Where did the New Leaders go wrong?

It is a new year but excuse me if I do not begin with the customary seasonal platitude. Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, playing the role of a Bush clone in Africa presented us with a Christmas present of bombs in Mogadishu. LIke Israel in Lebanon he claimed to be supporting the 'legitimate' government by offloading bombs on the Airport! For a country that cannot feed its own peoples Ethiopia seem to be overfeeding its defence (or is it offensive?) establishment.

In the Middle East, while Muslims were preparing for the Eid. American Cretins, otherwise called Iraqi government, presented Saddam's head to their Patron-Saint in Washington on Eid Day. Ironically the Eid El Kabir, was institutionalised as Ram slaughter in place of human slaughter but Bagdad and Washington reverted back to the barbaric practice.

I am not sure how many of us can say Happy New Year in these circumstances?

Prime Minister Melees Zenawi of Ethiopia is one of the most intellectually engaging leaders on the African continent today. He is one of the small groups of younger and supposedly dynamic leaders that burst on to the political scene in the 1990s for whom President Yoweri Museveni (who had come to power earlier in 19856) became a titular head. They were generally referred to as ‘New generation of African Leaders’. I was, along with many colleagues inside and outside the Pan African Movement, a great proponent for these leaders. They represented a fresh approach to leadership, seemed to be clear ideologically and politically. They spoke with confidence and inspired many Africans and friends of Africa that indeed ‘African Solution to African problems’ was indeed a reality.

But did we celebrate too early? Were our hopes and enthusiasm misplaced? By the mid-1990s, many of these leaders began to show personal, political and ideological strands that made people to wonder whether these are not ‘old wines in new bottles’. To some of their opponents these leaders are even worse than the former dictators they replaced.

I am not one of these perpetual pessimists who always seem to see an unending bad news that imprison the present and moors us permanently to our inglorious and the more unsavoury parts of our history. A lot of positive changes did take place and are still taking place in many countries. And we did learn to dream again but more importantly renewed our hopes.

Whatever one thinks of Museveni now he is not an Idi Amin. And Meles is no Mengistu. Whatever may have happened in the DRC, we did well to remove Mobutu. Whatever anyone thinks of the RPF or Kagame in Rwanda we should never feel or be made to feel guilty for ending genocide and putting the country on a path of normalcy.

We can explain what has happened to these leaders and what they may have become without forcing the parallels that they are not different from past dictators. Such blanket criticism negates many of the positive things that have happened and continue to happen, albeit, unevenly across the continent.

Like other enthusiasts, I am still asking why and what happened to some of those I got to know fairly well. For now I would like to share 10 reasons why the ‘New Leaders’ seem to have extinguished or are extinguishing the hopes they had inspired. It may not wholly apply to all of them but the pattern is generic.

One: They come as liberators but the longer they stay in power the more they become oppressors, intolerant of dissension or even discussions within their own political and military formations, among original leaders and in the wider society. Check in all these countries where the original leadership has remained intact even five to ten years after assumption of office.

Two: The vanguard of the masses slowly become vanguard of the ruling party / clique and soon degenerates into vanguard of the leader. Take the example of Eritrea‘s Issias Afwerki, who has managed to turn a country we all thought was going to be a shining example of a ‘future that works’ into a large garrison. They wrote a beautiful constitution that was ‘people-driven’ but became ‘Leader jammed’ and remains gathering dust. The people had their say but the leader had his way!

Three: They usually come in with big dreams and enormous commitment to the masses but the paraphernalia of power, the glitz, pomp and pageantry and all the trappings begin to take over. The ascetic ones amongst them begin to enjoy the good life and could not have enough of it. Add to that the institutionalized culture of sycophancy, jungle fatigues soon give way to the best of Savoy row suits, Gucci shoes, Rolex watches, etc. The comrade has now ‘arrived’ and will not be in a hurry to vacate he State House which he once detested. Some of them made a point of not occupying huge palaces vacated by their predecessors but soon moved into them or build even more imposing ones ‘on national security grounds’.

Four: A ruling group that had been held together for many years (from rebel groupings until they capture power) by shared ideology and perspectives become more and more built around the personality of the leader, his family, in-laws, freelance opportunists and other cronies recruited for ‘loyalty’ rather than any commitment to the country or people.

Five: The interest of the party, the government and the people become indistinguishable from the whims and caprices of the Leader. To oppose him was to oppose the people.

Six: The progressive changes they have brought about in the country become ‘gifts’ from a benevolent leader to his hapless citizens. Again here we should not throw away the baby with the birth water. Generally these leaders did turn around the economy and political arrangements in their countries. Things did improve even if in most of the cases, they were growth without development anchored on neo liberal policies beloved and imposed by the IMF / World Bank.

Seven: The one failing that many people -- especially their former comrades --find unpardonable in these leaders are their ideological somersaults. Most of them were revolutionaries who began their political carriers and rebel lives as firebrand anti imperialists but soon became converts to the free market and new best friends with the imperialist countries especially the USA and other Western powers. What angers many is the way in which some of them even use their new approval by Washington as a badge of honour replacing their former revolutionary icons!

Eight: These former revolutionaries, who previously espoused Pan Africanism, resigned themselves to ‘better managing’ the neocolonial state and soon became engrossed in competition rather than cooperation with their former comrades. Instead of more Pan Africanism, they engaged in less as they reduced relationship with other states to one of bilateral economic and political arrangements. The consequence of this is a tragedy like the DRC where we built a Pan Africanist Alliance to get rid of Mobutu, but could not sustain it after victory because every state wanted to have a pliant regime in Kinshasa instead of a Pan Afrianist regime in the interests of the people of DRC people and those of the region. Liberators become looters and occupiers...

I have saved the last two reasons deliberately to the end because they help explain the folly of Meles in Somalia.

Nine: This is the twin evil of these leaders becoming both victims of their militaristic means of getting and retaining power and wallowing in external validation by the same Western powers that not too long ago were praising our dictators as ‘moderate’.

Most of these leaders do not know how to negotiate without having their AK47s corked. They are used to conquering. Therefore, even when they profess democratic reforms, they are being tactical rather than strategic. They expect their peoples to be forever grateful and to accept incremental changes as decried by the leader. The only institution they trust is the armed forces. That’s why Ethiopia could fight Eritrea and Uganda and Rwanda can do the same in a third country despite assumptions of solidarity and affinity between the leaders.

Ten: My last reason -- and probably more decisive -- is the flattery and endorsement by the West. It makes these leaders feel that they are doing their peoples a favour. But more than that, it gives them illusions of becoming global players and they instinctively ally themselves behind geo-political and economic strategic interests of the West. But in these days it means lining up behind the USA and bush for all kinds of Bush wars.

Meles’ Ethiopia is the current worst practice of this. I am not one of those who think that Meles is just doing what Washington wants. What he has done is to use Bush’s doctrine to affirm his alliance but also justify his narrow national and sub-regional security concerns.

In invading and occupying Somalia, Ethiopia even has the legitimacy of the IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) and AU backed process that led to the formation of the TFG (Transitional Federal Government).

But as intelligent as he is, why can he not learn from his Washington friends that, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, it is easier to occupy a country than govern it in peace. Are they not talking to Rwanda and Uganda about their experience in the DRC? Why does Meles think that Somalia will forever remain weak militarily? If a country with almost 100 % Muslims want to be governed Islamically how undemocratic is this? Does Meles not realize that the TFG will remain what we call in Hausa ‘GWANATIN JEKA NA YIKA” (i.e. a puppet regime)? Sooner than later, its allies will turn against it the way Kabila senior turned on his Kigali and Kampala allies.

It was Prime Minister Meles who famously insinuated that African leaders may be having psychiatric problems because ‘they repeat the same things but expect different outcomes’. Since he was a medical student before leaving for the Bush, it is perhaps about time he turned his diagnosis to himself.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director, Africa, for the UN millennium, Campaign. He writes this weekly column in his personal capacity as a concermed Pan Africanist.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete came to power on a populist vote. Wamachinga, the semi-employed and unemployed youth of Dar es Salaam symbolized his populist support. He promised them one million jobs.

Kikwete’s first task was to convert his populist support into a popular support. Populism is fragile; it is ambivalent and can go in either direction, progressive or reactionary. In a country like Tanzania with over 12,000 villages, in which live some 80 per cent of the population, mostly smallholder peasants, converting populism to popularity means establishing a close rapport with village communities.

Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere did have such rapport but it was top-down, paternalistic. Mwalimu did not see peasants as an agency for change; peasants could not bring about change, rather he saw change being brought to them. Edward Moringe Sokoine had a developmental conception of the village. Sokoine saw the village as a harbinger of self-reliant, national development and the peasant (a rich peasant?) as an agency of change. Whatever the differences, there was one fundamental thing common to them. Both men were persons of unimpeachable personal integrity, which endeared them to the masses and strengthened them against pressures from local reactionary and foreign imperialist forces.

A fourth phase president who would make a difference would have had to combine the popular rapport of a Kambarage with the sober developmental vision of a Moringe. We therefore needed a JMK. In his first year, I envisioned President Kikwete in khaki perched on a landrover conversing with villagers, visiting even those villages where they still think Nyerere is the president. It was not to be. Instead, we found the President jet-trotting to foreign lands, including the most hated bullies of this world, chasing ‘development’. If investors needed to be charmed, that could well have been done by his charming Prime Minister. But JK needed to be in the country to transform himself into a JMK.

While the populist support was not converted into a popular support, worse, within one year the President lost even his populist support, thanks to his short-sighted lieutenants who mercilessly chased away Wamachinga thus piling up the numbers of unemployed. Now the President will have to create not one million, but perhaps 1.4 million jobs to accommodate the former Wamachingas!

The Cabinet

The ‘who’s who’ in the cabinet would give a signal of the President’s direction. In the people’s perception, the previous vigogo had indulged in an orgy of self-enrichment, ujasiriamali. They could not name names in public for fear of being persecuted by the State but in their palavers - majiweni and mabarazani - they could tell you who owned what and how he/she got it. The tip of the iceberg was an utterly inexplicable sale of government houses.

True, Mwalimu’s leadership code was killed and buried in Zanzibar by Mzee Ruksa. What we did not know then was that it was a signal to forsake even elementary political ethics. In the second half of the third phase government the neo-wabenzi, against whom the leadership code was promulgated in the first place, went berserk, holding directorships in companies, sometimes in the very sector under your ministry; awarding tenders to sons, and cousins and girlfriends; accumulating real estate; having a finger in every business pie, fair or foul, and much more. People were not only disappointed with this type of ujasiriamali, they were simply disgusted - and despaired.

People expected a messiah in JK who would deliver them from the orgy of self-enrichment. They expected him to signal a different direction by, at least, choosing into his cabinet people of unquestionable personal integrity. As a symbolic gesture he would have perhaps declared that those who took government houses had disqualified themselves from the potential pool of ministers. That alone would have sent a signal that he meant business, that he was truly a man of the people. And Kikwete could have done it; he was riding on a wave of 80 per cent vote. For reasons best known to him and his advisers, the president rubbed salt into the wound by announcing that he too had “bought” a government house!

CCM appointments

The 2005 nomination process of the presidential candidate within the CCM was one of the worst in the party’s history. Politics of ethnicity and race were freely deployed; the amount of money used could have only come from slush funds provided by tycoons; factional fights and intrigues abounded. Many felt in their bones that the party could crack. That did not happen. But the party came out of elections more fractionalized than it had entered it. Any farsighted leader of a political party in that situation had two major tasks.

First, to cement the party with a vision and a programme transcending factions and primordial prejudices. Second, to re-establish the integrity of the party and its leadership. Two party posts would be germane to this double-task, the post of the secretary general and that of the treasurer.

The party cried out for a sober organizer as the secretary general, not a cheer-leader used to haranguing people as if they were some empty tins fit only for making noises. It called for a treasurer who would be absolutely above board and known for his/her personal integrity, who would not compromise in matters of money. Again, the chairman did not measure up to the expectations in his party appointments.

Social and economic development

One year is not long enough to assess the developmental performance of a regime. But it is long enough to gauge its developmental direction. In this case, the fourth phase government seems to have decided, either consciously or by default, to stay the course. The course was set by the Mkapa regime: mindless privatisation and marketisation of the economy, including privatisation of strategic sectors, for example, finance and insurance; commodification of public goods and services, for example, land, water, energy, health and education and ruthless and unregulated exploitation of resources by multinationals – minerals, timber and forests and other bio-resources.

The experience of mining companies and the fiasco of privatized management in the water and electricity should have made the fourth phase government to revisit the course rather than stay it. The current power crisis, whose origins could be traced to the scandalous IPTL deal and equally scandalous imposition of Net Group management by force (remember that FFU accompanied the South African management when taking over TANESCO offices against resisting workers!), has been made worse by the outrageously scandalous Richmond saga. The credibility of the regime has hit rock-bottom, and the president’s studious silence only helps to feed the rumour mills of Dar es Salaam.

After some twenty years of the neo-liberal direction of the economy, one would have thought that the new government would have made a sober assessment in the light of its own experience and the experience of other countries, particularly Latin America where neo-liberalism has been discredited to the boot. Instead, we have accepted to be part of the perverted logic of IFIs (International Finance Institutions) which attributes lack of success to insufficient reforms – so reform is the only industry that shows exponential growth rates! When shall we be done with reforms?

Space does not allow going into details. But the least that is expected is that we seriously revisit our development paradigm. Are Mkukuta and Mkurabita serious developmental programmes? Which country has reduced poverty by cash transfers without developing the economy? And where is an example of success of De Soto’s Mkurabita?

Foreign policy

If there is one area where both the third and fourth phase governments have shown utter lack of appreciation of the world situation, it is in the country’s foreign alignments. True, there is only one superpower but that does not mean one has to go into its armpit. This superpower is a vicious military power with a clear military design on Africa. It is therefore very difficult to understand Tanzania accepting to send a brigade to Lebanon and co-sponsoring the US-authored UN resolution for intervention in Somalia. The design of the US on the Eastern seaboard is clear – to string it with military bases from Djibouti through Somalia and Dar es Salaam to Durban. Tanzania is one country which has a relatively stable polity and the lingering Nyerereist legitimacy in Africa. Its landmass connects the Indian Ocean to the heart of rich Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. For these and many other reasons, US eyes Tanzania. It is surprising therefore that instead of keeping safe distance, our leadership goes out of its way to court this dangerous military octopus.

It is school-boyish to think that non-alignment does not make sense in the unipolar world. It makes more sense today than ever before. Remember Bush has drawn the line – you are either with us or with the “terrorists”, which means anyone who is against US foreign policy. Under these circumstances, non-alignment means ‘we are neither with you nor with the terrorists!’

By the same token, it is again surprising that Tanzania is increasingly courting and embracing another vicious military power totally aligned with the US – Israel. Hopefully, our leadership will realise its folly before it is too late.

The union question

This has been the continuing subject of discussions and frustrations in the media. The tail continues to wag the dog. The mpasuko in the union cannot be resolved without resolving the mpasuko in Zanzibar. And for resolving the mapasuko, the CCM has to rise above political opportunism. The problem is that the CCM leadership fails to discipline the Zanzibar CCM because mainland CCM factions opportunistically seek out the most reactionary elements in Zanzibar, lest the ‘opposition’ get into power. This is a groundless fear. There is no force in Zanzibar which would want to break the union but if the situation continues as it is, where Zanzibar fails to build a national consensus, then indeed the union could breakup. The JK government has failed to move on this score. One needs to be firm; flabbiness of position wouldn’t do. Sharing of power in Zanzibar is not going to rock the Tanzanian boat at all, nor, in fact CCM’s hegemony. Those who are opposed to national unity on the Islands are purely doing so out of personal interest and personal interests cannot be allowed to wreck a country.

Summing up

In sum, then, the immediate task facing the fourth phase government is to take a serious stock, not only of its one year in power, but also the direction in which the country has been moving for the last twenty years. For any government to lose its massive support within a year is very serious indeed and it requires serious attention, not escapism and scapegoating.

• This article first appeared in The Citizen, a Tanzanian daily, on 21st December, 2006. Issa Shivji is a retired law professor.

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

Rwanda and Burundi were recently admitted as full members of the East Africa Community. It is both historic and timely. We criticize our leaders a lot, and most of the time justifiably. However, when they do good things we should also have the integrity to say well done.

It is historic in beginning to right some of the injuries inflicted on Africa that turned us into Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone and all the phony phones in spite of the fact that majority of our peoples do not have access to any phone! And if we are to be phonic, why should it not be Africaphone?

Whenever Pan Africanists talk about colonialism critics always say we are too focused on the past, escapist and blaming colonialism when, in their view, colonialism ‘finished’ long time ago. My retort has always been: How I wish! The impact of colonialism is so pronounced in our lives that even our physical geography is determined by this shameful past. For instance, go to any of the fancy hotels on the continent and ask for the breakfast menu. The option you will be given in many places is ‘continental breakfast’ but the continent will not be referring to the African continent. If you ask for African meals (Nigerian hotels being exceptions in terms of always having African foods) many of them will tell you that they needed ‘24 or 48 hours’ notice yet they can offer you all kinds of so called ‘international’ cuisine. In ‘Francophone’ countries, choices of cheeses and wines from particular regions of France are available on demand!

Leave the foods and let us look at traveling on the continent. If you travel from Kampala to Kigali by road and it is raining in Mbarara, it is likely that it will rain all the way to Kabale and from there to Kigali. Similarly the physical geography, topography, the lush greenery, hills, valleys, all remain the same, only increasing in density as you move on. Then you reach Kabale, the last major city on the Uganda side, about 20 kilometers from where you come to the border post, Gatuna (to Ugandans) or Katuna (to the Rwandese).

Nothing has changed in the geography, the looks of the people and even the languages they speak are mutually intelligible. You will see the peasants, petty traders, carrying their wares through panya panya roads parallel to the formal border roads, while those of us with passports are waiting to cross over on either side in our vehicles. These peasants just carry on as good Pan Africanists ignoring the tarred road and officials.

After you clear border bureaucracy, your first challenge will be to change from driving on the left (as in Britain) to the right (as in France). Before you recover from the driving change you also have to adjust your watch by one hour! I am not a geographer but I am not persuaded that between Kabale and Kigali or Kampala there is an hour time difference, exactly the same time difference between Paris and London! I think this has more to do with history than geography, and that history is colonialism. Those who claim colonialism ended have definitely been quick to forget. However there is a part of the criticism that I do accept. The responsibility for keeping these mental and physical borders rests with Africans and our leaders. It does not excuse you and I, because these leaders came from among us and we are the ones who through our action, inaction or indifference keep them in power.

They enjoyed keeping us divided so that they can remain big fishes in the tiny ponds bequeathed to them by colonialism. They talk regional integration but engage in national disintegration politics. They talk Pan Africanism but preside over sectarian political systems of ‘tribalism, ‘clannish’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘regionalism’, ‘religiosity’ and other kinds of divisive politics. Since they could not hold the country together it became impossible to aspire to regional integration or Pan African unity.

The Cold War also gave some of our leaders the false confidence that they could survive as client states of the West or the East without bothering about their neighbours.

Hence the first East Africa community collapsed under the twin pressures of internal political disagreements between state elites and their external alliances. But the peoples of the region continued cooperating irrespective of what happened in the state lodges. The governments are now listening to the people and reconciling themselves to reality.

In the past few years Africa has returned to the agenda of regional integration and Pan Africanism because globalization is making most of the states irrelevant. Also with the end of the Cold War many of our states and leaders ceased to be of strategic importance and lost their opportunistic levers of playing the West against the East.

The larger point is the fact that in spite of the many challenges, our democratic struggles are succeeding. Most of the leaders are not able to rule in the old ways again. The quality of leadership is improving across this continent.

In addition to the Cold War, the old colonial rivalry especially between the British and their French cousins endured for a long time in Africa and militated against regional cooperation, integration and Pan-Africanism.

Two regions of Africa - East Africa and West Africa - suffered most the consequences of this European tribalism. As the European Union became a reality the Francophone countries suddenly became aware that they were in Africa after all because France could not take them into the Euro Zone.

What makes Rwanda and Burundi, Central Africa? Geograhically and historically if they are central to anything it is East Africa. However because the French had to distinguish their looted territories from those of their British cousins, the geographic misnomer came about. This misnomer groups Cameroon, which is in West Africa, with Rwanda, the real Central Africa, the two Congos and Gabon as Central Africa!

By formally admitting Rwanda and Burundi into the East Africa Community the political leaders are finally reconciling history with geography and snatching victory from the jaws of colonial defeat.

It is a sign of a region slowly coming to terms with itself. The biggest contribution of the two countries to the region is their peoples as workers and producers. The Banyarwanda are easily the largest ethnic group in the region. They live in their millions in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and DRC. But historically they have been badly treated in their own countries and treated as either refugees or long-term migrants with no permanent rights as citizens no matter how many generations they may have lived there. Genocide and irresponsible leadership drove many away from their homes, and xenophobia prevents them from becoming full citizens in the countries of their refuge.

Xenophobia is so strong in the region that in Uganda two popular ways of discounting the claims of your political opponent is to call them ‘Banyarwanda’ (meaning Tutsi) or Nubian (meaning Sudanese).

The expanded East Africa now provides opportunity for regional citizenship and with it the right of every citizen of the region to live, settle, work in any part of the region. With progress towards a political federation this will include the right to vote and be voted for.

For Africa as a whole we want our peoples to have the right to move, settle, work, and live without visas or passports from Cape Town to Cairo. As steady progress is being made at regional level it makes this Pan African dimension inevitable. West Africans have been free to move across their region for two decades now, and this has not led to everyone moving to Nigeria. The peoples of the Old East Africa have been free to move around and adding Rwanda and Burundi to the region does not mean that all the people will move to Kenya or Tanzania or Uganda. It just means that they are free to do so if they wish without any security or police always harassing them as ‘foreigners’.

Similarly, other East Africans could go to Kigali or Bujumbura as and when they please.

South Africa and Southern Africa need to learn from these two experiences to assure them that freedom of movement does not mean that everyone wants to come to Joburg. The majority of Africans live and would like to remain in their villages in peace, security and prosperity. Those who need to move will do so one way or the other. We need to stop criminalizing them as ‘smugglers’, ‘aliens’, or ‘illegal immigrants’. Most of them are Pan-Africanist entrepreneurs delivering goods and services to our peoples, as and when needed in the true spirit of ‘Africa sans Frontiers’ or ‘Africa without borders’.

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

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

The BBC's Africa Have Your Say programme is linking students at a school in Abuja with a school in London to discuss migration and explore the realities of life through the eyes of young people.

The first time I heard of Rwanda it was not as a separate country. It was as hyphenation: Ruanda-Urundi. That knowledge came from a Sociology class taught by a German Lecturer, in a pre-degree class at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria’. In those days Sociology was heavily dominated by Anthropology and its preoccupations with ‘the tribe’, ‘the clan’ and ‘the native’. Sociology was a discipline introduced out of protest at the uses and abuses of anthropology.

Anthropology has always had a bad name because of its close association with the colonial enterprise. European colonialists captured Africa through an unholy trinity: Christianity, the Maxim Guns and the Trade. The Anthropologists acted as the civilian contingent of the imperialist enterprise by providing what intelligence officers today provide for the modern state.

This is the same kind of far-reaching specialized local knowledge that ubiquitous Western NGOs can still provide (though a lot of information and knowledge are easily available today) to their sponsors today. The anthropologists were not necessarily ( like many of the missionaries) conscious agents but their knowledge, studies, ‘participatory research’ and activities among ‘the native’ directly and indirectly helped the colonialist project.

For Ruanda-Urundi what we know was that these were countries divided between ‘two tribes’, Hutu and Tutsi. The former looked more like us: Negroid, broad nose, short and stocky while the latter does not look like us: they are lighter skinned, taller, with long noses. With that, our racist focus on Rwanda and Burundi was constructed and the template put in place.

When you then consider the colonial imprint of indirect Tutsi rule in cahoots with the colonial rulers as the traditional aristocratic overlords, the anti-Tutsi prejudice became complete and got given a kind of respectable ideological justification.

Later in Political Science classes one was presented with another set of truisms that did not square with the tribal angle. Rwanda and Burundi, this time joined together with Somalia, we were taught, were the only countries in Africa where ‘tribalism’ was not an issue as in many post colonial African states, because the people of those countries were the same ‘tribe’, same faith. In the case of Rwanda and Burundi they did not even have significant dialect differences.

So if the people of those countries are not of different tribes how come they are killing each other? The answer lies in politics and power, not in ‘tribe’.

It took me moving to Uganda in the early 1990s to complete my education about Rwanda. Most Africans’ understanding or misunderstanding of Rwanda and Burundi was shaped by racist anthropological understandings. The ambiguities of some of the most radial scholars on this continent about the 1994 Genocide, and in understanding Rwanda since then, are rooted in this.

Many Africans believe themselves to be Hutus and by definition are apologetic about Hutu extremism. People who are usually critical of colonial constructs of ‘tribalism’ and ‘ethnicity’ in Africa, lose their critical faculties when it comes to Rwanda and Burundi. Because Genocide was carried out in the name of the majority, against a minority, does not make it ‘democratic’ or excusable. One’s opposition to minority rule should not condone genocide or atrocities against ethnic or racial minorities or minorities’ of any kinds.

The role of past colonial and neocolonial powers, especially Belgium and later France, in manufacturing these tribes and playing them against each other in order to perpetrate foreign domination in that part of Africa, cannot be separated from the successive Genocide that has engulfed the two countries (though with different victims and villains) since the late 1950s.

Without France and Belgium, the Genocidiare regime of Habyarimana and MRND could not have held on to power for so long. Without France and its ‘operation turquoise’ after the defeat of genocide in 1994 the Genocidiare regime, its army and clergy could not have forced genuine refugees behind fugitives in camps in Goma and other parts of Eastern Congo that eventually led to forceful closure of those camps, prolonged wars in the Congo and instability that continues until today.

It is therefore very rich, insulting and most mischievous and mendacious that a French judge sitting in some obscure province, and an even more obscure kangaroo court, can start issuing indictments against the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame and nine of his officers.

Was the Genocide really caused by the shooting down of the plane of Habyarimana? If it had not been planned well in advance, with weapons being put into place how could it have been carried out and executed so swiftly and with such clinical precision?

Africans too readily accept Westerners sitting in judgment over us, without us doing the same for their many atrocities against us. Very often we allow our disagreements or opposition to particular regimes or leaders to cloud our better judgment and this gets non-Africans off the hook and even inflates their pomposity towards us. For many of us, as long as we are opposed to the person, people or governments being attacked, we think it is alright regardless of the principles that may be at stake.

How many African judges have issued indictments against Western leaders for their complicities in the many tragedies that continue to take place on this continent? Why can’t our judges, governments or institutions and even our human rights organizations who are quick to accept donor funds to campaign (rightly in many cases) against abuses by our governments also put some energy into prosecuting and campaigning against non-African excesses against Africa?

France and Belgium in particular and their successive leaders, ministers, corporations, diplomats, bureaucrats are guilty of aiding and abetting Genocide and should hang their heads in shame instead of looking for Africans -leaders or the led - to prosecute. They are only trying to ease the burden on their own consciences about their moral, political and legal complicity in murdering the innocent in Rwanda. 1994 may be the worst expression of these excesses but there are too many similar cases across this continent. Where do we even start when counting these cases? Is it Genocide by the Germans against the Hereros in Namibia? Or King Leopold’s Genocide in the Congo? Is it the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, coordinated by the Belgians and the CIA? Is it the overthrow of patriotic regimes including that of Nkrumah, Ben Bella, and so many more by agents of the West? Or do we cite the testing of nuclear weapons on innocent people of the Cameroon by the British in the 1960s?

We do not have to look far back in history to find evidence of Western conspiracies and wrongs against Africa. Most western countries will stand indicted without too much research. France will be in a special class of its own as both a brutal colonial power and neocolonialist on this continent.

There is more than enough for many western countries, and their leaders - political, religious and corporate -to be hauled before the ICC. That they are not is because they are the ones making the rules and then breaking them. That they get away with it is because we let them. International law should not only be for the poorer countries to obey, used to threaten current leaders, or enforce on leaders who have fallen out of favour (like Taylor, Milosevic, and others). It should apply equally. In a just world, how many western leaders, current and past, would be sitting comfortably in their mansions?

The responsibility for Genocide is not about who shot Habyarimana, it is about those who aided and abetted Genocide in that country ending with the delivery of their final script in April 1994. That responsibility, Monsieur Judge, is on France and their Belgian cousins.

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

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

Friday (ranar Jumaa in Hausa) is supposed to be the holiest of holies and the most blessed of all the blessed days for all believers in the Muslim faith. But last Friday 10th of November has given us cause to rethink this belief. For members of my family and me it has become a day of infamy. Instead of being a day of strengthening faith it is a day during which our faith in Allah was tested and some of us may have momentarily failed. It was the day we were robbed of one of the more gregarious siblings in our family of 10 brothers and 8 sisters from four mothers. Our dad passed away at a very mature age of 90 in 2000 but my mum, the youngest of the four wives from whom all 18 of us came died very young, at less than 60 years old when she died in 1997. We thought then and still do now that death was most cruel taking my mum at such a young age, in a life that was full of sacrifice for all her surviving 9 children. I said surviving because we could have been 12 (to the best of my knowledge). The girl before me died before she was one month old and at least twice when I was old enough to know what was happening my mum had lost one baby through still birth at full term and another child at slightly more than one year, a brother, Suleiman, after whom our last born boy, Sule, was later renamed. It is possible my mum had more than the 12 I could recollect but never bothered to tell me, her first surviving child because these things are not talked about both culturally and religiously.

However if my mother had been alive the death of my second brother, Sikiru (popularly known as Parrot) last Friday, would have killed her instantly. And I am not sure I could cope with losing both of them at the same time given how rotten I still feel 9 years since my mum passed away and how bad I am feeling at the moment for Sikiru’s death. Even though my mum had many children and had been luckier than all the other wives(most of us survived and made her a posthumous 50 % stakeholder in my Dad’s estate, her children being exactly 50% of all surviving children of my Dad) . Other wives always believed that we survived in that huge numbers because the Old man loved our mum most as the youngest wife but really my educated guess is that we survived because both the material situation of the family and access to medical facilities when my Mum joined the Harem was much better than when the older siblings were born, many of whom died when they were under 3 years old. Sikiru was her favorite. It is difficult for mothers to choose between their children but emotionally they tend to be more attached to the weaker ones. Sikiru was a very sickly child as a toddler. I could recollect his having concussions almost every week and my mum screaming to the whole neighborhood and everyone bringing one concoction or the other to ‘wake him up’. The hawkish eyes of a loving mother became so focused on this sickly boy and remained so throughout my mother’s life, something that Sikiru got accustomed to and used to good effect in all kinds of sibling rivalries as we grew up. As the first child my tasks and obligations were cut out for me. I had to be the responsible one and look after all those who followed me. . Between Sikiru and I there was a special bond because he looked like me and together with Amina , our last born, the number 9 for my mum and the 18th of the whole family, the three of us were the ones who looked most alike. When he came to Kampala for the 7th PAC he caused so many breaches of protocol and security as many (including our Chairman then Colonel Kahinda Otafiiremi and our then Chief of Staff one young Lt. Mayombo) misstook him for me! Through choices that he made consciously and those made for him by accident of birth by being my brother Sikiru became like a clone to his older brother following in my footsteps to go and study Political science at Bayero University Kano after secondary education at the notoriously harsh, seniority-obsessed Rimi College in Kaduna and A levels at Kwara State College of Technology, Ilorin. It was in Ilorin that the mustard seeds for his Student Union activism and political activism were planted and came to gregarious fruition at BUK where he was elected Publicity Secretary of the Student Union. By this time I had left home for further studies in the UK and had become a political exile against successive military dictatorships in Nigeria from Buhari/Idiagnon dual autocracy through IBB’s corrupt patrimony and Abacha’s sadistic regime. Sikiru was vocal, very eloquent and gifted writer who had no problem committing his views to paper. I have always thought he could have been a more successful journalist than anything else but he was too energetic and spread himself in different directions as though he had foreboding that he would not live long. He packed many things into his restless life: politics, PR, education, entrepreneurship, sponsorship of sports, promotion of theatre, Cinema, music promotion, journalism and more. And he did all of them with gusto. If God had a fixed address Sikiru would have found him and He would be impressed. But no sooner HE makes his acquaintance Sikiru will disappear! He would have moved on to other hobbies and challenges. When my mum passed away in 1997 he was in Funtua managing a private secondary school. It was on his advice and persuasion that we bought out the previous owners of the School and renamed it after our late MUM: Hauwa Community College. It was through his creativity, diligence and ways and means that we were able to buy the school change the name and he nurtured it to become the first ever private College to have been given full College Status and registration for both NECO and WAEC in Katsina state. He was a trail blazer but a restless spirit.

We were to later fall out on his management of the College leading to his exit. Unfortunately this is what everyone will remember. Whatever our disagreements though I never stopped loving him as a brother. I was very happy that he bounced back (yet again , as anyone who knew Sikiru knows, ba kasawa, i.e. no surrender) in one of his abiding loves, journalism, representing first , The Independent Group of Newspapers as Katsina State Correspondent and later till he died THE VANGUARD. . I followed his progress on the net but we never met or talked much in the past two years. I regret this because now it is too late for us to make any amends. But we are thankful to Allah that he is survived by Three Children from two wives. May Allah rest his soul, forgive his sins and bless the children to continue the good works that he had started. I would have wished to hold him, shake his hands and tell him how sorry I am about what happened between us but it is too late now. If you have any member of your family or friend with whom you may have fallen out please make amends because there is no guarantee that you or them will be here later today or tomorrow.

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

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

Former president of the republic of Ghana, Jerry Rawlings, last week attacked the administration of his successor John Kufuor, during a lecture in London. He claimed the administration was destroying gains he made as president and accused the west of propping up a corrupt regime in the west African nation.
He was speaking at a Black History Month symposium organised by London Southbank University’s students’ union.

"Contemporary Africa is simply inconceivable without understanding the role and impact played by nationalism which gave rise to postcolonial African states as they are currently configured and the imperatives for self-determination and development that have driven African political cultures and imaginaries," writes Paul Zeleza, "Trying to unpack the historical dynamics of African nationalism—its causes, constructions, compositions, contexts, courses, and consequences—is immensely complicated but critical to mapping more productive futures for Africa..."

The First Pan African Cultural Congress organised by the African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia will be held on 13-15 November. The agenda for the meeting has beein published and includes sessions on Memory and Heritage; Language, Culture, and Education; Culture, Youth, and Gender; Cultural Rights, Freedoms, and Intellectual Property Rights; Cultural Development; Culture, Development, and Social Transformation; Cultural Policies in Africa; African Culture, the Media, and New Technologies.

I have been writing obituaries so frequently in the past year that I am beginning to feel there are no more adjectives left to appreciate the lives of fallen comrades. But somehow one has to find the words, both as part of grieving and also in defiance of death, to remind us that the thief of all thieves, while it may rob us of loved ones, will not be able to rob us of their memories too.

On Saturday, 26 October, 2006 they buried a very dear comrade and friend: Dr Wanjiru Kihoro. Unfortunately I could not be at the funeral but did attend two public testimonials (one an evening of political tributes and the other a funral service on Heroe’s day, both in Nairobi) as part of the farewell to Wanjiru. She was buried in the land of her ancestors in the picturesque Kikiyu District of Nyeri, Kenya. Wanjiru had been in a coma for over three years and nine months since she suffered severe injuries in a plane crash early 2003. A number of prominent politicians, including MPs in the newly triumphant NARC-Kenya government, died in the accident.

For all these years, friends and relatives, but especially her incredibly optimistic husband and comrade, Wanyiri Kihoro, and her father took turns by her side at the National Hospital in Nairobi. They all hoped against hope and prayed for her recovery. Any small sign of attentiveness no matter how dim was interpreted as a sign of her ‘coming back to us’. Friends and relatives were encouraged to visit her and talk to her normally with the hope that one voice, or a cacophony of recognizable voices, might jolt her sensory nerves back to life.

I was one of those fearful friends who dreaded going to see Wanjiru while she lay in bed. A few times, I had synchronized my contact with Wanyiri to coincide with the closing hours for hospital visits so that I could be disallowed but could wait for Wanyiri to get out so that we could sit and chat. One such night on my way from Kla we ended up sitting up till after 2.00am. Instead of me giving him words of encouragement it was Wanyiri who was cheering me up, insisting that I must go and see Wanjiru, talk to her , even syndicate our political arguments, jokes, saying that maybe it would help.

About eight weeks ago, a mutual friend and comrade, Micheline, who had worked with Wanjiru at the Africa Centre, Akina Mama Wa Africa and Abantu, who is now
Africa Director of UNFIFEM in New York, came to Nairobi. She dragged me and her husband, James Oparo, who was as squeamish as me, to go and see Wanjiru instead of meeting up with Wanyiri after the closing hours.

And I am now glad I went again. We spent quite a long time with her, Mzee and Wanyiri chatting, being nostalgic and generally doing the usual exchange of hot political gossip that political activists are known for. Of course the Wanjiru on the bed was not the Wanjiru we had known. She was much smaller but the machines monitoring her heart beat became very agitated and Wanyiri explained to us that it meant she could hear us and was trying to respond.

After looking after a terminally ill person for a long time carers tend to become both medical doctors and believers in miracles. Wanyiri’s father in law and Wanyiri were virtually part of the hospital establishment. It was an act of spousal and parental devotion that is rarely seen these days.

Any African who was in the UK from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s would have known or heard about Wanjiru. She was very active in the Kenyan and Pan African struggles of those years. She was a pioneer African feminist working both for the liberation of Africa and the emancipation of African Women. At a time when many progressive groups paper over the gender dimension of struggles by declaring the revolution the only target, she and her fellow pioneering sisters formed AMWA and were insistent that the liberation of the African Woman should not be delayed until victory came. She was also an early mobilizer and organizer for what we called disdainfully in those days, ‘bourgeois democracy’. She believed in and worked for a democratic Kenya at a time when many of us thought we could use AK47 to shoot our way to State Lodges and rain down Socialism from above! She built solidarity with all kinds of progressive groups be they African, Latin American, Asian or European, believing and putting into practice the unity of progressive humanity in the face of national oppression and imperialism.

She was a mobiliser, organizer, agitator but also very enterprising. While she was ideologically and intellectually on the Nkrumah and WEB du Bois side of Pan Africanism, she was organizationally in the Garveyite tradition of creating independent economic bases for political struggle. She would organize Whip rounds, Harambe, individual taxation, fee paying get-togethers, sales of publications, auctions, and others all to support the struggle.

Most of the famous and not so famous Kenyan politicians that I know today were influenced by Wanjiru. The Kihoro’s little flat in Union Street, Clapham North, became both a haven and transit lounge for Kenyan activists running away from the authoritarian killer government of Moi and KANU. Wanjiru would organize for them to meet other Kenyans and Africans, members of the British establishment (Conservative or Labor), human rights groups, Diaspora lobbies, and others. She was capable of remaining in solidarity with comrades who had fallen out and even those fighting against governments like Jerry’s Ghana or the NRM in Uganda, with whom she had close personal and political associates.

When her husband, Wanyiri, was arrested in Kenya and detained without trial in the infamous Nyayo detention centre (a place built in the basement of a huge shopping complex without people suspecting for a long time that human beings were being tortured under their feet as they do their shopping) Wanjiru did not become a grieving exile widow but used his incarceration and torture to focus international attention on the deplorable human rights situation in Kenya. At that time Kenya was darling of the West. Moi was regarded as ‘moderate African leader’, provided military bases for the West and throughout the Cold War was on the right side of Washington and London. In return, his masters rewarded him with aid and loans. Western tourists and INGOs trooped to Kenya.

So close was the relationship with the British that throughout the 1980s the Thatcher government and later the Major government never allowed any big peaceful demonstration in front of the Kenyan High Commission. They used to allow only 12 demonstrators at a time. We used to organize 12 hour non-stop demos and the Kenyan security would film the 12 of us for those 12 hours! So complete was the hold of Moi/KANUon Kenyans that Wanjiru and her comrades could not raise 12 Kenyans for the demonstrations. The Kenyan regulars were usually Wanjiru and her comrades in the UKENYA and UMOJA external groupings for the Kenyan pro-Democracy Movement including Mwakenya. They included Yusuf Hassan, Wangui Wa Goro, Shiraz Duraini and Adulatif Abdallah. Ngugi wa Thiongo, after his release from detention without trial, became the titular leader of these groups. People like Irungu Houghton provided the back-stopping secretariat. Of course there were numerous other Africans, especially Nigerians and Ghanaians, allied to the Africa Research and Information Bureau (ARIB) and the journal, Africa World Review (AWR) and also those in the Solidarity movement on Kenya the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya ably led by the Trinidadian writer and publisher, John La Rose of New Beacon Books who, also sadly passed away early this year.

As Wanjiru is laid to rest I salute her courage in staying the course of the struggle and living to see a Kenya free of Moi and KANU rule. But I regret that she did not live long enough to enjoy the benefits of democracy for which she fought and sacrificed so much - ultimately her life, and am sadder still that many of the political leaders in Kenya today have forgotten so soon the pains and groans of the masses that brought them to power, and are behaving in a way that may make KANU seem electable again.

Since she died, there have been so many eulogies and praises from all kinds of people (many well meaning and deserving) but there are many from people shedding crocodile tears - especially politicians who betrayed the struggle – as well as those she helped bring to power who forgot about her as she lay wasting on the hospital bed I am sure Wanjiru would not have been surprised about this since she did not engage in the struggle because she wanted to be acknowledged. She was not without her own contradictions and weaknesses like all of us mortals. And for anyone engaged in struggle there were bound to be mistakes and misjudgments because the only person who does not make mistakes is the person who does nothing.

Sleep well Wanjiru, You did your best and your best was more than enough in one lifetime. Adieux Mama Pambana!

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

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

At the United Kingdom Money Transmitters Association (UKMTA) conference at City Hall on 17 October 2006, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone gave enthusiastic support to calls for remittance tax relief. He promises to raise the issue personally with the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Economic Secretary Ed Balls.

We have managed to obtain a copy of the Pan African Parliament Draft Strategic Plan for 2006-2010 (dated Augus 2006).

The document outlines PAP’s strategic objectives as being:

1. Strengthening funding capacity of PAP
2. Upgrade and deepen the knowledge and skills of the Members of Parliament
3. Strengthen administration, support services and programme areas
4. Develop value-added information and research services
5. Develop and strengthen ICT infrastructure and use
6. Develop and strengthen research capacity

The political objectives are defined as:

1. Represent the voices of the peoples of Africa and advocate for the peoples’ popularization of the PAP
2. Promote, protect and defend the principles of human rights, gender and disability equality, democracy, peace and security in Africa
3. Enhance the oversight capacity of PAP
4. Promote the harmonization of continental, regional and national laws to foster continental integration and development
5. Encourage and support inter-institutional and other deliberative organs cooperation
6. Transform from an advisory and consultative body to a full legislative organ

The document outlines the action plans of the ten permanent committees, the bureau and the secretariat.

The full text is available at the link shown.

The African Union has announced the holding of the first pan Africn conference on culture to be held in Addis Ababa 13-17 November 2006. Announced rather late, and being launched allmost a year after it was originally planned, the purpose of the Pan African Cultural Congress is to review and assess the cultural sector in Africa, and consider challenges and opportunities in order to draw strategies and appropriate programmes.

A gathering of black intellectuals going by the name of the Native Club has stirred rigorous debate in South Africa. Some have likened the Native Club to the Broederbond; however, the Club defines its objectives as being to work towards contributing to the on-going process of decolonisation and eradicating apartheid and colonial mindsets. Suren Pillay reflects on the furore around the Native Club debate, reminding us of Wole Soyinka’s criticism of the Negritude Movement, that a tiger never proclaims its tigritude!

For a while now I have tried to put my finger on my precise unease with the Native Club. Of course the name of the club is bait enough, but I am prepared to grant the organisers a level of irony, and not get too riled about who is a native. I will also avoid the temptation to point out how being a native can conflict with the aspirations of scholarly life to a universal sensibility. And I have to assume that my invitation to join was lost in the post. The main source of my worry with the Native Club however, is this: as intellectuals they don’t seek to speak truth to power, as much as seek to be power itself.

Defenders of the Native Club all raise the very crucial point that there is a startling and severe lack of black intellectuals in academia.. True, and as the driving concern for those who have formed the Native Club, they must be lauded for making this issue more of a public scandal. However, most universities, if not all institutions in South Africa, will at least publicly agree with you. It is about representation, and of course it is something that correctly challenges post apartheid South African life as we try to correct the historical injustices of apartheid. We must however ask ourselves the more demanding question of whether the wrong of apartheid is simply reducible to a right of representation?

The motivation for the Native Club is in my view correct, but insufficient. We have to move the debate beyond representation - it is not an end in itself - and confront the existential question of what it means to be an intellectual in post-apartheid South Africa. Defenders of the Native Club tend to emphasise white control, white institutions, white viewpoints, and ‘white prevailing discourses’, which recalls in my memory the debates we had in the1980’s about Bantu education during the school boycotts. We shouted Phantsi Bantu education, but we did not mean by this that we wanted the education that white South Africans were getting. We would not be defined by whiteness, both as a problem and as a solution. Yes, we may have envied the physical infrastructure of those well-resourced schools, but we realized that white South Africans were getting an equally defective education, and that we would have the opportunity to create something radically improved in a post-apartheid South Africa.

For many, that new education would entail thinking critically, and independence of action and thought based on the best values of the humanities. Our colleagues in the Native Club seem so agitated by the problem of white control that they have fixated on a change of demographics, but have not gone further to unpack what exactly is problematic with the ‘white viewpoint’, and consequently feel no need to make a case for what would be better about a ‘black viewpoint’, if either actually are possible. Is this, one wonders, because the views of the leading black intellectuals in the Native Club, so precariously close to those of the ruling party, may not be that different in substance to the white viewpoint they seek to dislodge? After all, we have quickly learnt that a black capitalist is no less immune to the imperatives of profit than her white counterpart. And so too for the black university administrator.

I hesitate to resurrect Frantz Fanon because he really has been abused of late. However, many seem to have not read Fanon too finely when it comes to Blackness and Whiteness. Recall that for Fanon neither black nor white was a ‘fact’; both were dependent on each other for their existence. It is therefore possible to see both identities implode so as to no longer make them socially, politically and economically discernable.

Imagining a South Africa without apartheid was a big, bold question mark that stood glistening on the other side of the bleakness and bloodshed that was the struggle against apartheid. Being beyond apartheid would mean being able to find alternatives to the ways things were, and if one wants to get completely nostalgic about it, forge a better kind of society. That’s what made it compelling, and makes it so disheartening sometimes these days. The question marks are quickly being replaced with the exclamations mark of power, and those that come bearing the exclamation marks like a cross are often familiar faces. However, the vocation of the intellectual is to consistently keep the question marks of human life open, never accepting the easy answers and always vigilant to the status quo. That said, being critical doesn’t mean you only say bad things, because criticism can be about positive appraisal too, but to be critical does mean never tempering disagreement for the cosiness of solidarity, lest we become ideologues - just witness Ronald Suresh Roberts’ latest turn.

If we accept what Cornel West preaches, that being an intellectual is about speaking truth to power, then surely it would mean having a permanently sceptical relationship to the powerful regardless of colour, and not simply being critical because you actually aspire to be the powerful. This, unfortunately, seems to be what the Native Club is about. To have a wider purchase on other intellectuals, the Native Club will have to do more than articulate concerns about representation. It will have to pose thought provoking intellectual questions, do some solidly rigorous scholarly work, and fire the imaginations of a new generation of young minds. Remember the venerable Wole Soyinka’s critique of Negritude: a tiger never proclaims its tigritude!

• Suren Pillay is a senior lecturer in the Dept. of Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Have you ever wondered if there is anything you can do to contribute to solving global poverty? Did you sometimes ever get that sinking feeling that you are just one person who is too insignificant in the face of the forces of global domination and systematic oppression to make any difference? How many times has helplessness at the things happening around you or in the wider world forced you to conclude that you cannot beat the system, and that, at best, your only choice is to either join them or drop out?

If you have answered yes to one or more of these questions do not be embarrassed at all. You are one among billions of us (actually 6.5 billion) who inhabit this earth. Most of us feel helpless, often disapproving of many things happening around us and in the world but feeling we lack any power to change them. There is frustration that no matter what we think or do, the world will always remain skewed against the poor and powerless, the little men and women, who constitute the majority. Whether it is the environment, the economy, education or health, many have to come to accept that the rich classes amongst us, and the richer nations of the world will always squeeze the poor and get their way all the time.

We all know that Mahatma Gandhi’s famous words: ‘there is enough in the world to satisfy our needs but not enough to satisfy our greed’ uttered so many decades ago are as true today as ever. The vast wealth from improved technology, science and genetic engineering in the last five decades is more than enough for all of us. However, the structures of power within and between nations continue to reward those at the very top, while penalizing the majority poor at the bottom of the pile.

Poor people in poorer countries of the world cry out against their rich who also groan at the richer countries. Within richer countries the poor feel no better. Yet the system that is producing this fabulous wealth in one pole, and desperate poverty in another is created by human beings. Therefore it can only be changed through their individual and collective efforts, sometimes cooperatively, but often in confrontations and through contradictions.

The United Nations ushered in the third millennium (and its 55th anniversary) at the Millennium Summit in 2000 with a declaration that recognized that the world could be made better and that we all deserved to treat each other and our shared environment better. This was encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was an attempt to create a new social contract between the peoples and governments of the world. It committed to eight goals ranging from ending hunger through universal access to basic education, women empowerment, health, and environment to reforming the unequal global trade, increasing quality aid and cancelling debt of poor countries.

Since the MDGs became the ‘new’ language of development discourse, there continues a debate as to whether they are achievable or not.

The UN itself realized that neither the declaration alone nor the official adoption of the MDGs will guarantee their fulfilment both in the north and the south. That is why the UN Millennium Campaign was established to work with citizens to hold their governments accountable for the fulfillment of the MDGs. The campaign works with and through national coalitions in various countries allied to the Global Call Against Poverty (GCAP) but also with faith based groups, local councils, national, sub regional and regional legislatures, youth, students, women and trade unions, to ensure political accountability of all leaders to their peoples at various levels. The MDGs can only be achieved at the local and community level. That is where their impact will be directly felt.

Over the recent years of neo-liberal economic hegemony, economic policies have become even more undemocratic. The policies are dominated by technicians, all kinds of latter day voodoo experts from the Bretton Woods institutions, to the total exclusion of citizens who are the producers of their national and global wealth. The majority of citizens become victims of these policies. The MDGs have tremendous potential for opening up democratic spaces for political accountability of leaders. Through MDGs it is possible to begin to reverse this arrogant trend of making economic issues the sole preserve of economic egg-heads, and judge economic policies not just in terms of macroeconomic growth but development, how they impact on the general welfare of the majority of the peoples of the world who are poor.

As part of efforts to popularize the MDGs and focus global attention on poverty, the UN Millennium Campaign in partnership with GCAP allies and others including OXFAM, Action Aid International, NOVIB, and Micah Challenge, has been participating in a one month campaign of activities. This began on the 16th of September and will culminate in the International Day for Poverty Eradication on Tuesday 17 October.

If you have not been involved it is not too late. You could still join the activities this weekend. On Sunday, October 15 and Monday, October 16 there is a ‘Stand Up Against Poverty Challenge’ in which anybody who cares can be a full participant.

Can you imagine a world in which the MDGs are a political priority for all our governments and other governments in the world? A world without poverty where every child is guaranteed education, where many women do not die in labour and people living with HIV/Aids have universal access to free treatment based on need not cash. A world where malaria, TB and other preventable diseases no longer kill us in the vast numbers they currently do. A world in which the environment is fully protected and the vast creativity of human mind and scientific discovery will be used for sustainable development that guarantees that this earth that we are loaning from the future generation is handed on safely.

There is a small chance to put your imagination into action. The goals sound like dreams but even the creation of this world must have begun with a dream. It needs not remain so. It is a world that we can bring about by first making people aware of the MDGs and working with them to demand their fulfilment from their leaders. Holding leaders to their promises is all that it takes. If the richer countries deliver on goal 8 the poorer countries can also deliver on goals 1-7. It is a complementary process which must run concurrently from goal 1 to 8. You can contribute to making it happen wherever you maybe. Together we can all make the difference between fulfilment and indifference.

This weekend you can add your voice to that of millions of other citizens of the world by joining the campaign against hunger amidst plenty: ‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ and stand up for the MDG’s. It will take not more than five minutes.‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ is an innovative Challenge in which we are attempting to set an official Guinness world record for the highest number of people ever to ‘Stand Up Against Poverty’ and stand up for the MDG’s.

We have just 24 hours to set this record. Be one in a Million!

Check for details of campaigns near you this Sunday 15 October (from 10.00 am GMT)to (10.00 am GMT) Monday 16 October and also how you can organize your own stand up moment and register it to be counted: and [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

I have maintained an unusual silence over the past few weeks about the exposures and counter exposures between the President of Nigeria, retired General Olusegun Obasanjo and his estranged Deputy, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku. My initial reaction was dismissive because it is a case of the kettle calling the pot black. However, while I was neither fazed nor dazed by the gutter level to which their internecine warfare had descended, I must confess that I did not know that they could sink even lower and do so openly.

But like many concerned Nigerians I had recoiled into an embarrassed indifference, consequently feigning lack of interest and convincing myself that I could not care less. Dog eats dog or vulture ogling vulture - why should I care? But that was just a defensive front. What the President and Vice President of any country do affects the citizens. Government machinery is virtually paralyzed by the war between the two who seem locked in a loveless cohabitation from which they are unable to disengage.

Neither of them is catholic therefore divorce should have been easier! But Atiku has refused to jump and Obasanjo's people have been inept at pushing him. So the cohabitation falters on.

The tragic death of many Senior Army Officers in yet another air crash a few weeks ago forced a temporary truce between the two warring factions in Aso Rock, but they have now resumed public hostilities. One gets a feeling that this is some kind of Nigerian bastardized form of truth without justice. We have heard, and will hear more gory details of officials looting, squandering, comprador activities, and betrayal of public trust, but may not see the perpetrators punished or even showing any remorse.

The general public discussions seem to suggest that many people believe that the revelations are prompted not by any wish for corruption to be rooted out but by a political vendetta against political opponents. While this may be true and has a bearing on how the public perceives the official war against corruption, it smacks of public complacency.

All looters may not be caught but it is baffling to suggest that those exposed, who can be proven guilty should not be tried. Even if Obasanjo is trying only his real and imagined enemies I have no problem with their trial if they actually are guilty. However, when another administration comes to power, Obasanjo and his cronies can and should be tried too.

It is very strange that the supporters of his Deputy are not actively pleading the innocence of their Godfather but rather saying he is not alone and that his boss, the President, is also guilty. It is an unprincipled defence based on a warped logic suggesting that unless all thieves are caught, the few should not be tried. This cannot be a plea for discharge, though it could be a plea bargain in some cases if the accused fully cooperates with the court.
We need to separate the hypocrisy of those prosecuting and pointing fingers at corrupt politicians from the possible guilt of those being targeted.

If all Obasanjo’s enemies happen to be thieves they should pay for their crimes. It does not excuse Obasanjo, but since he may not be tried while he is still in power his day in court may be postponed. If we look at Latin America (in the 70s) the Generals initially got away with impunity but more than twenty years later some of them faced justice.

The other argument in support of Atiku is that he is supposed to be a very popular politician. This similar argument is used in favour of Jacob Zuma, who has populist appeal in South Africa. But should popularity be a reason for the law not to take its course? Readers may ask how these questions relate to my article (which a few critics believe to be too ‘understanding’ or even ‘adulatory’) on Winnie Mandela last week? My support of Winnie was not an endorsement of the acts for which she was convicted but rather pointing out the disproportionate attention paid to her while others were left to go scot-free. If she had not been Winnie Mandela it is doubtful she would have been treated this way. However because she is Winnie it is reasonable to expect higher standards from her. Understanding how things went ‘horribly wrong’ is not the same as conferring impunity on her. One could still admire her, not because, but despite these convictions.

Atiku is in no way a Winnie Mandela but closer to a Zuma. But if he is as popular as his supporters claim why should his conviction make a difference? Zuma has remained a serious challenger to the South African presidency in spite all kinds of acrimonious litigations and despite being fired from his post. He has survived rape charges and only had his corruption case struck off the court roll.

Atiku’s supporters are not so sure about the legal process in Nigeria. They are even more uncertain about their own party. This says a lot about the rule of law and democracy in the country. They fear that the timing of his corruption trials may prevent him from contesting for nomination for the presidency and contesting the election itself next year.

Obasanjo can try Atiku, but Atiku cannot put Obasanjo on trial, at least not in any court other than that of public opinion. Obasanjo’s crude tactics against his deputy have certainly made Atiku more popular and created a false hero for democracy to some people. His supporters are milking the goodwill claiming that his travails happened because he was opposed to Obasanjo’s third term. So great is the public disenchantment with Obasanjo’s lacklustre, arrogant government that not many people are asking what his opponents really stand for.

Obasanjo may get his pound of flesh by denying Atiku the chance to run but as he himself knows too painfully well: no condition is permanent. He has travelled full circle from presidency to prison to presidency. And he could restart the journey all over again in the near future.

The revelations have also exposed the Nigerian ruling elite as not only rotten to the core, but rotten from the core. For Obasanjo and his apologists his holier-than-thou, I- know-best messianic politics have been exposed for what they are: empty. In days gone by these revelations would have triggered a coup. But coups are out of fashion not only because of the fundamental shift in international opinion but also because internal power dynamics (unlike those recently seen in Thailand) have changed.

In any case the generals control the levers of the economy and political machineries (including even important sections of the traditional aristocracies) undisguised across Nigeria. They are able to use their looted monies to buy criminal infrastructures and therefore do not need the traditional military coup anymore. They have elected to resolve their secondary contradictions through the current democracy without democrats, a civilian regime, only in name with the generals imposing their will on the society. Welcome to the Latin Americanisation of Nigerian politics. All power to the generals!

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

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

Set against the backdrop of the UN High-Level meeting on International Migration and Development in September 2006 and in commemoration of the October celebrations of “Black History Month” in the UK, leaders of African Diaspora organisations in the UK, wider Europe and the US will gather in London at the first ever African Diaspora Leadership Forum. The forum will culminate in an evening reception launching the ‘African Monitor’ - an African-owned civil society mechanism for monitoring and advocacy in relation to G8 commitments to Africa.

On September 26, a gorgeous African woman, about whom no one is indifferent, turned 70. She has lived more lives than the proverbial Cat of nine lives. But she still manages to retain her poise, grace and popular appeal through what we can all agree is more than a fair share of personal and political trials and tribulations. She was born Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela in the Village of Bizana, Pondoland, South Africa,in 1936. She became more famously known world wide as Winnie Mandela after marrying (in 1960) a divorced upwardly mobile Black Lawyer, Nelson Mandela, who later became world famous for his political activities and incarceration. It was not a ‘normal’ marriage because politics interfered with any attempt by the couple to settle down. By 1962 the apartheid state had sentenced Mandela along with his comrades to either life or long term imprisonments. Mandela remained in prison for the next 28 years becoming the symbol of the yearnings of the oppressed Black people for freedom.

He was not to see the outside of the prison walls till 1990. Two years after his release their unusual marriage ended in separation in 1992 and divorce by 1996.

Many of us grew up on Hugh Masekela’s famous tune “Bring back Nelson Mandela, bring him back home to Soweto, I want to see him walking hand in hand with Winnie Mandela……no more war”. It was never to be for long. We constructed a romantic canvass on the lives of these two people regardless of the empirical fact that they have lived apart for such a long time. At a human level it is daunting enough to catch up on almost four decades of separation let a lone such extraordinary lives lived in very public glare. Public and private disolves when it came to Winnie and Nelson.

There were those who had somehow expected that after those defiant fists that walked hand in hand with Mandela out of the Prison gates in 1990, Winnie was going to step aside, even go back to the kitchen and be ‘the good wife’. In the very public disagreements that visited their separation and divorce, Bishop Tutu famously chided her for not living up to this expectation suggesting in an unfortunate pre feminist choice of words that Mandela needed someone to bring his slippers.

It was a relationship in which everyone had an opinion and even more than a decade after the divorce opinions are still divided. Some people think it is an act of betrayal to admire Mandela and like Winnie and vice versa. But the issue cannot be that clear cut. Many struggle with admiring both and the inevitable contradictory emotions. The ambiguities are made more complicated by Mandela marrying, Graca Machel, the widow of another iconic man, Samora Machel.

Both Winnie and Graca share the double burden of being prominent in their own right but also for the men they married. It is a case of the chicken and the egg. There is an endless debate about whether these women would have been as prominent as they are if they had not married these great men. It is an argument from a reactionary ideology of patriarchy that does not value women in their own right but see them only in the shadows of men whether their fathers, uncles, brothers, husbands (or lovers) or even sons! But looking at the lives of both women they would have been prominent politically. Graca married Samora after his first wife Josina died and she was already active in the struggle for the liberation of Mozambique through FRELIMO. They married as comrades who met in the struggle.

The fact that most women married to, or in a relationship with famous men do not end up being famous should caution those who believe that Women can only be something under a man’s umbrella. Ironically those who argue this way do not argue the opposite as true. Why are Men married to famous women not famous by virtue of their sleeping arrangement too?

In the case of Winnie I doubt if anyone below the age of 50 years today would have known Nelson Mandela but for Winnie. She is the Mandela that kept Nelson in our consciousness. She did marry him young but she grew up politically mostly outside of his tentacles. By the time he came out of prison she was a political figure with a huge following in her own right. Men in general, even the greatest amongst us, consciously or unconsciously, find it difficult to adjust to famous partners. Things were not helped by the brutal battles for power within the liberation movements and the maneuvers around the transition. It was not just personal distance of many years that had to be faced but also salient political differences between a more reconciliatory Mandela and the more radical Mandela whose whole life had been shaped by confrontation with the apartheid state and also factional struggles within the movement and control of township militias.

The crux of the matter is that Winnie is generally judged by many people as a woman, wife and mother, not as a politician. How many men we greatly respect and admire and at the risk of heresy, Madiba himself, will still be standing if we apply the same gendered judgments? If the situation had been reversed and Winnie was inside and Mandela was outside would anyone had been surprised that he took interest in other Women? There is no doubt Winnie made many mistakes and made personal and political choices that are questionable. As she admitted at the prompting of Bishop Tutu in the famous encounter at the TRC: ‘Things went horribly wrong’. But who among the other liberation leaders has not made any mistake? She has been charged with everything imaginable both by the apartheid state and sadly even under the ANC government. The persecution complex is futher sttrenghtened by the ease with which previous pillars of apartheid slipped into post apartheid respectability without remorse, all in the name of National reconciliation! Without excusing Winnie’s serial lapse of judgment, it is difficult for many of her admirers including this writer not to conclude that she is being persecuted. But somehow she emerges triumphant, head unbowed. Even at 70 Winnie is neither down nor out. Perhaps her parents saw the future when they named her, Nomzano, which means ‘Trial’ in the Xhosa language. Happy birthday Mama Afrika!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

On October 7th, 2006, a conference will convene at the African Caribbean Centre in London to build an international organisation to coordinate efforts to unify and liberate Africa and place it’s vast resources into the hands of African workers and poor peasants.

On October 7th, 2006, a conference will convene at the African Caribbean Centre in London to build an international organisation to coordinate efforts to unify and liberate Africa and place it’s vast resources into the hands of African workers and poor peasants.