A current corruption crackdown by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has been met with cynicism by some sections of the Nigerian public, who have questioned the motives of the president. In this context Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers a humourous incident involving the president, some protestors and a new passport.

A couple of years ago President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria was the chief guest at Uganda's independence celebrations. As to be expected the Nigerian high commission in Uganda held a reception for him and invited the Nigerian community in the country to lunch
with the president.

For most of my time in Uganda I was in the unusual position of being one of the 'prominent Nigerians' in the country. Even when I could not go to the country during the military dictatorship the high commission was still kind enough to consider me worthy of being invited to meet all kinds of delegations from Nigeria. Their attitude was quite different from that of the Nigerian high commission in London with which I had only public demonstration and picketing engagements with throughout the same period.

What passes for the Nigerian community in Uganda is actually mostly West African citizens resident in the country. Since Nigeria is the only West African country with diplomatic representation in East Africa and Central Africa its high commissions or embassies serve as a West African diplomatic mission. For me that is the clearest proof, if any is needed, that Pan-Africanism is common sense. It is not only desirable but cost effective, efficient and pervades all our lives consciously and unconsciously among our peoples and between our states - both deliberately but often out of necessity.

The only obstacle is our artificial states created to serve other people's interests. They are illegitimate in the lives of many Africans. They often demonstrate their presence through the numerous inconveniences they can put in the way of their citizens. Many of them are so insecure about their existence they try to proove their independence and sovereignty in everything, including declaring themselves independent of the truth!

At the Obasanjo reception there was a group of 'Nigerian Boys' (mostly serial adventurers in transit in search of greener pastures) carrying placards protesting against exorbitant fees for acquiring the then newly introduced computerised Nigerian passports and the long bureaucracy in getting them.

Obasanjo, speaking after the lunch, in a mixture of standard English laced with Yoruba accent and the more universal Nigerian Pidgin English, in the spacious grounds of the High Commissioner's residence, confronted the demonstrators directly. He assured them that he was not trying to make money for the government of Nigeria through a hike in money paid for passports. He said the hike in the fees was due to the high standards of technical design of the new passports, which cost more to produce. It was computerised with a requirement for fingerprints. All these were necessary not just to catch up with the latest technology but because according to the President "I am tired of being a 419 President".

419 is a decree passed by a military government in Nigeria meant to punish people who are engaged in advance fees fraud on contracts allegedly awarded by Nigerian governments, its agencies and parastatals. Any user of the Internet will now know that there is nothing Nigerian about these scams anymore. All kinds of fraudsters from other countries in Africa through the Middle East and other parts of the world have joined in usually claiming to be sons, daughters, wives, concubines, etc, of one big man or the other who recently died but left the putative relative the secret code to huge sums of money which he/she now wants to pass through your account!

The original Nigerian scam was straight-forward. It played on the corrupt ‘contractocracy’ (government of contractors by contractors and for contractors that the country had become). The perpetrators usually claim to have secured a huge contract from the ministry of defence, national oil parastatals or a big person in the central bank. They will then quote fantastic figures to a recent contract that they
have secured. However there will always be a snag, some cogs in the greasy wheel that have to be oiled. Someone needs to be 'given something' so that the monies can be released quickly. That is where, if you are a bent greedy person yourself, you will be roped in. They will suggest you help with x amount of money to speed up the process and bingo, you can laugh your way to the bank.

Obasanjo was candid with his audience and explained how he had met two young men in Yola prison - where he was imprisoned by Abacha - who had given him tutorials on how 419 worked. He always also expressed his indignation at being informed of Nigerians in prisons in very distant shores he had traveled to. Therefore the computerized passport was part of the government's strategy to control the access to the passports which were previously available to the highest bidder. I am not sure if computerisation has changed anything. The President believed that the new passports were difficult to forge.

Trying to be more Catholic than his Pope, the high commissioner went further than his boss by stating that the new passport was "impossible to forge". In the crude frankness that Obasanjo is famous for he looked at his Uganda representative with bemusement that made all of us listening laugh. He retorted: "Mr Ambassador, it is difficult but not impossible - nothing is impossible for a Nigerian.” Even the placard bearing demonstrators fell about laughing and threw away their placards. Obasanjo was being realistic about the ingenuity and the negative creativity of his compatriots, but still determined to be one step up fighting the corruption (perpetrated by a few) that has become a bye word for the country.

His current anti corruption crusade that has already claimed two ministers and also the dismissal of the inspector general of police recently are part of this war against corruption. It may not end corruption but hopefully bring about some fear and sense of shame that may make the Nigerian elite to think twice before plunging into the national treasury. It is a long way from reversing the culture of graft in public office but the spectacle of seeing the former inspector of police in handcuffs being matched into a courthouse may send signals that no one is untouchable.

This week another trial began of the former federal minister for education, Prof. Fabian Osuji (definitely no connection with the more noble British Fabian Socialists), the former president of the senate (the third in line in the country) and other top officials of the education ministry and some national legislators. The minister had allegedly bribed members of a subcommittee of the national assembly in order to get his ministry's budget passed without alteration.

Many Nigerians are very cynical about the trials, the timing and the motives of their president. I am no admirer of Obasanjo and his “I-know all” executive insecurities but the baby and the birth water should be separated. The fact that all thieves may not be caught should not mean that those caught should not be punished. The law may not catch up with all lawbreakers but there must be certainty that those caught will be punished according to the law without any fear or favour.

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Contributing to the ‘poetics’ of pan-Africanism started by Kioi Wa Mbugua and Tajudeen Abdul Raheem: the debate reminded me of a poem I penned during a gathering of African feminists. Failed, still-born or germinating, Africa’s freedom-dreams are dreamed. But are they really only ever dreamed in the masculine…….?

Womanrise!

glide
the figure 8
across these Mnyarwanda hips
these Mswahili
Mswazi
Ashanti
Xhosa
ride
the slow flex
and turn
mould and
build
breeeeaaaaaaaathe
and
transform
the rhythmic rebirth
of Africa’s daughters

Mwalimu, Madiba
Lumuumba, Nkrumah
asanteni sana!
but it is our turn now…

incandescent butterfly woman
and river spirit
rise!
impala and ocean mother
rise!
story teller and basket weaver,
rise!

mama, dada,
mother, sister
rise!

sister comrade sister fighter
sister lover sister friend
rise!

sister comrade sister fighter
sister lover sister friend
rise!

Woman,

rise!

Tony Blair (B.Liar to his enemies) is set for a third term after moving his New Labour Party so far to the right that it is almost indistinguishable from the opposition Conservative Party, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. His three-term reign, to the puzzlement of African leaders under international pressure to show commitment to good governance by stepping down after two terms, is bad news for ethnic minorities.

Next Thursday, May 5, is general election day in Britain. Barring a very dramatic shift through a last minute change of mind by millions of voters, the governing Labour Party will be returned for another term in office.

The election has been dogged by a number of clouds of uncertainties that may not have anything to do with a fundamental difference between the Labour Party and the main opposition Conservative Party. In fact the biggest problem for the Conservatives is that under Tony Blair (those who cannot stand him call him TORY B-LIAR!) his New Labour has outdone the Tories in their reactionary politics and policies, whether on immigration, law and order or the economy.

The second opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is more distinguishable from the other two by a wide barge on key policy alternatives, but unfortunately these nice people (as they are generally believed to be) are undermined by the undemocratic ‘first past the post system’ that advantages the two main parties. Both Labour and the Tories are beneficiaries of a disproportionate distribution of seats in parliament as a result of having their core voters concentrated in key regions, thereby gaining a majority of seats even without a substantial majority of the popular vote. Unless proportional representation is introduced across the board (not just restricted to European Elections as at the moment) it would be difficult for any third party to make a breakthrough in Britain.

So the voters are forced to decide between one set of Tories and another one. Personality and presentation assume more influence in such a situation. British politics is significantly being Americanised and emptied of substantial ideological differences and political cleavages that may make it pointless choosing between either of the two dominant parties.

The outcome of the election is not a foregone conclusion in many of the marginal constituencies and among different kinds of disgruntled groups. First among these are natural labour voters who are disappointed in Tony Blair's arrogant leadership and toadyism to Bush - especially over Iraq and other foreign policy summersaults. The media and Labour politicians often disingenuously talk of those angry about Iraq as if they are all 'disaffected Muslims'. Muslim British are not the only section of the society that feel betrayed by a Prime Minister elected to serve Britain who chose to be foreign secretary of the USA! The issue has not and will not die away until Blair is no longer Prime Minister.

Second, ethnic and racial minorities feel that Labour has abandoned them as a key constituency in favour of pandering to increasing xenophobia and racism in the wider society. They can point to a raft of immigration and asylum seeking laws further compounded by panic draconian legislation on terrorism that directly or indirectly victimise Black and other ethnic minorities. Instead of leading by principle Labour has allowed the conservatives and their cheer leaders in the largely rightwing media of Britain to lead on these issues. In fact they are in some kind of grotesque competition on these and many other issues for the dubious title of 'The Nastiest' party of Britain. The Conservative leader, Michael Howard, used to have a virtual monopoly on this but successive New Labour Home Secretaries from Jack Straw through David Blunket to the current burly beast, Mike Reid, have done their nastiest best to close the gap.

So bad has Labour shifted to the right on these issues that a former ‘Leading Nasty’, one of Margaret Thatcher's Bull terriers, Norman Thebit, was briefly cast as a Liberal Democrat during the debate on the Terrorism Bill in the House of Lords. Even he could not help drawing attention to the unusual role Labour forced him into. For a man who spent all his political career bashing miners, challenging ethnic minorities to pass the cricket test or jump on their bikes or haranguing the public to accept police state diktats it was a big irony that even this uncompromising law and order grandee felt Labour had gone too far in its crusade against 'terrorists'.

The ideological convergence of the leading parties and the frustration by Labour voters about Tony Blair has generated fears that the turn out could be low. The educated guess is that a lower turn out may punish Labour but be good news for the conservatives.

I am just glad that I will not be in Britain and have not applied for the controversial postal ballot. Where I would have voted is one of those constituencies where even a dog wearing Labour's colors will be elected. In any case many Black voters tend to vote labour when they vote. However, under Tony Blair not a few are reconsidering this historical loyalty. Already in many London constituencies Black, Asian and African voters are switching locally. Like other voters tactical voting may be the means through which anger at Blair and particular war mongering MPs (including the mixed race MP for one of the London constituencies, Oona King) will be punished. There may not be many spectacular upsets but there may be a few symbolic 'enough is enough' messages to Bush's friend by this weekend.

If the Labour lead turns out to be much lower than predicted his tenure at No. 10 may be brought to a quicker end soon. But whatever the size of the majority, Blair is on his last term - despite the fact that there is no term limit in Britain. Among the Ekisanja supporters of President Museveni in Uganda for example (and also other Presidents in Africa toying with extending their rule) there must some confusion as to why a PM who has no limit on his terms is pledging not to run again while they are busy trying to get a president whose terms are constitutionally limited to stand again.

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

* Please send comments to

This is an introductory course on UK-based Africans' contributions to development. You will discuss issues of migration, remittances, advocacy and practical aspects of community organisation. Using visiting speakers and a case study approach, you will consider the changing nature of African diaspora and community engagement.

The wider civil society movement have to stop behaving like missionaries whose motives because they are allegedly doing ‘God’s work’, states Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem in connection with recent events in the AU’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). Civil society has to hold itself to the same standards of accountability and transparency they demand from governments.

It was not unexpected that this column of last week on the orchestrated election of the Nobel Laureate, Wangari Mathai, as the President of the AU’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) would generate so much private and public responses, especially on the internet. It is both an indication of the growing seriousness attached to African initiatives and African institutions but also proof of the global village that the world has become in the age of interactive multi media and new information technology. I have always been open about my enthusiasm for the Internet, even as I support many of the anti-globalisation causes! E-mail is one of the most democratising aspects of globalisation.

The responses are varied but can be broken down into two broad categories. Those that are in the realm of ‘to be expected’ and those that are more nuanced and proactive. The intriguing thing is that both aspects were often cohabiting in many of the responses. So lets deal with what should be more familiar. One, ‘why are you attacking Mama Wangari?’

My position is not about Wangari or any of her bureau members as individuals (many of them are well-known to me) but a defence of a fundamental principle of separation of state roles and civil society roles and obligations. Nobody will argue with a trade union organisation that replaces its general-secretary when he or she becomes a minister or a member of parliament. If a Minister is similarly elected as head of a trade union the government will expect the person to leave. Wangari is in the same situation at the moment and she can still make a choice since her appointing authorities have failed in their duty to know the difference between the two positions.

Two, I did not seek to denounce Wangari as a leader who originated from civil society and is still critically important to that constituency, but she has had a change of jobs and we should not blur the lines. It is important for civil society to have allies in government but government should not swallow it up. It is rank opportunism to think those lines do not matter simply because the current beneficiary is someone we respect and value. As one of my respondents pointed out she would have risen more in principled public estimation if she had done one of two honourable things open to her: refuse the post because of her government position or resign from government due to her commitment to the new post. By doing neither she has diminished herself and her standing.

The more nuanced responses are many and most of them share my concerns but give different mitigating circumstances. One, there is a pragmatist group that argued that ‘this is a done deal’.

Though civil society is part of governance it cannot and should not substitute for government. Therefore it must avoid any action that confuses both theatres of struggle. Two, some argue that what happened was legal and within the rules. Let me just stretch their limited imagination to remember that slavery, colonialism and apartheid were codified in laws of the day. Did that make them acceptable?

Three, one person even suggested that it was ‘backbiting’ to speak out after the event. Does this mean that we should only speak about an event only during the act itself or when we are physically present? If this dubious standard is applied to all public discourse we shall not have anything to discuss since most of the issues, decisions and life changing policies that affect us are taken outside of our purview and many, even outside of Africa. Does that mean that we have no rights to complain and should just bear our victimhood as a fait accompli? There is no statute of liberty on justice and none should be imposed on accountability.

Four, others argue that Mathai was the best choice because the other options being pushed by AU bureaucrats presented a worse case scenario. This is begging the issue. The AU could not have put guns to the heads of those present (even though they paid their bills) if a few people had voiced their opposition openly in the assembly instead of largely grumbling and agonising privately. Maybe the AU would have seen sense and taken them more seriously. The fact that Wangari was appointed in absentia, ‘unanimously’ meant that some of those present (who had strong reservations) did not, or were unable to follow the logic of their own convictions. I appreciate the fact that some of those present did not have speaking rights. Many others were even attending the forum for the first time and were on a learning curve that was too steep! They were required to make decisions about what they did not know. That ignorance strengthened AU bureaucratic manouvres.

Five, another person even suggested that the newly crowned Madame la Presidente ‘had no time to waste’ stating that she been given a great job to do and implying she is so busy that she should not be diverted by these debates. I can only say that even a good thing can be done in a very wrong way. And this is one of them. That kind of language coming from people who are supposed to be defenders of civil society exposes the lack of willingness by our leaders both in civil and political society to be accountable to the people they serve. Is civil society not supposed to have more democratic credentials than governments?

The whole process further exposes the orchestrated confusion between NGOs and civil society. While NGOs may be part of civil society they are not ‘The’ civil society. Unfortunately because of donor-driven agendas and mercenary activism, NGOs in Africa are now passing for civil society hence the new distinction between CSOs and CBOs! The former is dominated by middle class counter elite claiming to speak for the constituencies more ably represented by the latter.

However the more successful NGOs become the more integrated they become into national and international and multilateral structures of power. They move from advocacy into incorporation and cooptation. There is nothing wrong in people moving from civil to political society and vice versa or making a similar journey to the private sector. However the actors in the various sectors must be clear about the lines even when osmosis is desirable.

African NGOs and the wider civil society movement have to stop behaving like missionaries whose motives cannot be questioned simply because they are allegedly doing God’s work. We have to hold ourselves up to the same standard of accountability, transparency, level playing field and due process that we harangue our governments to uphold.

What happened at the ECOSOCC Interim General Assembly was clear: It was a stich up. Does this mean nothing good will come out of it? I am an optimistic political activist who, like Bob Marley, "may fight and run away but live to fight another day.” Therefore even if Wangari does not resign the interim ECOSOCC institutions should not be ignored. Maybe out of this fudge we could salvage an ECOSOCC that will work together and independently with emerging structures of the AU. It is not yet Uhuru therefore wherever we are and regardless of which side of the debate we fall, we should maintain interactive vigilance and challenge this largely AU-chosen representatives of CSOs to deliver to the diverse constituencies they are supposed to represent. They ought to be CSO representatives in the AU, not AU agents among Civil Society.

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

* Please send comments to

In our edition of 25 November 2005 we carried a poem by Kioi Wa Mbugua in response to an article by Tajudeen Abdul Raheem. You can read the poem by visiting http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=25797. Below Tajudeen Abdul Raheem responds with his own poem.

Nkrumah and Nyerere did not fail
One was born too early and the other grew up too late
I cannot forget why and how Lumuba died because his ghost still haunts us
How can I forget Okot's song of Lawino for as long as the lament of Africa continues to echo in our ears?
WEB Du Bois would not mind lying unsung and unmourned if we can produce the Du Bois of our times to continue the struggle
The African Socialist Intellectual is not dead many of them just became consultants on the misery of Africa while others are either in MONGOs (my own ngo) or have become NGIs (Non Governmental Individuals)
Ngugi stoped being James but the many Jamesses of Africa will not let him be So the bigger Jameses claimed him .
Soyinka and Achebe: heroes without clout in their motherland: One a multiple exile by force and the other by circumstances but both of them victim of the Judases in power.
Because without those Dreams, the nightmares will reign. Have we not had enough nightmares?
Those dreams should inspire us to:
Stop agonising and start organising
The Sun will rise, Afrika shall be free
Therefore I cannot ask Kioi to join the dream because he is already part of it.
Where we need to link up is in organising
As Nkrumah used to say: Organisation decides every thing.

Neo-liberalism has had a devastating impact on higher education in Africa, writes Issa Shivji in our lead editorial this week. "The public intellectual, whose vocation is to comment, protest, caricaturize, satirize, analyse, and publicize the life around him or her is rapidly becoming history, which history, by the way, has no historian to record," states Shivji as he charts the history of East African discourse and the impact of neo-liberalism on intellectual life.

>>>>>

The purpose of this short intervention is to review the state of interaction between our universities in East Africa so far as intellectual debate is concerned. If in the process I refer somewhat passionately to the debates of the 60s and 70s, it is not out of nostalgia but to draw inspiration. And we need this inspiration given the state of intellectual inertia and marketisation of academia that has set in with the invasion of neo-liberal agenda in our universities.

The Nationalist Period

Sketches of the political context

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the immediate post-independence period was one of great expectations and equally great political turmoil. The anti-colonial struggles that picked up after World War II came to fruition in Africa in the sixties. Ghana got its independence in 1957 and Nkrumah picked up the flag of Pan-Africanism in his great passion for African Unity. Born in the midst of cold war, signs of any autonomous nationalism by independent states attracted the wrath of super-powers. Western intervention in the running and changing of regimes in Africa was rampant. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the open military intervention of the US left an indelible impression on the East African leaders and made them very vulnerable. Radical nationalism had a very hard time keeping afloat.

The Zanzibar revolution of 1964 and the subsequent army mutinies in all the three East African countries threatened to derail nationalism in this part of the world. The extent of the influence and intervention of the former colonial power, Britain, in these events can only be appreciated now when we have the opportunity to peruse diplomatic papers of the sixties and seventies recently opened in the Public Records Office. Relatively more independent nationalists like Nyerere found it extremely difficult to keep the former colonial power at bay. Embarrassing though it may have been, Nyerere had to call in British troops to quell his riotous soldiers. But the nationalist in him could not countenance British troops on the Tanganyikan soil. He had the Nigerian troops look after the defense of the country while the new Tanzanian army was being trained.

In what he called an “undiplomatically frank” letter to Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister of Britain, Nyerere narrated his fears and entreated the Prime Minister to understand his position.

“These are only a few of the reasons why we cannot be expected to be so confident of American non-interference in our affairs as British feel in relation to her own country. For the whole of this past year we have been subjected to pressures from the United States – and from Britain too before the change of Government – in relation to events in this country, particularly in relation to the post-revolutionary period in Zanzibar.

And finally, I am sure you will realise that there has been a reaction against the complacency with which we viewed our security questions before the mutiny of January this year. It may be that in consequence we see dangers where none exist, but if so this is a fault on the right side under the circumstances. Africa is going through an extremely difficult period of transition, and coup d’etats are not things in which any African Government can afford to take a merely academic interest.” (Letter from Nyerere to Wilson, 27/11/64)

Kenyatta had thrown in his lot with the West while Obote was struggling with his kingdoms. Nyerere continued agonizing over where he stood. His anti-colonial nationalism began to draw him to take non-alignment more and more seriously. The liberation wars in southern Africa, which were inevitably, and for obvious reasons, supported by the Soviet bloc and, which found a home and consistent support in Nyerere, no doubt, also had a radical influence on Mwalimu.

There were other events on the continent which also played a role in the political thought and discourse in this region. Nkrumah had moved radically to the left. His Pan-Africanism went hand in hand with anti-imperialism. Unlike Nyerere’s anti-colonialism, which was politically and diplomatically much more astute, but lacked a profound understanding and appreciation of imperialism, Nkrumah’s anti-imperialism was thoroughly rooted in political economy. His ‘Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism’ (1965) published in October 1965, elicited an immediate protest from the US Government which promptly cancelled a $35 million aid to Ghana. Four months later Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup (Blum: 1986:223). The CIA had been planning the coup with Ghanaian military officers for a year (Blum 2001:141).

Five months later, one of the architects of the coup Colonel A. A. Afrifa wrote a book on the coup (Afrifa 1966) which could have been easily penned by a CIA scribe. In the book, the author vilifies Nkrumah’s Pan-African dreams and support for national liberation in the Congo and elsewhere and demonstrates his unreserved flunkeyism towards the West.

“At the attainment of independence, the British handed over to us a decent system of Government in which everyone had a say. …. Organization of African unity or no Organization of African unity, I will claim my citizenship of Ghana and of the Commonwealth in any part of the world. I have been trained in the United Kingdom as a soldier, and I am ever prepared to fight alongside my friends in the United Kingdom in the same way as Canadians and Australians will do.” (quoted in the introduction, Afrifa 1966:11)

Reading Afrifa’s book may send a chill down our patriotic spines. But I should say only some spines! In this age of globalization, not very dissimilar things are being said by our own leaders. One East African president is credited with having castigated his own people as ignorant, envious and lazy for not understanding the demands of globalization while another has dramatically disowned his own radical past as he embraces the imperialist US.

The East African Academic Discourse

Nyerere’s radical nationalism eventually led him to ‘socialism and self-reliance’ while at the same time he continued to nurture a pretty consistent aversion to both the, then, super-powers. Only a few months before the Arusha Declaration, the University students had demonstrated against the introduction of compulsory national service and mandatory contributions from their salary. One of the placards read; ‘Colonialism was better’. Nyerere could not stomach it. He dismissed the students, some three hundred of them, and used the occasion to lambaste the accumulative tendencies of his own coterie of leaders. He slashed their salaries by twenty per cent. That became a precursor to the leadership code of the Arusha Declaration.

‘Every TANU and Government leader must be either a peasant or a worker, and should in no way be associated with the practices of capitalism or feudalism. No TANU or Government leader should hold shares in any company … or hold directorships in any privately owned enterprise … or receive two or more salaries … or own houses which he rents to others.’ (Nyerere 1968:249), thundered the Arusha Declaration. University students thus became the historical harbinger of the Leadership Code, if not the Arusha Declaration, albeit unintentionally.

The Arusha Declaration heralded an unprecedented intellectual activity on the Campus of the University College at Dar es Salaam. But this activity was not only a Tanzanian one. It involved East Africans. It will be remembered that this was the time of the University of East Africa. Makerere sent out doctors, Nairobi engineers and architects and Dar es Salaam, lawyers. My own class of 1967-70 boasted almost half non-Tanzanians among whom were the leading lights of, what later became, Museveni’s guerrilla force and first cabinet.

Student leaders, Faculty members and administrators, came from the three East African countries. The subject-matter of study was East African. In the Law Faculty, for example, we studied and taught the laws of all the three East African countries. The first interdisciplinary course introduced in the Faculty of Law in the wake of the Arusha Declaration, and with the intention of breaking down compartmentalization of knowledge, was called ‘Social and Economic Problems of East Africa.’ Later on, the Faculty of Arts and Social Science introduced a similar course called ‘East African Society and Environment’ known by its acronym EASE.

Student struggles, protests, debates and intellectual discourse in and outside the classroom was East African. In their Second Memorandum, the Vigilance Committee which spearheaded and led the student protest against a new curriculum clearly used the East African vantage point:

“As it was stated in our first memorandum, the real issue at stake is a fundamental one concerning the ownership of this University College: whether the College will ultimately belong to the people of Tanzania and East Africa or to imperialism.” (Quoted in Shivji 1993:40)

East African students were also very prominent in the militant student organisation like the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF). Its chair was a gentleman called Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Among its members and activists were many East Africans who later on became prominent in various fields of life in the countries concerned. East Africans prominently participated in what we used to call then ideological struggles or debates.
Prominent East Africans, including academics, were invited to exchange views with the students and the Faculty of the University College. No East African, or African, event passed without there being a discussion and a “surgical” analysis of whether it was in the interest of the people or the petty bourgeoisie and/or imperialism.

Although this was a period of intense debates and radical discourse on the Dar Campus it had its reverberation on the other two Campuses as well. When Obote declared his ‘Move to the Left’, among the first places outside Uganda that his intellectual supporters visited was the Dar Campus. I remember Professor Yash Tandon fervently defending Obote’s ‘Move to the Left’ before a very cynical, but well-grounded and articulate, USARF militants. The then chairman of USARF, Museveni, sardonically snubbed Tandon arguing that the ‘Move to the Left’ was not a traffic question!

I frequently joke that in the Left we had a neat division of labour between the three East African countries. Dar excelled in ideologising but it only ideologised. As Mao said of Trostky: He, Trostsky, took a correct stand but he only stood. Nairobi organised, took to the streets and philosophized later, while Kampala took to the ‘bush’, gun in hand and power in head.

No doubt, the prominent discourse was radical. Although garbed in the language of Marxism, I think, it was grounded much more in ‘radical nationalism’ than ‘Marxism-Leninism’. The mainstream academic discourse too was nationalist, albeit inconsistent and wavering, but the point is that there was a discourse, a debate, a critical examination of our history and politics, culture and economy, past and present. It was a vibrant intellectual community with a home-grown debate, concerned about not only seeking the truth – the traditional vocation of a university – but also asking, ‘truth for what and in whose interest’. Interestingly, with the benefit of hindsight I might even venture to say that although at the time the gap between the mainstream nationalism and radical nationalism appeared wide and unbridgeable in the then young militant minds, they had a common point of departure and, perhaps, even a common vision.

The nationalist mainstream too contributed in a “strange” way to the East African discourse, whether it was in the form of nationalist histories narrated by Temu and Kimambo or anti-colonial art embedded in the poems of Okot p’Bitek or the early novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o or Ebrahim Hussein’s plays. I say, in a strange way, because at the time we saw mainstream nationalists as essentially reactionary yet we engaged with them and that is precisely the basis of a critical discourse. With relish, we cited p’Bitek’s anti-European poems and his biting caricature of the Europeanized African elites. Listen to this which first appeared in 1967 in the ‘Transition’ coming out of Kampala and was later reproduced in the volume ‘Socialism in Tanzania’ edited by Lionel Cliffe and John Saul:

“The students in our University are not revolutionary. They are committed and conservative. They have vested interests. They look forward to graduation, the circumcision ceremony before joining the “big car” tribesmen. Our university and schools are nests in which black exploiters are hatched and bred, at the expense of the tax payers, or perhaps heartpayers.

And when they have fallen into things
They eat the meat from the chest of bulls
And their wives grow larger buttocks
And their skins shine with health,
They throw themselves into soft beds
But the hip bones of the voters
Grow painful sleeping on the same earth
They slept before Uhuru.” (Saul and Cliffe 1973, vol.2:293)

No doubt there is some truth about what Okot p’Bitek is saying about the students then, but today, it is the whole truth about our neo-liberalized universities; yet we do not have p’Biteks to agonize over it.

There was another, more formal, interaction and academic input into the East African discourse. Under the aegis of the Inter-University Council (IUC), there used to be an annual East African Social Science Conference whose venue rotated between the three Campuses. These conferences were great events. Faculty were accommodated in student dormitories. Research papers and field reports were presented. Current events were discussed. Some of the conferences became big occasions provoking intense dialogue. I remember that when my ‘Silent Class Struggles’ was ‘published’ in the then USARF’s journal, ‘Cheche’, (September 1970) it was presented at a subsequent Conference by a comrade since I was away in London doing my LL.M. I am told there was very interesting discussion.

On another occasion, I think it was in mid-seventies, there was a very heated debate on Angola. This must have been sometime in mid-70s, just about the time that the tradition somehow fizzled out, like many other East African forums.

Two things happened in 1971, which directly or indirectly, were responsible for heralding the disintegration of the East African discourse, at least its formal organizational forms. One was the overthrow of Obote and the other was the dissolution of the East African University. While playing a delicate political game, Nyerere, unlike his friend Obote, managed to avoid Nkrumah’s fate. After his palace coups in which he got rid of his kings, Obote took the road to the Left. But his move to the left in a highly differentiated Ugandan society not only attracted opposition within but also the imperial wrath without. In a coup by Iddi Amin Dada, backed by the Israelis and the British, Obote was overthrown in 1971 heralding in a new phase in the disintegration of whatever was left of East Africanness in the region. The Amin coup drove out many Ugandan intellectuals to various countries abroad. A good number ended up in Dar es Salaam where they became part of the academic and intellectual discourse.

Some Ugandans became members of the Faculty while others found jobs in the city. All of them were invariably involved, openly at the University, or more privately in town, in study groups, contributing to the ongoing discourse. But otherwise, each of the three East African countries went its own way, politically, economically and intellectually. The University of East Africa which had incorporated the three Campuses of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Makerere became separate universities. Although the three national universities did not have formal links, it is interesting that they informally knew and took interest in each other’s debates and discourses during much of the ‘70s and eighties.

For instance, Dar es Salaam was very aware of the ‘agrarian debate’ among Kenyans carried in the ‘Review of African Political Economy’ (originally abbreviated to RAPE and later changed to ROAPE) published in England. Its editors were the former lecturers from the North who had participated in East Africa. To an extent, therefore, ROAPE illustrates the spill over of the East African discourse. Interestingly, there were other spillovers. For example, those who had taught law in Dar played a prominent role in directing the Department of Law at the newly established University of Warwick in England where law was taught from an interdisciplinary approach or ‘law in context’. Courses like Law in Development carried on the tradition established at Dar.

Just as the Ugandan exiles physically participated in Dar debates and organised from there to liberate their country from the clutches of Iddi Amin, Kenyan militants drew inspiration from Dar. Although numbers began to dwindle, a significant number of Kenyan students managed to find their way to the Hill. But they faced increasing obstacles. For example, the then Attorney General, Mr. Njonjo, who put on airs of an English gentleman, would not accept Dar law graduates unless they had done another year in the Kenya Law School, presumably to debrief them of Dar es Salaam ‘school’.

Formal links between the three campuses suffered even more. Although we continued to visit each other’s Campuses as external examiners, this was not conducive to developing a coherent discourse. But even separately, as we approached the eighties, intellectual and academic climate on the three campuses began to decline as the socio-political context entered the period of Structural Adjustment Programmes and increasingly aggressive imperial policies orchestrated through the IFIs.

To the academic doldrums of neo-liberalism, we now turn.

The Neo-liberal Intervention

Neo-liberalism made its entry into our countries through various Structural SAPs of the early eighties. These programmes were nothing more than the further integration of our economies and resources into the world market circuits (liberalisation of trade); the withdrawal of budget allocations from social services to repay loans (cost-sharing and balancing of the budget); the deliverance of natural resources to multinational capital, but, more important, to take away the sovereign decision-making right of the African nations. Cost-sharing and user fees destroyed whatever little “welfare” state was established in the wake of independence.

Universities came under severe attack. The World Bank suggested that Africa had no need for universities, Universities were ‘white elephants’ which devoured more than what they produced (Zeleza & Olukoshi eds. 2004, 2). The content of what the Universities taught was not suitable for the market. It would be cheaper to train our kids in Northern universities. Our politicians and university administrators slavishly bought into these. We embarked on the so-called transformations of our universities from sites of generating knowledge to kiosks for selling “education wares”. Our courses these days are modularized and semesterized. In effect it simply means cutting up courses into bits and pieces, regardless of whether it makes pedagogical sense, to enable fee-paying students to collect necessary units to pass. It is not good business to fail students; that would draw out university business from the market. What our colleague, Professor Chachage, said in an external examiner’s report sums up the tragedy of the commodification and marketisation of higher education.

“The number of unit courses, as it is clear from many of the papers I went through, is a result of the way semesterization has been undertaken, whereby whole years courses from the previously three-term system have been simply broken into two separate courses to satisfy the requirement of the process. This has been done without any regard to the coherence of the programmes, and how the process of building blocks of knowledge through thorough exploration of themes is affected. The end result is what is important for a student is to simply collect enough units to get a diploma or a degree. In this regard, what has been created is a situation whereby a student looks for an easy way to obtain a degree and not knowledge.”

The debates and intellectual discourse which is the life-line of any vibrant university community has virtually disappeared. There is no time as time is a commodity subject to ‘opportunity cost’. In a competition between consultancy and panel discussion, the rational economic choice is of course consultancy, particularly when panel discussions and intellectual debates have virtually no value and are actively discouraged by our new-university mandarins. A couple of years, ago one of our lecturers received a letter of reprimand for organizing a panel discussion on the Afghanistan war during “office hours”! (For that can only be the appropriate word these days for teaching time).

The public intellectual, whose vocation is to comment, protest, caricaturize, satirize, analyse, and publicize the life around him or her is rapidly becoming history, which history, by the way, has no historian to record. (The historian is busy taking American tourists on a tour of the Bagamoyo slave market.)

I am of course exaggerating, but I am exaggerating the truth. Many of us, who may nod our heads in the Senate and laugh at silly jokes cracked by the university mandarins, agonize in corridors and in private. The committed intellectual in us refuses to go away, if not in all, at least in some. And I believe, or want to believe, that those few constitute a critical mass which we need to nurture and revitalize consciously, deliberately, and patiently.

Dying craftsmen broke the machines in protest. That cannot be expected of petty bourgeois intellectuals. We cannot perhaps stop the commercialization of our universities, but we can at least think of university co-operatives. We must be able to revive our craft in new conditions. We cannot and need not repeat the discourses of the nationalist decades but we need to reinvent an Eastern African discourse, maybe, this time around, rooted in genuine Pan-Africanism. We have to engage and take issue with the Pan-Africanism of the States, the NEPAD-ist one rooted in globalization ad domination, and pose an alternative Pan-Africanism of the People, rooted in anti-imperialism and liberation. In other words, the nationalism of the twenty-first century is Pan-Africanism rooted in anti-imperialism (for the development of some of these ideas see Shivji 2005) . This is not a proposal. It is only an illustration of reconstructing an Easter African, not only East African, discourse. By Eastern African, I mean the inclusion of Rwanda, Burundi, DRC besides Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Needless to say no discourse is uncontentious. The essence of any serious discourse is precisely contention of ideas. Pan-Africanism and anti-imperialism are very contentious issues depending on the social stand-point one takes. I am not taking a position. I am only arguing for a discourse in which we can, and should take positions. Our major social responsibility is to discourse and expose the ills of society, to hold up the mirror, so to speak.

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* Issa Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

References

Afrifa, A. A., 1966, The Ghana Coup, 24th February 1966, London: Frank Cass.
Blum, William, 1986, The CIA: a forgotten story, Lonodn: Zed Books.
Blum, William, 2001, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s only Superpower, London; Zed Books.
Nkrumah, K. 1965, Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism, London: Heinemann.
Nyerere, J. K. 1968, Freedom and Socialism, London: OUP.
Saul, J. & Lionel Cliffe eds. 1973, Socialism in Tanzania, vol. 2, Nairobi: East African Publishing House.
Shivji, I. G.1993, Intellectuals at the Hill, Dar es salaam: DUP.
Shivji, I. G., 2005, ‘The Rise, the Fall and the Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa’, in Felicia Arudo Yieke ed. East Africa: In Search of National and Regional Renewal, Dakar: CODESRIA
Zeleza, P. T. & Adebayo Olukoshi eds. 2004, African Universities in the Twenty-First Century, vol 1, Dakar: CODESRIA.

The African Union (AU) began drawing up plans on Tuesday to establish a 15,000-strong African stand-by force by June 2006. The entire contingent should be able to be deployed within 30 days of an order from the AU's Peace and Security Council. A draft roadmap on peacekeeping in the continent, released by the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, said five brigades of 3,000 men each would be in place by next year.

Tony Blair urges his people to show the same compassion to the African victims of, what he calls, ‘man-made disaster’, that they have shown to Asian victims of natural disaster.

The small question though is: which man has been responsible for Africa’s man-made disaster? We shall not go too far back into history. Let’s just look at the last two decades and only two major wars – economic and military – which have devastated the continent.

The continent is the most war-torn region in the world. In the last decade, there were 12 wars taking place in 10 countries on the continent. Eleven were supported by the US through arms sales or military training. Many of these wars were offshoots of the Cold War years. According to one estimate, during the Cold War years (1950-1989) US sent some US$1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa. And this trend has not stopped in the post-Cold War period. Africa has yet to reap the so-called peace dividend.

From 1991-1995, 50 of Africa’s 53 countries received military assistance from the US. US arms sales and military training to Africa totaled more than $227 million. And US’s junior partner, UK, follows suit. British arms sales to Africa rocketed from ?52 million in 1998 to ?125 million in 2000 and topped ?200 million in 2001 after the deals with Tanzania to sell ?28 million military air defence and ?100 million to sell Hawk jets to South Africa. Under Tony Blair’s new labour government, military sales to Africa increased from 1.6 per cent of all sales to the Third World to 19 per cent.

Gordon Brown’s compassionate offer to pay 10 per cent of Tanzania’s debt to the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank amounting to some $40 million over the next ten years sits rather awkwardly with $40 million that was spent a couple of years ago to get the radar from a British company with Blair’s support. At the time one British MP, Tony Worthington, commented in the House of Commons: ‘The idea of going to Dar es Salaam to negotiate debt reduction and then agreeing to something that adds $40 million to that debt does not sound like prudence, does it?’ Well, in the imperial mindset, it does.

Arms trade is “good” business. It is “good” economics and “good” politics. It creates jobs, increases profits and ensures a safe continent for Western multinationals to continue siphoning off resources and expatriating super-profits which keep the capitalist engine running. And as a bonus, the military-industrial complex of the West keeps reproducing the dependency syndrome in Africa, caricatured in the African child with a begging bowl.

The aid-dependency syndrome in Africa, which is deployed variously – for domination, for compassion, for humiliation, for intimidation – is an important plank in the relationship between the West and Africa. While we are pilloried with ‘aid-fatigue’ in response to our begging bowl, Western rulers get very angry when some countries (very few indeed and none in Africa) try to extricate themselves from the world wide aid net.

It is revealing that when India refused to accept any aid from the West for tsunami victims, the Western world was outraged. Journalists ridiculed and questioned India’s motives – ambitions of a regional super-power, seeking a seat in the Security Council, acting big brother to neighbouring countries. These are the same people who hardly ever question the motives of Western aid. No, Western aid is out of altruism and human compassion.

Mwalimu (Julius Nyerere) was hated by the West more for preaching self-reliance rather than socialism. If he survived the wrath of the CIAs of this world (unlike Nkrumah) it was perhaps because we never practiced self-reliance and Mwalimu never wrote a book, ‘Self-reliance, the First Stage of Liberation’, the way Nkrumah did, ‘Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism’.

Anyway, so much for the military war. What about the economic war?

For the last two decades beginning with structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s, Africa has been involved in implementing neo-liberal policies handed down by the West through their so-called multilateral institutions. SAPs have devastated the continent. Since 1980 African debt has increased 500%. 313 million Africans lived in absolute poverty in 2001 compared to 200 million in 1994.

Life expectancy has dropped by 15%; literacy rates have fallen. More than 140 million young Africans are illiterate. In ten years, between 1986 and 1996, education spending per capita in Africa has fallen by 0.7% a year. Primary and secondary school enrollment has gone down as parents cannot afford cost-sharing imposed on them. University students have rioted as they find themselves without employment and therefore unable to repay loans. In Tanzania, non-payment of educational loans has been criminalized!

Mr. Blair need not ask which men are behind Africa’s man-made disaster? But can Africa’s men and women swallow the rhetoric of compassion and forget the reality of exploitation?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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Last Friday the British Prime Minister's Commission for Africa report was published amidst fanfare, even bluster and brave talk about 'new beginnings' and 'great opportunity.' The reaction has generally been mixed whether in Africa or globally, including Britain itself. This is largely because Africa and her momentous challenges have never lacked focus but have always been short-changed when it comes to concrete action to realise the often declared good intentions.

As someone who has been critical of the Commission as an unnecessary project; a waste of time, energy and money that could have been put to better use; and a diversion from what Africans are doing and want to do for themselves, there is not much in the report to make me lose my scepticism. It has actually triggered more questions.

In its description and analysis of the problems it has nothing new to say and modestly makes no pretence to do so. It is a good summary of what we already know. Perhaps it is in some of its recommendations that some tactical if not strategic shifts can be discerned. I say tactical because both the analysis and the suggested solutions are essentially still within the same neo-liberal, market-only ideological hegemony of these times.

It is still seeking to adjust Africa to global forces despite timid recognition in sections of the report that trade liberalisation, privatisation and the donor-driven market mantra have hugely contributed to the collapse of infrastructure, social lives and caused great deprivation in Africa. Just like we had dubious notions of 'adjustment with a human face' to offer palliatives for the atrocities inflicted on victims of IMF/World Bank SAP policies in the 80s, the Blair Commission may turn out to be offering us 'globalisation with some human faces'.

But even in these there are doubts as to the concrete action that will follow the 100 or so recommendations. I don't think anybody believes that all the recommendations will be acted upon, but a number of key ones will remain a focus of action. They include increases in aid, debt cancellation, trade distortions that prevent fair trade, corruption, good governance, peace and security and others.

Out of these even fewer may emerge dominant. Aid will remain very high because it will satisfy the instant gratification of 'wanting to do something’ and doing it now. Yet doubling or quadrupling aid is not the issue for as long as Africa and other poor countries are trapped in the structural iniquities of trade. The truth also must be told that some countries in Africa, especially mineral or resource rich ones like Nigeria, DRC or Angola, do not need aid - they need a functioning government. Indeed all of the countries will be better off with fairer trade than any volume of aid. Aid will only strengthen the hands of the new missionaries of Western NGOs and humanitarian interventionism in Africa.

There will be a lot of talk about reforming the unfair international trade and financial system but when the crunch comes self interest of the richer countries may not allow any serious movement.

Debt cancellation for all may become more fashionable in the discourse but debt relief with conditionalities may turn out to be what will be achieved since the US government is not likely to support the necessary reforms that may mean it is not able to punish its enemies and reward its friends. Yet universal debt cancellation will give every country an equal chance of a fresh start.

The other issues that may get more money thrown at them will be support for regional and sub-regional institutions including the African Union, especially on peace and security issues. This may not necessarily be due to any new commitment for lasting peace in Africa, but because they are cheaper and politically less volatile for Western countries whose governments are not willing to risk the lives of their citizens in 'far away' places like Africa. It is a return to praetorian functions at a multi lateral level. Otherwise why is the new love and admiration for Africa's role in peace and security issues not extended to include our right to self-determination in economic issues and how we govern ourselves?

'The taste of the pudding' the English say 'is in the eating.' Therefore it is in the national and international action that the Commission's report is able to provoke that will make critics like myself to either, (happily) eat humble pie or claim victory in saying 'we told you so'.

Even on the day of the report itself the omens were, contrary to the 'feel good about Africa' spin of the sponsors, not all good. For a report that took the bold step of acknowledging that there was nothing African about corruption and admits that it is systemic and has both African and non African actors and perpetrators it was very ironic that its activities were held at the British Museum, a place that has been a major beneficiary of looted historical and aesthetic assets from all over the world but especially Africa. Tony Blair could have shown some genuine remorse and willingness to really change things for the better by handing over some of these stolen treasures as a symbolic gesture that business will not continue as before.

And this for me is the core of the matter. The Commission's report will get more buy-in if Britain leads by example instead of sermonising and lecturing the rest of the world on being good or fair towards Africa. It can race fast to meeting its own Millennium Development Goal target of 0.7% of GDP as a contribution to global aid. At present it is hovering at around 0.4% and hopes to reach 0.7% by 2015! So why set new targets if you cannot reach existing ones?

The Museum of London may be a depository of looted historical treasures but the city of London itself is a major player in the systematic looting of Africa: direct theft by companies and corrupt African leaders, money laundering, fictitious transactions, etc. Britain can show real leadership by being the first country to implement the recommendation of the report that calls for repatriation of such looted funds to the countries they were stolen from and also punishing businesses, banks and finance houses that aid and abet bribery and corruption in Africa. If Britain can do this, a course of action that it does not need the support of anybody to embark on, it can then challenge other countries to follow its good example.

This leads us to the challenge of all challenges that the report faces. It is based on the assumed influence of Britain this year as the country heading both the EU and the G8 countries. But that influence will itself depend on how credible Britain is. Thus the personal standing of Mr Tony Blair cannot be divorced from the matter. It is no secret that he suffers an enormous international credibility deficit as a result of his uncritical support for Bush, who has so far given him nothing back in return. His credibility may improve if Bush could help him out on this subject, but we cannot hold our breath. So who will listen to Prophet Blair in his new missionary activity in Africa?

Even the British people who elected him and his party and may well do so again (there being no reasonable alternative) no longer trust him. His credibility among the Africans he now wants to save, is even less. For some time President Thabo Mbeki, The Renaissance Man of South Africa, was a close ideological soul mate, but the relationship fell apart both over unrealistic pressures to be a poodle to Blair in Zimbabwe and disappointments over NEPAD. Nigeria's Mr Know All, General Obasanjo, who also liked to see him as a chum, is more circumspect again due to hurting knees from KNEEPAD and Western reluctance and British lack of co-operation in getting Abacha's stolen Billions. To many African leaders Blair is viewed either with suspicion or incredulity or both. Many are wont to question his interest in Africa, the Messianic tone and his perceived. For Blair therefore it is not just that the prophet has no honour in his village - even outside his village nobody trusts him.

There are a number of spins around the report, which I find most disingenuous and which risk the backlash that overkill salesmen or women get from wary customers. One, it is constantly dropped on you that a majority of the 17 commissioners are Africans. This is supposed to confer African ownership on the report. Do they not know that the majority of the colonial officials and the slave captors and buyers before them were Africans?

Two, attention is also drawn to the fact that two serving African leaders participated in the Commission. Someone should tell Blair that signing up to good intentions has never been an issue with our leaders - action is where the challenge is. Many of them will jump at any opportunity to show a grateful nation that their Dear Leader is respected internationally and has friends in Washington, Paris or London! The same leaders signed up to the AU and NEPAD and somehow managed to forget to mention that when the call came through from 10 Downing Street. What is the point in agreeing on the vision, mission and strategic plan of the AU and accepting NEPAD and yet rushing to sign up to another report? It is like being invited to your own funeral. Many of these leaders will still say yes whenever another call comes through from some other do-gooders, especially from outside Africa.

Finally, this year is presented as a 'Make or Break year.' Does that mean that any African who wakes up on 1st January 2006 would have made it? In spite of all the apocalyptic scenarios a majority of our peoples will still be alive that day and going about their survival in the best way they can and I bet it will not be because of Blair's commission.

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

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The relationship between many Africans and their governments is only comparable to the disillusion, distrust and suspicion that become the permanent bodyguards of a man or woman who has been jilted too many times.

If care is not taken such a person may not have any successful relationship again even when he or she meets the genuine person. The weight and hang ups of the past are such that they becloud the present and threaten future relationships. The alarm Bells are on 24/7 patrol singing: ‘not again’ or ‘once bitten twice shy’ or any other lyrics that warn against trust and building confidence. Just assume that the current relationship will end in the same bleak alley of past ones, do not raise your expectations and do not expect much. This defensive prop becomes a permanent shield against any disappointment.

Consequently potentially good and rewarding relationships are not given room for nurture and development. However as no human being is an island to himself or herself we are doomed to trust and take risks in sharing our lives with other people because without doing so whatever we may tell or convince ourselves about, our lives may never be complete.

Governments, like partners, are necessary evils. What can you do without them and what can you do with them?

How many Africans will run towards the police, the army or any of our security agencies when they are in trouble? Most of the time we are running away from them because if they are not the source of your problem you may compound your problem by running to them! That's why many Africans talk about ‘The Government’, ‘’Those in power’ or ‘The regime’, instead of ‘Our government’.

The alienation is not just against the coercive organs of the state. Even the civil arms of our governments are as anti people as their security counterparts.

Some years back I was amused by a friend, Dr Patricia Daley, who is a Geography Don at Oxford University (one of only two Black Africans who are full faculty members) when she asked me about the population of Nigerians in the United Kingdom. Apparently in the Census figures she was looking at at the time there were only 150, 000 Nigerians in the Queen's own country! I could not resist laughing because anybody familiar with the demography of Africans in Britain will know that even countries with a much smaller population in the UK than Nigeria (Uganda, Ghana or Sierra-Leone for example) will easily notch up that number and still be counting. So I told her maybe that was the number of Nigerians in Peckham or Dalston alone!

But what the figure showed was that many Africans even though part of Britain's ‘visible minority,’ were absent officially. Even our embassies cannot tell you how many of their citizens are resident in the United Kingdom or any country in the world for that matter. In some countries they do not even know what the actual population is anyway.

Many of these émigré Africans are directly or indirectly running away from their governments, therefore why should they go and register at their embassies or high commissions that they are there?

However Africa is changing and changing for the better and should and would continue to do so in spite of challenges here and there. This process requires new ways and cultivation of new attitudes in dealing with our governments and in the way our governments deal with us. There are good governments in Africa. There are reforming governments in Africa. Bad governance is receding even if at snail speed in some countries.

Look at the recent events in Togo. Baby Eyadema has been forced by sub regional and African consensus, to step down. Two weeks ago I wrote arguing that the military coup that led to him succeeding his could-not-have died-sooner dictator father, should and would not stand. There was no clairvoyance in that certainty. It was based on the good wind of change going across Africa. Because Africa was united in saying ‘No’ the rest of the world had no choice but to follow our consensus.

A few years ago this would not have been possible. Now that it is we should recognise it and work towards making this good practice standard practice. There is no point sniggering at it as many are doing. If we continue to see an unchanging or unchangeable Africa we are both undervaluing our democratic struggles and short charging our gains. Togo shows a new resolve on the part of Africans to enthrone constitutional rule in Africa. Even if Baby Eyadema is to be elected president after the transition it would have been done under the constitution, not military fiat.

We should not be timid or coy about praising our governments when they are doing well. We cannot build and institutionalise responsible government in Africa if we continue in the destructive culture of ‘Us’ and ‘them.’ Confrontation and condemnation should not be our first and only tool of engagement. We should seek co-operation where possible, embrace collaboration when desirable and embark on confrontation where and when necessary. These tactics and the strategies they demand need not be mutually exclusive. All of them are useful and necessary in building sustainable democratic societies and political communities that are at peace with them. We just need to deploy them where and when most applicable, or simultaneously at times.

Too much of our activism, especially in these days of professional foreign-controlled, donor-driven, materially -rewarding NGOism is too skewed in favour of oppositionism instead of positive engagement with our governments and institutions. You need to ask why European and American governments and charities should be arming you, aiding you and building your capacity to confront your own government? Why are they not building the capacity of Africans living in their own countries to be effective citizens where they are? Why should Africans or people of African origin in these countries be marginalised while they are promising you heaven on earth in Africa? Dependence on foreigners or their money will not build Africa. ‘Rome’, they say, ‘was not built in a day’, but the Romans were there and willing to build it.

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

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Former US president Bill Clinton is one of the most famous faces around the world. He is recognisable by many people who may not even be able to identify the location of the US on a map. But it was not always scripted like that from the beginning.

When he announced his intention to contest for the US presidency in 1989/1990, many Americans did not even know where he came from and much less, whom he was. Yet he had been governor of a small southern state of Arkansas, of which many Americans asked: Arkan...what? This bewilderment was the reverse of what happened to a previous Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, of whom it was asked: Jimmy Who?

Clinton’s handicap was not just because of his relatively unknown and unprepossessing state, he also did not come from a rich family. His surname did not ring any bell like say a Kennedy or a Bush, Rockefeller or Ford.

In Arkansas itself, Clinton comes from a place called Hope. And what he had in abundance in addition to his charisma and confidence was great hope that he could achieve his ambition to be president of the most powerful country in the world against all odds!

One of the events that inspired him was an earlier encounter with an icon of American politics and probably the most revered US president, John F Kennedy. As a school kid, Clinton shook hands with the great Camelot and that fired him. And by sheer determination, luck and personality, Clinton became president and probably only second to his icon on the popularity stakes.

In spite of his many foibles, he remains a hugely popular former US president both within and beyond the country. His was a genuine triumph of hope over adversity. No wonder he remains the ‘Mr Feel Good’ and a loveable rogue by many.

The Clinton/Kennedy encounter came to my mind as I ruminated over the last AU Summit in Nigeria’s soulless federal capital city of Abuja at the end of January. The government in a country where ‘more money than sense’ is the official public spending policy, spared no expenses. No expenses were spared in making sure that the executive tourists to the city are impressed by Africa’s slumbering super power.

As it is customary on these occasions, head of state after head state who rose to speak, including the AU Commission chairperson and the UN Secretary-General, thanked ‘the people and government of Nigeria for their... generous hospitality...bla bla bla’!

What was not in doubt was the presence of the government of Nigeria, whose security and intelligence and other operatives were crawling all over the International Conference Centre. As for the people of Nigeria, perhaps they followed on their televisions, that is if the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) or (is it Never Expect Power Always by long suffering Nigerians) stood to honour its role. I was not sure if any of those leaders thanking ‘the people’ bothered to look up at the huge public gallery of the conference centre as they spoke.

That is where most of ‘the people’ would have been if they had been given access to the function. Unfortunately, the place was largely empty. One would have thought that for the sake of PR, they would not have filled up the place only with the countless security operatives. If they did not want ‘the people,’ why could they not trust their under-employed security operatives? Or why could they not have packed the place with school children from the countless public and private schools in and around Abuja. Imagine the impact on young kids of being in the public gallery and seeing all these movers and shakers of Africa at work. Who knows how many little Clintons could have been inspired? Then the answer came to me like a revelation. It is not just that many of our leaders hate and have contempt for the people they rule, they also do not want us to have hope for a better tomorrow and that we may dream of a future without them. That is why they do not want little boys and girls to dream like that poor boy from Arkansas, that one day, they could be presidents.

To the extent that some of them contemplate succession, they think of it only in monarchical terms, that is even after they have long passed their sell-by-date. This murdering of hope by deliberate marginalisation of the youth and killing of their aspirations is a far worse crime by some of the leaders than their misrule. It is like someone slapping you and also denying you the right to cry or shed tears. So whether they like it or not we must ‘KEEP HOPE ALIVE’.

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

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The Situation in Togo since the death of its long-term dictator, Gnassingbe Eyadema, has not shown any sign of being resolved. The sub-regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed by the African Union and supported by the United Nations and the EU, has led global opinion in rejecting the succession of Baby Eyadema. All the right noises have been made and in an unprecedented consensus, Faure Eyadema has been told that this time around the answer is Non!

However strengthened by Togo's army, which is nothing but a personal militia of his father, Baby Eyadema and the ancient forces of reaction built by his father have continued to ignore the wishes of their people and advise of neighbours and the rest of the international community. Their tactics are very simple. They intend to sit it out hoping that with time their unconstitutional change may become a fait accompli and all concerned will shut up so that even if he is not accepted by de jeur he will remain leader by de facto. After all his father, even when democratisation through the Movement for Sovereign National Conferences in many former French colonies in the 1990s swept aside fellow dictators, managed to weather the storm. A divided opposition and a ruthless capacity to intimidate, co-opt or eliminate the opposition helped him to maintain an iron grip on power for almost four decades. He also relied on liberal exploitation of ethnic and regional fault lines to divide his opponents and the country in addition to presenting himself as the only 'strong leader who can hold the country together'.

However Baby Eyadema cannot be as lucky as his father for many reasons. One, the Togolese people, brutalised and silenced by his father and his henchmen for many years, have remained consistent in fighting for their democratic rights against all the odds. They fought his aged father to a standstill, often betrayed by opportunistic and factionalised opposition parties and leaders. Eyadema was a lame duck leader for many years but held on to power by subterfuge, intimidation, corruption and luck in his choice of formal opponents. It was not just raw power and its use that helped him to remain in charge. The fact that most people under the age of forty did not know any other leader other than Eyadema conspired to create a psychological situation of 'if not him who can?' His son does not have all these advantages, but more importantly the Togolese were no longer afraid of his dad by the time he gave up the ghost. The opposition is not just within the political class but spread across the whole society.

Two, the sub regional situation in West Africa has changed in favour of democratic constitutional rule. Related to this is a willingness of ECOWAS to intervene in the affairs of erring member states. Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Ivory Coast are clear examples of the region acting together, sometimes with great contradictions, to help stabilise a neighbouring country. This precedence compels ECOWAS countries to reverse the military coup in Togo. Three, what is further strengthening the regional resolve is the qualitative changes that have occurred at the continental level through the more proactive provisions of the charter of the new African Union. The Act of Union makes it clear that it is not only military coups that are no longer tolerated but also all unconstitutional changes of government.

From 1999 when the Algiers principles were unanimously adopted the continental body has shown its willingness to put its money where its mouth is. The first casualty was the hapless military regime of General Gueye in Cote d'Ivore. The OAU refused to recognise his regime precipitating the uncompleted transition that forced Gueye out of power. Since that first example Central Africa, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia, with different outcomes, have provided opportunities to test the principle. Whatever the contradictions it is now clear that the old narrow definition of sovereignty and territorial integrity that operated as 'leave my victims to me and I leave yours to you' is no longer operational in Africa. We have moved from non-interference into 'non-indifference'. In 1980, Samuel Doe assassinated the then Chairman of the OAU, William Tolbert, and he was able to sit in the next summit because it was considered an 'internal affair'. This is no longer possible in Africa today therefore the internal affairs of all member states have become legitimate concern of the AU.

Three, the international environment has also changed dramatically. The cold war is over even if it has mutated into another kind of war, no less intense. However the old practice of 'their bastard and our bastard' that turned every dictator into a bride is becoming obsolete. Structural Adjustment Programmes, the IMF/World Bank and globalisation have delivered African countries to imperialism in a way that makes it increasingly insignificant who is in power as they will follow the neo-liberal hegemony. Therefore interests of former colonial powers are no longer tied to that of one individual or group in a particular country. Though there are still notions of 'strong man' or 'the best they have got' that feed the ego of reluctant democrats across this continent, the tolerance level for unreconstructed dictatorship and personal rule has become very high. Eyadema relied on France for most of his rule and when he had contradictions with France he could flirt with the Eastern bloc, but all these are gone now.

The odds are weighted against Baby Eyadema and the Togolese army. If they go peacefully that will be good for Togo and the rest of Africa but if they refuse, targeted sanctions and swift military intervention when necessary should be deployed to get rid of them. It will be a signal to other political megalomaniacs who think that their countries are their personal property to be ruled in perpetuity by themselves or their offspring that Africans no longer accept self proclaimed divine misrule.

ECOWAS has to learn from the horror of Ivory coast where regional pressure forced out Gueye but produced an inconclusive outcome that is still wasting that once prosperous country. While pressures must be unrelenting in restoring constitutional rule in Togo immediately there is a need for wider engagement with the broad democratic forces: political parties, civil society groups, professional associations, trade unions, etc so that Eyadema's people do not exploit the situation to create chaos. Togo is not just a test for ECOWAS but an opportunity to show the rest of the world that Africa is no longer prepared to continue 'business as usual'.

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

* Please send comments to

Migration of highly skilled and educated people has depleted poor Caribbean economies of valuable human capital and has created social dislocation among families and communities, according to a paper produced by: the Canadian Foundation for the Americas.

This paper examines the developmental impact of the growth of the diasporic economy on Caribbean countries, focusing on the issues of remittances, diasporic exports, brain drain, as well as the new health and security risks associated with migration and mobile populations.

It finds that remittances have emerged to be the fastest growing and most stable source of capital flow and foreign exchange in the last decade, but questions whether remittances alone can outweigh the loss of investment in human resource development.

The paper's main conclusion states that diasporisation is likely to further peripheralise the region, and recommends that the policy dialogue should move beyond the remittances issue to take into account wider developmental concerns.

Recommendations include the negotiation of bilateral or multilateral agreements that would encompass some investment by labour importing countries. This should be complemented by regional attempts to counter "global poaching".

* This summary was compiled by Pambazuka News from the Eldis email newsletter. The full paper can be read online at the following address: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC17409

It is almost two weeks since the Boxing Day tragedy of theTsunami Earth Quake that devastated countries of South Asia and to a lesser extent the two African countries of Kenya and Somalia. We are used to and have become more cynical of the media and humanitarian agencies describing every natural and unnatural disaster as 'the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen' or 'a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions', suspecting they are hyping it up in order to raise the bank balances of the agencies' accounts and extort compassion from an increasingly compassion-fatigued world.

But the huge scale of the Tsumani tragedy has blown away all cynicism and suspicions about humanitarian publicists and compassion entrepreneurs. Words can neither describe nor express the full impact of this disaster that immediately became a tragedy right in front of our eyes and most of us powerless to do anything about it once it started. Despite all the available technology, information and knowledge, nature still struck in a most menacing way humbling human beings and our historical and evolutionary arrogance that we are supreme in the universe and all that abounds in it.

The symbolic period of Christmas (and all the consumerism that has expunged most religious or spiritual meaning out of it) in which the tragedy unfolded unified many people's anxiety about God and nature.

Religious people look up to God for explanation, comfort and deliverance, but even the most religious person must ask what kind of God inflicts such catastrophe on his creation and for what sins? The non-religious and agnostics also look on helplessly and take out their frustration on God by asserting that the indiscriminate way in which the disaster struck was proof to them that God could not have been existing and not avert such huge tragedy.

The tragedy also showed the limits of science despite all the undeniable advances over several centuries: there is still plenty more to be unravelled and known in nature. We are yet to be full masters of our environment. The positive side for science though is the belief that all things are knowable, but we are limited by available knowledge and technology whereas metaphysical people believe that some things are not knowable. The ultimate truth must belong to scientific progress because its truth is accumulative through the years such that what our forefathers could not explain we now can just as what is baffling us today may not ruffle our children or their children after them.

While the scientist and the religious people wrestle with their explanations or non explanations one of the most encouraging things that has come out of the tragedy is the outpouring of genuine human solidarity, reaching out to the victims from across the world. In the midst of all these pains the unequal power relations in the world manifests itself both openly and subliminally. Would there have been such massive concern if a considerable number of Westerners were not involved? Can we recall similar outpouring of grief exactly a year ago when a similar earth quake devastated Iran killing more than 40, 000 people?

Do not get me wrong about the huge scale of the South East Asian eathquake and the untold suffering for all the victims. I cannot help feeling that were westerners not involved on such a huge scale it would not have been treated as yet another disaster that happens to hapless peoples especially in Africa.

Look at your screens and see the hands of friendship, humanitarian support and solidarity of people in the richer countries of the world mainly Europe and the USA that we see constantly. Yet solidarity is being shown even if in small but symbolic ways in virtually every country of the world. The BBC or the CNN may not broadcast them but compassion is not the monopoly of the richer countries.

In times like these it is the totality of our humanity that counts not one country or class of peoples. The popular response to the disaster has exposed how insensitive and narrow-minded governments can be not just in poorer countries but also in the richer, supposedly more democratic and enlightened of the West. The President of the World and self-proclaimed God's son, George Bush, took three days before he could make any statement. His loyal British poodle, Tony Blair, despite public clamour in Britain, remained on his holiday resort in Egypt. However the public in both countries led the way in providing support of all kinds. Now both governments are playing catch up with popular momentum and promising to match the public contributions. Bush has even recalled his father and Clinton from retirement to help him galvanise public support.

In a number of African countries there has been the usual official statements but also public concern. However, many do not have the infrastructure to convert the genuine concerns into concrete solidarity. We need to look into this because no matter how bad our situation may be there may always be some other people somewhere on this planet whose conditions may be worse off from ours. We cannot be constantly playing victims and be complacent about our and other people's suffering. We must fight against the disaster fatigue that may make us appear insensitive or inured to the suffering of others because of our own suffering. We need to build people to people solidarity between ourselves and between us and other peoples of the world. Every little bit counts towards building genuine bridges of human understanding.

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tragedy there is a growing debate about where Africa's case in 2005 will be given the immediacy of the situation and the genuine popular opinion in the West.

There is talk of debt write off, cancellation and full scale restructuring of the affected South East Asian countries. This is right and necessary but it needs not be a case of either / or because as Ghandi used to say: 'There is enough in the world to satisfy our need but not enough to satisfy our greed'.

Africa does not have to be devastated by earth quakes before its debt is written off, it is suffering devastation in many other forms that may claim more lives this year than the final total of those perishing as a result of the Tsumani. Powerful countries in the world should not play the poor against each other and we should not also engage in competition for compassion. Global justice should be our aim whether in the north or the south of our shared hemisphere.

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

* Please send comments to

Billy Okello, a Kenyan Rapper known by his artist name of “Billy Boy” has been jailed for eight months by a Swedish court after being found guilty of five separate charges namely: mishandling a Swedish woman, threatening the woman, damage to property, driving without a license and driving while under the influence of alcohol. Billy will also pay the woman a total of 28,700 Swedish crowns in compensation for damages to the woman’s property, causing her pain, violating her integrity and causing her physical and psychological trauma.

"As a Nigerian who has lived and grown up in Britain, the way the developing world has been portrayed has always been a source of bafflement and great sadness. It seemed as if the press were obsessed with learning only about the war, the famine and the corruption. It was in this frame of mind that I happened across a magazine entitled Ovation, a celebrity magazine dedicated entirely to Nigerian endeavour and success both in Nigeria and in the diaspora."

"This paper analyzes the impact of established Diaspora on the reduction of poverty, and identifies ways in which policy interventions, especially from donors of official development assistance, might strengthen that impact. The new policy interest in Diasporas reflects a broader concern with globalization, and specifically the very recent appreciation of the volume of remittances to developing countries by emigrant workers and their descendents."

Grantmakers Without Borders funding list available

"Grantmakers Without Borders promotes funding for long-term social change in the developing world, but we find it impossible not to respond to the recent Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. There is no doubt that the injustice and marginalization faced by low-income communities in the Indian Ocean region are in large part to blame for the staggering number of deaths we are now witnessing. Mother Nature can be fierce, but her wrath is never so powerfully felt as where people are forced to live on the brink. At times like this it seems that all donors, no matter their theory of change, are compelled to respond. Grantmakers Without Borders has developed a list of organizations responding to the tsunami disaster for funders and donors interested in giving. We encourage you to visit our website, at www.gwob.net, to view these recommendations and to pass the link along to colleagues and friends."

Via Campesina launches relief fund

Via Campesina (http://www.viacampesina.org) - the global alliance of peasant, family farmer, farm worker, indigenous and landless peoples organizations, and other rural movements - calls for solidarity with the millions of people affected by the tsunami disaster and is launching a global fundraising campaign to channel assistance to affected communities of fisherfolk and peasants, for their own relief and reconstruction efforts, through grassroots organizations. Make a secure on-line credit card donation now by clicking on:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=4589

Organisations involved in relief efforts

World Health Organization / Pan American Health and Education Foundation
www.paho.org
* Action Aid
www.actionaid.org
* American Friends Service Committee (AFSC Crisis Fund)
www.afsc.org
* Care International
www.care.org
* Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders
www.msf.org / www.doctorswithoutborders.org
* Red Cross and Red Crescent
www.ifrc.org
* Salvation Army
www.salvationarmy.org
* Save the Children
www.savethechildren.org
* Oxfam
www.oxfam.org
* United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef
www.unicef.org
* United Nations World Food Programme
www.wfp.org
* UN refugee agency, UNHCR
www.unhcr.ch

TrustAfrica is seeking a consultant to help elaborate a strategy for collaboration between TrustAfrica and the African Diaspora. TrustAfrica is being established as an African grantmaking foundation supporting African solutions to the continent's most pressing challenges, including peace and conflict, regional integration, and citizenship and identity. TrustAfrica has been housed in the Ford Foundation since 2001 and will become independent and move to Africa in late 2005 or 2006. The Ford Foundation and other donors will provide initial funding for TrustAfrica's operations and its endowment. TrustAfrica will also raise additional funds from African sources to ensure it is self-sustaining, one of many actions TrustAfrica will undertake to ensure African ownership of its mandate.