Barack Obama might become the next United States president. Because of his African roots, this possibility has been met with euphoria and enthusiasm in the continent. In some instances, African expectations are the expression of racial pride. In others, they are simply irrational, unrealistic and misguided.

Centuries of slave trade and systematic degradation of people of African descent notwithstanding, there might be an American legacy of compassion towards the continent.

Africa's importance to US national interests might even be growing. The continent now supplies the US with 15 percent of its oil imports. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has diversified its initiatives in Africa.

Several valuable assistance programmes with strong bipartisan support in the US congress now range from major trade agreements to the fight against HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis and terrorism.

Still, the US has neither a strategic approach, nor a comprehensive policy towards the continent.

African Women’s Day gives us the opportunity to remember that gender-based violence is one of the most serious and widespread violations of the basic rights of women, particularly on the African continent. Gender discrimination is both one of the causes and an aggravating factor of the consequences of violence against women, thus contributing to the perpetuation of impunity of such cases.

The signatory organizations call on African States to ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on women’s rights (the “Maputo Protocol”), harmonize national laws with international standards and take all necessary measures to fight against violence against women by tackling the general context of discrimination which encourages such violations and which perpetuates the marginalization of women, particularly as regards their access to justice.

In this context, the signatory organizations want to draw the African States’ attention to the need to tackle the general environment of discrimination, which leads to such violence against women, generally of a sexual nature, perpetrated by the State but also within the community or in the private sphere.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has repeated his rejection of the ‘Union for the Mediterranean’, launched last month in Paris on the initiative of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Speaking on a visit to Tunis, Gaddafi, - the only leader to stay away of the 44 invited - claimed the project would seperate North Saharan countries from the rest of Africa. "I do not agree to cutting up Africa for hypothetical prospects with Europe" he added, and went on to characterise the Union as a violation of AU resolutions, a threat to Arab unity, and a return to colonialism.

Ironically however, his fears of ‘division’ had already been mirrored by many of France’s EU partners. As a result the original ambitious French plan for a ‘Mediterranean Union’ has been watered down to the point where it is unlikely to be more than a talking shop, equally incapable of fulfilling either Sarkozy’s dreams or Gaddafi’s fears.

INTRODUCTION

Is the criminal justice system in Kenya well equipped to protect women from gender-based violence? This a critical question because in July this year, the (SOA) is celebrating two years of existence having came into force on 21 July 2006.

It has been lauded as an evolutionally piece of legislation that provides for the prevention and protection of all persons from harmful and unlawful sexual acts. It expanded the definition of rape to comply with jurisprudence that is evolving from the international arena and introduces new crimes that did not exist in the previous legal framework.

While the world looks elsewhere, Somalia is in flames. The nation just topped a list of the world’s most unstable countries by Foreign Policy magazine, and the United Nations has declared the humanitarian situation there “worse than Darfur.”

In the next three months the number of people requiring immediate food aid will reach 3.5 million. Over one million refugees have fled their homes. Due to a raging insurgency against the current transitional government – which has support from both the West and Ethiopia – Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, has earned the nickname, “Baghdad on the sea.”

In Somalia, there are no diplomatic superstars like Condoleezza Rice or Kofi Annan, who rushed to Kenya to settle its election crisis; there are no celebrities like Mia Farrow or Jim Carrey to urge international action and awareness as they did in Sudan and Burma.

“The elevation of an agricultural people to the condition of countries at once agricultural, manufacturing and commercial, can only be accompanied under the law of free trade, when the various nations engaged at the time of manufacturing industry shall be in the same degree of progress and civilization; when they shall place no obstacle in the way of the economical development of each other, and not impede their respective progress by war or adverse commercial legislation.” - Friedrich List, in the National System of Political Economy

People often say when Africans argue for an integrated national African economy, they are self-indulgent entertaining nothing but a futile illusion. They claim that to argue that Africa must unite economically, ‘knowledge-ically’, politically, and ’society-ically’ is to day-dream and to give in to fantasy. They assert that Africa does not exist in anything, form or shape other than as a geographical accident.

Of course, they would hardly say this of the USA, for example, where 'the tribes of the whole world’, and people have united under one constitution and national flag, and right now seemingly poised to electing an African –American with a father from Kenya! To claim more than a geographical reality to Africa is often condemned and reproached. The pursuit of African integration is said to be a too pie in the sky dream, fantasy, utopian, unrealistic, which distracts from taking realistic incremental actions. Thus, going for unity on a big scale is pronounced dangerous!

The current food crisis has been heralded as the worst since the 1970s. Ordinary people, from South Africa to Egypt, India to Turkey, have been forced to make severe adjustments to their lives to deal with food hikes that continue to rise exponentially since late 2007. A combination of complex factors, including poor harvests, higher energy prices and unprecedented demands exceeding supplies, amongst other contributing factors have led to the current condition. The world is a different place compared to the 1970s though; it is a vastly connected and interdependent globe, highly networked, largely dependent on the dictums of the logic of globalization, where chinks in supplies have a ricocheting effect across the globe, including the first world. We know that such increases have resulted in lifestyle changes and increased vulnerability for those at the bottom, but how similar are these struggles and experiences? The IOLS-Research Unit, UKZN bring together a collection of real stories of how ordinary people are being affected by the current spate of food and oil hikes, compiled by Azad Essa.

MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA by Nomkhosi Xulu

Margaret Shabalala*, 85, is a pensioner and the breadwinner of her household. She lives with two of her unemployed children who are in their mid 40s. She has four grandchildren, all high school graduates, but unemployed, except one. "Whenever I get my pension I have to carefully distribute each and every cent so that all in the family gets some share, said Ms Shabalala. "Obviously my pension is unable to cover buying the food for such a big family. From my pension at the end of the month, I try to buy basic foodstuff like rice, flour, maize meal, oil and sugar. These are the kind of things that should last us for the whole month, but that does not really happen. Sometimes I am left with nothing and I can't even go to church as taxi fares are also increasing with everything else."

"Things are not the same anymore," she continues, "our life situation just keeps on getting worse. I only wish that things were different. I am old and sick and have hardly anything to eat because of rising food prices. My daughters and grandchildren are looking for employment but that is not helping as well. Instead it is emptying our pockets for bus fare and photocopying, faxing and posting of CVs. I even tried looking for land in order to plant vegetables but have not yet succeeded. Every now and then I try to encourage my family to boil food as that will save oil. Things are really bad."

*name changed

Sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) is a scourge on Africa; a pandemic that has undermined women and girls’ rights to autonomy, bodily integrity, human dignity, sexuality, security and tranquillity. SGBV has, and continues to be a major hindrance to rights and justice. It is prevalent in all our societies across the continent, including non-conflict situations. It is repeatedly used as a weapon against girls and women in conflict/crisis situations. SGBV, including intimate partner violence, is a leading factor in the increasing "feminisation" of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

The inadequacy of our societies’ responses has cast SGBV as an abuse we are willing to live with. Women and girls, regardless of their race, age, social and economic status, live in perennial fear of violation.

We, the delegates of say ENOUGH.

People in government, business, and political and civil society organisations routinely talk about 'stakeholders'. They do exercises in stakeholder analysis to inform their 'strategic planning'. Invariably they use the stakeholder language to advertise claims about the inclusivity of their thinking, their processes, and their practice. The organisation we work with [Church Land Programme (CLP)] was asked recently to prepare an input for a 'stakeholder analysis' for a collegial NGO and this forced us to reflect on why we were so uncomfortable with the very idea. We presented some of our thinking as the basis for discussions at the NGO meeting. It was good that there was a mix of people there including grassroots militants as well as civil society employees.

The note below includes some thoughts we had prepared, as well as things we learned from people at the meeting. It outlines why we conclude that the stakeholder discourse, and the practices that go along with it, are in fact part of an order that functions to exclude and silence. For those at the meeting who came from grassroots formations, it was clear that this approach fitted very much with their analysis and experience. Summarising their key points, it was said that the stakeholder approaches exclude, enslave, silence and demobilise. The combined effect is to try and reduce their struggles to what can be managed within the terms set by the rich and powerful.

STAKEHOLDERS = THOSE WHO COUNT and EMANCIPATORY POLITICS = MADE BY THE UNCOUNTED

By definition, stakeholders must mean those people or groups who are recognised as having a stake in something. Part of CLP's evolving way of understanding the world we're in has meant moving decisively away from the assumption that we get toward good praxis by analysing, and working with, relations with 'stakeholders'. It's not that we think stakeholders don't matter – on the contrary, they constitute 'what is' and they therefore affect a lot of things that people have to deal with. But they cannot constitute spaces for a liberatory politics. The 'stakeholders' are those who are counted and who are qualified to speak – their counting, qualifications and speaking being constituted by and within the terms of the existant order (of 'the police' as Rancier would have it). A liberatory politics is the opposite – it is precisely the disruption of those terms by those who are not counted, not qualified, and therefore, should not be speaking. In short: naming the stakeholders is in order – liberatory praxis is the 'out of order' of those who do not qualify to be stakeholders.

It's just been a few weeks since Nelson Mandela was taken off the United States terrorism watch list. No doubt so that they too could join in the celebrations of this living icon, without the embarrassment of hoisting up a revolutionary.

I gather that a revolutionary in America is, someone, not quite viewed through the same rose-tinted lens worn by us Southerners.

Mandela made the cover of Time Magazine again this week. It's his fourth time on the cover. I couldn't resist picking it up as I walked past the magazine rack at the local store, knowing well that I was going to be presented with yet another romantic glorification of his role as reconciler.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment. I join the rest of the world in praising the power of his peacemaking in our deeply divided nation. But Mandela is my hero for a few different reasons too. There is much more to our beloved leader than the image of the sanitised reconciler we've been fed since his release from prison.

Ten years ago, in May 1998, I had the pleasure of meeting Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of the US, for a few minutes in Geneva during the World Health Organisation's 50th Anniversary Assembly. She was one of the VIPs invited to celebrate this event at the WHO which had just passed under the leadership of its first woman Director-General, Dr. Gro Haarlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway.

Mrs. Clinton's presence was in recognition of her unsuccessful, but commendable attempt, during her husband's first presidential term, to convince her country's legislators to introduce some form of medical insurance for American citizens, some 40% of whom had no medical cover then, and still do not, to this day.

Statement of the Communist Party of Sudan

The inclusion of the name of the President of the Republic of the Sudan among those wanted for justice by the International Criminal Court, increases the complications engulfing the crisis prevailing in the Sudan. Despite the fact that such procedures were already in place and expected since the establishment of the Court, and this last step of naming the President of the Sudan was preceded by a similar step indating two prominent figures in the Government in February 2007, the Government of the Sudan was ill- prepared both legally and politically to react to either attempts.

It is well-known, generally accepted and cannot be hidden that what is going on in Darfur is a real tragedy and the human catasrophy. We, the Sudanese Communist Party, reiterate what we have already declared that the Sudanese Government bears full responsibility for it is happening in Darfur, since its own policies have led to the aggraviation of the tragedy. We continue to demand together with others the investigation to the crimes committed in Darfur, and to bring those responsible to justice regardless of their position in the state hierarchy. The Government did not heed two reasons.

I was on a flight from Entebbe to Nairobi on June 30 when I read The New Vision's front page story titled "Mother cuts off defiler's penis."By the time I finished the story, my spirits were up and I have been in a great mood ever since.

According to the article, Angelina Kyomugisha was weeding her banana farm in Mbarara when she heard her 10-year old daughter cry out. She went over to have a look, only to find 40-year-old Geoffrey Mugarura defiling her little girl. Kyomugisha did what every mother ought to do in such situation - she pounced on Mugarura and cut off his penis. Then she flung it into the bush.

Neighbours helped search for Mugarura's severed penis till they noticed a dog running off with something in its mouth. They threw a stick at the dog till it dropped what was left of his snack. At this point in the story I had to control my laughter for fear being thrown off the flight. At hospital, a doctor confirmed that they would refashion what was left of Mugarura's penis so that he could at least urinate with it. As for any other business, the dog had taken care of that.

1. AU MEMBER STATES MUST STRENGTHEN CAPACITY OF THE AU COMMISSION AND ASSEMBLY OF HEADS OF STATES TO COPE SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH LONG-TERM DEVELOPMENT GOALS, AND ‘EMERGENCY’ ISSUES SUCH AS ZIMBABWE:

The dominance of Zimbabwe’s governance and human rights challenges at the recently concluded 2008 African Union midyear summit in Egypt highlights that AU member states urgently need to strengthen their capacity to follow through on details of, and implementation of commitments to key African development issues – alongside other equally important issues that are not summit themes.

Specifically the Commission of the African Union needs to be provided with more resources and capacity to ensure AU ability to maintain 100% focus on long-term key development goals while simultaneously coping with emergencies on governance, human security, and peace and security issues. In addition, the Assembly of Heads of State themselves need to build their own capacity to cope with these ‘emergencies’ at summit level, alongside producing clear decisions and outcomes on summit themes. Issues like Zimbabwe, Darfur or the food crisis could hardly be described as a surprise to any of our Heads of State. They also need to provide the crucial resources for in country summit preparation, and implementation of outcomes between summits by a strengthened AU Commission, the AU Executive Council, relevant line Ministers and the Ambassadors on the Permanent Representatives Council.

Apparently, January 1 2008 saw a breakthrough in Chinese workers’ rights, and a flight of employers to other lands where labour is cheaper and less protected. At least that is what must have happened if the rosiest [or most alarmist] interpretations of China’s new labour law, which came into force on that date, are to be believed.

But getting at the facts behind the reports is another matter - and of interest to African activists for at least two reasons. First, China’s competitive labour cost advantage is blamed for loss of employment in Africa especially in textiles. Second, Chinese firms in Africa are supposed to conform to local laws or failing that, to Chinese legislation. So if China’s labour laws are now to become a worker’s nirvana, could African workers in future hope to hitch a ride on the apparently greater rights of their Chinese brothers and sisters?

When I was young and impressionable I had this grand vision of saving the world. It was so easy to dream up a free and fair world where sanity, justice and good health prevailed. It was even easier to engage in activities that could quicken the coming into being of those dreams. Now that I am older, I’ve since learnt that many of us go through such phases until we arrive at a waking place. I have now known the toughest place to be; the here and now. Forget the interval for a moment. And don’t get me wrong, I am not against dreaming. That’s where we all have to start anyway. I cannot imagine how best to survive and change harsh realities without a map of radiant dreams. But we must not stamp our eyes on the map, on the canvas. We are only to look at it for direction, not dwelling. Imagine if we were to focus all our attention on the compass without moving, what would we achieve? And yet it seems to me many of us and a big number of organizational realists are trapped between the dreaming and the coming true, avoiding the here and now. I am writing about all the Millennium Development Goals setters and implementers. They haven’t stirred from the map, the deep sleep and soft dream. Here’s my analysis.

In the area of HIV/AIDS prevention, the United States government has been criticised for increasing funding for abstinence-only strategies, while religious establishments like the Catholic Church continue to question condom use. The current HIV/AIDS prevention campaign urges women especially, to abstain, be faithful, or use condoms (ABC). This is because women and girls comprise the majority of those found to be HIV positive. UNAIDS 2006 report estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, 57% of adults with HIV are women, and young women aged 15 to 24 are more than three times likely to be infected than young men of the same age group. Based upon these statistics is the short-sighted conclusion that women should be the main target in combating HIV/AIDS. Truthfully, they are the majority that turn up to be tested and their results are easily available. In many countries in Africa, the HIV/AIDS statistics for men are hard to find, if they exist at all. Do we then conclude that the HIV/AIDS campaign should focus largely on urging the women to be more vigilant and careful when it comes to prevention or it should all the more be about empowering the men to be loving, respectful and protective towards the women?

The application by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a warrant of arrest for Sudanese President Omar Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur creates both big opportunities and big risks for peace in Sudan.

These are the first charges of genocide and the first charges against a head of state to be brought before the ICC. The judges will now have to weigh the Prosecutor’s evidence and decide – a process that could take some months– whether to issue the arrest warrant.

Climate Change is accepted today even by die hard sceptics as a real crisis that must be urgently tackled for the preservation of the earth in a form that would sustain human and other life forms. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the best known body of climate scientists who accepts that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities [1].

It has also been recognised as a human rights issue by the UN. There have been several conferences, studies and multilateral discussions on the issue. There has also been plenty of foot dragging by governments who erroneously think that prodigious carbon emission is a mark of progress and development.

We note that the global North has historically contributed disproportionately to the amounts of greenhouse gasses (GHS) in the atmosphere whereas the global South has been saddled with the impacts and is now being forced into a corner from where she has no option but to seek means for mitigation of the impacts and adapting to them as well. It is instructive as we shall see that the slant of these official frameworks and mechanisms have been intimately tied to trade and have had the main slant of opening up opportunities for huge financial benefits for polluting industries while the South will be further pushed into the debt trap through the strategies of the World Bank and other international financial players.

This paper aims to review governmental frameworks for addressing climate change with an underlying premise that there is an urgent need for the delinking of carbon emission from positive development.

The KYOTO PROTOCOL

The Kyoto protocol will effectively end in the year 2012. The protocol had set very minimal targets for reduction of carbon emissions that was to be achieved between 1990 and 2012. Major emitters such as the USA and Australia did not accept these targets. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other analysts have shown that even if the targets set by Kyoto were met, the climate crisis would not have been sufficiently tackled.

While the mainstream media doesn’t always ignore the pressing issue of hunger in Africa, it rarely explores the root causes of this problem. Behind most news on the issue, there’s an assumption that casts hunger as a natural result of unfortunate weather conditions, coupled with bureaucratic inefficiency and bad economic planning.

With this in mind, in 2005 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a plan to “help millions of small-scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.” In the years since, the foundation has been joined in its efforts by a number of other organizations that have founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

ACCORDING TO AGRA

AGRA programs develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural “value chain”-from seeds, soil health, and water to markets and agricultural education…. A root cause of… entrenched and deepening poverty is the fact that millions of small-scale farmers-the majority of them women working farms smaller than one hectare-cannot grow enough food to sustain their families, their communities, or their countries.

AGRA’s assumptions — and those of the mainstream media — rest on the premise that the Africa’s hunger problem is one of production. While production may be part of the story, it’s far from the complete picture. The heart of the agriculture crisis that Africa and the world are currently experiencing lies in the failed policy paradigm promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, institutions that still have enormous control over economic policy in many African countries.

The current food crisis is yet another reminder of the feminisation of poverty. Women produce most of the food in poor countries, yet they have less access to seed, fertilisers and extension services. They are also the most hungry -- about seventy per cent of the people who do not have access to enough food are women and girls. Women form the bulk of the working poor -- they toil long hours without reaping enough to enable them to climb out of the dollar-a-day absolute poverty bracket. In some countries women widowed by HIV and AIDS are routinely disinherited, and in these and many other countries women's lower cultural or legal status means that they do not own the land they till. The food crisis has inevitably taken a greater toll on women, and consequently the well-being of whole communities is affected.

Some of the grim statistics are as follows [1]:

- Food prices have risen 55 percent from June 2007 to February 2008, including an 87 percent increase in the cost of rice in March.

- Households in developing countries spend an average of 70 percent of their incomes on food, compared to the 15 to 18 percent that households spend in industrialized countries.

- Even before the food crisis hit, an estimated 7 out of 10 of the world's hungry were women and girls.

- Rural women alone produce half of the world's food and 60% to 80% of the food in most developing countries, but receive less than 10% of credit provided to farmers.