Selling cancer to Africans

British American Tobacco (BAT) has signed an $11.90 million deal with Malian state tobacco company, SONATAM for the production and distribution of Dunhill cigarettes in West Africa.

BAT is latching on the gullibility and weakness of African governments. It has created sneaky and illegal policies to outsmart restrictive laws, keeping Africa as one of its most lucrative markets while endangering millions of lives. According to Euromonitor data, BAT has the largest share of cigarette sales in the Middle East and Africa.  According to Financial times, it flagged a number of African countries as offering “further opportunities” for sales growth.

Late last year, a BBC investigation uncovered evidence of bribery at British American Tobacco. BAT was accused for bribery scandal in Kenya and Uganda. This was made known by Paul Hopkins who worked for the BAT in Kenya for 13 years and claims to have facilitated bribes for several individuals. In order to prove this, he released emails to Panorama showing the company’s involvement in these deals, which detail him being told that paying bribes was the cost of doing business in Africa.

In 2008, the company was the subject of a BBC documentary, in which Duncan Bannatyne investigated the marketing practices of the company in Africa and specifically the way the company targets younger Africans with branded music events, competitions and the sale of single cigarette sticks. Many of the practices uncovered were not in line with BAT’s own code of conduct and company standards. Bannatyne also interviewed Dr Chris Proctor, Head of Science and Regulation, who admitted that advertisements targeting children from three African countries were ‘disappointing’.

In 2007 the Nigerian government alleged that BAT marketing and advert campaigns were targeting the youth amongst other things. Several states in the country followed suit, taking legal action and seeking payment for future damages in anticipation of tobacco related diseases.

The Libya and Mali Land Deal

In one of Africa's largest and most secretive foreign agricultural investment deals, oil-rich Libya, under the leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, signed a 50-year, renewable lease for the land with Mali's government in 2008. Plans for the land deal were reportedly hatched in direct negotiations between two leaders who have since been deposed - exiled Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and Libya's Gaddafi, who was captured and killed after being toppled from power.

Malian farmer Balima Coulibaly and his fellow villagers watched with dread as 100,000 hectares of fertile land they have farmed for generations were handed to Libyan investors with no discussion about the impact on their impoverished communities. Villages in the area remain without paved roads, phone lines or water pipes.

The land in the Office of Niger, the agricultural heart of the West African country, was provided rent free, with water rights included, on the condition that Libya build canals and roads to cultivate rice and cattle there. But seven years on, with Libya in chaos following Gaddafi's ouster and drought-hit Mali grappling with an insurgency, the project has stalled. Mali's government admits it's unsure what will happen with the deal since the collapse of Libya's government. Tens of thousands of poor families living and growing crops on the land say they remain uncertain what their future holds.

“We don't know what will happen to us," said Coulibaly,an aging local leader, "We have a big hunger problem. At the moment, we are just trying to survive." More than half of the country's 15 million people live below the official poverty line and nearly two million are hungry, says the U.N.'s World Food Programme. Coulibaly believes his village, where many are illiterate, doesn't have a lot of barganing power in international business deals. "We worry that we won't be allowed back if the project starts again," said Balima. "We invested a lot in these lands, planting trees and building things - but one day they could come and take it all away."

An estimated 60,000 small farmers reside within the area, each farming less than half a hectare. Sangha and Finn residents do not have formal title to the land they farm, although Malian law recognises customary tenure. They say they were not consulted ahead of the Libyan deal and have no idea what is happening now or could happen next. A 40 km (25 mile) canal was built to irrigate rice fields on the Libyan land but local people aren't allowed to use the water. Authorities have ignored their requests for water access and pipes.

Backers of land deals say they bring much-needed investment to Africa, and can provide jobs and improve the productivity of the land. But rights activists say local people are rarely well compensated for their losses and handing over land could exacerbate local food shortages. At the time, terms of the deal weren't publicly released but it was rumoured all rice grown there would be exported. Many large-scale foreign land investment deals in Africa are designed to shore up food security in the country acquiring the land or on international markets, not in local ones, experts say.

Chantal Jacovetti, a researcher with Mali's Coordination of National Farmers' Organisations, a rights group, said foreign investors often want land, but not the farmers on it. Jacovetti said small-scale farmers in the Office du Niger could triple their food production if they had government support to build infrastructure and, crucially, access to formal land tenure.

"Some communities have been on that land for 800 years," Jacovetti said. "But now they are totally precarious. Companies want to grab this land and get rid of the peasants."

Moussa Djire, a University of Bamako legal scholar who analysed the Malibya investment, said secrecy over the agreement led some to suspect shady dealings but personality politics probably played a bigger role in creating the project than illicit cash. An undated copy of the contract obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation showed the deal granted Malibya, a subsidiary of Libyan sovereign wealth fund Libyan African Investment Portfolio, land for 50 years with no mention of exports. Despite Mali facing three droughts in the past decade, the contract gave investors water "without restrictions" from June to December with some limits in drier months.

"How can they guarantee water for foreigners and not us Malian people?" fumed Binan Coulibaly, a local farmer. "It's already difficult for us to survive."

The Office du Niger, with green trees and healthy herds of cattle grazing by the roadsides, contrasts with Mali's desert north where almost nothing grows. Irrigated by a dam built by French colonialists in the 1930s, the agricultural area operates as a separate administrative unit from other parts of Mali's government and is responsible for much of the country's food. It could produce more if better managed, experts say. "We have the potential to be the great bread basket of Mali," said Sinaly Thiero, deputy director of Office du Niger, who coordinated the Malibya project on the government side. With no-one from Libya visiting the site since civil war erupted there in 2011, Thiero is uncertain about the project's future. The concession could be revoked unless food production and infrastructure investment goes ahead, he said, but he refused to give a deadline. "Whether the Libyans keep the concession depends on the Libyan government," Djire said. There are deadlines for developing the assets but Malian law allows for extensions under certain circumstances, he said. The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which financed the Malibya project, refused to comment on its African land deals through its London-based public relations firm, Consulum Strategic Communications.

Family farmers - including those in rich countries - produce about 80 percent of the world's food, according to the U.N's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). A study by Sweden's Lund University found more than 32 million hectares of land globally - an area larger than Poland - has changed hands in similar land deals up to 2012, but often the bankers, speculators and sovereign wealth funds behind these deals don't have much expertise in farming. Farmers' rights advocates said several similar large land deals from Mali to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan have not met the desired results for anyone involved.

International Agroecology Forum Says No! To Industrial Agriculture

Today, the sun has risen brighter than ever in Mali to warm the more than 250 delegates of the first International Forum on Agroecology being held at the Nyéléni Center in Sélingué, south Mali  hosted by Confederation of Peasants Organizations of Mali (CNOP) and La Via Campesina, and organised by organisations which are part of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC). There are women and men, from diverse constituencies, among them farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous people, pastoralists and urban consumers from all corners of the world, arrived to the center in buses from Bamako and other regions of Mali.

Over the next four days, the women and men of the conference will debate, share experiences and celebrate agroecology with the view to reinforcing a common vision and principles, as well as deciding on a common strategy to claim back the concept of agroecology, “beyond just the scientific aspect, to encompass its social, economic and political elements”, as Gilberto Schneider, from the Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores (MPA) in Brazil, pointed out.

The Forum opened with a warm welcome to the participants by Ibrahima Coulibaly, the president of the CNOP, who explained the reason why such a forum was taking place now. According to Coulibaly, in spite of agroecology now being mentioned everywhere, it is necessary to question who really are at the center of agroecology. “We are talking about small scale food producers, peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, we are who feed the world population. It is we who are the real heroes of the agroecology. It is we that should have a voice”, he said.
Maria Noel, from Movimiento Agroecológico de America Latina y el Caribe (MAELA) in Uruguay, said that agroecology has been practiced for centuries and it represents more than just a system of production. She explained that it was a way of being, a way of life, which respects the environment and provides a livelihood and income to the majority of food producers and fisherfolk on the planet. “We have to make sure that this concept is not captured by corporates”, she said.

In fact, the industrial agriculture system based on heavy use of harsh chemicals, which destroys both soils and forests, depletes resources, and affects the health and wellbeing of both small holders and consumers, is being systematically favoured by governments, which serve the interests of multinationals and enact free trade policies dictated by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. As Ibrahima Coulibaly stated: ‘’Humanity went too far, when we thought that we should put the economy before all. This has weakened the world, made it more vulnerable and resulted in climatic change: extreme weather, droughts, and severe water shortages”, he said.


Participants of the first Agroecology forum have a common understanding that the only way to save the planet for future generations is to practice a virtuous agriculture. Thus, people must stand together as one, and this is possible because “we are the majority. If we say no to industrial agriculture, it will be no!”, stressed Coulibaly.
Andrea Ferrante from the Italian Association of Biological Farmers (AIAB) and La Via Campesina reiterated: “we are the answer. The answer to feed the world lies with agroecology. We want a model that is based on our knowledge, our way of living, not on petrol and fake answers from the industrial world. We look at the future of our children”.  

The link between rural and urban actors has also being highlighted through a need to connect responsible consumption and production, in strong local and regional food systems based on agroecology.

"It is not possible to have food sovereignty, the respect of peoples right to culturally appropriate and healthy food, without agroecology,‘’ said Ferrante.

By Communication team of the International Forum On Agroecology here

International Agroecology Forum to Address Food Sovereignty

Mali: La Via Campesina and allies host an International Agroecology Forum to address Food Sovereignty

More than 200 delegates, among them peasants, family farmers, fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, consumers, urban poor organizations, NGOs, academics and other social movements will be at the Nyéléni Centre in Mali from 24 to 27 February, to take part in the first International Forum on Agroecology. This forum takes places at a time where the world is facing economic crisis, the climate is changing, and the Mother Earth is being aggressively exploited by the corporate model of death and land grabbing.

According to La Via Campesina, agroecology is essential to humanity, since it builds autonomy and a better life for small scale food producers, produces more healthy food, provides a strong base for food sovereignty, and allows rural peoples to live in harmony with and take care of our Mother Earth. Peasant and small scale food producers’ agroecology is considered to be the model of life, of farms with farmers, of food producers with productive resources, of rural communities with families, of countryside with trees and forests.

According to Ibrahim Coulibaly, a leader of the National Coordination of Peasants Organizations (CNOP) in Mali, “this forum will bring practical responses, that will lead to concrete solutions on how agroecology can save the planet from hunger and climate change”.

Together with La Via Campesina, organizations such as More and Better (MaB), Movimiento Agroecológico de América Latina y el Caribe (MAELA), Réseau des organisations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA), World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fishworkers (WFF), World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP) are co-organizers of the forum.

The Mali forum aims at exchanging local knowledge and know–how of farmers, sharing the innovations of peasants and small scale food producers, training materials and territorial processes to address the challenges of building an ecologically and socially just 
food system, as well as strengthening the synergies between the different small scale food producer organizations, social movements and other organizations promoting Agroecology.

from here

African History (2)

Mansa Musa of Mali was the wealthiest individual in the history of the world. After adjustment for inflation, Mansa Musa had a personal net worth of around $400 billion. When Mansa Musa went on the Hajj, the gave away so much gold that the price of gold in Cairo went into freefall and did not recover for a decade.

The Mali Empire was a great African medieval kingdom that lasted over 400 years with its own schools of Mathematics,Astronomy and Philosophy. Sub-Sahara African empires had written languages just like any other. The Mali Empire was known for its high quality manuscripts, and the city of Timbuktu was a major learning center. Even as south as the Kongo and its Kingdom that rose had establish relations with Europe. Not to mention the Christian Ethiopia. Most of the history of south of the Sub-Sahara is unknown due to the rapid spread of Islam in North Africa (which is part of African history and its civilizations) in the 9th century. The religious division, and lack of navigation technologies prevented direct contact with those regions. Its not till the 14th century that we have European beginning to explore that they regain direct contact.

The slave wars

In Mali Tuareg rebels are capitalising on fighting in Mali to reacquire former captives whom they regard as their property from birth.


Anti-slavery groups say the conflict and ensuing political chaos in Mali has worsened the situation facing the 250,000 people who live in conditions of slavery in the west African state. The MNLA leadership and parts of the Ansar Dine Islamist group, which fought for control of the north last year, come from Tuareg noble families, some of whom are responsible for continuing the practice of slavery in Mali. The Malian anti-slavery organisation Temedt has reported cases of slave masters profiting from the chaos of the past year to recapture former slaves, including at least 18 children seized from one village last September.
Although slavery is a crime against humanity in Mali's constitution, it remains deeply ingrained in the culture. For centuries, descent-based slavery – where slavery is passed down through the bloodline – has resulted in "black Tamasheq" (the Tuareg's language) families in Mali's north being used as slaves by nomadic Tuareg communities. Generations of children have been considered the property of the Tuaregs from birth. Despite the constitution, slavery is still not illegal in Mali, making it difficult for anti-slavery groups to launch criminal prosecutions.

In 2008, Raichatou escaped slavery in the northern desert town of Menaka, heading for the relative safety of Gao. Raichatou became a slave at the age of seven when her mother, also a slave, died. "My father could only watch on helplessly as my mother's master came to claim me and my brothers," she says. She worked as a servant for the family without pay for nearly 20 years, and was forced into a marriage with another slave whom she didn't know.My master only wanted me to have children so that he would have more slaves in the future. My opinion did not count. I had to live with a man I had not chosen for three years. They told me that the only way I would get to heaven was to obey my master. My instinct for liberty was telling me to grab every opportunity to be free, but my slave mentality was telling me the opposite" she says.

Mali: the background

What is now Mali has a long history. The Malinke empire ruled the area from the 12th century to the 15th century. Then, the powerful Songhai empire ruled over the Timbuktu-Gao region. In 1591 Morocco conquered Timbuktu and ruled the city for two centuries. In the 19th century the land became a colony in 1904 (named French Sudan in 1920). In 1946, the land became part of French Union.

Mali, situated in West Africa, lies in the Sahara region. It has a land area of 1,240,000 sq km, which is four-fifths the size of Alaska in the USA. Mali is land-locked and shares a border with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast,  Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. The north has a porous soil and dry weather, while the only fertile soil is in the south where river Niger and Senegal provide water for irrigation. Its natural resources are: cotton, maize, millet, and groundnuts. these crops are mainly produced from the south because of irrigation system around them.

It is estimated that Mali as of 2012 is 15,000,000 people. (growth rate is 2.6 percent) (birth rate is 4.6 percent). Infant mortality rate is 11.36 percent. Life expectancy is 52.1. Density per sq km 10. Mali has about 51 tribes such as Madinka, Bambara, Kunta, Soninke, Arabe, Pere, Sarahule, Bobo, Bozo, Kado, Sawraye Tamachec, Kroloboro, Tuareg, Arabs, etc. As to religion, 90 percent are Muslims, 7 percent Christians and 3 percent animists.
 
The capital is Bamako with 1,325,300 metropolitan area and the currency is the CFA franc that is used among francophone countries in West Africa.

Mali became independent on 20 June 1960 under the name of Sudanese Republic. This Republic was joined by Senegal in the Mali Federation. However after two months Senegal seceded. As a result the Sudanese Republic changed its name to the current Republic of Mali.

The first President of Mali, Modibo Keita was born to a Madinka Moslem family in Bamako. He took over power as an elected President on independence in 1960.  Keita  introduced a single party state and Pan-Africanism, like other presidents that promoted Pan-Africanism in their various countries:  Azikiwe in Nigeria, Nkrumah in Ghana, Sekou Touré in Guinea-Conakry, Nyerere in Tanzania, and Kenyatta in Kenya.

On 19 November 1968 General Moussa Traroré removed President Keita in a bloodless coup d'état.  He spent some weeks in detention in Kidal in the northern of Mali and died in May 1977. Keita’s death attracted demonstrations that were violent. These were organised by his party and the Madinka ethnic group that felt humiliated and maltreated by General Traroré and his cohorts.

Mali has been on a barrel of gun powder for years since independence. The northern part of the country which is comprised of cities like Timbuktu, Kidal, Gao, Sevare, Tesalit, Djabali, Konne, Mopti, etc, has been protesting to Bamako government about the lack of development in their region. They feel marginalised by the government. Each time they rise up against the government, they are decimated.

In the 1980s the Tuareg rebels were the only force confronting the Bamako government, demanding their independence in the north. But, because the rebels lacked sophisticated weapons to go into full offensive against the Mali regime, the Mali government did not bother to counter them. Northern Mali has been the zone of terrorists for years. There was no border control in the north. Ansar-Dine was formed by a Tuareg rebel called Iyad Ag Ghaly in July last year in order to bring in more jihadist fighters into their region for support to invade northern Mali.

In 2006 the Tuareg rebels looted weapons from the army depot in the town of Kidal for their struggle, but that did not send a signal to Bamako that trouble was on the way. The regime in Bamako has been on soft pedal with the Tuareg because of a lack of weapons to confront them. And the rebels, noticing that the regime was handicapped and incapacitated to confront them, started seeking support from other jihadists from other countries like Boko Haram of Nigeria, Al-shaabab of Somalia, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. These terrorists have the common goal to achieve Sharia law in Islamic religion. They are better organised than the government because of their belief in sharia.

In January 2010  an offensive was started by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). The movement assumed momentum after the fall of Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. These terrorists stole many sophisticated weapons from the Gaddafi regime and crossed the desert to start a rebellion in the northern Mali. So these weapons, sold to Libya government by the French government, ended up into the hands of bandits and terrorists.

And to worsen the situation, on 22 March 2012, a group of angry army officers led by Captain Amadou Sanogo did a coup d'état and appeared on television to announce that they had seized control of the country. They said their reason for taking over the country was because, President Dioncounda Traoré was not handling the conflict in the north very well. The coup d'état did not succeed as the military only controls the south of Mali, leaving the north known as Republic of Azawad to MNLA, Ansar-Dine and Al Qaeda terrorists to control. Dioncounda Traoré, who had been forced by the junta to go into hiding, was re-instated. The Tuareg rebels that used to be in control of the north were chased out by MNLA, Ansar-Dine and Al Qaeda Maghreb as they had no weapons to hold on the region.
 
French and African military intervention
In January the Islamist fighters decided to take more cities from the south in order to build a well-balanced Azawad republic. They captured the central town of Konna and planned to push further south to Bamako. The government of Bamako had no other choice than to ask France for help and Paris responded as a colonial father by sending 550 troops and tanks, at the same time carrying out air strikes on rebel positions in the north.

A rebellion that could have been crushed within one week of its existence stayed ten good months before French intervention and other allied forces such as Nigeria with 1200 soldiers. Other African states such as Benin republic, Niger, Togo, Chad,  and Burkina-Faso also sent troops. Other western countries like USA, Britain, Germany and Belgium are supplying the logistics.

In April 2012, when the jihadists took the north of Mali, they committed human right abuses by amputations, flogging, stoning to death those who oppose their interpretation of Islam. All these severe pains inflicted on innocent people could have been avoided if UN have done their work well. But it is a waste of time for any nation in crisis calling the UN for intervention.

Malians are nice and hardworking people with beautiful music and culture. They welcome and respect people. Malians have nothing, but the little they have are shared among people that is around them, even to a piece of bread. It is callous and total negligence by the entire world that resulted in Malians facing the brutality of the Islamic jihadists.  I am convinced that if Mali had an oil in their soil, a lot of capitalist powers could have gone to Mali a long time ago without waiting for UN security council approval.

On 25 January France promised to give $452 million to the Mali government. How is this money going to help an ordinary citizen of Mali from south to north? A lot of millions have been donated to African leaders by the West. And this money ended up in pockets of individual leaders while the masses are left to rot. If the money given to Mali government passed through the village Alkalis, or village heads, of every community this would help ordinary Malians and mean that they would reject every offer coming from jihadists, be it food or cash.

The jihadists donated some food items to some people in order to win support and it worked for them. They used that trick and won the hearts of some parents who voluntarily gave their children to jihadists as child soldiers. But those that refused to give their children, their children too were forced to join the rebels.

Whatever the French government’s motives for intervening, there can be no doubt that most Malians welcomed it. The spokesperson for Malians living in Orleans, France, Habib Doucouré,  said that were happy with French and African military intervention as it saved Mali from Al Qaeda destruction.

Cebiloan HYACINT, 
France.
 

Why Mali

At issue in Western interventions in Africa's wars is the scramble for Africa's resources. They're vast. They're some of the world's largest and richest. They include oil, gas, gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, iron, copper, tin, lead, nickel, coal, cobalt, bauxite, wood, coltan, manganese, chromium, vanadium-bearing titanium, agricultural lands, and offshore fishing.  

Mali is strategically located. It's West Africa's largest country. It's more than double the size of France. It borders on seven nations. They include Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea, and Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Its northwestern area is largely arid desert or semi-desert. The Sahel runs through its central region. Rainfall and rivers make southwestern territory marginally more lush than the rest of the country.The Niger River is its most important geographic feature. It traverses the Sahel and southeastern region. It's a major transportation artery. 

 Mali's resources comprise of gold, diamonds, phosphates, bauxite, lignite, kaolin, salt, limestone, gypsum, granite, marble, diatomite, hydropower, iron ore, manganese, tin, lead, zinc, copper, oil, gas, and uranium. Mali is Africa's third largest gold producer after South Africa and Ghana. It's rich in uranium. It has an estimated 5,000 tons or more. It's neighbor Niger is the world's fourth largest producer. In 2007, Algeria's state oil company Sonatrach and Canada's Selier Energy signed oil and gas exploration deals. In mid-2012, drilling began.

Pretexts are easy to invent and the war on terror is just another piece of camoflage for  serving French, British and American business interests.

The struggle to live in Mali

While world media attention is focused on the French military intervention to thwart militant Islamist rebels, it is easy to overlook that for most Malians, to just stay alive is, in itself, an everyday struggle.

The country’s birthrate and infant mortality rate are the second highest in the world. Infant mortality exceeds 10 percent. Life expectancy at birth is among the shortest in the world.

With climate change and the Sahara desert creeping ever southward, life for rural and nomadic populations in the north is getting worse; even at the best of times. Drought is now a common reality. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about a quarter of the population faces severe food insecurity.

The current conflict makes the misery worse. Very often the popular response is flight–to anywhere else. Oxfam estimates that 30,000 so far have fled since the French began their campaign last week. They join some 345,000 previously internally and externally displaced persons due to the ongoing unrest. The Catholic Information Service for Africa estimates that the number of displaced persons could reach 700,000. Already it estimates that about a third of Mali’s population of more than fifteen million is affected by the interrelated crises involving food availability, nutrition, and military conflict. This extreme privation plays a major, if often hidden, role in refugee flows and the availability of children to fight as soldiers as the only means of obtaining a meal.

the Mali mess

Only last month, asked about intervention in the strife-torn Central African Republic, the French President François Hollande replied: “Those days are over”. But apparently not. France (and Britain) appear to be embroiled in yet another war. French planes attacked targets,  The mayor of Konna, says the dead included children who drowned after they threw themselves into a river in an effort to escape the bombs. Britain has provided transport planes. Americans provides intelligence and logistical support, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Nigeria agreed to send soldiers to join hundreds of French troops. France, the only European country still to have a permanent military presence in Africa with several major military bases. French involvement in Mali dates back more than a hundred years. The current unrest erupted in Mali after President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they had mounted the coup in response to the government's failure to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

A secular separatist Tuareg, National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad,  wants an independent state in northern Mali called Azawad. National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad. The group which once controlled the cities of Gao and Kidal has largely melted back into the population awaiting its next chance. The MNLA is generally disregarded and underestimated because it has receded and allowed al-Qaeda-linked groups to take over the field. But it's important to remember the genesis of this crisis was an action by the MNLA to take over northern Mali, and all that is happening can be seen as a kind of reaction. The aspirations of the MNLA are deep-rooted going back to the first Tuareg rebellion in 1963. Their demands are not going to go away and those demands will continue to be the deep root of the northern Mali crisis.

National Front for the Liberation of Azawad is an Arab group loosely allied to the MNLA which wants the people of northern Mali to have the right to self-determination. They want northern Malians to be able to decide whether they want to be autonomous, independent or to be a part of Mali, possibly through a referendum similar to what happened when Southern Sudan voted for independence. The FLNA is not asking for the implementation of Sharia law.

Ganda Koy (Masters of the Earth) is a Songhai ethnic self-protection militia which has been around since the second Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s. Ganda Koy has in the past fought alongside the Malian Army against Tuareg rebels. They have allegedly committed massacres against Tuareg civilians. Human Rights Watch recently put out a report warning that ethnic self-protection militias like Ganda Koy and Ganda Izo are compiling kill lists of members of MNLA, Ansar al Din, other groups and their collaborators.

Ganda Izo is a Fulani ethnic militia that was formed in 2008 to perform a similar function to Ganda Koy—providing self-protection to the local Fulani populace and countering Tuareg rebellion.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is a mostly Algerian and Mauritanian group that has been present in northern Mali since 2003 and which has kidnapped and held more than 50 European and Canadian hostages for ransom in the last ten years earning what is estimated to be well over $100m. Niger's foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum recently said that AQIM's presence in northern Mali was part of a deal between the group and the deposed President of Mali Amadou Toumani Toure. Hostage ransom money from European governments was allegedly spread around to Malian officials while AQIM was given free rein in Tuareg areas, with a wink and a nod from the Malian Army. AQIM is currently holding at least nine European hostages in northern Mali. Over the last decade a few local Ifoghas, Tuaregs and Arabs joined AQIM in Mali, and their members also inter-married with the community. However now that AQIM are openly circulating in the main cities of northern Mali, and thanks to its association with local groups like Ansar al Din, the group has become more mainstream. Now youths from southern Mali, Senegal, Niger and other countries have come to join them under the rubric of the Islamic Police which AQIM has a direct hand in running.

Ansar al Din is a group of local Ifoghas Tuaregs, Berabiche Arabs and other local ethnic groups who want Sharia law implemented everywhere in Mali and across the Muslim world. The founder and head of Ansar al Din is Iyad Ag Ghali, a Tuareg former leader from the 1990s. Over the past ten years Iyad worked closely with the former president to try and put an end to simmering Tuareg rebellions and to negotiate hostage ransom deals with AQIM. Ansar al Din's spokesman is an Arab from the Timbuktu area named Sanda Ould Boumana who was incarcerated in Mauritania in 2005 for being an alleged member of al-Qaeda. The majority of Ansar al Din fighters are Tuaregs from Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ifoghas tribe and Berabiche Arabs from the Timbuktu area. Ansar al Din avoids fights with the MNLA and FLNA so as not to shed blood of relatives and tribal cohorts which would be de-legitimising. They tend to leave that job to MUJAO and AQIM. Although Ansar al Din denies any links with al-Qaeda, it effectively functions as a local umbrella under which members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) can operate. The relationship between the two groups is analogous to the association between the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghainstan, with Ansar al Din playing host. The two groups work together running the religious police, for example. Ansar al Din keeps its membership Malian, thus keeping their future options open within Mali. Ansar al Din can be found in all three main cities of the north: Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal.

Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa is the most opaque of the al-Qaeda-linked groups in northern Mali. It is supposedly a dissident group which split off from AQIM, but they told Al Jazeera that they're proud of working with AQIM in Gao to fend-off mutual enemies. MUJAO says like Ansar al Din that they want Sharia law everywhere in the world. Unlike Ansar al Din the group incorporates both locals and foreigners from the Sahel region and North Africa.  MUJAO has been the most aggressive in attacking MNLA elements as well as Arab groups who want self-determination for northern Mali. When the MNLA gain a foothold in a region, MUJAO are known to harrass them until they leave. Tilemsi Arab drug lords from the Gao area are alleged to be involved in funding MUJAO and some of their young people have joined.

The trade routes of the Sahara once made the region now called Mali among the world’s richest. But for the past century, it has been marred by instability and conflict.

Source

Mali's misfortune

Mali is in the grip of a food crisis, yet fields either side of the road heading north from the capital, Bamako, are lush with newly grown crops of maize, millet and okra. Mango trees abound, alongside baobabs, valued for their fruit pulp, which makes a porridge high in vitamin C, as well as karite trees – called shea in English – which bear nuts providing cooking oil. Roadside stalls boast bananas, guavas and aubergines, while fisherman can be seen at work on the waters of the River Niger or on one of its major tributaries, the Bani.

Lack of rains last year across the Sahel, that part of West Africa lying just south of the Sahara, resulted in poor harvests, which sparked higher prices for staples such as millet. This left some 19 million people across the region dependent on food aid. The situation was already perilous when the rains failed. A food crisis in 2010 had left more than 10 million already facing shortages. In Mali, some 4.6 million people are in need.

Christian Aid's country manager, Yacouba Kone, says it is too early to tell whether this year's rains will produce a harvest plentiful enough to fill the grain stores. "The fields may look as if they are full of food – the rains so far this year have been good – but the harvest is still months away, and, meanwhile, the granaries are bare, and people are struggling," he said. "A 100kg sack of rice last year cost 30,000 West African francs. Now the price is 50,000. Poverty here is entrenched and only a few can afford the fruit and vegetables you see for sale..."

. At one village, Goroulie, flash floods destroyed a number of homes and food stores. The 63-year-old village chief, Antongoule Guindo, who in better times farms millet and soya bean, said: "Physically, we are alive, but inside we are dead. The children go to sleep hungry."

Electing Democracy

A coup d'etat by the army took place in the West African nation of Mali on Thursday, March 22 even though elections were scheduled to be held in little over a month (on April 29) where legitimate differences could have been debated, with voters (rather than guns) deciding the future of the country. A group of military officers , ironically calling themselves the "National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State", ended 20-years of democracy in the West African country. This group did not topple a dictator who had ordered soldiers to fire on his own people, as had been the case 21 years ago, but a democratically elected president in the last month of his term.

Liberal freedoms matter. One should never underestimate the value of liberal-democratic freedoms, even if they can be said to be often primarily symbolic. It is important, not to understate the significance of holding back authoritarianism. The dictator has in many peoples' minds the symbol of the law, all-capable, all-powerful, ready to manage affairs in a rational manner, not in the manner dictated by bourgeois law or by propertied interests. The most damaging thing to the cause of real democracy is the repeated assurances that what we have nowadays is democracy, and so all the sleaze, all the secret negotiations and dirty deals get lumped together to suggest in people's minds that democracy is not all that great. The dictator or the Junta become a symbol for orderliness and rationality in an insane and disorganised world. They represent stability. Most people do not look to democracy to bring about this stability. The bourgeois propagandists have done their work, and have effectively destroyed any belief in democracy as the idea that folks can run their own lives and own communities. Years of battering and enforced passivity has come to mean that for most of the working class the idea of them being in charge of affairs is inconceivable. They have been part of a manipulative system for too long and have become resigned and compliant.

The term democracy is bandied about and gets widely differing explanations of what it is or what it should be. It is a word that is ill-defined, misused, over-used too ambiguously and has been hijacked by governments and elites to deliberately misinterpret their actions and so deceive a captive and poorly represented electorate. Electorates worldwide haven't had the true experience of involvement, of having had their voices heard, at any significant level to have resulted in a culture of expectation of inclusion in the various processes of so-called democracy. Rather than an expectation of involvement there is apathy, cynicism or the repeated mantra heard far and wide that governments don't listen to the people. Many so-called democracies tend to breed apathy for a variety of reasons. Decisions have long been made for people not by people, electorates distanced from their representatives, decisions made with no consultation process and "leaders" believing they have been selected to take the reins and make all decisions on behalf of the voters. It's taken for granted that once elected the politician decides on behalf of the electors. There is scant reference to the masses in times of major decisions, public spending or whether to go to war. Even mass demonstrations can leave the elected unmoved and intransigent. As a result there has long been a culture of complaint, a collective feeling of impotence with no expectation of being heard, even if seemingly listened to.

We have all heard at some time or other such statements as "democracy is inefficient"; "the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship"; or "the country should be run by experts, well trained managers, not just any Tom Dick or Harry". These points are easily countered: democracy is only inefficient if your only criterion is speed, but if you include wide consultation and a plurality of opinions and ideas within the decision-making process, then democracy is actually far more efficient in the long run. The benevolent dictator idea neglects the fact that dictators must have a class to back them up so as to ensure the primary aim of all dictators—of staying in power. Likewise, with the group of managers, the question becomes, how do we select such managers? And how are they supposed to manage the country? In whose interest?

It is a basic tenet of the World Socialist Movement that the establishment of socialism involves the capture of political power via the ballot-box. For this to happen presupposes the existence of a "bourgeois democracy". We regard universal suffrage, the vote and political democracy within capitalism as a potential class weapon, a potential “instrument of emancipation” as Marx put it. Marx and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. But while such an arrangement is undeniably preferable to political dictatorship we don't entertain any illusions about the nature of this "bourgeois democracy". It is a very limited kind of democracy indeed. Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be.

“Democracy” has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy. Looking at the vast sums of money involved in our allegedly democratic elections we can hardly claim that they are "free". In fact in most of the so-called democratic countries it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging for political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process. There also the other aspect of bourgeois democracy, such as free speech, which is similarly compromised by the nature of the system. In this case by the disproportionate power it bestows on those who own and control the media. Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in allegedly democratic societies prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change. The idea of fair and free elections would give the ruling class political apoplexy. This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. Within the latter we are free to organise politically and to develop our support to the extent where we can eventually overcome the embargoes and impediments that capitalism’s restricted democratic forms impose on us, whereas in the former any socialist work is necessarily clandestine and can invoke severe penalties. What we can equate is the hypocrisy of bourgeois politicians, who rightly condemn those dictatorships where political freedom is denied and yet are willing participants and vociferous defenders of a form of capitalism wherein financial impediments exist that make a mockery of real democracy. Democracy is not a set of rules or a parliament; it is a process, a process that must be fought for. The struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism. It is not a struggle for reforms, for this or that political system, for this or that leader, for some rule change or other—it is the struggle for an idea, for a belief, a belief that we can run our own lives, that we have a right to a say in how society is run, for a belief that the responsibility for democracy lies not upon the politicians, but upon ourselves.

Socialists are offering the establishment of an open and genuine system of participative democracy in a world where the massively destructive and ubiquitously corruptive power of money would no longer exist. Socialism will of course be a democratic society with elections and referendums. Democracy means the rule or power of the people, i.e. popular participation in decision-making. It allows various ways of reaching a decision but, in the end, if consensus cannot be obtained, it has to come to a vote; in which case the majority view prevails. Democracy does not mean that all decisions have to made at general assemblies of all concerned or by referendum; it is compatible with certain decisions being delegated to committees and councils as long as the members of these bodies are responsible to those who (s)elected them. If there wasn’t such democratic control there wouldn’t be common ownership, so there wouldn’t be socialism. Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the majority. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action.

White Gold

Mali is a country so impoverished it is ranked 160th out of 169th in the United Nations Human Development Index. Life expectancy here is just 49.
Mali depends on cotton for its survival. Half of its export revenues come from cotton – it is the second-largest producer in Africa after Egypt – and it is estimated that more than 3.2 million Malians, 40% of the country's rural population, depend on the crop for their livelihoods.

Despite the fact that cotton prices are running at a 15-year high after crops in China and Pakistan were hit by floods earlier this year they are victims of an iniquitous global trading system. In the United States, the scale of government support to 25,000 cotton farmers has thrown the international trading system out of kilter. The political lobby for cotton is one of the strongest in US agriculture. in 2008/2009, cotton producers were awarded $3.1bn (£1.9bn) in subsidies, which, astonishingly, exceeded the market price by around 30%. The EU and China award its farmers similar grants, albeit on a lesser scale.The result has been overproduction, the rise of fast, disposable fashion and the artificial lowering of world cotton prices. The consequences are felt most deleteriously by the poorest farmers at the end of the supply chain. The price of west African cotton has fallen every year since 2003 and despite the recent spike in prices, there has been a long-term decline in real terms since the 1950s.

The American economy does not rely on cotton to anything like the same extent. In Mali, cotton is such a valuable commodity it is known as "white gold". According to Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, the elimination of global subsidies would raise cotton farmers' incomes in sub-Saharan Africa by 30%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/mali-cotton-farmer-fair-trade

Land grabbing in Mali

Another story about the great African land grab , this time from Mali .

Mali has approved long-term leases for outside investors to help develop more than 160,000 hectares of land. The region, 300km northeast of Bamako, contains some of the most fertile rain-fed land in Mali.

Rice producer Siaka Daou is among those farmers concerned that they will be reduced to being day labourers for foreign-owned concerns.
"The way the government is parcelling out land from Office of Niger [region] is worrisome. This will stamp out small producers. We will no longer have land to cultivate and will be forced to work for industrial agriculture producers."

Mali's land code protects local land rights, but only as far as the land is used for "productive use". But "productive use" is not clearly defined and this may open the door to abuse .

"Most of the sample contracts are silent on the issue," said the FAO report.
For example concerning a Libyan-funded irrigation project, Mali's National Association of Farmers issued a communiqué demanding more information about the contract signed between Libya and Mali.
"The contract signed remains invisible...there are no guarantees in the contract that the [local] population would benefit from it," the association said

china africa

Chinese President Hu Jintao said he wanted to deepen Beijing's trade and investment links in Africa despite the global economic slowdown.

China's trade with Africa has shot up 10-fold since 2000, soaring 45 percent to nearly $107 billion last year alone. China's investments in and imports from Africa are dominated by minerals and oil -- Angola is China's single biggest crude supplier. Chinese companies are expanding sectors such as mobile telephones as well as food and agricultural businesses, such as fisheries and sesame production in Senegal. Tanzania and Mali are also Africa's third and fourth biggest gold miners and Senegal has a burgeoning gold and iron ore sector. China's Sinopec is looking for oil in northern Mali, while the state-owned China National Petroleum Company signed a $5 billion deal to produce oil in neighbouring Niger. China has invested heavily in Africa, building parliaments, stadiums, bridges and roads in numerous countries. But critics say the hastily built infrastructure is nothing more than a bribe for access to Africa's vast mineral wealth, natural resources and bountiful coastline.
Fishermen in neighboring Guinea-Bissau say after their government accepted China's gift of a new parliament, their coastline was invaded by Chinese trawlers who have fished their waters dry.

Sudan claims China is working with it to head off a possible International Criminal Court arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur. China, whose firms pump Sudan's oil, says a warrant would worsen instability. This trip , according to some observers , is also to counter the accusations that they only do business with resource-rich autocracies

Africa: Kosovo Revives Hopes for Secession

The recognition of Kosovo by some of the West’s major powers is boosting the hopes of secessionist movements across Africa , according to this news item . In an article titled “Kosovo—the precedent that will enflame Africa,” a columnist for the Ivoirian newspaper Notre Voie predicts a revival of secessionist groups across the continent and doubts that the international community will be able to resolve the resulting crises.

“The world is about to witness… another political and diplomatic revolution which may give birth to some new nations," reads an opinion piece published on Somalilandnet.com, a website that caters to the autonomous region of the same name that seeks to secede from Somalia.

“Kidal will follow the example of Kosovo to become independent,” reads a forum entry on Kidal.info, a website named after a city in the northeastern part of Mali that is home to a Touareg rebellion that has clashed sporadically with governmental forces.

“This hard-won freedom by Kosovar citizens will serve as an example for the future autonomy of Kabylia,” wrote a contributor to Kabyle.com, a website committed to the affirmation of Algeria’s Kabyle Berbers, who resent the arabization of the country at the expense of the Amazigh culture.

At Rewmi.com, one of Senegal’s major news sites, one commentator wonders if the Senegal's government’s recognition of Kosovo will not reignite the separatist tendencies of MFDC, a rebel group that wants independence for the southern Casamance region.

Africa’s strongest case will likely come from Western Sahara, which has been recognized as an independent country by the African Union but whose sovereignty is not effective because of Morocco’s insistence that it is a province of its kingdom. A Saharawi blogger at Saharaopinions.blogspot.com, noted what he regards as the inconsistency of Western powers: “In Kosovo they imposed an independence that was not based on international legality, but in Western Sahara they’re opposed to self-determination that has been recommended multiple times by that same legality.”
Another wrote “Kosovo is an example of how we can effectively make our case,”

Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights affirms "the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination," but this has to be balanced against the inviolability of territorial boundaries that resulted from colonization (the so-called uti possidetis principle under Article 4 of the African Union’s Constitutive Act).

Cooking With Poison

Cut-price cooking oil used in most Malian households has been found to contain gossypol, a toxic substance that is known to cause sterility, cancer and inhibit growth.The majority of Malians buy the oil for cooking since, at an average of US$1.25 a litre, it is about half the price of imported oils.
Only two out of 57 oil producers studied around the country had the necessary equipment to produce safely-refined cooking oil , the rest were producing oil containing gossypol, a harmful poison.

Adama Haidara doctor at the Hope Clinic, a medical centre in Sikoro near Bamako, backed this up, stressing it is also linked to cardiac arrests and cancer. “The risks to the consumer after a long period of absorption of non-refined oil are enormous.”

The government has ordered producers to update their equipment, but not all can afford to and some have been forced to shut down production for good.

"The government had no controls in place, no follow-up, nothing…the quality of the oil produced, and the health of consumers mattered little to it,” said Seydou Samaké, a Bamako resident who used to frequently cook with the oil.
“The doctor has arrived after the death. It’s always like that. It took us being poisoned for the government to intervene,” complained Oumar Traoré, a member of the Mali Coalition for the Protection of Consumers (REDECOMA).

Beyond any drought

A new report discusses NGOs .

The Sahel has long been vulnerable to drought, impoverishment and food insecurity, as the droughts of the mid-1970s, 1980s and 2005 show.In the Sahel, shocks from drought and flood are inevitable, but unpredictable in terms of location and timing, andlargely uncontrollable. The people of the Sahel are thus intrinsically exposed to climatic shocks or hazards.This assumption equates vulnerability with inadequate food production as opposed to food access. The levels of malnutrition seen in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso in 2005 were out of all proportion to the drop in production levels and could not be explained on the grounds of climatic variation alone, [not even in combination with the locust invasion] . Climate does not cause vulnerability. Since independence, development agencies and development programmes have been promising real change in these three incredibly poor countries. Why has this development been unable to break the cycle of poverty ?

Inappropriate aid policies are partly responsible for the Sahel region’s poverty according to a strongly-worded report issued jointly by 10 international NGOs to be released on Wednesday in London. The report, which is called ‘Beyond Any Drought', is supported by a network of high-profile international NGOs including Oxfam, the British Red Cross, CARE International, Save the Children and Action Against Hunger, breaks with the usual positive image of the work of aid agencies to say donor-funded projects in the region are often based on “shallow analyses” that ignore common sense.

More specifically, the report says that donor pressure means aid agencies focus too much on measuring the production of heavy, nutrient-scarce staples like millet and sorghum while ignoring basic economic issues such as whether people can afford to buy them. Nutrition appears as a medical issue rather than an issue of access and power. Food security is too easily seen as a set of technical questions, but is in fact based on profoundly political issues.

The most vulnerable households are highly dependent on the exploitation of common-property natural resources,particularly during drought years. Examples include firewood collection for sale, collection of leaves and other wildfoods for human consumption and for medicine. In northern Nigeria the dependence on wild products is an effective indicator of low levels of wellbeing at household and at community level. Households unable to access common property resources, such as wild foods, are more susceptible to draw on their assets and get into debt.The capacity for local communities to manage common-property resources, such as village forests and water sources,has been eroded through the expropriation of many of these resources by the state. Government agencies put in place to take responsibility for the management of these resources have largely failed. In practice, government departments were reluctant to pass on authority over resources (such as timber from forests) that often provided a valuable source of income, and communities were expected to assume responsibility with very few benefits

The American government’s aid agency USAID is singled out for specific criticism. It undertakes what the report calls “risky” policies including the dumping of thousands of tonnes of American surplus food stocks on the continent. the US Government allocates a budget of $1.2 billion annually to purchase surplus grain for food relief, with the overt objective of creating export markets overseas. This food may be distributed in kind or “monetized”, sold on local markets in exchange for cash to be spent on activities related to emergency relief and recovery. The process is hugely costly and inefficient once transporting and marketing is taken into account. Further, the risks of flooding local markets, depressing the price of grain and thereby undermining local producers’ livelihoods is well known.The report says that CARE, another of the NGOs behind the report, is going to stop accepting USAID food on “ideological and practical” grounds.

In spite of rhetoric around learning, NGOs find it very difficult to apply lessons on the ground. In five or six years there could be a complete change of staff in all the major development agencies, leading to institutional forgetfulness and a lack of profound understanding of the issues. Socialists have a longer memory and know that attempts to tackle Third World poverty will often be thwarted by the international market system and will frequently be foiled by the national ruling class appropriation of the local resources and wealth . The majority of aid organisations develop their programmes “on the basis of their own priorities and their own visions” the report says and when designing aid projects the views of locals are usually ignored . It will be the democratic empowerment of the workers by socialism that will begin to genuinely address the needs of the people of Africa .

State and class in pre-colonial West Africa

Was the state instituted for mutual protection or did it arise when society became divided into classes?

Long before Marx and Engels, political thinkers and philosophers had written extensively on the concept of the state. In the 1640s, Thomas Hobbes had argued that the state was essentially a contract between the individual and the government. The alternative, called by Hobbes the state of nature, was a thoroughly unpleasant life—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

This, according to Hobbes, the state emerged to improve mankind's lot. However, Engels, summing up his historical analysis in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that the State was a product of class society: "It is an admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel." As if to echo Engels, Marx pointed out that the state could not have arisen, let alone maintained itself, had it been possible to reconcile classes. According to Marx the state is an instrument of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.

Marx revealed that a definite level of development of labour productivity is essential before there is real opportunity for humans to exploit other humans. If people produce only the minimum of products required to maintain their physical existence and reproduction, any systematic appropriation of someone else's labour is out of the question. The opportunity to appropriate someone else's labour appears only when the productive forces have developed to the level at which the quantity of goods produced somewhat exceeds the minimum required to maintain the direct producers' lives. The question then arises: Did Africa's labour productivity reach a level that provided the opportunity for humans to exploit their fellow human beings? The answer is both no and yes. The appropriate answer to this question would enable us to determine the original of the state in pre-colonial Africa.

But it would be absurd to think of only the level of productive forces without the relations of production. Productive forces cannot be developed in a vacuum. People produce them jointly—in groups rather than on their own. People's relationship to the means of production determine their position and place in the production and the mode of distribution of the products. Where one group of people makes its living by appropriating the labour of the other, then society is divided into the exploiter and exploited. The need to maintain this vampiric relationship of production leads to the rise of an apparatus of coercion and conditioning to systematically brainwash the exploited into accepting their exploitation as a normal condition of life or to crush their resistance.

Before private ownership

If this analysis of state and class is anything to go by then one cannot authentically talk of the state among some of the communities in Ghana before the 14th century. The predominant principle of social relations was that of the family and kinship associated with communalism. Among the Gur social groups in the Upper East Region of Ghana, for example, every member of the society had their position defined in terms of their relationship with their mother's or father's family. Leadership was based on religious ties to the Tindana, or custodian of the land, who ran the affairs of the people with a committee of elders chosen from all the families and clans of the territory. This committee administered land, the major means of production not as its personal property, but as the property of all the people in Gurum-Tinga (Gur land) who had the right to till it. Hunting, fishing and grazing grounds for animals were organised in a similar manner. No-one starved whilst others stuffed themselves with food and threw the excess away or sold it for profit. The basic economic law was that of providing the members of society with the necessary means of subsistence through communal ownership of the means of production.

The absence of private property in the means of production, of the division into classes and the exploitation of man by man excluded the need for a state. Production was essentially of use values; and there was no alienation of the producer from his means of production.
The fundamental flaw in the social organisation of the Gur however was that the position of the Tindana was supposedly sanctioned by the gods, and therefore permanent. This notion also applied to the elders of families and clans who served in the committee of elders. Only death could loosen their grip on authority. This meant that people occupying positions of trust could use their positions for personal gain, taking a significant share of communal property and becoming rich; indeed vestiges of private ownership of property began to rear its ugly head in the Gur community around the 16th century. However this development did not reach its fullest maturity before the violent intrusion of British colonial rule. To a very large extent, this explained why the British colonial government had to create chiefs in Gur land and use them as instruments of its policy of exploitation and dehumanisation.


It is also important to note that once African societies began to expand by internal evolution, and the instruments of labour were perfected, people obtained more means of subsistence than was essential for their survival. The restricted nature of communal property and the egalitarian distribution of products of labour that characterised people such as the Gur acted as a drag on the further development of the productive forces. The need for joint labour disappeared with the appearance of sickles, iron-tipped hoes, spears and arrows. What this meant was that the possibility of individual labour also emerged. But individual labour brought about private ownership, private ownership brought about inequality between the people; and rich and poor people emerged. In the Mali empire, for example, the dominant mode of production was feudalism even though the communal and slave modes of production had not completely died out. By the end of the 15th century there were both chattel and domestic slaves in Mali comparable to the feudal serfs in Europe. In Senegal Portuguese traders also found that there were elements in the population who worked most days for their masters and a few days per month for themselves—a budding feudalist tendency.


A cursory look at the socio-economic and political scene in Africa before colonisation does not reveal one dominant mode of production. Also it is not easy to compartmentalise the socio-economic formations and arrange them in a sequence as some writers do, because the social and economic terrain reveals considerable unevenness in development. There were social formations representing hunting bands, communalism, feudalism while other formations represented a mixture of these. It was upon these that colonialism was superimposed.
ADONGO AIDAN AVUGMA

First published Socialist Standard May 1999