In preparation for the Second Nigerian Youth Leadership Summit scheduled for Enugu during July 4-5, 2006, development Partnership International along with other partners is organizing consultative sessions in all the geopolitical zones of Nigeria and in the Diaspora from May- June 2006. The purpose of the consultation is to find out what young people perceive as their most important priorities, what efforts and interventions they are undertaking to address these important priority areas, what challenges they are facing, both as young people and at the level of their work, identify and document best practices emerging from their work, and recommendations on how they can further improve their work. The consultation in the Diaspora, will focus more on health policy, health sector reforms, and how those in the Diaspora can contribute to Nigeria’s health sector development.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem travels to Beirut and reports on a meeting held to assess the past, present and future of the Global Call To Action Against Poverty.

When I told some friends and colleagues that I was going to Beirut their reaction was one of concern: What is taking you there? How many Africans will be there and what would take a Pan-Africanist to Beirut? To the second question the answer is very simple. I have never been anywhere without finding an African. You will find at least one or two Nigerians. Indeed any place you do not find a Nigerian you will be well advised to find your lady luck elsewhere! Africans are the adventurers of the latter part of the 20th century and the most mobile in the 21st.

European migrants, asylum seekers and refugees of the past centuries have re-written their history to read like epic stories of adventure, courage and the spread of 'civilisation' and 'progress'. In the future Africans may also repackage the desperate search for economic opportunities by our economically active populations across the world as adventure stories.

The first question is a reaction to the image of Beirut that many people have internalised, shaped by its prolonged conflicts of the '80s where pictures that have become familiar today about Iraq first confronted the world. The image of Beirut as a lawless city of armed bands and hostage-takers has endured. Hence the concern of my friends.

However Beirut is as normal as any mega city in the world. Of course if you look critically enough the symbols and memories of its not- so- distant past of armed occupation and current semi-armed status is not difficult to find. There are still buildings riddled with bullets and security men in hotels with bulging suits concealing weapons. But life just goes on.

I am in Beirut attending a conference of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). This coalition of various NGOs and CSOs from all the regions of the world was formed in 2004 to campaign for the eradication of poverty. Immediately in their sights then were the different international political opportunities presented in 2005 for fighting for a better international order, addressing inequalities, between peoples , nations and peoples, and within countries and making the leaders of the world accountable to the peoples of the world.

Britain had declared 2005 the year for Africa and the coincidence of the UK heading both the EU and the G8 raised hopes in certain quarters that some progress could be made in building a fairer international order. British NGOs were very important in building and shaping the global campaign. This was both a positive and negative benefit to the campaign.

There were many doubters including myself. But the GCAP coalitions believed in taking advantage of the situation to force certain debates, mobilise around a number of issues and put forward alternative policy positions. While they cannot claim to have achieved most of their policy platforms they can congratulate themselves that at the level of popular mobilisation, the issue of poverty has gained political priority internationally. Governments and international institutions were forced to react to the demands. The progress made in terms of policy changes may have been modest but focus on the issues was very significant.

Some of my own concerns about the 2005 activities had to do with my suspicion that come 1st January 2006 poverty would still be afflicting billions of people across the world and the media and 'saviours' of 2005 would have moved on to other things. I believe then and now that it requires more than a few concerts, symbolic gestures by richer countries, celebrity 'clicks against poverty' and endorsement by other media friendly figures for poverty to be wiped from the surface of this very rich earth we inhabit. Poverty amidst plenty is not just about specific policies but the structure of socio-economic systems both nationally and internationally. Therefore ending poverty amidst plenty requires changing the structures of power nationally and internationally. It will not be an act of charity but a deliberate demand for justice.

The Beirut meeting provided an opportunity for the GCAP activists to asses the year, savour their victories and examine the challenges that remained and decide where they go from hence.

The consensus is that the campaign should continue but with a more realistic inventory of its expectations and greater attention focused on regional and national efforts and mass activism to end poverty. The meeting made an honest assessment of 2005, guided by an independent review by external evaluators.

In spite of criticisms, some of them very biting and potentially divisive, the GCAP coalition partners are going to continue the campaign and review the struggles again at the end of 2007. While 2005 was dominated by international issues and what many critics called 'events chasing' the next phase is going to be shaped by issues of national and local campaigns on how to make governments both in the north and the south accountable to their peoples and honor the commitments they have made in 2005 and in the UN through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

While 2005 was dominated by the celebrities and campaigners in the north the next phase of the global campaign against poverty is going to be focused on peoples action, where ever that may be, thus putting into action that slogan from the women's movement: thinking globally and acting locally.

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

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Nearly 100 years after the first International Women’s Day, the lot of women has improved, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem in his weekly column. But there’s still much to be done before equality between the sexes becomes a reality. In the meantime, the world cannot be a better place if women's conditions are not better in it.

International Women's Day on March 8 has been marked for almost a century, the first being March 8, 1911. The day is meant to honour women, celebrate their achievements and focus attention on the continuing challenges facing the realisation of the fullest potential of women as equal citizens with equal rights to men. It is a day to recommit everyone to the motto: women's rights are human rights.

It is not just a 'women's day,' even if that is how it is popularly celebrated. It is about gender awareness and democratic struggle to make the world a better place for all its inhabitants, both men and women.

There is no denying the fact that women have made tremendous advances globally and in Africa in the past few years. There are many visible pointers to the growing numbers of women in top political positions. Last year, Mrs Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, of Liberia, finally broke through the ceiling by becoming the first popularly elected female head of state in Africa. That victory means that women no longer have to rely on the good will of men in order to hold or aspire to political offices.

The truth is that most of the women who have been vice presidents in Africa have largely been 'appointed' by the 'kind' male president. An unwritten convention in such patronage is to go for women 'who will not cause trouble' and who will be 'forever grateful' to the 'appointing authority'. Mama Ellen has now put an end to that. No longer will an African woman's political ambition be limited to the second position, as a kind of political accessory for Presidents and political parties seeking political correctness and looking for votes.

It is not just in politics that African women are making giant strides. Just look around at other fields, such as the economy, community, civil society groups and NGOs, education, academia, and the professions. These achievements are not due to magnanimity on the part of the men, who are still very much in charge of the largely patriarchal power structures in society. They are the outcome of wider struggles, sometimes provoking incremental reforms and sometimes the result of prolonged conflicts. Women as women and as part of the democratic struggle, together with men, have won and continue to struggle for more victories in new frontiers. No doubt a changing consciousness and awareness is improving men's attitudes and creating men who may not be as hostile to the advancement of women as their fathers or grandfathers. But the fact that we can still point to women in top places means that it is not yet commonplace.

There are many challenges ahead. One, in some countries where women have made giant strides in formal political institutions, like Uganda or Rwanda for instance, there is a tendency to see the progress as a 'gift' of the president, thereby inculcating a kind of political gratitude that promotes political cronyism to the detriment of the wider interests of women's struggles. In Uganda, Museveni and his party talk as if they own Ugandan women and the peasantry. Even in countries like South Africa, where the gender gains are part of a wider progressive movement, there is a tendency to make women feel perpetually grateful to the party.

Two, as with all oppressed peoples, women may be oppressed not because they are women, but because they are of a different class, colour or creed. Thus, they suffer the oppression differently. Some women may become economically and politically liberated and acquire more choices at the expense of fellow women. For instance, some middle class women are able to make the choices that they make because other women subsidise their existence.

Three, a high number of women in public offices may be important symbolically and certainly necessary, but this may not translate into gender-aware policies and politics. For instance, Mrs Ngonzi Iweala is Nigeria's Minister for Finance. Mrs Sirleaf-Johnson has appointed another woman as her finance minister, but they are both committed to the neo-liberal policies of their IMF/World Bank bosses. Therefore their policies will not benefit most women, who make up the majority of the poor.

Four, while principles like 'positive discrimination' in favour of disadvantaged peoples, including women and other groups of marginalised peoples, must be defended, there must also be vigilance in order to ensure that this does not lead to a permanent quota ghetto for a few, while the power structures remain the same. The limited quota approach is mainly incorporating women into the exploitative and oppressive system - not tearing the system down.

The relative progress in many areas should not close our eyes to the enormous tasks ahead to change the iniquities of the world. We must ask ourselves how just and how fair it is that only 1% of all titles to land in the world are owned by women. And it is not only in land ownership that women are so unfairly treated. The Independent of London, in its special edition for Women's Day displayed other shameful statistics about the condition of women, not just in Africa but around the whole world. These figures should make everyone wake up and stop being complacent about the fate of more than 50% of the population of the world.

Just imagine: 70% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty are women and children; 85 million girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared to 45 million boys; 67% of all illiterate adults are women; out of 191 heads of state/government who are members of the UN, only 12 are women.

While we quote these figures and raise questions about them on the occasion of International Women’s Day we should spend the rest of the 364 days of every year taking action locally while thinking globally on how to right these wrongs. It is impossible to create a better world without bettering the lot of women. The opposite is also true: the world cannot be a better place if women's conditions are not better in it. Everyday should be a Woman's Day.

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

* Please send comments to

The Pan African University is a global university whose faculty, staff, students and external partners employ intellectual and financial resources to enrich the lives of those they serve. The university educates students to assist in the enlightening and disciplining of their minds and their preparation for active, professional leadership.

Lawmakers from both parties said Thursday (March 2) a newly disclosed videotape of a pre-Katrina briefing for President Bush and top administration officials raises new questions about government response to the storm that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,300 people. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the video "makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable. It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. That's what made the failures in response - at the local, state and federal level - all the more outrageous." The video, obtained by The Associated Press, "confirms what we have suspected all along," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, charging that Bush administration officials have "systematically misled the American people."

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers the life of Kwame Nkrumah, ousted from power in a coup 40 years ago on February 24. Vilified in life, in death Nkrumah has been vindicated and many of his ideas are only now coming to fruition.

Last Friday, February 24, marked the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of the government of Kwame Nkrumah in a military coup that was inspired, orchestrated and sponsored by the combined forces of local reactionaries and external neo-colonialist powers, especially Britain and America for whom Nkrumah's militant Pan Africanism was abhorrent. It was a day of infamy that signalled the retreat of radical nationalism in Africa and delayed any hopes of uniting Africa and defending it against imperialist predators and their local agents.

But the overthrow of Nkrumah did not diminish the dream. In his exile years in Conakry, until his death in 1972, Nkrumah continued to write, speak and mobilise for a radical socio-economic and political transformation of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo.

His writings became more rigorous and programmatic because he had the benefit of having being in power before and therefore was able to critique his own experience and suggest ways of moving forward. Unlike many people who become 'pragmatic' with loss of power and advancing age, Nkrumah became even more revolutionary.

One of the reasons given for the coup was that Nkrumah was 'communist'. Another one popular among enemies of Pan Africanism at home and abroad was that Nkrumah allegedly wasted Ghana's resources on African liberation. It did not matter to his critics that this 'communist' programme was never hidden from the people of Ghana who successively voted for Nkrumah's party and their allies despite tremendous opposition from political rivals representing business and Ghana's largest nationality group, The Ashanti, and their junior partners. The 'wasted' resources they talked about included full and open support for liberation movements across Africa to free Africa from colonial rule and apartheid racism in southern Africa.

Today everybody, including our former colonisers who also kept apartheid alive for four decades, have all become 'our partners in development' and profess good will towards Africa. Yet they opposed our liberation and did not forgive Nkrumah for daring to challenge their racist prejudice and boldly doing something about it, not only in Ghana but across Africa. For this he was derided, caricatured, ridiculed and attacked even out of power and after death. After several failed attempts to assassinate him failed they got their agents within the armed forces of Ghana and the police to launch a coup while Nkrumah was out of the country.

Ghana became orphaned and did not recover its confidence as a country again for many decades. It is a testimony to Nkrumah's success that 40 years after he was overthrown Ghanaian governments and leaders will still be judged (and judged poorly) against him. Even his enemies are forced to acknowledge him as a true national leader and statesman who was genuinely committed to the welfare of the people of Ghana and Africa.

Was Nkrumah perfect? Definitely not. He did make many mistakes. As Cabral famously remarked in his tribute to Nkrumah at a state funeral in Conakry, April 1972, if Nkrumah died of cancer it was 'cancer of betrayal'. But he did not just stop at blaming those who betrayed Nkrumah he also used the African idiom, 'Food only cooks in the pot' to ask why it was possible for him to be toppled. Many people still supported Nkrumah but the party that was the organic link between him and the masses had been hijacked by cliques.

Is there any difference today? How many of our previously radical leaders are still popular with the masses? The longer they stay in power the more distanced and distancing from the people they become. They begin to consume the propaganda that 'without you the country will collapse'.

Time they say is a final arbiter. The ideas that Nkrumnah lived and died for continue to reverberate across the continent. It is clear to everybody today that Pan-Africanism is not a dream anymore but a precondition for the survival of Africa and Africans in the face of new rampaging and rapacious exploitation, packaged as globalisation. Those who had accused Nkrumah of being too impatient had the honesty to admit in public that they were wrong and regretted that they were not as radical as Nkrumah had been. Africa could have been saved the wasted decades.

History has absolved Nkrumah in many ways. At the dawn of the new Millennium the BBC ran a campaign for the African of the Millennium. There were so many nominations and it was obvious that many interests were routing for Nelson Mandela, but in the end Kwame Nkrumah was the clear choice of the majority of the listeners.

It is not only at the symbolic level that Nkrumah has been rehabilitated. Some of the important institutions created by the African Union were issues on which Nkrumah was vilified in the 60s. Examples include his call for an African High Command. Now we have a Peace and Security Council, working on a Common Defence Pact and the AU has plans for a Standby Force.

Nkrumah campaigned for one Union Government and they said it was impossible, but today we have elements in place like the Pan African Parliament and the African Court of Human Rights. There are discussions at senior levels on actualising a Central Bank for Africa. There is a standing committee of heads of state that is working on ways of accelerating the process for the creation of a Union of African States by 2009 as proposed by Libya. We may not get there that soon but that we are seriously re-engaging these issues means that Kwame Nkrumah has not died in vain.

We cannot call for his soul to rest in peace. Instead we ask that his spirit continues to haunt us so that we can realise for this generation and safeguard for the future, the United Africa for which he lived and died.

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

* Please send comments to

Netfa Freeman, director of the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists in Washington, reflects on the annual Black History Month held in the US during February, criticizing how it has become commercialized and arguing for Black History Month to evolve so that it considers a broader Pan-African historical context. “…African people need to develop institutions for coordinating our political activities internationally; to generate faith and unconditional support for these activities; take control of information about our history and current geo-political events.”

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” - Carter G. Woodson

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” -Marcus Garvey

The need to once and for all embrace a reasonable and comprehensive interpretation of African history that inspires and uplifts Black people is evident when examining how Black History Month is celebrated in US culture. Like most other historic reflections, Black History Month is sanitized with stagnate and idealistic interpretations, aimed at removing the vital elements of historical struggle and revelation. Today it is customary during the month of February for media to make superficial sound bites about "African-American" pioneers in technology, sports, scholarship and anti-slavery activism.

While schools highlight leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas and several others, rarely is the celebration used to thoroughly reflect on the ethics, political vision, and philosophical insights of these leaders. Rarely does the celebration clarify the socio-political milieu in which they struggled and glean relevant lessons from historical context. Further, connections to Africa are generally severed at the Middle Passage, instead of recognizing the subsequent interconnections between the economic circumstances, cultural expressions, and political movements of African people. This is expected since it isn't difficult to see how knowledge of these connections conflict with a corporate capitalist culture that has effectively commercialized Black History Month as a means to advertise commodities. Nationwide Insurance airs a touching radio commercial that doesn't even offer history, but simply appeals to insure “personal Black history” by buying life insurance.

However, a proper examination of Black History Month must also take into account the laws of change and historical development to which everything is subject. In 1926, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, an African historian, writer, and educator, established Negro History Week to honor the contributions of African people in North America. For "historical clarity" African is being used to refer to all people of African descent, whether they are born in North or South America, the Caribbean, Europe or any other part of the world. Born 1875 to former slaves in New Canton, Virginia the extent and scope to which the Harvard educated Dr. Woodson identified did not extend beyond North America. Woodson even chose the month of February for the observance of Negro History Week because the birthdays of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and US President Abraham Lincoln fall in this month. Regardless, Dr. Woodson contributed profoundly to our understanding that a better knowledge of history is critical for African people, at least in North America, to achieve greater pride, self-determination and collective progress. As go the laws of change, Negro History Week itself transformed. About fifty years later, near the close of the Black Power era (early 1970s), the celebration was renamed Black History Week and even later expanded to Black History Month in 1976. These changes reflected a progression in how African people throughout the world had come to identify.

Dr. Woodson insisted that history was not the mere gathering of facts or a chronology of events, but that the object of historical study is to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the social conditions of the period being studied. Applying this objective to the social conditions in which Dr. Woodson lived reveals coexistence with the 1914 Garvey movement in the formation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Black Star Line. The UNIA's movement, led by the Honorable Marcus Garvey, broadened the ideological scope for African people beyond the confines of birth-country and into the extensions of the Diaspora.

Marcus Garvey offered a more inclusive philosophy of how African people could identify, reflect and engage. Before the UNIA, the Pan-African movement found an earlier expression in 1900 at the first Pan-African Conference convened in London by Sylvester Williams. Since that first conference there have been seven subsequent Pan-African Congresses, the seventh taking place in Uganda in 1994. Consistent with the teachings of Dr. Woodson, the inspiration that comes from biography and history must necessarily include the context that connects the "American negro" to a broader African people scattered and struggling in 135 countries worldwide.

Since the founding of Negro History Week a host of positive and negative personalities, events and historical developments have transpired, affording African history instructive and dynamic lessons for humanity. More has also been learned about philosophies and methods of history. Nevertheless, the most instructive lessons are largely neglected. Black History Month must do more than emphasize the inspiring achievements of great individuals. It must also help in refining a historical philosophy and method of study that helps us understand the prevailing conditions of our time. Historical study should explain such phenomena as how young Africans from the Congo to Haiti; from urban neighborhoods in the USA to other parts of the world are armed and reaping havoc on their own communities. It should be able to explain how a people from a continent that has spawned some of the greatest contributions to world civilization are persistently plagued by apathy, disease, poverty and political disempowerment in communities around the world. Neglecting the history that connects Black experiences and struggles beyond the confines of a particular country renders Black History Month deficient and leaves room for the notion of African inferiority.

Historical context presupposes more than outstanding achievements and personalities or else is it sterilized into something incapable of explaining present global challenges and illuminating future direction. For example, it is clearly significant that in March 1978 the US National Security Council issued secret memorandum 46 in response to directives from the president that "a comprehensive review be made of current developments in Black Africa from the point of view of their possible impacts on the black movement in the United States". This memo demonstrates the attitude and multiplicity of political and economic interests influencing US policy toward Africa and African people:

"…. adverse to U.S. strategic interests, the nationalist liberation movement in black Africa can act as a catalyst with far reaching effects on the American black community by stimulating its organizational consolidation and by inducing radical actions."

Surely it is a positive thing for any African community to achieve greater organizational consolidation and radical change from adversity. Instead the memo recommends:

“1. Specific steps should be taken with the help of appropriate government agencies to inhibit coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United States.

2. Special clandestine operations should be launched by the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility in American and world opinion against joint activity of the two forces…

3. US embassies to Black African countries specially interested in southern Africa must be highly circumspect in view of the activity … opposing the objectives and methods of U.S. policy toward South Africa…

4. The FBI should mount surveillance operations against Black African representatives and collect sensitive information on those…include facts on their links with the leaders of the Black movement in the United States, thus making possible at least partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their activity.”

This history demonstrates that African people need to develop institutions for coordinating our political activities internationally; to generate faith and unconditional support for these activities; take control of information about our history and current geo-political events.

It’s common knowledge that the continent of Africa is the most naturally rich continent on earth. It is also painfully clear that African people everywhere are among the poorest and most oppressed. A proper reflection of Black history can combat this by educating people about the forces in conflict with African progress and providing lessons from past successes and failures. To combat inferiority complexes African people need to know that profound forms of organized resistance have been and are being waged against slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.

It is inspiring to know that the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the US were taking place simultaneously with similar struggles for independence and self-determination in Africa and the Diaspora. Leaders like Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Dubois, Sekou Ture and others were meeting, making plans and concretizing the Pan-African agenda. Knowledge of such things has proven to resolve notions of inferiority and to imbue African people with a greater sense of social obligation. The social movements in African history intersect across geographical boundaries and are energized by class struggle. The context in which we consider ourselves must be commensurate with the exigencies before us that exist within an increasingly globalized yet more polarized world. Just as Negro History Week has evolved into Black or African-American History Month, to continue having value it must evolve into a Pan-African Historical Context.

* Netfa Freeman is director of the Social Action & Leadership School for Activists (SALSA), a program of the Washington DC based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He can be emailed at netfa (at) hotsalsa.org.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The people of Uganda go to the polls today (February 23). It is an election that is historical in more ways than one. It is the first multiparty elections since the National Resistance Army and Movement (NRA/M) captured power in 1986 and ushered in almost two decades of “No Party” government under President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. It is an election in which the voters are faced with much clearer choice of candidates. The voters are also spoilt for choice of candidates at various levels from the plainly mediocre to the comical to the serious, and many in between. It is probably the most controversial election campaign yet.

The election tourism industry has flourished and their allied clients in local and international NGOs, hotels, entertainment, taxis, car hires, food sellers and business centres must be wishing the campaigning had gone on longer. Even us columnists, especially my colleagues who mostly comment on Ugandan domestic issues, may find less passionate issues to rant on and on about.

Initial reports from different observers have been typical of what one has come to expect these days. It seems the statements are already written before they arrive, or the templates are in the laptops and all they need to do is just cut and paste - changing location, country and names of parties and candidates as and where necessary. A minority of the voter tourists have suggested that due to the lack of level balance between the government and the opposition the election may not be fully free and fair. The majority of reports so far, including that of the African Union (AU), released on Tuesday, 21 February, suggest that in spite of a few incidents including violence, they are confident that the campaigns have generally been 'ok' and look forward to a free and fair election.

The opposition and the ruling parties and their supporters react to these assessments differently depending on their political interests. But there is no denying the truth that the government did engage in underhand methods, some of them so crude and crass that they beggar disbelief. There was clear intimidation of the opposition and disruption of their campaigns. The main opposition candidate and former follower of Museveni, Kiiza Besigye, was facing trial for treason and in a new political low, trial for alleged rape, and was in and out of courts and detention centres, as well as campaigning across the country. Even some supporters of the ruling party have claimed intimidation, especially in opposition strong holds. But it is an unequal balance of terror because the ruling party and government always has greater power and leverage for intimidation than the opposition.

Debates and controversies will definitely continue after the elections but today the people of Uganda have the chance to award marks to all the candidates and parties and decide who governs Uganda for the next five years.

It is a right that has been won with blood and struggles. It is not a gift from any leader or party. It is not just those who went to the bush to fight dictatorship who made democratisation possible. The millions who stayed in the country, kept working in spite of all odds, kept hope alive and supported the struggles in non armed ways have also made their contributions - and many of them also paid with their lives. There was a tendency on the part of Museveni and his zealots to equate opposition to him as treason.

But democracy like rainfall knows no good or bad farmer - it will pour on all. This means that even those who were on the wrong side of the democratic struggles have the right to democratic freedoms and protection within the law. As people vote today, the controversies and passions not withstanding, they will still be inhabiting the same country with their political opponents, this time tomorrow and the day after regardless of the outcome of the vote.

It is important for every qualified citizen to exercise their democratic right to decide who governs them, although it is also democratic to refuse to vote if you feel that none of the candidates or parties represents your interest.

Of course the election, though the most decisive event is not the only proof of democracy. The process leading to it is also important in determining the legitimacy of the outcome. And voting in itself is not enough. As Joseph Stalin (no pretender for any democratic values) once observed, while he was not able to influence how people voted he could influence how the vote was counted. In many countries, not just Africa, even the way people vote can be influenced. However, the decisive influence often tends to be the counting. People must defend their mandate by ensuring that all their votes are properly counted and that the results tally with how they voted. In the polling booths today, as millions cast their votes, they must ask themselves: would I be able to live with myself this time tomorrow if this candidate wins? Is this person the best for the peace and prosperity of all Ugandans?

Whatever the outcome, Uganda can never be the same again as the era of deepening multiparty democracy beckons. For Museveni and his acolytes it is either the end (if they lose) or the beginning of the end (when they win).

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

A Pan-African ICT regulatory agency that could deal specifically with ICT issues that have a continental bearing, such as satellite communications, could help reduce the costs of communications to African governments, businesses and individuals. This was the view of Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) when he opened SATCOM 2006 as keynote speaker in Johannesburg on February 21.

Haiti can return as a member of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) after its elections, says Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. Mr. Patterson made the announcement during a press conference in Trinidad following his final chairing of the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Negotiations, during which Haiti's readmission was discussed. The conference was telecast to journalists assembled at the Office of the Prime Minister's press centre in St. Andrew. With the presence of CARICOM monitors, and other such organisations on the ground, including 9,000 United Nations troops, he said he was satisfied the elections were free and fair.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem compares the crisis over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed with the Fatwa issued against the author Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhoolai Khomeini. Neither the West nor Islam has a monopoly on good or evil, he writes, concluding that “…freedom will be meaningless if it is completely unlimited, but living in a society also means that we have to share it with people whose ways and values may clash with ours”.

I was a student in England when the Salman Rushdie affair broke out. Let's refresh our memories. Mr. Rush to Die, a celebrated British writer of Indian Muslim origins, had written a novel called Satanic Versus. In it he repeated one of many insinuations about Prophet Muhammad, sexuality and women.

Apart from the literary types and their allied industry promoters, not many people would have heard of the book, even less would have bought it and fewer still would have read it. Somehow some Muslim clerics got to hear about this book and before you could say Salam Alaikum Muslim Clerics in Bradford (predominantly Asian) were up in arms, calling for a ban on the book and declaring it a blasphemy against Islam.

Then Iran's Ayatollah Ruhoolai Khomeini, (briefly in the 1980s the Spiritual Leader not just of Shiite Muslims but notionally for all Muslims and admired by many anti imperialists for cutting the US to size) waded in by declaring a FATWA (basically capital punishment for an apostate Muslim). From a local affair in Bradford the anti Satanic Verses popular protests spread across the United Kingdom and became a global bonfire in many Muslim countries. A spate of bannings followed, including by many African states that feared that the book was a threat to public peace and safety.

The protests about the book had less to do with the offence than the context. This was England in the 1980s, painfully adjusting to the conservative counter revolution of Margaret Thatcher in which poor people in general but ethnic and racial minorities in particular felt marginalized and vulnerable. British Muslims, especially second or more generation Asians locked in their ethno-religious laagers in places like Bradford and Leicester, felt more vulnerable than others. A community under attack from socio-economic and political changes finally found its religious faith also not considered sacred! The matter was made worse by the fact that the author who gave this public expression was, or was supposed to be, one of them even if he claimed to have become a lapsed Muslim! Do we see any parallels with the current protests because of a set of cartoons published in some Danish newspaper four months ago?

Like Rushdie's case the matter began locally but it became global because of technology but also because of the current tensions about the role of the West in global matters, particularly in the Middle East. Like British Muslims their brethren and sisters in Denmark, despite pretensions to the contrary of liberalism in countries like Denmark, feel left out and in recent years under right wing attack due to the rightward shift in politics in the Nordic and Scandinavian countries. Xenophobia is on the rise (formalising itself in parliament and government) as in many other European countries.

While Rushdie’s case was regarded as a stab in the back, the cartoons are considered a frontal blow. The international environment has meant that the tiny Muslim populations in a very tiny country called Denmark are not alone. Their frustrations can feed into all kinds of frustrations by Muslims and non-Muslims alike about the West.

The disagreement is presented as a simplistic one between freedom of expression and its enemies. Or even more directly as yet another clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, with the former standing for democracy and the latter lack of it. But it is not about religion essentially, but about politics and power locally and internationally. Freedom is not absolute anywhere in the world, least of all in the West. Would the same newspapers that have gleefully published the cartoons in over 25 Western countries (including the apartheid State of Israel) have published them if they had been about Jews? What would be the reaction of the same newspapers if the cartoons were about Jesus Christ, insinuating that he was a pedophile, since so many priests in Europe and the US have in recent years been exposed as systematically abusive of children in their flock? How many of these freedom lovers will take up the challenge thrown by an Iranian newspaper which had commissioned a similarly offensive set of cartoons about Christianity and Judaism and dare publish them in their papers?

On the other hand how many of those militant protesters burning down embassies and brandishing all kinds of violent posters and placards will be tolerated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or any other so called Muslim state if their protest was about the un-Islamic practices of their rulers whose rule is any thing but Islamic?

How many of those protesting have actually seen these cartoons? My guess is that like the Satanic verses, which many liberals bought to show solidarity but never read beyond the 'satanic' page, many of those protesting the cartoons have not and will not even see them.

Does that mean there are no issues at stake apart from cynical politics and transferable anger? No, there are serious issues and discussions that need to be heard but which can only be meaningful after the current pontification from the West and victimhood emotionalism from Muslims has settled down.

Neither has a monopoly on good and evil. Freedom will be meaningless if it is completely unlimited but living in a society also means that we have to share it with people whose ways and values may clash with ours. Finding a peaceful formulae for mutual coexistence within boundaries of tolerance in equal dignity is what democracy is about. The tragedy is that the West behaves as though it has a monopoly on democracy to the extent that many non Westerners or non westernised people now instinctively reject democracy as a western subterfuge.

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

* Please send comments to

Officials in Haiti say they have reached an agreement to declare Rene Preval president, after a vote marred by claims of irregularities. The announcement was made after urgent talks between government and electoral officials, according to the Associated Press news agency. Mr Preval has alleged that "massive fraud" denied him an outright victory in the 7 February poll. The vote triggered massive street protests by Mr Preval's supporters.

Pan African Health is the premier African healthcare congress - incorporating a conference, exhibition, and the 1st Healthcare Award for Excellence and Innovation sponsored by Absa. The theme of Pan African Health (PAH) 2006, which takes place from 29 – 31 August 2006 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa is accessing and managing funding for healthcare initiatives in Africa. PAH 2006 will see the Africa’s leading healthcare players and role players converge on the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, to stay abreast of developments in the healthcare and healthcare funding arenas, to share information and experiences, to reinforce existing relationships and to seek out and form new relationships. Contact Jenny Wong for further information on: Tel: + 27 11 465 8871; email: [email protected] or visit www.panafricanhealth.com

Software developed by a company founded by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth has been installed by Google, the world's most-used search engine. Despite such a prominent endorsement, Shuttleworth will not be making any money: the software is free to use. Since selling his internet company to Verisign for US$575m in 2000, Shuttleworth has become a champion of open source, the free-to-use, free-to-alter software that challenges costly brand-name products.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti reports that: "We have great news: Political prisoner Fr. Gerard-Jean-Juste, “Fr. Gerry” is right now on a plane in the air from Port-au-Prince to Miami. A cancer center in Florida has agreed to treat his leukemia, so he will get immediate attention for the cancer, as well as for the pneumonia he contracted this week. Fr. Gerry was granted a provisional release, which requires him to return to Haiti after the treatment to face the charges still pending against him. The current charges against him are as baseless as the other charges which have been dismissed."

Travelling through Nigeria recently, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers how he was stopped by a crowd of people warning him that bandits has set up an ‘operation’ and were looting passing motorists. Abdul-Raheem assesses the state of lawlessness in Nigeria and the rule of Olusegun Obasanjo, who is moving ever closer to a third term bid and the possibility of becoming a “lame duck president with everything imploding around him”.

These days I have been spending more time in Nigeria. ‘Home', as they say, is indeed the best, but for most Nigerians it must be tough love. It is often difficult for one to say if things are getting better or if one is just getting used to it and lowering one's standards - while increasing one's tolerance levels of unfair situations and injustices on the many fronts of the multiple obstacle race that the country has become. Just when you think things are never going to get worse, Nigeria and Nigerians combine their unique capacity to find ways of digging deeper and sinking further.

The general insecurity across the country has proven so insurmountable that Nigerians seemed to have resigned themselves to it and put themselves on a permanent state of alert, hoping that lady luck, miracle prayers, or some voodoo or witchcraft or a combination of all these will see them through.

In addition to these, those who are rich buy themselves militias. Armed robbery, hired killers, political killings, and other forms of gratuitous violence are perpetrated both privately and officially by the police and other security agencies charged with public safety. The Inspector General of Police recently publicly apologised and promised to take action about a number of serving police men accused of 'hiring' their guns to gangs of armed robbers. And the Police write boldly on their vehicles ‘to protect with integrity and honesty’, either as a sick joke or as a mockery of Nigerians.

Not long ago I had a personal experience of the lawlessness. I was travelling home to Funtua, which is about 75 kilometres north of the University town of Samaru Zaria, at around 8pm. At a small town called Giwa we saw huge crowds of people lined up on the road and a row of different vehicles parked by the roadside. Everybody was shouting that we should stop. We did and we were told that 'there was an operation' ahead of us. This operation was not a security sweep or road check: armed robbers had mounted a road bloc and were taking whatever they could find from their victims. Confidently we were told the 'operation' was going to be over in about an hour. We were advised that once there were cars coming from the opposite direction it meant the road was clear. And within an hour, as we were advised, 'the road opened' and we drove home safely.

You will be forgiven for asking a number of obvious questions: Where were the police? If everybody knew where they operated and even the time and also the days (usually market days in surrounding trading towns) why were the police not doing anything about it?

Very legitimate questions but only a stranger will ask these kinds of questions in Nigeria. Everybody knows that the police and the army, if they are not doing the 'operations' themselves, are aiding and abetting the crimes because they share in the booty. It is not only their guns that they rent out - they also regularly parcel out sections of the federal highways so that these nefarious 'operations' can take place with impunity. Once they are done you will see siren blaring police vehicles rushing in at break-neck speed to the scene after their comrades in crime have bolted with the loot!

Yet this is a country in which Obasanjo and his acolytes delude themselves into believing the people have never had it so good. That is why they are orchestrating a constitutional reform that will make it possible for Obasanjo to stand for a third term like his good friend and ex-Comrade, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, in Uganda.

Obasanjo does not seem to have learnt anything from his previous experience as a military head of state, his stint in civil society as founder of Africa Leadership Forum and his horrible prison term under Abacha.

A friend who was present at a meeting between General Ibrahim Badmasi Babangida when he was head of state and General Obasanjo as a coup-plotter-turned NGO-activist narrated an interesting exchange to me that is relevant to this matter. Obasanjo had fallen into an armed robbery ambush on his way to a scheduled meeting with the smiling dictator, Babangida. Being the cautious general that he was he did not play any hero with armed robbers. He knew he was outgunned and saw no rationality in resisting so he surrendered the money he had and they let him go. They did not know and could not have cared who he was. If they had known it was Obasanjo they probably would have even killed him anyway. He became a victim like any other innocent Nigerian whose only crime was driving on the road. In narrating this experience to Babangida, citizen Obasanjo told him that he had no doubt that there was no political motivation to the crime. But if it had leaked out to the public immediately many would have jumped to the conclusion that - because Obasanjo had been openly very critical of Babangida’s policies - the government had a hand in it. Therefore he asked Babangida to take the issues of public safety and security seriously, otherwise the government was going to be held responsible for everything and anything.

It is a shame that the same Obasanjo cannot allow himself similar wisdom since he became President seven years ago.

As the tussles for power intensify at all levels of government, a spate of killings and fear of more violence has gripped the country.

By no means would all of the violence be politically motivated, but so bad are things now and so polarised has the country become that everything is blamed on Obasanjo and his government. The recent brutal murder of the wife of the 'former radical' governor of Kano State, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi, was immediately suspected to be politically motivated because Rimi is one of the most vocal critics of Obasanjo’s third term bid. The available evidence so far from the investigations suggest that to the extent that politics was involved in the murder it had local dynamics rather than anything to do with Aso Rock. But who cares for such empirical details in a leader-centric system where the President is God?

It is not only killings that are blamed on Aso Rock. Many of those being investigated for corruption now claim that it is because they are opposed to Obasanjo's third term bid or because they are supporters of Obasanjo's estranged Deputy, Atiku Abubakar. The whole governance system is grinding to a halt so that even the good things that Obasanjo's regime has done and is doing are lost in the controversies. He is losing control of the machinery of the state and on his way to becoming a rogue President.

Yet he can retreat from the abyss and leave a more positive legacy by making a broadcast to the Nation renouncing any intention of amending the constitution to facilitate his self-succession in 2007. This will immediately drastically bring down the overheated political atmosphere of the country. It will also destabilise his many enemies who have built a coalition of convenience around anti-third term campaigns. More than that it will give him the opportunity to regain credibility for a lasting legacy in the areas of public safety, economic reform, the war against corruption and even more leverage in deciding who succeeds him. Failing this he will remain a lame duck president with everything imploding around him but travelling all over the world to fix everybody's problems without a clue on what to do about those he was allegedly elected to solve.

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

* Please send comments to

“Nothing has captured and engaged the imagination of the Ghanaian political jockey lately, home and abroad, more than the current bill – Peoples Representation Amendment Bill – in front of parliament,” says an article on The Bill seeks to extend voting rights and exercise to Ghanaians domiciled overseas. “To those who support the amendment, this is a further demonstration of the buoying democratic dispensation in Ghana…To the opponents, the bill is pregnant with all the anxieties reminiscent of the concerns and fears. They are afraid and are keen on seeing that the right people are elected to govern the country, whose policies would not endanger their interests.”

Triumphant Bolivian president elect Don Evo Morales touched down in Africa last week as part of a whirlwind global tour ahead of his official inauguration on January 22. Morales, who visited South Africa where he met with politicians and civil society leaders, has pledged to adopt socialist policies and resist US influence on the domestic policies of his country. Okello Oculi tells us who Morales is, what pressures he is likely to face and what his election means for Africa.

Bolivia is a country two-thirds of whose population are indigenous "Indians". The Asian connection in their Euro-centric ethnic label is a gross historical error by European travelers who after 1492 assumed that any landmass west of the Atlantic Ocean's European coast must be the fabled India. On December 18, 2005, its voters made history by electing "the first wholly indigenous president in Latin America in modern times". His name is Don Evo Morales, a bold campaigner against American opposition to growing cocoa plants for the economic benefit of his native peoples.

Morales, an Aymara Indian, won 51.1 per cent of the vote, making it the first time that a Bolivian president is not elected by the country's parliament (or Congress), and thereby denying the big white European land owners in the eastern provinces the decisive voice in an election. Morales has openly declared himself as a "brother" to leftist presidents Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Lula da Silva in Brazil, and Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Bolivia has a unique geopolitical status, sharing borders with Brazil to the north and east, Peru in the northwest, Chile in the southwest, and Argentina and Paraguay in the south. In the mid-1960s, after being disillusioned with the revolutionary potential of Laurent Kabila and his colleagues in today's Democratic Republic of Congo, Che Guevara (the famous Cuban-Argentinean medical doctor turned revolutionary armed fighter), went and started a guerrilla war in Bolivia under the theory of establishing a "focal point" for exporting liberation to the whole of South America. In 1968 the American government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) triumphantly flashed around the world pictures of a dead Che Guevara. He had been murdered by a military unit funded by the agency.

Morales came to power leading a coalition of "trade unions and social movements" led by his own union which has pledged to legalise the growing of cocoa out of whose leaf cocaine is extracted. At his election victory rally he declared: "Long live cocoa, no to the Yankees". He pledged to re-negotiate contracts which, under the privatization programme of the previous government, gave ownership of oil and gas reserves to foreign multinational companies. Che Guevara must have smiled in his grave in Cuba, his adopted country.

Morales, like Fidel Castro, Salvadore Allende in Chile, and Hugo Chavez before him, will face stiff opposition from the United States. His pledge to "change the history of Bolivia with peace and social justice" must taste like salted human excrement to President Bush and his born-again Christian crusaders for a post-Cold War American domination code-named "pro-democracy".

The rich white minority who voted for his opponent, Jorge Quirago, will oppose his grabbing land from them for redistribution to the dispossessed "Indians"; as well as the central government's control of royalties for gas and oil. For him to succeed he must deepen the combative skills and steadfastness of his followers.

He must also implement creative policies for taking economic growth to the poor through loans to cooperative groups and small firms; supporting local mass-based technological inventiveness, while supporting patriotic big businesses and vigorously undertaking land redistribution. Such concrete economic empowerment initiatives will be the much needed anchor for sustaining the popular mandate of the election victory.

Yet Morales must not underestimate the blood-soaked record of American foreign policy in the region. The naked brutality with which the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile was crushed in 1972 and the subsequent reign of terror which President Eduardo Pinochet unleashed on his supporters, as well as the massacre of thousands of "communists" in Brazil and Argentina in the mid-1960s, must always be kept in view by Morales. Only by such vigilance will the "Movement for Socialism", which he leads, ensure the practical realisation of his assertion that "the people have defeated the neoliberals".

Morales' anti-privatization election victory is coming at a time when African leaders have been selling away national economic institutions to foreign multinationals; and doing so behind the backs of their pauperized peoples. Moreover, those leaders who took loans without putting them to development of their nation's economies are now being hunted down like thieves by Euro-American debt collectors. Morales's boldness, rooted in the mobilization of his country's trade unions and other mass associations, is therefore a vital lesson to Africa.

* Okello Oculi, Ph.D, is Executive Director of Africa Vision

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Driven by the vision of Africans reporting on Africa for the world, a group of professional broadcasters, business people and reporters is setting up a pan-African satellite television network within a year. Modelled on Arabic satellite network al Jazeera and led by Salim Amin, son of legendary Kenyan photojournalist Mo Amin, Africa TV aims to be an independent voice reporting on all events - good and bad - to the continent and the rest of the world.

I am an African American and I read your article with interest. I see myself as a Pan-Africanist and am very interested in seeing the relationships between Africans and African Americans progress. For purposes of further research and from the perspective of an African American, you should know that one of the chief differences between Africans and African Americans is the tendency for Africans to "soft peddle" the issue of institutionalized slavery as it was practiced in North America.

I don't know whether this stems from some sense of guilt for African complicity in the slave trade or something else unknown to me, but African Americans sense it. For instance, in your article, on two separate occasions you used the term "came, via the trans Atlantic slave trade." I believe the correct and true term is "brought, via the trans Atlantic slave trade."

Now, some may think that this concern is "nit-picking," but the "new" African Americans are coming of their own choice, motivated and desirious of being a part of the American Experience. The desendants of those Africans that were "brought" here have worked, bled and died in making this new coming easier for those arriving today.

I encourage you to continue your research in this area and hopefully I have added in a small measure to the discussion.