Globalization has many faces but it essentially refers to the movements of goods, capital (real or financial), and people (skilled or unskilled).To an increasing extent, it refers to growing contacts among people. These movements and contacts bring with them exchanges of ideas and techniques that can promote welfare. This interesting book brings the knowledge and sophistication of first rate economists to the analysis of the globalization of talent and assesses its various and not always obvious consequences.

During the Kenya Elections 2007 and after, amateur and professional photographers alike captured powerful scenes of the campaigning, voting and ensuing violence and destruction. The exhibition tells this story through over 150 compelling images, presenting an opportunity for us all to remember and reflect. Exhibition runs Monday to Friday 9am -5pm and on Saturdays 10am-4pm. Closes 10th May 2008.

"Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge" (Aimé Césaire)

Aimé Césaire died on 17 April 2008 in Fort-de-France on the French Caribbean island of Martinique at the ripe age of 94. His life and political choices are truly captured in his friend and surrealist writer André Breton's words: Césaire was the "prototype of dignity".

But, like most brilliantly creative men, he had more than one incarnation. Throughout his long life, Césaire contained the multiple identities of surrealist poet, political playwright, intellectual engagé, politician and anti-colonial crusader.

Aimé Césaire was born in 1913 in the small town of Basse Pointe in Martinique to a lower-middle-class family. He displayed early brilliance and was admitted at the age of 11 to the Lycee Schoelcher in Fort-de-France. After moving to Paris, and studying in the prestigious Lycee Louis Le Grand, he prepared for the competitive entrance exam of the elite École normale supérieure. During this period, many African and Caribbean intellectuals had been recruited under the French colonial policy of assimilation to study at metropolitan universities. The years Aimé Césaire spent in Paris were formative in many ways. There he absorbed French culture, European humanities and learned Latin and Greek; but he also befriended the Senegalese intellectual Léopold Sédar Senghor (with whom he began to study African history and culture), and was exposed in Paris to influences from African-American movements such as the Harlem renaissance. In this intellectually ebullient climate Césaire and Senghor (together with Césaire's childhood friend Léon-Gontran Damas) launched a journal called L'Etudiant Noir (The Black Student) featuring the works of writers from Africa and the Caribbean. The concept of "négritude" - defined as the "affirmation that one is black and proud of it" - was coined by them in the first issue of the journal, although credit is generally ascribed to Senghor alone. Négritude blossomed into a political, philosophical and literary theory that would have repercussions all over the world.

Much of Césaire's later work revolved around the theme of restoring the cultural identity of black Africans. Critiques of négritude have pointed to the essentialism and nativism inherent in the idea that all people of negro descent shared certain inalienable essential characteristics. But négritude went beyond the race-based assertions of African dignity of WEB du Bois or Marcus Garvey, in that it attempted to extend perceptions of the negro as possessing a distinctive personality in all spheres of life, intellectual, emotional and physical. Within the négritude stream, Césaire's life and oeuvre was special and different in its attempt to embrace négritude, Marxism and surrealism all in one. In the early 1940s Aimé Césaire and his wife Suzanne Roussy (Roussi) returned to Martinique and took up teaching posts in Fort-de- France. With other colleagues and friends they launched a new journal called Tropiques. This became a major voice for surrealism which they perceived as the strategy for revolution and emancipation of the mind. Césaire's most renowned works, Les Armes Miraculeuses (Miraculous Weapons) and Soleil cou coupé (Beheaded sun), embraced both surrealism and négritude. But it was his Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal (1939) that brought him fame and led André Breton to describe it as the "the greatest lyrical monument of our time". This epic poem depicts in symbolic imagery the degradation of black people and describes the rediscovery of an African sense of self. It provided the all important starting-point for the claiming of a black Caribbean identity.

By the end of the second world war, Césaire - like many young intellectuals of the time - joined the French Communist Party (PCF). He took an active interest in politics, running successfully for mayor of Fort-de-France and was for decades deputy to the French national assembly. He was instrumental in the change of status of the former colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guinea, and Reunion from colony to départements within the French republic. In 1956 he broke away from the Communist Party partly because of its unwillingness to condemn the Soviet Union's intervention in Hungary and partly because of the privileging of proletarian revolution over anti-colonial struggles. Thus while many communist intellectuals in France remained mute, Césaire took a principled stand. He later created his own political formation, the Martinique Progressive Party, and openly supported the candidature of Ségolène Royal in the 2007 presidential election.

Césaire's writings and politics had a deep impact on the francophone colonised world. His Discourse on Colonialism (1950), less known than the writings of his former student Frantz Fanon, argued subtly that colonialism affected the colonised as as much as the coloniser who was dehumanised through the practice of torture and violence. It dealt with issues that would be taken up by postcolonial thinkers in the later 20th century: the importance of an ideology of race and culture that sustained colonial rule anticipated the idea that colonialism is also domination through knowledge. He believed that a revolt of the tiers monde was the only path possible for the creation of a just world. His later works on colonialism were grounded in history. He wrote about Toussaint L'Ouverture's heroic attempt at revolution, about Patrice Lumumba's struggle in the Congo and finally adapted Shakespeare's Tempest to explore the relation between coloniser and colonised. Reading him is a caution against today's tendency to read colonialism as an encounter between cultures or the creation of contact-zones. Reading him serves as a reminder that colonialism was essentially humiliation and pain.

Aimé Césaire never lost his dignity and as a intellectual engagé always took a principled stand, critiquing in the same vein all the avatars of modernity from Marxism to nationalism and colonialism with the trenchant weapon of poetry. He leaves us beautiful words reminiscent of some of Mallarmé's poems, complex and demanding yet conveying a piercing sensation of beauty and depth.

* Nira Wickramasinghe is a professor in the department of history and international relations, the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Among her books are Civil Society in Sri Lanka: New Circles of Power (New Delhi, Thousand Oaks/ Sage, 2001); Dressing the Colonised Body: Politics, Clothing and Identity in Colonial Sri Lanka (New Delhi, Orient Longman, 2003); and Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities (C Hurst and University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

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

Antiretroviral therapy should be recommended to all people with HIV who have CD4 cell counts below 350 cells/mm3 regardless of whether they have symptoms of HIV disease or not, according to new guidelines from the Southern African HIV Clinicians’ Society published in the Summer 2008 edition of the Society’s journal.

Skin-to-Skin: Challenging Textile Art opens at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg on 16 April 2008, running until 10 May. Curated by Fiona Kirkwood, the exhibition reflects South Africa's multi-cultural identity and unique history through diverse work by artists using textile-related concepts, techniques and materials.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem looks at the the Africa Public Health Development Trust (APHDT) campaign to hold African governments to their commitment of allocating 15% of their annual budgets to health.

There are many people who used to be firebrand revolutionaries who have retreated into NGOs and are adapting guerrilla strategies to their advocacy, ambushing governments and others who hold power over what we eat, what we drink, our leisure and pleasures, be they corporate shirks, religious establishments or other powers that may be.

Many are moving away from inertia-inducing cynicism to active engagement and strategic infiltration of global, regional and sub-regional multilateral meetings, and influencing their agenda both from within and without. A downside of this, of course, is the constant danger of being incorporated, of popular ideas being hijacked and subverted, or of becoming too respectable and ineffectual.

There was resistance among many of Africa's leaders about opening up their summits and other regional multilateral meetings. Many of them were bent on keeping the business of government the exclusive preserve of 'sovereignty and territorial integrity' of largely unelected and mostly unelectable dictators. However, due to the persistence and perseverance of pro-democracy forces and continuing democratic gains, the spaces that opened up at national levels gained complementary spaces at sub-regional and continental levels. In some cases rights, conventions, charters and other politico-legal instruments agreed at the continental level have become a catalyst for reform at national levels. The engagement by human rights and other pro-democracy groups with the African Commission for Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) is one good example.

A major consequence of entering the corridors of power is that many of us are ceasing to be active revolutionaries and becoming expert RESOLUTIONARIES, adept at tracking these events, plodding through voluminous and sometimes unreadable documents.

But this no longer true among a growing brigade of African Resolutionaries. They read these documents and use them as entry points to engage with our governments, policy makers, multilateral agencies and developments partners at various levels. One group that is likely to be more influential in the long run is the Africa Public Health Development Trust (APHDT), a coalition of health advocacy groups across Africa being coordinated by the indefatigable Rotimi Sankore, a veteran in Africa's social movement. As we gain more legitimate space for civil and political rights, socio-economic and cultural rights, rights to development will become more central to our social movements, superseding the 'sexy by default' traditional human rights groups and the protest by per diem that some of them have become.

Some of the contradictory dynamics in engaging with governments are evident in APHDT's campaign to get African governments to meet their commitment to allocate 15% of their annual budgets to health. The APHDT and its allies are campaigning that they honour their commitment. However, at the recent AU/ECA joint meeting of African finance, planning and economic development ministers between 31 March and 2 April this commitment was going to be quietly dropped, but for the presence of the APDHT and its allies, including the UNMC.

The agenda was packed, but both APDHT and the UNMC shadowed the meeting to guarantee finance for Africa's capacity to meet the MDGs, and in particular to ensure that the public health commitments in relation to the four health-related goals, as well as the Abuja 15% commitment, remain.

Of the four points suggested by the CSOs that were persuasive to the experts, only the following two, in modified language, made it to the ministers' final resolutions:

1.That towards actualising the implementation of the AU Africa Health Strategy and associated health plans, including those on HIV, TB, malaria and reproductive health, African countries must urgently meet the AU Abuja pledge to allocate at least 15% of national budgets to health, combined with a consistent upward review of percentage expenditure on health and per capita expenditure on health, to ensure that the necessary levels of expenditure to increase life expectancy by 2010 and to meet the health-based MDGs by 2015 are achieved.

2.That African ministers of finance, planning and economic development organize a joint conference by 2008 or early 2009 to agree on the specifics for sustainable health financing to implement the Africa health frameworks and meet the health-based MDGs.

The recommendations that ministers adopted under paragraph 153 of the draft report, which also informed resolution 7 bullet 5 of the same report, were silent on the 15%.

There was discontent among the finance ministers regarding the feasibility of achieving the 15% target when there are so many competing priorities in the budget. Fiscal conservatism is the norm for finance ministers in these ideologically driven days of neo-liberalism. However, ministers have no right to refuse to implement their political bosses' decisions. They can only do so if their political bosses have forgotten their own commitments and the citizens are not aware of them. Citizens have a duty to remind them and also demand that these commitments are met.

It is most scandalous that according to the APDHT ‘…Africa currently loses over 8 million people a year mainly to TB, HIV, malaria, maternal mortality… This tragic loss, which is the equivalent of whole countries dying out and greater than losses from all modern conflicts combined, is a result of weak or collapsed public health systems.’

It goes without saying therefore that ‘…the long-term sustainable financing of public health as a whole should be recognised as a top social and economic development priority for the ECA and AU Member States.’ And indeed anyone seriously interested in Africa's development.

If you are outraged that millions of our peoples die annually in most cases from preventable diseases you have a duty to challenge your minister of finance to stop robbing the sick and causing more unnecessary deaths by balancing books against lives. The recommendations will be going forward to the next summit in Cairo. Be sure that your president recommits himself or herself to the Abuja pledge and not renege on them as the ministers are suggesting.

Our heads of state, ministers of finance, health, education and international partners express commitment to meeting the MDGs, yet they are unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. It must be that their hearts are not in it.

African governments are quick to partner with anybody, and cry their hearts out when it comes to aid, trade and debt, but are reluctant to be accountable to their own citizens about their own budgeting and spending commitments. Africa cannot insist (rightly) that the richer countries meet their commitment to increase aid to 0.7 % of their GDPs and then renege on specific commitments to their own peoples.

The 2001 Abuja 15% pledge is not just a number that can be conveniently erased from documents or dropped quietly. It is not just another statistic. It is a betrayal of the dead and the living. It is a choice between life and death.

*Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem writes this column as a Pan Africanist.

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

Publisher: Riverhead books, 2004.
Hardback 334 pages.

This is why there is hope for Somalia

The novel Links, by Nuruddin Farah, opens with a very arresting line:
“Guns lack the body of human truths!”

Right away we are introduced to a story of guns and concealed truths. To untangle what lies in this statement, we follow the author’s narrative of the wars within a war, and a lost battle. Tension maps every page with each exposition of the dangerous terrain that’s become Somalia, the characters intentions and impenetrable intrigues.

Links is not a one person story. Neither is it just a political one. It is a balanced, gendered one. Each woman, each man, each child is a story. Amidst the violence and senseless horrors experienced by most characters, we are inclined to embrace Rajo, (Raasta) a child who is both vulnerable and legendary. She is seen as “a symbol of peace in war-torn Somalia, the stuff of myth, seen by the city’s residents as a conduit to a harmonious coexistence.” Wise beyond her age, she talks people out of their depression, comforts mothers and gives confidence to the children. “…she gives shape to the links between words and their meanings, and then fits them into chains of her own choosing.” By age four she has figured out what marriage is like. With “a face as ancient as the roots of a baobab,” she is referred to as the “Protected One.”

Rajo is Somalia wearing a dress and a child’s face. As her story unfolds, we find out how she is abducted but not stolen. She has to put up with risks but like enduring hope, she is the sun that rises each day to greet the once beautiful Somali land. There’s little wonder therefore that Rajo actually means hope.

We are also seduced to listen and accept the story of Jeebleh, who returns to Mogadishu after twenty years to pay homage to his mother’s grave and also settle a few scores with one of the bad guys—Caloosha. At the airport, Jeebleh presents his Somali passport. The officer leafs through the pages looking for the visa. It is Jeebleh’s turn to be sarcastic and ask when it has become “necessary for a Somali to require a visa to enter Mogadiscio?” Jeebleh must tread carefully because he is walking on eggs. He cannot tell who is a foe and who is a friend. Nothing is told straight up. He even has to go through a tangled maze to locate his mother’s actual grave. Bile, the good guy is walking on landmines with his trying-to-do-good attitude and actions. Af-Laawe, who has started an NGO to take care of the dead prides in his “Funeral with a difference!” He speaks in metaphors all through the story. He is consistent in not giving clear answers to simple questions.

“How is Bile?” Jeebleh asks Af-Laawe.
“It depends on who you talk to,” Af-Laawe responds.
Later, Jeebleh asks Af-Laawe, “Why the nickname ‘Marabou’?”
“Somebody has been telling you things,” is Af-Laawe’s response.

Behind his back there are rumors that his efficiency and expediency in gathering the bodies into his van is only because he is selling organs of the dead and making huge profits out of calamity.
Within the quandary, Farah goes on to weave a delicate hope. He uses whatever realities are at hand to send a double textured message of hope. For instance, on the collateral damage that’s become Somalia’s rubber stamp, he writes: “A cynic I know says that thanks to the vultures, the marabous and the hawks, we have no fear of diseases spreading.” In another instance, one of Jeebleh’s contacts says, “My cynical friend suggests that when the country is reconstituted as a functioning state, we should have a vulture as our national symbol.” There is irony as well as good hope considering the manner in which the sentence is stated. “…when the country is reconstituted as a national state…” Farah sees the coming into constitutional state Somalia, some day.

And the use of the vulture too must be deliberate. In ancient Egypt—Kemet land, the vulture was the symbol of royal protection won on the foreheads by pharaohs, gods and the goddess Nekhbet. Egypt then was fertile, just and prosperous. Also, the powerful Ghanaian empire before the fatal brush with colonization had the symbol of a vulture. During slave trade, for those who escaped slavery, the vulture acted as a guide to the hills, away from the dogs, the horses and the overseers. For those who collapsed or died along the way, the vulture ate (read cleared) their remains. This gave a certain sense of freedom to those Africans since they believed that the vulture would carry their spirit back to their roots, back home to Mother Africa. Farah’s use of the many deaths and vultures can be interpreted through this original African expression of freedom and return to a desired state. A delicate hope!

The major strength of the novel is Farah’s honesty about the links that break and mend Somalia. The links that are the threads of hope as well as the strands of death, the root cause of the existing chaos threatening to extend to the neighbouring nations, the network of clans and lunatic warlords. Farah merges the landscape of memory and reality to recreate a possible Somalia, scathed but not diminished.

* Mildred K Barya is Writer-in-Residence at TrustAfrica (www.trustafrica.org)

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

"Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration" is intended as a multi-media festival to celebrate the avant-garde work of Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987), to be staged in Oxford in the spring of 2009. Its additional aims are to promote world literatures in English, foster interest in the issues of postcoloniality, and encourage an inter- disciplinary approach to the study of literature. We are looking for actors, musicians, film-makers, fine artists, cartoon animationists, and others who would like to pay a tribute to Marechera through their art. Please direct all enquiries and project proposals to [email][email protected]

Heart-warming, controversial and practical. Derrick Fine’s first book, Clouds Move, a memoir, published in 2007, intimately reveals his journey of living with HIV, detailing his experiences from his first coming out as a gay man to disclosing to close friends and family that he is living with HIV.

There is a widespread assumption among rich countries that Africa is the problem and that we in the rich world are the solution. This book turns this complacent, conventional wisdom on its head. It argues that the policies of rich countries, though couched in benevolent terms, are in fact responsible for many of the ills in Africa... For Africa to move forward, the citizens of rich countries must be aware of the false premises on which their own leaders deal with Africa.

Andrew Mushita and Carol Thompson
Africa World Press, 2008

A new book co-written by veteran Zimbabwe agronomist Andrew Mushita and United States-based political economist Carol Thompson, titled Biopiracy of Biodiversity -- Global Exchange As Enclosure, is a path-breaking work on one of the most important issues in the near future.

The work by Mushita -- a director of the Community Technology Development Trust, and Thompson, a professor of political economy at Northern Arizona University in the US -- is a timely and critically important contribution that examines biopiracy in Africa, indigenous knowledge systems, biodiversity and international instruments on trade and intellectual property rights.

This book, published recently by Africa World Press, also focuses on sustainable farming, the limitations, successes and dangers of industrial agriculture, US trade relations in Africa, the land issue, food security and international instruments on seed and the need to preserve biodiversity as a policy for food security.

In many ways, the book, persistently works to advance public understanding of complex issues related to biopiracy, biotechnology, indigenous knowledge systems, World Trade Organisation instruments on patenting and strategies to deal with food insecurity and the rampant and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.

Mushita and Thompson argue that the essence of seed exchange is sharing and not to profit as is happening in the world today. They say the current tendency to sell seed, pollute and put the dollar first can be damaging to the traditional important ways of life that seek to share seed to grow plants across the world and protect the environment.

"Yet the terrible other side of the story is that all this richness, beauty and wealth -- germinating from sharing is now threatened," the authors say in the opening chapter titled, The Ancient Future.

"It is being destroyed by refusal to share, by hoarding for a false, ephemeral prosperity. It is being destroyed in the name of science, of law and 'just reward' in the name of innovation, power and of profit."

The book is enjoying rave reviews worldwide.

"This book provides vital information to a cross-section of stakeholders for understanding challenges posed by international agencies and highlights the need for strategic policy alternatives to sustain biodiversity. I recommend it for reading by all those practitioners involved in economic development and food policy issues," said Godwin Mkamanga, director of the Sadc Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Lusaka, Zambia.

The authors also contribute to a vital dialogue about the effects of globalisation on traditional farming systems in Africa, the use of food aid as weapon of domination by powerful countries and the dwindling use of African grains.

They say the US government sent genetically modified (GM) maize kernels to Southern Africa in 2002 as food aid, without bothering to care about the high risk or uncertainty that the shipments would pollute the local genetic maize pool.

ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE AND MALAWI REJECTED THE GMO MAIZE

"The view from the inside of the continent looking out is that aliens have responded to drought and famine with inappropriate technology, expensive (highly profitable to some) unsustainable inputs, trade barriers against African goods and more loans than grants for so-called food 'aid'," Mushita and Thompson point out.

The authors also argue vehemently for the protection of Africa's biodiversity which is now increasingly being poached by Western countries. They say indigenous knowledge is a key weapon for the survival of the people on the continent.

Mushita and Thompson say the demise of traditional medical knowledge was due to slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalisation. For long, they say, indigenous communities used their own traditional knowledge to treat successfully ulcers, asthma, diabetes and sickle cell anemia among a string of other ailments.

Bio-resources have been shared freely for centuries as people exchanged seed, plants and animals for breeding and the writers say, what is new and disturbing is the patenting of the seed "whether an offered gift or stolen cultural secret" into private property.

In many parts of the developing world agricultural diversity is an important part of people's culture. Researchers say this diversity helps to provide stability for farmers who grow a range of crops.

If one particular crop or variety fails, the others help make up the difference. But today, Africa's large and diverse biological diversity is now at risk with many plant and crop species under threat of extinction owing to pollution, unsustainable use practices, climate change, introduction of exotic species, civil conflict, intensified human activities and other factors.

Mushita and Thompson give an in-depth historical overview on biopiracy relating this colonial legacy to piracy in the 21st century.

A 2005 report by the US-based Edmonds Institute and the African Centre for Biosafety indicates 34 examples of Western laboratories developing drugs, cosmetics and industrial products using material from African plants, animals or microbes.

Researchers expressed concern that a lot of materials have been exploited from Africa without public accounting and any permission from the communities involved. The report detailing 36 cases of biopiracy in Africa titled "Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit Sharing" generated heated debate at international meetings on negotiations of fair deals for developing countries to benefit from their genetic resources and traditional knowledge.

The report outlines 36 case studies of medicines, cosmetics and agricultural products that originate from biodiversity (including plants, marine life and microbes) in African countries and that have been patented by multinational companies without there being evidence of benefits accruing to the countries of origin.

The 2005 report's author, Jay McGown, says in the introduction: "It's a free for all out there, and until the parties to the CBD solve the problems of access and benefit sharing, the robbery will continue. They've got to declare a moratorium on access until a just protocol is finished and implemented."

The new book by Mushita and Thompson take the debate on biopiracy further, arguing that biological resources exploited for medicinal, agricultural, horticultural and cosmetics uses show no evidence or even information of benefit sharing agreements.

They also discuss the debate about intellectual property rights and analyse new and different laws under the WTO before moving on to propose that the extension of intellectual property rights over seeds and plants challenges scientific logic and threatens biodiversity.

The book speaks out in a simple and captivating way explaining how plants, roots and seeds define the community through healing.

"Most often, women are the keepers of the seeds, tucked away among the beams in the thatched roof, protected from pests by smoke from cooking fire. Others are stored in tins in another location. Villagers volunteer labour to build storage buildings for seed banks, protecting the treasure within the public trust," the authors wrote.

The same happens when African farmers choose seed from the best plants in the field using traditional farming "genetics" that takes into account seed yielding the most grain, preferred colour, pest resistance and drought resistance.

But when international aid agencies come in, the writers quote one Zimbabwean plant scientist, they come with advice and an agenda that focuses more on "yield, yield, yield" ignoring taste because the American industry manufactures taste with additives of sugar and citric acid.

"On the farms in Africa, the choices are complex and subtle and learned from the older generation. Farmers with the reputation for having good seed will be sought out and will harvest more seed, ready to exchange it," Mushita and Thompson say.

They say at one time, over 3 000 species were used as human food but now, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that only 150 plant species are cultivated, 12 of which provide approximately 75 percent of food needed and four of which produce over half of the food people eat across the world.

The writers respond proactively to this challenge and say: "The future of the planet depends not so much on military power nor capital speculation but on each one becoming informed, debating and making choices about global exchange or enclosure of seed and plants -- our collective nourishment, our wealth."

This book refers both to the African continent and to the region of Southern Africa and captures the experiences of the people as it pertains to biodiversity, biopiracy and traditional knowledge systems.

The emotive land issue in Southern Africa is also discussed in detail showing its importance when it comes to food security and food self-sufficiency. There is a section which compares and contrasts international protocols for seed exchange from agencies trying to reconcile the demand for patenting, the respect for indigenous knowledge and the need to preserve biodiversity as a policy for food security.

The final chapter summarises policy recommendations relevant both to other developing countries and the US. In contrast to current international policies which have reduced the role of the state, the recommendations include the public sector as a vital player in preserving biodiversity and delimiting piracy.

Mushita and Thompson call for the fostering of new patterns of relationships through seed exchange and sharing of information. The Western world continues to infringe on human rights and the ecological balance of nature in Africa through the export of seed GM, seed hybrids, biopiracy and promotion of unsustainable technologies in agriculture.

And this book, which argues against the commercialisation of science and the commodification of nature, is a clarion call that should be widely read and discussed by everyone concerned with biodiversity. It advances public understanding on issues related to the environment and development which are happening in the world but are not getting reported in the mainstream media.

* Sifelani Tsiko is an award winning Zimbabwean journalist. This review first appeared in the Herald, Zimbabwe.

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

Business involvement in philanthropy is increasing day by day, but is it a blessing, a curse, or somewhere in between? Just Another Emperor? is the first book to take a comprehensive and critical look at this vital new phenomenon. Whatever position you take, this will be one of the most important debates of the next 10 years.

Pambazuka News is pleased to announce that one of its writers, Shailja Patel has been awarded the FannyAnn Eddy Poetry Award, from the International Research Network (IRN -Africa), for her poem, "Screaming."

FannyAnn Eddy, fearless leader of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, was brutally raped and murdered in 2004.

The awardees said that "Screaming" is striking because it illustrates how damage to the body is one of the many weapons patriarchy uses against those who dare assert dissident sexualities. One way of theorizing eroticism is exceptionally demonstrated through this poem.

Screaming" will appear in IRN-Africa's forthcoming collection of writing on alternatives to heteronormativity in Africa, "Outliers".

Langaa Publishers. Bamenda, Cameroon. 2008. [ISBN: 9789956558124, 360 pages, Price: £14.95]

The prolific Cameroonian writer and academic Francis Nyamnjoh continues to delight his readers with the publication of his latest novel Souls Forgotten. Souls Forgotten is a bitter indictment of the political and social situation of many African countries. The novel is set in the fictional land of ‘Mimboland’, a linguistically divided nation presided over by none other than President Longstay and suffering from endemic corruption, failing public services and wild nepotism whose similarities with the author’s native Cameroon are hard to miss.

The novel follows the path of Emmanuel, the apple of his villager parents’ eye whose hopes of social progression and riches are pinned on his academic achievements. Indeed as Nyamnjoh insightfully observes Emmanuel has the expectations of his entire home village resting on him as ‘one person’s child is only in the womb… from birth the child belongs to the entire community, to tend and harness for the good of all and sundry’. Emmanuel is thus emblematic of the many African youths who head to Yaounde, Dakar, Nairobi and other African capitals in search of fame and fortune to bring to themselves and their home village as the relentless pace of urbanisation continues across the continent.

The author effectively captures the frustration and desperation that many young Africans face when they arrive in the supposed ‘cities of gold’ and have to face the ‘guillotine’ of exam results. These results, which determine the have and have-nots, are not determined by academic ability but rather by the insecurity of the lecturers who see these youths as potential rivals. Like the lives of these many youths Emmanuel’s path in life does not go smoothly as his transformation from optimistic youth to desolate dropout unfolds in front of us. Ironically it is in his journey back to the village he was so desperate to escape that Emmanuel finally comes of age finally demonstrating the strength of character and integrity that the city often sucks away.

Competition is rife among the young and old as they strive to attain their share of the national ‘cake’. However, Emmanuel is not alone. Indeed it is the devotion and integrity of his girlfriend Patience, which provides one of the most touching images of the novel. Indeed Nyamnjoh’s characterisation is one of his strengths as his eloquent prose consistently forces the reader to reshape their opinions and prejudices throughout the course of the novel with the transformation of the apparently feckless Emmanuel into an unlikely hero.

Parallel to Emmanuel’s urban adventures runs the tale of his home village of Abehema where black magic, power struggles and greed prove to be a lethal combination. Emmanuel’s decision to return to his village after prophetic dreams links the two narratives and leads us to the inaccessible inner regions, where governmental indifference and ruthless exploitation lead to unimaginable devastation.

Nyamnjoh’s complex and rich interweaving of narratives is a further strength of the novel. He plays on African legend and traditional beliefs, often digressing into anecdotes and the supernatural, thus ensuring that the reader remains fully engrossed. Although the subject matter may seem depressing Nyamnjoh, as always, manages to inject the narrative with his humorous, satirical style. The author is a true analyst of African society never failing to use his literature to criticize and chastise the ruling classes in both Africa and abroad.

This is a complex novel which avoids the usual clichés about Africa. Through the juxtaposition of peaceful pastorality and cold urbanity Nyamnjoh offers an insightful study of the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity forced on many Africans, particularly the young. The question of tradition and modernity and achieving a balance between the two touches upon a central issue in modern day Africa. However, Nyamnjoh does not merely pose questions but gives answers as to how we can best continue ‘the battle for change’ which, long and tiresome though it may be, demands a constant struggle. He is far from resigned to the depressing situation depicted in Souls Forgotten instead this novel is a testimony to the strength of solidarity. Ironically this message is delivered by Chief Ngain, the greedy and ruthless leader of Abehama, who brings the wrath of the ancestors onto his village, just as President Longstay’s prolonged insensitivity to the will of the people has brought untold suffering to the land of Mimbo. He tells the local chiefs, ‘if after my death you decide each to go his own way, you shall all perish as the pieces of wood you’ve just crushed…‘If you stay united, you shall be as firm as the bundle you couldn’t break.’ It is this ‘power of togetherness’ that lingers with the reader particularly through the close bonds between Patience and Emmanuel. In fact this is exactly the message the author leaves us with: that where institutions and the ruling classes fail it is up to Africans themselves – together - to take hold of their own destiny.

*Alice Macdonald is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

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

Strife is a novel laden with, yes, strife! It is at once a family story, a national one and eventually a borderless one. The author, Shimmer Chinodya, through the Gwanangara family takes on the task of interpreting and explaining happening events first by revisiting the past to deal with the upturning, unresolved business. The spirits start talking through Kelvin Gwanangara:

‘I am Mhokoshi! I want my weapons back!’
‘I am Njiki!’ Kelvin snarls, in an old woman’s voice. ‘My spirit is roaming the forest.’ ‘I am Sabastin.’ Now a strange young man’s thin breaking voice. ‘I need rest.’
‘I am Zevezeve the porcupine. You shat and spat on me when I visited you.’
‘I am Edgar Tekere. I’m back from the war. I see blood everywhere.’

Dunge Gwanangara, after many years of living as a Christian is challenged to put aside Christianity and consult n’angas. He ends up making mistakes for he doesn’t really know how to, he’s been busy being a strict Christian. The unresolved issues only grow larger. More misfortune strikes members of his family. One of his sons becomes epileptic, another schizophrenic. Dunge’s wife—the moon huntress— hears voices. Eventually, it turns out that no one thing really works, and no one solution will come from Christianity or tradition, modernity or education, science or destiny. The past no longer holds together and science fails to offer a cure to the Gwanangara afflictions. Conflict heightens as one value weighs against another and the realization that choosing one path is no longer practical. The characters in the novel fumble about, grappling for the ‘way.’ In the words of the author, ‘Everything that can go wrong goes wrong…’ And what’s supposed to happen doesn’t happen.

The book has selfless characters who sacrifice themselves for others, and also selfish individuals who only want to depend on others, and even blame others for their misfortunes.

The most refreshing part of the novel is when the author exposes migrations and relations that link various people across Africa, rendering the current borders meaningless. The ordinary person is well integrated, it’s the elite who are confused and divided by national borders. The young, rural people have no ‘crossing’ problems, leaving Zimbabwe to go and work in Mozambique or Malawi, learn the languages there and speak them. An old woman is at ease to cross from Zambia and visit her relatives in Zimbabwe, (without papers) but the educated are lost in the legal requirements and the consequences of crossing borders without visas.

The Gwanangara family has relatives across borders and occasionally exchange visits. The sad aspect is that these visits are mostly triggered by moments of crisis; strange illnesses and death. Most of the characters are courageous and they strive to overcome the obstacles that try to pull them down.

Towards the end of the story there is a sense of ease, a mellowness softening the rough edges of strife. The Gwanangara family starts to bond, openly talking about themselves and each other without hiding behind masks. They bail each other out and hear each other out. Also, they discover the joy of involving themselves earnestly in other people’s lives. They attend the funerals, graduation parties and weddings with genuine concern and discover that some of their relatives are not as bad as they had seemed to be. ‘In fact, none of the Chivi people seem half as bad as we were made to think they were. Perhaps we should make a fresh start.’ There is a new understanding amongst relatives giving hope to open friendship and genuine love.

At the end of the narrative, Strife is not only portrayed as a family saga or a single community affair but an African one. Utilizing the drama form to conclude his story, Chinodya seems to suggest that almost every African no matter where the geographical divide must make choices as to what will work in the future and question the belief invested in science, bones or Bibles. There will be several schools of thought for influence and inspiration: education, medicine, destiny, tradition... But before arriving at a lasting solution, the past will keep calling, making coping in the present moment alone nothing but full of strife!

Weaver Press, Harare, 2006, pp 223

* Mildred K Barya is Writer-in-Residence at TrustAfrica (www.trustafrica.org)

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

A bold new film from Golden Bear winning director, Mark Dornford May (“U-Carmen eKhayelitsha” – Golden Bear Berlin, 2005) is being released countrywide from the 7th of March. “Son of Man” is a revolutionary film that explores an interpretation of the Jesus Christ story in a contemporary African context and should spark lively debate about its portrayal both of Christ and of Africa. Released by Spier distribution the film will begin its run at the Rich Mix Centre in Bethnal Green before branching out to sites in Bristol, Edinburgh, Cambridge and elsewhere in the UK.

In a decision welcomed by Tunisian researchers and novelists, the Ministry of Culture announced that several works previously banned by the Censorship Department will be freed for publication. The Arab Institute for Human Rights (AIHR) confirmed on Monday (February 18th) that Tunisia would lift the ban on books which have been held in a legal limbo for years.

An innovative project to celebrate Kenyan success has taken on a new relevance and urgency in the light of continuing troubles caused by the 2007 disputed elections. GenerationKenya 45, which will document outstanding contributions by a nominated selection of Kenyans, will ensure it takes into account the needs of national healing and reconciliation necessary to resolve the current crisis.

Multiple ideas would well articulate a constantly changing world’s vision and open Imaginary Lines to individual experiences in which the validation of the individual emotional and creative spaces can be reclaimed and legitimised within a collective public environment. This, however, would be based on the principle that cultural pluralism promotes tolerance, acceptance and mutual respect.

If it's true that the less costly straight-to-DVD journey of any historically rooted drama is potentially bolder and more truthful, by more effectively bypassing the profit-driven political censorship of Hollywood, then Black August is certainly a striking example of this promising trend. The searing drama is an earnest and reverential biopic delving into the tragic, short life of the late George Jackson, sixties US political prisoner, LA Black Panther spiritual and intellectual guiding force, and fierce leader within the Black prison movement at San Quentin.