It was good to read the article on the visit of Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem to the Pan African Parliament (PAP). It is good that I have finally found space to air my views on the PAP. Firstly, I concur with the sentiments that there is a need to publicize the existence of the PAP as the majority in our various countries are not even aware that there is the existence of such an institution in Africa. Publicizing the PAP will certainly enhance the desires of oneness and strengthening the mindsets of all of us towards a unified Africa. This will build us more than ever and the potential of this PAP towards unifying Africa is certainly understated.

Secondly, I would like to comment on the process of representation on the PAP. Why can’t it be mandatory that we have elected leaders to represent us from each country? The election process should happen at the same time from each country. The criteria for being elected should be that each candidate should have served a full term in their own countries. The elections should be given full attention with a mandate required from all districts in every country. If I feel that I have the power to elect a representative from my country to represent me at Continental level, I will be sure to have an interest in what that MP is going to say or contribute in the PAP.

Therefore I would like to call upon all Africans to support my call for all Nations to conduct elections for their Pan African Parliament candidates. These elections need not be expensive as we could use our existing infrastructure at district level and get civil society and civic bodies to organise and mobilize for the administration of such an election. It is by carrying out such activities that the local people will feel the importance of the PAP.

Thirdly, should the above-mentioned proposal be accepted by all, it will give room for the members to have full allegiance to the PAP and not consider it as just another activity through which to get an extra allowance.

This is how we as a continent will be able to build our continental leadership. This is a call for our leaders to start investing seriously in the PAP.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem visits a Pan African Parliament session in South Africa and reports back on the progress of one of the African Union’s most important institutions. After two years of existence, the PAP is making progress, although teething problems remain.

The Pan African Parliament (PAP) has been sitting for its Fifth Ordinary Session in Midrand, South Africa. On its agenda are: the rationalization of Economic Communities (RECs) in Africa; Peace and Security in Africa focusing on the Great Lakes region, Darfur, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and the DRC; PAP and civil society linkages in enhancing effective implementation of NEPAD/APRM; the PAP audit and strategic plan.

I have taken the trouble to identify the agenda partly to let all Doubting Thomas’s know that the PAP is not just an assembly of eminent MPs from across Africa who meet occasionally as a kind of Pan African Parliamentary lobby group. It is also to show critics and cynics that despite its statutory 'advisory' role, according to the Constitutive Act of the AU, the parliament is finding its feet and developing a pro-active programme of action to make itself relevant to the yearnings of African people to make the dream of unity a reality.

The PAP is one of the most important institutions in the AU that distinguishes it from the old Organisation of African Unity. The latter was statutorily and in practice a leaders' forum, whereas the former seeks to be a pro people and people - driven organization, hence the inclusion of democratic and potentially democratizing institutions like the Parliament, ECOSOC, African Court of Human Rights, etc.

It has not been easy for the parliament to take off properly since it was inaugurated two years ago. There was a lot of politics about where it was going to be based. Libya was one of the countries that offered to host it. It has the resources to do so but many felt that while they may have a huge building there may not have been much of a parliament because of the maverick nature of the Libyan political system. In the end South Africa won and it was a very good decision because despite one's reservations about the Pan Africanisation of Apartheid power relations, the country is one of the most vibrant democracies on the continent. It also has resources to support the infrastructure of a parliament. The South African parliament already uses 11 national languages, therefore providing for a PAP that officially uses 6 working languages was not a problem at the level of facilities. South Africa has fulfilled its obligations about providing a permanent home to the PAP, with a custom-built parliament equipped with the latest techno facilities including individual offices for all the 200 parliamentarians and 24-hour Internet access. Many of the parliamentarians do not even have these facilities in their national parliaments.

However the building and technical support is not what makes a parliament. It is the quality of what they do inside their sessions and how much they impact on the lives of ordinary Africans that will give or deny legitimacy to the parliament.

I had the honor of visiting (along with a number of civil society activists) the PAP in session last week. We found a generally enthusiastic, warm and people-friendly PAP. From the speaker to the clerks to the parliamentarians, they did not mind that we had not made any formal appointments but had just dropped by and they were willing to engage and entertain our queries.

They all wished that more Africans would take and interest in and interact with the PAP. Maybe two years is too short for the parliament to be visible to all Africans, but we need to take more interest in it. The South African Broadcasting Corporation is trying its best to popularize the work of the parliament by having daily broadcasts of interviews, features and discussions on the PAP while it is in session. The PAP also needs the support of media in all the African countries for people to know that it exists - and exists for them.

The challenges that the PAP faces derives from the structure and powers conferred on it. One, it is merely advisory therefore its debates and proceedings are not binding on countries. Two, it is not directly elected thereby denying it Pan African legitimacy. It is either elected or appointed from national parliaments which makes it like a kind of continental subcommittee of parliaments. Three, by statute it is only required to meet twice annually, with each session lasting not more than 30 days.

In reality most sessions have been for two weeks because of limited resources. The parliamentarians do not get any extra allowance apart from per diem and transport for the duration of their stay, which is covered by their national governments. This has meant in practice governments limiting themselves to the statutory meetings, with little money for any activities in between the two sessions. It has 10 subcommittees, which must also meet during these ‘sessions’. Consequently the PAP is not able to perform its monitoring, oversight and advocacy functions effectively. Four, there is also a high turn over in membership due to different electoral timetables in the 53 countries. This means that at every session more members are being sworn in while experienced members are being lost. A departing member called PAP the most prominent transit lounge in Africa! For instance, three of the five members from Uganda will not be returning for the next session because they lost their seats in the last parliamentary elections. One way of stopping this is to have PAP elections at the same time in all the countries and separate it from national elections and parliament. We cannot have an effective PAP without offering Pan African citizenship and full participation to all Africans wherever they may be.

Finally, our leaders have to put their money where their mouth is by making available the resources that PAP needs to function. We cannot have PAP running like another donor-driven NGO or aid-addicted state bureaucracy.

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

* Please send comments to

Young African girls are being brought into Britain and "deliberately impregnated" so they become eligible for council flats, MPs have been told. Debbie Aruyo of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (Afruca) said later some of the children were aged 12 to 16.

Awaaz researches, records and disseminates information on the South Asian community in East Africa, and in Kenya in particular, and acts as a catalyst to record the history, and establish linkages with the Indian subcontinent and the South Asian Diaspora in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Awaaz responds to a need for a publication that fosters serious debates within the Kenyan South Asian community and is meant for a general audience.

The website Black Presence in Britain has been included in the newly revised, expanded 2nd edition of the 'Young Person's Guide to The Internet'. The reference book is for young people, from primary to post-university education, their teachers, schools and parents and contains 1,600 thoroughly researched, up-to-date websites covering education and leisure.

“How nice it would be if whites were to say ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘thank you’ to the vast majority of people in this country who have been so forgiving about the past.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu. April 27 is Freedom Day in South Africa. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem tackles the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the country’s racist past.

Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, is a global figure recognised as a symbol of peace and racial tolerance, probably only taking second place Nelson Mandela, Madiba. Post-Apartheid Tutu, in his wonderful humour and sober combination of theological pacifism with advocacy for social justice and political change, continues to be a voice for the underprivileged not only in his home country but also across the world. He is one of the few individuals around the world without even the political power of a ward councilor, but who wield enormous influence through the moral leadership they offer built on personal integrity and consistency in their commitment to social justice. Tutu has continued to judiciously use that power to speak truth to power inside and outside of South Africa.

He will be remembered for his role as the Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. The Commission was a bold move by the post-apartheid democratic government to help the millions of individual and group victims and perpetrators of the apartheid state and its crimes to come to terms with the past through full disclosure, demonstration of remorse, willingness to atone through personal forgiveness and in some cases administrative and judicial justice and other compensation.

It was a controversial step for a nation whose past atrocities and the consequences were only too painfully glaring, practically in every aspect of life. There were many people who felt then that the main liberation movement, the African National Congress, had already given away too much to the old racist power bloc and that the TRC absolved it further. Not a few people felt that the requirement of remorse was too subjective to be meaningful. Who is to say merely saying sorry meant that the person saying it meant it?

The procedures of the TRC transfixed many across the world with details of the gross violation of people's rights that competed with well-documented Nazi atrocities.

As the TRC continued its proceedings, one could not escape the conclusion that apartheid atrocities orchestrated by the state and its functionaries in a deliberate way for several decades were being put on the same basis as excesses (though condemnable and should not be condoned) by the various anti apartheid organisations especially the armed wings of Umkonto We Sizwe , Azanian Peoples Liberation Army and others. The trial of leading icons of the struggle like Winnie Mandela received mixed reactions. This was not because people supported the crimes for which she was tried but suspected that a woman so badly treated by the apartheid state was also being judicially persecuted by a government she helped bring about because of her controversial relationship with it. The disclosures of human rights violations of the liberation movements somehow made some of the racists feel a kind of dubious vindication in that the Blacks were as bad as them.

Over the months, the TRC became not so much a centre for engineering a new social contract between South Africans in this wonderful and romantically brand new RAINBOW nation (coined by Tutu and seized upon by everyone caught up in the optimism of the times, even though the rainbow has every colour in it except Black!).

Perhaps that symbol of a rainbow nation symbolically represented the balance of power in a post apartheid South Africa where Blacks formed government but essentially are still not in power in many ways. Real economic, social and political power still resides among whites. It is not the classic neo-colonial state as we know in the rest of Africa but rather a power structure that is still very much racialised with a small new Black elite happily acting as overseers. In the face of Tutu's Commission many former leaders of the apartheid state including former President P.W. Botha were defiant and saw no reason to apologise for their crimes. People like the Afrikaner Resistance leader, Eugene TerreBlanche and his types became a symbol of the worst of the racists, determined to resist any change.

No doubt there were many white people who genuinely supported the struggle and suffered many indignities including torture and death, but the majority of apartheid's victims remain black South Africans. Also, whether a white person supported or did not support the apartheid state, they were beneficiaries of its misrule. Does that mean that all whites should feel guilty forever for the crimes of apartheid? It cannot mean that, but they should also not rob Blacks of their painful memories by attacking anybody who suggests that the past should be remembered and atoned for as a racist or someone not interested in 'moving on'.

The pacifist Tutu himself was at the receiving end of both the liberal and conservative backlash last week for saying in an interview during a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the TRC and organised by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation: “How nice it would be if whites were to say 'I'm sorry' and 'thank you' to the vast majority of people in this country who have been so forgiving about the past.” The reactions of many white south Africans including bleeding heart liberals to this statement that I have been following on the pages of the newspapers just goes to show how the past continues to weigh heavily on the present and has implications for the future. Every time historical debt is mentioned Whites tend to feel defensive and reel out their numerous contributions to the struggle. But the truth of racialised economic power in South Africa is that Whites as a group continue to be on top during and after apartheid. The fact that it is only Tutu's critique of their attitude that gets all the attention and not his frequent critique of the government for leaving behind the poor of South Africa (who are mostly Black) is itself proof if any is still needed of who is the privileged group in the new South Africa.

The voice of people like Tutu needs to be heard and acted upon. A philosopher, not frequently quoted these days, once formulated that while “...life must be lived forward it must be understood backwards”. That understanding is still very much in dispute among South Africans, even though they have made a lot of progress that many did not think possible only 15 years ago.

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

* Please send comments to

AfroNeth is a platform for African Diaspora Organizations in the Netherlands; on this platform they can enhance their participation in the Dutch society and in Africa, as well as build strong partnerships with pro-Africa development agencies.

German site available for articles on Africa and the African diaspora in German-speaking Europe. Table of contents, some full text articles & interviews. Africa events in Europe.

Peace Magazine offers a bleak assessment of the role the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has played in the Caribbean country. Under pressure from the US, France and Canada to give "uncritical assistance" to the interim government and the Haitian police, MINUSTAH has failed to uphold "either the letter or the spirit" of its mandate.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem tackles the public split between Nigerian vice-president Alhaji Abubakar Atiku and president Olushegun Obasanjo. The conflict is deadlocked: Atiku can’t quit for fear of what his president will do to him, while Obasanjo can’t fire him because his deputy has just enough power to hang on to office.

In many countries, a vice president who has shown so much public outrage and disagreement with his president and has been so officially ignored and embarrassed by his boss as the vice president of Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, would have resigned as a matter of honour. Similarly, a president, who finds himself in such confrontation and so personally and politically distrusts his deputy, would have had him sacked.

The fact that neither has been done despite the open hostility between Atiku and President Olushegun Obasanjo should tell us something very sad about the politics and power dynamics of Africa's largest country: No principles and no scruples, just personal ambitions even at the expense of the people of the country! This lack of principles is not uniquely Nigerian but it does not make it right.

Atiku cannot resign because the second he is no longer vice president he would have lost all immunity (which often operates as impunity among our elected officials). He must be scared that his embittered boss may put him in handcuffs, send him off to Kiri Kiri (Nigeria's maximum prison) on a thousand and one charges which can easily be dusted up from the files. The obvious one, which has been used to silence or 'persuade' some of his supporters to reconsider their opposition to the President, has been trials for corruption through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Atiku has been preparing to be President for a long time and will do anything to achieve his ambition, but going to prison is one of the few prices he is obviously not prepared to pay. Hence he has to remain in office untill the last possible second, when Obasanjo will not be able to do anything to him officially.

The President, on his part, has not been able to sack him because he lacks the political support of the National Parliament to carry it through. Instead, he has chosen to humiliate, subvert, corner, marginalise, undermine and also go after anyone suspected to be loyal to him within the ruling party, the political and business establishment, in the hope that Atiku 'will see sense', mend his ways or just quit.

It is an admission that the President does not control all the ace cards despite the mantra of his supporters reminding Nigerians that General Chief Matthew Olushegun Okikiola Obasanjo is the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Commander of Police, Commander of Prisons and Commander of Customs, Head of Traffic Police, Chief of Federal Road Safety Corp, etc, etc!

But what is the dispute between Obasanjo and Atiku? A very simple matter really. Atiku wants to succeed Obasanjo as President, just like Gordon Brown (who is not even Deputy Prime Minister but the Finance Secretary) has been wanting and waiting to succeed Tony Blair as British Prime Minister. It is not that Blair is very happy about it, but there is almost nothing he can do about it because the Labour Party will decide eventually.

But in the case of Atiku, his and Obasanjo's party, the People's Democratic Party (also more appropriately known as 'People Deceiving People') is not a party but a cabal of political contractors beholden to whoever is in control of the contracts. Despite not having a political, military, or even an ethnic base, in 1999, after Sani Abacha's death, Obasanjo, still recovering from his jail experience, was asked by other generals if he would consider going back to Aso Rock. Once ensconced in power, Obasanjo has become the tail that wags the dog, proving once again that a donkey can rule and twist Nigeria to his whims and caprices as long as it is occupying Aso Rock!

Ibrahim Babangida, Atiku and others who facilitated Obasanjo's ascent thought wrongly that he had no choice but to stick to them after coming to power. In 2003 they flexed their muscle again but their personal and class greed forced them to reach another deal with Obasanjo. Soon after the massive rigging in which Atiku was a major facilitator, Obasanjo went against them again and has remained so since then. He became president twice in spite of the wishes of Nigerians. Therefore, he cannot care less if the whole country is now opposed to his changing the constitution to facilitate what in Uganda many opposition people call a 'Sad Term'.

Does this make Atiku the martyr for democracy that his propagandists claim? Definitely not. He has not articulated any policy difference from Obasanjo's IMF/World Bank-know best neo-liberalism. Between him and Babangida, the other front-running contender, the choice is one of sunset or darkness. Obasanjo's people are using this to blackmail Nigerians that there are no alternatives. They are being half clever because the reason there are no other alternatives is because the incumbent has placed 'No vacancy' on the Aso Rock gate. The real choice is not between Obasanjo and these people but really between Nigerians and the military/civilian plutocrats!

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

* Please send comments to

Twilight and Reason online magazine provides a mix of news, information, and perspectives on all subjects related to the relationship of African American people to the colleges and universities that enroll Black students and employ Black faculty, staff, and administrators. Twilight and Reason provides news and commentary on current events and trends in Black higher education, historical research, and updates on African American History of Higher Education Project (AAHHEP) collections, exhibits, and programming.

The African Diaspora Investment Forum (DiaForum 2006) in Brussels, June 29-30, 2006, aims at bringing together Africans in the diaspora with other stakeholders in view of enabling investment and skills transfer to the continent.

International students are worth around £5 billion a year to the UK economy but in recent years competition for attracting overseas students has been fierce and Britain is keen not to lose out to countries like the US and Australia which have always been popular destinations. Education Minister Bill Rammell told Black Britain that they are "looking at Africa as a whole to try and establish partnerships and to get it driven at a local level so that they can tap into wider funding from the aid agencies."

Zimbabweans living in the diaspora have reacted angrily to statements by President Robert Mugabe. "They are letting the country down by going to England where they are looked down on and given dirty menial jobs, they scratch the backs of old people in homes in England," he said.

The Forum of Zimbabweans in the diaspora says it has begun organising its members to help solve some of the humanitarian problems in Zimbabwe. At least 80% of Zimbabweans live below the poverty line. The forum celebrated the country's 26th independence anniversary by holding a meeting in Johannesburg yesterday (April 18).

"Looking Both Ways refers to the artists’ practice of looking at the psychic terrain between Africa and the West, a terrain of shifting physical contexts, emotional geographies, and aesthetic ambitions and expressions," said Laurie Ann Farrell, curator of Looking Both Ways, Museum of African Art, Long Island City, New York. "It attempts to provide insight into the Diaspora from an international perspective, revealing it through the art and stories of the artists themselves."

The World Health Organisation (WHO) designated 2006 as The Year for Health and the United Nations has designated this year as The Year of Migration. For the African continent, the combination of the two factors can have devastating consequences. WHO reports that 2.9 per cent of the world’s 175 million population live outside their country of birth. As health professionals on the African continent migrate to western countries out of economic necessity, the loss of medical expertise is increasingly leaving a depleted health sector incapable of meeting public healthcare needs.

The world feels a little smaller when you watch Peru Negro. The group hails from Lima, but there's something Cuban in their drumbeats, something African in the way they whip the air with their hips and shoulders, even a bit of the American South in a body-slapping musical routine as near to the hambone as you'll see north of the Carolinas. What feels so familiar in Peru Negro's program, performed Thursday night at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center, is part of the mystery of the African diaspora, linking islands and continents and cultures in ways that resonate to this day.

The African Diaspora Film Festival (ADFF) features the work of emerging and established filmmakers of color. Most important, ADFF distinguishes itself through its presentation of outstanding works that shine a different or comprehensive light on African Diaspora life and culture - no matter what the filmmaker’s race or nationality. Submission deadline for ADFF 2006: August 31, 2006 for feature length fiction films; June 30, 2006 for shorts and documentaries.

Three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Washington and its allies insist that Operation Iraqi Freedom will end in victory, despite ever-increasing bloodshed in the country. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem hones in on the architects of the invasion, George Bush and Tony Blair.

This week is the anniversary of the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. President Bush and his British poodle, Tory Blair, have both been trying to put a spin on their continuing destruction of the country and its people to their very sceptical compatriots and a world that has stopped believing anything said by these global con men who cannot be relied on to even declare their names without inviting suspicions!

The war was never sanctioned by the rest of the world and despite many diabolical attempts in the past three years to give it some kind of moral and diplomatic seal of approval Washington and London remain isolated.

Blair never had a united country, party, parliament or government behind his militarism. That was why he had to lie about the 'imminent and immediate danger ' that Iraq allegedly constituted. The Weapons of Mass Deception (WMD) and 45-minute strike capacity of Saddam Hussein have been exposed for what they were: fantasies of a duplicitous war monger determined to please his American bosses at any cost. He has been crashing down the hill of public trust since the invasion. His handler, George Bush, initially manufactured a national coalition behind him but knowing what they now know millions of Americans have discovered that their dumb President used 9/11 to falsely lure them into an unjust war without end. The easy victory he promised has become a nightmare, forcing parallels with Vietnam.

Worse for Bush, his loony right intellectual and political gurus who provided specious ideological justification for the invasion are recanting in their droves. He has become a disciple whose prophet has been exposed as a phony.

Listen to two of the most hawkish war mongers. The first, Francis Fukuyama, the apostle of End of History and the ever rising advance of Western liberalism recently said: "By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for Jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.”

The second is fellow Republican hawk and a senior official before conflict of interest forced him out, Richard Perle. He said: "The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong. We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners."

Others who supported the war have become publicly disillusioned. Despite their confessions though there is one thing common to all of them. They are recanting for American reasons without any concern for the Iraqis. When they talk of 'Casualties in Iraq' they do not mean the innocent Iraqi children, women and men murdered en masse at weddings, naming ceremonies or in detention centres – the so-called 'collateral damage' of Bush' s adventurism. They are only concerned about the couple of thousand of American and British killed in the war. While they are still counting their casualties in the lower denomination of four digits the Iraqi casualties are in the hundreds of thousands. In their minds it's only American and British lives that matter. The rest are just statistics. Even in death a Westerner's life is still worth more than that of other people. That's why Bush could falsely claim that 30,000 Iraqis 'more or less' have been killed in this war. Could he have said 'more or less' about American life?

As the late Bob Marley said: "You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time."

The Hausa also say: "Mara gaskiya ko cikin ruwa sai ya yi gumi" (a dishonest person will sweat even if he is in water!). Bush and Blair are liars and murderers, who if only the world is fairer, should have been hauled before the International Criminal Court as war criminals who have continued to kill innocent civilians in another country that posed no threat to their countries.

The only other alternative now is to wait for their exits. In the case of Bush, there is a date which cannot come sooner. But Blair is the weaker of the two monsters. The Labour Party should do the world a big favour and begin a long process of atonement for the needless death of innocent Iraqis by changing the locks to 10 Downing Street. Blair’s latest exposure of offering peerages and other national honours for undeclared 'donations' or 'loans' to the Labour Party just shows how cynical and amoral a politician this man, (B-Liar) is.

If he had been an African leader the British government would have been one of the first big mouths to be condemning his corruption and lack of transparency. Blair helped Bush to undermine international law and he has now domesticated the same skills by finding loopholes in laws passed by his own government on party financing. The British people have enough very British reasons to be rid of this fraudster whom Nigerians would have easily recognise as a '419' Premier.

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

* Please send comments to