Mozambique decriminalises homosexuality and abortion

Mozambique decriminalised homosexuality on Monday when a new penal code came into force that swept away old Portuguese colonial laws, in a victory for campaigners for gay rights in Africa. The new penal code, which was announced last December by the then president, Armando Guebuza, also decriminalises abortion after lobbying by civil rights organisations.

As Burundi Goes To The Polls, Journalism Is A High Risk Job

For the families of journalists like me in Burundi, life has been hell these past few weeks, especially since street protests began in April against the president’s plans to run for a third term.

Children haven’t been to school since then. Every day my son asks me when he do will do his homework. He remembers that the demonstrations started as he come home one Friday with a homework assignment. One day I had to ask his headmaster to open the school gates for a few minutes just so he could go in and feel some relief. It didn’t work.

The official discourse is reassuring, but the economic, political and social decline continues. Our families don’t understand how we can choose this career. “This job is death,” my sister told me recently.

“Papa, did they shoot at your computer,” my son asked me once. My boy likes computers. Many journalists had their computers riddled with bullets after private media houses were attacked in the wake of a failed coup bid in May.

“Son, it’s time to do something else. I’m afraid for you,” said my mother in a tearful phone conversation recently.

For journalists working for private or foreign media, it’s as if our work has become a crime.

But think the whole community is under threat. Today it’s journalists; tomorrow it could be shopkeepers, or doctors.

As a journalist and citizen I had always hoped that what’s happening now would not come to pass in Burundi. Events seem to evoke the old demons of destruction and violence. (Civil war ravaged Burundi between 1993 and 2005.)  Even before today’s legislative polls, the elections had already claimed victims: tens of thousands of people have fled the country and many have also taken flight inside.

Ever since the coup bid, reporters have gone into hiding, including myself as well as colleagues from both private and state media.  I personally chose not to leave Burundi for a neighbouring country, but around 50 journalists have fled and some are living in refugee camps.

The closure of private media “is a major setback for freedom of expression, because there are no more voices that contradict those of the government, no more independent sources about what is happening now,” Jean Regis Nduwimana, a professor of communications, told me.

He added that he feared the country was at risk of falling prey to “a quasi-totalitarian regime which only wants to hear its own voice heard on state media.”

These days moving around with recording devices, laptops or smart phones is very risky. Staying at home all the time is impossible but travel has to be done with great caution. Many journalists say they are followed. Some have had their houses attacked. The most recent case of this was of Voice of America reporter Dianne Nininahazwe, who was also followed.

We journalists expected private media to be reopened before polling began. But it seems we are going to have to wait for that, nobody knows for how long.

Over the past week I saw men lying on the ground bleeding after grenades were thrown from car windows. Being a journalist now is to live the pain of others and to forget one’s own. We have all lost loved ones in the past but the wheels of history in Burundi are still turning and the same mistakes are being made. We continue to shed tears for our friends and family. People are still burying their loved ones.

Our country’s greatest curse is that people never try to walk in others’ shoes.

I’ve heard government officials describe those protesting as bringers of bad luck. This has gradually become a conflict although the government says 99.9 percent of the country is calm. But it’s not normal for people to flee a country when elections come around. Can you imagine more than 100,000 refugees? Children separated from their parents, not going to school, who can no longer sleep, who are in camps, at risk of cholera and malnutrition?

About 10 days after the failed coup, journalists working for foreign media and visiting correspondents were summoned by the National Communications Council. I arrived late. I had considered not showing up at all; I thought I might find myself behind bars. This place makes you paranoid. At the meeting, we were warned, accused of only covering the demonstrations when the ruling party was in full campaigning mode, of encouraging the protestors, of only talking to refugees when 10 million people had remained in Burundi.

Once when I tried to interview a witness to an attack he refused to talk to me, saying he didn’t want to die.

Gunfire and grenade blasts rang out in parts of Bujumbura on Saturday night, and again on Sunday night. For hours, we had no idea who was shooting or why. State radio announced three people had been killed on Saturday night. The police spokesman was mysteriously unreachable.

All this makes for a fearful climate. I can see no cause for calm. Burundi’s former partners have pulled out, as have election observers.

Gunfire in a country the government says is calm and the withdrawal of the opposition from the race, and widespread calls from the international community to delay the polls are signs that we are on a slippery slope and that that the return will be hard.

by Désiré Nimubona from here

Critique of De Leon's First Stage Socialism and Labour Time Vouchers

The Critique of the Gotha Programme remained an unfinished sketch which Karx Marx had not intended for publication. As a result this text remains fragmentary and inconsistent. What Marx was dealing with in the Gotha Programme was communist society not as it has developed on its own foundations but, on the contrary, just as it was emerging from capitalist society.

       Karl Marx's discussion of the future socialist society remained fragmentary and experimental. He never attempted to offer a blueprint for a future socialist society. He remained convinced that the success of Socialism depended in the last analysis on the historical circumstances that by nature vary from one country to another. Karl Marx was at most times uncertain concerning the course which Socialism was to pass through. However, he remained convinced that the workers had no ideals to realise apart from setting free the elements of the new society with which the old collapsing bourgeois society is pregnant.

          Trotskyism, Anarchism and Bolshevism are heavy-handed definitions with 19th century traditions. They remain what they are: violent versions of socialism and everyone using them stands to be ridiculed. The International Union of Socialists, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Independent Socialist Party are all leftist petty-bourgeois anarchical movements embroiled in the post-WWI socialist movements. They follow the traditions of Leninism and vanguard political socialism interested by usurping political power from the state through Trade Union labour militancy.

          Thus De Leon's interest in Market Socialism under labour-time vouchers. After the workers have usurped political power from the state, the bourgeois class would automatically abolish itself and become a part of the classless socialist society; the bourgeoisie cannot be conceived to remain as a distinct sect within socialist society.

          To believe in first stage Socialism is to discredit the vision of Socialism as a universal realisation of a classless, moneyless and stateless society. Socialism can only be propagated through a socialist party organically composed of working class members. Socialism must not be spear-headed by a vanguard of think-tank intellectuals. After Socialism has been universally realised the need for a specialised leadership would abolish itself-the Socialist parfies would be disbanded. The eradication of capitalism would denote the end of the market system and commodity exchange.

          The whole edifice of De Leon's infatuation with Socialism hinges upon belief in first-stage Socialism under a market system in which the allocation of individual needs would be evaluated upon an exchange mechanism. Labour time vouchers do not differ from money; they are all units of labour exchange. The critics of Karl Marx fail to appreciate the differences between the two stages of Socialism and thus confuse the first stage of Socialism with the second stage. They fail to appreciate the fact that during the first stage the production relations still remain dependent upon the exchange values between different individuals unpacified from the class divisions inherent under the division of labour.

          It is only during the second phase of Socialism that the market system finally abolishes itself, when human labour is freed from money and taxes and that we can inscribe on the banners of working class the slogan: To each according to his needs, and from each according to his capabilities. Needs and talents are freed from money and price restrictions and become mere activities taking place in a classless and non-market society. Needs are not reckoned under demand prices in a scarcity society, but as an individual claim. Thus Socialism will achieve a universal high standard of living and would solve the riddle of poverty.

          Trade unions are representatives of working class organised industrial militancy against private capital. They fight for wage increments, not for the eradication of private capital. Trade unions cannot be tumed into jumping boards to Socialism unless when these unions are under the influence of socialist agitators. Yet trade unions even under the influence of socialist agitators remain what they are: labour arbitration movements.

          Trade unions cannot exist under socialist society because there won't be a distinct class to defend.

          Trade unions are a phenomenon of antagonistic class interests and work to organise working class industrial resistance against private capitalism. Thus a vote for a trade union is a vote for a wage increment while a vote for a socialist party is a vote for unrestrained consumption.

          Under capitalism marriage, love and happiness become inhibited by income conventions. Free socialisation becomes restricted. Class barriers check and put limits upon labour mobility. The working class sanctify themselves under the protection of trade unions, the first expression of working class organised resistance against private capital.

          Thus trade union movements and labour associations cannot by themselves succeed in usurping political power from the state.

K. Mulenga, 
Chimwemwe. Kitwe,
 ZAMBIA

Stateless in Sahel

Thousands of refugee children in western Mali are at risk of being stuck in the legal limbo of statelessness, which could mean little or no access to health care and higher education.

While the Malian government, along with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), has issuing birth certificates to almost 8,000 children born to Mauritanian parents who took refuge in Mali between 1989 and 2014, the majority still have no legal paperwork linking them to either their country of origin or their country of asylum.

“Because these children were born in exile, their births were never registered,” said Mamadou Keita, who works with the local NGO Stop Sahel in Kayes, where the majority of the Mauritanian refugees have settled.  “When a child is born in Mali, the birth needs to be declared within one month… After one month, it becomes complicated and has to go through the courts,” he explained. But because these children were born to refugee parents, many of whom live in remote communities, they never went through this legal process. “A birth certificate allows them to plan for a future,” Stop Sahel’s Keita said. “For example, it’s necessary to apply for higher education and receive study grants.”

Boubacar's parents fled inter-communal clashes in Mauritania more than 20 years earlier and never returned.

“I was born in Mali,” Boubacar told IRIN. “I call myself Malian. Mali is my home.”

But because his parents never registered his birth at the mayor’s office or local health clinic, the law considers him to be neither Malian nor Mauritanian.  This is despite the fact that both his parents and grandparents hold refugee status in Mali and are Mauritanian citizens. Without a birth certificate, Boubacar and the more than 7,800 other children like him in Mali are unable to receive state services, such as health care and other social protection services, or officially register for school after grade six.

For those refugee children wishing to stay in Mali permanently, unless they obtain a birth certificate they will never be able to register for a national ID card or passport, nor be they eligible to apply for citizenship in either Mali or Mauritania once they turn 18. It will also be difficult for them to officially marry or, one day, be issued a death certificate.

“These refugees have been living in communities in Kayes for years. They have their businesses…they are well integrated,” said Isabelle Michal, a public information officer with UNHCR in Bamako.  “Birth certificates are just the legal component of the integration process. They protect children who would otherwise risk statelessness and they open the door for possible citizenship, local integration and social cohesion.”

This issue of stateless refugee children isn’t unique to Mali.  Worldwide, more than 10 million people have no official nationality, according to UNHCR. Many of them were born to refugee parents. Others were left without a country after borders were redrawn or new states emerged.

Beware Of New Alliance Land Grabs

Report for ActionAid International (June 2015)

 Ten African countries have signed up to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition – the G8 countries’ main strategy for supporting agriculture in Africa that was launched in 2012. As the New Alliance has been under way for three years, some of its likely impacts are becoming clearer. This briefing – covering Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania and Senegal – shows that some large companies involved in the New Alliance are already accused of taking part in land grabs in some countries. It also presents new research to argue that the initiative is further increasing the risk of rural communities losing their access to and control over land to large investors, largely through policy commitments on land titling and land reform. Implicated in these reforms and risks of land grabs are the G8 donor countries bankrolling the New Alliance and the European Union. These governments must stop all engagement in and support for the New Alliance and replace it with genuine initiatives to support small-scale food producers and advance sustainable agriculture.

from here

The essence of socialism

Socialism will solve the antagonism between civil society and the state. The political state as defender of sectional interests of the ruling class will disappear. The essence of socialism is to eradicate the existing production relations which are based on commodity exchange, the use of money, and trade. The hoax of a market mechanism will be abolished once and for good. Dialectical Marxism And Scientific Socialism aims at creating a stateless and equal society through self-realisation by the workers and toilers to free themselves from the yoke of capital.

The teachings of dialectical Marxism do not envisage that violent military insurrections are the first stage in the creation of Socialism. Sogialism will not start from above. Neither can it be imposed but will be the outcome of the existing antagonisms within capitalist society.

Inflation, unemployment and labour unrest are social vices predominant in every capitalist nation. Under capitalism the inherent antagonisms between capital and labour is truly exemplified in the perpetual existence of crises. Exploitation depicts a state of complete alienation: the negation of the workers from the fruits of their labour. Under capitalism the social institutions of producing and distributing goods are wholly owned by the wealthy capitalist class.

Under socialism these social institutions are vested in the whole population and are utilised for the purpose of meeting the needs of every individual member of society. The socialist premises of Karl Marx's dialectical materialism can only be realised when political and economic relations existing under capitalism have been abolished by the communal ownership of economic institutions.

After the working class have taken over the management and ownership of every form of economic and entrepreneur activity from the capitalist and ruling class and have dispensed with ownership and dissolved the bureaucratic methods of civil society, the vacuum of economies of scalewhich had been preserved under scarcity conditions by the capitalist producers will be instantaneously filled. There will occur a general improvement in people's living standards under socialism because goods will no longer be restricted by prices but shall be produced for targeted consumers relative to the demand or needs.

The establishment of a "communist" state in Russia by the Bolsheviks supposedly on the principles of Marxist dialectics brought Marxism into disrepute. Leninism posed a great threat to Marxism during the epoch of imperialism especially among those philosophical circles in which dialectical materialism was held in esteem.

The social and economic conditions under which the Russian revolution took place were not conducive to the realisation of a socialist revolution. That is to say that the historical conditions for socialism were non-existent in Russia at the time. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" as was then conceived by Lenin and the Bolsheviks was a far cry from what was propounded by Marx. Whereas to Karl Manes own interpretation the "dictatorship of the proletariat" entailed universal working class activity, to Lenin and the Bolsheviks it meant a totalitarian regime under a dictator. Lenin emphasised it very strongly that a state run on military precision was what Russia needed most.

We Socialists have long been advocating that what was established in Russia by Lenin was not socialism. We have postulated our assumptions on the fact that historical conditions which give rise to socialism did not obtain in Russia at the time. Russia was not ripe for socialism. 

KEPHAS MULENGA

 (Zambia).

Drought and HIV

In California, the drought is serious. Shortages mean short showers, brown lawns and empty swimming pools. But in sub-Saharan Africa, drought spreads disease, including the still-rampant HIV virus. The phenomenon is more sociological than ecological: Slim harvests slash farmers’ incomes, forcing them to find new ways to earn money. Some turn to sex, according to a new study in The Economic Journal. In a recent article from Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE):

Analyzing data on more than 200,000 individuals across 19 African countries, the research team finds that by changing sexual behavior, a year of very low rainfall can increase local infection rates by more than 10 percent. That means condoms and sex education aren’t all that’s needed to thwart the epidemic’s spread. Affected farmers also need economic change to help them weather the dry period, without sacrificing their health.

“These are the people who really suffer when the rains fail, and who are forced to turn to more desperate measures to make ends meet,” co-author Marshall Burke, PhD, a fellow at the FSE, said. 

Ethiopia: Massacres For Land Grab Continue

ne indReports surface of ‘massacre’ of Hamar tribespeople in Ethiopia

Survival International has received reports that violent conflict between Ethiopian soldiers and Hamar pastoralists has left dozens dead.
The Hamar, like the other tribes of the Lower Omo Valley, are victims of the government’s policy of “villagization.”
They are being evicted to roadside villages without their consent, and their ancestral grazing lands are being sold off to investors for commercial plantations.

These land grabs have already led to starvation in some parts of the Lower Omo Valley.
Tensions have been rising as a result of these evictions and, at the end of May, Hamar were reportedly attacked by soldiers with mortars and semi-automatic weapons.
A news blackout imposed by the government makes it impossible to know the exact number of casualties, but one expert has referred to what took place as a “massacre.”

Some observers have also linked the violence to the failure of the government to investigate the alleged rape of Hamar girls by local government officials, and to the prosecution of Hamar men for hunting on their ancestral homelands.
For several years, evictions have been accompanied by other serious human rights abuses in the Lower Omo Valley, including beatings, rape and arbitrary arrest.
One Hamar refugee told Survival, “The government told us that if we don’t give into them we will be slaughtered in public like goats.”

In response to Survival’s campaign, international donors to Ethiopia visited the region in August 2014. However, they have yet to release the reports from their investigation, despite formal requests by Survival to the European Union and the UK and US governments to do so.

Reports indicate that the soldiers are still in the Lower Omo and are now threatening the Mursi and Bodi, the Hamar’s neighbors, with violence. According to oigenous person currently in the region, “They say they will kill us. We are now crying a lot. Crying to ourselves.” 

 from here

Nigeria's Agenda for "Change" = More For The Legislators

Nigerian lawmakers will soon pocket $45 million as “wardrobe allowance.” All that - and a lot more - in a country with a minimum wage of about $80 and where more than half the states have not paid workers for months. Pathological greed! 

Wind the critically slurred legislative tape back to the first National Assembly of the Fourth Republic. It began sometime in 1999, you’d recall. That was the period the incautious yet irrepressible Chuba Okadigbo, then a brand new senator of our perpetually blighted Republic, first gave an inkling of what the legislators had in stock for an already battered people. A furniture allowance of N5m each had just been announced by one unfeeling government agency for 109 senators, and something a little less for their 360 equally rapacious partners stationed in the House of Representatives.
 
“What!” Nigerians screamed in ear-splitting anger. They wondered why newly elected legislators would be asking for that much for their convenience in a country that had been robbed blind and severely wrecked by the retreating military oligarchy. Typical of him, Okadigbo – Oyi as he was then widely saluted by his admirers and subjects – poured cold water on the issue by declaiming flamboyantly that if anyone cared to know, he was not in Abuja to live like a cockroach. Since that open display of arrogant indiscretion, Nigerian legislators have not looked back in their avowed journey of mindless plunder.
 
It has since assumed the tale of as you cut off their finger, they find new ways to adorn it with a diamond-studded ring, thus lending strong credence to the widely held view that more than being legislators, these so-called lawmakers are nothing but a terminally dependent class of Nigeria’s prebendal state. In their heedless quest for material and sensual pleasures, they have only stopped short of demanding from the state the power to keep permanent suites in the poshest hotels across the country for as long as their tenure lasts. And who says they won’t soon get to that point?
 
So bad it is that even in this era of clamour for a decided “change,” they are not showing any faint sign of taming the odious grab-grab mentality. There is no other name for this kind of behaviour other than pathological greed. Stretching it further to accommodate synonyms in three local languages, the Yoruba would call it iwa wobia; in Igbo they would say it’s something like anyan ukwu, while the Hausa will see it as typical halin azzalumai.
 
In a few days, these azzalumai of the 8th National Assembly will shamelessly stretch their hands to pocket about N9bn ($45million) – senate president, Bukola Saraki, says the figure is lower, without giving the real figure – courtesy of the Nigerian state, for what they call wardrobe allowance. Last week, it was reported that the preening new Senate President (the de facto President of the Federal Republic) was still operating from his personal residence because the N27.1bn naira ($135million) castles being built by the government for principal officers of the National Assembly were still under construction. All these in a country with a minimum wage of N18,000 (about $80); a country where more than half the states have not paid workers for months.
Whatever the real figures of the official extravagance, it is one story that leaves a sour taste in the mouth. This shameless affront or iwa wobia by our certified anyan ukwus is coming at a time of intense expectation of total break from the ignoble past, a period when citizens are yearning for new ways of running public office in Nigeria.
 
In this period of national emergency, of debilitating and fast dwindling national revenue, when an overwhelming population of government workers and their families are crying due to starvation occasioned by non-payment of salaries for several months, you would expect the legislators to say NO, not again; you would expect them to reject with unequivocal bluntness the imposition of any privilege, deserved or not, that seems to depict them as insensate gorgers. And this criminal and silly wardrobe allowance, certainly, is a typical example of that insensitivity.
In 2004, Robert Rotberg, the US professor of governance and foreign affairs, among other qualifications, described the Nigerian leadership as “predatory kleptocrats” and “puffed-up posturers”. We now know the class that largely informed that unflattering but apt description.
 
If the lawmaking business in Nigeria is truly about the people why, for instance, would a David Mark, a Bukola Saraki, an Ike Ekweremadu, a Yakubu Dogara, a Stella Oduah, a Remi Tinubu or any other legislator collect money from the state to clothe him/herself in these lean times or any other time for that matter? In the sixteen years of David Mark in the Senate (eight as Senate President) what sort of clothing has he not worn at the expense of the state that he would now again rely on the people’s money to replenish his stock? When will these people ever think of denying themselves some things in the interest of the common good?
 
Why would a Bukola Saraki, who spent eight years as the governor of a state, been a senator for the past four years, and recently elected Senate President, not feel any scruple collecting money for what they call wardrobe allowance when there are hundreds of thousands of children orphaned by Boko Haram and homeless victims of unending ethnic/religious conflicts sleeping under sub-human conditions in makeshift Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across the country without food to eat, not to talk of clothes on their backs? Who cares what legislators wear so long as at they make laws that will improve the lives of the people? They could go to the National Assembly naked for all we care! After all, most of them are flabby imposters and we don’t think their nakedness would excite anybody.
 
Sadly, not a whimper yet of outrage from legislators including, Ben Bruce and the boisterous Dino Melaye, who so far have been most vocal in the ironically feeble crusade to trim the cost of maintaining lawmakers in the National Assembly. Although it’s heart-warming that the duo has expressed interest in reducing the cost of governance through personal sacrifices, they must focus on the attitude of the Senate in general and its leadership in particular, if they expect to be taken seriously.
 
Riding around Abuja (from the National Assembly to his residence) in a black, expansive Mercedes Benz in a 15-car convoy that includes a bomb disposal vehicle, a state-of-the-art-ambulance, motorcycle outriders and a retinue of aides and security personnel, Saraki is already carrying on like a latter-day emperor, in blatant contrast to the “change” mantra on which his party, APC, campaigned and was voted in as the “governing” party.
Saraki’s Maitama neighbourhood is daily assailed by the raucous blare of siren from his long and needless convoy. This obscenity, a throwback to the David Mark era, won’t be markedly different from what obtains in the neighbourhood of Saraki’s deputy as well as those of the Speaker and his deputy. Just imagine the cost of keeping these vehicles on the road and maintaining these retinues of aides and, of course, the inconvenience for ordinary citizens!
 
If this is the “change” the APC talks about, then it means the “change” that brought it to power was a mere slogan. Nigerians were deceived to get their votes. President Muhammadu Buhari, the symbol of the leadership of Nigeria, surely has his work cut out for him. While we believe in the principle of separation of power, President Buhari must defy the so-called godfathers and show leadership because, in the end, he is the President of the Federal Republic.
 
The last time we heard from him it was that his age might affect his performance. Mr President, you were not voted to represent Nigeria at the under-17 World Cup. You were elected president to lead. Apart from showing good example, all you need to do is put the right people in the right places (a test of that will be when you send your list of ministers to the Senate), empower state institutions to do their work effectively and take bold actions in the interest of the masses.
 
The style of the present order must not be a carry-over of the abomination of the last 16 years. As a first step, the President should immediately meet with APC legislators in the National Assembly and impress on them the need to reject forthwith the satanic wardrobe allowance. 

from here

UK Aid Brings Hardship and Displacement for Tanzanian Farmers

OI_Report_Irresponsible_Investment.pdf

Norfund, the UK aid department, and Capricorn are funding the British company Agrica’s industrial rice plantation in Mngeta, Tanzania, which is destroying the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, driving them into debt, and impacting the local environment, according to new research by The Oakland Institute released today in collaboration with Greenpeace Africa and Global Justice Now.
  - See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/25045#sthash.0K6h3scG.dpuf

Agrica’s rice plantation in Tanzania has been used as a showcase project of the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition [1] and the Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania [2]. But the new report, Irresponsible Investment: Agrica’s Broken Development Model in Tanzania, documents a catalogue of devastating impacts on local communities.

Norfund, the UK aid department, and the US investment firm Capricorn Investments (co-founded by eBay philanthropist Jeff Skoll) have all invested several million US dollars in Agrica, a British company registered in the tax haven of Guernsey.

“Although Agrica is portrayed as a responsible investment venture, its takover of fertile land has brought misery to local communities. Labelled ‘squatters,' smallholders were forced off the land, lost their livelihoods, received a meagre compensation for their losses, and have had to face debts resulting from doing business with Agrica,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

Local farmers who planted rice for Agrica were required to purchase chemical fertilizers manufactured by the Norwegian fertilizer company Yara. They also had to sell the rice at a price determined by the company. “Agrica peddled chemical inputs to smallholders, leaving many in debt. In an area known as Tanzania’s food basket due to its fertile soil, this uncovers the real agenda of Agrica. They have opened up new markets for the products of international agribusiness that are damaging for both people and the environment,” explained Glen Tyler, agriculture campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.

The research findings raise concerns about the environmental impacts of Agrica’s industrial rice plantation. The prolonged use of agro-chemicals as well as the expansion of irrigation from 215 hectares to 3,000 hectares - resulting in up to one-third of the nearby Mngeta River’s dry season water flow being diverted - threatens the Ramsar-protected wetlands, within which the plantation is located [3].

“This project undermines the rhetoric of aid-sponsored large-scale agricultural investments and exposes the true beneficiaries to be agribusiness multinationals rather than small-scale farmers and local communities,” said Heidi Chow, food campaigner for Global Justice Now.

Despite claims that this is the only possible model for agricultural development, the approach is deeply flawed. More effective avenues would focus on meeting the needs of the smallholder farmers and assisting them to develop appropriate farming practices. Providing support to agroecological methods would boost yields and improve food security while preventing the debt cycle that comes with the regime of intensive chemical inputs.

The Oakland Institute, Greenpeace Africa, and Global Justice Now are demanding that all of Agrica’s investors cease funding and review their other agriculture investment schemes in Africa for similar abuses against African farmers. A global campaign is being prepared to mobilize against such wrongdoings by international donors in coming days.

from here

The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa
The G8 launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa in 2012. Its aim is to lift people out of poverty by bringing African governments and the private sector together, primarily international corporations. This public-private partnership has been criticized by over a hundred African and international civil society organisations and farmers groups on process and its policies, which dictate major legislative changes in African countries, enabling private corporations to exploit the best agricultural resources.

SAGCOT
The government of Tanzania started the programme Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First) to support industrial agriculture, and created the public-private partnership Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) within a designated region of high agricultural potential as a showcase to attract agribusiness.

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
The Ramsar Convention’s mission is “the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local and national actions and international cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout the world.”

Wetlands are among the most diverse and productive ecosystems in the world. They provide essential services and supply all our fresh water. However, they continue to be degraded and converted to other uses. See www.ramsar.org for more information. 

World Bank Group: Project Critics Threatened, Harassed, Jailed

(Washington, DC, June 22, 2015)

The World Bank Group has done little to prevent or dissuade governments from intimidating critics of the projects it funds, or monitor for reprisals, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 144-page report, “At Your Own Risk:Reprisals against Critics of World Bank Group Projects,” details how governments and powerful companies have threatened, intimidated, and misused criminal laws against outspoken community members who stand to be displaced or otherwise allegedly harmed by projects financed by the World Bank and its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The World Bank and IFC have failed to take adequate steps to help create a safe environment in which people can express concern or criticism about projects funded by the Bank Group without risk of reprisal, Human Rights Watch found. “The World Bank has long said that public participation and accountability are key to the success of the development efforts it funds,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions advocate at Human Rights Watch. “But the World Bank’s repeated failure to confront intimidation or harassment of people who criticize its projects risks making a mockery out of these principles.”

Human Rights Watch found that people who have publicly criticized projects financed by the World Bank and IFC have faced threats, harassment, and trumped-up criminal charges. When reprisals have occurred the Bank Group has largely left victims to their fate, preferring silence or “quiet diplomacy” over the kind of prompt, public, and vigorous responses that could make a real difference.

In spite of what are often grave risks, affected community members in numerous countries have spoken out about the problems that they see with Bank-supported projects.

Here we will focus on Uganda.

In Uganda, staff at Uganda Land Alliance and a journalist who worked to document and stop forced evictions linked to an IFC project described threats, including death threats. The government also demanded a public apology to the president and threatened to deregister Uganda Land Alliance unless they withdrew their report documenting the evictions. In recent years, a growing number of governments have embarked on broad and sometimes brutal campaigns to shut down the space for independent groups. Some governments have responded with ire to criticisms of government-supported development projects, condemning those who speak out as “anti-development” or traitors to the national interests. These abusive measures can obstruct people from participating in decisions about development, from publicly opposing development initiatives that may harm their livelihoods or violate their rights, and from complaining about development initiatives that are ineffective, harmful, or have otherwise gone wrong.

The independent, internal complaint mechanisms for the World Bank – the Inspection Panel – and the IFC – the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) – have acknowledged the real risk of retaliation against critics, but neither has established systematic practices to identify risks of reprisals or address them. Since receiving the Human Rights Watch findings, the Inspection Panel has announced it is working on a guidance note on how to respond to reports of reprisals, and the CAO has promised to consider the Human Rights Watch recommendations. “The Inspection Panel and Compliance Advisor Ombudsman’s eagerness to tackle the risk of reprisals and improve their systems is a great sign,” Evans said. “World Bank management should follow the lead of its complaint mechanisms and take the issue of reprisals seriously.”

selected quotes:

    “There is still the stigma. We don’t go out as strong any more. We are very cautious about what we say. We don’t say anything controversial in a meeting any more. It affects how we do our things.”
    – A staff member of the Uganda Land Alliance, an independent group whose employees faced threats and harassment and that faced de-registration following its research and outspoken criticism of an IFC-financed project.

    “Those who delay industrial projects are enemies and I don’t want them. I am going to open war on them.”
    – Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, two days after breaking ground on the World Bank-financed Bujagali dam project. Human Rights Watch found that reprisals take place in a broader climate that demonizes critics as “anti-development.”

    “Free speech is the cornerstone of transparency and accountability. Where World Bank projects are being implemented, citizens must have a voice.… The World Bank should have done more to protect the security of people speaking out against this project. It’s us who facilitate the voice of the people. I’m not aware of them [the World Bank] doing anything [about the reprisals against critics of this project].… This makes me believe they think free speech is not an issue for them.”
    – Geoffrey Wokulira Ssebaggala, a human rights defender and journalist who covered forced evictions in Uganda linked to an IFC-financed project.

Taken from here

Fact of the Day

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, José Pacheco, has said that about 24 percent of the Mozambican population still affected by food insecurity,

WEALTH and POVERTY

From an article by Tom Lebert, a senior international programme officer (Resources & Conflict) at War on Want.

Africa is blessed with a rich bounty of natural resources. The continent holds around 30% of the world’s known mineral reserves. These include cobalt, uranium, diamonds and gold, as well as significant oil and gas reserves. Given this natural wealth it comes as no surprise that, with the tripling of global mineral and oil prices in the past decade, mining has exploded on the African continent. Over the period 2000 to 2008 resource extraction contributed more than 30% of Africa’s GDP while the annual flow of foreign direct investment into Africa increased from $9 billion to $62 billion (most of this into extractive industries). However, despite being so richly endowed, and despite the mining boom of the past decade, Africa has drawn little benefit from this mineral wealth and remains one of the poorest continents on the globe, with almost 50% of the population living on less than $1.25 per day.

So, why is it that a continent with such vast potential wealth can remain so poor? It is in large part down to ‘illicit financial flows’: the illegal movement of money or capital from one country to another. The exploitation of mineral resources has all too often led to corruption and a large proportion of the continent’s resources and revenues benefiting local and foreign elites rather than the general population. Trade mispricing (and in particular transfer pricing and trade misinvoicing) is the most common way of transferring illicit funds abroad. Through trade mispricing, companies seek to maximize profits artificially through maximizing expenses in high-tax jurisdictions and maximizing revenue and income in low-tax jurisdictions. This enables corporations to minimize tax payments illegally and transfer the funds abroad.

Such illicit flows undermine social development and stymy inclusive economic growth. Instead of investing resource revenues into improving infrastructure, health and education, political elites, often in collusion with mining companies, have siphoned off proceeds from the continent’s mineral and oil wealth – lining their own pockets to the detriment of ordinary Africans.

Zambia presents as a wealthy country – the largest producer of copper in Africa and the 7th-largest globally. Yet Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 74% of the population living on less than $1.25 a day and 43% of the population being undernourished. This is in part due to a haemorrhaging of wealth, mainly to transnational mining companies. According to the Zambian Deputy Finance Minister, in 2012 the country was losing $2 billion a year from tax avoidance – around 10% of Zambia’s GDP. The mining industry was the largest culprit and the bulk of the loss was attributed to transfer pricing – where parts of the same company trade with each other at prices that they determine on their own – and to the over-reporting of costs and under-reporting of production. The situation is compounded by overly generous tax incentives provided to companies by the Zambian government.

The Zambian example is not an isolated case. Such corporate practices in the mining sector are common right across the continent. In South Africa, illegal capital flight through trade-misinvoicing (a means to evade tax) is rife in the ores and metals sector. Over the period 1995 to 2006 trade misinvoicing alone amounted to $167 million. And when it comes to fuel-exporting countries, over the period 1970 to 2008 states were losing on average $10 billion per year because of misinvoicing – the sum accounting for nearly half of all illicit financial flows from Africa during this time. Moreover, statistical data generated through the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, which was introduced in 2003, revealed that diamond production was nearly twice as large as estimated, indicating massive smuggling, under-reporting and tax evasion in the sector. The list goes on.

Factoids on Africa

Here are some interesting fact you might not know about Africa.

1.The Gambia has only one university.
2. Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s only Spanish speaking country.
3. South Africa is the most visited African country.
4. Nigeria has the richest Black people in Africa.
5. Samuel Eto’o is the highest paid Footballer of all time, he received about £350,000 weekly in
Russia in 2011.
6. A person from Botswana is called a Motswana the plural is Batswana.
7. A person from Lesotho is called a Mosotho.
8. A person from Niger is called a Nigerien.
9. Nigeria has won more football cups than England.
10. Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the world’s most educated President with 7 degrees, two of them are Masters.
11. Al-Ahly of Egypt is the richest club in Africa.
12. Didier Drogba is Chelsea’s highest goalscorer in European competition.

13. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is Africa’s longest serving Head of State. He has

ruled Equatorial Guinea since August 3, 1979when he overthrew his uncle, Francisco Nguema. His
son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is his Vice President and will succeed him if he resigns.
14. Zinedine Zidane wanted to play for Algeria, but the selector rejected him, saying they are
already many players like him in the team.
15. President Jacob Zuma was once a referee in prison.
16. President Robert Mugabe is Africa’s oldest Head of State and the world’s second oldest Head of State. He was born in 1924.
17. The Seychellois are the most educated Africans. Seychelles’ literacy rates (Adult: 92%, Youth: 99%) Zimbabwe is 2nd (Adult: 91.2%, Youth: 99%).

18. Rwanda is a better country for gender equality than England and USA. 

19. Somalia got its first ATM on October 7, 2014.
20. South Africa has the most Grammy award winners in Africa.
21. Ethiopia has the most airports in Africa.
22. Ethiopia’s economy is growing faster than China’s.
23. Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country, it has existed for over 3,000 years without being

colonised.
24. Nigeria has the most monarchs in the world.
25. Angola has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal

READ MORE: http://www.naij.com/468022-25-facts-africa-likely-unaware.html

Robbing the poor to pay the chiefs

Provinces are going to need to find an additional R100 million a year to pay traditional chiefs and headmen, and the money is likely to come from existing budgets in infrastructure and poverty reduction projects.

The recommendation of the independent Commission for Remuneration of Public Office Bearers, decided yesterday to standardise the salaries of the country's more than 5000 headmen to pay a flat annual salary of R84125. It has been determined that traditional leaders' salaries will be increased by 28.4%. Recent public sector wage negotiations agreed to a 7% increase for government workers.

Political analyst Nic Borain believes it is impossible not to consider that increasing the salaries of traditional leaders is politically motivated, especially ahead of local government elections next year. "Zuma is trying to nail down the rural support, and the system of patronage is the way he is doing it, spreading this patronage to the chiefs." 

Political analyst Protas Madlala said the timing of the salary increase for headmen and women was perfect for the local government elections, “Ultimately this salary increase is to buy votes...”

Prepaid Water Meters Deny Millions Access To Water

While many countries appear to have met the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, rights activists say that African countries which have taken to installing prepaid water meters have rendered a blow to many poor people, making it hard for them to access water.

“The goal to ensure that everyone has access to clean water here in Africa faces a drawback as a number of African countries have resorted to using prepaid water meters, which certainly bar the poor from accessing the precious liquid,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development, a Zimbabwean democracy lobby group, told IPS.

Prepaid water meters work in such a way that if a person cannot pay in advance, he or she will be unable to access water.
As a result, African rights activists like award-winning Terry Mutsvanga from Zimbabwe and other civil society organisations are against the idea of prepaid water meters.
“If one has to pay upfront before accessing water, then it would mean those in most need would be denied access,” Mutsvanga told IPS, adding that water is a global human right.
Mutsvanga was echoing the United Nations General Assembly which, in July 2010, emerged with a binding resolution on the human right to water and sanitation – but for Africa, the human right to water may be far from reality.
Laden with a population of approximately 1.1 billion, Africa’s 300 million people have no access to safe drinking water, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Many rights activists on the continent attribute Africa’s mounting water challenges partly to the advent of prepaid water meters.
“We already have hundreds of millions of people without access to clean water, and imagine the severity of the water challenge if water prepaid meters would reach everyone on the continent,” Mutsvanga said.

Over the years, prepaid water meters have been widely used in African countries like Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland and Tanzania, as well as South Africa, where the meters which were rolled out in 1999 are currently in low-income areas.
Zimbabwe is currently conducting a pilot project aimed at installing the prepaid water meters, in towns and cities to begin with. And the country’s impoverished urban dwellers like 51-year old Tinago Chikasha are in panic mode, fearing the worst may be coming their way.
“Local authorities are pressing ahead with the idea of prepaid water meters, but jobless people like me have no money to make prepayments for water while we already have unpaid water bills running into thousands of dollars, which local authorities say they will deduct through all future water prepayments, meaning we run into the danger of having dry water taps for as long as we owe local authorities,” Chikasha told IPS.

In non-African countries like the United Kingdom, prepaid water meters are no longer being used after they were declared illegal in 1998 for public health reasons.
They were also abandoned in South Africa at one stage following a massive cholera outbreak, but were reintroduced and have replaced previously free communal standpipes in rural townships.

Despite U.N. recognition that water is a human right, international financial institutions such as the World Bank argue that water should be allocated through market mechanisms to allow for full cost recovery from users, and civil society activists like Melusi Khumalo in South Africa blame capitalist tendencies for necessitating the advent of prepaid water meters.
“Prepaid water meters are a result of such negative policies by institutions like the World Bank and they [prepaid water meters] deny water access to those in most need,” Khumalo, who is affiliated to Parktown North Residents’ Association in Johannesburg, told IPS.

In Zimbabwe, Mfundo Mlilo, chief executive officer of Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA), told IPS: “We are vehemently against the prepaid meter project because it will not solve the problems of water delivery, and these prepaid water meters will not lead to residents receiving adequate safe and clean water, while the same prepaid water meters will also not lead to increase in revenue flows as the City [of Harare] claims.”
Last month, Harare’s Town Clerk Tendai Mahachi was reported by Zimbabwe’s Weekend Post as saying: “With these meters we expect roughly to save about 20-30 percent of the current costs we are incurring.”
According to Mahachi, at least 300 000 households in the Zimbabwean capital are scheduled to have prepaid water meters installed, while all new housing projects will be obliged to install meters.

Meanwhile, with prepaid water meters set to rake in big money for some of Africa’s local authorities, there are those like Nathan Jamela, an urban dweller in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, who fear the health consequences.
“We experienced the worst cholera outbreak in 2008, and we fear that if prepaid water meters are installed in every household here we will slide back to the crisis, with many people unable to afford to pay for water,” Jamela told IPS.

from here

Together we can win

"Nothing has changed. We are still being paid under the apartheid wage structure." explained  David Sipunzi, newly elected head of the NUM, South Africa's biggest mine union. He was referring to the fact that lower-paid miners were overwhelmingly black and often drawn from rural areas far from the shafts - a system that has prevailed for decades.

Sipunzi added he aimed to bring Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) back into his union which left over a decade ago. "We are not enemies, we are both workers. The enemy is the employer. If we are fragmented we are not going to win the battle with the employer."

WORKERS UNITED CANNOT BE DEFEATED 

Globalisation: Free Flow Versus Restriction

Despite the rhetoric about globalisation’s free flow of ideas, capital and technology, the world remains obsessed with restricting the movement of people who don’t fit into neat boxes of what is tolerable or even desirable.

Late last week, I was informed that I would not be able to travel to Dubai for an important meeting scheduled months ago. Like other countries across the globe, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) halted travel for those with Guinean, Liberian and Sierra Leonean passports during the height of the Ebola outbreak. It has not lifted these restrictions.
 
The miniature red suitcase I had packed lay abandoned on my wooden floor. I caressed my dark green Liberian passport as if to reassure this inanimate marker of identity that my citizenship was not on trial here. The spectre of Ebola had simply triumphed over reason. Yet, the irony of this episode hasn’t escaped me. Dubai is a hub for cross-continental travel. In 2013 alone, the UAE boasted the fifth largest international migrant pool in the world—hosting 7.8 million foreign residents out of a total population of 9.2 million. Furthermore, foreign labour migrants account for 90 percent of the country’s private workforce, mostly from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
 
Unlike the US and UK, where anti-immigrant sentiments have reached fever pitch, the UAE seems more pliant to international travellers. So, naturally, I thought it was odd when I attempted to complete the online visa form and Liberia was not listed as an option for ‘present nationality’. Nor were Guinea and Sierra Leone. This was punishment for simply being born in Africa with a particular African passport. Even the organisers of the meeting were shocked, disbelief sprinkled in their conciliatory e-mails and phone calls. All diplomatic channels had proved futile. The verdict was irreversible. I would not be getting on that plush Emirates flight. Never mind that Liberia was declared Ebola-free on May 9, exactly one month ago. Never mind that I have not been to my homeland in over 10 months. Nor was I asked about recent travel there. Never mind that my country and its people are slowly trying to recover from an invisible foe that killed nearly 5,000 and infected about 11,000.
 
In the past year, I’ve seen my passport scrutinised more intently than ever before, but the UAE blanket bias felt like adding salt to a fresh wound. At first, I experienced blinding rage with a touch of indignation. The kind that gurgles in the pit of your gut, and then explodes. Then I was amused by the absurdity of it all. If I were travelling directly from Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone and had a passport from a country on UAE’s list of exemptions, I would have gotten a visa on arrival with ease. No questions asked. Mild acceptance slowly seeped in, reminding me that we maintain immigration hierarchies as a form of erasure and silencing. In our obsession with citizenship tiers, west is best. North trumps South. And white is inevitably right. Never mind black/brown solidarity. Or does that even exist?
 
I have shied away from returning home fearing the kind of immobility that sees people not as complex beings but as nameless, faceless ‘threats’ to national security. A sedentarist kind of metaphysic that keeps certain people in their place. People like me. Truth be told, the natural human compulsion for mobility is currently under threat because of irrational immigration bans such as the UAE’s.
 
For all the rhetoric about globalisation’s free flow of ideas, capital and technology, the world remains obsessed with restricting the movement of people who don’t fit into our neat boxes of what is tolerable or even desirable. The UAE saga is a microcosm of a larger debate about the need for immigration reforms worldwide. The scapegoating of migrants across the globe deflects attention from the fact that most countries have failed to improve the quality of life of their domestic citizens. Afro-fobic attacks in South Africa, Australia’s Pacific Solution, and the plight of Rohingya Muslims off the coast of Indonesia are extreme examples. Immigration is framed as a zero sum game, with finite rights and resources available to a select few.
 
I watch migrants who look like me risk their lives on sardine-packed, rickety boats to cross the Mediterranean, and know intuitively that they wouldn’t flee if they had a choice. With each desperate attempt to cross over, what they are effectively saying is that Europe must make amends for waging unjustifiable wars and supporting authoritarian regimes in some of their countries of origin. Centuries ago, Africans were so eager to escape lives of bondage, some dove to sudden death in the Atlantic. They were the first forced migrants I can recall. Now, many of us travel across these same waters for short-, medium- and long-term trips. Not because of some deep, abiding love for life abroad, but because it gives us a measure of flexibility. It keeps us physically connected to the rest of the world. And for someone like me with chronic wanderlust, the ability to travel unencumbered is almost as necessary as oxygen itself.
 
Although a self-professed transnational, I used to be suspicious of Liberians who changed their nationality out of convenience. But after interviewing more than 200 of us across five urban centres in West Africa, North America and Europe for my doctoral thesis on citizenship construction and practice, I have become more empathetic. Many of us make the switch because of the access so easily denied me by the UAE. But we shouldn’t have to.
 
I can’t say I would ever consider exchanging my passport for another, especially since Liberia prohibits dual citizenship. Yet, the UAE debacle has shaken me to the core. It’s made me acutely aware that citizenship is both personal and political.
 
from here by Robtel Neajai Pailey, Liberian academic, activist and author based at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Conservation for who?

Baka “Pygmies” of Central Africa eat 14 kinds of wild honey and more than 10 types of wild yam. By leaving part of the root intact in the soil, the Baka spread pockets of wild yams – a favorite food of elephants and wild boar – throughout the forest. The Baka are taught not to overhunt the animals of the forest. A Baka woman said, “When you find a female animal with her young, you must not kill her. Even worse, when the little animals are walking next to their mother, it is strictly forbidden to kill them.” But despite their intimate knowledge of their environment, Baka in southeast Cameroon face arrest and beatings, torture and even death at the hands of wildlife officers funded and supported by the conservation giant World Wide Fund for Nature. Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has uncovered serious abuses of Baka “Pygmies” in southeast Cameroon, at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported and funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Baka are being illegally forced from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation” because much of their land has been turned into “protected areas” – including safari-hunting zones. Rather than target the powerful individuals behind organized poaching, wildlife officers and soldiers pursue Baka who hunt only to feed their families.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Forests and Fauna, which employs the wildlife officers, is funded by WWF. WWF also provides officers with technical, logistical and material assistance. Without this support the anti-poaching squads could not function. UN standards require WWF to prevent or mitigate “adverse human rights impacts directly linked to its operations” even if it has not contributed to them, but the giant of the conservation industry appears reluctant to acknowledge this. Despite the evidence that the anti-poaching squads have grossly abused the rights of the Baka, WWF continues to provide its crucial support. As a result of the loss of their land and its resources, many Baka have reported a serious decline in their health and a rise in diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. And they fear going into the forest that has provided them with everything they need for countless generations.

A Baka man told Survival, “The forest used to be for the Baka but not anymore. We would walk in the forest according to the seasons but now we’re afraid. How can they forbid us from going into the forest? We don’t know how to live otherwise. They beat us, kill us and force us to flee to Congo.”

The Bushmen consume over 150 species of plant and their diet is high in vitamins and nutrients. Yet Africa’s last hunting Bushmen in Botswana are abused, tortured and arrested when found hunting to feed their families. A Bushman said, “I know how to take care of the game. That’s why I was born with it, and lived with it, and it’s still there. If you go to my area, you’ll find animals, which shows that I know how to take care of them. In other areas, there are no animals.”

The Bushman tribes of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are the last Bushmen to largely depend on hunting in Africa. They were illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation”. Although the tribes won an historic legal battle to return to their land, the government is using hunger as a weapon to ensure it gets its way. Government officials have admitted that the Bushmen do not hunt with guns and there is no evidence that their hunting is unsustainable. Despite this, in 2014, President Khama acted against the constitution, and imposed a nationwide hunting ban; international conservation organizations have heaped praise on him. Private game ranches, however, are exempt from the ban. The Bushmen are accused of “poaching” because they hunt their food. And they face arrest, beatings and torture, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. The Bushmen, as hunter-gatherers, are being starved off their land. With no way to feed themselves in the reserve, they are forced once more to return to return to government resettlement camps or “places of death,” as they call them. Racism among the governing elite in Botswana means the Bushmen are typically treated as second-class citizens, their human rights trampled on. Their way of life is entirely compatible with conservation: the Bushmen, more than anyone, are motivated to protect the wildlife on which they depend. Bushmen tribes have inhabited the region since time immemorial. They know how best to look after their environment. Why have they been excluded from the conservation process? Not a single conservation organization stood up for the Bushmen’s human rights when they were evicted and, shamefully, the conservation industry has lauded President Khama. For example, he has been invited to host a prestigious event for the new global campaign against poaching called United for Wildlife, a coalition of the most powerful conservation NGOs. Its president is Prince William.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve lies in the middle of the richest diamond-producing area in the world. For years, the government claimed that the eviction of the Bushmen was motivated by conservation and had nothing to do with mining. Yet in 2014, a diamond mine worth billions of dollars opened inside the reserve, on the Bushmen’s ancestral land. Conservation, it seems, was just an excuse for removing the Bushmen. Khama is also on the board of Conservation International, which ignores his atrocious human rights record. It similarly turns a blind eye to the diamond mining and fracking exploration he encourages on Bushman land.

There are many more examples of how tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world – satellite images and academic studies have shown that indigenous peoples provide a vital barrier to deforestation of their lands. Yet tribal peoples are being illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation.” It’s often wrongly claimed that their lands are wildernesses even though tribal peoples have been dependent on, and managed, them for millennia.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “Tribal peoples are better at looking after their environments than anyone else – after all, they have been dependent on, and managed, them for millennia. If conservation is actually going to start working, conservationists need to ask tribal peoples what help they need to protect their land, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as possible. A major change in thinking about conservation is now urgently required.”

Sick but still at work

According to a just-released survey, South Africans won’t let a cold or flu get the better of them with 8 in 10 determined to go to work even though they are sick– a phenomenon known as "presenteeism".

48% said they just can’t afford to take a day off work due to mounting workloads, while 33% argued that they’re just too essential to the business operation.

17%, however, said their employer discourages them from taking sick leave or when they do, they get penalised for it, and a further 11% fear of losing their jobs when they do take time off to recover.

Mariska van Aswegen, spokesperson of Pharma Dynamics says many organisations have reported a growing culture of "presenteeism" in the workplace, which usually leads to lower-than-normal productivity levels and can actually cost employers more than it would if sick employees would just take a sick day. “Studies show that productivity levels only drop to about 28% when employees take sick leave compared to a much more significant drop of 72% when they show up at work feeling lousy.” She attributes this trend to the prolonged economic stagnation. “To some, physically showing up at work every day means job security. People want to make sure that they are not forgotten about and want to prove that they are committed to their jobs.” But, with more sick employees hovering around the office, the risk of spreading viruses and making others sick, increases substantially. 

The Nigerian First Lady

Many Nigerians were enraged recently over a watch first lady Aisha Buhari wore during her husband's inauguration ceremonies. She wore a Cartier Baignoire Folle 18-Carat White Gold Diamond Ladies Watch, estimated to have cost roughly $52,000, or more than what President Muhammadu Buhari earns in three months from his official salary. 

The timepiece triggered outrage from some Nigerians as the newly elected president has vowed to crackdown on government corruption, including overpaid public officials. Buhari played up his modest background while on the campaign trail, claiming he was a pastoral farmer with 150 cows who could barely afford to pay for his presidential nomination form. More than 50 percent of Nigerians live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day, according to the United Nations.

UK Aid Donors' Investment Displaces Tanzanian Farmers

Oakland/Johannesburg/London: Norfund, the UK aid department, and Capricorn are funding the British company Agrica’s industrial rice plantation in Mngeta, Tanzania, which is destroying the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, driving them into debt and impacting the local environment, according to new research by The Oakland Institute released today in collaboration with Greenpeace Africa and Global Justice Now.

Agrica’s rice plantation in Tanzania has been used as a showcase project of the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition [1] and the Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania [2]. But the new report, Irresponsible Investment – Agrica’s Broken Development Model in Tanzania, documents a catalogue of devastating impacts on local communities.
Norfund, the UK aid department, and the US investment firm Capricorn Investments (co-founded by eBay philanthropist Jeff Skoll) have all invested several million US dollars in Agrica, a British company registered in the tax haven of Guernsey.

“Although Agrica is portrayed as a responsible investment venture, its takeover of fertile land has brought misery to local communities. Labelled ‘squatters,’ smallholders were forced off the land, lost their livelihoods, received a meagre compensation for their losses, and have had to face debts resulting from doing business with Agrica,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

Local farmers who planted rice for Agrica were required to purchase chemical fertilizers manufactured by the Norwegian fertilizer company Yara. They also had to sell the rice at a price determined by the company. “Agrica peddled chemical inputs to smallholders, leaving many in debt. In an area known as Tanzania’s food basket due to its fertile soil, this uncovers the real agenda of Agrica. They have opened up new markets for the products of international agribusiness that are damaging for both people and the environment,” explained Glen Tyler, agriculture campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.

The research findings raise concerns about the environmental impacts of Agrica’s industrial rice plantation. The prolonged use of agro-chemicals as well as the expansion of irrigation from 215 hectares to 3,000 hectares - resulting in up to one-third of the nearby Mngeta River’s dry season water flow being diverted - threatens the Ramsar protected wetlands, within which the plantation is located [3].
“This project undermines the rhetoric of aid-sponsored large-scale agricultural investments and exposes the true beneficiaries to be agribusiness multinationals rather than small-scale farmers and local communities,” said Heidi Chow, food campaigner for Global Justice Now.

Despite claims that this is the only possible model for agricultural development, the approach is deeply flawed. More effective avenues would focus on meeting the needs of the smallholder farmers and assisting them to develop appropriate farming practices. Providing support to agroecological methods would boost yields and improve food security while preventing the debt cycle that comes with the regime of intensive chemical inputs.

The Oakland Institute, Greenpeace Africa, and Global Justice Now are demanding that all of Agrica’s investors cease funding and review their other agriculture investment schemes in Africa for similar abuses against African farmers. A global campaign is being prepared to mobilize against such wrongdoings by international donors in coming days.

Please download the full report here: Irresponsible Investment: Agrica’s Broken Development Model in Tanzania

Notes
1. The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa
The G8 launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa in 2012. Its aim is to lift people out of poverty by bringing African governments and the private sector together, primarily international corporations. This public-private partnership has been criticized by over a hundred African and international civil society organisations and farmers groups on process and its policies, which dictate major legislative changes in African countries, enabling private corporations to exploit the best agricultural resources.
2. SAGCOT
The government of Tanzania started the programme Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First) to support industrial agriculture, and created the public-private partnership Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) within a designated region of high agricultural potential as a showcase to attract agribusiness.
3. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
The Ramsar Convention’s mission is “the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local and national actions and international cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout the world.”
Wetlands are among the most diverse and productive ecosystems in the world. They provide essential services and supply all our fresh water. However, they continue to be degraded and converted to other uses. See www.ramsar.org for more information.

from here