Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Libyan skullduggery for control of key oil installations
War by proxy or deed, business by other means, is an inevitability in capitalism. It is fought over trade routes, markets shperes of geopolitical interest and raw materials.
(*Source below) With Islamic State driven from its last urban stronghold in strife-ridden but energy-rich Libya, fresh turmoil is brewing over control of lucrative oil installations.
And a polarizing military figure who once enjoyed close U.S. support — Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar — is at the heart of the unfolding struggle.
The North African country is splintered by an array of rival armed groups, some of them loyal to one of two competing governments. Haftar has carved out a powerful fiefdom independent of the weak but internationally supported administration in the capital, Tripoli.
Three months ago, forces loyal to Haftar seized the main terminals at the heart of Libya’s “oil crescent,” a concentration of oil-shipping ports and facilities on the Mediterranean coast. That gave him and his ally, a rival government based in the country’s east, control over crucial oil exports, which currently amount to about 600,000 barrels of crude a day.
That grip has not gone unchallenged. This week, Haftar’s forces — the self-styled Libyan National Army — beat back a series of attacks by a loose coalition of armed groups based in western Libya. The attackers consisted of a mishmash of Islamist fighters and some backers of the Tripoli government, including a militia leader named Ibrahim Jadran, who headed a semi-official force that formerly controlled the oil facilities.
Few expect the fighting to end any time soon — but in the meantime, Haftar, who is based in Libya’s second city, Benghazi, has seen an exponential leap in his personal power and prestige in the months that the oil terminals have been under his thumb.
“It’s been a huge boost for him, and really shifts the momentum to his advantage,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. “He has credibly shown the international community he’s guarding the oil fields, and the oil is flowing, with revenue going into central coffers…. It’s an enormous card that he’s been able to play.”
Born in 1943, the field marshal — a title conferred on him by the eastern government, not recognized by the Tripoli one — has faced reversals of fortune before. In fact, they have defined Haftar’s long career.
A onetime key lieutenant of dictator Moammar Kadafi, who was killed in 2011 after being ousted in a popular uprising, Haftar fell out of favor after commanding Libyan forces on the losing side of a 1980s conflict in the neighboring African state of Chad. He fled into exile in the United States, and from a base in northern Virginia, cultivated close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Islamic State may soon lose its stronghold in Libya. H
He returned to Libya to fight on the side of anti-Kadafi forces, but failed to achieve the degree of influence he had hoped for in the power struggle that erupted after the dictator’s downfall.
In 2014, he again burst into view when he went on national television to outline his plan for “national salvation,” launching a wide-ranging battle against Islamists who then held sway in Benghazi and other eastern towns and cities.
Backed by a number of former military commanders and an impressive array of military hardware left over from Kadafi’s time, Haftar won popular backing by doing what the then-central government could not: largely restoring stability in Benghazi and other eastern towns, where a local Al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al Sharia had staged a chaotic campaign of assassinations and bombing attacks.
Confident and charismatic, Haftar has demonstrated an astute grasp of regional political forces at play. He won the support of Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah Sisi, whose stridently anti-Islamist views dovetail neatly with Haftar’s, and of the United Arab Emirates, another avowed enemy of the Islamists.
Haftar is also well-positioned to take advantage of a newly assertive Mideast stance by Russia. He has made several trips to Moscow this year, most recently last month, when he was photographed in a Russian-style fur hat as he headed to high-level official meetings.
Russian news reports said he may have submitted a “wish list” of weapons if a U.N. arms embargo applying to all parties in Libya except the Tripoli government was lifted.
And Haftar and his allies are said to have been heartened by the incoming U.S. administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Analyst say Haftar’s inner circle believes the new American president may tilt away from the Tripoli government, which has some Islamist-leaning elements — even if that means breaking with the United Nations and Europeans.
The Tripoli government “is in a very weak position in relation to Haftar, and that’s a big turnaround,” said Richard Reeve, a Libya expert at Britain’s Oxford Research Group, an independent think tank. “He’s a force to be reckoned with.”
Though the field marshal will probably stay in the spotlight and continue to flex his military muscle, Libya’s other power struggles haven’t gone away.
The battle against Islamic State in the coastal city of Surt, though unrelated to the struggle for the oil installations Haftar controls, sapped the strength of powerful militias based in the western city of Misrata. The seven-month campaign to retake Surt ended this week when the Misratans and their government-allied supporters finally cleared out the last square city block Islamic State fighters were holding.
Islamic State, although ejected from its only urban redoubt in Libya, nonetheless remains a threat, according to analysts and the U.S. military, which oversaw coalition airstrikes against Islamic State positions.
“There’s still ISIS in Libya,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said after Surt was declared free of the militants, using another acronym for the group. “They are out in the desert, they are underground, they have blended into the population, and they are going to be a challenge for the Libyan government in the future.”
Amid Libya’s volatile political landscape, Haftar’s wider ambitions may be limited by unpopularity outside his eastern sphere of influence. In other parts of the country, he is despised for both his American links and his past as a Kadafi confidant and enforcer, with Islamists holding him in particular disdain.
But some of Haftar’s backers aspire to greater powers for him, with some suggesting that the entire country would benefit from emergency military rule — presided over by the field marshal.
“His opponents accuse him of being another Kadafi, of wanting to take Libya back to a military dictatorship,” Wehrey said. “He’s a military man through and through, and he wants to have a seat at the table — he’s emerged as the indispensable power broker in Libya.”(End source)*
We live in a world capable of destroying itself several times over. Such a situation is not inevitable. Although war has a long history it can be brought permanently to an end.
A world without the twin concomitants of capitalism, war by deed or proxy and poverty absolute or relative, will provide its own challenges when we get there.
*From L.A. Times
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Merry Marxmas
We address our Christmas message to the working class, about
to enjoy yet another wretched holiday under capitalism.
At Christmas time the religious want to rejoice in fantasies
about a messiah born of a virgin. The television channels seek the highest ratings
for their Christmas Specials. While the retailers use Santa to seduce children
into a life of consumerism.
December 25th was a holy day long before Jesus Christ was
even thought of. Primitive man worshipped the sun because the course of his
life was dominated by the yearly round of that planet in the heavens. This
practice was wide spread but especially in northern countries mid-December was
thought to be a critical time, as the days became shorter and shorter and the
sun itself weaker. Great bonfires were lit to give the sun god strength and,
when it became apparent that the shortest day had passed, there was great
rejoicing. Thus the Roman winter-solstice festival, held on December 25th in
connection with the worship of the sun-god Mithra, was known as the birthday of
the unconquered sun-god.
Socialists seek a decent society where all are co-operative
and sociable but not just for one day a year. Christmas is supposed to be a time of good
cheer. But it is impossible to disregard capitalism and the misert and distress
it causes even at this time of the year.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
What’s Next for Dadaab
Kenya now aims to close Dadaab by the end of June 2017. Conditions
in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee
complex, are deteriorating fast. Mark Yarnell from Refugees International says
its residents face either starvation or returning to a conflict zone. The
refugees being slowly starved out of Dadaab are expected to return to the very
conditions that caused them to flee in the first place.
A funding shortage has forced the Word Food Program (WFP) to
cut food rations for refugees in Kenya and beginning this month, the WFP cut
monthly food rations in half for all refugees in Kenya through at least April
unless it receives $13.7 million from donor governments. By cutting food, the
international community, in addition to causing immediate harm, is reinforcing
the Kenyan government’s message that Somali refugees are not welcome.
A prolonged drought across the border in Somalia, combined
with ongoing insecurity, is exacerbating a humanitarian crisis there. According
to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the current rainy season has been
50 to 70 percent below average thus far. More than 5 million Somalis – about 40
percent of the population – are in need of food aid, and that number is
expected to rise in the coming months unless there is an immediate surge in
humanitarian assistance. As the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia,
Peter de Clercq, stated: “The drought situation is extremely worrying and could
deteriorate rapidly if we don’t act now. We are running against time.”
Despite the push to return refugees, fighting inside Somalia
continues to force civilians to flee their homes on a daily basis. It also
hinders the ability of aid workers to access people in need, thus compounding
the impact of the drought. Recently, fighting between forces loyal to the
semi-autonomous regions of Galmudug and Puntland displaced over 75,000 people.
Refugees in Dadaab, most of whom are Somali, face an
impossible choice: stay in Dadaab where the future is uncertain and conditions
are deteriorating or return to Somalia to face insecurity and hunger. The U.N.
maintains that the returns are voluntary, that refugees have a choice. But so
long as a deadline for camp closure exists with no other option for refugees
but to return to Somalia, the logic does not square. One woman as she waited
outside a UNHCR return help desk, where refugees can sign up for the
repatriation program. I asked for her thoughts on the voluntariness of the
program. “This is about fear. It’s not about choice,” she said emphatically.
In Dadaab, nearly every refugee we interviewed told us they
were fearful about what might happen to them if they did not sign up for the
UNHCR return program, which includes $200 upon departure from Dadaab and $200
upon arrival in Somalia, plus a six-month subsidy per household.
“Everybody wants to take the money before being kicked out,”
one refugee told us. “Maybe the government will beat us or set the camp on
fire,” another said. A number of refugees spoke about threatening messages from
Kenyan government officials that aired on the local radio station – messages
such as, “We are going to show you the way to go back if you don’t go on your
own.”
Kenya deserves to be criticized harshly for threatening to
shutter the camps and push refugees out. But they are not the only ones at
fault. Lofty commitments and declarations by the UN meant little as they did
not translate to tangible improvements for people on the ground.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Uganda's oil land-grab
Since oil was discovered in Uganda’s Bunyoro sub-region in 2006, the value of land adjacent to the oil the sites have increased dramatically. The discoveries triggered a rush for land acquisition by investors and speculators. Over the past decade, many rich individuals have invaded the area and claimed ownership of land adjacent to the oil sites.
Oil wells were discovered in communal settlements, game parks and on the shores of Lake Albert. The area is mainly inhabited by fishermen, subsistence farmers and hunters, who lived on customary land and had no formal documentation to prove the ownership. Consequently, investors continued to acquire land for oil-related projects such as oil waste treatment plants, central processing facilities, pipelines, industrial parks and other petroleum- related investments.
This has raised the stakes for land ownership and the rights of customary land owners are at risk as the wealthy and influential elites attempt to gain titled land in what is called the Albertine graben. Many customary land owners in the oil-rich Albertine graben claim the rich and politically connected individuals are processing freehold land titles on their land without their consent and approval.
"Although, we have owned this land communally since time immemorial, there are rich people coming here claiming to have land titles for our land in anticipation that government intends to set up an oil Central Processing Facility (CPF) here," said Mr Kaseegu, who is also the Kisimo LC1 chairperson.
"New land claimants who had never expressed interest in the land before oil discoveries have emerged in Buliisa district, threatening the interests of residents who have owned land communally for so long," says Mr Angalia Mukonda, the chairperson of Buliisa Elders Forum.
According to the Kiryamboga village chairperson, Mr Geoffrey Nnsi, more than 400 families who owned the land under a joint customary ownership since time immemorial permitted Tullow Oil to prospect for oil in the area.
But the residents were shocked, he says, when they received a copy of a letter from Ntambirweki Kandeebe & Company Advocates indicating that the land where the oil well had been discovered belonged to Gids Consult Ltd as a registered proprietor with a title (FRV 146 Folio 13).
"Our clients have found drilling rigs and fences on their land. There are also vehicles belonging to you and other equipment parked on our clients' land," Mr Ntambirweki Kandeebe wrote to the Tullow Uganda General Manager in a letter dated February 27th, 2014.
"You have gone ahead to construct roads on our clients' land without our clients' knowledge and permission thereby impeding their use of land and interference with their freehold ownership," he stated.
In Africa - America First
Al-Qaeda doesn’t care about borders. Neither does the Islamic State or Boko Haram. US Brigadier General Donald Bolduc thinks the same way.
“Terrorists, criminals, and non-state actors aren’t bound by arbitrary borders,” the commander of Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA) told an interviewer early this fall. “That said, everything we do is not organized around recognizing traditional borders. In fact, our whole command philosophy is about enabling cross-border solutions, implementing multi-national, collective actions and empowering African partner nations to work across borders to solve problems using a regional approach.”
A SOCAFRICA planning document offers an insight onto the scope of “multi-national, collective actions” carried out by America’s most elite troops in Africa and details nearly 20 programs and activities -- from training exercises to security cooperation engagements -- utilized by SOCAFRICA across the continent.
Publicly, the command claims that it conducts its operations to “promote regional stability and prosperity,” while Bolduc emphasizes that its missions are geared toward serving the needs of African allies. The files make clear, however, that U.S. interests are the command’s principal and primary concern. “SOCAFRICA’s foremost objective is the prevention of an attack against America or American interests,” according to the declassified secret report. In other words, a “foreign agenda,” not the needs of African partner nations, is what’s driving the elite force’s border-busting missions. “We will prioritize and focus our operational efforts in those areas where the threats to United States interests are most grave,” says a formerly secret SOCAFRICA document. “Protecting America, Americans, and American interests is our overarching objective and must be reflected in everything we do.”
Bolduc is fond of saying that his troops -- Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, among others -- operate in the “gray zone,” or what he calls “the spectrum of conflict between war and peace.” Another of his favored stock phrases is: “In Africa, we are not the kinetic solution” -- that is, not pulling triggers and dropping bombs. He also regularly takes pains to say that “we are not at war in Africa -- but our African partners certainly are.”
This is not entirely true. As part of its long-fought shadow war against Somali al-Shabab militants, the U.S. has carried out commando raids and drone assassinations there (with the latter markedly increasing in 2015-2016). On December 5th, President Obama issued his latest biannual “war powers” letter to Congress which noted that the military had not only “conducted strikes in defense of U.S. forces” there, but also in defense of local allied troops. The president also acknowledged that U.S. personnel “occasionally accompany regional forces, including Somali and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces, during counterterrorism operations.” Obama’s war powers letter also mentioned American deployments in Cameroon, Djibouti, and Niger, efforts aimed at countering Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa, a long-running mission by military observers in Egypt, and a continuing deployment of forces supporting “the security of U.S. citizens and property” in rapidly deteriorating South Sudan. The president offered only two sentences on U.S. military activities in Libya, although a long-running special ops and drone campaign there has been joined by a full-scale American air war, dubbed Operation Odyssey Lightning, against Islamic State militants, especially those in the city of Sirte. Since August 1st, in fact, the United States has carried out nearly 500 air strikes in Libya, according to figures supplied by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).
On any given day, between 1,500 and 1,700 American special operators and support personnel are deployed somewhere on the continent. Over the course of a year they conduct missions in more than 20 countries. According to Bolduc’s November 2015 briefing, Special Operations Command Africa carries out 78 separate “mission sets.” These include activities that range from enhancing “partner capability and capacity” to the sharing of intelligence. Most of what Bolduc’s troops do involves working alongside and mentoring local allies. SOCAFRICA’s showcase effort, for instance, is Flintlock, an annual training exercise in Northwest Africa involving elite American, European, and African forces, which provides the command with a plethora of publicity. More than 1,700 military personnel from 30-plus nations took part in Flintlock 2016. Next year, according to Bolduc, the exercise is expected “to grow to include SOF from more countries, as well as more interagency partners.” the SOCAFRICA strategic planning document produced in 2012 indicates the existence of one or more other training exercises. Bolduc recently mentioned two: Silent Warrior and Epic Guardian. In the past, the command has also taken part in exercises like Silver Eagle 10 and Eastern Piper 12.
Such exercises are, however, just a small part of the SOCAFRICA story. Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions are a larger one. Officially authorized to enable U.S. special operators to “practice skills needed to conduct a variety of missions, including foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, and counterterrorism,” JCETs actually serve as a backdoor method of expanding U.S. military influence and contacts in Africa, since they allow for "incidental-training benefits" to "accrue to the foreign friendly forces at no cost." As a result, JCETs play an important role in forging and sustaining military relationships across the continent. Just how many of these missions the U.S. conducts in Africa is apparently unknown -- even to the military commands involved. As TomDispatch reported earlier this year, according to SOCOM, the U.S. conducted 19 JCETs in 2012, 20 in 2013, and 20, again, in 2014. AFRICOM, however, claims that there were nine JCETs in 2012, 18 in 2013, and 26 in 2014. Whatever the true number, JCETs are a crucial cog in the SOCAFRICA machine. “During a JCET, exercise or training event, a special forces unit might train a partner force in a particular tactical skill and can quickly ascertain if the training audience has adopted the capability,” explained Brigadier General Bolduc. “Trainers can objectively measure competency, then exercise... that particular skill until it becomes a routine.”
SOCAFRICA also utilizes a confusing tangle of State Department and Pentagon programs and activities, aimed at local allies that operate under a crazy quilt of funding schemes, monikers, and acronyms. These include deployments of Mobile Training Teams, Joint Planning Advisory Teams, Joint Military Education Teams, Civil Military Support Elements, as well as Military Information Support Teams that engage in what once was called psychological operations, or psyops -- that is, programs designed to “inform and influence foreign target audiences as appropriately authorized.”
Special Operations Command Africa also utilizes an almost mind-numbing panoply of “security cooperation programs” and other training activities including Section 1207(n) (also known as the Transitional Authorities for East Africa and Yemen, which provides equipment, training, and other aid to the militaries of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen “to conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda affiliates, and al-Shabab” and “enhance the capacity of national military forces participating in the African Union Mission in Somalia”); the Global Security Contingency Fund (designed to enhance the “capabilities of a country’s national military forces, and other national security forces that conduct border and maritime security, internal defense, and counterterrorism operations”); the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism (or PREACT, designed to build counterterror capacities and foster military and law enforcement efforts in East African countries, including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda); and, among others, the Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Partnership, the Global Peace Operations Initiative, the Special Operations to Combat Terrorism, the Combatting Terrorism Fellowship, and another known as Counter-Narcotic Terrorism.
A 2013 RAND Corporation analysis called such capacity-building programs “a tangled web, with holes, overlaps, and confusions.” A 2014 RAND study analyzing U.S. security cooperation (SC) found that there “was no statistically significant correlation between SC and change in countries’ fragility in Africa or the Middle East.” A 2016 RAND report on “defense institution building” in Africa noted a “poor understanding of partner interests” by the U.S. military. In Africa, terrorist organizations and attacks have spiked alongside the increase in U.S. Special Operations missions there. In 2006, the percentage of forward-stationed special operators on the continent hovered at 1% of total globally deployed SOF forces. By 2014, that number had hit 10% -- a jump of 900% in less than a decade. During that same span, according to information from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, terror incidents in Africa increased precipitously -- from just over 100 per year to nearly 2,400 annually. During the same period, the number of transnational terrorist organizations and illicit groups operating on the continent jumped from one to, according to Bolduc’s reckoning, nearly 50.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
The African Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan launched by the United States in 1948 to aid the recovery of war-torn Europe had a strong focus on the private sector. Money was transferred to European governments, but they were required to use it for loans for local businesses. German Development Minister Gerd Müller is trying to drum up support for a Marshall Plan for Africa. Little is known about what it will involve, or cost. But critics doubt it is the right road to African renewal. Ulrich Delius from Germany's Society for Threatened Peoples has misgivings about the use of the term 'Marshall Plan' in this context.
"Marshall Plan makes people think of reconstruction after World War Two in Europe." Politicians are misusing the term to disguise their true intentions, he said.
Germany is anxious to stop a growing number of migrants - many of whom come from Africa - from making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe.
Germany's TAZ newspaper claims that European industrial and arms companies will be among the beneficiaries of plans to help Africa fight migration.
"The funds which African countries have been promised to help them fight migration will find their way, first and foremost, to German and European industrial and arms companies," said Simone Schlindwein, the paper’s Africa correspondent.
Together with 24 other journalists, after research in 37 African and European countries, she believes to be the hidden back story to the EU's new migration policy.
"After much painstaking work, we gained access to unpublished documents which has so far been denied to the European public," said Christian Jakob who is overseeing the project at TAZ. The journalists received documents from NGOs such as Statewatch and from insiders apparently critical of EU policy.
Instead of linking development aid to good governance or observance of human rights, the EU is now evidently prepared to financially reward states who keep migrants away from Europe, take back failed asylum-seekers, and introduce biometric controls at their borders. Biometric identity cards are going to be combined with Visa or Master Cards, Schlindwein claims. Every trip to an ATM won't only reveal the identity and location of the user to financial institutions but to state authorities as well. The planned surveillance of Africa would be far more penetrating than anything conceivable in Europe from a data protection perspective, Schlindwein said.
Defense contractors such as Airbus and Rheinmetall, normally associated with tanks and other weapons systems, will be building high tech border installations in many African countries. These firms will be receiving EU funds which were previously earmarked for poverty reduction and humanitarian aid. "German companies, such as Giesecke and Devrient, which specialize in biometrics and encryption, have secured orders from Algeria to Cape Town," Schlindwein said. "These orders were not put out to tender, but mostly wrapped up at meetings in presidential palaces in the middle of the night."
Many European parliamentarians are apparently unaware of the deals their governments have forged with African dictators behind closed doors, Schlindwein said. The EU, she claims, has promised Sudan's authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir - who is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the ICC - that it will cancel his country's debts if it stops migrants from Eritrea and Ethiopia leaving for Europe takes back its own citizens who have already arrived in Europe.
These African governments are not just willing tools serving European interests, they also have their own policy targets as well. The world's biggest refugee camp, Dadaab, is in Kenya and the country intends to close it down. At the same time, it is planning to build a huge border fence along its frontier to Somalia."So the Somali refugees once they have left [Dadaab] won't be able to come back," Schlinwein said."The new European rationale on migration is spreading through the whole of Africa."
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Burundi's refugee problem
More than 325,000 people have fled Burundi and a further 100,000 have become internally displaced since April 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would stand for a third term, leading to protests, unrest and a brutal crackdown. This exodus effectively reversed a massive repatriation movement that saw approximately half a million refugees who fled conflict in Burundi return between 2002 and 2010.
Despite the seriousness of the human rights situation, Burundi was not in a state of war. But few Burundians were surprised. They had been seeing the signals of a pending crisis for months, if not years. Since coming to power, Nkurunziza‘s government had been growing increasingly repressive, deploying a toxic mix of media control, intimidation of civil society and arbitrary arrest of opposition members. The announcement of Nkurunziza’s intention to stand for a third term was simply the final straw.
While most of those who fled since 2015 did so out of fear – either of being directly targeted as a result of political affiliation, or a more general fear of the situation escalating into civil war – these reasons dovetailed with broader social, economic and cultural concerns, many of which related to land disputes exacerbated by shortcomings in the wide-scale repatriation process in the 2000s.
Many of the people we interviewed were disillusioned because promises made to them at the point of return were not kept. This injustice was further reinforced when, in the absence of sufficient assistance on return as promised, they were both economically marginalized and politically ignored – particularly those who were unable to reaccess their family land. Thus, the president’s third term in office was simply a catalyst for deeper, structural issues, including the government’s failure to address injustices that lay at the heart of decades of conflict and led to a chronic deficit in civic trust. The exodus also stemmed from a lingering failure to reabsorb hundreds of thousands of refugees and people displaced inside the country who had been living in external or internal exile for years or even decades. The marginalization and injustice that had driven them into exile in the first place was compounded by the failure to address these issues as part of a meaningful resolution to their exile.
In other words, neither the causes of their previous displacement – the genocide in 1972, or the decade-long civil war in the 1990s – nor the challenges that arose during the effort to repatriate them home have been sufficiently addressed or resolved. This latest round of displacement is therefore the continuation of events that are deeply embedded in Burundi’s post-colonial history, and the current crisis must be seen as part of a wider story of conflict and displacement that continues to haunt the country.
In one of the poorest countries in the world, the government’s failure to tackle these drivers of conflict and displacement, and to ensure that resources were accessible to the population rather than hoarded by the few in power, left people disillusioned with those in authority, regardless of their political affiliation, and with few opportunities to escape poverty. While people might technically have been called citizens of Burundi, the lack of substance to their citizenship has been a terrible disappointment to most.
It was hardly surprising, therefore, that at the first sign of trouble in Bujumbura, many took the decision to flee once more into exile, despite devastating consequences to them and their families. Their plight demonstrates that peace is never going to be sustainable when individuals or groups are left to carve out their lives on the margins – whether inside or outside the country.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
The Squeeze on Obiang
Just a few weeks after 11 lavish vehicles belonging to
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema
Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, were seized in Switzerland, a 250-feet luxurious
yacht belonging to him has been confiscated by the Dutch.
The $120 million yacht was reportedly seized,
after it attempted to leave Makkum, Netherlands, for Malabo, the capital city
of Equatorial Guinea.
Farms not oil wells
Most African governments have focused on growth in
extractive industries such as oil and mining, resulting in some neglect of
agriculture, said Kanayo Nwanze, the president of the United Nations’
International Fund for Agricultural Development, based in Rome. That’s heightened
food insecurity and crippled opportunities for the majority of the continent’s
population that lives in rural areas, he said in a telephone interview from
London.
"Oil hasn’t fed people," Nwanze said. "It has
enriched the pockets of a few people and the majority have become poorer. A
vibrant agricultural sector not only feeds your population, it creates jobs, it
generates wealth and it will keep people on their land."
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
South Africa's richest men
South Africa’s 10 richest men:
- Christo Wiese – R81.2bn (Brait SE)
- Ivan Glasenberg – R60bn (Glencore)
- Stephen Saad – R16bn (Aspen Pharmacare)
- John Whittaker – R15.9bn (Intu Properties)
- Laurie Dippenaar – R12.9bn (First Rand)
- Bruno Steinhoff – R12.6bn (Steinhoff)
- Atul Gupta – R10.7bn (Oakbay)
- Johann Rupert – R10.6bn (Remgro)
- Jannie Mouton – R9.8bn (PSG Group)
- Koos Bekker – R9.6bn (Naspers)
- Patrice Motsepe - R9.55-bn (African Rainbow Minerals)
- Here are how other black individuals fared in the top 100 Paul Baloyi of enX Group ranks 46th with R1.17-billion. Harishkumar Mehta‚ with holdings in Redefine Properties‚ the Spar Group and Tiso Blackstar‚ is ranked 50th with R1.12-billion. Mzolisi Diliza of Growthpoint Properties came in at 56th place with R962-million. Sipho Nkosi of Exxaro Resources is 58th with R944-million.Ramachandran Ottapathu of Choppies Enterprises ranks 66th with R756-million.Polelo Zim with holdings in Northam Platinum and Sanlam came in at 69th place with R725-million At 75th place is Mxolisi Mgojo of Exxaro Resources with R655-million Joe Madungandaba‚ with holdings in Afrocentric Investment Corporation and Jasco Electronics‚ is 79th on the list with R624-million.Farouk Ismail of Choppies Enterprises is 83rd with R564-million.Zwelibanzi Mntambo of Exxaro Resources is ranked 88th with R534-milliion.Mustaq Enus-Brey with holdings in Brimstone Investment Corporation‚ Life Healthcare and Nedbank came in at 95th place with R489-million Woolworths SA CEO Zyda Rylands is ranked 166th with R202-million‚ and is one of few women on the list
- The study also lists top earners of which TMG Digital has counted nine black people in the top 100.
- They are: MTN Group's Raymond Dabengwa‚ AngloGold Ashanti's Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan‚ First Rand's Sizwe Nxasana‚ Gold Fields' Alfred Baku‚ Standard Bank's Sim Tshabalala‚ Exxaro Resources' Sipho Nkosi‚ Sasol's Nolitha Fakude‚ MMI Holdings' Ngao Motsei and Shaik Yunis of Deneb Investments‚ E Media Holdings and others.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Friday, December 09, 2016
The UK Spy Machine in Africa
Kenya, a former colony, hosts a permanent UK base and thousands of troops rotate through it every year to be trained in warfare in arid environments.
Britain’s electronic spy agency listened in on businessmen, government departments and politicians, including heads of state closely allied to the UK, according to the latest Snowden leaks.
The documents, first seen by French Newspaper Le Monde, are likely to cause severe diplomatic issues between the UK and, for example, Kenya, whose President Mwai Kibaki As well as intercepting Kibaki’s communications, the UK also spied on then Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Other victims of UK espionage include roving businessmen from Ivory Coast, Gabon, Tunisia, Mali and Congo and members of the military, intelligence community and former and current statesman from a number of counties, including Angola.
The documents also show that the UK listened in on calls by the leader of another former colony, Nigeria.
Phone calls between the oil-rich nation’s President Umaru Yar’Adua and his main advisers were also invasively monitored. As were those of the then-serving heads of state of two other freed UK colonies, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
Many of the intercepts seem to have been aimed at economic activity, including the Democratic Republic of Congo’s department of mines, Kenyan banker Chris Kirubi and the Nigerian billionaire Tony Elumelu – one of Africa’s most influential men.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Capitalism Vanilla-style
Madagascar provides about 80% of the world’s supply of vanilla. Madagascan vanilla is used in chocolate, cakes and ice-cream sold to consumers around the globe by some of the world’s biggest brands.
Retailers are profiting from the world’s second most expensive spice are ignoring the desperate plight of impoverished Madagascan farmers. According to a new report by research and media centre Danwatch, the vanilla supply chain is keeping farmers locked in a cycle of exploitation, poverty and child labour. Malnutrition and child stunting are realities of family life. The Danwatch report claims that the plight of Madagascan farmers has been largely ignored by exporters and retailers profiting from the $192m (£152m) trade in Madagascan vanilla.
Prices fluctuate, but industry reports show the commodity is currently selling at between $200 (£160) and $400 a kilo. Xidollien’s mother, Liliane, gets just £6 a kilo for the family’s vanilla pods from the “collectors”, young men on motorbikes who come to the village to buy the pods after each harvest. She has no idea where her crop ends up. “I sell to a collector. When it goes, it’s gone,” she says with a shrug.
Rajao Jean, president of a local farmers’ association, says that when farmers become desperate for food during the long wet months, the same collectors return to offer a “vanilla flower contract” – loans to see them through to harvest. The collectors fix the price and return after harvest to collect their debt and the high interest it has accrued, buying the pods far below market value. Jean says that if farmers have a bad harvest or have their plants stolen, they can be forced to sell land, animals and possessions in an attempt to pay off this debt. He explains that a loan of £1 in March could have escalated to £10 by harvest time in July.
“The farmers are making a scarce profit,” says Jesper Nymark, executive director of Danwatch, adding that the investigation reveals a lack of traceability and transparency in supply chains. “Several of the importers and retailers we have spoken with are not able to say which specific farms their vanilla comes from, and whether there is vanilla in their supply chain that has been produced by children.” He continued, “Retailers and importers are obliged by UN guidelines to do whatever [is] in their power to know their supply chain, and to correct violations of human rights if they occur,” says Nymark. “According to the experts we have talked to, there seems to be quite the task ahead in ensuring that people in Madagascar are supported, not exploited, as a consequence of the lack of transparency in the supply chain for the vanilla sold in local supermarkets.”
The International Labour Organisation estimates 20,000 children are working in the Madagascan vanilla trade, the majority of them in the Sava region. The country has ratified international child labour conventions and set a minimum working age of 15, but the ILO says there are 2 million children between the ages of five and 17 engaged in various forms of work on the island; nearly 9% of the total population.
Many here don’t consider children working alongside their parents as a problem. Tombo Tam Hun Man, former mayor and now local vanilla kingpin in Andapa, one of the main towns in the vanilla-producing region, says that children helping in the fields is a natural way for them to learn about vanilla farming.
Under Madagascan law, children must go to school until they are 14, but he admits that few children in the vanilla villages will get an education. “If you don’t start to teach your kids to do something, what will they do? It is better than nothing,” he says. With few government schools, private fee-paying schools are often the only option for farming families. There is no visible evidence of any infrastructure or investment in the vanilla communities by any of the exporters or retailers using Madagascan vanilla pods.
The Madagascan authorities have attempted to regulate the vanilla trade, introducing a code of conduct in 2015. However, resources to implement the code are insufficient, says Bety Florent, president of the regional child labour committee. “We are still at a basic stage. There is still no effective measure,” she says, explaining that only 16 of 86 child labour committees proposed by the government have so far been set up in the region.
Land reform is no reform
South Africa has a history of colonisation, racial domination, and racially-based land dispossession. Black people were forced off the land they owned and they depended for their livelihoods through numerous legislative policies and other coercive measures. In 1994, South Africa’s democratic government implemented land reform to rectify these past racial injustices, to correct skewed land ownership patterns and to alleviate poverty. There is a general agreement that land reform has been a failure and needs to be sped up. Research shows that between 70% to 90% of the projects (including land restitution projects) have failed. The study showed that beneficiaries remain poor 17 years after being given their land back. Most are unable to generate a livelihood from agriculture and depend on state social grants for survival. Beneficiaries were able to rejoice at having their land back, but they have been unable to escape poverty.
What’s gone wrong?
The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies notes that: “South African land reform beneficiaries have been victims of unworkable project designs, largely irrelevant to their livelihood possibilities, aspirations and abilities.”
Land reform has contributed little to helping beneficiaries earn a livelihood from the land. An important component of land reform was for the beneficiaries to become self-sufficient. Projects are designed in a way that favours capital intensive commercial farming unsuitable to the beneficiaries’ circumstances. Other reasons include inadequate post-settlement support, lack of skills, poor planning and infighting within communities. Findings show that land beneficiaries have been virtually neglected by the government.
One farmer commented on the absence of support: “We don’t get the necessary support from the government man! We don’t get it, at all, they are not interested in coming to support us and help us to give us something … They should come here and make a workshop and call us together, those who are interested in farming and stuff like that, there would be a lot of people because I am not the only one… They don’t support us! They do give the land, and what’s the reason of giving people land and then not helping them? Because we need a tractor, we need this and that, we need seeds…”
Giving people land and then depriving them of appropriate support to earn a living from the land is regressive. It is self-defeating for the government to dump people on land without sufficient or relevant support. If land reform continues in its current fashion, its prospects are doomed.
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Amelioration is no cure
About 2.8 billion people - between a third and a half of the world's population - burn solid fuel such as wood, crop waste, charcoal, coal and dung to cook their food in open fires and leaky stoves. Inside those homes, cooking smoke is eye-stingingly visible, and it blackens the walls. But the invisible effect it has on the tiniest, branching airways of the lungs is what makes this a global crisis. Those smoke particles are taken up by cells that form part of the natural defences of the lungs. In doing that, they diminish the function of these cells, increasing the risk of infections and chronic illness. Crucially, smoke is a key driver of child pneumonia - a leading cause of death in children under five in many countries across the developing world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that four million premature deaths every year - in children and adults - can be attributed to indoor air pollution. That is why in 2010, the United Nations Foundation and the US State Department launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), with a mission to "foster the adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels in 100 million households by 2020".
Cleaner cookstoves, the alliance says "save lives and reduce illness". There is, however, a problem. A study run by Kevin Mortimer in Malawi over the last two years, and written up in the Lancet, shows that the cookstove alone does neither. A big clinical trial in Malawi was expected to show children are less likely to die of pneumonia if they live in a home where food is cooked on a smoke-free stove rather than an open fire. Instead it suggests the stove makes no difference. "We followed up and monitored the health of 10,000 children for this study, and our results basically show that there is no difference in cases of pneumonia between the intervention and the control group," he says. "The hard science - certainly from our study - is perhaps at odds with the claim that stoves along the lines of the ones we've used here save lives and reduce illness."
Where does this leave a huge UN-backed project to get 100 million clean cookstoves into homes in the developing world by 2020?
"Exposure to household air pollution is a problem of poverty," says Kevin Mortimer, a medical doctor and a respiratory health researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. "If you're not poor, you're not exposed."
Namibia
Namibian 2.1 million population is multicultural multiracial and multilingual.
The San were the earliest inhabitants of Namibia, followed by the Damara and Nama people. Bantu groups, known collectively as the Ovambo people, began immigrating to Namibia around the 14th century and became a majority in the late 19th century. The OtjiHerero, Caprivian, Kavango, Baster, Afrikaans, German, Himba, and English people round out the population of today’s Namibia.
During European colonization in the late 19th century, the German Empire established rule over most of the territory as a protectorate in 1884. It began to develop infrastructure and farming, and maintained the land as a German colony until 1915, when South African forces defeated its military. In 1920, after the end of World War I, the League of Nations mandated the country to the United Kingdom, which delegated the administration of the country to South Africa. The South African leaders imposed their own laws, including racial classifications and rules. In 1948, with the National Party elected to power, South Africa applied the apartheid regime to Namibia, known at the time as South West Africa.
In the later 20th century, uprisings and demands for political representation by native African political activists seeking independence resulted in the U.N. assuming direct responsibility over the territory in 1966, though South Africa maintained de facto rule. In 1973, the U.N. recognized the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) as the official representative of the Namibian people; the party was and continues to be dominated by the majority Ovambo ethnic group. In response to continued guerrilla warfare, South Africa installed an interim administration in Namibia in 1985. Namibia obtained full independence from South Africa in 1990, though Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands remained under South African control until 1994.
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Dirty fuels - dirty air
In September, the blog reported how many Africans were being poisoned by the air they breathed in the name of profit.
Five West African nations are banning ‘dirty’ European fuels – exported fuels with higher sulphur levels – in response to concerns over vehicle emissions and in an effort to bring safer, cleaner air to more than 250 million people, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said
Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire introduced strict standards that will ensure cleaner, low sulphur diesel fuels, and better emissions standards, thus effectively cutting off Europe’s West African market.
Not before time.
Monday, December 05, 2016
Burundi's descent into hell
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said Burundi's
brutal regime has set the small central African country on a "descent into
hell", warning of the risk of genocide.
In a 200-page report, the FIDH documented how
state-sponsored violence and opposing rebel groups have perpetuated a cycle of
violence. More than 1,000 people have died and up to 800 are missing. Some
8,000 are being held for political reasons and more than 300,000 people have
fled the country
"The crackdown by the security services and the (ruling
party's youth wing) Imbonerakure... aims primarily at retaining power through
any and all means," the report said. "All the criteria and conditions
for the perpetrating of genocide are in place," the report said, listing
"ideology, intent, security institutions... identifying populations to be
eliminated, and the using of historical justifications."
Anschaire Nikoyagize, of the rights group, ITEKA League,said in a statement: "The crimes of the regime have become systematic...
Crimes against humanity are occurring and there is a risk of genocide."
Burundi suffered a brutal civil war from 1993 until 2006
between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, which claimed an estimated 300,000
lives.
A failed coup in May 2015 was the "breaking point"
after which the authorities adopted a "logic of systematic
repression", the report said. After Nkurunziza's re-election in July 2015,
the repression deepened, it said, citing targeted killings and massive
arbitrary detentions. In addition, ethnic Hutus in power "have sought to
turn a political crisis into an ethnic one, equating 'opponents' and 'rebels'
with Tutsis," the report warned.
Friday, December 02, 2016
The girl-soldiers of the DRC
Eastern Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups that prey on locals and exploit mineral reserves. Millions died between 1996 and 2003 as a regional conflict caused hunger and disease.
Girls in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are joining armed groups because they cannot afford to go to school, while former girl soldiers struggle to return to class amid stigma from their communities, a charity said. Around a third of all children in armed groups in the country are estimated to be girls, who are often married off to militants and are vulnerable to abuse and rape, activists say. While civil society groups have had some success in getting boys out of armed groups and into re-integration programmes, this shame and fear of rejection back home has kept many girls in the bush.
"If we leave the group, we're going to be targeted ... so many girls accept and continue to live with their bush husband," said one of the 150 former girl soldiers interviewed.
Many girls in the region join militia groups to obtain food and money, to seek protection against violence, or because their families cannot afford to pay their school fees, according to a report by Child Soldiers International.
"It is deeply shocking that, because their families cannot afford to pay school fees, some girls see joining an armed group as their only option, and decide to throw themselves in harm's way," said Isabelle Guitard, director of programmes at Child Soldiers International. While primary education is free and compulsory by law, most schools in Congo charge fees for books and uniforms.
Senegal's Islamic Schools
Many are sent by parents in Senegal to Islamic schools, called daaras, where they are expected to receive food, shelter and teachings from the Koran. But tens of thousands of children in daaras across the West African nation are forced to beg in the streets to make money for their teachers, called marabouts, said rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Anti-Slavery International.
President Macky Sall in June ordered the removal of children from the streets and said those who force them to beg would be imprisoned in a drive to end a practice estimated by the United Nations to generate $8 million a year for Koranic teachers in the capital.
Yet fewer than 1,000 talibe [street-kids] of more than 30,000 in Dakar have been swept off the streets to date, with marabouts hiding them away or dressing them smartly to evade detection, said the state's national director of child protection Niokhobaye Diouf. "Many disappeared after Sall's announcement ... hidden by the crooked people who profit from their begging," Diouf said.
Sall vowed to close unsafe daaras after nine children died in 2013 in a fire, yet few have been shut down, while an anti-trafficking law passed in 2005 to stop the abuse of talibe has since led to only a dozen prosecutions of marabouts, HRW said. A draft law to regulate and modernise the daaras has stalled amid concerns from marabouts about the integration of the schools into Senegal's education system, activists said.
Many activists said prosecuting marabouts is key to ending abuses. "With the regulatory law in limbo and daaras not part of the education system, how else can Senegal ensure talibe are not subjected to begging and abuse?" said Lauren Seibert of HRW.
Yet few prosecutors choose to take on cases against marabouts, according to a spokesman for the justice ministry's anti-trafficking task force (CNLTP). Only a handful of marabouts have been jailed in cases of extreme abuse and deaths of talibe in recent years, activists said, while Senegal has only made two convictions for forced begging since 2014, found the U.S. TIP report.
"It may be harder to change the mindset of prosecutors than that of marabouts," said Laetitia Bazzi of the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF).
Thursday, December 01, 2016
Digest November 2016
| Africa's Socialist Banner | Digest | November 2016 |
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Low wage South Africa
In South Africa people earning from R12,500 monthly ($860 or £700) are being classified in the group of the country’s wealthiest for government policy purposes It certainly isn’t enough for a life of luxury. You’d be hard-pressed to do much saving and investing on that income or even afford a comfortable home with a home loan.
More than 16m South Africans are desperately poor, while 6.5m with monthly salaries from R12,500 and up are among the country’s richest, according to the research presented to the government. Imraan Valodia and David Francis of the University of the Witwatersrand were part of a team that suggested the country’s minimum wage should be a monthly R3 500 ($250; £200) on the basis of these figures.
6.2 million or 47% of working people in South Africa earn less than R3,500, while 4.6 million (35%) earn less than R2,000 per month. 1.1 million domestic workers – 887 000 of them women – earning less than R3,500 per month. In community services, 1.2 million workers earn less than R3,500 per month. Approximately 800,000 of them are women. The median wage for employed women in 2015 was only 77.1% of the wage for employed men. This means that a woman in the middle of the wage distribution earns only 77 cents for every R1 her male counterpart earns.
What is clear from this research is that the yawning gap between rich and poor is a problem that won’t be solved by playing around with the minimum wage level.
Austerity in Sudan
A dramatic increase in the price of medication, fuel and electricity in Sudan has spurred discontent across the country. Over the past two weeks, protests and strikes have been calling for the government to reinstate subsidies, which were removed earlier this month. The cuts are reportedly part of wider austerity measures that have been implemented to address the country's foreign currency crisis and fiscal deficit. The Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) stopped providing foreign currency for the import of medicine. Medication prices increased between 150 and 300 percent
"The new decision, which caused the increase, is a huge disaster," local pharmacist Hatim Aldaak told Al Jazeera. "This will affect many citizens, especially the poor, because, as you know, the percentage of the poor in Sudan is very large. You cannot imagine the reaction and emotional effect it has on us, when someone comes into the pharmacy to buy medicine and asks for the price and tells us they can't afford it and they then leave with the medicine still on the shelves," said Aldaak.
The end of subsidies was also implemented on fuel and electricity.
Amna Sayed, a 42-year-old mother and tea lady says she is struggling in every way. "It is not just the medications; I can barely send my two children to school. Transport alone is too expensive now and so is food. I sell tea, and even before these increases I hardly managed to get by."
Shop owners, such as Mohammed al-Amin, are similarly struggling. "A 50kg of sugar went up from 510 Sudanese pounds [$78] to 580 [$89], and a 10kg packet of flour went up from 65 Sudanese pounds [$10] to 85 [$13]. Most notably, 100kg of beans went up from 1700 Sudanese pounds [$262] to 2100 [$324], beans – which is the most consumed meal,"
Sudanese citizens responded to a call for three-days of civil disobedience. Some neighbourhoods in the capital saw limited movement of vehicles and pedestrians. Universities and schools were largely effected by the strike, as the majority of students stayed home, forcing some schools to cancel the school day.
Since 2011, following the split of South Sudan, Sudan has been struggling to recover from the loss of three-quarters of the country's oil exports. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended that the Sudanese government gradually introduce such measures to address its crippling economy. Prior to the split, Sudan experienced substantial economic growth driven by oil exports and foreign direct investment, with nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita more than quadrupling between 1999 and 2010. But Sudan's growth was too heavily reliant on oil. When oil export revenues dropped and austerity measures introduced, the country entered a depression, losing more than 15 percent of its GDP in 18 months.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Black is Beautiful
A multibillion-dollar industry of skin-whitening products dominates the West African beauty market. Some estimates putting the number of women in West Africa using lightening cream at 70 percent in some places.
Women are now being told that it is wrong, and even illegal, to bleach their skin. Officials say they are worried there could be a sharp uptick in skin cancer because these products attack the skin’s natural protective melanin. When you bleach, it takes off the outer layers of your skin and this part of the world, the sun is always on. So there’s more skin cancer.
At the same time, they are flooded with messages — and not even subliminal ones — that tell them that white is beautiful.
Ghana’s Food and Drug Authority began a ban on certain skin-whitening products that include hydroquinone, a topical ingredient that disrupts the synthesis and production of the melanin that can protect skin in the intense West African sunshine. But the ban in Ghana hasn’t extended to removing the countless billboard advertisements on how to get “perfect white” skin. Nor have the creams and lotions disappeared from stores. In Accra’s Makola Market, endless shops and stalls had walls filled with potions dedicated to the lightening of skin. The Ghanaian government’s chief officer in charge of putting the ban in place, during an interview at his office, expressed relief that his 3-year-old daughter’s skin is not as dark as his own. “Luckily,” said Emmanuel Nkrumah, “she’s lighter than me.” They are banning the products that give women lighter skin (although no one believes the ban will work) without banning the social messaging that tells women they should have lighter skin.
The “why” goes back centuries, and says much about the searing effects of colonization that lingers today. When the Europeans colonized Africa, they brought with them centuries of belief that they were racially superior, and established a class structure that exists today, 50 years after African countries regained their independence. In many West African countries, at the top of that class structure, sit white expats, whether they are European diplomats in affluent neighborhoods, the United States Embassy staff members in their walled compounds or Lebanese merchants in electronic shops. Next in the hierarchy are the mixed-race people. The European colonists who came to Africa mated with Africans and produced mixed-race offspring, who were then deemed to be of a superior class to the full-blooded Africans. South Africa’s apartheid system went so far as to legally enshrine mixed-race people, called “coloureds.”
In many African countries, the word “mulatto” does not have the negative connotation that it has in the United States. The view that the lighter your skin, the “better” you are did not leave the continent with the Europeans, and eventually, science caught up, as skin-lightening products became available throughout the continent. “Anyone in this country could see that the mulattos were given precedence everywhere,” explained Dr. Edmund Nminyem Delle, a dermatologist who for three decades has campaigned against skin bleaching.
“It breaks my heart,” said Ama K. Abebrese, an actress. “There’s not a day I don’t drive into town and see a billboard that tells me I need perfect white skin. We are here in an African country, and it’s like someone just hit you in your gut.”
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Madagascar Famine Looming
Food and Agriculture Organisation says 330,000 people in Madagascar are on verge of ‘a food security catastrophe’ following sustained drought that has decimated crops with agencies warning last month that nearly 850,000 people are experiencing “alarming” hunger levels. More than 50% of children suffering from stunted growth, a condition caused by malnutrition over the first 1,000 days of life.
Dominique Burgeon, director of emergencies and rehabilitation at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said, “People go from one lean season to the next, resorting to negative coping strategies. People are eating anything to fill their stomachs, selling most of their belongings, cattle and land. It shows the severity of the situation and the need for us to act.”
Farmers talk of the earth changing; of failed rains and crops, and barren land.
“People are living under extreme conditions. We are dealing with a development crisis that has lasted for decades now, worsened by El Niño. For many, it is day-to-day survival,” said Elke Wisch, country representative for Unicef Madagascar. “Worst case is another crop failure,” said Wisch. “Then you are looking at – and we’re starting to see this now – people eating seeds instead of planting them. That is a desperate situation.”
Solar Power
70 percent of Africa's 600 million people are not connected
to the electricity grid.
"Rural populations depend largely on firewood, charcoal
and kerosene for lamps or lanterns to light their homes," says Francis
Njoka, a renewable energy expert at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture
and Technology in Nairobi.
In East Africa, more than 350,000 people already use solar
panels to light their homes.
Solar panels now provide from 12 to 14 hours of lighting.
It’s cheaper and more efficient than kerosene
Fact of the Day (Kenya)
In Kenya, half the
population lives below the poverty line, earning less than $2 per day, with no
access to basic amenities. Every year, over 1 million Kenyan youths enter a job
market with no employment opportunities
Thursday, November 24, 2016
SACP - South Africa's Child Poverty
Almost two-thirds of children live below the poverty line of R965 per month. Not only are the country's children facing gross inequality, but unemployment and poverty means many households cannot financially support their young.
Inequalities in access to quality services and opportunities still run along racial with 41 percent of all black African children and 33 percent of this group across all ages living in the poorest 20 percent of households in the country.
Despite many children being eligible for a monthly child support grant of R360 researchers pointed out around 1.8 million are still not accessing the grant, many of whom are among the neediest young children. At R12 a day, the grant was in effect a very small amount and was not enough to cover a child’s most basic daily food needs.
Southern Africa's land reform
Twenty-two years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is still grappling with land reform. Progress is slow under the current approach to shift land from white back to black people and many are becoming impatient. Land ownership is a contentious issue in South Africa. With the end of apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) party promised to right the wrongs of the past by shifting land from white farmers back to the black population who lost most of South Africa's fertile land under colonial rule. But the government is still far from reaching its initial target of redistributing one third of the land by 1999. 90 percent of the farmland that has been redistributed is not productive anymore, meaning that land reform has not been commercially viable.
"We haven't given it enough time," said Professor Nick Vink, chairman of the Agricultural Economics Department at Stellenbosch University. "It's something that's going to be with the country for the next two or three generations."
Left-winger,Julius Malema, renewed his call for blacks to occupy white-owned land. The Economic Freedom Fighters party has won public support with by campaigning against inequality in South Africa and calling for non-violent occupation to redistribute the land.
"They have been living peacefully. They have been swimming in a pool of privilege, they have been enjoying themselves because they always owned or land,” said Malema about South Africa's white, land-owning minority.
Robert Mugabe wanted to use his land reform program to eliminate the traces of colonialism by giving farms to black Zimbabweans. 15 years later the country can no longer feed itself. Some 4,500 white farmers were dispossessed, sometimes forcibly, and a million black Zimbabweans were settled on their land. A number of new medium-sized farms were created but by and large the land was redistributed to small-scale farmers – and to people who had good connections to the Mugabe regime. As a result of the land reform, some 300,000 black farm workers lost their jobs. Like the dispossessed white farm owners, they received no compensation for their losses. With the implementation of the land reform, the government failed to seize the opportunity to abandon traditional hierarchies and give women more of a say in the running of the expropriated farms. Less than 40 percent of land is currently being used productively, he told DW. One reason for this is that no real work is being done on many of the new large farms now in the hands of members of the political elite. Small farmers lack the necessary know-how and do not have enough capital to purchase the equipment they need, seeds, fertilizer or fuel.
Land reform seems to have become a symbol of how deep racial divisions still run in the country.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Africa Opposes Gay Rights
The 54-national African Group endeavoured to delay the appointment of an UN expert on LGBTI rights, gay rights investigator Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand. South Africa broke ranks with the rest of the continent.
Muntarbhorn, who is an international law professor, was appointed in September. He was given a three-year mandate to investigate abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. His appointment happened despite a stormy debate that also saw several African states vote against the decision.
In Africa 33 countries have anti-gay laws including Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Mauritania.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Nigeria's Slump
Two years ago, in 2014, Nigeria overtook South Africa to become the continent's largest economy, measured by GDP. Yet the country faces severe infrastructure challenges, and it still suffers from chronic power shortages.
Nigeria has seen its crisis deepen in the third quarter. Renewed attacks on pipelines and a slump in oil prices sent the West African nation into its third quarterly contraction in a row, with no fix in sight.
Oil production accounts for around 70 percent of government revenue, and the bulk of the nation's export earnings. Oil production averaged 1.63 million barrels per day. That marked a 22-percent drop from the same period a year earlier, when Nigeria produced 2.17 million barrels per day.
The government's efforts to prop up the naira has drained foreign currency reserves, necessitating the abandonment of the naira-dollar currency peg in June of this year. Despite that measure, a dollar shortage still persists, with black market rates hovering around 440 naira to the greenback this month, compared with the official bank rate of 320 naira to the dollar.
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