightly be called Europe’s strategy for Africa instead of the deceitful tag of EU-Africa Strategy. The basic principles, contents, negotiations and processes were dictated by the Europeans with the Africans playing catch up or merely reacting as reviewers of papers drafted by the EU and their consultants. I should know what I am talking about because I was partly involved in the CSO (more appropriately NGO) process. Instead of the European NGOs talking and partnering with their African NGO counterparts they were dealing directly with the AU bureaucrats, principally the African Citizens Directorate (CIDO). CIDO (which should be more appropriately called Centre for disempowering African Citizen Participation in the AU) then proceeded to cherry pick which African NGOs and NGIs (like myself) that they can involve. Things were not that different in the governmental processes. So bad did it become that there were deliberate leaks to NGO activists by concerned Ministers especially on EPA by African finance Ministers despairing at the bullying of African governments by the EU and their governments to force Africa to sign up by the time of the Lisbon summit.

It is obvious that the same divide and rule tactics which Europe successfully used to conquer us as slaves and later colonize and balkanize the continent into mostly non viable states was at play. How can we be negotiating with the EU as EAC, ECOWAS, SADC, etc when they were negotiating with us as the EU? Perhaps it is most appropriate that the venue of the Summit was Lisbon, capital of Portugal. Portugal was the first European country to set foot in Africa and the last to leave its colonies forced by armed struggles in its colonies. Indeed it was revolution in its colonies that precipitated revolution in Lisbon itself that freed it from Military dictatorship.

We really cannot blame the Europeans for leading us by the nose. We should ask our selves why our noses are so readily available. Why are we so ready and willing to respond to other people’s agenda with no respect for ours? Is it that we cannot refuse any invitation to dinner even if the food is not palatable or when we may be full?

Respect is not given on demand but earned by the way one respects oneself. If African leaders can sign up to NEPAD, AU, RECs and other intra African multilateral agreements and conveniently forget them whenever extra African powers come calling we cannot blame others for over writing them.

There is no amount of agreements that our leaders can sign with other regions of the world that will deliver social progress and development to our peoples unless we put our house in order and learn to deal with the rest of the world with a united front in spite of the contradictions between us. Others have their own internal contradictions too but they know where their best interest and what their long term strategies are.

If we say the AU is our primary diplomatic and political organ for Africa’s shared interests then we need to give it the essential power to do so on our behalf instead of constantly running around sucking up to any powers that claim to have interest in Africa.

The politics of the process that led to Lisbon is yet another demonstration of the ugly truth that we are yet to be taking our selves seriously and hence we belittle our own institutions and through that ourselves and privilege others in our affairs. It is time to stop this circus of Executive mileage and saver miles across the world. The leaders should just stay at home and implement all the agreements we already have to accelerate regional and continental integration. Anybody interested can come and join us as we rebuild this continent from Cape Town to Cairo. We do not need new agreements. We just need to fulfill existing ones we made among ourselves. Without this all agreements will just be like one between cats and Mice. Is there any wager who the mice are?

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN Millennium Campaign, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this column in his personal capacity as a concerned Pan Africanist.

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

Customers subscribing to iWay Internet brand are set to benefit from efficient high, quality and reliable service after the merger of Afsat Communications and MWEB Africa. Afsat and MWEB have been operating in several of the same countries, but their services were complementary and together they would have more buying muscle for renting transmission capacity from companies that operate the satellites.

When in 2003 I wrote on the Malawi discussion listserv Nyasanet, asking if anybody knew the whereabouts of Kanyama Chiume, somebody responded and said Kanyama had sold his property around 1996 and left Malawi for good, announcing that he would never be back in Malawi again, unless “in a coffin.” This week Kanyama Chiume, a Pan-Africanist who was at the forefront of Malawi’s independence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and was later forced into exile by Dr. Kamuzu Banda, will be returning to Malawi, “in a coffin.”

The World Bank has announced plans to collaborate with the African Union in exploring the possibilities for the development of a Diaspora Remittances Investment Fund, according to a statement made available to PANA. The World Bank statement said the establishment of the Fund would be based on global experiences that exploited the benefits of and leverage remittances to finance Diaspora-led development activities, in a manner similar to existing mechanisms in Latin America.

Tajudeen reflects on the the life of the late former prime minister of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the injustices he committed against the people of Zimbabwe.

We shall not mourn this racist, and nobody should make us feel guilty for our freedom!

Ian Smith died in a South African hospital on Wednesday 21 November. He died a cantankerous old man, incorrigible racist with no redeeming features and no remorse for his atrocities against the Black people of Zimbabwe whom he ruled without their consent for 2 decades until popular resistance and liberation war defeated him. He was defeated in spite of the active support of the military machine of apartheid South Africa and the not so indirect collaboration of his British first cousins and his second cousins, many times removed, in Washington and other Western powers.

These facts are worth restating here because the World has changed so much in the past 2 decades that I would not be surprised even if many Zimbabwean Young People (not to talk of other Youth in Africa) do not have a memory of Ian Smith and what he stood for. For many Young people in Zimbabwe government means Mugabe/ZANU-PF. For those of us shaped by the struggles against apartheid and racist settler regimes in Southern Africa we know about Ian Smith and Rhodesia. It is only in Africa that such evil people benefit from lopsided National reconciliation and live till their old age with impunity. One day One day we will be strong enough and stable politically to demand accountability of all our leaders past and present as it is happening in Latin America and beginning to happen in Cambodia. Let all our oppressors live till old age (at the scene of their crimes) so that justice can catch up with them.

Whatever one thinks about the current situation in Zimbabwe we should not be fooled by the western Media into believing that Ian Smith was some kind of benevolent dictator under whom Southern Rhodesia (as it was then called) prospered. The BBC has been doing its usual best in balancing this evil racism represented by Smith with their opposition to Mugabe.
They are simulating nostalgia for this vile white supremacist. If there is a hell I hope Smith is roasting in it, in the most hellish section of it!

Africans are so alienated from our political leaders that many of us find it very hard to acknowledge any good in them. Even when they are doing the right things we often suspect them of doing them for the wrong reasons. And we are reluctant to praise them because of the many false prophets that we have suffered in the past. These erring on the side of caution make us even look at our many victories with cynicism post facto.

That’s why you will hear many Africans, not necessarily apologists of colonialism or imperialism, declaring that ‘things were better under colonialism’.
It is not that they want colonialism to return (with the exception of Some Sierra Leoneans!) but they are disheartened by the inability of the post colonial government and elite to sustain the initial popular legitimacy and live up to the expectations of Uhuru in a sustainable way.

Colonial apologists in the west interpret this disenchantment to mean Africans would be better served by a return to colonial rule. This way they wash their hands off their shame and guilt of their fore fathers.

Whatever Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF and President Mugabe may have turned into it will be most erroneous and deeply offensive to celebrate Ian Smith and White Minority rule. No mater how well a master treats his Slaves on his plantation they remain slaves with little or no dignity. That was why Sekou Toure made that famous nationalist declaration against colonialism when the French offered all their colonies a choice between freedom and remaining under French tutelage in the name of French Federation. He said:
‘We prefer Independence with dangers to prosperity on our Knees’. It is the same spirit of freedom that made that foremost Kenyan Nationalist, Dedan Kimathi at the height of Mau

The likes of Ian Smith preferred that we live on our knees. Even if some of the actions of our leaders like Mugabe may tempt us to draw the unpleasant parallels we should avoid this throwing away the baby with the birth water. We can resist them the way they resisted racist oppressors but lets us not be blinkered by racist propaganda that sees only perpetual conflict and collapse in Africa since we gained our freedom from them Without the enormous opportunities for public education, building of social infrastructure and expansion of the economy and its benefits brought about by independence I for one (the son of a Tailor and a petty trader) would never have had the chance to go to school and be able to write this article.

Just ask yourself how many Black Zimbabweans were graduates, medical Doctors, Lawyers, school teachers, academicians, civil servants, even bankers, business people , investors , diplomats and even farmers before independence in 1980. As a student in England in the
80s I recall how Zimbabwean Students were an elite group to themselves, with more allowances than Nigerians and their Oil bonanza.

It is in the nature of things that the middle class that is Mugabe regime’s creation that have now become his biggest critics and opponents. They have a right to take freedom as a starting point and to desire more their fathers’ generation. However they will be committing political suicide if opportunistic alliance with the West makes them throw away their rightful inheritance by saying that Mugabe is not better than or is even worse than Ian Smith and the Rhodesians.
That way they are giving all the credits for National liberation to Mugabe and denying the contribution of their own parents and the many generations of Zimbabweans who struggled, paid with their lives and suffer many degradations so that they can be free.
Memory is very important. Even if former enemies have become our new friends we should not forget the scars.

Ian smith was bad news all his life and even in death he remains that. I cannot in all honesty say May his soul rest in peace (in PIECES, yes, please God!). It will be hypocritical. May the spirit of those Zimbabweans murdered by his regime and its criminal killer squads, the Rhodesian army and allied fascist groups, be waiting to haunt him and hold him accountable for his crimes against their humanity.

* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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

Welcome to the world of the African Diaspora Film Festival from Nov 23 to Dec 8in numerous venues in New York. This is the 15th Annual Festival. In our reality, people from diverse races, nationalities and backgrounds come together to enjoy important cinematic works of creativity, intellectual expansion, identity, and equality. In this world there are no boundaries around people because they are embraced in a universal understanding of humanity. This is the element of commonality that weaves through this annual event of images from Africa and the African Diaspora.

You are invited to endorse and register for a Trade Unions Conference for African Liberation being co-ordinated by ALISC Network and SOAS Friends of Africa on Saturday 10 November from 10 am to 5pm at Vernon Square Building near King’s Cross, Room V111, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Vernon Square Campus, Vernon Square, London WC1 (near Kings Cross)

US Report on the spread of HIV/AIDS claims one Haitian immigrant in 1969 is the cause of the spread of AIDS in the US.Leslie Fleming responds on behalf of Haiti Action.

Dr. Maryse Narcisse, member of Haiti's National Commission of the Fanmi Lavalas Party, has been kidnapped. Dr. Narcisse and her driver, Delano Morel, were abducted near her home in Port-au-Prince. Dr. Narcisse is a medical doctor and long-time advocate for democracy in Haiti. She has been in the forefront of efforts to provide community-based health care and education for all Haitians.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/324/43776-Sankara.jpgKoni Benson and Mukoma Wa Ngugi interview Aziz Fall, Co-ordinator of the International Campaign for Justice for Sankara (ICJS) on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Thomas Sankara.

President Thomas Sankara, affectionately referred to as Africa’s Che Guevera was assassinated in Burkina Faso on October 15th, 1987. Twenty years later, his assassins remain in power and continue to reverse the revolutionary changes Sankara initiated.

We interviewed Aziz Fall, the co-ordinator of the International Justice Campaign for Sankara (ICJS) who has been receiving ongoing anonymous death threats since December 2006. He has been co-ordinating 22 lawyers from France, to Senegal, Canada, Togo and beyond, dedicated to using legal means to find the truth behind Sankara’s assassination.

We started the interview by asking Aziz Fall about the death threats against him and his family, and about ICJS and the UN judgements on Sankara’s assassination. We then asked him about some of Sankara’s achievements in relation to the emancipation of women, education, and neo-colonialism in the 1980s, and then moved onto questions about power, politics, and policies in Burkina Faso under President Blaise Compaoré who has been in power since Sankara's assassination in 1987. Lastly, the interview reflects on Sankara’s legacy and his continuing relevance in this age of globalisation.

Aziz, Can you please tell us the nature of the death threats? What do they say? Do have an idea of where they are coming from? Are they from the government? Third parties? Is it one person or several people etc?

Thank you. I’ve received four death threats since December 2006. Three letters in bubble envelopes left in the mailbox at my front door. The first one was simple and said “stop or be stopped,” the second was similar but didn’t mention my name, and the third was a little more explicit, mentioning my name, asking me “to commit suicide or face execution.” I filed a complaint with the police in March 2007.

Then, in April, after the screening of a film on Thomas Sankara in Montreal, a young Burkinabé journalist, Sam Kah, who appeared in the film, received a threat, according to the organising committee of the Thomas Sankara 20th anniversary commemorations. The committee had invited both of us to their activities which take place Oct 11-15th, 2007. Following the threat against Sam Kah, I decided to tell the committee members about my own death threats, which I had previously hidden from them because I was worried it would have a demobilising effect.

They issued a press release concerning the threats against the two of us. A couple of days later, I received another threat, this time by phone. A man with a strange accent warned me that neither the police nor my lawyers would be able to protect me, and that since I still didn’t understand, my family would be targeted first, then me.

At about this time, someone tried, unsuccessfully, to break into my home through the back door. This was discovered as we were installing an alarm system.

We don't know exactly who is behind these threats. But we have good evidence that a Frenchman and two Africans have something to hide, because they have been caught in a number of lies and contradictions. The police and CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, are still investigating. That’s all I can say at this point.

It is unacceptable that as an advocate of freedom and justice, I am being physically threatened in a country that promotes these basic values around the world. We have approached the Canadian authorities about this situation, and we have great hope that they will do everything to solve the matter.

Can you briefly talk about the International Campaign Justice for Sankara (ICJS) and GRILA? How does the United Nations judgement (in which the Committee considers that the refusal to conduct an investigation into the death of Thomas Sankara, the lack of official recognition of his place of burial and the failure to correct the death certificate constitute inhuman treatment of Ms.Sankara and her sons, in breach of article 7 of the Covenant) affect the search for justice on behalf of Sankara?

Sankara's widow, Mariam Sankara, and his two sons never abandoned their call to the international community to take action to bring his assassins to justice. Ten years ago, the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA, an internationalist and panafricanist group) answered that call by creating an international campaign with a twofold strategy involving a political component and a legal one. I had the honour of co-ordinating a team of 22 lawyers, which put together a case for a full investigation into the murder of President Sankara and a dozen of his colleagues.

The government of Burkina Faso, under the presidency of Blaise Compaoré, along with a highly compromised judicial system, blocked all efforts by the Campaign to bring the case to court. After exhausting all possible legal recourse within the country, the Campaign brought the case before United Nations Human Rights Committee. Just over one year ago, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in favour of the International Justice for Sankara Campaign, and demanded that the government of Burkina Faso take action to shed light on the circumstances of Sankara's death.
(See )
That was actually a world first, and certainly a legal precedent in Africa, creating a breach in the cycles of impunity that characterize the political life of our continent. There is also a link between the Sankara case and the trial of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian head of state, who plotted with Compaoré in the assassination of Sankara. We expect the final UN judgement to be announced later this year and really hope that it will represent a major step forward in the global struggle against impunity.

What were some of Sankara's achievements, be it in the emancipation of women, education or rolling back neo-colonialism?

Our organisation (GRILA) and the revolution in Burkina Faso are the exact same age and we have many things in common. So we may sound pretty subjective when it comes to our assessment of what was achieved in those three years. Sankara tried to put into practice most of the key elements of our own philosophy; among other things, the destruction of all forms of racism and ethnocentrism, with the Bambaata summit and the anti-apartheid struggle; the respect of collective and human rights; the struggle against regimes allied with imperialist interests; a balance between rural and urban incomes; food self-sufficiency; the fulfilment of basic needs. A key issue for Sankara was the political, economic and social emancipation of women and the transformation of sexist mentalities. That particular aspect was crucial in a very traditional society where sexism was so with entrenched. Men were invited to go to the market once a week, women were appointed to key State positions, and civic rights and the constitution granted women important advantages.

While there were mistakes and contradictions due to the weakness of his alliances, Sankara was steadfast in focusing on other key issues as well, issues that are still cornerstones to our own work, namely, popular and civic participation, popular democracy and the promotion and empowerment of Africa's youth. Sankara promoted self-reliant, ecologically sustainable development, and invited locals and foreigners alike to plant trees; the emergence of regional panafricanist states that were politically and economically accountable to their citizens, as evidenced by his attempts to unite with Ghana. Sankara was committed to fighting corruption, and personally served as a very modest example, refusing to live a life of luxury and reigning in any tendencies by those within his government toward ostentatious consumption.

Are some of these changes still visible or has the Compaoré government managed to erase all of them?

While the Sankarist regime laid the ground for stability and a better form of development, it is clear that the international order ensured that Compaoré's regime did not take the same path. Compaoré’s regime was also involved in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean crises and wars, generating tremendous wealth for itself. The government has become very wealthy, which has allowed it to bribe some of the opposition elite, while intimidating or killing others. Within the framework of the neo-liberal agenda and the French zone of influence among its former African colonies, the regime has been able to establish a formal democracy and to reproduced itself, and in so doing has widened the gap between the haves and the have nots.

Compaoré has recently amended the constitution so that he can run for a third term which means he will have been in power from 1987 to 2012.

A very common phenomenon in Africa indeed. It's a pity, but history will judge. Killing your comrades and opponents and tailoring the constitution to fit your needs is nothing new. Even if the population is frightened, and busy surviving the harsh conditions of unequal development, there is no doubt that one day it will rise up against this.

How do the people of Burkina Faso regard Sankara today? Is he still part of the political imagination?

In general, people have a lot of admiration for him despite of the regime’s anti-Sankara propaganda and intimidation. The teenage generation doesn't know him well, and many may just know him as an icon. However, it is heartening that at the African social forum in Bamako, Sankara was chosen as a leading model. As my comrade Ameth Lô wrote, “The Sankarist alternative remains, therefore, entirely relevant in addressing issues surrounding development and lasting sovereignty. It is a panafricanist socialist alternative, focused uniquely on meeting the needs of the African masses, impoverished by decades of structural adjustment programs that had no results other than to ensure continued payments to shameless creditors for the so-called debt that's not only immoral—since a third of the initial debt has been repaid—but also because the borrowed funds were never injected into the economic and social fabric of these countries.” (see http://www.grila.org/e_forum.htm)
We'll see how the population will react on October 15, but it is clear that Sankara is going to be celebrated in many countries this year, which has been named Sankara Year by his supporters. That is surely a great sign of vitality and political imagination!

How does Sankara challenge the idea of revolution today? What is his legacy? What is his continuing relevance in this age of globalisation?

I think that GRILA is living proof of that legacy, and that the struggle that is at stake, in this process of so-called African union and various attempts at integration, has to consider what we are still advocating, namely: democracy and progressive strategies that focus on self-reliant and popular development. Africa should rely more on its own forces, within a socialist and panafricanist perspective, and develop strong ties with other third world countries. This form of development entails subordinating external demands to internal needs. A consciousness that is increasingly homogenised by the dominant values of today's globalized world system, however, is incapable of envisaging such a path. As the Burkinabé revolution was trying to achieve, GRILA's task as well as that of any other progressive political force in Africa, should be to contribute to re-politicizing the discussion around development, fostering a new political consciousness, and channelling the efforts of an organic intelligentsia that will be capable of building an alternative to the disorder now ravaging Africa.

How are these challenges being addressed today—locally and internationally?

For us it is important to continue the work. We will not be intimidated. Locally the Sankarist movement, despite numerous factions, is more united and better organized. In many African countries and in the Diaspora, Sankarist clubs and associations are mushrooming. A lot of people expect that history will repeat itself in a cyclical fashion. But each society is confronted with new challenges, and will take different roads. It appears to me that as long as the contradictions of capitalism deepen, and societies continued to be destroyed by the capitalist way of life and production, we have no choice but to invent more progressive and internationalist paths in order to tackle the barbarism of globalisation and the forces that dominate it.

* Koni Benson is a researcher at the International Labour Research and Information Group in Cape Town.

* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change (KPH, 2003), and editor of the forthcoming, New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.

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