News Headlines Deliberately Hide Real Events

Foreign companies buying Africa's fertile land 

According to an ORDAF (The Association of Researchers in Middle East and Africa), political events and terror news are deliberately kept in the headlines to hide African land grabs by Western countries. According to the ORDAF report, terrorist and policital events are at the forefront of African nations while millions of hectares of land are in the hands of foreign governments. More than 60 million hectares of land that belongs to 80% of Africa are quietly being exchanged hands through sales and rentals under the smokescene of political instability and terror crises. In recent years powerful nations' have kept Africa in the headlines with the incidences of Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda, hiding behind these events while trading in international deals. 

Going back to the 19th century, fertile lands was taken away from the indigenous people of Africa and given to poor white farmers and that today modern methods are now being applied on those lands. In particular this exchange of lands between Europe, the US and Asia have been far more widespread in the last 15 years. These mostly have been covered up by keeping the issues of the Christian Sudanese, the activities of Al-Qaeda's Maghreb activites, the Libyan-Egyptian political crisis and the As-Shabab in Somalia in the headlines, distracting from the secret deals and negotiations. As a result, by keeping these news at the front and hiding behind these news, it has been hoped that the purchase of the lands will be completed as soon as possible. 

In the report, very little countries with the exception of North African Saharan countries of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco but not including Mauritania were the few countries that did not rent out land over 10,000 hectares. The report says, “In some countries, the sales were so high, that there were now groups of observers researching the movement of land sales. At the top of the list was Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, Cameroon, Guinea, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique were being watched carefully. What was even more striking was that with lands exchanging ownership, Western countries imposed that the land that uses traditional agricultural methods by the local people must be removed from all state authority. 

It was also stated in the report that in recent years China had usage rights of billions of hectares of African land. Whether through rental or sales, China has - irrespective of the price it had to pay – with land in its hand has strongly increased its opposition. China had expressed interest in Ethiopia, Congo, Zimbabwe and Cameroon which had closed off the land.

from here

Join The Club - Football, Like Politics, Is Corrupt

Nigeria and Algeria both fell out of the World Cup at the last 16 stage, competing heroically against France and Germany and showing amazing discipline and shape for 70 of the 90 minutes. Then tiredness clearly began setting in. Brief lapses in concentration allowed the European teams to win.
Few African teams, especially sub-Saharan ones, ever progress beyond the last 16, and so it went this year. Before Algeria and Nigeria were knocked out, The Ivory Coast, Ghana and Cameroon had already left the tournament. Surprise upstarts have come not from Africa, but from Latin America.
Costa Rica, a small country with only 5m inhabitants, played with admirable style and effort. Chile gave Brazil a huge extra-time fright. Colombia delighted everyone by being even more stylish than the Brazilians. Whether Costa Rica or Colombia progress beyond the quarter-finals remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the African teams were once again wracked by controversy. Seven Cameroonian players were accused of match-fixing. The Nigerian and Ghanaian teams threatened “industrial action” to ensure they received their bonuses. The tournament was treated to the spectacle of an aeroplane flown from Ghana with a shipment of banknotes to pay the players in cash, since no-one seemed to trust the Ghanaian football authorities to honour their undertakings in any other way. Then, when Ghana went out, the country’s president mooted an official inquiry into the team’s poor performance.

Throughout Africa, high hopes and huge expectations are counterweighted by meagre national resources, which are widely subject to corrupt pilfering. National football associations become sources of personal income, and people fight to become association presidents – not because they are experts in football development, but simply to have leverage over money.
And so organised football, like organised civil society with foreign links, becomes an alternative to a corrupt political life lived for personal enrichment. In this sense, at least, corruption is diversifying. But it does no good for the sport, especially at the prestigious international level.

The African teams of today are very different from those of even recent World Cups. Nearly every player is now a professional employed by a “big” team. They work at Chelsea, at AC Milan, Galatasary, and, even when playing with minor European teams, they are participating in aspirational set-ups. These players know what goes into a successful team.
But as soon as they get to national level, their coaches (Stephen Keshi aside) tend to be a step down; their national associations are inept, as well as corrupt. At a certain point, and this point was clearly avoided by both Nigeria and Algeria, teams think they are destined not to win, wonder why they should try, and think instead of maximising their compensation for the inconvenience the World Cup has caused them.

The president of Ghana can order as many enquiries as he likes, but football today is a big business and should be treated like one. That means African football associations need to have the efficiency and dynamism of international corporations. It might take some of the glamour and romance out of the game – but it also might do something to cut down on the embarrassments.
It’s not just football, of course. Earlier this year, Kenyan athletes threatened to stop competing if their international prize money was subject to taxation. The athletes were wrong to think they should be exempt from what should be a widened tax base designed to boost the country’s revenue; all countries simply have to do this. But even if in some cases they themselves were the nation’s emerging sporting oligarchs, they still refused to pay money into a system used by political figures to steal money for personal gain.
To that extent, the president of Ghana’s enquiry might come to a simple solution: football gets better as the nation gets better. Football wins if the nation’s government wants to win as a nation – not as a grouping of sectional, personal, and often very petty interests.

from here

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SA Politicians Fill Their Pockets

34 Ministers, 33 Deputy Ministers, 52 Parliamentary Chairpersons, 53 Parliamentary Whips, leaders of opposition parties, around 200 MPs, 9 Premiers, 90 MECs and 331 MPLs will pad their already hefty pay packages with another 5% windfall (backdated to April last year).

Deputy President Motlanthe gets an extra R118 000 for a R2, 5 million yearly package while Ministers will receive an additional R100 000 to raise their annual salary to R2,1 million. National MPs and MPLs will have to make do with R45 000 and R43 000 yearly increases respectively, taking their corresponding annual salaries to R934 000 and R904 000.

Local politicians have followed suit. In late January the City of Johannesburg announced that Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Lechesa Tsenoli had approved over R122 million in salary hikes for the city’s 230 councillors, 17 committee chairpersons, 10 mayoral committee members as well as the city council’s Chief Whip and Speaker. Accordingly, councillors in this oft-claimed ‘world class’ city will receive a R28 000 annual increase, elevating their yearly salary to R458 000 while committee chairpersons get a R39 000 hike which ups their annual salaries to just under R825 000.

All of these pay hikes are, in formal terms, separate from the incredible array of benefits and perks enjoyed by  politicians but which are, in reality, part of the overall salary ‘package’. Despite repeated warnings by the Treasury to reign-in such ‘nice-to-haves’ alongside promises by the self-same politicians to practice self-restraint, Minister Tsenoli recently approved increased monthly cell phone allowances for South Africa’s 10 000+ local politicians of up to R3 300 for metro mayors and R1 650 for councillors.

Let’s put this all into perspective. The median wage of those South Africans fortunate enough to actually have a job stands at R2800 per month or R33 600 per year. With respect to the lowest paid South African politician, a local councillor, the pay hike for the Johannesburg variety is only slightly less than a worker’s median yearly wage.  Even the monthly cell phone allowance of metro mayor’s is R500 more than what an average South African worker earns in the same period.

A comparison of worker and politician wage increases only further confirms the huge wage gap. Worker demands for wage increases, which politicians and capitalists continually decry as excessive, have, according to the Labour Research Service delivered an average increase since 2007of R957 per month. Meanwhile, a quick calculation of the same average for national politicians rings in at 5 times that of the workers.

When DA leader Helen Zille boasts about the DA-run Western Cape refusing the latest salary increases, we must ask her and her party why they have readily accepted all previous hikes and have nothing to say about the astronomical wage gap between DA politicians and the black majority that they so desperately want to vote for them.

While President Zuma or Minister Nzimande tells us that ANC/SACP politicians have an enduring commitment to redress wage inequality and are simply servants of the people, Zuma earns more than British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande. South Africa’s national Ministers edge out their British peers by a cool R300 000+ and have raced ahead of the French by almost R1 million per year. Even if by smaller differentials, our national MPs are also better paid than their British and French counterparts.

From Here 

Greasing their palms

In a quiet amendment added to the Finance Bill late Thursday, members of Parliament approved a golden handshake of $110,000 each to be paid after their term ends early next year. The sweetener comes on top of an annual package worth $125,000, which is 70 times more than the average Kenyan worker takes home each year. It would take an average Kenyan worker 61 years to earn the sum that each of the country’s 222 lawmakers would be given under the bonus. The average annual per capital income is roughly $1,800.

 The move comes less than a fortnight after Kenya’s government said it could not afford to cover pay increases demanded by teachers and doctors, who had been on strike for three weeks in September. When the government said it had no money to pay them higher salaries, to then give themselves $25 million is beyond unreasonable. 

Going beyond the unions

Who is the labour candidate in the Egyptian presidential election? The answer is no one.

Despite the presence of the left wing candidate, labour lawyer Khaled Ali, who repeatedly denies the accusation of being a ‘socialist’, and advocates a ‘strong private sector’ working hand in hand with a state-run public sector, neither Ali nor any other candidates can claim to speak for Egypt’s working class, simply because the working class does not have yet formal entities, organisations, parties, and unions that can claim their representation.

In the West and elsewhere, there exist labour unions and parties that have a grassroots presence in the workplace and include millions of workers and civil servants in their membership. The rank and file members are engaged in daily struggles over improving work conditions via negotiations, agreements, or strikes against the management. The extent of grassroots support can always be measured by the degree of response to strike calls issued by those unions’ leadership. If you are in the United Kingdom for example, and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) issues a call for a general strike on any given day, you can safely expect industrial actions to take place that day. This is not to praise the politics of the TUC but to highlight the existence of a structure that can mobilise the working class, articulate their demands, and claim their representation.

There is nothing of that sort here in Egypt yet. While we have witnessed millions of Egyptian workers going on strikes or staging protests since 2006, it still lacks a national organisation that can coordinate the strikes, claim class representation, and raise political demands on behalf of the workers in the current political arena. Socialists are non-existent and those on the Left do not have enough of a presence among the working class. 

The Federation of Independent Trade Unions, announced in Tahrir Square in the midst of the 18-day uprising, has grown to include more than 200 independent unions, with two million workers. Yet, the federation is still green, with uneven support. The federation has been active in ‘intervening’ in and ‘extending solidarity’ to strikes, but it would be a farce to give the federation credit for ‘instigating’ the industrial actions in the first place. Though the federation lent its support for the November 2011 mini uprising, its presence in Tahrir was largely symbolic, and included one tent and a banner. The 11 February 2012 general strike call was another test for the federation’s strength, yet it once again exposed its weakness. Though the federation endorsed the anti-SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) general strike call, not a single strike took place. Strikes which occurred on that day were already scheduled in advance by the strike leaders, and we cannot credit the federation with this action.

The increased friction between strikers and the military police, which include crackdowns and military tribunals for strikers, means an increasing number of workers are turning against the army, even when they started their struggles over bread and butter issues. In cases like the harbours and airports, the strikers had clear demands about the demilitarisation of the management and the sacking of military generals and advisors who ran the business. Strikers in Suez also marched, calling for the execution of the National Democratic Party (NDP) tycoon who owns a ceramics factory and stands accused of involvement in the ‘Battle of the Camel’. Gas workers smashed NDP billboards in downtown Cairo, demanding the return of the NDP local office building back to their company, since the NDP had taken it over illegally under Mubarak. Among the demands of the public transport strikers was the purging of the management of police officers. These are some  examples of a ‘political’ dimension that is taking shape in the strike wave, but the Federation still fails to relate to it.

The Federation is roughly one year old, and the unions under its umbrella are still incapable of providing representation and a unified political voice in the current revolution. This is not a pessimistic look at the future of the federation. It takes years for unions to build their support and cement the channels of coordination between the different sectors, but there will always be limitations on the extent of the revolutionary potential those unions have. Unions, at the end of the day, are built to "improve" the conditions of exploitation, not  "abolish" exploitation once and for all - here is the task of a mass socialist party. As long as the most militant sections of the current strike - those who are leading the mass strikes in sectors in direct confrontation with the military - are not organised into a socialist party, you can expect the workers’ voice to continue to be absent in the current political process.

Letter from Zambia

Zambia is showered in condolences. President Levy Mwanawasa passed away in Percy Military hospital in Paris on 19 August.

Indeed, many ordinary Zambians are troubled by the untimely death of the president in the sense that every individual is unique. The people of Zambia are pious mourners and have turned up in large numbers wherever the coffin of Mwanawasa was being paraded for last farewells. The MMD has declared 21 days of national mourning. But some political think tanks are critical of the government’s motive and have seriously castigated them for parading the coffin around the country. They consider it to be a mere political gimmick aimed at winning the political confidence of the Zambian voters.

There is a succession crisis within the MMD. The current constitution allows for the holding of a party convention when adopting a presidential contender. But the MMD has unilaterally decided to select a candidate through the National Executive Committee. This move is untransparent and undemocratic. There are calls within the MMD hierarchy for the adoption of the current Vice-President Rupiah Banda (UNIP). The following have submitted their names for adoption as presidential aspirants from the MMD:
Willa Muyamba, Enoch Kavindele, Brian Chituwo and Ludwig Sondashi…

All the above-mentioned individuals are well-to-do MMD stalwarts. The wife of the late president Doreen Mwanawasa is proving a hard nut to crack in the sense that she is indirectly campaigning for the MMD through accompanying her husband’s coffin to every part of Zambia. Indeed, she even went to the extent of publicly humiliating the Patriotic Front president Michael Sata during a body-viewing ceremony at Chipata airport (Eastern Province). She railed at Sata in an unbecoming manner for a bereaved widow. It is said that she told Sata to stop attending the funeral. She told him that she had not reconciled with him. Sata had a political reconciliation with the late president in June. When Mwanawasa died in France Sata was among the prominent leaders who received the coffin at Lusaka International airport on 23 June.

Politics in Zambia are strongly influenced by ethnic and tribal loyalties. The MMD is a tribal party in the sense that the late president appointed people on the basis of their ethnic and tribal backgrounds. The current crop of ministers comprise of nephews and cousins of Mwanawasa. The entire MMD leadership is peopled by Lenje- and Lamba-speaking political appointees.

The ruling MMD currently enjoys massive support in rural areas. It is utterly impossible for the MMD to lose a presidential election given the positive economic policies of the late president Mwanawasa. Zambia’s favourable economic development is dependent upon the copper mining industry that is currently enjoying favourable prices on the stock exchange in London. Zambia remains a class-divided society with poverty and unemployment remains unappeased.
K. MULENGA, Zambia

Political whores

In Kenya there is a proposal to pay hefty salaries to the wives of the prime minister and vice-president. A leaked document says the head of civil service Francis Muthaura has directed that they each be paid $6,000 (£3,000) every month.

A government memo leaked to the local media directs that Ida Odinga and Pauline Musyoka, wives of the prime minister and vice-president respectively, will be rewarded for their roles as hostesses.
The pay is also supposed to recognise their role for upholding national family values.

Socialist Banner believes it is more the rich and powerful feathering their own nests at the expense of the poor and vulnerable . We can only agree with Transparency International's Gladwell Otieno who said the move is a confirmation that Kenyan politicians are just a greedy caste, looking after themselves at the expense of poor Kenyans recovering from the effects of post-election violence.

Comments on Kenya

As usual , it is the workers that are being used as pawns in the political battle of the elites .

The wave of post-election violence in Kenya is hurting mainly the poor rather than the politicians who caused it but who are safe inside their gated compounds, an Italian slum priest said. Father Daniel Moschetti has worked for 15 years in Nairobi's Korogocho shanty-town.

"This is a war of the poor. The slum residents are suffering," he said. "We have no food, no water. We have no communication with the outside world, whilst politicians are creating the conditions for civil war."

"Kenyans have shown a much greater maturity than politicians, but it is the politicians living in their secure compounds who are inciting ethnic hatred," Moschetti said. "The future of this country is in the hands of people who have no wisdom. They are blinded by pride and cannot see their people dying."

The death toll from ethnic riots triggered by President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election approached 250 .

The Times explains that every election since multiparty politics was reintroduced in 1991 has involved rigging. So far the margin of victory has always been so great that Western diplomats - keen to maintain “stability” - could claim that the cheating would not have made a difference to the result. “Voting broadly reflected the will of the people” was their duplicitous phrase that allowed the ruling elite to play their quinquennial charade. Now the margin of victory is too thin. The cheating did make a difference and Raila Odinga, the leader of the main opposition party that has won the largest number of seats in parliament and six out of eight provinces, is not going to accept defeat.

Kenyan politics are more than a lucrative game of musical chairs for the elite. They are the most vicious and tribalised on the continent. Politicians often address their own people in coded language. “It is our turn to eat!” is a phrase they often use. It means that it is the turn of our ethnic group to rule — and loot as much as we can.

“This tribalism was started by Jomo Kenyatta, perfected by Moi and super-perfected by Kibaki,” said Elvis, a young accountant living in Kibera. He refused to give his surname as it would reveal his tribe , one of 42 different ethnic tribes

Intense internal and international pressure forced Mr Kibaki to appoint John Githongo, a former journalist and corruption campaigner, as anti-corruption czar. Mr Githongo commissioned Kroll, a private security firm, to trace, freeze and return the money lodged in accounts all over the world. but once these details became available to senior figures in Kibaki's Government, the second and third stages of the process, freezing and recovery, were abandoned. Mr Githongo fled for his life and, even in a British haven, was given an armed bodyguard. The Kenyan elite have a history of killing people who ask questions about corruption.

The Financial Times comments as western leaders scramble to prevent Kenya’s descent into chaos they should find time to consider their own failure to respond to a crisis that has been long in the making. For the first time in Africa’s post-independence history, an insider was ready to reveal how corruption worked – with evidence that included secretly taped conversations with cabinet ministers. Britain and other aid donors were given an opportunity to tackle corruption, using as leverage aid that exceeds $16billion since independence in 1963. Britain chose not to act on Mr Githongo’s evidence. Instead, it has been business as usual. They did not believe it was ultimately in their interests to have a showdown with the barons of corruption. They did not want to upset what they saw as a regional “island of stability” from which the UN and other international relief agencies, including hundreds of foreign non-governmental organisations, operate – a thriving business that accounts for a fifth of Kenya’s annual foreign exchange earnings.

If aid has worked in Kenya, how do development agencies explain the growing pauperisation of its people? In 1990 about 48 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. Today, more than four decades after independence, nearly 55 per cent of Kenyans are subsisting on a couple of dollars a day. And for all the 6 per cent annual gross domestic product growth achieved in the past two years under Mr Kibaki, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening. To see the crisis only in terms of tribal allegiances and ethnic clashes is to miss a vital element in the Kenyan picture. The population has doubled in 25 years to 31million Unemployment is growing, and the number without land is growing.

For these people there is nothing to lose by taking to the streets, driven by frustration and fury that transcend their tribe.

Kenya is paying a terrible price for the tolerance of its corrupt government by its western partners.

If history is anything to go by the only ones who get to “eat” are the rich and well-connected. The poor, whether Kikuyu, Kalenjin or Luo, remain poor.

Kenyan Corruption

Socialist Banner notes the self-aggrandisement of the politicians in Kenya to award themselves a financial bonus . They have voted to award themselves a $22,000 bonus each at the end of their five-year term . Kenya's 222 MPs already earn more than $10,000 a month in salaries and expenses, much of which is tax-free, in a country where most people live on less than $1 a day. To rub salt into the wound these MPs had the gall to have originally wanted a bonus of $98,000 each but the finance minister declined to cooperate .

We are , of course , not surprised since thay are after all primary representatives of the master class and naturally each MP aspires to join the ranks of their capitalist masters .

While looking out for their own mercenary futures , the MPs also watched their backs and barred the investigation of corruption cases which occurred before 2004.

The move to pardon corruption cases which happened before 2004 effectively stops any investigations or attempts to recover funds looted in the multi-million dollar Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing scandals.

Recently a report was found to have been suppressed that alleged that £1 billion was corruptly syphoned off by family and friends of the previous Moi government . The 110-page report by international risk consultants Kroll details assets still allegedly owned by the Moi family and their entourage in 28 countries, including hotels and residences in South Africa and the United States, a 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia, three hotels in London, a £4 million house in Surrey, and a £2 million penthouse flat in Knightsbridge. It claims the Moi family laundered $400 million through a complex web of accounts in Kenya, Geneva and Frankfurt. It also alleged that they and a handful of associates own a bank in Belgium that was used to launder money from Kenya and uncovered a web of secret bank accounts, shell companies and dummy trusts registered in tax havens, including the Cayman Islands. Moi’s sons, Philip and Gideon, were reported to be worth £384m and £550m respectively.

Unless the Kenyan people join together with the peoples of all nations and take control of their own destinies , we fear that one discreditable elite will only be replaced by another as equally disreputable bunch of self-serving parliamentary parasites.

The Real Role of Leaders

The real role of leaders.

Is it not interesting that whilst Safia "the Roman", Amina Lawal, Bariya Mazagu and many more yet to come face torture or even death a la sharia in Northern Nigeria for no crimes committed, Mohammed Abacha, son of the late Sani Abacha is granted bail after having been charged in court on 101 counts of corruption and theft? Yet Gen. Obasanjo maintains a deafening silence over both cases? What is the reason behind this "silence means consent"? It is that leaders are by necessity selfish and hypocritical? He is dumb in the face of religious barbarism because he fears to lose support from the Muslim north with elections around the corner. He is also blind to the release on bail of a convicted criminal obviously because the bail case happens to coincide with his visit to Kano, the hometown of the Abachas and any comments might worsen his electoral chances in an already strong opposition city.

Nepad –The clash of the Titans

If money is the root of all evil then so is the multi-billion dollar African economic renaissance package called Nepad. Whereas Abdoulie Wade, Thabo Mbeki and Obasanjo are leaving no stone unturned in their bid to secure funds for Nepad, others like Yahya Jammeh of Gambia are ridiculing the project. New African of September 2002 reports that Jammeh has dismissed Nepad as something that "will never work. You come up with a programme and depend on nothing but begging. I, Jammeh, will Not kneel down before any man and beg. I will only kneel before God" Every African leader, in fact, kneels before the almighty World Bank and the IMF! Charity begins at home, it seems. Billions of dollars begged will first have to satisfy the immediate families of Wade, Mbeki and Obasanjo before any left over (if there’ll be any) can trickle down to the families of the likes of Jammeh. That is genuine leadership in a money-based world!

The State

On whose side is the state?
Nowhere has the state ever been neutral. On the contrary it always works in the interests of the haves and against the have-nots. In February this year Trevor Manuel, the South African Minister of Finance, in his budget statement, announced a large surplus of a quarter of a trillion rand. So who gained from the windfall? The government cut taxes by significant margins, such that the rich got the top marginal rate of 42% of earnings cut to 40%. But a huge clamor for a basic income grant of 100 randfor all citizens fell on deaf ears. Instead, 2.5 billion rand was set aside for the hiring of more policemen on the beat; some 16000 rand to keep the coercive state machinery well lubricated
Later in July when municipal workers in Johannesburg went on strike, the police were unleashed on them for daring to ask for better conditions of service.

Fooling the people

The western powers divided Africa into small units for the sole purpose of pillaging the resources of their colonies. Today, African leaders are talking about uniting the continent as a means of redressing the sorry state in which it finds itself. But in practice they are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the artificial borders as the colonialists demarcated them. And the reason? Like the colonialists before them, they have a firm grip over the resources of their fiefdoms and the wealth created is for their own personal use. Barely a week after the birth of their AU in Durban, South Africa, and Wade of Senegal openly expresses his preference for money over people. Gambian private and commercial vehicles were barred from crossing into Senegal because of a misunderstanding over taxes. Even the Gambian Foreign Minister, who was on his way to Mauretania on an international assignment, was turned back at the border by Senegalese authorities. (The Independent Friday 19-21 July 2002)

Leaders or criminals?

The leaders of the world’s most powerful nations, the G8, gathered in Canada for their annual summit a few months ago. The two-day meeting was held in the small mountain resort of Kananarkis. They were guarded by thousands of police within a twenty-mile security zone and there was only a single road leading into the resort with 16 checkpoints. (BBC June 2002). Why should leaders be treated like prisoners or they really are criminals?

Hypocrisy

Madagascar was excluded from the AU meeting in South Africa as the Central Organ of the OAU ironically recognized neither of the two contestants to the presidency. The leader of the CO is none other than A. Wade of Senegal, who was the same man who brokered a peace plan (in his Dakar ) which agreed on a recount of the ballot and who said that whoever emerged winner was the legitimate choice of the people. It was done and Marc R. got the people’s mandate. So how come Wade led his gang of kingmakers to ostracize Madagascar? How reliable are these leaders?

From African Socialist No1