Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem looks at the Yar Adua's administration and the political mileage the stolen election has cost him and argues that the only Yar Adua will win back legitimacy is "through public policies that reduce poverty, deliver education, creatre decent jobs for the millions of youth roaming the streets, empower women. bring security to cities, towns and villages and light up all homes, industry and streets of Nigeria."

May 29 was Democracy Day in Nigeria. It marks the day in 1999 when the Nigerian Generals returned the country to civilian rule albeit under a recivilianised former General, Olushegun Obasanjo. After 8 years of civilian politics under Obasanjo, the best that can be said is that democracy remains a national aspiration especially in terms of its capacity to deliver on the bread and butter issues that afflict the majority of Nigeria's boisterous millions. While the kind of brutality, arbitrary arrest, gross violation of the rights of citizens and other excesses that were characteristic of the direct military dictatorship of previous military regimes especially that of the kleptocratic Babangida and Abacha's sadistic regimes are no longer the case, it is perhaps an indication of the impatience of the public or the short memory of the chattering classes in the country that some people will argue that 'Obasanjo is worse than Abacha'.

The current scandals being exposed about the regime of Obasanjo and the financial recklessness of companies and individuals allied to his nightmare team of free loading parasites not withstanding, I do not agree with those who believe that Obasanjo's has been the worst regime Nigeria has ever had. By all means the atrocities, bad judgements and policy hypocrisies of the regime should be exposed and those guilty punished. The fact that these matters are coming to light, albeit after the regime has left office, is indeed part of growing demands for accountability. It may have been delayed but it sends out a message that there is no statute of limitation on abuse of office and betrayal of public trust. Many of those who are now clamouring for Obasanjo's head, or were public critics of his regime while he was in office, could not do the same under either IBB or Abacha. That in itself should count for something. But there are just too many people who cannot forgive Obasanjo for his arrogance and holier than thou attitude.

This year's Democracy Day also represents the first year of the administration of Alhaji Umar Musa Yar' Adua. The stench from Obasanjo's administration continues to hang over Yar Adua and the obsessions of those after Obasanjo and his cabal is making it look like Yar Adua's regime is a mere extention of Obasanjo's. As far as many of these people are concerned no change has taken place and the ghost of Obasanjo is seen looming large and haunting every room in Aso Rock. The low profile personality of Yar Adua and his even lower lustre style have combined to enthrench this view that he is a dithering and indecisive president. Hence the various sobriquets applied to him and his regime: 'Mr Go-Slow', 'Mr Hold-Up', and 'Mr No-Show' etc. They all point to the frustration of the public at his seeming lack of dynamism. It is a regime that has been too cautious and that caution is inducing executive inertia.

The circumstances under which Yar Adua was imposed as a candidate and eventually being handed the keys to Aso Rock meant that the legitimacy issue initially made it too defensive. There was uncetainty about how long it would last and some wrong-headed optimism that the courts would invalidate the robbery of the electorate.

These issues made the government less ambitious from the start, waiting to see what would happen. It was not as though Yar Adua had nothing else going for him. I argued then and continue to believe that he would have won without rigging. No serious observer could objectively claim that either of his two closest rivals had won. He also had a personal reputation of not being corrupt and a record of leading a decent administration in Katsina State for 8 years. So there were people willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the regime was caught between being grateful to the Obasanjo PDP robbery machine which gave it the stolen mandate and robbed public which wanted the new President to distance himself from his benefactors. Neither could be fully satisfied.

It was obvious that the PDP had more influence in the making of the new government. Yar Adua did not seem to have much room for manouvre therefore the party prevailed. All he had was his personal credibility as revealed in his innauguration speech where he assured the country he would be a servant leader and lead by example. That he was not Obasanjo and was not given to what Nigerians call 'I too know' and associated 'Baba-cracy' (rule of Baba by Baba for Baba!) was a positive development. His simplicity and austere outlook encouraged many Nigerians who are tired of the profligacy and ostentatious high living of Nigeria's power elite.

However governing a country as diverse and routinely mismanaged polity like Nigeria requires more than just being nice and wanting to do good. It seems that Yar Adua has become a prisoner in Aso Rock, distrusting his corrupt party and the wheeler dealers across the country. Unfortunately they have been so preoccupied with this that they have not been able to leverage the potential public support and good will from many Nigerians.

The PDO operates like a regime under siege - withdrawing into a tiny laager of few trusted people around the presidency. While this may have worked in a provincial setting like Katsina, it is not working any wonders in Abuja. Many people may want to help Yar Adua but they do not have entry points. The system's core is still dominated by malevolent individuals whose only claim to their position is because they have been part of previous misrulers! Yar Adua's small band of believers' inability to have its own narrative and grand vision has made it become vulnerable to other people's agenda. The most successful in filling this executive vacuum created by Yar Adua's excessive caution is the anti- Obasanjo lobby. While it is important to hold all leaders accountable the same Nigerians will blame Yar Adua for doing nothing later.

Let those who want to go after OBJ do so by all means possible under the law but Yar Adua needs to embark on his own programme very aggressively. A programme that will help launder the stolen mandate through public policies that reduce poverty, deliver education, create decent jobs for the millions of youth roaming the streets, empower women, bring security to cities, towns and villages and light up all homes, industry and streets of Nigeria. He needs to throw caution to the winds and break out of the presidential prison that Aso Rock has been for him for the past one year.

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

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

Kola Ibrahim looks at the legacy of Fidel Castro, the internationalization of struggle and calls for “working class activists from Kenya to Venezuela to Georgia to Pakistan and the rest of the world – to build a genuine working people’s political platform.” This year, an ailing but still going Fidel Castro will turn 82.

In addition to a conflicted identity, Mildred Barya argues that the xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Africa in general can be traced to the Berlin Conference and partitioning of Africa.

Until the colonial borders are removed we will not have lasting peace anywhere in Africa. Nobody is going to deconstruct the existing borders except a group of committed African thinkers and doers. The recent South Africa shame of brother against brother, sister against sister has clearly shown that we need to make the journey to Berlin quickly, to break the curse of borders that was inflicted upon Africa by the white colonialists in 1885.

The time is ripe to reverse the trend before other clean ‘fingers’ catch the infection and oozing pus from the festering, sore fingers. The disease is the same across Africa, it only manifests differently. It happened in Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa, it has happened in Kenya in East Africa, it happened in Rwanda and continues to spill in the Great Lakes Region. It is the same happening in the Horn of Africa, now it is happening in South Africa, soon the entire Africa might begin to smell from these rotting fingers if the African Union leadership and other concerned bodies, concerned people, do not step in to curb the disease and rename the land. It is time for us Africans to change this bloody, brother-sister-hunting course and write our history as Patrice Lumumba dreamt when he said:

“Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity…it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets.”

South Africa reached pitch fever in its bursting hatred, clearly demonstrating a greater need for us to say; ‘Let there be no more South Africa but a country that accepts all Blacks, no matter where they may be coming from.’ Words alone do not bring a prophecy to pass; we are not in the days of miracles so actions must do. Short of action, South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, must eat the papers on which he wrote Black Consciousness. What is Black Consciousness without the African personality and identity? What is Black Consciousness if it is not all Africa-Black-Inclusive?

It is a big shame that when we were beginning to recognize and celebrate the African presence globally, South Africa announced its own drum beat and danced to a different tune. When we were beginning to warm up to the World Cup come 2010, South Africa proved that it is not worthy to host the cup, that it is not ready, not yet ready. For if many South Africans cannot tolerate their brothers and sisters from the closest, neighbouring countries, how will they consider the people from far off lands? The saying that charity begins at home does not lie. Who will be safe to watch the World Cup in the folds of xenophobia? One would rather go to a less ‘privileged’ but safer country than being caught up in the throngs of xenophobia.

The way South Africa has given vent to reckless violence shows there’s something rotten at the core. We are not witnessing the surfacing of new fear, but a deep decay in the hearts and minds of the killing groups. It is not about hating the other foreigner. If anything, South Africans started with hating themselves. For a long time they have been killing what is considered their ‘own.’ They did not spare Lucky Dube; they do not spare thousands of women and young girls who are raped and murdered everyday, making South Africa one of the most dangerous countries to live in. The killings have been going on, it is only now that they have reached marginal proportions and gained a new definitive target: Black foreigners. Immigrants.

The murderers have forgotten a crucial piece of history: They have forgotten that many Africans wept with the South Africans during apartheid rule. Many African countries mobilized logistical, moral and physical support for the South African struggle. And many Africans left their safe homes to go to dangerous South Africa to fight for the freedom of South Africans. The people from Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Tanzania and several other places actively joined the South Africa struggle with good will and intentions of brother fighting for brother, sister standing by sister. They must rent their clothes now realizing not only the loss of unity that they embraced, but the shame and disgust that come with regression. The pain in a journey back to the broken road.

I did a small exercise with a large, African social group. I asked each one of the members to suggest which country in Africa they would not want to live in. 99 per cent circled South Africa. The most amazing thing is that places like Congo, Sudan’s Darfur, Chad, Somalia, Kenya and Zimbabwe where conflict is ripe and the residents are not just seated on volcanoes but are being boiled and cooked in the lava, many Africans still indicated a willingness to want to live there, to go there and help. To go and suffer with those who are suffering. This gave me hope that there is a revolution and there are Africans keeping true to the revolution, defying fear and other obstacles to fight for justice, progress and African-ness.

South Africa therefore has plunged in a senseless blood-spilling orgy. We cannot understand why this has happened if we do not recognize that a deep Identity crisis is at the bottom of the problem. Many South Africans have never quite accepted themselves as Africans. The logic therefore is simple. They cannot accept others who are Africans. Many South Africans haven’t felt safe in their own skin, in their country, in their own-ness, how then can they accept others? South Africa is warped in denial at many levels, confusion, reckless power and now, a terrible forgetfulness. This is the analysis: It will take a longer time cleaning up the South African psyche and reality than stopping all the violence in Congo and Darfur. The reason is because South Africa seems to be the only country so far that has an in-built denial system. In other countries when things are not going well, the masses and leadership to a large degree generally accept the dysfunctional phases and the need to change. There is a wide acceptability of things having gone wrong. In South Africa what you easily recognize is denial: It is not HIV/AIDS, it is not crime, it is not this and that... This is going to cost South Africa such a huge fortune in terms of time and name clearance.

How do we help South Africa to at least resolve the huge identity crisis and denial syndrome? The answer is in deconstructing and then reconstructing Africa as a whole and within that framework redefining who is a South African. Many of us know that our cultural ties and heritage go beyond colonial borders, yet we continue to wear the colonial blinds. Culture and politics have failed to make the interconnectedness shared among all Africans a check against violence. Perhaps it is time to go scientific. Here is how. If many of us are to do a DNA ethnic make-up test, we would discover various percentages of several ethnic groups that contribute to our genetic profile. This would give us good snapshots of who we are, our ancestry and our identity. We would realize we are yesterday’s people, we are much of today’s people and we will be tomorrow’s people too. In short, to borrow Alice Walker’s new book title, “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.” There isn’t going to be a so-called pure South African, the other Mozambican, Malawian, because in truth such identities do not exist, have never existed. They were coined up to suit the colonizers. Centuries down the road we still let them make us, shape us, define us. What more could be wrong with us?

For a start, I think all the so-called South Africans should do a DNA test, government sponsored. It will make us humble and teach us a thing or two about union and diversity which culture and governments have failed to teach us. Because we inherit a unique assortment of DNA from our mothers and fathers, it is possible for one’s DNA results to be different from a family members—even a sibling’s. Does this mean members of a family who discover unique differences and some noticeable similarities as well should pick up guns and fire at one another, in the name of a different DNA composition, one being more Shangaani than Zulu for instance?

Before any peace movement can stop us all from shouting ‘kill the other, kill them all…’ perhaps a DNA is what will save us and show that we have enough of ‘the other’ in us; in our cells, in our genetic make up and ‘bloody’ composition, thus stopping us from wrecking havoc on our selves, the other.

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

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

As Africa marked the golden jubilee of African Liberation Day on May 25th, the African Union (AU) commission marked the occasion under the theme of "Meeting the Millennium Development Goals on Water and Sanitation", which will also be the theme of the AU summit to be held in Egypt this June. Concurrently, the committee of twelve African heads of states met in Tanzania to discuss the implementation of a Union government. While only five of the twelve heads of states expected to attend the meeting took part, those absent being represented by senior officials, the mini-summit approved several accelerators including the free movement of people, the establishment of financial institutions, regional infrastructure and African multi-national firms. Following the committee of twelve meeting, President Kikwete of Tanzania, current Chair of the AU, expressed shock at the xenophobic violence in South Africa but underlined that these were not government policy but “acts of vandalism”. This violence, among other events in Africa this year, are occasion for pause during this year’s Africa Day celebrations, according to Faten Aggad, who states that: “Africa Day should not only be a day to celebrate our diversity in the form of diplomatic functions and academic workshops. It should also be a day when we assess our future as a continent. For starters we should reflect on ways to create development-oriented governance systems”. He further assesses the challenges and opportunities of the African Peer Review Mechanism as a starting point for responsive and accountable African governance systems. In this regard, the AU commission will hold an East African meeting on the African Charter on Democracy, Election and Governance in Rwanda from May 29-31 aimed at promoting and encouraging ratification of the Charter. “The popularisation of the Charter and the strategies to mobilise as many signatures as possible during the ratification process are some of the main objectives of organising regional meetings”.

As the African Union prepares for the summit in June, which will take place in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, Francis Ameyibor provides analysis of the expectations and challenges for this meeting. Noting that the summit will be an important indicator of the performance of the new leadership of the commission, he further elaborates that the summit will “confront the adoption and implementation of a more responsive and rights based social policy framework for Africa. Among them are the non-implementation of existing social continental policy standards contained in various AU Decisions and Declarations and the MDGs, poor national and inter-ministerial linkages and inadequate resources.” Further, on “the formation of the Union Government of Africa, it is expected that the Summit would come out with a definite position, and stop the foot-dragging tactics”.

In regard to aid and development, a recent report has revealed that “on current trends the European Union (EU) will have given 75 billion less in aid by 2010 than it promised” and that European governments inflate aid statistics with debt relief and refugee costs. Assessing regional integration in terms of trade and development, Dot Keet notes that “neo-liberalism really narrowed the conceptualisation of regional integration. The World Bank and the IMF were promoting the paradigm called ‘open regionalism’, for and towards ‘global integration’, and this was backed by the EU.” She further asks how Africa can forge external agreements, such as the Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU, when regional protocols on these issues are not in place or have been reinterpreted from their original intention. Also affecting African integration, the European Commission has unveiled plans for a Mediterranean Union, bringing together 44 countries, including Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. This Union is to have a co-presidency from the EU and a Mediterranean country lasting two years.

Lastly, the new commissioner for science and technology, Jean-Pierre Onvéhoun Ezin, plans to include education in the proposed African Science and Innovation Fund, in a move meant to avoid duplication of efforts, but which some fear will diminish resources for science.

In this essay, Horace Campbell looks at the importance of Africa Liberation Day, its changing relevances as Africans are betrayed by the architects of first independence and how, through struggle, we can reclaim and fulfill its promise.

INTRODUCTION

On May 25, 2008, peace loving peoples all over the world will celebrate African Liberation Day. This will be the fiftieth anniversary of the setting aside of a day to commemorate those who sacrificed for the liberation of the African peoples at home and abroad. In 1963, the Organization of African Unity was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Then, the main emphasis was on the liberation of territories from colonial rule. At the end of apartheid in 1994 new ideas of liberation were placed on the agenda for Africa. Questions of health, food security, environmental justice, decent education, the rights of women, the politics of inclusion and cultural freedoms were placed as the core of the liberation of Africa. African women at the grassroots are campaigning for a new form of popular power where African peoples will have the voice to intervene in the political process where they live and where they work. These men and women at the grassroots seek to give meaning to political participation and realize the dream of C.L.R. James who envisioned that ‘every cook can govern.’ This form of politics elevates the political participation of the people beyond periodic voting. African youths at home and abroad are looking forward to new institutions and new sites where the ideas of peace, love and human dignity will prevail.

THE ORIGINS OF AFRICA DAY AND AFRICAN LIBERATION YESTERDAY

At the All African Peoples Conference, held in Ghana, in 1958 it was agreed that one-day would be set aside as a national day of remembrance for African freedom fighters. Ghana had achieved its independence in 1957 and one year later Kwame Nkrumah called a conference of African workers, freedom fighters and champions for justice. Nkrumah who had been inspired by Garveyism and the self mobilization and self organization of the people took up the idea of African Liberation day and successfully promoted the idea to the leaders who formed the Organization of African Unity. The first celebration of Africa Day had begun in Harlem, USA by the followers of Marcus Garvey who had called for African Unity from as far back as 1919.

When Ghana achieved its independence in 1957 Nkrumah maintained that the independence of Ghana would be “incomplete without the independence of all of Africa.” Together with the principal freedom fighters within Ghana, Nkrumah established a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government and appointed George Padmore to run the secretariat. The task of the secretariat was to act as the coordinating point for the establishment of links with freedom fighters on the African continent and for the secretariat to be a center for information to support those fighting for freedom.

At that historical moment freedom was conceived of as freedom of the peoples and freedom of the states from colonial rule. To carry forward this task the Ghanaian government deployed the resources to support freedom fighters, trade unionists and political activists for independence. This was the spirit that inspired the calling of the All-African Peoples’ Conferences in 1958. It was at this meeting where Patrice Lumumba was introduced to the wider Pan African struggles. In tandem with this people-centered activity, Nkrumah also convened the conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa.

Because most of the present governments in Africa are opposed to the liberation of the peoples and the Union of the peoples of Africa the detractors of African Union present the struggle for the United States of Africa as a Gadaffi Initiative. Instead of Africa Day becoming a day to honor and celebrate those who struggled for independence, the day has been taken away from the people and the officials use this as another opportunity to organize embassy parties and dinners to seek assistance from the imperialists who are today called ’donors.’ Nowhere is the idea of Pan Africanism more devalued than where Pan Africanists seek to use the name of Pan Africanism to establish NGO’s to seek assistance from the very same forces that undermine African independence. Yoweri Museveni has used the current Secretariat of the Pan African Movement in Kampala as political football.

AFRICA DAY AND THE OAU IN PRACTICE

Fifty years after the start of the celebration of Africa Day in 1958 there are still colonial territories in Africa. The most well known is the case of the Western Sahara. The military invasion and occupation of Iraq by the USA demonstrated clearly the reality that the days of colonial occupation are not yet over. In North Africa and in Palestine the legacies and problems of military occupation reinforce and support the dictatorial rule of the Egyptian ruling elite.

At the time of Kwame Nkrumah, Nasser and the peoples of Egypt represented one base of support for freedom fighters. Today, the leaders of Egypt seek to establish a dynasty and hinder the full support for those fighting against occupation whether in Palestine or in Iraq. Peace activists in North Africa like peace activists in the other parts of Africa oppose occupation and genocidal violence. It is this reversal for the peoples that ensure that the politics of retrogression thrives. With the absence of committed leadership, militarists seize the discourse of liberation to establish movements for emancipation and liberation to foment genocidal politics. Genocidal politics thrives when the politics of exploitation, exclusivism, racism, militarism, religious dogmatism, extremism, and patriarchy intersect in a nested loop to oppress the people. Sudan is one society where the recursive processes of genocidal thinking, genocidal institution, genocidal politics and genoicidal economic relations are reproduced to perpetuate war and the wanton destruction of human lives.

There is a new peace movement across the globe and the celebration of Africa Day is one component of the struggles against genocide and genocidal thinking. This peace movement in Africa must link up with the global movement for peace so that liberation in Africa will be associated with emancipation, peace, social justice and the well being of the people.

THE OAU LIBERATION COMMITTEE

It was very significant that it was in those states that supported African liberation with moral, material and political support that this day was observed at the national level as a public holiday. After imperialism killed Patrice Lumumba and orchestrated a military coup d ‘etat against Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and the Tanzanian people stood out in the ways in which the idea of African Liberation was respected and the society made tremendous sacrifices for the liberation of Africa. Julius Nyerere established a tradition of self-sacrifice that was followed by those committed to ending all forms of exploitation. The Tanzanian society could not have supported liberation and hosted the OAU Liberation Committee to spearhead liberation without the mobilization and politicization of the ordinary people.

One can compare the sacrifices of the Tanzanian peoples with the present Xenophobia in states such as South Africa and Angola where former freedom fighters have used the history of the liberation struggles to hold on to political power, to enrich themselves and diminish the meaning of independence and liberation The attacks on African migrants in South Africa and the violence unleashed against poor workers in 2008 represented one example of how the former leaders of the African liberation process have become obstacles to the further emancipation of Africa. Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF leadership in Zimbabwe represents the extreme example of freedom fighters who started out on the side of the people but used state power to enrich a small clique while shouting about imperialism. Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea represent leaders who once used the language of liberation while setting up militaristic states to oppress the people of Africa.

WILL THE PEOPLE PREVAIL?

The momentum and energy of the poor ensured that the OAU through the liberation committee supported the process of decolonization in Africa despite the fact that the generals constituted the majority at the summit. The formation of the OAU in 1963 had been a compromise among member states that could not agree on how to respond to the clear external manipulation of the Congo after those representing the interests of Western mining capital murdered Patrice Lumumba in 1961.It was in this Congo where the traditions of militarism, corruption and genocide had taken deep roots.

Those who yesterday opposed African liberation and supported dictators such as Siad Barre (Somalia), Arap Moi (Kenya) Félix Houphouët-Boigny y (Ivory Coast) and Hastings Banda (Malawi) now write books on failed states in Africa. This language of corruption and notions of Africa representing a breeding ground for ‘terrorism’ is one component of psychological war against Africa. The objective of the propaganda is for the young to forget the imperial crimes in Africa. In this way the dream of the young is to escape Africa to Europe.

The imperialists who orchestrated and planned the assassination of Patrice Lumumba have reframed their role in the destabilization of Africa and now write books celebrating their role in the destruction of African sovereignty. Larry Devlin who was the Chief of Station of the Central Intelligence Agency in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) has written a book (Chief of Station) to cover up the crimes of US imperialism in Africa. Mobutu represented the biggest obstacle to African liberation and unity and for thirty five years Mobutism supported genocidal politics and genocidal leaders in Central Africa from Rwanda to Burundi and Uganda under Idi Amin. The clause of non-interference in the internal affairs of states was the expedient to protect the confraternity of dictators. Despite these setbacks, the people prevailed and are now placing the question of the union of the peoples of Africa as the urgent task of contemporary liberation.

The formation of the African Union in 2001 was a conscious effort to transcend the traditions of violence and militarism. Defeat through victory Just as how at the end of slavery in the British territories 1834 the slave masters were compensated, so in the period at the end of apartheid the West intensified the neo-liberal agenda of privatisation, liberalization and de regulation so that the architects of apartheid and their black allies could enrich themselves.

Firstly, through IMF and the World Bank the basic rights to education, housing, health care and decent wages have been eroded. This has meant that the African poor have borne the brunt of the world capitalist depression. When Alan Greenspan, (former head of the Federal Reserve in the USA) noted that this capitalist depression has been the worst since 1920, he neglected to note that the poor and the exploited in Africa bore the brunt of this capitalist depression. Food riots in Senegal, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Egypt, Somalia and the Cameroons are the outward signs of the stirrings of a new liberation movement where the peoples of Africa are demanding food, clothing, shelter and access to proper health care.

Secondly, African liberation now requires that the people control their governments and that issues of financial planning and budgeting are discussed in the villages, townships and cities of Africa. In Africa, the politics of retrogression has become the norm, and the leadership has taken – to cultural proportions - the tendency to turn their backs on the people as soon as they take office. Hence, though the African Union has stipulated that no leader can come to power through military coup leaders now resort to electoral theft as evidenced recently in Kenya and Zimbabwe. There is now an urgent need to create new democratic institutions to strengthen popular participation and representation. Parliamentary democracy on its own is not enough; it must be supplemented with and strengthened by other popular institutions and associations like the local governments, cooperative movements, independent workers, women, student and youth organizations, assemblies or organizations for the environmental concerns and for minority rights, and so forth A new leadership must ensure that this is the dominant political culture, with enough flexibility to allow for changes when changes are needed to strengthen and further consolidate that culture.

This new political culture will eventually shift power from the current corrupt and unrepresentative political groupings, to local communities whose chosen representatives will be accountable to the interests of these local communities first not those of a small center that monopolizes power in the national political groupings.

Thirdly, in the midst of the millions dying from the AIDS pandemic the African governments are being coerced to cut delivery of health care. The provision of health for the masses of the people represents one of the fundamental goals of liberation in this era. All across the continent the requirements for a healthy life are pressing when the poor are seeking environments with clean air, clean water, and neighbourhoods cleared of mosquito holding areas and homes that are not dilapidated.

LIBERATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL REPAIR

Environmental repair and environmental justice form the fourth link in the chain of liberation in this new century. All across the continent the present leaders glorify the extraction of petroleum resources without regard for the health and safety of the peoples. From the North of Africa down to the Namibian coast petroleum companies are looting African oil while destroying the environment. Nigeria represents an extreme example of where environmental racism abounds and where a small clique is enriched while the majority of the peoples are exploited.

As much as 76 per cent of all the natural gas from Petroleum production in Nigeria is flared compared to 0.6 per cent in USA, 4.3 per cent in the UK, 21.0 per cent in Libya. The flaring is one of the most severe of the numerous hazards to which the peoples of the Delta and the Rivers States are exposed. At temperatures of 1,300 to 1,400 degrees centigrade, the multitude of flares in the Delta heat up everything, causing noise pollution, and producing CO2, VOC, CO, NOx and particulates around the clock. The emission of CO2 from gas flaring in Nigeria releases 35 million tons of CO2 a year and 12 million tons of methane, which means that Nigerian oil fields contribute more in global warming than the rest of the world together. (Claude Ake, 1996)

It is in Africa where the petroleum companies are engaged in crimes against Africans and crimes against nature. Many of the gas flares are situated very close to villages, sometimes within a hundred metres of homes of ordinary citizens. Petroleum companies have been flaring at some sites for 24 hours a day for more than 30 years. Despite this record, the standard view of environmental management, is that the basic rights of private property and of profit maximization, come before the health and welfare of the peoples of Nigeria in general, and in particular, the peoples who live in the Niger Delta.

Concerns for environmental justice are kept subservient to concerns for economic efficiency and capital accumulation. Successive governments in Nigeria have been willing accomplices to this degradation, the oil companies are protected while the health and welfare of Nigerian society suffers irreparable. The cuts in the social wage of the population make it impossible for local communities to support health clinics and there is an absence of drugs in most rural hospitals. The oil revenue is recycled to prop up the political class. Since 1958, Royal Dutch Shell has extracted billions from the lands of the Niger Delta. It is in this situation where a movement has developed called Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Should African freedom fighters be supporting the armed struggles in the Niger Delta when we are presented with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta? Acts of militarism even in the face of the keenest oppression can only be supported in the present era when all other forms of popular political mobilization have been exhausted. This is the concrete lesson from the wars in Sierra Leone and “the revolutionary forces of Foday Sanko.” We have also learnt the limits of armed revolutionary struggles from the wars of liberation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the military campaign of Kabila, the intervention by Wamba dia Wamba, the senseless wars between Angola, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Namibia along with prolonged fighting in Eastern Congo there are clear lessons for liberation.

These acts of militarism and war force revolutionaries to grasp the meanings of liberation and liberation movements today.

The legacies of the defeat in the Congo The Congo stands at the heart of Africa and peace in the Congo will have a tremendous impact on social reconstruction and transformation in Africa. Regional cooperation between truly democratic states will change the African Union and there will be a quantum change in the politics of Africa when the ideas and principles of African wildfire spread to all parts of the continent. In order to forestall the full operation of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, the United States has established the US Africa command to remilitarize Africa at the moment when the driving force behind African liberation is the peace and social justice movements. It is this peace and justice movement that inspired the continent wide opposition to the Africa command so much so that the US government has to resort to covert agreements to shore up the allies who are secretly colluding with western militarism.

Potentially were countries such as Angola, the DR Congo and the Sudan democratic states, they could collectively put together a major program of self-development, funded entirely by them for the whole Eastern and Southern Africa region. The West understands this and it is for this reason that the European Union and the USA are not supporters of peace and demilitarisation in Africa. In the face of the crisis of US capitalism the Chinese have emerged as a major force in the political economy of Africa. This new engagement has been significantly different from the period when the political leaders of China had supported the decolonization of Africa and provided support for Tanzania to build the Tazara railroad.

From liberation to emancipation As we come to the end of the first decade of a new century this moment provides one other opportunity to reflect on the tasks of liberation in the last fifty years and to assess how far the tasks and goals of liberation were realized. The crisis of the nature of human existence is manifest in all spheres of social relations; in the relations between humans (men and women), in the relationship between humans and the environment and in the forms of economic organization. It is now clearer that African liberation is not possible within the capitalist mode of production. When Walter Rodney wrote the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, he had stated unequivocally that capitalism stands in the path of further human transformation. Now this is even clearer with the nested loop of environmental crimes, food crisis, economic terrorism, pandemics and the absence of representative democratic forms.

African women are leading the call for a new definition of liberation beyond one where African males occupy the positions of power of European and send their children to schools to be educated in European languages and in the ideas of patriarchy, domination over nature and private property. Since the period of the anti-apartheid struggles there has been a deepening of the understanding of liberation to encompass issues that are common on both sides of the Atlantic such as regional economic integration, democratisation, the end to genocide, reparations, the emancipation of women, the end to sexism and heterosexism, the humanization of the male and the humanization of the planet. The African Liberation Struggle of Tomorrow How can Africans be validated as human beings and lay the foundations for a new sense of personhood? This question has been sharpened by the major turning point in human transformations with the revolutionary technological changes that carried potential for healing as well as the potential for destruction. Books on Apartheid medicine have pointed to the ways in which Africans are being used as guinea pigs. The questions of the worth of the value of African life, of human life will be contested in the 21st century.

Millions are dying from preventable diseases and the health infrastructure has deteriorated while health workers leave Africa in droves. Where Information technology and robotics are changing the nature of work, education and leisure and the traditional understanding economics, the advances in gene splitting technologies are changing the very ways in which plants and animals are produced. The information revolution is bringing telecommunications technology to most communities across the continent and the peoples are now able to keep in constant contact with their village communities. African youths are using this technology to bring knowledge and information to others in order to break the control over information. Imperialism seeks to tap into the cognitive skills of the peoples while the governments look to Europe for models of education.

Africa is the home of the richest biodiversity on the planet. While some leaders are struggling for land, the biotech and pharmaceutical companies are patenting African medicinal plants. The threat of the major biotech companies to patent life forms along with the new rules of the World Trade Organization relating to intellectual property rights contain the seeds of undermining all of the gains that were made in the context of the struggle for self determination. By presenting life as an “invention” the biotechnical companies and the food corporations seek to eliminate the African farmer altogether. It is against this background that Africa is providing the lead in the World Trade Organization against the patenting of life forms. In the book, the Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, Samir Amin has warned of the dangers to the pauperization of the majority of farmers in Africa if African government follow the model of agriculture of Europe and the United States.

AFRICAN LIBERATION AND THE CENTRALITY OF GRASSROOTS WOMEN

Whether it is in the area of food production, health care, care for the sick or the education of the youth there is a disproportionate burden that is carried by women of the grassroots. One of the most important new development in the debates on revolution and transformation in the 21st century lies in the centrality of the place of the black women of the producing classes in the struggle for social transformation. This discussion which is going on in Africa and in the Americas emanates from a long tradition of struggle by black women and the determination that the black woman would never be again be marginalized in the African revolution.

The ensuing debates on women’s rights, racism, class alliances, environmental racism, gender and social reproduction hold the seeds of the most profound understanding of the limits of the concentration on productive forces that was the hallmark of radical politics for the generation after 1917. The question of how the understanding of the oppression of women is linked to the household as a site of politics brings home the point that one cannot be politically progressive and support any form of domination or intolerance. The women's movement successfully challenged the labor theory of value and influenced our understanding of the centrality of household production in the capitalist labor process. These revolutionary women have deepened our understanding of the importance of care and that the discipline of economics will remain one branch of capitalist ideas unless it takes into consideration care and reproductive capabilities of women.

Female labor power was never calculated in the economic models of nineteenth century revolutionaries. Black women such as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman yesterday and women such as Angela Davis and Nawal El Saadawi today placed the question of the liberation of women on the political agenda. Throughout the twentieth century the women’s movement internationally made great strides in placing the gender, care and housework as fundamental questions of revolution. However, in the main, this mainstream movement was dominated by conceptions of progress and reason that emanated from Western Europe.

It was the radical black feminists who have reflected on how the growth of emancipatory ideas has contributed towards the project of our collective emancipation. By framing and ending the separation of the woman question from the other sites of struggles and making gender transformation the central question of the struggle, the progressive women inside the left movement and in the radical formations have taken the political lead in the fight for justice. Hence in Africa today, the combined energies of the women from all parts of the Sudan are seeking to place the issues of rape, sexual terrorism, violation and gender oppression at the center of the debate on the future of the Sudan. Fundamentalism of all forms represents one component of the counter revolutionary period in which we live.

UBUNTU

There is need for a new orientation on liberation to conceptualize the values of ubuntu as the basis for liberation. The concept incorporates values of sharing, cooperation and spiritual health. Ubuntu, emancipatory politics and reparations are the key concepts for liberation tomorrow. The attainment of ubuntu is bound up with the political union of Africa. The concrete understanding of the cultural unity of Africa and the contributions of the African peoples towards human transformation are being refined every day through day to day struggles. Cheik Anta Diop who has studied the linguistic basis of African Unity emphasized the importance of African languages in the push for continental unity. African Liberation will be meaningless if it is not rooted in African languages and in the genius of the African woman. The aspirations of Diop, which were outlined in his book on the Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, form the core of the African Union of tomorrow. Diop was clear that his idea on industrialization and regeneration of Africa was not based simply on the development of the productive forces without reference to the working people of Africa. Diop wrote clearly of the requirement of effective representation of women at all levels of governance.

The future of African liberation will be informed by a new mode of politics where ordinary African men, women and children will be able to revel in the idea of Africa for the Africans at home and abroad and tear down the borders of oppression and control which were created in 1885. The future of Pan Africanism and the AU must reinforce the traditional respect for the elders and should raise up a new tradition, respect for young people. This new tradition calls for Africa to lead the world in the use of all means to support the emancipation of African women and girls and to end all forms of oppression.

This is the essence of reparations, peace and justice!

*Horace Campbell is the author of the well known book, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. His latest book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation is published by David Philip of Cape Town, South Africa.

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

Pambazuka News is proud to announce that Mildred Kiconco Barya, one of our regular contributors, has won 1st Prize for the Africana Fiction section in the Pan-African Literary Forum (PALF) writing contest. She will receive a full scholarship to the conference, which will be held from 3rd -18th July 2008, in Ghana, as well as publication in a special section of A Public Space. Please join us in offering Mildred our heartiest congratulations.

Tajudeen rages against the attempts in Kenya to criminalise African language media. The state should be making laws to protest society and be willing to sanction those who use the media to exacerbate ethnic tensions rather than seeking to ban them.

African Languages should not be criminalised. In this column last week I wrote about the demonisation of the media in Kenya as Kenyans tried to exorcise themselves of their recent ghostly past.

The media is not without its faults but to blame it for the hatred, violence, wanton destruction of property, neighbours killing one another and communities turning against themselves is simply finding a scapegoat. Such a convenient foil will make it possible to let off all the other culprits and in this case the grand architects of the mayhem, the politicians, the political class, and Kenyan ruling class in general who whip up these sentiments and manipulate the genuine grievances of the masses in pursuit of their own personal and class interests.

As the grand coalition government that is increasingly exposing itself as lacking many grand people, struggles to take off the politicians who were only a few weeks ago sprouting all kinds of extremist statements are uniting against everybody else , becoming holier than thou in preaching national reconciliation, peace and trying to outshine one another as ‘the patriotic Kenyan’! Everyone else is guilty except the political leaders.

The Nairobi Star (Saturday May 10) reported on ‘radical proposals’ emerging from the recent bonding retreat of the new government : ‘vernacular radio stations should be closed down, cabinet ministers agreed …’ . The decision according to the report ‘… followed discussions on what role the media played in the post election period…’.

Really? I do not speak nor understand any of the languages of the 42 officially recognised ethnic groups in Kenya. My understanding of the more widely spoken National language, Kiswahili, is still very much ‘kidogo kidogo’ (i.e. little), yet I am acutely aware of the crass hostilities between different communities, charges of ethnic discrimination and allegations of ethnic monopoly of this or that by one group or the other. So which media is poisoning my mind?

The Kenya ruling elite have been quite successful, until recently, in living in grand denial about the injustices, social, economic and political that have made them one of the most prosperous middle classes in Africa but also one of the most unequal societies in the world. The tragic violence on the back of the disputed elections finally punctured deep holes in this class/crass delusion.

Even a casual familiarity with Kenya’s colonial and post colonial history will reveal the extreme violence perpetrated by the British, well thought to the independence elite who perfected their rule through the same divide and conquer of the British and turned Uhuru (independence) into a permanent burden to the masses. Yet somehow the elite swallowed their own propaganda that Kenya is an oasis of peace and stability. They took comfort in the disintegration of their neighbours and somehow believe that civil wars, genocide, military coups, economic meltdown, etc were things that happen to their neighbours, not in Kenya, the country known internationally as the destination of all exotic safari complacent to the tune of ‘Kenya Yetu, Hakuna Matata’!

The decades of violence from independence including ethnic clashes, ethnic cleansing and high level unsolved political murders were minor details conveniently airbrushed from the official self image of the country, until December 2007.

Now that the ideologically manufactured innocence has finally been exposed the rulers are looking for scapegoats for the troubled paradise, a paradise that has always excluded the majority of its peoples whatever their ethnicity, religion or race.

By making the media broadcasting in indigenous languages the enemy the political elite is only showing itself up as the local settler colonial masters that they have always been. In that colonial mindset the majority of the people, their culture, traditions and their languages become objects of attack and persecution.

The colonialists justified their predatory adventures, oppression and exploitation of the colonised as ‘white man’s burden’ to bring civilisation and God to the natives. The post colonial elite continues the same attack on their own peoples in the name of modernisation which culturally translates as westernisation and uncritically aping the language and cultures of wazungu (Europeans) . That’s why our indigenous languages are referred to as ‘vernacular’ and our children are made to feel ashamed of speaking their mother tongues at school and even punished for speaking them!

The current attack on indigenous language media in Kenya is not unique to Kenya. It is not limited to the media but wholesale attack on Africaness. It takes different forms in many other countries but relentless, all the same.

It is not just about freedom of expression but part of a long attack on the mind of the masses that must be resisted. The English language media are no less guilty of xenophobia, ethnic hatred or distortions, misrepresentation or disinformation. So why pick on the indigenous language stations? Is it because English phobias and ideological biases are preferable to indigenous ones?

In the UK, the Welsh are proud to use their local language and insist on having signposts in Wales in Welsh and have mandatory broadcast in their language. In Britain in general ethnic minorities are not ashamed to reclaim and retain their culture including their languages while being part of a vibrant multi cultural society.

And yet in Kenya the politicians want to legislate against ethnic media! Just imagine the ridiculousness of it all. A kikuyu, Luo, Luhya or any of the numerous diaspora of Kenyan communities in the UK can establish a radio station or any other media in their mother tongue, sometimes even with government support but back home in Kenya, if the politicians have their way, such endeavour would be criminalised!

I am very much aware of the role which the media especially radio (which is still the most influential media across Africa because it is virtually accessible to everyone) can play both negatively and positively in our societies. Radio Mille Coline in Rwanda was both orchestrator and perpetrator for genocidaire elements and genocide. But the solution in post genocide Rwanda was not to ban Radio in Kiyarwanda but to change the laws, criminalise hatred broadcast and publications and reorient the content of programmes in a wider public education programme of continuous fight against the ideology from which genocide springs.

The state should make laws that protect the whole of society and be willing to sanction those who violate them whether in the media or politicians or academics instead of blaming indigenous languages. In blaming the language rather than those who instigate these sentiments Kenyan politicians are behaving like the proverbial ostrich man in the Yoruba saying : O fi ete sile on pa lapa lapa (i.e. someone who is suffering from leprosy is busy seeking medicines for eczema!).

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

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

Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi accused a "corrupt" government of failing to manage the country's oil wealth and ordered it to hand out oil money directly to the country's five million people. Western diplomats said the call, late on Wednesday, appeared aimed at putting pressure on the government to speed up reforms to improve the living standard of the population at a time of soaring oil revenues.

On Saturday, April 11th, a little past 3 p.m., a MINUSTAH (UN) soldier, Nigerian Cpl. Nagya Aminu, was shot and killed in downtown Port-au-Prince. While this killing was widely reported in the international media, what followed the killing was not. In the immediate aftermath of the killing, at approximately 3:30 p.m. that same afternoon, MINUSTAH troops launched a massive assault on Haitian vendors at the open-air sidewalk market near the main Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince—the area where the soldier had been killed.

Bill Fletcher looks at the hypocrisy surrounding the United States' misadventures into Somalia.

Bush’s so-called war against terrorism entered a further, cynical stage with the recent classification of a Somali group as alleged ‘terrorists’. Al Shabab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, was declared by the US State Department to be a terrorist organisation. The Bush administration claims that ‘some’ members of Al Shabab are affiliated with Al Qaeda.

In order to understand the cynicism of this move it is important to remember that Somalia was a basket case for over a decade after the overthrow of the dictator Siad Barre. Filled with clan-based warlords, the country had no stable government. An international attempt to forge a transitional national government resulted in no further stability or end to the violence. The rise of a right-wing Islamist group known as the Union of Islamic Courts, however, brought about a period of relative stability and internal peace. While the group was and is ultra-conservative in many of its tenets, it was successful in crushing or co-opting many of the warlords. Further, it was an indigenous group to Somalia and not an arm of another country or an external social movement.

Using the pretext of an alleged - and unproven - connection between the Union of Islamic Courts and Al Qaeda, Ethiopian troops - encouraged and backed by the Bush administration - invaded Somalia in 2006 with the stated objective of supporting the Transitional Federal Government, an institution that was on its last legs and had little support within the population. Although the Ethiopians defeated the UIC in formal battle, the situation in Somalia devolved into guerrilla war and chaos. It has been going downhill ever since.

Al Shabab, whether one supports them or not, is an armed resistance movement. It has been carrying out military actions against troops of the country that invaded Somalia. One does not have to support the UIC or the actions of Al Shabab to recognise that a people have a right to oust those who invade their land.

The Bush administration’s action in classifying Al Shabab as ‘terrorists’ further complicates an already difficult situation. Instead of recognising that Al Shabab is the military wing of a legitimate movement, classifying them as alleged terrorists makes efforts towards a political resolution of the conflict unlikely, if not nearly impossible, just as has happened in Iraq. One does not have to like Al Shabab, or agree with its objectives, as long as it can be demonstrated on the ground that it is a movement that has a real constituency and is militarily confronting an occupying army.

The Bush administration, as it has done in other parts of the world, e.g. in Turkey with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), or in the Philippines with the Communist Party of the Philippines (and their New People’s Army), selectively chooses when to classify an insurgency or resistance as terrorists, based almost solely according to whether the target of the insurgency/resistance is a friend of the Bush administration. In the case of Somalia, the Ethiopians are doing the bidding of the Bush administration as well as serving their own regional ambitions.

There is another piece to this which is worth noting. Throwing around the label of ‘terrorist’ is also aimed at suppressing dissent here at home in the USA. Whether one is a Somali émigré, Somali American, or simply someone who supports Somalia’s right to national self-determination, the label of terrorist has a chilling effect on one’s willingness to speak out. As witnessed during the Cold War with the manner in which the charge of ‘communist sympathiser’ was used to suppress dissent, the suggestion that someone is either soft on terrorism or, worse, aiding and abetting an alleged terrorist group shuts down all reasonable discussion.

So, let’s be clear: the Bush administration is not interested in reasonable discussion. We, however, should be, so we need to push back against this latest outrage.

*Bill Fletcher Jr. is executive editor of The Black Commentator where this article first appeared [www.blackcommentator.com">. He is also a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum.

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

The Darfuri Leaders Network, a broad-based alliance representing Darfuri diaspora organizations across the U.S., today urged members of the U.N. Security Council to address the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis in Darfur during an upcoming special session of the council this week.

Kuwe nakaThabo,

Siyakubulisa ngesihle samakhosikazi ngolimi lwethu!

Siloba lincwadi singabomama besizwe seZimbabwe esibhekane lokuhlukuluzeka sidinga uncedo kubomakhelwane.

Ngomgqibelo mhlaka 12 April umntanakho uThabo wezakuleli eleZimbabwe ezoxoxisana loRobert Mugabe. Kasazi ukuthi baxoxisana ngani ngakho ke asisoze sigxile kungxoxo yabo ngoba singayazi njalo lesizatho singasazi ukuthi kungani uThabo waphoqelela wedlula kuleli. Kodwa sizakhuluma ngamazwi aphoswa nguThabo esuka kuleli wathi "inkinga, ziphi inkinga." Lamazwi asicaphula ngakho sicela umkhuze, umbuyise ebuntwini uThabo.

IZimbabwe ibhekane lobunzima lenkinga kwezomnotho, kwezombusazwe, kanye lokungahlaliseki nje jikelele. Kasenelisi njengabomama ukunakekela abantwabethu sibanike ukudla kathathu ngelanga, ukuthola ukudla kunzima konke lokhu uThabo ukutshaya indiva.

Ukhetho esisuka kulo lwengeze ngamandla ukuhlupheka kithi lanxa ukhetho lwaqhutshwa ngokuthula sihlukuluzekile engqondweni ngokwala kukaRobert ukuthi impumelo kamongameli yaziswe uzulu.

Abantu asihlalisekanga ngani ngoba isibalo samapholisa sesandile ezigabeni ikhulukazi emaphandleni lokhu kusenza sidlele evalweni.

NakaThabo siyacela ngesisa umkhuze uThabo ngaloludaba umtshele axwaye ukukhuluma engahluzanga emazwi akhe, asuke asicasule kakhulu. Sicela umkhuze singakamkhuzi thina. Untinte umfazi, untinte imbokodo. Tshela uThabo ame acabange abesekhuluma engabozilulaza phakathi kwamanye amadoda.

Yithi omakhelwane

Women Of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)

Loosely translated into English

Dear Mother of Thabo, We greet you in the name of sisterhood and in our mother tongue (isindebele)!

We are writing to you as mother of the suffering masses of Zimbabwe to ask for your help.

On Saturday 12 April 2008, your child Thabo Mbeki came to Zimbabwe to meet Robert Mugabe. We don't know what they discussed or the real reason he came to Zimbabwe so we cannot comment about that but we want to comment about the words he used when he was leaving.

He said, "There is no crisis in Zimbabwe. We find this has provoked us. Please correct him.

Zimbabwe is in an economic, political and social crisis. We cannot afford three meals a day or even find the basic commodities to feed our children. The political crisis has been worsened by the recent election. Although the election day was peaceful we have been annoyed by the refusal of Mugabe to release presidential results. Socailly the amount of police around the streets and in our rural areas make life very tense.

NaThabo please correct you son about these issues and tell him to refrain from hisrespecting us by his comments.

Please discipline him before we have to do so.

Your neighbours, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)

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

Agustin Velloso advices those interested in plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea "to choose one's travel companions for a coup d'état with care."

Starting April 1st, 2008, Lufthansa offers 295 seats, three times a week, in a superb Airbus for anyone wanting to travel from Frankfurt to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea's capital city. It now seems incredible that in the 90's only Iberia flew to Malabo, from Madrid on Sunday morning, and back the same evening with a group of civil servants, a bunch of nuns and priests plus some Equatorial Guinea nationals.

This new connection between Equatorial Guinea and the rest of the world beyond its closest African neighbors, joins those of Air France, Swiss International Air Lines, Royal Air Maroc, KLM, Spainair, Sonair, Jet Air and some others. Even flights from unspecified airports in Europe with airlines which are not IATA members - although they advertise as such- can be found on the Internet.

The airlines tell the public this intense activity is due to growing business opportunities and changes taking place in the African country: "Blessed by a growing economy in recent years, the country maintains numerous international trade relations, principally in the energy sector."

THREE MEN AND A HELICOPTER

However, seasoned travellers do not agree on this point. Simon Mann, a British mercenary once told the UK's television Channel 4 that "things were very bad" in Equatorial Guinea and that "regime change was badly needed". He added that "the regime was stumbling, the State was sinking" (http://www.asodegue.org/marzo1208.htm).

Mann is the model of the English gentleman. He studied in Eton, the world's most elitist school, cradle of renowned travellers since its foundation in 1440. After graduating he spent the next 30 years travelling the world together with other gunmen, shooting to order or off his own bat in order to make money. His last trip for that purpose, began in South Africa in 2004 and has landed him in Malabo's Black Beach jail, where he has just been imprisoned after being jailed for a time in Zimbabwe.

Many people learn at school that travelling is the best way to learn. Mann has certainly changed his opinions. A mere week at his Black Beach prison cell has led him to abandon his former negative image of Equatorial Guinea and to declare the country "has experienced an incredible change in four years".

On the same day in Madrid, where he lives as a Geneva Convention refugee, Severo Moto, president of Equatorial Guinea's government in exile, said the opposite : "I am coming back home!" in order to bring freedom and democracy to the country. (http://www.guinea-ecuatorial.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid…)

Moto's travelling experience is the opposite of Mann's. The more he travels the world the further he gets from Equatorial Guinea. Seeking all kinds of support for his political return home, he has been to many different places. But none of them has taken him even half way to his apparent destination. What is worse, he has come close to losing both his life and his refugee status in Spain.

Mann and Moto are not alone in their plight. Since 2004, after a life of travel for pleasure, one of their main supporters, Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has some difficulty leaving Britain. Many countries refuse to grant him a visa precisely for his past involvement in adventures that were too big for him. How come his partners failed to notice that this true wet blanket has failed in virtually all the sports, business and financial projects he has undertaken?

Mann now complains that Moto and Ely Calil, another financial backer, cheated him. Thatcher says he thought the helicopter he rented for their botched plan, was meant to serve as an ambulance. Moto says he knows nothing at all about Mann's coup d'état. Calil, who made his fortune in the oil business, has left his fancy residence in London's Chelsea. His current whereabouts are unknown.

NOTIONAL COUPS, NOTIONAL OPPOSITION

The only clear thing emerging from this Marx Brothers remake is the advisability of choosing one's travel companions for a coup d'état with care. Opposition leaders inside the country know this all too well. That means cultivating relations with the most important foreign centres of political power. In other words: travelling from Malabo to the United States and European Union capitals.

Unfortunately, despite frequent invitations for these leaders to visit powerful countries with leverage over Equatorial Guinea, their visits have not borne fruit. On the eve of legislative elections due next May in Equatorial Guinea, Convergencia Para la Democracia Social (CPDS), an opposition party founded underground in 1990, today has two representatives in the national congress. The remaining 98 seats are held by supporters of Teodoro Obiang, President without a break since 1979.

One might say that the important thing is not the number of trips, but their quality. Up until now, it seems that CPDS secretary general, Placido Mico, has yet to learn what Moto knows: world governments are far more interested in Equatorial Guinea's oil than in its people's human rights. All those foreign trips have not taught Mico what Obiang and any other dictator who leans on US friendship knows: so long as they obey imperial policies, they will stay in power, unless their own people bring them down.

Mico never tires of declaring in every city he visits that CPDS "is a political party aiming to introduce changes in Equatorial Guinea once it gets power, which it will acquire by democratic means. For this, it works peacefully for the establishment of a democratic regime in Equatorial Guinea". It may seem incredible, but he adds that he is confident that the United States government may change its current policies towards Equatorial Guinea (http://cpds-gq.org/laverdad56/opinion3.html).

This and similar statements are sweet music to Obiang and the world leaders who support him. So they are more than happy to pay for Mico's air tickets and travel expenses. The Equatorial Guinea opposition leader gives them no trouble and above all guarantees that their corporations increasing investments and business in this small oil-rich African country are safe. Furthermore, this heavenly status quo means they can meet with Mico openly. So in the unlikely event that domestic public opinion questions Equatorial Guinea's lack of democracy, they can say they are doing their share to support it.

TYRANNY - GOOD FOR BUSINESS

No wonder more and more airlines are offering new connections to Malabo. International entrepeneurs have realised, as politicians have, that their businesses are not in peril with the current government or any other likely to succeed it. Such security does not apply to Equatorial Guinea's people, whose human rights are violated on a daily basis. It seems corporation CEOs do not get news about Obiang's policemen chasing after opposition leaders and sometimes torturing them to death. They also seem not to know that business is the preserve of the elite, that democracy is just a dream for the majority of the population either at home or in exile. (http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Africa/Equatorial-Guinea)

One learned observer of Equatorial Guinea who, oddly enough, does not travel there, explained last March 17 why businessmen choose this country for their activities:

"We have heard many times during the last years that Equatorial Guinea is changing. The truth is that real development has not taken place. What exists is an enormous development of Obiang's entourage's enterprises. These have made them incredibly rich while the majority of the population remains poor." (http://www.asodegue.org/marzo1708.htm)

He adds: "news coming from different parts of the country speak of little enthusiasm amongst the people entitled to register for the elections. They are tired of the same people governing all the time, no matter who the citizens vote for. Some reports also inform of irregularities." (http://www.asodegue.org/febrero01081.htm)

TRAVEL - THE GREAT EDUCATOR

In the meantime Obiang himself and his family also travel to Europe and the United States. On arrival he is greeted with flattery. In the April 12, 2006 press conference by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, she said: "thank you very much for your presence here. You are a good friend and we welcome you." (http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/64434.htm)

From time to time Obiang has to listen to "recommendations" and "suggestions" about governance and human rights on his trips abroad, but his bank accounts and properties keep on growing anyway. Neither do the admonitions affect the income of Western companies operating in Equatorial Guinea.

When criticism cuts him to the quick, he fights back and speaks his mind. He is right. Why the half-hearted criticism at the same time as they openly flatter him? This helps explain Obiang's growing interest in China: a country he has visited five times in the last few years. (http://www.embajadachina.org.mx/esp/xw/t217927.htm)

Obiang's trips to Europe and the United States, generate new ones in their turn, from Western Prime Ministers and Foreign Affairs Ministers, from other high government officials and from big corporation CEOs. If two sandals and an ass were all it took Herodotus to write impressive reports of the political and social events he witnessed in his travels, what will these people write from their first class seats in an Airbus A330-300, equipped with "two meter long beds, wine cellar, 5-star chef, musical classics and video"? (www.lufthansa.com)

Back home, after a two or three day visit to Equatorial Guinea, they declare the country has made important steps towards democracy, that the political situation has vastly improved, and last but not least, praise the outstanding environment for foreign investment. That is why people say travel broadens the mind. Maybe when Western airlines start giving seats to the thousands of people from Equatorial Guinea who have never flown with them, those people too will at last see the wonders of Equatorial Guinea so fulsomely described by foreign politicians and businessmen.

Moral: increase international air connections with Equatorial Guinea.

*Agustín Velloso is Professor of Education Sciences at the National University of Education in Madrid. This English version of the article was revised by toni solo.

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

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem looks at Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF and MDC and asks whether the Zimbabwean people are being truly represented in the winds of change

I have to begin this week’s column with an open apology to a dear brother and comrade, Thomas Deve. He was one of the ‘original politburo’ of seven  idealistic young men (unfortunately  we were all men) who masterminded the organising of the 7th Pan African Congress in Kampala in 1994. The others were Napoleon Abdulai, Col. Serwanga Lwanga,  Major Ondogo ori  Amaza, Brig. Noble Mayombo Rwaboni and Myself. Our chairman was then Col. Otafiire (now Major-General, who was really  ‘utter fire’ in those days).

Sadly, of the four Ugandans in this team only one person (Otafiire) is alive today. By a coincidence all the other three non Ugandans have ended in the UN system! Is the UN where Pan Africanists retreat or resign to? The answer (s) will have to wait another time. In spite of changing trajectories we remain close both personally and politically. We generally hold similar views on political developments based on our shared political and ideological values and orientation. Most of the time none of us needed to do double checks to know where ‘the correct political line’ is. 

However twice now I have disagreed with Thomas’ judgement and twice I have had to recant. Both had to do with Zimbabwe. In 2000 I was part of the CDD delegation led by former President of Liberia, Prof Amos Sawyer, that the government of Zimbabwe had allowed to monitor the referendum. In several conversations with CSOs, National Constituent Assembly advocates, academics, journalists, opposition and government spokespersons and partisans the general conclusion was that ‘there was no way’ ZANU-PF was going to allow MDC and its allies to win the referendum. Even Morgan Tsvangirai was convinced that ‘Mugabe will not allow it’ and expressed doubts that if they won h Mugabe would put all of them in jail! 

Thomas Deve was the only one among all the people we officially interviewed who told us categorically that ZANU-PF/Mugabe was going to lose the referendum. I thought my comrade had been talking too much to disgruntled city dwellers and was taking the chattering classes for the masses. Off I went to Masvingo region where I was convinced that the rural masses as in other areas will troop out and vote for ZANU-Pf and dwarf the urban guerrilla movement of the MDC and angry CSOs. Was I not wrong?  The masses in the rural areas voted with their feet and the urban warriors were triumphant. At an African Association of Political Science (AAPS) and SARIPS  public Public Forum at Hotel Monomapata the day the result was released I had expressed my fears about the future of the country because the opposition was not prepared for Victory and the government had not been prepared for defeat. Both bore bad omen.  ZANU-PF went ahead to controversially ‘win’ the election the following year and the subsequent and has held on to power since then.

Come 2008 elections I and many other pundits repeated our ‘Mugabe will never allow the opposition to win’ mantra. He swore so himself openly. In case the world was deaf of hearing Army Commanders, Head of Police and other Security goons let it be known that they were not willing to salute a president who was not part of the Liberation war. Pity all those Zimbabweans  (demographically a majority of the population!)who missed out on the CHHIMURENGAs by being born too late. We had many discussions with Thomas and he insisted that there was  not going to be an outright winner and predicted a run off. I thought that Mugabe would not risk the humiliation of a run off.

Needless to say that Thomas was right again. How could we all have got it wrong? Could it because we have been so saturated with the 7days/24 hours highly biased reports on Zimbabwe and Mugabe that we have resigned ourselves to the devilish regime using all kinds of tricks to continue to hold on to power? One of the weaknesses of this politics of demonisation is that one becomes wedded to the doomsday scenario. Another is that we undermine and under estimate the creeping power of resistance and incremental democratic gains of the people of Zimbabwe. Even the opposition underplays its own victories (such as the reforms of the electoral processes) in order to have Mugabe permanently roasted in the court of public opinion especially in its constant pandering to Western audiences. The possibility of its victory was talked down in favour of a flawed process producing a flawed outcome . 

As in 2000 we were preparing for outright rigging by ZANU-PF which did not materialise.  Even when the much predicted violence did not happen we were still fearing it was only delayed. The Western Media and cynical reflexes about flawed elections across the continent had prepared our minds for rigging but the parliamentary results showed otherwise. The opposition’s victory then meant we had to change the script because of the potential contradiction of accepting  the parliamentary result and denying  the presidential result.

There is wrong comparison with what seemed a similar situation with the recent ‘top up’ rigging in Kenya but the real parallel is probably MKO Abiola’s denied June 12 1992 mandate  in Nigeria. In Kenya the conclusion of many independent observers has been that it was impossible to say with all certainty who had won the presidential election.  

In 1992 the Prodemocracy forces were able to unofficially publish Abiola’s result because of the ‘open secret’ ballot system that limited every polling station to a maximum of 500 voters and the requirement that each voter lined up behind their candidate’s poster and the certification of the result by all present.

It was possible to know who won by tallying the result from all polling stations which in Zimbabwe (for the first time) were required to be publicly displayed after counting. So no problem of we cannot find our returning officers as the Chairman of Kenya’s discredited Electoral Commission infamously claimed.

It now seems that in Zimbabwe the possible margin of error could swing either way. Even the MDC had only claimed it had barely met the 51% requirement. And ZANU-PF’s figures already conceded that they have not met the requirement by a few percentages. Strangely ZANU-PF had called for a rerun even before the official result is announced while the MDC now claims that it has ‘won’ and therefore there is no need for a rerun.

Is the MDC not falling into the trap of ZANU-PF and Mugabe? Are we not seeing a repeat of the referendum vote here where ZANU PF saw their defeat as a wake up call to clobber the populace into line by the time of the General elections.

Is it not clear that they are preparing for the rerun while the opposition is shuttling between the court and diplomatic capitals? I am not quite sure if the MDC will achieve anything by choosing this course. Why can’t they just go for the rerun and humiliate the Old man? 

It is to Thomas who has now earned his status as the ‘authentic guru’ that I turn for some homely clarity. His view is that the opposition may be more vulnerable  than everyone is predicting if there is a run off. If the rerun were to go against MDC what are we going to say? The only ‘solution’ we have been prepared for is Mugabe losing. One Member of the European Commission even suggested that  the EU and the rest of the international community (often used to mean EU and USA!) should recognize the result as declared by MDC. Where were they when Abiola was jailed for no other crime than winning an election? What implication does this type of ‘help’ have for the legitimacy of our institutions? 

Yes something needs to be done but what, by whom and when? And how? God knows that Mugabe is no longer part of the solution but central to problem but should he go simply because the West want him out? Should he also be holding the country to ransome in the name of defying the west even if the country is ruined? When would patriotic Zimbabweans both inside the ZANU-PF/MDC and those outside both parties say enough is enough.

How democratic is it that we hold elections with only particular outcomes in mind? Do elections ion themselves solve socio-economic and political problems Or they just reflect them? Were Hitler and Mussolini not elected? 

Instead of looking at ZANU or MDC victory is it not possible to conclude that Zimbabweans like Kenyans are tired of winner takes all politics by not giving overwhelming mandate to either the tired gerontocrat or his prodigal sons and daughters in the MDC?

Before you start following the Afropessimists’ please reflect that Kenya, Zimbabwe or Nigeria and their controversial Elections are not the only way . Botswana just had a transition from one president (voluntarily retiring one year before his term) and giving way to another without any fuss. It was so normal to the people of Botswana that it did not even make much news. 

Is Mugabe revolutionary enough to liberate himself from power and national suicide and bow out even at this late stage with some dignity or he will wait to be humiliated whatever the outcome of the result?

From Nigeria through Kenya  and now passing through Zimbabwe it is now clear that elections in themselves, important they may be, are not as decisive as the power to ‘announce’ the official result. How can we guarantee the integrity of this all powerful messenger? 

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

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

Steve Ouma argues that for the promised social transformation in Kenya to take root, "political class and other parochial interests" have to give way to consensus and truth telling.

The jubilations that followed the announcement of the Grand Coalition cabinet on April, 13, 2008 were expected. In the lips of most Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) supporters the talk was “at least now we shall also share in the National cake” and perhaps not just as “passengers” in government but real actors. Evoking the classical argument of legal theorist Bruce Ackerman, some analysts have argued that Kenya has been in a constitutional moment since the outbreak of the post 2007 election violent protests. My reading is that most of these commentators have not made a full reading of Bruce’s argument- and if they have, then their interpretation of the text is a little off the mark. Bruce argues that constitutional democracy in the United States has evolved along two distinct tracks of lawmaking. One track is that of “normal politics,” the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government make decisions on behalf of citizens in the absence of high levels of citizen engagement. The second track is what he refers to as the “constitutional moments” These are times characterized by sustained citizen engagement and mobilization and demand for social transformation. This track is therefore one of “higher” lawmaking enterprises.

During these constitutional moments, the people themselves assert their supremacy, and demand sweeping changes in the structure of constitutional democracy. When American democracy has functioned on this second, “higher track” of lawmaking -- as when the constitution itself was framed, when the country emerged from its civil war and brought an end to slavery, and when the federal government dramatically expanded its intervention in the national economy during the New Deal of the 1930’s – governing institutions were fundamentally reshaped.

By all measure, the Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s and President Kibaki’s hand shake and the subsequent deal, legal and constitutional changes have not generated such heights. In the recent history though, when Kenya experienced constitutional moments was the case during the 2002 elections and at the National Constitutional Conference held at Bomas of Kenya (popularly referred to as the Bomas conference). Before the conference, Prof. Yash Pal Ghai’s Commission had gone round the country listening to the people. After many years of misrule and oppression Kenyans used the Ghai hearing sessions as moments of reviewing their past and defining the future. Through Ghai and his team they demanded a presidency that did not replicate a god; one who was not above the law or omniscient. As, Barth (2005), notes the Kenyan president is like a Greek god- pompous in benevolence, and lethal in malevolence. On the super-centralized government framework, Kenyans lamented that they work so hard deep in their villages, and generously give unto “Caesar” through exorbitant taxes, but have no say on how “Caesar” shares out the national cake. For this reason they demanded to be allowed to participate more prominently in the way they are governed, and the way their resources should be shared. One cannot side step these moments simply because there was no violence associated with them. These were constitutional moments.

After the 2002 National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) velvet revolution, the clarion call “yote yawezekana bila Moi”( all is possible without Moi), was all over the air and there was increased vigilance by the citizens. In assertion of their supremacy, citizens arrested police caught extorting bribe. Workers in the Export processing Zones took to the streets in March 2003, to claim better wages, collective bargain agreement and justice relation in production. And most important, there was pressure on the NARC administration to fast tract the constitutional reforms- which in their pre-elections pledge, they had promised to do in 100 days. When Bomas re-opened, the debate was robust and unstoppable. Kenyans wanted wide sweeping changes in the structure our constitutional democracy.

The struggle was so intense that it finally polarized the country at the referendum. While there were other issues on which the “NO” and “YES” side differed and put forward passionate arguments amidst propaganda and mudslinging (which are common in vote-wooing campaigns), the subject of the executive and devolution of power was the real water shade. Evidently, most Kenyans wanted and still want a less powerful executive. These were constitutional moments which simply lacked a midwife. It is the frustration and abortion of these moments that created the recipe to the Post December violence pushing t the Country to its death bed.

Kenyans therefore know what they want and have defined it rather well during the 2002 and 2003 “constitutional moments”. These moments have been frustrated by the political class and other parochial interests. It must be in realization of this fact that the president quipped while making his contribution in parliament on the National Accord and Reconciliation Bill 2008 that “even Orengo alone can now write the Constitution”.

With this clarification, what Kenya is going through now can best be described as a moment of liminality. The theorist, Victor Turner (1922-83), introduced this concept in his famous essay “Betwixt and between; the liminal Period in the Rites-de- passage”. His thesis was focused on rites of passage and more so initiation. Turner regarded rites of passage and in particular initiation ritual, as a process of transformation whereby a person moves from one defined state to another, with an intervening period of uncertainty and crisis. It is this state of crisis- liminal stage – that is the focus of the ritual, which seeks to control it and to impose the values of the society upon the wavering individual who for a short but critical period, is in a “gap”. In this “gap” between social status, neither the old nor the new rules apply and the individual is compelled by the society to reflect on her situation, her place in the society and indeed the existence of the society as such.

Going back to the 18th March parliamentary debate ,perhaps this state of Kenya’s liminality was best captured by the Hon. Minister for Justice and Constitutional affairs who in her contribution reminded Members of parliament that the amendments the National Accord and Reconciliation Bill sought to make to the Constitution “is temporary, pending the full review of the Constitution.” The Country is therefore between the new and the old legal order, between authoritarian presidency and another centre of power, between a presidential democracy and parliamentary democracy, between an open and a closed society. One must also recall that the National dialogue Committee is still in session and its Chief mediator, Mr Oluyemi Adeniji, was in the parliamentary gallery on 18th March. What the Committee has been doing is to assist Kenya to reflect on her situation, her place as a member of regional and international community and indeed her own national identity.

The liminal period is also the state of truth telling. Within Victor’s analysis of initiation, it is during their period that the individual is taken through the rigor of community secrets and is invited to understand the truth about the community. Kenya intend to start two truth telling process. One shall be under way soon and that is the Independent Review Committee (IREC) whose mandate is to probe the presidential election fiasco that plunged the country into crisis. The other shall be the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. The common objective of the two parallel teams is to define the elusive truth. This shall be the most trying moment as truth is ultimately a matter of socially and historically conditioned agreement. This means that what the various parties may see as facts, may well depend on their vantage point of seeing the world.

It is only when this consensus is attained that the country shall move on towards the social transformation that we have been yearning for and create a new moral code and national physique. This new Kenya must be reflected in the new constitution whose time line has now been given as twelve months. Liminality is a creative and critical state of being, it is how best all Kenyan stride through it that shall determine our reintegration amongst ourselves and with the international citizenry.

*Steve Ouma is based at the Faculty of Arts, University of Western Cape, South Africa.

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

The newly elected chair-person of the South-African based Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum, Mr Solomon Chikowero, has urged Zimbabweans based in South-Africa to remain resilient in the face of many challenges confronting them in the country.

Chikowero urged Zimbabweans based in South-Africa to unite and press for democratic reforms in Zimbabwe that will enable an environment that fosters stability to ensure a peaceful transition and reconstruction, for them to be able to go back home.

"Many of us are here for economic and political reasons, for as long as these remain unresolved then we are going to remain in foreign lands forever. We want to go home. The harmonised election on March 29 offered an opportunity for the resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis, but it seems as though the Robert Mugabe regime will stop at nothing to disregard the people's will. No solution that does not respect the will of the people will be sustainable."

Chikowero urged Zimbabweans based in South-Africa to come out in their hundreds for a demonstration to be held on Wednesday the 16th of April, to press for a lasting solution on the Zimbabwean situation. South-Africa's President Thabo Mbeki at the weekend declared that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe.

"We know there is a crisis in Zimbabwe, that is one of a ruling elite that refuses to accept that the people rejected it at the polls. We know who won in the elections, we demand that the results be made public for all without any further delays."

*Please note that the logistics and mobilisation will be handled by ZDF affiliates the Zimbabwe Revolutionary Youth Movement and the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum - Demonstrators will start gathering at 10.AM. For more information, please contact, Sox Chikhohwero Chair-person of the ZDF at 27 72 238 9192 or Simon Mudekwa at 0796192955.

Sheldon Drobny looks at the close relationship between Bill Gates' philanthropy and tax-exemption and argues that the "great problems of the world today are a direct result of the wide disparity between the rich and poor."

My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. I have known for years that a smart wealthy person could keep control of all his assets without estate or income taxes through cleverly structured charitable foundations. These foundations are perfectly legal and allow the donors to keep absolute control of all their money and power and accumulate enormous appreciation free of taxation. In 1967, the loopholes were outrageous and the law has tightened some of these tactics for the rich. However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same.

The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes.

The Gates Foundation now has about $60 Billion under the control of the wealthiest people in America. They do not have to sell any of their positions in the stocks that they put under the tax-exempt umbrella. Furthermore, they can vote their stock holdings the same as if they did before and they can make the same investment decisions about their considerable corporate holdings. Both Buffet and Gates exhibited the most predatory capitalistic practices as corporate executives and investors. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway are not models of socially responsible capitalism. That being said, this foundation will be in the long run richer than the Catholic Church, which has accumulated wealth and power for over 1500 years. However, the results will be exactly the same. They will never liquidate enough of their assets to do any real good for the most onerous problem we have as humans; the worldwide poverty that is caused by the great disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

The Gates Foundation and the Catholic Church have the same goals. They are to keep the legacies for which they were created. For Bill Gates and Warren Buffet it is the control and legacy of family wealth as in the ancient days of the Pharos of Egypt. And by not paying any taxes, Gates will be more powerful than the Pope. I realize that this foundation has done more for disease research and education than any single government institution. But, that is just a condemnation of how little rich countries do for the less fortunate. And the United States is one of the worst examples of how little it does for its own people.

The great problems of the world today are a direct result of the wide disparity between the rich and poor. But, it is hard for the wealthiest to even look at this as an issue of most importance. Catholic Charities do a lot for the poor and I am sure that the Gates Foundation will do a lot for diseases of the poor. But, that is merely a band-aid for one of the symptoms of poverty. The real issue today is poverty.

The governments that keep their people in abject poverty while their leaders are obscenely rich from oil revenues cause many of the problems in the Middle East. But, even the poorest of their people now have access to satellite TV and Internet information that shows these people how much they are being exploited. The simple answer that they hate us for our freedom is absurd. They hate us because they see the wealthy and powerful as the cause of their suffering. As was the case in Germany in the 1920s, even a cultured society can succumb to irrationally violent leaders if they are hungry and poor. It is a human problem that we saw occur in a 1st world country. The 1968 movie, The Shoes of the Fisherman {1} was a fictional account of a new Pope who had the conscience to solve world poverty by giving away all the Church's assets. Below is a summary of the plot from

“After twenty years in a Siberian labor camp, Kiril Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lvov, is set free. The Catholic Archbishop is released and sent to Rome, where the ailing Pope makes him a Cardinal. The world is in a state of crisis - a famine in China is exacerbated by United States restrictions on Chinese trade and the ongoing Chinese-Soviet feud. When the Pontiff dies, Lakota finds himself elected Pope. But the new Pope Kiril I is plagued by self-doubt, by his years in prison, and by the strange world he knows so little about. This movie contains extensive information about Catholic faith & practice, as a television news reporter steps in from time-to-time to explain the procedures involved in selecting a new Pope.”

The movie was not great but it did emphasize the point I am making in this piece. Unless wealthy people and governments around the world recognize the threat that poverty has on humanity, our chances of survival are markedly decreased. And unless the major wealth of the world is used to help feed its people, the diseases caused by poverty will never be cured. The prevention of diseases, both physical and mental, caused by hunger and poverty are the real dangers we face. And with all the concentrated wealth, we have the capacity to give everyone enough to survive and still leave the wealthy with plenty of luxuries. If Bill Gates gave $29 Billion away and kept only $1 Billion he would still have a wonderful life. If he gave it to Sally Struthers, she could probably feed the world.

*Sheldon Drobny was the co-founder of Air America Radio. He is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Paradigm Group II, a venture capital firm specializing in socially responsible businesses. This article first appeared in Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org) in August, 2006

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

I first arrived in Zimbabwe in the mid 90s as a young, naïve university student, curious and open to all that the world had to offer. And at that time, Zimbabwe offered quite a lot - a strong economy based on formidable exports, a literacy rate unmatched by other nations in the region, and people who were proud and welcoming, who had dreams for themselves and their families.

Over a decade later, only one of these remains recognizable to me…Zimbabwe’s people.

Though now I have experienced more of the world’s triumphs and disappointments, I believe that Zimbabwe remains a country that should continue to invoke pride in its people. Not because of what now seems like utter economic and political regression, but rather in spite of it.

Zimbabwe today is plagued by shortages – shortages of life’s basics like cash, fuel, food, and most recently, water and electricity. Not to mention the shortage of trust in the formerly strong institutions and leaders that governed Zimbabwe after independence in 1980. These shortages are hard to make sense of in a country whose well-managed economic development once made it a strong, respected nation the world over.

I work for a U.S.-based family foundation that makes small grants to local, grassroots organizations working with vulnerable children in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Our grantee organizations in Zimbabwe have struggled tremendously over the past seven years with these shortages and with hyperinflation, at 250,000% in January. Through 2002’s Public Order and Security Act, each one of their activities and meetings are subject to government approval and surveillance. Yet our grantees remain committed to keeping their doors open. This, despite the tremendous burden of what is euphemistically referred to by Zimbabweans everyday as the socio-, economic-, and/or political- “situation.”

Our grantees work at the community-level to serve children and their families, providing such myriad services as education support (paying school fees, providing uniforms and materials), counseling for bereaved children who have lost their parents to AIDS, vocational skills training and income-generating projects, abuse prevention and treatment, rehabilitation of street children, provision of anti-retro viral treatment for HIV-positive children, and legal aid on such cases as stolen inheritance. While in Zimbabwe in January, I was astounded by what our grantees must now do to ensure these services continue. Everyday tasks now takes so much effort - the steps and details so complicated given the shortages and constraints. Time is never on our grantees’ side, especially in dealing with the immediate protection needs of children. Yet our grantees carry on. This speaks of not only their compassion and commitment, but of their remarkable coping and management skills.

What they are able to do is now more important than ever. Children are undoubtedly carrying the heaviest burden of the impact of Zimbabwe’s situation. They are obviously the most disadvantaged by the pressure on families and communities, but also through the “politicization” of everyday life in Zimbabwe and the significant damages to the health and education sectors.

There is no doubt that people are suffering in Zimbabwe. But it is equally true that many people and organizations in Zimbabwe are responding. Civil society, though struggling, remains strong and present. These organizations’ efforts must be recognized, valued, and supported.

Now is not the time for the philanthropic or donor community to withhold funding from Zimbabwe. Limited funding or a “wait and see” attitude is a flawed, and potentially dangerous strategy, especially for children. True, a foundation’s dollars might not retain the same value as in other countries, but seeing the incredible work of our grantees, I have no doubt that our dollars go just as far.

As philanthropists, our dollars are meant to support societal transformation. In spite of the difficult operating environment, civil society organizations in Zimbabwe are not only providing vital services for children and families. They are also well-positioned to ensure this change, both before and after an eventual regime change.

Children in Zimbabwe deserve to have their dreams. And in a time when it is hard to find hope, civil society organizations, both large and small, are building a brighter future through their work with children in Zimbabwe.

Kenyan activists gathered to peacefully urge the Kenyan government not to increase cabinet ministerial posts as a way of accommodating the power-sharing deal because this adds to an already bloated bureaucracy - instead power should be shared meaningfully within the posts that exist. Onyango Oloo here below is writing shortly after the Kenyan government tear-gassed the activists.

It is around three minutes to one in the afternoon here in Nairobi.

Slightly over forty minutes ago, I was part of a group of civil society activists who were sent scampering all over Uhuru Park after being tear gassed by the Kenyan riot police.

Among those dozens forced to shed sudden involuntary tears were Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai, well known Kenyan human rights lawyer Harun Ndubi, Kenya National Commission for Human Rights Chair Maina Kiai, Africog head honcho Gladwell Otieno, Awaaz Managing Editor Zahid Rajan, Bunge la Mwananchi regulars Samson Ojiayo and Gacheke; Open Society East Africa Director Binaifer Nowrojee; independent documentary film maker/activist Mbugua Kaba; singer/dancer/drummer/actor/activist "Toothbrush" Ooko; ODM Secretariat member Dr. Jospeh Misoi; feminist/GBLT activist " Ms. P"; NCEC Coordinator Ndung'u Wainaina; minority rights activist Ms. Patita; Fahamu staffer Stella Chege and even the colourful Orie Rogo Manduli.

The cops did not discriminate in their distribution of the noxious canisters: I saw Anne Mawadhe of the BBC and several other local and international media folks choking from the ubiquitous gas fumes.

Later, as we were exiting Uhuru Park-with some still trying to access Harambee Avenue, the ultimate destination of the protest march- I could not resist throwing a broadside a the clutch of askaris, headed by an Assistant Commissioner who were looking for an opportunity to clobber us with their over used rungus. Directing my ire and fire at their presumed boss, I berated them for thwarting the efforts of democracy loving, corruption hating Kenyans like us who were there to fight against a bloated cabinet precisely we were thinking of underpaid public servants like the police and prison warders who still lived in hovels and earned a pittance even as they put their lives on the line for the greedy fat cats lining up for big jobs at the expense of the poor mwananchi tax payers. For a moment, given his vicious ferocious glare, I thought the Assistant Commissioner would unleash his goons on me.

Whatever violent thought was passing through his mind, he let that thought pass and let me, pass too, through them to the other end, towards the Hotel Inter Continental.

Ironically, the rest of the rally had gone smoothly, peacefully and without an incident.

Statements were read and speeches were made by Maina Kiai, Gladwell Otieno and Wangari Maathai; the patriotic songs including the militant national anthem were sung by all of us. We all had our "No More Than 24!" placards and we all intoned our slogans.

What is intriguing is WHO gave the police instructions to disrupt our legal, peaceful, democratic and constitutionally protected right to assembly, freedom of expression and association?

Was it just the police bureaucracy acting on their own and obeying their blood thirsty instincts?

Or was it an order from the "government" trying to keep a lid on dissent?

Freedom Corner is of course associated in the public mind with protests againt the status quo.

At any rate, for such a routine civil society action, I was somewhat taken aback by the number of helmeted riot cops on hand to"welcome" us to Uhuru Park with their traditional feisty hospitality.

The question that needs to be posed to PNU and ODM is whether or not power sharing extends to the Kenyan people.

After all, it is the ordinary Wanjiku and the Achieng who ensured that these two major parties have so much political clout.

It is our votes which propelled them to parliament.

It is our taxes which sustain them-whether as backbenchers or full cabinet ministers.

When they want to demonstrate to their opposite numbers about their strength, it is to us their turn when it comes to mass mobilization.

Presumably, we should be their political bosses because we are the ones who keep them in power.

In other words, we have a direct stake in their power sharing wrangles between PNU and ODM.

Obviously, we may never be invited to those hush hush negotiations because some of the political players view us as irrelevant to the process.

But since this is OUR Kenya that they are talking about, we do not their word of approval to participate in the process.

We have a right to be involved in determining not just WHO governs us HOW, but what kind of policies and action points will ensue.

It is not just about PNU haggling over positions with ODM.

At the moment all praises are going to Kofi Annan as the man who saved Kenya.

We have quickly forgotten that long before Kofi Annan set foot in Kenya, there were already Kenyans from all walks of life- from Ambassador Bethwell Kiplagat to Muthoni Wanyeki and the youth in the informal settlements- who were busy calling for Peace, Democracy, Truth and Justice.

I feel that two main players-ODM especially- should take their time to study how the ANC kept in touch with its popular and social base even as it top leadership anchored by Nelson Mandela kept ordinary ANC members informed and involved in the details of the power sharing process even as they dialogued with the De Klerks and the Pik Bothas.

There is a need for the Kenyan people to step up to the plate and seize this historic moment in our country's political development and push through a thorough going agenda for constitutional and democratic reform and shake our mainstream politicians from their comfort zone.

We should redefine power sharing to mean the right of the poor to share power with the rich; the right of women to share power with men; the right of the vijana to share power with the wazee...

To do this we must have a battering ram, an organized voice- a force that brings together civil society, smal political parties, trade unions and other social forces.

Today we saw that the Kenyan neo-colonial STATE as opposed to the "government" has no qualms about reasserting its essential violent and coercive nature. It means that even after elections, even after the bloody carnage which followed after it and all those heart rendering peace songs and exhortations for reconciliation and national harmony, we still need to redefine the power dynamics expressed by the daily actions of the state in the lives of Kenyans.

Yesterday (at least according to the front page of the Daily Nation today, April 1, 2008) cops trying to disperse a similar peaceful communiy protest in Njiru, on the peripheries of Nairobi shot dead an unarmed woman who was not even in the protest but sitting as a passenger in a public service vehicle. As we speak, units of the Kenya Army are busy torturing peasants in Mt. Elgon and shooting dead innocent civilians in an attempt to "restore peace" in that western Kenyan region that has been rocked and wracked with state and militia violence.

As Kenyans with a democratic conscience we need to tell the powers that be that there are effective alternatives to those Rambo intrusions- whether it is tear gassing peaceful protestors in downtown Nairobi; shooting in cold blood a woman in a matatu in Njiru or torturing villagers in Mt. Elgon.

In the meantime let me go back to two Sixties/Seventies slogans:

A Lutta Continua!

Un Pueblo Unido, Hamas Sera Vencido!

*Onyango Oloo, a Kenyan political activist and ex political prisoner.

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

The Council, at its meeting of 13th March 2008, approved the appointment of Professor Issa G. Shivji to the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Research Chair in Pan-African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam.

Born in Kilosa, Tanzania in 1946, Professor Shivji was for 36 years a distinguished professor in Constitutional Law in the University of Dar es Salaam's Faculty of Law. He is a professor of international renown, having built his reputation through the publication of over 18 books, numerous articles and book chapters. He has received several national and international distinguished scholar awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of East London, UK. Professor Shivji has devoted most of his life to addressing issues on the exploitation of Tanzanians through both the national and the international economic and legal orders.

The University Research Chair is envisaged to be motivated by interdisciplinary research, which will address the socio-economic, scientific and cultural problems facing the African Continent and the country, and which will stimulate thinking and debate that takes account of the continent's historical achievements and the international challenges facing it.

The functions of the Chair will be to develop and promote ideas in interdisciplinary basic research on broad development issues from a Pan-African perspective; to reinvigorate the University as a site of rigorous intellectual debate and discussions through varied activities including quality publications; and to create opportunities for debates on development directions.

The Chair will be officially launched on 15th April 2008, to coincide with the week of Mwalimu's birthday. The occasion will be marked by lectures, palavers, a book launch and exhibitions.

Pambazuka News and Fahamu staff extend their congratulations to Issa on this well deserved appointment.