According to the European Union's profile of Ghana, one-third of the 3 million Ghanaians who live abroad, are in either Europe or North America. According to Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Arie Van Der Wiel, many Ghanaian migrants find their way to their final destinations illegally and are therefore vulnerable to exploitation by migrant traffickers and some employers.

The Pan-African Parliament(PAP) opens an historic session in South Africa, bringing together for the first time elected representatives from Algiers to Antananarivo for debate on African issues. It has 265 members, five from each of the 53 countries. Each delegation must reflect the political diversity of the countries, meaning that members of the opposition must also be included.

"I will create a desk in both the President's Office and Foreign Affairs to coordinate the affairs of Ugandans in the diaspora. I am studying the question of parliamentary representation...and any other areas of Ugandan concentration in the diaspora. On the strategic issues the Movement has been facing." This is according to a recent speech by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

Last week in Nairobi at a summit of the leaders of the East African Community (EAC) countries the envisaged political federation of the region was given a new push. A committee has been set up to look at the modalities and submit its report to an ordinary summit of the leaders to be held November 30 this year.

This is a landmark progressive development with implications for other regions of Africa (ECOWAS, SADC, IGADD, etc) and the whole of Africa through the African Union. It is a good example that should spread and do so quickly. Unfortunately the media in the region and outside of it are not giving the matter the due consideration it deserves.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a firm believer in the federation, was so incensed by the media's lukewarm attitude that he branded Ugandan journalism and journalists 'useless' for not giving proper coverage to the issue. As a freelance member of the profession I will not go as far as the president who is not known for saying 'room for improvement ' where 'very bad' will fit. I don't think the local media is 'useless' instead I will say that it suffers from two serious (but politically curable) diseases: petty localism and external ideological dependence.

One makes it grab as headlines any local issues no matter how silly. The other makes it victim of 'download the downloadable' from the internet about any other issues that are an 'inch' outside the national boundaries and even more embarrassingly sometimes, national issues outside of the capital city!

In the 1960s the former British colonies of East Africa through the East African Community (EAC) were a beacon of regional integration envied by other regions, not just in Africa but even internationally. This was a period of nationhood and nationalism as former colonies asserted their right to govern themselves and exercise sovereignty over their affairs. Supranational organisations that required loss of sovereignty were not popular. In practice they operated as multilateral bodies cooperating on specified issues rather than integration agencies.

The late AM Babu, a radical icon in African Nationalism from Zanzibar and later a minister for Economic Development in Tanzania after his small island country was united with mainland Tanzania in the mid 1960s, used to reminisce about the early years of the East African Federation and the Pan Africanist dreams that inspired many of them in those days. He told us how ministers from the West European countries used to ask him and his colleagues how they were managing their federation without too much squabbles. These were days when the European Union was little more than a trading cartel around steel. By that time the EAC already had a common educational system and university, a common airline, and a communications and transport system.

Unfortunately, as the crisis of neocolonialism deepened across Africa the real gains of the union, rather than be a continuing source of further integration, became victim of bad politics and governance leading to its break up in the 70s. But even after its break up the remnants of the federation, in spite of division of assets, survived through infrastructure, both human and material. For instance telephones between the three countries remained local but more than this trade, commerce and movement of people have continued to defy the colonial boundaries and the internecine power struggles between the leaders over many years.

Indeed the political instability of a country like Uganda for most of the 70s up to the mid 1980s and Kenya in the Moi years succeeded in creating new regionally aware people who have had to live outside their countries among their neighbours. Many of the leaders were educated in each other's countries and therefore made friends across the region. This people to people contact and the force of interactive economic activities ensured that regionalism continued to survive in spite of the state elite. For instance Museveni remains popular in Tanzania especially in his old University of Dar es Salaam whereas Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa is more popular at Makere University. Many of the political leaders and activists were contemporaries at these universities.

After the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979 mostly through the efforts of the Tanzania Army and Ugandan exile groups based in Tanzania it was hoped that EAC would return to its glory days. But those were times when Kenya was a cold war darling of the West and had delusions of surviving and doing better than her neighbours. So ideological suspicions did not help rebuild the Union. The Obote 2 regime was also too unstable internally to be a credible regional player.

However with relative stability returning to Uganda from the late 80s under Museveni the idea of a renewed EAC began to flourish. Moi's Kenya, though the regional economic power with more to gain from further integration, remained suspicious of its neighbours and for much of the 80s and early 90s Kenya's reluctance slowed the movement back to integration. But Kenya was fast losing its 'oasis in an ocean of crisis' status as Uganda under Museveni became a new darling of the West with Aid money and 'generous' IMF/World Bank facilities turning the once basket case of Africa into another 'miracle'.

At the same time the pressures of globalisation were beginning to take their toll just as the cold war was thawing after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Like in all regions of the world the East African states were being driven by the forces of economic necessity in a predatory globalisation to move closer to each other. Consequently ideological and political suspicions were thrown aside as new efforts took place to restart the romance long suspended between the states. This culminated in the East African Cooperation treaty.

By this time Museveni's revolutionism that Moi had feared had become an economic counter-revolution with vestiges of his revolutionary past only surviving in his no party movement politics. Tanzania had also abandoned its Uhuru Na Ujama as privatization took roots and historical anti capitalist ideology of the country turned against collectivist solutions deemed socialist. The economic convergence of the states made it easier for them to see and deepen their integration efforts. Collective survival dictates the tempo.

There were cautious steps initially in order to avoid problems of the past and rebuild bridges but progress has been incremental since the late 1990s. The EAC has a parliament appointed from among elected legislatures in all the three countries. It has agreed to set up an East African court. It has signed Custom Union agreements and has a timetable for a common market and monetary Union. The final bloc in its regional integration efforts is a political federation of the states. It has also set conditions under which other states in the region can ascend, to membership. Rwanda, after its elections last year, should not have any obstacles in its ascension to full membership. If Burundi's peace process culminates in an elected government acceptable to the people it should also be able to gain full membership.

The bigger prize should have been the DRC but in the current circumstances one has grave doubts. However some of its regions, especially the volatile Eastern region, are culturally and economically part of the EAC therefore some real politic will be needed to accommodate that reality.

Uganda, that was the bane of the old EAC, has been very upfront and almost impatient in the current drive. In a twist to history, Tanzania that has been the home to both regionalism and Pan Africanism in the region, later became the one slowing down things. This was mainly due to the relative weakness of its emergent bourgeois interests who feared that Kenya capitalists would swallow them up.

There are many challenges ahead but regional federation is indispensable for a Pan African Union envisaged by the Constitutive Act of the African Union.

* 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]

Due to the humanitarian crisis currently occurring in Darfur, Sudan, the country has been in the headlines recently. Ten years ago, the decade old civil war between the Arab-dominated government in the north and the Christian and animist south caused thousands of children to flee to safety. Although the fighting is over, the children who were brought to the United States five years ago as the Lost Boys and Lost Girls of Sudan, continue to struggle in their new home.

TransAfrica Forum's Second Annual Student Network Conference will be taking place from November 19-21, 2004 in the United States. TransAfrica Forum seeks to provide a network for student activists and campus organizations, and to create opportunities for long-term relationships and collaborations with those groups and other progressive organizations in the U.S. who seek to influence U.S. foreign policy as it applies to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

One story that remains untold in all the various statistics about qualified Africans abroad is the pressure under which they are put to take up low paid jobs and generally to retool and downgrade on coming to the West. Indeed, Dirty Pretty Things, a 2002 film directed by Stephen Frears, details the story of those faceless, nameless immigrants who find themselves in England. Until they wangle a way of getting regular documents, they lead the hunted, humiliating lives of the illegal immigrant.

"Political Federation would make a critical difference, ushering in a fundamental integration of East African states. At the Pan African Movement, we remain more convinced than ever before that integration must be a central component in Africa’s response to an unfair world economic and trading system, which is heavily weighted against the vital interests of African people. To integrate is a question of not just development, but of the very survival of African people."

African churches in Dublin are growing in size and number. They reflect not only a growing community, but also one that is putting down strong roots, establishing its own amenities and services. It is thought there are around 15,000 Nigerians in Ireland, with most of them living in the capital.

I have had a chance to look at Farid Omar's article ‘Darfur at the Crossroads: Caught Between Western Hypocrisy and Muslim Complicity’. (Read it online at My impression is that while I can agree to some of the arguments he makes I am also in disagreement about some factual and interpretative errors in his discussion. I am going through his piece almost paragraph by paragraph in order to lay bare the discrepancies and factual inadequacies.

For a start, the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) have not been altogether silent about the genocide in Darfur, which is instigated, aided and abetted by the Khartoum government. In a recent report made by the BBC, 9th August 2004, entitled ‘Arab League backs Sudan on Darfur’, the reporter indicated that "Arab Foreign Ministers at an emergency session in Cairo backed Khartoum's measures to disarm Arab militias and punish human rights violators. They called on the UN to give Sudan more time to resolve the conflict. And Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Taha said he thought the UN's end of August deadline was impractical." In effect the report indicated that, "the Arab League has rejected any sanctions or international military intervention as a response to the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region." The Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Taha had indicated that, "We are really committed to disarm whoever is acting outside the law". But who armed the Janjaweed? He added that, "comprehensive stability was only possible if both the Arab Janjaweed militia and rebel groups disarmed."

It is possible to read into this, firstly, the indecisive and guarded complicity of the Arab League position on the tragedy of Darfur. Genocide is not something which can be given time to be reversed. The slaughter and butchery of 30 000 Furs (not Darfuris) is a matter which needs to be brought to a close immediately. In any part of the world today any extension beyond immediacy in terminating genocide would hardly be countenanced. In the present Sudanese conflict in Darfur with the Sudanese army plus the Janjaweed on one side and African nationalist rebels on the other, who are oppressors and oppressed?

Secondly, if you compare the stance of the Arab League to that of the United Nations you will notice an enormous gap in perception of the magnitude, dimensions and perceptions of the crisis. While some of us recognize in the crisis genocide and ethnic cleansing others see a question of disarming armed bandits and rebels as the heart of the matter. I am not aware of what the OIC has or has not said, but I would agree with Farid Omar that they appear to be "strangely silent". If that is the case, then that certainly amounts to implicit complicity.

I share Peter Takirambudde, Chief of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch's view that Sudan is "trying to manipulate opinion in the Arab world to hide the massive crimes it has committed against Sudanese citizens."

Magdi Abdelhadi of the BBC has observed, with regards to the Arab League's statement that "there were no surprises in the Arab League statement and Khartoum got what it wanted. The statement welcomed measures already taken by the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed and bring those responsible for human rights violations in Darfur to justice. The Arab foreign ministers also pledged to assist Sudan and the international community in resolving the conflict peacefully. The statement was very much in line with a report by an Arab League's fact-finding mission to Darfur earlier this year, which largely exonerated the Sudanese government from responsibility and laid the blame on a combination of factors, including protracted drought, tribal conflict and under-development in western Sudan." Of course human rights violators should be brought to book. Human rights violations are unacceptable in the modern world, whether such violators are Americans in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Arab authorities in the Sudan, or human rights criminals in the Great Lakes area.

True enough, "While western hypocrisy on the situation in Darfur is really problematic, Muslim complicity in the Darfur mayhem is equally disturbing. The Muslim people and their allies around the world should stand up for Darfuris, denounce and expose western double standards and condemn the AL and the OIC for their inaction and failure to put pressure on Sudan to contain the crisis in Darfur." There I have no problems with Farid Omar's views. But then he goes on to say that, "The western media has presented the political and humanitarian crisis in Darfur and broader conflict in Sudan as a race or religious war. This is a false paradigm. The conflict in Sudan is not one pitting the so-called Muslim-Arab North and the so-called Christian/animist South, or between the Arab Janjaweed militia working in collusion with the Sudanese government and the Black Africans in Darfur. The people of Sudan are all Africans, be they Black-Africans or Arab-Africans." Here I have a bone to pick with Omar. Certainly the various conflicts or the various fronts of war in the Sudan are not simply racial or religious. That is the crude and distorted simplification of the issue. But, we must not forget that the Fur are Muslims just like the Arabs in the Sudan. Therefore the conflict cannot be put down to religious differences. Then, what is it?

For years the Khartoum regime of Muslim fundamentalists have also been pursuing ethnic cleansing in the Nuba Mountains of Southern Kordofan with genocidal overtones against the Nuba who are also mostly Muslims. A similar tactic has been in place there, that is, using local Arab militias working hand in glove with Sudanese army units against the Nuba. In the South of the country the conflict is of much longer standing and can be said to have commenced in August 1955, with a period of low intensity conflict between1972 and 1983. Since 1983 over two million southern Sudanese have died as a result of the war.

In the case of the war in southern Sudan the international media has too often simplified the struggle as a conflict between a Christian and animist South against a Muslim North. The real fact of the matter is that it is a struggle between Arabs and Arabized Nubians and the Africans of the Sudan whether they are Fur, Zaghawa, Messalit and other similar groups in the west or the Ingessana in the east or the Beja/Hadendowa in the Kassala area adjacent to Eritrea. Some Nubians are now rejecting Arabism. The struggle in the Sudan is an age-old struggle between the forces for the Arabization of Africans and African nationalism, which rejects Arabization.

It is not simply a question of Islam against Christians and animists. I have in the past on many occasions indicated to friends in the Southern Sudan that they have for too long allowed their position to be sold short by playing to the international media and other interests which simply defined the struggle as one between Christians and animists in confrontation with Muslims. The explosion of media attention in the wake of the emergence of the Darfur crisis has underscored the falsity of the religious explanation of the conflict. If the Fur, Messalit, Zaghawa, Ingessana and Beja are Muslims certainly the struggle of the Sudan is not a religious conflict of Muslims and non-Muslims.

The history of the Arabs in the Sudan has been part of the history of the Arabs in Africa. Arabs entered Africa in the middle of the 7th century AD and have been steadily Arabizing Africans starting with the Berbers of northern Africa who till today have to a degree been resisting Arabization.

The Sudan and Mauritania are possibly the most decisive flash points in this process. Will Africans steadily accept to be culturally Arabized or will they resist Arabization and remain culturally rooted in their histories?

This is the real question of the Sudan and Africa. I say that I believe Africans prefer to remain African and not to become Arabs. I say this without prejudice to Arabs or those Africans who have become Arabized and wish to remain so. Just as much as Arabs have the right to protect their identity, history and culture, Africans also have a similar right. Just as much as Arabs wish to see the realization of Arab unity (el watani el arabi), Africans also most fervently wish to see the unity of Africans. The Arab League with all its weaknesses represents contemporary aspirations of Arabs for Arab unity.

As I have often argued, for as long as the pursuit of this ideal is conducted democratically for the freedom of Arab peoples, the ideal deserves the support of all progressive and well meaning people. But this must not be allowed to proceed geographically, politically, economically and culturally at the expense of Africans. Where does the border of the Arab world end and who are the people beyond the borders of the Arab world? Africans need to answer this question for themselves.

Today on the maps of the Arab League the Arab world includes about a third of Africa's geographical area. There are some of us who say enough is enough. No further expansion at the expense of Africans is tolerable. The notion Arab-Africans is a term used in the Sudan to hide the realities of Arabization. It is a concept, which has become in some ways a Trojan horse for Arab expansionism in Africa. Culturally and otherwise, people will always mix and adopt new identities, but this must not become a one-way traffic to Arabization and the cultural denationalisation of Africans.

In the broad historical experience of Africans two imperialisms can be pointed to, Arab and Western imperialism. Historically, Arab imperialism in Africa is older than western imperialism by a millennium. The day Africans realize that Arabs are not Africans and Africans are not Arabs but that the two peoples must live together in peace and with humanity towards each other their recognition of the African identity would have moved one step further and would have made a decisive conceptual move towards the ultimate achievement of African unity. The unity of Africa embraces historically, culturally and psychologically more directly the African Diaspora than the Arab north of Africa. In this sense, the African Diaspora is central to Pan-Africanism and African unity.

In a manuscript I am currently writing I have made the point that, if we want to maintain the rigour of the logic of the Diaspora link, we must, as Africans, define our reality on a historical and cultural basis. In this respect, geography is only useful in as far as it helps us to understand the historical and social process. We can therefore hardly define the reality of contemporary Africa as a geographical expression; that is, Africans as all who live on the continent of Africa. The argument has a resounding and irresistible flip-side, which is that, all who do not live on the continent or not born on the continent, are not Africans. This is the distorted logic, which pushes out the African Diaspora. We must not equate citizenship with nationality or cultural identity. A state may have people of different nationalities.

I do not agree that the so-called "race and religious analogy of the conflict is part of the ideological ploy of U.S. imperialism to generate anti-Arab hostility among African-Americans and Black Africans, to win support of African-Americans and Black African Christians for the US neo-Conservatives/Christian right project against Arab and Muslim Africans, and in particular against Sudanese Muslims. It is also aimed at undermining the long standing Afro-Arab solidarity that has historically striven against the forces of western imperialism, colonialism, apartheid and the occupation in Palestine."

Of course western imperialism must be denounced but so also must the Arabization of Africans be fought. It is ridiculous to bracket African-Americans with US neo-conservatives in this way. It is at best disingenuous and at worst mischievous. The point, which the Darfur crisis has forcefully brought home to many Africans in the Diaspora, is the fact that ultimately the definition and identity of Africans cannot be based on colour. In the Sudan it is not possible to differentiate African from Arab on the basis of colour and I am sure that with television available worldwide many Africans in the Diaspora who have for centuries been faced with white racism find it difficult to digest the fact that most Arabs in the Sudan have black faces. The point I have elsewhere made is that amongst Arabs colours range from black to blonde. The same is true for Jews. In years to come this may be more clearly true for Europeans.

Ultimately what defines an African from an Arab are cultural and historical belongings, not nature but nurture, not biology but rather culture. The black colour which is common for most Africans happens to be a miraculous bonus, in the sense that whereas most other major peoples of the world have other attributes they share as groups based on culture, religion, language, history and geography, mixed to different degrees, in the case of Africans in the absence of clearly unifying language and religion, colour has become a most useful blessing which makes most Africans recognizable from a good distance. But, in the future increasingly there will be many Africans who are not necessarily black. This is the way the world is moving and this is the future of humanity.

From my viewpoint, part of the tragedy of Darfur is that African nationalism in the Sudan has been conveniently split between what is going on in the west, south, east and northeast. Africans have so far failed to find sufficient ground to realize that they are all fighting the same war. The Arabist rulers in Khartoum have been clever at creating convenient and tactical truces, and thereby silencing and truncating the Southerner's struggle from the Fur, Ingessana, Nuba and Beja. This amounts to success for the policy of divide and rule, which has been in the past used to such consummation by successive Arabist regimes in Khartoum, who fear and deny the predominant African character of the Sudan. What al Bashir and the Khartoum clique fear most, is that the Arabist minority may lose control of the Sudan; that the African majority may exert its preponderant character.

It is most doubtful if the Arab League, in its present form, would readily accept a thoroughly democratic solution to the national question in the Sudan. But Africans are waking up. Sooner or later the African character of the Sudan as a democratic expression of the society will triumph.

I am happy with Farid Omar's philosophically inclusive sense of humanity. But, I fear the persistence of the confusion of Arab and African on the continent and beyond. This confusion, on this specific matter, appears to be more prevalent among Africans than non-Africans. We still do not seem to know or understand who we are. I hope we do not go into another major Pan-African meeting/congress with this confusion. If this happens, we would not have made any real headway since the last one. Let us not try to foist an African identity on people who do not want to be so regarded and who reject the African identity; who continue to despise and enslave Africans. I agree with Farid Omar when he says that, "the root causes of the Sudanese conflict are primarily political and can be located in totalitarian tendencies that have overtime, suppressed the evolution of popular democracy." While this diagnosis is right the point has to be seen in relationship to the long history of oppression, slavery, war, ethnic cleansing and now genocide.

The suggestion that external forces have fanned the Sudanese conflict is grossly exaggerated and misplaced. Blaming the conflict on American arms and money and right-wing evangelical groups in the US does not do credit to the Africans of the Sudan. The Africans of the Sudan are a group oppressed by the minority Arab elite in the country. As for the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the Sudan, we must remember that the Sudan as it is geographically represented today is like all African states an artificial creation of European powers. The British were anxious to control the whole of the Nile Basin in order to supply Egypt with its lifeline, the Nile waters.

Omar's contention that "the Sudanese government either has no interest in resolving the crisis or lacks the capacity to do so", is spot on. As for the AU I agree with Farid Omar that the about "300 Peace Monitors it has deployed in Darfur is grossly inadequate." Again Farid Omar's observation is pertinent when he writes that, "Like the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conference, the Muslim and Arab media have also maintained a strange silence.” In sharp contrast to events in the Middle East, coverage on the horrific Darfuri scene by Al-Jazeera and other leading Arab Satellite Televisions such as the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya is dismally marginal. Failure by Muslim and Arab media to adequately cover the grisly events in Darfur smacks of complicity.

Africans need to read the lessons right in this behaviour and attitude of the Arab media. The simple truth about all the wars in the Afro-Arab borderlands is that, at best we should be able to nationally coexist in peace. But if we cannot live together in peace, then we must go our separate ways without rancour, pain and mutual torment. The members of the global community have fortunately agreed as standing international protocol, since the Treaty of Versailles, that in our times, nations and peoples have the right to self-determination.

This protocol applies equally well to the African people of the Sudan.

* Kwesi Kwaa Prah is Director of the Centre for the Advanced Studies of African Societies. This article has been used with permission of the author.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Festival Eritrea is being held in Toronto between the 4th and 6th September. Eritreans from Toronto will be joined by many from throughout the country. There will be a number of events including guest speakers, fashion shows and a talent contest.

On Friday 3rd September, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London is hosting a workshop on the role of the diaspora in the post conflict reconstruction in the DRC. The event is free.

This Sunday, 5th September, sees the launch of a new progressive weekly radio programme, Africa Meet Africa, on Pacifica Radio in Washington DC. The programme aims to showcase events throughout the continent of Africa and its. Listeners can tune in from throughout the world via the station's webstream.

Today the Security Council of the United Nation is meeting to discuss the pitiful situation in Darfur. The same body had given the Government of Sudan an ultimatum of one month (which ended Tuesday 31 August) to disarm its killer allies, the Janjaweed Militias, that have been running rampage with impunity in the Western region of the country.

Many independent observers, humanitarian NGOs and concerned people doubted then that the Sudan government would meet this deadline or even had any intention of doing so. The suspicion was that the government would use that time, albeit a short one, to gain more time and pretend it was doing something in order to ease the mounting diplomatic pressures on it.

The UN resolution was not just about the Government of Sudan - it also called upon the armed rebels to observe a ceasefire and cease any violence against innocent civilians. Further the resolution called for active resumption of peace talks under the auspices of the African Union and broad support for the AU's peace monitors.

One month later has there been any positive development to assuage the doubters? The sad answer is a definitive “No”. The humanitarian crisis continues to worsen for the people of Darfur and all kinds of humanitarian agencies are feeding fat on their misery through endless appeals, a huge chunk of which may not reach Darfur. On the political front, there have been more talks about talks than a real political breakthrough in addressing the political issues behind the conflict.

The Abuja talks hosted by General Obasanjo as Chair of the AU and also Chair of the AU peace and Security Council is more or less in impasse. There were lots of motions without movement. However in order to keep the efforts on track a lot of diplomatic speak is being employed to dress up the situation and talk up little gains.

The small gains include, one, the rebels attended the Abuja talks at senior level thereby abandoning their initial misguided belligerency in boycotting a previous AU talk in Addis in July. Two, the Sudan government by sitting at the table with the rebels, has diplomatically and politically acknowledged that it was recognising rebel political groups even if it does not recognise their aims. Three, the meeting also offered opportunity for the AU and others interested in the Sudan conflict to learn more about the complexity of the many conflicts in the Sudan.

Many had (wrongly for years) seen Sudan only in terms of its Arab/African fault lines or the religious prism of Islam/ Christianity. In Darfur these assumptions take different permutations. Also many naively assume that peace will break out once the SPLA and Khartoum long-negotiated peace deal takes full effect. While the North/South conflict may have the most prominence internationally Sudan has been fighting all kinds of bitter wars on many fronts with all kinds of marginalized and disaffected sections of its huge country, the largest on the African continent. That simplistic understanding of Sudan has led many well-meaning peace initiatives by different African states and other members of the international community to collapse.

However the Arab/African dynamics of the conflict is threatening the effectiveness of AU action and seriously endangering its consensus. It is playing into the hands of militants in the conflict especially in Khartoum. So what would the UN Security Council be deciding today on Darfur? China and Russia and Arab allies of Sudan including some African states, ignobly blocked a more censorious resolution that would have made sanctions mandatory if Khartoum failed to deliver. Now there will be further negotiations on what to do.

Allies of Khartoum will continue to insist that it is doing enough and willing to do more but that the time was short. Its opponents will retort that it has no intention of doing anything but merely buying more time to defeat or considerably weaken the rebels militarily and also intimidate the civilians into submission. The evidence for the past one-month does not augur well for the government.

The case for a more effective pressure to be brought to bear on the government is clear. While the UN's support for the AU effort is most desirable it is also important that the AU's engagement be more robust. It should move beyond peace monitoring to peace -making and enforcement. It has given too much room for Khartoum to bog it down in procedural and administrative issues. The constitutive Act of the Union unlearnt the dubious notion of 'territorial integrity and sovereignty ' of the old OAU which became the Dictators' charter. Thus there are now clear grounds under which the Union can intervene in the 'internal affairs' of its member states. The Darfur situation is a clear test of Africa's commitment to new ways of governance and solidarity.

Even if for political reasons the AU may not want to see the situation in Darfur as 'genocide', by any definition, it is a gross violation and systematic abuse of rights of Darfur Africans on a mass scale.

The AU cannot just be negotiating small numbers of troops with Khartoum but must be more aggressive in enforcing its mandate. This will mean more troops, which a number of states have indicated they are willing and able to contribute. A number of human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch have called for Chapter VII of the UN charter to be invoked so that the AU troops on the ground can be increased and its mandate expanded to include protection of civilians.

The silenced voices of those killed and being killed right now and the agony of those fleeing death stalking their villages and towns, not to talk of the agony of the innocent women being raped and children being traumatised in Darfur demands no more words or yet another plan but direct enforceable action against the Janjaweed militias. Asking or relying on the Government of Sudan to do this will be like asking turkeys to vote for an early Christmas. The time for action is now: no more excuses from Khartoum.

* 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]

Strategies must be identified and implemented to bring healing and reconciliation between Africans in the homeland and in the Diaspora, a government minister has said. Government was encouraging the return of those in the Diaspora, because by knowing their roots and knowing what actually took place during the slave trade, the healing and reconciliation process would have begun, the minister said.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the City University (London) have embarked on research on the contributions Zimbabweans in the diaspora make or are interested in making towards the development of their country. The research is targeted at Zimbabweans living in the United Kingdom and in South Africa.

Global Mappings: A Political Atlas of the African Diaspora is an interactive website that demonstrates linkages between transnational black politics, social movements and world historical events of the 20th century.

Many Ethiopians, who left the country for either political or economic reasons, are often heard confessing that in all respect life for Ethiopians in the Diaspora is not as glamorous as one is led to believe. Obviously, it is always a bitter struggle to survive in an alien society. As the saying goes, you have dignity only in your own country. Most Ethiopians in the Diaspora do not seem to be comfortable in their second home.

"A prophet has honour" as the saying goes - but "not in his village" is the concluding refrain. How else could one begin to understand the recent tragedy that befell prominent African literary and political figure, Ngugi wa Thiongo and his wife on their maiden visit to Kenya meant to end Ngugi's almost two decades of exile from the dictatorship of the KANU regime that had detained him without trial and persecuted him into and even in exile.

They were violently attacked and viciously robbed in the apartment they were staying in -a relatively secure area of Nairobi, a city that is dubiously mimicking the Nigerian commercial city of Lagos or South Africa's Joburg in notoriety. It is no wonder that Nairobi is now infamously referred to by residents as Nairobbery!

The couple took a very brave and courageous stance of disclosing the full details of their ordeal, which included the rape of Ngugi’s wife. What a way to be welcomed back to a country that you have given so much of your life, energies and resources for. It is an Afropessimist’s wish come through and true!

Our hearts go out to Ngugi and his partner and we send our solidarity at this grave hour and wish them the courage and conviction to weather this storm. If Ngugi had imagined this and written it in one of his novels or political essays many people would have dismissed it as fantasy. It is indeed true that life is, unfortunately, often stranger than fiction.

If this had happened during the nightmarish days of the Moi dictatorship many, including myself, would have been quick to point to the ruling regime and its hirelings as the culprits, thereby giving the criminal attack a political colouring. While Ngugi may not be a card carrying member of either the ruling Rainbow Alliance parties or any of the formal opposition parties no one is seriously suggesting that the attack was politically motivated. From all the reports of his hugely welcomed return home there has been nothing to suggest that he has uttered or done anything to ‘provoke’ this attack.

Despite several years of exile and political activism his return had largely been non political, to the great disappointment of many of his former comrades and youthful activists who had hoped that Ngugi's temporary return would fuel some political fires and provide a focus for more sustainable opposition to the faltering leadership of the Rainbow politicians. But Ngugi had stuck to his literary, cultural and academic activities.

So one has to conclude that the attack was criminal rather than partisan. However it does have many political implications. If a prominent "son of the soil" well known locally and internationally cannot feel and be secure in his native capital city then who on earth is safe in that city? Kenya has become like Nigeria where the minister of Justice was murdered by hired killers and up to now the killers and their sponsors "have not been found".

If a Minister of Justice cannot get justice where is the rule of law in that country? Who will blame Ngugi if he goes back to the U.S. and never makes any attempt to return to Kenya again? I hope and trust that this tragic incident will not diminish their political activism and vision for a secure and democratic Kenya in a humane world.

Crime against persons and property and the gratuitous violence that often attend them are serious problems for many African countries. Standard left-wing, progressive views will try to explain away these things as symptoms of deeper structural problems of inequalities and injustices in "the system" whereas right-wing persons will see these as "just criminals who deserve no sympathy". I don't know whether it is old age catching up with me but I am beginning to find faults with many of my comrades on the left. I am still not comfortable with the rightist instinct to personalize the issues but I am more and more drawn to "personal responsibility" of the offenders no matter the circumstances.

Nobody forced those people to plan and execute their violent crime against Ngugi and his partner. Worse still they needed not rape their victim and the physical torture suffered by both of them were simply gratuitous. The physical wounds will heal but the psychological stress and trauma will take long for both his partner and Ngugi.

Let us hope that their courage in not hiding the horrible truth may actually help them to deal with it in their private lives and may also provoke further action and debate on general insecurity across the country but especially the gender dimensions of generalized violence in many of our countries. Rape remains a taboo topic in many of our societies yet it is taking place everyday in all kinds of situations, armed robbery being one of the extreme contexts including war. It is about time we stop the denials and defensiveness around it and face it squarely: Rape is worse than death therefore its perpetrators must be dealt with sternly and victims supported by various means.
Pole Sana, to our good friend, Ngugi, and his partner.

* 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]