In a series of alerts in 2004 we examined media coverage of events surrounding the military coup that forced Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile on February 29, 2004.

A shocking new report in the British medical journal the Lancet on human rights abuses in Haiti finds that 8,000 people were murdered and 35,000 women and girls raped during the U.S.-backed coup regime that followed Jean Bertrand Aristide. Those responsible included Haitian police, United Nations peacekeepers and anti-Lavalas gangs.

Early in July I was in Banjul, the capital of the country that dubs itself ‘the smiling coast of Africa’, for the AU Summit. A year had elapsed since I last saw many of the political elite who make it a point to attend these gatherings. I am referring to the media professionals and the NGO types.

Many of my friends, especially those in the AU whom I had branded as ‘bureaucrats of our Union’ ‘AUcrats’, and ‘AUrats’ were already waiting to confirm if it was indeed true that I had recently joined the UN Millennium campaign.

I had to keep reminding myself that it was in fact the truth. I couldn’t help thinking that either there was something wrong with me or them. Of all possible employers, it had to be the UN! Crowds of people wanted to exchange business cards with me. They did not want my new business card to correspond with me. Believe it or not, they wanted to keep my card as a souvenir. For them, the card represented ‘Taju joining the system’ or ‘Tajudeen selling out’.

The AUcrats had a field day taunting me as a latter day ‘UNOcrat’ and ‘UNORat’. All my attempts to convince them that I am still within the CSO community, for the UN Millenium Campaign is meant to empower citizens of the world, went unheeded. One of them even boasted to me that I would be saying ALUTA STOPEE instead of ALUTA CONTINUA soon! Time will definitely tell.

I was barely two months in the Campaign but somehow people were looking for evidence that I have mellowed or been bought over. Those who have not received my weekly column now believe that it must be because the UN has put an end to my writing career. Many now look for evidence in my writing that I have had a paradigm shift in my political worldview.

I had arrived in Banjul with an even bigger change in my public persona. After two decades of serious Piping I had given up smoking. The obligatory pipe dangling from my mouth was no longer there.

It was the second day of the Summit when one of the sisters observed that ‘something has changed about you’. Those present chorused: ‘He has joined the UN’ but she disappointed them by saying that my detour into what many of them regarded as ‘behind enemy lines’ was not it. Someone also observed that I had lost a few pounds. Thanks to the craze for losing weight these days, it could have been misinterpreted as evidence that ‘the man is going’ as we euphemistically refer to people suspected of living with AIDS in Uganda. But my weight loss was not due to any dietary change but the result of a serious bout of Malaria.

The sister asked people to guess what could be amiss about my physical appearance. It was not like I was wearing a three-piece suit and a tie in tropical conditions. So what were they supposed to be looking for?

I was in my “Acting Big Man” full Nigerian National Regal Attire. That did not come as a surprise to many, for an enduring popular aspect of the AU razzmatazz is the orchestrated display of colourful African dresses with the West Africans, invariably leading the pack. However, there seems to be increasing competition for the lead role from other regions, especially Southern African women.

So if there was nothing amiss with clothes, what then was the problem? Finally, with the smugness of the only one who knows and the sense of discovery comparable to Newton discovering the Laws of Gravity, she shouted: “Look at him! The pipe is missing.”

Everybody started demanding to know where the pipe was. Instead of congratulating me, they wanted to know why I had stopped smoking.

I had stopped smoking over a year earlier. I must emphasise that I had not stopped because I had realised that smoking was dangerous and bad for my health. Every smoker knows that (and does not care about the legal warning) just as alcoholics know that liquor is not good for their health.

When it comes to alcohol there is still a half hearted debate about whether alcohol is good when drunk in moderation. There is no such debate about smoking. Those who smoke pipes delude themselves that they smoke less. But the truth is that it is the same nicotine.

So, the message should not be ‘smoke less’ but ‘do not smoke at all’. Even now that I have stopped the impact of my previous smoking will be with me till the grave. And what is frightening is that my second-hand smoke might have affected someone else’s health.

It is often said that smokers are the only true Socialists left because they share their smoke with you whether you like it or not. This is why smoking ceases to be a matter of personal choice.

Suppose I had designs to poison my family or circle of friends or whole community, wouldn’t the State be compelled to put me behind bars? Yet smokers are doing this every time they smoke.

I am no latter day convert to ‘no smoking evangelism’. I do not wish to preach to people. I still miss the buzz and elation of bonding with complete strangers, the cancer friendships, the emotional release and other feelings that go with smoking. I am still very tolerant towards my former comrades. But I hope for those still in the Club that the puff they are now blowing is their last one.

What prompted the change was a plea from my older daughter, Aida, 10.

On a wintry morning, I was taking her and her younger sister, Ayesha, 6, to their school in North London. I rolled down my window for my first puff of the day (which any smoker cherishes. I must add that at the time our house had become a Talibanesque no smoking, no drinking Sharia Zone!).

Out of the blue, Aida said: “Baba do you know that you will not see me graduate?” I was shocked and asked why she was talking death at 8.00am. She said: “Because you are smoking.” And proceeded to reel out all the medical, social and environmental reasons befitting kids brought up on ICTs. Gone were our days of ‘do as you are told’, ‘do not speak unless you are spoken to’ and grandfather of all indiscipline, to correct the Mzee!

I was happy and saddened at the same time. I was happy that my 10 year old daughter was confident that she was going to graduate, but sad that my lifestyle was making her feel that her father might not be there. The buzz, the urge and everything that goes with that puff drained out of me that morning and ever since I have not filled up the pipe again.

Africa is far away from the litigations nightmare of the US that makes long-term smokers go to court to prosecute tobacco makers for not warning them that smoking is bad for their health!

Be that as it may, it is a scandal that tobacco companies just like oil companies and other corporations get away with serial murders in Africa and other Third World countries. It is not just their exploitation of the environment and people, but that most of their adverts would not have been broadcast or published in the West.

Tobacco and alcohol advertising are still booming in the poorer countries, where both political corruption and weak regulatory capacities allow big corporations to do what they like. They also present themselves as “partners- in-development” because of the economic contributions they make to tobacco growing countries. They have loads of money to advertise, and the media is financially dependent on this.

Governments may be compromised, and media owners reluctant to act but as individuals there are little things we can do. For me the least of the actions I can take begins with the picture editors at New Vision newspapers in Uganda, the original publishers of this column.

With this article I am making a public break with the tolerated poison industry that the tobacco industry represents. I am no longer active in the fraternity. I may not be able to stop the British American Tobacco and other tobacco companies but at least I can demand that The New Vision no longer uses a picture of me with a pipe.

I hope my good friends Owori Charles, Kevin and Sue O’Connor in the East African branches of the anti-smoking lobby ‘Tobacco or Health’ and others who have written to me take this as a public atonement and a determination to affirm life instead of being an accessory to my own death and that of others. There should be nothing glamorous about smoking. The tobacco corporations have too much money to convince and confuse the public about their merchandise. So, it would be an act of making the rich even richer on my part were I to appear with a pipe every week in my newspaper column.

From now on I say: not in my name.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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

George W. Bush - the master of fabricated distractions-as with the false pretense invasion of Iraq-has turned the national television news media away from the United States. So it was a sobering reversal of direction to watch ABC's August 24th Primetime Special Edition "Out of Control: AIDS in Black America." It marked the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS and the last documentary that the late Peter Jennings worked to put on the air.

On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina we speak with Jed Horne, an editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and author of "Breach of Faith."Horne says, "Louisiana is part of the old south...The mayor is a Democrat but could probably be called a neoconservative. He's as much a believer in the kind of free market, less-is-more approach to government as Karl Rove, one of his mentors."

The future National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC will fight the tendency not to dwell on slavery and other negative events because these experiences are often essential to African American culture. It will also provide inspirational stories and lessons, and highlight the importance of African American history to the United States.

reviews: "The major chapters in this book deal with things from getting started (you're not using Ubuntu yet? Hello?) to setting up a server for a small office. 100 hacks, 414 pages, and a tuning fork on the cover (which must be confusing Darwin, wherever he is). This is one of the books I really went into because I use Ubuntu on one of my systems."

The Irish know a lot about colonialism and oppression. They know what it means to be occupied, humiliated and oppressed, denied dignity and humanity on your own God –given soil. They are the first and last colony of the British. They have rebelled, sabotaged rose up in arms, and fought many wars, against the British in order to secure their liberation. Thus one of their famous nationalists, Connolly, knew what he was talking about when he stated: ” A nation that holds another in bondage cannot itself be free”.

Ireland did win its independence from Britain but not as a united country because the British gerrymandered the borders of the Irish counties and manipulated the Independence referendum in a way that ensured that a pro colonialist (otherwise called Unionist) majority was guaranteed in six of the counties which became Northern Ireland’ within the United Kingdom. The Irish Nationalist never accepted the division of their homeland and this gave rise to armed resistance by the Irish republicans through the IRA (Irish Republican Army). After decades of armed struggle, despite protestations to the contrary, it was no less a conservative ‘Queen and Country’ party than a Margaret Thatcher led Conservative government, that began negotiations with the terrorists’ that finally led to the Good Friday agreement and ended major active hostilities between the British and the IRA in Northern Ireland.

The history of British colonial domination across is full of repeats of this pattern of public declarations that ‘we won’t talk to terrorists’ but making deals behind closed doors usually after realizing that they cannot defeat the ‘terrorists’ militarily. Former British terrorists included many Israeli Zionists like former Prime Ministers Begun, Rabin, Sharon and others who were leading members of ‘terrorist’ cells that waged a campaign of terror, murders and assassinations to chase the British out of Palestine and establish the Zionist state of Israel. Many people regarded as national heroes in Israel were at one time or the other under ‘terrorist watch’ by the British. But today all that is forgotten with Britain as the most pro –Zionist state in Europe supporting anything that the Americans are doing in their uncritical support for anything that Israel does.

The history of Israel as a Zionist state and the collective memory of pain, suffering, oppression and humiliation as a people, either in Biblical Egypt or fascist and genocidal ‘modern’ Europe, should have taught them that no matter how unequal the power balance, oppressed peoples will always rise. Even if all the powers in this world combine to hold them down they will always find a way to affirm their humanity.

Its current unjust war of destruction and campaign of annihilation in Lebanon is a glaring example of how it might be able to be right. The attacks on Lebanon are ostensibly justified as ‘retaliation ‘for the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese resistance group, Hizbollah whom they regard as terrorists. But three weeks into the this unequal tragedy it is clear to anybody that even if the two soldiers were not abducted Israel would have found another reason for ‘reinvading’ Lebanon, a country from which they were expelled by the same Hizbollah and other patriotic Lebanese forces.

How much is the life of an Israeli worth? On the principle of a-life-for-a-life how many more Lebanese children, women and innocent men have to be killed, orphaned or widowed before Israeli lust for blood is satiated? Lebanon has been bombed continuously for three weeks, its infrastructure destroyed in a vengeance spree of collective punishment by the Israeli Army. Those that have the power to moderate Israeli militarism, principally, its biggest backer, the USA, have egged it on against all pleas by the UN and other members of the international community, for a ceasefire. Instead the US and its loyal poodle, the British Prime Minister, have speciously insisted that Lebanon somehow brought this unto itself. They have not learnt their lessons from Palestine. They humiliated Yasser Arafat in life and death, orchestrated the succession of Abbas but still gave nothing in return to show that ‘moderation’ can deliver, and were later surprised that Hamas won a democratic election. No sooner than Hamas was elected they began a campaign of blockade and sanctions that punishes the Palestinians for voting democratically!

In Lebanon only two years ago, we are made to believe a popular uprising of Lebanese democrats, eschewing foreign intervention consequent to the assassination of the popular PM, Hariri, led to the exit of Syrian forces. It is this same democratic government that is being ‘supported’ by invasion. Israel like its Anglo-American backers has a weird way of ‘bombing people for freedom’ despite trying it in Iraq and Afghanistan without evident success. Instead of securing their illegitimate occupation of Iraq through divide and rule of the population, what their occupation has done is to unite Iraqis in a patriotic resistance against foreign domination.

No fewer outcomes will come out of the current attacks and occupation of Lebanon by Israel no matter how long it takes. I saw a young woman interviewed the other day who summed up both the mixture of hopelessness and defiance when she said: “Lebanon has seen war before and we survived………… we will survive this one too and the Israelis will leave our country...”

Does this mean that there is nothing that anyone of us can do? There is a sense of powerlessness and anger by many that given the power balance even if you do not support the Israelis you have nothing but moral outrage to help the Lebanese or the Palestinians. We should not underestimate the power of moral outrage. The ANC and other Liberation Movements in South Africa like the Mau Mau fighters in Kenya before them or the Algerian Resistant Movement before that, and the Madiba, who is now venerated by everybody, used to be regarded as terrorists.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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

"The Ebon Run" is the Black-oriented human-rights magazine that allows the people themselves to write their own articles in their own words and have them distributed to the people. It is YOUR magazine to use to get the word out regarding vital news and info. Partners are needed in order to develop and expand this critical project.

To mark Liberia’s Independence Day, Liberian-Americans and concerned consumers from 36 states are joining Friends of the Earth, International Labor Rights Fund, Institute for Policy Studies, TransAfrica Forum and other members of the Stop Firestone Coalition in telling Firestone that “80 years of exploitation is enough.” As part of the first national day of action organized by the Stop Firestone Coalition, participants will be delivering letters to Firestone Complete Auto Care in Wheaton, MD and to retailers across the country in an effort to urge the tire giant to end its long history of perpetuating slave-like conditions on its rubber plantation in Liberia.

The second Conference of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora (CIAD II) was held in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil, from 12 to 14 July 2006.

The conference, under the theme “The Diaspora and African Renaissance”, was officially opened by the President of the Republic of Brazil, Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Alpha Omar Konare, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, and several African and Caribbean Heads of State and Government attended the opening.

Four round tables and twenty-four thematic parallel sessions allowed some 1000 academics, artists, civil society activists and political leaders to discuss thoroughly key issues related to African political, economic and cultural Renaissance and the effective participation of African from within and outside Africa in this mission.

West African Correspondent for Pambazuka News, Hawa Ba, attended the conference last week. Her reports are available at the AU Monitor website.

Attending a memoriam for Ghana's Dr Busia, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem describes his reactions to the speech made by Akwais Aidoo, Director of the newly founded TrustAfrica Foundation. There is a need, he suggests, for us to engage - and engage seriously - with our political opponents, rather than merely reacting to them - we may find we are holding both ends of the same stick. Sectarianism has caused too much division in the Pan African movement, and much of it based more on prejudice than a clear understanding of the actual differences - which is needed if we are to influence others holding different political positions to our own.

Accra, the capital city of Ghana, is my favourite city on the west coast of Africa. It is peaceful, fairly well-planned, though it is rapidly growing into a mega city with all the attendant problems of pollution, insufficient infrastructure, extreme poverty amidst riches, slums, etc. It is also badly copying Lagos in ‘go slow’ (traffic hold-ups) on the major roads but thankfully not up to the manic levels yet.

There is also the general friendliness of Ghanaians and Pan Africanist awareness. To many people the obvious pull of Ghana as a whole is because it gave us Kwame Nkrumah. You cannot walk around Accra without feeling the proud heritage of Pan Africanism and the high hopes and dreams that once bestrode this country that blazed the trail of popular struggles for independence. Not only Pan Africanist heroes /heroines and cities are so honoured other icons of Third World struggles like Gandhi, Nehru, Sukano, Ho chi Mi, Castro, etc have streets named after them. Civil rights figures like WEB Du Bois, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Junior, are all represented in this city of Circles and Statutes.

For those of us who are unashamedly Nkrumahist, Ghana will always mean Nkrumah and vice versa. It also means that, either consciously or unconsciously, we make political choices either for or against political figures and parties in Ghana based upon our loyalty to the Osagyefo. In the pantheons of our hate figures in Ghanaian politics Dr Kofi Busia, a political rival and opponent of Kwame Nkrumah is probably top of the infamous club. The mere mention of his name to many Pan Africanists of the Nkrumahist tradition invites many unprintable reactions. The death of both men many years ago has not diminished the political hostility between their supporters.

Fifty years since Ghana’s independence and more than 6 decades since the political lines were drawn in the epic struggles for independence, several regimes down the line including two failed revolutionary attempts, prolonged military rule and now an increasingly confident democratizing environment, Ghana politics is still very much polarised between the BUSIA-DANQUA group and the ever fractious and sectarian broad Nkrumahist tradition. Not even 20 years of JJ Rawlings’ rule both in its brutal first ten years and authoritarian reluctant democrat of the second decade has changed this division. Broadly even his regime is seen (at least by the Busia-Danquah people) as part of the Left/Nkrumah family not withstanding the fact that at a personal level the Man either hated or is hostile to Nkrumah.

Nowhere is the saying: 'never say never' more applicable than in politics. I could not imagine myself attending a political memoriam for Dr Busia despite my tenuous link to him academically through St Peter’s College Oxford of which he remains the most famous Alumni. It became stranger still that I should be attending such an event under the auspices of the Busia Foundation. Yet on Monday 10 July at the British Council Auditorium in Accra I went to listen to the 3rd Annual Memorial Lecture in honoor of Dr Busia organized by The Busia Foundation set up by his aged widow. I have nothing against the family personally. Prof Abena Busia, who is co-chair of the foundation, is a sister I know and respect hugely and her cousin, Nana Busia, is a fellow Pan Africanist soldier. The problem is just inherited political prejudice. What really persuaded me to go was the Guest Lecturer, a senior comrade (even if his perpetual youthful face does not indicate he has become a Mzee too) and Pan Africanist of the same Nkrumahist orientation, Dr Akwasi Aidoo, the Director of the newly launched TRUST AFRICA Foundation. I had to take a second look at the advert when I first saw it in the papers on the morning of the event. Like other Nkrumahists (admittedly few), I later met at the talk I wondered what Akwasi will say about Busia in such a public space that is so tied up to a man we grew to loathe politically? Indeed I felt like a gate crasher at the event.

However I was glad I went. The Lecture was very measured, carefully crafted and calibrated. He began by identifying why we needed to hear about Busia and other leaders who made great contribution to cause of liberating our peoples. One, we did not know the man beyond the prism of those who opposed him because he was a political opponent of Nkrumah and those who lionized him because of that. Two, there is a benign if not a calculated political and intellectual neglect of the man. Three, reaction to Busia was often based on political prejudices without due recognition given to him first and foremost as a credible intellectual who took himself seriously, researched and wrote voraciously addressing what he considered challenges of his time. In particular the man regarded education as key to ending poverty, bringing prosperity and modernizing the society. Finally Akwasi, for the first time, even to the Busia family with whom he has been close for many years, acknowledged his personal debt to Busia who had paid part of his school fees purely out of a chance meeting with the Young Akwasi in his home village. The family was to discover later at his funeral the many people whom Dr Busia had personally helped on the ladder of self-reliance and achievements through education.

Akwasi then sought and succeeded in many ways to take the audience on a journey to meet and get to know Dr Busia. He did not hide his political position and did not shy away from mentioning Busia's controversialist politics be it the aliens compliance act or the devaluation of the Cede, and mother of all, promotion of dialogue with apartheid South Africa, etc. But they were done in measured tones. There was a stage I felt he was being too accommodating but I stayed much longer than I thought I would and learnt to unlearn some of my prejudices about the man. The lecture did begin a necessary interrogation and engagement with our lived political experience that is not just about Busia or Ghana. It goes to the heart of the biggest challenge facing Africa today as we struggle to create a society in which the majority of our peoples are not victims but agents of change and a leadership that is organically linked to serve them and not just rule over them. When we look at the nationalist elite regardless of where they were politically whether as presidents or opposition leaders they took themselves seriously, tried to understand their society, study it and proffer solutions. They were both intellectually and politically much more in charge then than now.

How many of our leaders today, whether holed up in State houses or hankering after same in opposition, can we say are applying themselves both intellectually and politically to the challenges we face? It is not just that they are not thinking but they actively discourage original thinking. Thinking has been contracted out to 'experts' often meaning non-Africans while development is delegated to humanitarian agencies whose stocks rise with every disaster we suffer.

The other lesson I took away from Akwasi’s lecture is the need to engage and engage seriously with even our political opponents, read them and understand why and what we disagree about. Sometimes we may just be holding different ends of the same stick. You will be surprised how much you share with your opponents if you only learn to listen, persuade instead of trying to convert but above all have the humility and the intellectual and political integrity to accept that your opponent may sometimes be right. Politics should be an art of the possible and the possibilities include those who may not agree with us.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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

Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum. Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.

Community Groups met last Friday (July 7) to discuss strategies to counter what is perceived as government ‘propaganda’ plans for the 2007 Bicentenary to 'dishonour' the memory of African people who fought for their freedom and resisted enslavement. To many of the organisations present at the forum with, held at Kingston University, the name itself is offensive and seeks to present Africans as mere victims in what the establishment refers to innocently as the ‘slave trade.’

The Ghanaian Minister for Tourism and Diasporean affairs, Hon. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, addressed a special briefing session last Friday (July 7) to launch an initiative for the year 2007 to “heal and reconcile” relations between Africans at home and abroad. Among the Joseph Project’s immediate objectives are to establish Ghana as the gateway for the return of Africans from the Diaspora to the continent.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem reports on the pomp and ceremony at the 7th AU Summit in Banjul, wondering how a poor country like Gambia can afford to host such a grand occasion. There were notable absences including of Uganda's Museveni, but newcomers included the Chinese, Indianns, the Iranians, and Venezuela's Chavez. Civil Society Organisations held a number of initiatives including a Question Time Africa where Liberia's President Sirleaf and Rwanda's Kagame were interrogated by activists. With the main theme of the Summit being regional integration, Tajudeen returns to his bugbear about the impediments to free movement of Africans who need visas to visit African countries, while non-African foreigners fly around with ease.

The African Union ended its 7th Ordinary Session of the General Assembly of heads of State and Governments in Banjul, Gambia on monday 3rd of July. The razzmatazz of state events , that surrounds these events may sometime make people dismissive of them as the most expensive celebrity watch on the continent. Yes, They do not come cheap and it is obvious that many of the states cannot afford to host these summits yet the allure of publicitry and the political and diplomatic prestige that comes with hosting it make many of them to even go into debt to host it.

The big question on everyone's lips in Banjul was how a poor country like the Gambia found the money to host such a grand occasion. A brand new Executive estate of Presidential Villas were builft for the Summit in addition to a new International Conference centre. This is not talk of the brand new Four Wheel vehicles, loads of Mercedes Benzes smelling of fresh factory paint and other expoensive vehicles conveying the different delegations in blazing heat and entourage of motor cades and outriders on new monster machines. I do not think that the people of this peacful country officially titled 'The Smiling coast of Africa' had ever seen any thing that big before and may not see such in the near future. Eklections are also close therefore the Government and ruling party (APRC) of President Yayah Jammeh milked the occassion for what it was worth. It was like the whole of Africa has endorsed Jammeh why would Gambians not do the same?

One of the changes that has happened in the new AU is the amendment to the old practice of host nations becoming chair of the organisation. This is no longer the case. That was why Sudan could not assume the chair even as it hosted the last Summit. And Yayaha Jameh thankfully will not become the chair otherwise he could even milk it more in domestic politics as Africa having voted for him.

The AU Summits also provide an opportunity to monitor, study and observe intra African politics and the power play between our Leaders but also between Africa and the rest of the world.

For instance a noticiable absentee from the Summit was President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. He used to be a heat with media and other heads of state throughout the 1990s but in recent years as he clung to power in Uganda his pan Africanist stocks have fallen. In the past any host wanted Museveni to confirm fist, because that was going to make others to attend. But these days even his absences are not felt!

The other interesting power monitor is the presence of foreign dignitaries. The Chinese and the Indians, historical allies of Africa but increasingly acknowledged as Global powers feared by the West, were in Banjul in full force. Ofcourse the various western powers who have traditional considered Africa as their excllusive areas of domination were there with the Americans muscling in on everybody in their familiar arrogant ways.

But their current bad guys were also their gamely spirit. Ahmedtijane, the President of Iran and President Hugo Chavez were both there. Chavez was in his element, defiant, resisting and anti imperialist. Ahmed Tijane came with a motor cade of awesome Hommer vehicles as long as those holywood Chevrolets or streched Limos! There was mild drama when the technical equipment failed in the middle of his now very familatr speeches that keep Washington and tel Aviv awake. Many suspected sabotage by, you know whom. The meeting had to be suspended for a few hours.

That little drama for me shows the lack of capacity of some of our states. How can a government that spent so much money on the pomp and pageantry of the Summit not have prepared itself for possible technical sabotage? There walk outs by some western Observers at the meeting coorniating their activities thru SMS texts. Again this exposes our vulnerability. It riases the perennial issue of why we should have so many Westerners whether government or NGOS always having access to our activities at the highest level while we do not have same in their forum but more importantly we limit access by our own people.

It is easy to get lost in these power plays and forget other important events that surround the Summit including the Summit agenda itself. There were a number of CSO/NGO parallel activities before and during the Summit which built upon the spaces that have been opening up since the innauguration of the AU. A number of African CSOs have been raising concerns about CSO participation in the Union which has so far been limited to invited spaces that are too much under the control of the bureaucrats of the Union whether it is through ECOSOCC or the Commission. The tendency is also to allow CSO activities to hold before the Summit and literally drive them out of town by the time the big guys come save for the few who may have secured 'observer' 'special Guest' or other access badges. While the invited spaces are useful it is also important the CSO and other stakew holders have independent spaces whose agenda, content and programmes are determined by them and they can invite the AU and the leaders to them. A meeting of CSO was held in Nairobi earlier this year before the Khartoum summit to build consensus around emerging issues in CSO-AU engagement.

In Banjul we made some progress through a forum organised by the UN millennium Campaign, Africa Office; Africa Regional Policy department of Action Aid Internationa; and the Pan Africa Policy Programme of Oxfam with the suppoort of Action Aid Gambia, Gambian and Pan African CSOs. It was a first at an AU summit. Prtesident Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, both participated in the Forum which is broadcast by SABC whose anchor man, Moses moderated the Panel. It is called QUESTION TIME AFRICA. The Presidents were asked questions by an audince of laregely CSO/NGO activists. Issues covered included the state of the Union, political commitment of leaders to make it work, aid, trade, debt relief, fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals and Yes, issues of juystice, governance, impunity, and many others. It was a good start and both sides see the forum as developing in future summits.

The main theme of the Summit was rationalisation of the regional Economic communities in order to strenghten integration. It is an issue that has been on the agenda for many years. It is simply unworkable that we should have competing instead of complimentary regional blocs and still claim that we want to unite the whole continent Now the decision is that new ones will be recognised while the various regions will work out modalities for rationalising those existing. It is still a work in progress but necessary if the Union is to fulfil its mission of uniting the peoples of this continent. On the whole the problem of uniting Africa is really a contradiction between two opposaing view points. Do we want to unite states or unite peoples? So far all efforts have been directed at uniting states that are probaby not unifiable given the ahistorical and inorganic nature of most of them. but peoples are and can be united. One first step is to set our people free for them to move, live and settle across this continent. A sad reminder of the indignities we suffer as Africans was the experience of many people who had to langush in Dakar airport on theiur way to AU summit because they did not have 'Transit visas'. It is in the poweer of all our states and leaders to remove the visa requirement for all Africans and if they cannot do it we cannot trust them when they proclaim Pan Africanism. We should embark on a consistent advcacy of naming and shamning those governments and states that put impediments to free movement of Africans but welcomne non African foreigners. A gallery of these Pan Africanist rogue states may be launched from summit to summit while we also create awards for those opening up other Africans. So leaders can choose to be Villains or Defenders of Unity of our peoples.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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

Edited by Kevin Yelvington, this book breaks new theoretical and methodological ground in the study of the African diaspora in the Atlantic world. Eleven leading scholars of archaeology, linguistics, and socio-cultural anthropol-ogy draw upon extensive field experiences and archival investigations of black communities in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Africa to challenge received paradigms in Afro-American anthropology. The contributors address colonialism, the slave trade, racism, ethnogenesis, New World nationalism, urban identity politics, the development of artworlds, music and its publics, the emergence of new religious and ritual forms, speech genres, and contested historical representations.

Whilst Tony Blair and his celebrity cohorts sing the familiar tune of ‘aid for Africa,’ the African Diaspora in the UK are looking at more sustainable options for eradicating poverty on the continent. AFFORD will focus on job creation at its annual event.

A pastor from South Africa living on the Isle of Man who brought Africans to the UK illegally to work for as little as £1.36 an hour to build himself a luxury house received a six - month jail sentence, suspended for two years last week.

Now that the 40th anniversary of Stokely Carmichael’s changing the direction, tempo and agenda of the civil-rights movement by chanting the phrase “Black Power!” in Greenwood, Mississippi has passed with scarcely a notice from black folks, perhaps it’s time to evaluate black power’s successes and failures.