some tips: sunsets and starvation are good

Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in you title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai' 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum' 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas' 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' mean Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

* Binyavanga Wainaina is the founding editor of the literary magazine, Kwani? This article is from the latest edition of Granta, a magazine that publishes new writing - fiction, personal history, reportage and inquiring journalism - four times a year.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Msia Kibona Clark explores the relationship between African Americans and the ‘new Diaspora’ of African immigrants to the United States. The relationship is not one that is without conflict, she writes, but argues that the two groups can no longer continue to segregate themselves from each other. In the future, the voice of African immigrants is likely to gain ground in areas of both domestic and foreign policy as Africans and African Americans prove to be valuable resources to each other.

(See French version below)

Africans and African Americans have always had a delicate and intricate relationship that has been influenced by history and perceptions. Phillipe Wamba, himself bi-cultural, once described the “fascination” Africans and African Americans have for each other as two groups which have been “gazing at each other across the Transatlantic divide like a child seeing itself in the mirror for the first time”. Well, today that “Transatlantic divide” is getting narrower. More and more Africans are coming to the United States, and these “distant cousins” are forced to, at the very least, acknowledge each other.

This acknowledgement, however, is not translating into a family reunion. African and African American social relations are dysfunctional at best and hostile at worst. The tensions that exist between Africans and African Americans in the US promise to reach a boiling point. In fact, there have been random cases of conflicts between African and African American students in American middle and high schools, as well as workplace conflicts over the hiring and promotion of one group over the other. While there are bright spots of cooperation and interaction, Africans and African Americans tend to segregate themselves from each other while harboring stereotypes and misconceptions that have prevented wide scale social interactions.

Every year Africans are entering American cities in larger numbers. In 1989, over 25,000 Africans immigrated to America. In 2001 the number of African immigrants doubled to more than 53,000. Over 75% of the African immigrants in the US today, in fact, arrived after 1985. And these numbers don’t include the more than 10,000 African students that enter US universities every year. In fact, many historians estimate that more Africans have immigrated to the United States since 1980 than came to the United States during the entire period of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Many of these Africans are moving into metropolitan areas, like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, and changing the face of African America, in much the same way West Indians did generations earlier. While there have always been Africans in America, the dramatic increases in African immigration in the last twenty years have made them an important part of the American landscape in general and the African American community in particular. In the past, the majority of African Americans, who did not consider African immigrants a strong presence, and who often did not even know they were here, overlooked the small numbers of Africans in the US. With the current, and rising, number of African immigrants in America, African Americans are encountering Africans on a daily basis, from New York City to rural Alabama to the midwestern cities of Ohio and Minnesota.

This trend is also having an impact on the African American community in the Washington, DC area. With between 80,000 and 93,000 Africans, the area hosts the largest number of African immigrants in the country. African immigrants (80,000-90,000) in the Washington, DC area even outnumber Caribbean immigrants (49,000) in the area. Washington, DC is, in fact, home to a diverse group of pioneer African immigrants who have made up the community’s diplomatic core and which have provided foundations for recent African immigrants. Washington, DC, is also home to one of the nation’s oldest majority Black metropolitan areas and one of the nations largest historically Black universities (HBCUs), Howard University, all making for an interesting mixture of peoples of African descent.

Africans and African Americans in the Washington, DC, area, like in other parts of the country, come into direct contact with one another at school, at work, and in their neighborhoods. These contacts are shadowed in stereotypes of Africans as either poor and uncivilized or smart and arrogant. African men are also seen as domineering and African women as passive and accepting of the abuse they get at the hands of oppressive African men. African Americans are seen as lazy, obsessed with racism, and lacking a culture. African American women are seen as loose, while the men are seen as violent criminals. The Nigerian slang word “Akata”, which Americans were first exposed to in the film “Sugar Hill”, is a word used by some West Africans to refer to African Americans. The word, roughly translated, is a derogatory term meaning “savage”, “slaves”, “captives”, or (like in Sugar Hill) “cotton picker”. These are some of the images that tend to hover over any contact between Africans and African Americans.

Not wanting to paint a completely hopeless picture of African/African American relations, there are important areas of cooperation between the two groups. Outside of the many friendships that have been formed by members of either group, African immigration to the US has also translated into more marriages between Africans and African Americans. Some research says that there are more Africans married to Americans of African decent than to Americans of European decent. There is also cooperation in the realm of activism. While Africans have yet to become involved in large numbers in domestic issues (police brutality, affirmative action), African Americans have a long history of championing African causes. Organization such as Africa Action, Africare, the African American Institute, IFESH, and TransAfrica are all African American organizations that employ and work with Africans on issues impacting Africa. In the area of pop culture, R&B artist Akon, a Senegalese, has made a name for himself in an African American dominated genre. Also, hip hop artists like Common and Wycleff Jean have collaborated with African musicians, linking hip hop artists in the Diaspora to those in Africa, something unheard of ten years ago.
Overall contacts between Africans and African Americans are often complex and multi-layered. Economic background, level of African-centered consciousness, length of time in America, age, and family influences, all play a part in the interactions between Africans and African Americans.

For example, Africans who have been in the United States longer, tend to have a better understanding of the African American community and the politics of race in America. This is especially true of those Africans who immigrated to the US at a young age. This younger group is more likely to have African American friends and to socialize in circles outside of their immigrant community. Another very important link in African/African American contacts are bi-cultural children. Those born of one African and one African American parent are often the link that ties the two communities together. They often spend much of their lives translating the culture of one group to the other. It is often a mixed blessing to be bi-cultural, to be part of both communities, and to be caught in the middle of the tensions that both communities continue to hold on to. This group, however, also serves as a critical link in any hope of bridging the gap between these communities.

The case of bi-cultural children and young African immigrants brings up another interesting piece to this puzzle: identity. For the African American community, identity has been an important part of African American self-determination. African Americans have always determined who and what constituted an African American identity. African Americans have traditionally been thought of as those whose ancestors came to America via the transatlantic slave trade. African immigration is now challenging that identity in ways West Indians did not. Today’s African Americans may not necessarily have a history rooted in the transatlantic slave trade. Second-generation African immigrants and bi-cultural children have a different history and culture, but a number of them identify, at least partly, as being African American. Some of these Africans have never been to Africa, and look, sound, and act (and in some cases, feel) more like African Americans than they do like Africans.

The research, in fact, says that children of African immigrants are African American. While other research refers to this recent wave of African immigrants in the US as the “new Diaspora” and to the Africans who are coming to the US as the “other African Americans”. Academia, however, does not necessarily determine real life perceptions. Identity is fluid and multi-layered, and at times conflicts. As more Africans are arriving on American shores, African Americans have to deal with the implications of these “new African Africans”. No longer can the two groups continue to segregate themselves. Groups like the NAACP and the Urban League have, in the past few years, begun to at least acknowledge the presence of African immigrants in America. That has to translate into an inclusion of their issues in the African American agenda. African immigrants represent a legitimate voice in this country and have the potential of reaching a similar level of influence that other immigrant groups have in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy. We already see Africans playing an increasingly larger role in lobbying American foreign policy in Africa, a role that was primarily filled by African Americans. Aside from all the wonderful ideas of Pan Africanism, Africans and African Americans would prove to be valuable resources to each other. Likewise, the definitions of who is African American will likely change in the coming generations to make room for the Africans who are continuing to arrive in the United States in record numbers.

* Tanzanian born and American raised, Msia Kibona Clark is half Tanzanian and half African American. She holds a BA in Political Science from Johnson C. Smith University, an MA in Comparative and Regional Studies from American University, and is a current PhD Candidate and Sasakawa Fellow in Howard University's African Studies Department. Her research focuses on African immigrants in the US and their impacts on African/African American interactions and identity. In addition, Msia is the Ugandan Country Specialist with Amnesty International, works as a Book Reviews Editor with AllAfrica.com, and has done consulting and lecturing with several organizations.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Les Nouveaux Afro-Américains ou l’influence de l’immigration africaine sur les relations panafricaines et l’identité noire aux Etats-Unis
de Msia Kibona Clark

Les Africains et les Afro-américains ont toujours eu des rapports fragiles et compliqués qui ont été influencés par l’histoire et les perceptions. Philippe Wamba, lui-même biculturel, décrit la « fascination » qu’ont les Africains et les Afro-américains l’un pour l’autre comme deux groupes « qui se contemplent à travers le Transatlantique comme un enfant qui se voit dans un miroir pour la première fois ». Aujourd’hui, cette ligne de partage transatlantique se rétrécit. De plus en plus d’Africains partent pour les Etats-Unis, et ces « cousins éloignés » se voient obligés, tout du moins, de se reconnaître.

Toutefois, cette reconnaissance ne se traduit pas en rencontres familiales. Les relations sociales entre les Africains et les Afro-américains sont au mieux, troublées et au pire, hostiles. Les tensions qui existent entre les Africains et les Afro-américains aux Etats-Unis promettent d’atteindre un point d’ébullition. Il y a eu, en effet, certains cas de conflits entre des étudiants africains et afro-américains dans des établissements d’enseignement secondaire du premier cycle et des lycées américains. On note également des conflits sur le lieu de travail déclenchés par l’embauche et la promotion d’un groupe par rapport à un autre. Même s’il existe des cas plus positifs de coopération et d’interaction, les Africains et les Afro-américains ont tendance à s’isoler les uns des autres tout en nourrissant des stéréotypes et des idées fausses qui ont empêché des interactions sociales plus répandues.

Chaque année le nombre d’Africains arrivant dans les villes américaines s’accroît. En 1989, plus de 25 000 Africains ont immigré aux Etats-Unis. En 2001, le nombre d’immigrants africains a doublé, atteignant plus de 53 000. En effet, plus de 75% des immigrants africains aux Etats-Unis aujourd’hui sont arrivés après 1985. Et ces chiffres n’incluent pas les plus de 10 000 étudiants africains qui se font inscrire dans les universités américaines chaque année. En fait, plusieurs historiens jugent que le nombre d’Africains qui ont immigré aux Etats-Unis depuis 1980 dépasse ceux qui étaient venus aux Etats-Unis durant toute la période de la traite transatlantique des Noirs.

Bon nombre de ces Africains se déplacent vers des régions métropolitaines, telles que New York, Los Angeles et Washington DC, modifiant ainsi le « paysage africain » des Etats-Unis, de plus ou moins la même manière que les Antillais quelques générations plus tôt. Alors qu’il y a toujours eu des Africains aux Etats-Unis, la croissance spectaculaire de l’immigration provenant de ce continent pendant les vingt dernières années leur ont assuré une place importante dans le paysage américain en général, et plus particulièrement dans la communauté afro-américaine. Dans le passé, la majorité des Afro-américains, qui ne considéraient pas la présence des immigrants africains comme étant significative, et qui souvent ne savaient même pas qu’ils étaient là, négligeaient la communauté peu importante d’Africains aux Etats-Unis. Avec le nombre actuel d’immigrants africains, qui est en hausse aux Etats-Unis, les Afro-américains et les Africains se rencontrent au quotidien, depuis la ville de New York jusqu’aux régions rurales d’Alabama en passant par les états du Midwest tels que l’Ohio et le Minnesota.

Cette tendance influe aussi sur la communauté afro-américaine de Washington DC, région contenant le plus grand nombre d’immigrants africains du pays entier, entre 80 000 et 93 000. Le nombre d’immigrants africains (80 000 - 90 000) dans la région de Washington DC est même supérieur au nombre d’immigrants venant des Caraïbes (49 000). En effet, Washington DC est le domicile d’un groupe comprenant divers immigrants africains pionniers qui ont constitué l’essentiel du corps diplomatique de la communauté et qui ont bâti les fondations pour la récente immigration africaine. Washington DC abrite également l’une des régions métropolitaines à majorité noire les plus anciennes ainsi que l’une des plus grandes universités traditionnellement Noires (HBCUs), l’Université de Howard, tout cela contribuant à un mélange intéressant de peuples d’origine africaine.

Tout comme ailleurs dans le pays, les Africains et les Afro-américains se rencontrent à l’école, au travail et dans le voisinage. Ces rencontres sont imprégnées de stéréotypes, qui dépeignent les Africains comme étant pauvres et barbares ou raffinés et arrogants. Les hommes sont aussi perçus comme étant autoritaires alors que les femmes sont soumises et acceptent les abus exercés sur elles par l’homme africain tyrannique. Les Afro-américains sont considérés comme des paresseux, obsédés par le racisme et dépourvus de toute culture. Les Afro-américaines, quant à elles, sont perçues comme ayant des mœurs légères alors que les hommes sont des criminels violents. Le mot argotique nigérian « Akata », auquel les Américains furent confrontés pour la première fois dans le film « Sugar Hill » est un mot utilisé par certains Ouest-africains pour faire référence aux Afro-américains. Le mot, traduit de façon approximative, est un terme peu flatteur signifiant « sauvage », « esclave », « prisonnier » ou (comme dans le film), « cueilleur de coton », voulant dire « sale ». Ce sont là quelques unes des images qui planent sur tout contact entre Africains et Afro-américains.

On est loin de vouloir peindre un tableau totalement désespéré des relations africaines / afro-américaines car il existe aussi des terrains importants de collaboration entre les deux groupes. En sus des relations amicales entretenues entre les membres des deux groupes, l’immigration africaine aux Etats-Unis a aussi abouti à une augmentation de mariages entre Africains et Afro-américains. Les recherches avancent qu’il existe plus d’Africains mariés à des Américains d’origine africaine qu’à des Américains d’origine européenne. On note également une collaboration dans le domaine de l’activisme. Alors que les Africains ont encore à s’engager en grand nombre dans les affaires locales (la brutalité policière, la discrimination positive), on sait que les Afro-américains défendent depuis très longtemps la cause africaine. Des organisations telles que Africa Action, Africare, The African American Institute, IFESH, et TransAfrica sont toutes des organisations Afro-américaines qui emploient des Africains et travaillent avec eux sur des questions concernant l’Afrique. Dans le domaine de la culture Pop, l’artiste Sénégalais de RnB, Akon, s’est fait un nom dans un style de musique dominé par les Afro-américains. De plus, des artistes hip hop tels que Common et Wycleff Jean ont collaboré avec des musiciens africains, rejoignant les artistes hip hop de la diaspora à ceux de l’Afrique, du jamais vu dix ans auparavant.

En général, les rapports entre Africains et Afro-américains sont souvent complexes et multidimensionnels. Le milieu économique, le niveau de conscientisation à la chose africaine, la durée de leur présence en Amérique, leur âge, les influences familiales, tout influe sur les rapports entre Africains et Afro-américains.

Les Africains qui sont aux Etats-Unis depuis plus longtemps, par exemple, ont tendance à mieux comprendre la communauté afro-américaine et la politique des races en Amérique. Cela s’applique surtout aux Africains qui ont immigré aux Etats-Unis à un jeune âge. Ces derniers, plus jeunes, ont probablement plus d’amis afro-américains et ont tendance à fréquenter des cercles autres que leur communauté immigrante. Les enfants d’origine biculturelle constituent un autre lien très important dans le contact africain / afro-Américain. Ceux nés de parents dont l’un(e) Africain(e) et l’autre Afro-américain(e) sont souvent le lien unissant les deux communautés. Ils passent fréquemment une bonne partie de leur vie à transmettre la culture d’un groupe à l’autre. Dans de nombreux cas c’est souvent un avantage incertain d’être biculturel, de faire partie des deux communautés et d’être pris au milieu de tensions auxquelles chaque communauté s’accroche encore. Toutefois, ce groupe sert aussi de lien crucial dans tout espoir d’établir un rapprochement entre ces deux communautés.

Le cas des enfants de naissance biculturelle et des jeunes immigrants africains confère une autre dimension intéressante à cette perplexité : l’identité. Pour la communauté afro-américaine, l’identité a toujours constitué un élément important de leur autodétermination. Depuis toujours les Afro-américains ont l’habitude de définir de qui et de quoi est constituée l’identité afro-américaine. Les Afro-américains ont traditionnellement été considérés comme ceux dont les ancêtres étaient arrivés en Amérique lors de la traite des Noirs. Aujourd’hui, l’immigration africaine remet en cause cette identité comme ne l’ont jamais fait les Antillais. L’histoire des Afro-américains d’aujourd’hui n’est pas forcément ancrée dans la traite des Noirs. La seconde génération d’immigrants africains et d’enfants de naissance biculturelle possède une histoire et une culture différentes, mais certains d’entre eux s’identifient, du moins en partie, aux Afro-américains. Certains de ces Africains n’ont jamais été en Afrique, ils agissent (et dans certains cas, se sentent) plus comme des Afro-américains (auxquels ils ressemblent d’ailleurs) que des Africains.

En fait, les chercheurs s’accordent à dire que les enfants d’immigrants Africains sont des Afro-américains ; par ailleurs, d’autres chercheurs font référence à la récente vague d’immigrants africains aux Etats-Unis comme « La Nouvelle Diaspora » et aux Africains qui vont aux Etats-Unis comme « les autres Afro-américains ». Toutefois, les recherches et les études effectuées ne définissent pas forcément les perceptions réelles de la vie. L’identité n’est pas de caractère fixe et elle comporte plusieurs aspects qui se contredisent parfois. A mesure que plus d’Africains atteignent les côtes américaines, les Afro-américains ont à faire face aux conséquences de l’arrivée de ces « nouveaux Africains africains ». Les deux groupes ne peuvent plus continuer à s’isoler l’un de l’autre. Depuis les dernières années, des groupes tels que NAACP et The Urban League, reconnaissent au moins la présence d’immigrants africains en Amérique. Cela signifie que leurs problèmes doivent faire partie de l’ordre du jour de la communauté afro-américaine. Les immigrants africains représentent une voix légitime aux Etats-Unis et ont la capacité d’atteindre un niveau d’influence similaire à celui que d’autres immigrants ont en matière de politique locale aussi bien qu’étrangère. On aperçoit déjà des Africains qui jouent un rôle de plus en plus important dans le lobby de la politique étrangère américaine en Afrique, rôle qui était au début rempli par des Afro-américains. En sus des idées extraordinaires du panafricanisme, les Africains et les Afro-américains représenteraient des ressources précieuses entre eux. De la même manière, la définition de l’Afro-américain changerait probablement pour les générations futures, laissant la place aux Africains qui continuent à affluer aux Etats-Unis en nombre record.

* Msia Kibona Clark, de naissance tanzanienne, a été élevée aux Etats-Unis ; elle est mi tanzanienne et mi afro-américaine. Elle détient un diplôme en Sciences Politiques de l’Université Johnson C. Smith et est également titulaire d’une maîtrise en Etudes Comparées et Régionales de l’Université Américaine. Boursière Sasakawa au sein du Département des Etudes Africaines à l’Université de Howard, elle prépare actuellement son doctorat. Sa recherche porte sur l’immigration africaine aux Etats-Unis et son incidence sur les relations africaines / afro-américaines et l’identité. De plus, Msia représente l’Ouganda au sein d’Amnesty International et travaille comme rédactrice de comptes rendus pour AllAfrica.com. Elle a aussi été consultante et conférencière auprès de plusieurs organisations. Lors de ses fonctions professionnelles et de ses recherches qui portent sur la Diaspora africaine ainsi que sur la pensée féministe, elle a été amenée à visiter l’Afrique orientale et occidentale, Cuba et le Brésil.

Msia Kibona Clark étudie le rapport entre les Afro-américains et la « nouvelle diaspora » des immigrants africains s’installant aux Etats-Unis. Elle estime le lien non pas sans conflit mais elle est d’opinion que les deux groupes ne peuvent continuer à se dissocier l’un de l’autre. A l’avenir, il est probable que la voix des immigrés africains se fera entendre de plus en plus dans le contexte de la politique intérieure ainsi qu’étrangère à mesure que les Africains et les Afro-américains se révèlent mutuellement utiles.

Texte traduit de l’original sous la direction de Vanessa Everson (maître de conférences au sein de la section de français de l’université du Cap) par Kesini Muregesan.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem begins the year with no resolutions and no predictions for 2006. But he does say goodbye to one aspect of 2005 that he found particularly irksome – the missionary focus on Africa by the likes of Tony Blair and Bob Geldof and the way in which leading NGOs were shamelessly co-opted by power. “I hope that in the New Year these NGOs will start looking more to Africa and Africans rather than false prophets, saviours and messiahs from outside,” he writes.

It is the end of one year and the beginning of another. It is customary to look back on the outgoing year, recalling the high and low points while looking forward to the New Year with hope and expectation - and sometimes trepidation about things foretold or just expected. Many people also engage in ritual New Year resolutions that habitually do not survive the New Year celebrations!

This column will not review the whole year. I am also engaging the good sense gear not to make any predictions for 2006 so as to save myself the trouble of verbose explanation why they did not happen, this time next year. And as for New Year resolutions, I save myself both embarrassment and disappointment in one go by not making any. This makes everything that may happen, whether welcome or unwelcome, a surprise all the same.

Instead of a review of the whole of 2005 I will just look at one issue that became almost an obsession for me throughout the year.

The year 2005 will go down as one in which so much was promised to Africa and in which so little was achieved. But the subterfuge helped clear any lingering scales on our eyes that foreign-do-gooders will help fix Africa.

We were told several times by all kinds of do-gooders that 2005 was Africa's year. These expectations were based on a dubious coincidence outside of Africa. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, assumed both the Presidency of the European Union and Chairmanship of the G8 Rich Vultures' Club and promised to make Africa his priority. Prophet Blair, who did not officially visit Africa throughout his first term (except for an obligatory photo call on Nelson Mandela), decided that, to cleanse himself of the blood of innocent Iraqis that he helped his buddy, barmy Bush, to exterminate, Africa would be his salvation.

Leading British NGOs led by OXFAM, who even had one of their former top ranking officials in Downing Street as an adviser, saw Blair's missionary view of Africa as a wonderful opportunity for funding and willingly went to bed with Blair.

Their shameless embrace of Blair is only comparable to the grotesque scandal of Western journalists becoming embedded with the Anglo-American imperialists in their illegal occupation of Iraq. These NGOs now have to search their souls during 2006 and ask if their collusion with power was worth it. But since they are not accountable to the people they serve they continue to talk up their treachery as success. What kind of success is this for debt relief that sees Nigeria paying back over three billion dollars to Britain alone, a figure more than the total aid budget of Britain in the same year?

What kind of opportunity for Africa is 2005 when pressures have to be dissipated on making the USA through its UN ambassador, the UN-hating Bolton, to accept not to eliminate the acronym, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set five years before? If it took so much effort to defend the acronym alone how much will it take to achieve the goals? If you are still in doubt about how bad things are, the recent WTO meetings in Hong Kong should put paid to any illusions. There was no movement on the big issues and decisions are delayed for yet another round of negotiations between the cats and the mice of the global economy. The cats will not give up their right to eat the mice while the mice have to do everything to escape being gobbled up.

It's a clear frontier but many Western NGOs confuse their domestic audience and their conniving Southern activists in facilitating the illusion that some cats are less greedy than others. Many Southern activists know this not to be true but carry on with their northern patrons because their jobs and careers depend on it. The campaigns offer individual poverty alleviation mechanisms without making a dent on the global and national structure of power that impoverishes the masses of their peoples. Whatever Bob Geldof, Bono and other busy-body new missionaries in the west may do, poverty can neither be danced out of town nor be talked out of existence with prime ministers and presidents. It is a poverty of history to think and act as though a few rock concerts will change the situation. No matter how many billions watch the concerts.

So grim are things that Bob Geldof has now become an adviser to the new Conservative leader, newly cloned Blairite, David Cameron, on global poverty. Having tried Blair and New Labour the patron saint of Western NGOs has gone for the Conservatives! I guess after trying the fake Tory why not go for the real thing? Are Oxfam and their assorted fellow travelers in Africa now going to persuade us that Cameron is the new face of the war on poverty?

It is clear that the British and other Western NGOs make adjustments to their own political environment and find relevance whoever is in power, but because our own NGOs are donor-driven, lacking a social base in our own societies, they have proven themselves incapable of doing the same. Therefore they declare themselves only independent of African governments and are not accountable to African people but dance to the tunes of their funders. I hope that in the New Year these NGOs will start looking more to Africa and Africans rather than false prophets, saviours and messiahs from outside. The fact that the majority of our peoples survived to see the dawn breaking on 2006 has nothing to do with what Blair, Brown, Bob and Bono (I often wonder why their names are all 'B'?) did for them or to them but the direct result of our will to live and overcome. In saying bye-bye to 2005 lets say bye bye to the B stars in the global pornography of poverty that dominated the multimedia during the year.

Happy New Year to you all.

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

* Please send comments to [email]editor@pambazuka.

While the African born make up a small proportion of the foreign-born population in the United States, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants born in Africa over the past couple of decades. As a group, the African born are more likely to be proficient in English, work in higher-level occupations, and have higher earnings than the overall foreign-born population. However, closer examination of the African born immigrants from specific countries reveals a great deal of diversity in migration patterns, political conditions, economies, and group histories.

The Pan-African Associations of America is a California 501(c)(3) Non-profit organization. Their mission is to promote the economic, cultural and political cohesion of African descendent and related cultures worldwide. Visit their website for more information.

The clock is ticking when it comes to current peace talks on Darfur currently taking place in Abuja, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. But this time its not the Government of Sudan who is the spoiler at the talks, but rather the rebel forces, most of whom do not represent their people and are using their time in Abuja to snuggle up to Western donors and have a holiday at the expense of the international community.

This week is very crucial for the now-on-now-off African Union sponsored peace negotiations on Darfur in Abuja. The agreement on security is supposed to be signed failing which these round of talks could be declared dead and all the negotiators, peace envoys, rebels, government representatives and the assortment of various 'international' (meaning non African and predominantly European and American) supporters of the peace negotiations should do their tax payers a big favour and pack their bags and go home.

It is a big irony that the main culprits for this failure will not be the usual first suspect of everyone: the Government of Sudan. There is no doubt that the government is a bad government that is decapitating its opponents and aiding and abetting atrocities in Darfur and also implicated in the imploding civil war in Chad. While the government of Sudan may deserve most of the criticisms against it the obstacles to peace in Abuja are sadly fully manned by the Darfur rebel groups: JEM (Justice for Equality Movement) and SLA (Sudan Liberation Army) and the way in which their international backers continue to treat them with kid gloves and thereby encourage their belligerence.

So fixed are many on the vile nature of the Khartoum government that by definition anybody opposed to it, for whatever reasons, must be good. So desperate have various sponsors of the negotiations become that they seem prepared to get an agreement at all cost. The obsession with delegitimising the Sudan government even while negotiating with it has produced a mixed signal of inertia. At what stage does the illegitimacy of the NIF/CP government become delegitimation of the Sudan state?

These factors have prevented a more objective appreciation of the situation. The painful truth that must be faced is that neither JEM nor SLA (as presently constituted) and the various factions within and between them with their fluid alliances and struggles for personal power and prestige, are in a position to make any deals that will hold for long. How can one justify the enormous expense of having over a hundred rebels in Abuja for weeks and months with only a few of them able to engage in any serious talks and the majority just playing spoilers or peace vultures? They are becoming to Abuja what, for many years, Burundi rebels or Somali factions became to both Arusha and Nairobi respectively: Permanent tourists sponsored by the international community as a kind of direct aid to the local hospitality and leisure industry.

The rebels' attitude makes it much easier for the Sudan government to do nothing other than just watch its ill-prepared bunch and bands of armed rebels. Consequently Khartoum's representatives and commitment remain untested by the mediators and the rebels on many issues because the rebels are too absorbed in their own self-importance to concentrate or focus on the larger picture. While the Sudan government has in Abuja obviously experienced, informed and well connected security and political figures, the rebel groups have chosen to send largely ineffectual, faction-ridden elements. Give or take half a dozen on both sides, all the rebels could be sent back without any impact on the talks.

After all the months of talks one had expected that these rebels would be gaining in experience and acquiring needed skills in engaging in negotiations, but they are rather stagnating and playing reactionary politics with the lives, blood, sweat and suffering of their peoples.

There is no doubt that the cause of Darfur is just but these rebels claiming to represent the suffering masses of Darfur are not doing so justly. Like the Khartoum government they are not legitimate leaders of the people. They are their self-appointed liberators. But unlike many liberation movements in Africa, which had to depend on the people to build and plan with them, these rebels have too many willing regional and international actors indulging their delusions of grandeur.

There are many weaknesses with the AU force in Darfur and also with the mediation framework but clamouring for its replacement with a UN one instead of helping to strengthen it, is a recipe for prolonged dithering on the part of the rebels and the government. A situation in which the rebels seem to have no faith in the AU and implicit confidence in non-African governments and institutions is playing into the hands of the government. The belief by the rebels that the AU will be replaced by a different force and mediators is actually encouraging the rebels to consider their role in Abuja as mere “walk on parts”, since there will be other forums for them outside of Africa for negotiations. By default they are conceding the diplomatic and political terrain in Africa to Khartoum while putting their faith in non-Africans. They obviously have not learnt anything from the crisis of the opposition in Zimbabwe.

While they are not talking with the AU mediators they are flattered to be the darling of many Westerners in the talks. Like the true colonial-minded leaders they are, they feel gratified to be seen with one western diplomat or the other, no matter how lowly placed. It boosts their sense of self-importance. It also gives the diplomats, security operatives and intelligence gatherers masquerading as supporters of negotiations a ringside seat in playing God with African lives. I honestly think the ritual presence of outsiders (especially so called Donor-countries) in these negotiations is, on the whole, negative. They are not putting pressure on the rebels to engage positively and instead seem to be encouraging their belligerence.

The priority should be to make the ceasefire effective, stop the massacres and protect the civilians. These can only be achieved through making the African Union troops more effective and expanding their mandate if possible through the UN Security Council. If this is not possible, the AU should do so by itself and seek the necessary international support to carry out the mandate. This also means that the loopholes in the original ceasefire that are being exploited by the government and its killer groups and the rebels too, need to be plugged. It means putting all pressure on Khartoum and the rebels to sign off the security agreement and be held accountable for it. In the worse case scenario, the AU needs to show political courage and call the bluff of the rebels by calling off the talks and advising them to call back when they are ready for serious talks and agreement. Meanwhile the threat of not giving Khartoum the diplomatic and political honour of hosting the next summit, due in Khartoum in January, should be made clear if the government continues to kill its own people. A government and opposition force whose power depends on mass suffering and death of their own peoples should be denied the company of other Africans and all decent peoples the world over.

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

* Please send comments to

First, I will like to thank you all for creating such a forum and congratulate you on a such hard and fine work.

I totally agree with Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem that "Pan-Africanism needs to leave the conferences and executive mansions and become part of the lives of ordinary people." (See Taking Pan-Africanism to the people, http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30541)

However, what I think that he fails to address is the question of our responsibilities as Africans to other Africans and the continent as a whole. For example, as guests or residents of other African nations, we have seen how so many people (like those from my home country Nigeria) have abused such privileges and end up tarnishing the image of a whole nation.

If such despicable acts occur at present whereby people do need visas to cross borders, what will happen when/if such restrictions are removed? I think Pan-Africanism should start with a clear understanding of the interconnectedness of our lives as humans and as Africans.

In his weekly column, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem tackles three African presidents who appear to have ambitions to rule until they drop dead. Omar Bongo of Gabon, Yoweri Musevini of Uganda and Olushegun Obasanjo of Nigeria are either firmly entrenched as leaders for life or are busy manipulating electoral laws so they can serve beyond their given time. Abdul-Raheem asks why these leaders see it as their god-given right to rule and rule and rule...

The more Africa changes the more it remains the same at the level of leadership. While it is no longer an issue for debate that we should choose our own leaders in a democratic election there are many challenges in the processes that may make cynics proclaim that we are only making a distinction without any fundamental difference.

Our dictators have learnt how to repackage themselves with a veneer of electoral democracy that ensues that we 'vote without choosing' since the outcome often remains the same. In the past few years constitutionalism has also made a come back across Africa but - unwilling democrats that many of the leaders are - they have found ways of constitutionalising their illegitimacy by following a constitutional route to deny their peoples the democratic right to genuine changes and alternatives in public policy.

Take the cases of three presidents from different regions of Africa who have become the symbols of this constitutional gerymandering. The first one holds the dubious title of being Africa's longest –serving (I am not sure what services any more), President, El Hadj Omar Bongo of the oil-rich Central African state of Gabon. He has been in power since 1967 and has just secured for himself another seven-year term at the presidential palace, which will ensure that he remains in power till he is 75 years old (officially). After that term, if both nature and the ancestors have not called him home, we can be sure that there will be no shortage of footloose opportunists to orchestrate 'one more term'. Bongo has ensured that he runs and runs till he drops dead. This is where his presidential run and re-run interfaces with that of the second president, retired general Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda, whose onward march to another term was the subject of this column last week.

I got many responses from both the Museveni camp and even more from the anti-Museveni group on that article. The president's men and women typically become legalistic on the issue, arguing that now that Ugandans have spoken through a referendum and there has been appropriate change to the constitution, the President is not doing anything unconstitutional.

They overstate their democratic credentials by stating the seemingly obvious: Ugandan voters are supreme they say and whatever they decide is sacrosanct. It is a very beguiling democratic case even if democracy is the last thing on the minds of those pushing it. It is always amusing to me why Ugandans are supreme over the issue of Museveni running again but have neither been supreme on the key economic decisions of the government or the various wars the country has been involved in for the past two decades. Not even elected members of Parliament have any influence on the government's neo-liberal policies yet the people are supreme!

On the other side of the debate the anti 'sad term' camp think I have become too complacent about Museveni's self-succession. I had concluded my article last week matter-of-factly that five years will soon come to pass. But the fear of many in the opposition is that it is not just the next five years that Museveni and his cronies want but the next one, and the one after that and probably another one after that until the president gives up the ghost. In a sense self-succession in perpetuity - like Bongo's.

I must confess that I have no answer to that speculation because there is something that happens to our presidents once they enter office that they find ways and means of perpetuating themselves. People often blame opportunists around them but I think that is a lazy approach. There is no adviser that will compel an unwilling president to remain in office for a minute longer if he is not that inclined.

Unfortunately Museveni is not alone in the struggle for presidency in perpetuity. And that leads us to the third president, another retired general, Chief Mathew Aremu Olushegun Obasanjo. I have been in Nigeria for the past three weeks and the big political issue is about the quest for another term by President Obasanjo.

Like Museveni's supporters when his campaign first started to change the constitution, Obasanjo's people are saying the president has not decided either way. Like President Museveni, Obasanjo rarely addresses the issue directly and when he does he says defensively that the constitution does not allow him to go beyond two consecutive terms and he has pledged to uphold the constitution. However, as it happened in Uganda his agents and political contractors are busy pushing for constitutional amendments that will allow him to stand for another term and thereby constitutionalising his self-succession as has happened in Uganda.

It is obvious that the three compare notes on how to deceive their peoples. It is sad that, in spite of the new African Peer Review Mechanism, they do not compare notes on how to improve the lot of their 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

At a meeting of African heads of state in Nigeria recently, the thorny issue of African unity was debated. While the leaders busied themselves with discussing a union of states, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem writes that what unity should really be about is a unity of people. Pan Africanism, he writes, needs to leave the conferences and executive mansions and become a part of the lives of ordinary people.

On November 12th and 13th at the Banquet Hall of Nigeria's State House (more popularly known as Aso Rock), President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his capacity as the chair of the African Union, hosted a conference on ‘Africa and the Challenges of the Global Order: Desirability of the Union Government’.

Five heads of state and government including President Thabo Mbeki (South Africa), John Kufour (Ghana), Abdulaye Wade (Senegal), Prime minister Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia) and President Boutefleka (Algeria) - represented by his prime minister - along with several foreign ministers and ambassadors were present.

A number of civil society activists, academics, international policy makers including Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia University), Adebayo Olukoshi (CODESRIA), Wangari Mathai (President of ECOSOCC), Gertrude Mongela (speaker of the Pan African Parliament), Ezra Mbogori (Mwengo) and others were also present to dialogue with the leaders on the best means of proceeding with the agenda of unity.

The meeting was a direct result of the directive given by the Shirte Summit in July based on the resolution put forward by the Libyan leader, Muammar Al Gaddafi demanding that a Union of African states be formed as a further step in advancing the Pan-Africanist idea. Libya is anxious that in spite of recent progress in the Union the demands and pressures of globalization are such that only a faster march to Unity will prevent Africa from being re-colonised.

As in 1999 not many African leaders were too enthusiastic about Libya 's proposals in July. However, as has become the practice, whatever Libya pushes it has enough material and diplomatic clout in the Union for it not to be ignored. The strategy of other powerhouses in the AU - especially Nigeria and South Africa - has always been how to contain Libya’s militancy. The matter was thrown at a High Level Panel headed by President Obasanjo along with Zenawi, Mbeki, Wade, Boutefleka, Museveni and Kufour. This Panel is due to submit its report to the next summit in Khartoum in January 2006.

In Abuja the Libyans - represented by their minister for Africa Ali Treiki (called by many "The Tricky man' for his long term survival of many sharp knives in the corridors of power) - put more flesh to their proposals in terms of a time table beginning in 2006 with the removal of tariffs and visas, the establishment of a central bank, and the formation of one army all of which would lead to the creation of a Union of African States in 2009.

Libya obviously wants a United Africa as a present for the 40th anniversary of the Al Fatah revolution! These are no doubt very revolutionary proposals given the slow take off of all the institutions of the new Union. Caution will dictate that we work on making existing structures work before taking another leap forward.

In a rare display of executive candor and public engagement the leaders present did not hide their disagreement with Libya's proposals. Thabo Mbeki led the charge, raising doubts about his ability to persuade reluctant South Africans to surrender sovereignty to an entity outside the country that they did not vote for. He expressed pessimism about common tariffs, drawing his conclusion from the slow progress of common tariffs and the customs union of SADC countries.

Zenawi argued that the proposals were full of old rhetoric without adequate research and analysis. He asked if Africa's underdevelopment is the result of lacking a union government or if a union government will make Africa develop. Obasanjo drew attention to the ECOWAS region which made great progress in the area of free movement but had not proceeded to other levels of integration.

Wade suggested that the integration of Africa is impeded by dependence on aid and the collective loses that Africa suffers from the export of its precious raw materials and mineral resources like oil, gold, diamond, etc. He caused some exchange of executive banter between him and his host when he asked for the right to share in Nigeria's fuel resources. Obasanjo retorted that he could not be giving Senegal cheap oil while it uses foreign exchange to buy imported rice which he is trying to dissuade Nigerians from eating.

The concerns raised by the leaders and others are genuine but I believe they are agonising instead of organising. I do not believe that Africans anywhere on this continent or in the Diaspora will not vote overwhelmingly for visa-free freedom of movement across Africa. The scandalous situation that degrades and humiliates us at the moment needs to be addressed immediately. How can an American, Canadian or Australian and virtually all Europeans have easier access to our countries while we treat fellow African as 'aliens'? Despite all the sensitivities and reactionary politics surrounding citizenship across Africa would it not be easier to recognise all Africans as Africans with full citizenship rights, wherever they may be in Africa? Mamdani, combining both personal experience and professional interest did not allow Wade's executive fiat to stop him from completing his presentation on this issue. Drawing from his book, ‘Citizens and Subjects’ Mamdani showed how the citizenship laws of today are a carry over of colonial divide and rule and a pluralism of legal regimes that made Africans into tribes subjected to native or customary laws. That pluralism has made it difficult for many African countries to create political communities with a sense of shared future.

Olukoshi took on the argument of ECOWAS not making progress since it introduced freedom of moment. Freedom of movement alone would not lead to integration if it was not accompanied by integrative infrastructure through transport, communication, education, commerce and trade, etc.

It is clear that we are back to the debates of the 1960s about how far and fast we should proceed to unity. The answer that our painful history teaches us is that slow progress has lead us to the slaughter house of neo-colonialism and impoverishment in the midst of abundant human and material resources. We have no choice but to move faster because the rest of the world will not wait for us.

It is now widely recognised that Pan Africanism needs to leave the confines of conferences and executive mansions of our leaders and become part and parcel of all our lives building from the down-up. A number of issues are clear. One, the heads of state want a union of states while what we need is a union of peoples. If people are at the centre of the agenda many of the contradictions and anxieties the leaders are obsessed with can be confronted together instead of dealing with them individually. Two, some states are more willing than others. And it may be necessary that instead of constantly waiting for everyone to come on board those who are ready should go ahead. Three, the Libyans have to learn how to be thorough and strategic in mobilising both leaders and civil society instead of wasting enormous resources as sweeteners to reluctant heads of state. The biggest obstacle to their good proposals is the way they do things rather than what they are putting forward. The crucial stage we are now at requires a broader alliance owned and led by our peoples to bring the frontiers down and release our energies for creative union that serves the people.

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

* Please send comments to

Political unrest has been widespread in Ethiopia since May elections that took the opposition close to securing a surprise victory over the ruling party. Last week, violence swept through the capital Addis Ababa as security forces cracked down on those participating in actions to protest the election result. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem calls for calm on both sides.

Since the May general elections in Ethiopia the country has been gripped by conflict. The country is only slowly returning to normal after a week long stay away called by the opposition who believed that the government robbed it of victory through unfair means. Both in June soon after the elections and now, several people have been killed and many more imprisoned.

While elections are supposed to indicate where the wishes of the people reside and both winners and losers are expected to respect the results, it is not often that easy in situations where neither is prepared for the result. Sometimes defeat can sound like victory and sometimes victory can be interpreted as defeat if the cost is too high. Both scenarios are playing themselves out in Ethiopia. The opposition has reason to be jubilant because in spite of the fields not being level they gained victories - some of them highly symbolic - against the ruling EPRDF.

In Ethiopia it is clear that neither the ruling EPRDF nor the two main opposition alliances, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), were prepared for the results and the obligation that the results impose on them in a democratic setting.

For the first time since the EPRDF came into power 15 years ago it faced a more challenging and credible electoral opposition. It lost all the seats in the capital to the opposition and lost to the opposition in other regions in particular the Amhara region. Its immediate response was to see the result as a challenge to its authority. It was obvious that its political and security intelligence misinformed it about its popularity. It was clear to most observers that after 15 years the EPRDF has become vulnerable. As the likelihood of an armed overthrow of the regime has diminished even among the country's largest nationality, The Oromo (who have been the longest military opponents of the EPRDF), peaceful resistance and democratic opposition has grown.

As it happened to other post revolutionary regimes across Africa whether in Zimbabwe or Uganda, the longer the EPRDF stayed in power the less 'grateful' people became for its liberation struggle. Uganda is the more obvious parallel. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, like President Museveni before him, became a former revolutionary turned free-market reformer with new best friends in Washington, London, Brussels, and other patented capitals of what he would (before) have called, rightly, 'centres of imperialism'. Like other Clubbers in the now ageing 'New generation of African Leaders' Meles is a very fiercely intellectual leader who is able to stoutly articulate and defend his positions.

Again. like Uganda, Ethiopia is heavily dependent on aid but somehow the EPRDF until recent years managed to stave off Western intervention in its political affairs. A kind of dual mandate partnership (familiar to Ugandans) developed whereby Meles pursued neo-liberal economic policies of the IMF/World Bank and the dominant western powers gave him a huge discount on internal political matters.

But acceptance in the West also comes with its own conflicting demands and expectations. It is always the case that the more our leaders become popular abroad the less they are at home and the more complacent they become about their domestic constituency - hence they are ill-prepared to think of any possible defeat.

The opposition on the other hand - after overcoming initial timidity, lack of clarity or better alternative socio-economic policies - begin to unite in opposition. Some people will just want change for the sake of it. Younger generations also emerge who now take the gains of the past as their starting point - not the ceiling on what is possible. This is where former revolutionaries in power become reactionaries, taking political opposition to be treason, shooting demonstrators, jailing leaders of the opposition and generally punishing the people for not voting wisely (i.e. electing them in perpetuity).

The opposition too, having spent too long in opposition is often unprepared for its victories and reacts either too triumphantly or with selective de-legitimation. The former exaggerates how close they believe they have come to seizing the state house while the latter makes them to always query the result only in areas where they did not win.

A process of mutual demonisation ensues between an insecure government humbled by the polls - especially losing in the capital where the government is based - thereby becoming psychologically an occupying force. The opposition on the other hand suffers the delusion that its control of the centre and a few cities also mean that it is de facto government and is often tempted to behave so by unleashing 'people power' which is often met by a government show of power. This situation needs statesmanship and leadership to break the impasse. The tragedy for Ethiopia so far has been the absence of such vision. The government needs to accept that those who voted against it have neither committed any sin or crime while the opposition also have to accept that those in power are not from Mars but fellow Ethiopians with whom they have political differences. There cannot be meaningful dialogue if the government uses guns and prisons as its first weapon of choice and the opposition regards the government as illegitimate.

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

* Please send comments to

Fueled by four decades of study and activism, John Saul illuminates the dynamics of change in Southern Africa. With clarity and passion he charts the movements, many of whose actions were first launched from a rear base in Tanzania, that brought about the independence of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Namibia and the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa. Looking ahead, he outlines the imperatives of Africa's next liberation struggle—for socio-economic freedom and popularly-defined development.

Journalists from five countries in eastern Africa gathered in the Ugandan capital Kampala at the end of last week to deliberate on trends in the development of the media in eastern Africa. Papers by journalists and media managers from the region and South Africa were presented at the conference with the theme “safeguarding the public interest: will the media in eastern Africa survive the onslaught of globalization?” The conference critiqued trends in media production, distribution and consumption in the region and discussed how to build partnerships among academics, media practitioners, the government and civil society with a view to strengthening democratic institutions in the region.

Is the concept of agrarian revolution a serious proposition or a vote-catching gimmick? Issa Shivji examines what a real agrarian revolution would look like and lays down some of the fundamental transformations that would have to take place. Central would be a shift away from export crops to primary food crops.

In the current political campaigns, unlike during the last ten years of the third phase government, there is some talk about the transformation of agriculture. Even catching phrases like ‘agrarian revolution’ are being thrown around. What does this really imply? Let us see.

Tanzania is a text-book case of what is described in political economy as an extraverted economy, dependent on export of primary agricultural commodities. Agriculture contributes around 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. Tanzania is a large country with a massive petty (largely middle and poor) peasantry which is firmly integrated in the world commodity market. Export agriculture is our mainstay. Our food production for domestic consumption is inversely related to that of export crop production and directly dependent on the vagaries of weather. This means that when export production is promoted, food production falls. Historically, the classical case is that of cotton growing in Mwanza region in the 1950s. As peasants concentrated their labour on producing cotton they spent less time on food. Not only that but the variety of food crops which provided balanced and adequate nutrition was also reduced as they concentrated on growing starchy cassava which requires less labour.

One recent study shows that in 1993/94, there were 3.7 million agricultural households on mainland Tanzania, amounting to a population of 20 million. The number of agricultural households had increased to 4.4 million in 1997/98, with a population of 23 million, an increase of 19 per cent in households and almost 16 per cent in population. The proportion of female-headed households is almost one-fifth. 90 per cent of farmers cultivated less than 2.0 hectares while large scale farmers cultivated only 14 per cent of arable land. Tanzania is thus a country of smallholders par excellence, the population directly dependent on smallholder agriculture being over 75 per cent.

In spite of the peasant production being small-scale and backward, it is the peasant who is most exploited. Exploitation means that the peasant does not get a return commensurate with his/her labour. The excess, that is the surplus, is drained away from rural areas to towns and international metropolis through unequal terms of trade to support non-producing classes and their luxury consumption. It would be different if the majority of this surplus was ploughed back into agriculture. It is not. The caricature of a bourgeoisie that we have is not capable of long-term investment in agriculture to spearhead a real agrarian revolution.

Our bourgeoisie looks to make quick profits. At best, it indulges in building and buses and guest houses. Its greatest aspiration is to become absentee landlords, or own land and offer it to so-called foreign investors in dubious deals euphemistically called joint ventures or just become commission agents for foreign firms. This is the bourgeoisie which in political economy is called a comprador, as opposed to a national, bourgeoisie.

So what does an agrarian revolution in these circumstances mean? First and foremost, it means that the agriculture sector must undergo a fundamental structural transformation which can only be done in the context of transforming the extraverted colonial-type economy to a nationally integrated economy. This implies a number of very important shifts in policy.

First, it means to shift away from concentrating on a few export crops to primarily food crops and other agricultural inputs for the domestic market.

Secondly, it means shifting from the hoe-based, rain-fed agriculture to the mechanized and chemicalized, irrigation-based agriculture. Agrarian transformation requires that other sectors of the economy – industrial, financial, energy, and transport and communication – should be integrated with and support the agriculture sector. For example, local industries must provide machines and other inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides etc. to agriculture. The manufacturing industry must provide incentive goods - textiles, radios, bicycles, etc. – to peasants. The agrarian revolution cannot be sustained if the necessary industrial inputs are all imported. They have to be manufactured locally.

Thirdly, it means that the energy sector should shift to provide, for example, electricity to rural areas at affordable tariffs. This in turn means that we have to move away from oil-based generation of electricity to hydro-electricity on the one hand, and from large-scale hydro-electricity plants, to small-scale generation which can be maintained by local rural based technicians.

Fourthly, it means that our transport system must facilitate movement of agriculture commodities primarily within the country. This means building a network of transport routes and networks joining villages and towns and regions, joining agricultural farmlands with industrial areas. This cannot easily be done if we rely on building tarmac highways in a large country like Tanzania. It is expensive to build and very expensive to maintain. The emphasis has to be on rail and sea transport joining main centres across the country to which villages can be joined by a network of feeder roads. (The boast about building highways joining cities and towns while letting the railway system go to the dogs is clearly misplaced!)

The financial sector too has to be reoriented to give necessary cheap credit to agriculture. Clearly, no commercial bank would consider giving credit to a farmer cultivating maize, tomatoes, onions or citrus fruit on a 20-acre farm, let alone the majority who hardly own more than 3-4 acres. It is simply not viable. And this has nothing to do with the peasants in Tanzania not having land titles to use it as collateral. This business of collateral, which is the backbone of the multimillion programme on formalizing property and business, is a red herring. Which commercial Bank would give a loan to a farmer simply because he holds a land title on a 2 or 20-acre farm? Everywhere in the world, a serious credit system for the smallholder is always organised by the state, not by the private sector.

These are only broad sketches to highlight what an agrarian revolution means and implies, if it is meant to be a serious proposition and not simply a vote-catching gimmick? There are many issues that need to be discussed and debated if one sincerely has a vision of an agrarian revolution. There are such issues as the source of initial capital: Such a transformation would of course require initial capital. Where would it come from? From donors – no way; from the World Bank – hardly! It will have to come from domestic sources. Do we have such sources?

What will be the appropriate institution to provide an enabling environment for such a transformation, the state or the market? Thirdly, what will be the social agency to effect such a revolution? Foreign capital, settler farmers, ex-Zimbabwe, ex-South Africa, or our own peasants? Thirdly, what kind of political force and configuration will have the will and capacity to oversee such a revolution?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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In the colonial language, land robbery carried out with the assistance of the state was called land alienation. In the neo-liberal era, the language, forms and mechanisms of land expropriation revolve around promoting efficient commercial agriculture and attracting foreign investment. Issa Shivji examines new forms of dispossession.

Robbery of land, labour and resources was the basis of primitive accumulation by colonial capital. Land was alienated from indigenous users and given to white settlers and colonial companies in the colonies, particularly settler colonies like Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The common pattern was to alienate most fertile and productive land to the settlers leaving behind rocky and most unsuitable land for the Africans.

By the end of the colonial period, some 4,000 white farmers had the monopoly of some 16,500 square miles of the so-called White Highlands which contained 30 percent of all good land in Kenya while over five million Africans were bundled into reserves consisting of the worst lands. Under the Land Apportionment Act of Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), some 178,000 Whites got 75,000 square miles of land while 2,290,000 Africans were left with 63,000 square miles.

Although huge areas of good land were reserved for the settlers, only small portions of these were actually cultivated. The aim was not only to provide land to the Whites but also to create landlessness among the Blacks so that the Africans had no alternative but to work for European plantations, mines and other enterprises at very low wages. Creation of cheap labour was a deliberate policy of the colonial state.

The system of poll or head tax, under which every adult African male had to pay a fixed amount of tax, whether or not he earned any income, was meant to force the Africans to go and work for European farms and mines.

European agriculture was given further advantages such as better infrastructure, prices, state subsidies and monopolies to ward off competition from African peasants. It is under such circumstances that European capital was accumulated. Everywhere under the colonial situation it has been proved again and again that the so-called efficiency of capitalist agriculture as opposed to inefficient and unproductive peasant agriculture is a function of state support and subsidies.

Two characteristics stand out in the colonial form of primitive accumulation. One, the use of extra-economic force, whether justified by law or not, to enable expropriation of resources and exploitation of labour. Two, strategic state intervention to create necessary conditions for capital to reap super-profits. Thus the talk about leaving the economy to the market is so much balderdash. The state always intervenes in the economy; the question is in whose interest.

Under the current conditions, the language, the justification, the mechanisms and forms of capital accumulation may have changed but the processes of accumulation by foreign capital in Africa share these two characteristics - the use of extra-economic force and the intervention of the state - and therefore I call it the primitive accumulation of capital. Let us take the example of land again.

In the colonial language, land robbery carried out with the assistance of the state was called land alienation. In the neo-liberal era, the language, forms and mechanisms of land expropriation revolve around promoting efficient commercial agriculture and attracting foreign investment.

The Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC), for example, is reported to have identified some four million hectares of land under its Land Bank scheme. This scheme has nothing to do with banks, more to do with lands. TIC writes to regional commissioners, who in turn write to District Authorities, who in turn order village executive officers to identify suitable lands in their villages and report back within 11 days. Thus TIC accumulates 4 million hectares in its land bank. Says Mr. Ole Naika, TIC’s Director of Investment:

“Over 2.5 million hectares of land in Tanzania have been surveyed and found suitable for investment. The figure constitutes some 62.5 per cent of over 4 million hectares managed under the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC). The remainder is categorised as land that is potential for investment where additional surveying or infrastructure is required” (The Citizen, 10/09/2004.

An investor, say a farmer from South Africa, who is interested in investing in commercial agriculture, would apply to TIC. Once the investor has chosen his preferred X thousand hectares he would be allocated land under a derivative title - a kind of lease - under the new land laws. The sale of this land would be done under terms which even the members of parliament would not be able to know because these are supposed to be contractual secrets. Going by previous experiences and what has happened in other countries, we know that land is “sold” to investors at dirt-cheap prices. In the mid-90s sisal estates were sold to businessmen at less than 50 US cents per acre.

Armed with his title, the investor gets a loan from, perhaps, a South African bank in Tanzania which holds deposits from Tanzanian workers and peasants, and NGOs, and the Government, and the aid money from donors. Thus the Tanzanian poor provide both land and capital to the investor.

Under an appropriate certificate from TIC, the investor would also have the usual tax holidays and tax exemption under which he would import - most probably second hand - tractors and machinery from South Africa. He would perhaps also have a permit to import his skilled foremen, to supervise his Tanzanian workers, and squatters and share-croppers, the former owners of “his” land.

The state has to provide him with the necessary infrastructure - roads and electricity and water - and an export subsidy so that he may export and earn foreign exchange in the interest of the country. Thus the Tanzanian taxpayer subsidizes the investor.

It is often said that the land given to investors is idle land. Under the colonial language, alienated village lands used to be called uninhabited or un-owned land; now they are idle lands. In practice, these lands are usually prime lands already used by peasants which means when they are alienated the inevitable eviction occurs giving rise to perpetual land disputes. To guarantee protection, safety and stability, the state has inevitably to use force to reassure the investor and keep the recalcitrant peasant at bay. Thus the Tanzanian State shields the foreign landowner from the wrath of the Tanzanian landless.

How is this process fundamentally different from the land expropriations of the colonial era? Primitive accumulation in popular language is nothing but reaping without sowing.

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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Tajudeen Abdul Raheem visits Khartoum for the first time in eleven years. In 1994, Sudan was at the height of Islamist rule, but now the hotel halls are filled with international NGO staff and Southern rebels struggling to change from their battle fatigues to fancy suits. There are many challenges ahead for peace in Sudan – not least of which are the expectations of the masses – and the new order will have to go beyond a change of uniform or the swapping of army camps for fancy hotels.

I was in Khartoum last week attending a conference of the regional organisation, Inter Governmental Agency on Development (IGAD), on building consensus around a peace and security strategy for the sub region. It was a follow up to a previous meeting early this year conveyed by IGAD with the support of the Addis based Inter Africa Group.

For many years IGAD has been synonymous with two of Africa's long running conflicts that have now been negotiated: Somalia and Sudan. Both have taken several years but IGAD leaders, supported by the African Union and other international actors have been very patient and persistent.

That patience paid off in the formation of a Government of National Unity for Somalia but unfortunately the government is yet to take the full reins of power in Mogadishu. The prospect for lasting peace in Somalia is also seriously in doubt given the increasing consolidation of self-rule in Somaliland.

However the Sudan negotiations, through Machakos and Naivasha, culminated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army / Movement (SPLA/M) and the Government of Sudan and the inauguration of a Government of National Unity with power sharing between the South, North and Centre and some representation for other parties.

While there is a lot of confidence that the peace may hold despite the unfortunate death of the charismatic 'strong man' of the SPLA, John Garang only three weeks after assuming office as the first vice president of Sudan, there are continuing concerns that Sudan's peace is not comprehensive enough given the continuing death and suffering in the Darfur region, where the Government of Sudan continues to aid and abet its Janjaweed militia allies in their attacks on mainly Black African Darfurians.

So both peace agreements that IGAD is justifiably proud of are not perfect. However this alone should not deny the organisation cautious optimism about its capacity to be a collective regional instrument for promoting regional integration and development and to be a forum for peaceful resolution of peace and security issues concerning the peoples of the region.

The conference was an attempt to document the often informal processes that led to the peace negotiations, reflect on the experiences and build consensus on a vision for the future. The conference can claim a modest success on this initial sharing of perspectives. The consensus document agreed after the three-day meeting - that brought together academics, think tanks, CSO activists, policy makers, diplomats, and foreign friends of IGAD –points to continuing engagement by IGAD within a framework of a people-driven and people-friendly regional integration vision.

While peace and security issues are of utmost importance, participants agreed that they are not just for inter state relations of governments or armed groups alone: The vision must be broadened to embrace human security and wider engagement of all stake holders. IGAD has to look at other aspects of regional integration that can promote wider peace in the region: regional citizenship, promotion of democratic governance, protection of human rights, informal linkages through social groups, students, women, youth, education, development of regional infrastructure, etc.

While the IGAD meeting was the reason I was in Khartoum, my main interest also included seeing for myself how the transition is shaping up - especially since the death of Comrade John Garang. The last time I was in Khartoum was 11 years ago. I had gone there to persuade the original NIF government of Dr Hassan Al Turuabi and General Omar Al Beshir to participate in the 7th Pan African Congress. They were angry with us for inviting Dr Garang and 'treating him like a head of state' when they considered him then a 'dangerous rebel'.

Arriving in Khartoum I could not help recalling the Chinese prayer 'May you live in interesting times'. If Garang was not dead I would have met him, holding court in the Khartoum Hilton, as the Vice President of the country with the same people who did not even want him at a Pan-African gathering a few years before. By coincidence it was the same hotel I was put in by the Government in 1994. Of course the atmosphere now and then were completely different.

In 1994 Sudan was at the dizzy heights of its Islamism, the NIF government reveled in its pariah status in the west and even considered it some kind of chivalry for Allah. The composition of those then milling around the Hilton was different. I remember there was a big American delegation of the Muslim-Christian Council led by Nation of Islam people, and other Islamist delegations from one country or the other across the world, all guests of the government.

But now the Hilton is dominated by: BINGOs, RINGOs, UN types, consultants, business wheeler-dealers and other assorted vultures of peace out for a grab of the peace action. But the most important residents in the hotel are the new SPLA/M elite looking every inch out of place. They reminded me of Miles Collines Hotel or Meridien in Kigali in 1994 after the defeat of genocide or the Intercontinental Hotel in Kinshasa after the exit of Mobutu.

You see the new rebel elite, recently made ministers in cities they had left several years earlier or never entered. The ones that fascinate me most are the former rebel commanders, in their new suits, usually ill-fitting because they are more used to their jungle fatigues. It is always amusing to watch these commanders trying to become civilians. Soldiers do not walk they march! So you see these big guys in their fancy suits and many of them with bulging inside pockets. There is also the problem of learning the new pecking order because you do not want to offend the new Big Men (and their few Big Women) who have become Honorable this, Excellency that, etc.

But beyond all this it was mixture of 'sadness and joy' returning to Khartoum. Sad that John Garang who had done so much to bring about this change was not there, but happy to see his colleagues continuing the struggle. Everyone I spoke to and commiserated on the death of our dear comrade left me with those comforting words "aluta continua'. They need this spirit if they are to make peace meaningful for southern Sudanese people and the generality of Sudanese.

Peace dividends must go beyond the exchange of military uniforms for smart suits; or from make-shift camps to the comfort of 5 star hotels and ministerial villas. There are just too many challenges ahead. First, there are the huge expectations of the masses that now that their 'boys' are in power their conditions will improve. This is a tricky one because the South has known only war and therefore the only industry is crude military-industrial in nature.

Two, many Southerners displaced by the war in northern cities, especially the millions in Khartoum, are hoping to escape the indignities of second class status in the north for the south where the SPLA and allies will be in charge. What work will they do? Where would they live?

Three, those remaining in Khartoum will need symbolic and practical measures that will begin to reduce their feelings of second class stature and apartheid type discrimination. How can one explain why most of the manual laborers digging around Khartoum in the many construction sites in a booming newly enriched oil country are Southerners? Why are most of the waiters, bellboys, cleaners etc in the Hilton of Negroid extraction? These are uncomfortable questions but they cannot be avoided if peace is to make sense to all these marginalized peoples.

Four, as it stands now the peace deal seem to be mainly between the north and the south with the assumption that both Beshir's wing of the NIF (a.k.a National Congress Party) and the SPLA/M will remain firmly in power both in Khartoum and Juba. So what will happen to other marginalized groups such as SPLA/M 's former allies in the NDA, rebel groups in Darfur and others that may also restart hostilities?

There are many other challenges but one vital one I have to mention is the question of a referendum due half way through the six year transition. I have no doubt in my mind that an overwhelming majority of southerners will vote for independence. Indeed one has the feeling that Dr John Garang was probably the only person left in the movement who still believed in a united 'New Sudan'. His death meant that the last ‘one nation’ Sudanese southerner has died and the road now (no longer if but when) leads to an independent Southern Sudan.

I know this conclusion is difficult to accept for many Pan Africanists but we have to ask ourselves what kind of unity we are building if citizens cannot feel or be treated equally in their own country. An optimistic half way house may arise if the Government of Sudan can demonstrate through genuine good will, real remorse and real actions during this fist phase in the transition that it has indeed changed. I am not naturally a pessimist but I have my doubts if the extremist core of this regime really wants peace in the Sudan or wish to devour their enemies in phases. It may be the case that the transitional period offers opportunity for a trial separation with a certain divorce after the referendum.

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Remember Saro-Wiwa Season is launching in two weeks time, and the link below contains information about two events happening in London on 21 October to remember the life of the Nigerian activist.

September was a bad month for Nigeria. First Chima Ubani, 42, director of the country's premier human rights NGO, the Civil Liberties Organisation, died in a car crash. Then, veteran activist Dr Yusuf Bala Usman died on September 24. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers the lives of two extraordinary activists and calls for their spirit of struggle to be remembered.

The past week has not been a good one for the endangered species of committed progressive people in Nigeria. In the middle of the week there was the tragic death, by yet another road accident, of Comrade Chima Ubani,42, director of the country's premier human rights NGO, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), a foremost defender of the poor, and a shining star for consistency and total commitment to the struggle for the liberation of the ordinary people in the face of the successive autocratic military regimes of the 80s and 90s in Nigeria and the creeping elective dictatorship of Obasanjo since 1999.

Ubani died in an accident between Maiduguri and Kano in the north-east part of the country, where he had been part of the key leaders of civil society and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) mobilizing support for a successful series of national strikes across the country against yet another increase in the price of petroleum products. His body was returned to Lagos on Saturday.

That same day (Saturday 24 September, 2005) yet another tragedy struck at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, with the death of a senior comrade, veteran struggle activist, radical historian and organic intellectual in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral: Dr Yusuf Bala Usman.

Many people outside of Nigeria may not have known him personally but more would have become aware of him by reputation and remember and mourn the sad loss. It was an inconsolable weekend. For my generation of student activists Bala Usman was the icon of our times whose radical scholarship and political activism caused us to ask very uncomfortable questions about the kind of knowledge we were being taught and the society we were living in.
The 70s and 80s were full of epic battles and the cold war was at its peak. In Africa, the liberation of Southern Africa, including the former Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau on the West coast, Zimbabwe and South Africa from settler regime and apartheid were prominent on the agenda.

The struggle against neo-colonialism was also intense and anti imperialist struggles were being waged across the underdeveloped world from Africa through Asia to the Middle East and Latin America. These were days before donor-driven formalized struggles that have today turned many revolutionaries into ‘resolutionaries’. They were periods when imperialism was called its proper name and not disguised under euphemisms like globalisation, friends or partners!

Bala and his peers of equally committed scholar-activists from across the continent who were teaching in various universities in Nigeria in those oil boom days opened our eyes and ears to the world around us and inspired us to believe that we can change it for the better.

There were many radical scholars, some of them exiles and refugees from the Idi Amin and Obote 2 regimes in Uganda, including Prof Yolamu Barongo, the indomitable Okot a P'itek and Ocello Oculi. There were others like Yusf Bangura, AB Zack Williams and others. There were radical scholars from the Diaspora too like Dr Patrick Wilmot who was later deported from Nigeria by the Babangida regime. People Like Ali Mazrui were regular guest lecturers on Nigeria's campuses, trailing one controversy or the other. By no means were all the radical lecturers only Africans or people from the Diaspora.

The high point of this was the Centenary of Marx conference held at Ahmadu Bello University in 1983. Some of the sectarian political and intellectual battles that were to decimate the left forces can be traced to this period. Bala was very prominent in these debates and enjoyed for many years the status of first among equals. He was born into the royal house of Katsina in northern Nigeria and did not have to do anything to survive. He could just have demanded and be given anything he wanted by way of personal pleasures and riches by virtue of being a royal and growing up at a time when the Emirs held sway.

Bala could have combined his royal spoon with his academic erudition and choosen to be part of any government or ruling clique across the country and feed fat on the sweat and blood of the people of Nigeria. But Bala chose to side with the masses. He became a traitor to his class. He committed class suicide and remained a revolutionary throughout his life. He could have checked out of the country like many of us (some voluntarily, some of us stranded, and others through coercion or for tactical /strategic reasons) but he did not. He believed that he was best able to contribute directly from the home front.

Whatever political or intellectual disagreements anyone may have developed with Usman in a life steeped in struggles on many fronts, even his worst critics will pay him the tribute of saying he remained true to his convictions.

Nigeria is indeed made more impoverished both intellectually and politically now that the loud and very clear and thunderous voice of Bala will no longer be there to speak unpleasant truths to power in a potentially great country damned by successive little-minded leaders impervious to any knowledge that could go beyond their noses.

It is perhaps befitting to a life of struggle that Bala's last public duty that many will remember for its high drama was at a conference last month called by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on corruption. Bala was one of the participants. President Obasanjo was the chief guest and he addressed the audience with his usual monologue and holier-than-thou pomposity.

At intervention time Bala was on the floor and he, as was characteristic of his fearless and fierce intellect took on Baba Iyabo (Father of Iyabo, as Obasanjo is also known in Nigeria) and tore into the empty shrines of his timid anti-corruption crusade and leader-centric governance. As we all know, Obasanjo is such a big 'democrat' that he cannot understand or continence anyone disagreeing with him.

He ordered his security goons to seize the microphone from Bala. Somehow the security heavies could not find the over 6 feet tall Bala who was standing with a microphone in a hall full of all the high and mighty in Nigeria. The conclusion of many was that even the security guys were sympathetic to Bala's lampooning of President-Know-All.

That was Bala Usman: Bold, full of guts and fearless before those who think of themselves as our lords and masters. Of course the hypocrisy of conspicuous grief after death of a public figure is already suffocating the country. The President was one of the first to send condolences on the two departed comrades declaring one “a brilliant young activist” and the other “a statesman”. It is customary to pray for the departed: May the spirit of Bala and Chima remain restless and continue to haunt us to continue the struggle for which they lived and died actively serving.

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

A new guide for civil society organisations is aimed at empowering non-state actors to effectively develop strategies for influencing inter-state institutions and programmes in Africa. The manual seeks to inform civil society organisations and social partners in Africa on the most important aspects of the new Pan-Africanism and new African agenda. The introduction of the report begins: "The past decade witnessed many efforts to give new meaning and substance to Pan-Africanism. This new Pan-Africanism remains as committed to African unity and solidarity as previous attempts. But it also goes further; it links issues of development with issues of peace and security, democratic governance, co-operation, and economic integration. For Africans therefore there is no choice between development, peace and security, and democracy. These three elements are inextricably intertwined. All actors engaging this new Pan-Africanism should take this challenge on board. They therefore need new innovative tools and strategies to influence political, economic, and social devlopments in Africa."

Troops began combat operations to take the city back. Snipers fired on rescue helicopters. Refugee camps housed thousands of homeless. This was the scene in New Orleans over the last week in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which killed hundreds, left thousands homeless and destroyed New Orleans as it ripped through the Gulf region. As with any disaster, focus turned quickly to the rescue efforts, and it wasn’t long before the Bush Administration came under fire for a lacklustre response to the rescue effort.

Critics were quick to point out that the Bush Administration’s slow response to the disaster was a clear indication of their racial bias, given that New Orleans was a majority Afro-American city. Not only that, but the media quickly seized on images of looters, mainly black, without providing the context that people were without food and had to feed themselves. The events that transpired in New Orleans somehow removed a veneer and exposed a hidden side of American race relations – and it wasn’t pretty.

Writing for Znet, Justin Podur, in questioning the naming of Katrina victims as refugees in their own country, (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=8680) explained the response by describing a “cruel nationalism” that had emerged amongst elites after 9/11, whose first impulse was to “blame foreigners, and then to strike out at them, expel them, and bomb them”.

But unlike in Afghanistan or Iraq, there were no outside forces to blame for Katrina and so the poor and predominantly black population who desperately needed assistance came into the firing line. “The government’s response to Katrina was a different kind of racism: not hatred of foreigners, but contempt and utter disregard for Black people’s lives, and for the extraordinary city they had made,” wrote Podur.

He went on to write: “It seems that the American government is treating Black Americans on the Gulf Coast with the contempt that it normally reserves for the citizens of other countries. After decades of struggle and sacrifice for the right to be full American citizens, Black people are being treated like the rest of the world is treated - as problems to be solved as cheaply as possible, not fellow citizens and human beings with dignity.”

The disaster has exposed the myth of America as the land of wealth and equality. Calling America a “failed state”, Dan La Botz, in an article for the online magazine Counterpunch (http://www.counterpunch.org/labotz09032005.html), wrote: “Every American city harbors millions of people with high rates of unemployment, low incomes, poor housing, no health insurance, low levels of education. In the United States 25 percent of our children are raised in poverty. Nearly 50 million people have no health insurance.” If this was the picture of a neo-liberal success story, where did that leave the rest of the world on the path to trickle down nirvana? Katrina focused attention on the seedier side of American society often obscured by the corporate media.

The implications went further than exposing the apartheid nature of American society, however. One of the reasons advanced for the sluggish response to the disaster was the Bush administration's focus on the ‘war on terror’ and its aggressive promotion of corporate globalization. Not only had this undermined rescue efforts because emergency personal were depleted, but it had also eaten into the soul of American society. La Botz wrote: “The United States, the failed state, is so because it was first a rogue state. The United States failed to sign the Kyoto Treaty, the International Court of Justice treaty, or the land mines treaty. The United States violated international law with its wars in Iraq and Iran, and with its unsuccessful coup d,état in Venezuela. What has happened over time has been that the general distortion of ethics and values in foreign policy has also seeped into domestic policy.”

Compiled by Pambazuka News. For more analysis on Katrina and the latest news from New Orleans, visit the following websites:

http://www.zmag.org/
http://www.counterpunch.org
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=09-02-05&storyID=22…
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=globalNews&storyI…
http://www.allhiphop.com/editorial/?ID=275
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16476747…
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/

Hurricane Katrina: Tides Rapid Response

Tides Rapid Response Fund works to help fill the funding gaps where community groups or underserved populations may be overlooked. The Rapid Response Fund pools donors' resources to increase the impact of their giving and our staff researches and distributes the funds as quickly and strategically as possible. As always, Tides staff will work closely with groups to identify how money can best be distributed, looking for effective grassroots and advocacy organizations working for short-term relief and long-term structural change.

You can make an instant online donation to Tides Rapid Response Fund for Hurricane Katrina Relief and Rebuilding. Just click the DonateNow button at the Tides Foundation website.
www.tidesfoundation.org

Katrina Aid: Support Community-based Relief & Reconstruction for Mississippi Delta Farmers & Fishworkers
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund (FSC), a member of Grassroots International’s ally the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), has set up an Emergency Relief Fund for relief and long-term reconstruction to help Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama farmers rebuild facilities and markets and help with direct emergency assistance for housing, food and water. GRI will be making a solidarity grant to support this effort. To find out how to donate, visit http://gol.c.topica.com/maadWScabj4wDa8ZUPccaeQzgF/

Hurricane Katrina could become a catalyst for global cooperation if only the US would learn from the disaster that it is co-tenant in the world and not a landlord. In the meantime, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Africans have a duty to show solidarity towards the victims of the natural disaster.

I have never really understood how Hurricanes are named and by whom. The scale of the devastation of New Orleans means that anytime one hears the name Katrina, images of mass suffering will readily come to mind.

Second week into the natural disaster we are nowhere near a common understanding of why the world's richest and allegedly most powerful country appeared prostate before the forces of nature. A bigger part of the controversy is based on a number of questions.

One, how natural was it if it had been long forewarned? Two, could it have been prevented? Three, if it could not be prevented should the communities not have been better prepared to deal with the consequences? Four, what was the level of culpability of local, state and federal officials in making the consequences of the disaster even more tragic either by acts of omission or commission, actions and inactions? But above all is the question of political accountability and responsibility for the consequences of the disaster.

George W. Bush, self-appointed saviour of the world, gung ho macho-militarist and prophet of pre-emptive action in far-flung places around the world either did not see the Hurricane under his nose or did not have any missiles to throw at it.

He has rightly been criticised for his reluctance (yet again) to get out of his holiday bed. But this slow reaction has become typical of Dubya. The man has been such an executive truant that he simply could never be found where he is supposed to be. Even when 9/11 (that he hijacked as his life's purpose and regime-defining issue) happened Bush was missing and remained in hiding for several days.

The rest of the world has continued to watch with both horror at the devastation and subdued bemusement and incredulity at the ill-preparedness of the Americans in the face of this tragedy. If it was in some third world country (especially Africa) there would be loud cries (no more louder than those from Washington) about irresponsible leadership.

There are three immediate lessons that I see. The first lesson is a very simple one. Every one of us, in emergencies, need help, rich or poor, big or small. Who would have thought that less than a year after the tragedy of the Tsunami that devastated several countries mainly in South East Asia and parts of East Africa, some of these countries including Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia would be coming forward to offer help to the USA!

The second one is that natural disasters do happen and can happen to any country. It only proves that we inhabit the same world even if some countries may deceive themselves that they are God's Landlords on earth. There is no territorial sovereignty over natural disasters.

The third lesson has to do with being humble and never saying never. As in a popular soap, the rich also cry and the poor also laugh. Last September, a Category 5 hurricane devastated Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. Cuba evacuated 1.5 million of its citizens before the storm. Consequently even though many homes were destroyed not a single Cuban died! The USA does not have all the answers to both its problems and global challenges. It can and must learn from others whose system it may like, whose leaders it detests but who have better knowledge and experience than the US in managing emergencies.

The other aspect of the disaster has to do with what it teaches us about America and the American way of life, its self-image, the projection of global military power and the reality inside the country.

The controversies are still raging as to whether racism or class are the main reasons why Bush and the US establishment have responded so shoddily. Personally I do not think it is a case of either or and I do not believe that one reason alone can explain the situation. It has to be a combination of reasons at the heart of which both class and race are fundamental factors.

America does not care about its poor people. This is not unique to the US ruling class since so many rulers do not care about their poorest, as most Africans will attest. However America as the richest country on earth is expected to look after its own. If it cannot why should anybody in the world accept its claims to wanting to solve other people's problems for them?

The truth is that the American dream has always been a self rationalization ideology for the rich. It has always been a harvest of huge nightmare for the poor and underclass in the system. Structurally and historically a disproportionate majority of these groups are of African-American origin therefore they bear greater part of the suffering. I am sure middle class African-Americans, with their 4-by-4’s, wider social networks beyond New Orleans and credit cards got out of harm's way as quickly as their white counter parts, but the bulk of their poor cousins had nowhere to go and perished in their thousands. Even those who could go elsewhere could not do so in good time because poverty had already condemned them to inadequate and vulnerable housing that Katrina gulped up at its first deadly kiss.

As a predominantly black place the majority of the victims would be black. Therefore race cannot be far from the surface. Indeed so black is the face of suffering globally that many people, including many Africans, initially thought the pictures were from yet another blighted African country. The shock was that these are pictures from America. Africans are known for their generosity, solidarity and kindness in the face of extremes of adversity but somehow we have not responded predictably to the tragedy in New Orleans despite the obvious connection. Are we so numbed by it that we are also shocked into delayed reaction or have become inured by familiar suffering that we cannot be bothered any more?

This is not just about African government’s responding. It is about African leaders in the diaspora too. It is not about Africans in Africa alone. It is about global Africa, at home and abroad. Where are we at this hour of need for our peoples stranded in New Orleans? We have to show that we as Africans have a duty to care and take the obligation seriously. That solidarity comes in different forms. America needs the rest of the world even if it was initially reluctant to ask for it. It has no missile shield defence system against natural disasters.

One good that may come out of this could be a grudging restoration of American faith in global institutions like the UN whose humanitarian agencies (in spite of general criticisms) are better equipped to deal with these type of emergencies. If the US learns from this disaster that it is a co-tenant, not the landlord of the world, then this tragedy could become a catalyst for global cooperation that may make the suffering of the people of New Orleans not to have been in vain.

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

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