legal vultures

Socialist Banner has previously reported on the Ivory Coast environmental disaster caused by the company Trafigura. Many of the victims managed to gain a share of £30million compensation for the health affects by the illegal dumping of toxic waste.

But it seems that the multimnational were not the only sharks . The lawyers ,Leigh Day and Co, who represented more than 30,000 victims , poor , uneducated citizens of the Cote d' Ivoire have claimed 105 million pounds legal costs including a £50 million success fee , £20 million more than the compensation reward. Not just that but they have failed to ensure that all the claimants received the money . Only 12,250 of them had cashed their cheques.

Civil litigation experts said that the costs were unusually high. "£105m is a very high figure – I don't think I've ever heard a higher one in over 25 years of practice," said David Greene, head of litigation at law firm Edwin Coe.

escaping into drink

Urbanisation is changing the way alcohol is drunk. Illicit brews smooth dealmaking and reconciliation in the countryside. But in the sprawling city slums, where most of Nairobi’s people live, they are more often a cheap way of blotting out a sense of abandonment.

The Korogocho slum is one of the poorest in Nairobi, Kenya’s teeming capital. Its 120,000 residents occupy a stinking square kilometre by the city rubbish dump. Nearly three-quarters are under 30 years old. Many are alcoholics.

The equivalent of $1 is enough to buy four glasses of illegally brewed chang’aa —and oblivion. Some drink the local special, jet-five, so called because the fermentation of maize and sorghum is sped up with pilfered jet fuel. It can damage the brain. Elsewhere in Nairobi, chang’aa is spiked with embalming fluid from mortuaries.The name, meaning literally “kill me quick”, is well chosen. This and other methanol-based kickers are sometimes fatal: 10ml of methanol can burn the optic nerve; 30ml can kill.

The UN’s World Health Organisation reckons that half of all alcohol drunk in Africa is illegal. Neighbouring Uganda may consume more alcohol per person than any country in the world. Much of this is waragi, a banana gin. Some 100 Ugandans died from toxic waragi in April alone. Botswana, arguably sub-Saharan Africa’s most successful country, serves up laela mmago, meaning “goodbye mum”.

ivory coast misery

We read that Ivory Coast , once called the "economic miracle" of Africa, with rapid growth in the first two decades after independence from France in 1960, is one of Africa's major agricultural exporters - around 40% of the world's cocoa, and more rubber and cashew nuts than any other country on the continent. But despite these cash crops, Ivory Coast has large regions suffering from malnutrition.

A third of children nationally suffer from chronic malnutrition. A recent survey showed that malnutrition was now at emergency levels among children under two years old in two regions in the north-west, Bafing and Worodougou. Children with malnutrition do not always get the help they need because of the cost of modern medicine, the lack of the health facilities close by. According to the International Monetary Fund, the poverty rate rose from 38% to 49% between 2002 and 2008.

This is not a country facing a famine, but a series of factors has left large numbers of the population struggling to grow and buy enough food.

"The reason why people are malnourished is mainly not due to a lack of food, but mainly due to accessibility issues due to poverty," says Mr Gerard ,country director for the health charity, Merlin. "The food on the market is expensive..."

Once more its a matter of capitalism's principle law "Can't pay - can't have"

Environmental Racism ? Or Capitalism ?

We read that Shell's Opolo-Epie facility gives the lie to claims from oil multinationals and the Nigerian government that they are close to bringing an end to the destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring.The Opolo-Epie plant is set to join at least 100 other flares burning across the swamps, creeks and forests of this oil-producing region, filling the atmosphere with toxins, seeding the clouds with acid rain and polluting the soil. The process of burning off unwanted "associated gas" brought up when oil is pumped out of the ground has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984. The government has set three separate deadlines for stopping the practice – the latest of which falls due at the end of this year – but still it continues. Medical studies have shown the gas burners contribute to an average life expectancy in the Delta region of 43 years. The area also has Nigeria's highest infant mortality rate – 12 per cent of newborns fail to see out their first year.
"This is environmental racism," said Alagoa Morris, an investigator with a local group, Environmental Rights Action. "What we are asking for is that oil companies should have to meet the same standards in Nigeria that they do operating in their own countries."

In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply the gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s ,is equivalent to more than one third of the natural gas produced in the UK's North Sea oil and gas fields and would meet the entire energy requirements of German industry.( Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.) Making use of the gas being burned could produce 8,000 megawatts of power – three times Nigeria's current output. A single small- to medium-sized flare could power up to 5,000 homes, shops, schools and clinics as well as pumps and filters for drinking water.

The pollution generated from this flaring has been measured at up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, with unknown quantities of the far more damaging greenhouse gas: methane. According to Chris Cragg, an independent oil and gas expert. "It is one of the largest single pointless emissions of greenhouse gas on the planet, with obvious implications for climate change that will not only affect Nigeria, but also the rest of the world."

The South African Freedom Day

South Africans mark Freedom Day on Tuesday and South Africa still has a lot to achieve before all South Africans are really free, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Monday.

"We cannot ignore the 58 percent of South Africans who live in poverty, who cannot really benefit from political freedom as they face a daily struggle to survive," spokesman Patrick Craven said in a statement.He said massive inequality had made South Africa the most unequal society in the world."Such inequality mocks our struggle to build a free, fair and equitable society. Neither can we celebrate freedom when our society is scarred by such high levels of crime and corruption."

He said there was a continued restructuring of the working class into a two-tier labour market.

"We suffer from the gross exploitation of workers, as capitalists seek new ways to enrich themselves at the expense of the working class and dodge around the labour laws." He explained that the first layer of workers enjoyed most of the rights contained in the constitution."They are covered by collective bargaining and enjoy better work security and better pay."

The second layer was of super-exploited workers without any rights or freedoms."For them, joining a union is a personal risk and upward job mobility is an illusion. It is a large and growing army of workers employed in low-paid, temporary, casualised jobs or employed through the enslaving labour broking system."

"The black working class, despite government provision of thousands of new houses, are still located far away from workplaces, forcing workers to spend a lot of the little wages they receive on ever-rising transport costs."

Workers bore the brunt of the recent capitalist crisis, caused by the greed of capital.In the first nine months of 2009 the country lost 959 000 jobs.

Craven said the only way for workers, their families and communities to win real and total freedom was for them to get organised in strong, fighting trade unions.And while Socialist Banner fully supports the efforts of the working class to unionize and resist the encroachments of capitalism , we need to heed the observations of Karl Marx and qualify the limits of trade unionism . Socialist Banner reminds the South African worker that only socialism will bring true emancipation from wage slavery and free the working class from capitalist exploitation.

"...the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system! "

WHEN AID IS NO FIRST AID

Extracts from this article.

In 1960, South Korea was as poor as the African countries, but thirty years later, the country was wealthy enough to offer aid to Africa.

The African continent has struggled with chronic poverty and under-development since the advent of political independence more than fifty years, and many Africans view this problem as one of Africa's own making. African development experts and academics have blamed foreign aid for the continued and seemingly intractable development crisis confronting the continent. Africa's war on poverty is perceived as amounting to begging and submissiveness, leading to reforms that have made Africans poorer. The contention among many African experts is that the more the developed north co-operated with the south, the poorer Africa became. Foreign aid has generally benefited the ruling elites in Africa, by among other things, enabling and perpetuating corrupt governments' hold on power, and by extension, entrenching the pervasive underdevelopment. Poverty is a justification for aid, but it is seldom the main criterion used for allocating it.

Over the past five decades, foreign emergency assistance to Africa has helped to avert hardship for many of Africa's poor, but failed to promote any significant economic development.Providing assistance to Africa's poor is a noble cause, but the five decades long campaign of aid has turned out to be what one critic called “a theater of the absurd.” To-date, the record of western aid to Africa has been significant, amounting to more than $500 billion between 1960 and 1997, which is the equivalent of four Marshall Plans being pumped into Sub-Saharan African. And today, the national budgets of most Sub-Saharan African countries are dependent on foreign aid for up to eighty percent of the annual budgets. Apart from the relief aid and economic development, foreign aid assistance was also provided to support reforms and policy adjustment programs. And between 1981 and 1991 alone, The World Bank provided $20 billion towards Africa's structural adjustment programs. The purpose of the programs was to make public institutions, government agencies, and bureaucracies in Africa more transparent, effective, efficient and accountable. It is baffling that Africa still suffers from a poverty trap, considering the depth of governments' corruption and the missing billions in export earnings from oil, gas, diamonds and other resources.

The disadvantages of aid include the fact that funding provided is usually tied to the fact it must be spend in the donor countries regardless of the high cost of goods and services. Rather than create wealth, prosperity and economic development, most Africans have over the past few decades realized a net decline in their standards of living. Research shows that over the period that foreign aid was being pumped into Africa, the per capita GDP declined by an averaged of 0.59 percent annually, between 1975 and 2000. The Heritage Foundation in 1985 concluded that foreign aid is not the answer to Africa's economic troubles; and in fact, the organization maintained that aid was contributing to Africa's underdevelopment woes. It is now a popular belief that foreign aid has been found to do more harm, leading to the situation where Africans have failed to set their own pace and direction of development; free of external interference. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development admits that aid to Africa has not been successful and despite many years of policy reform, no Sub-Saharan country has completed its adjustment program or achieved any sustained economic growth. Similarly, a Heritage Foundation study found that foreign aid retards the process of economic growth and the accumulation of wealth. The Foundation argued aid dependency pulls entrepreneurship and intellectual capital into non-productive activities, thereby blunting the entrepreneurial spirits of many Africans.In 1976, Tanzania began the $220 million Mufundi paper mill factory project financed by the World Bank. The project turned out to be a total failure, yet for twenty years, Tanzanians paid the bill for that ill-thought out experiment. In the early 1990's, the UNDP spent $900,000 over a three year period trying unsuccessfully to show farmers in north-east Ivory Coast how to cultivate onions. Meanwhile, 90 miles north, in neighboring Burkina Faso, the farmers there were growing onions profitably under similar agricultural conditions, but without any foreign aid. The decades of financial and technical aid transfers to Africa have not fostered economic growth, rather, it has left seventy countries, primarily in Sub-Saharan African, poorer than they were in 1980, and 43 are worst off than they were in 1970. The United Nations Development Program describes the 1980's, the period of highest foreign aid transfer to Africa, as the “lost decade.” Over much of that decade, 100 countries mostly in Africa, suffered major economic decline or net stagnation, and the conclusion is that foreign aid failed to create economic growth in aid recipient countries. The old belief that aid transfer allowed poor countries to escape the poverty trap has been refuted, because research has proved that poverty, contrary to the popular belief, is not caused by capital shortage. In fact, studies show that there is no correlation between aid and economic development, rather, most aid recipient countries have become and remained more dependent of foreign aid. Additionally, a World Bank study showed that food aid budgets in developed nations were mainly guided by prospects for commercial exports of surplus from donor countries, and not determined in accordance with the needs and objectives of recipient countries' to reduce dependence on imported food. Donors reduce food aid budgets when the prospect for commercial exports are good, and increase them when the prospects are poor. A U.S 1997 General Accounting Office report, criticized USAID for having no strategies for the assessment of the impact of its programs in enhancing the food security, and further, the Agency could not determine whether food aid was an efficient means of accomplishing food security goals in aid recipient African countries. Poor policy choices in Africa have caused development there to first stagnate and decline over the past several decades.The public image of foreign aid is of Western beneficence; nevertheless, studies show in some cases, foreign worker remittance to their countries of origin far exceeds the annual aid transfers from some European countries. In 1998, the officially recorded remittance from the Netherlands to forty-two low-income developing countries exceeded U.S. $1 billion; a sum equivalent to 115 percent of Dutch aid to those countries.

Foreign aid serves a useful purpose when it is provided to alleviate temporary hardship as in cases of natural disasters such as droughts, but, experience in Africa has proved that aid recipients could easily construe foreign aid as a substitution to their own productivity. Across the continent, food aid has suppressed food production, undermining the prices of local produced foods. A World Bank finding on food import into Somalia in 1998 concluded that aid had methodically undermined Somalia's civil society. Somalia had become more dependent on imported food than any other country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report noted that until food aid began to arrive in Somalia, the economy was predominantly an agricultural and pastoral economy. And up until the early seventies, Somalia was self-sufficient in food grains production; however, Somalia's share of food imported in total volume of food consumption rose from less than 33 per cent in 1979 to over 63 per cent in 1984. This sea change ironically coincided with the period of highest food aid distribution to that country. By increasing the supply of food aid, Somalia's domestic food prices were dampened, and the prices of local food crops were prevented from rising, thus reducing the incentives for domestic food crop producers. This exacerbated Somalia's food deficit.

Studies show that there is overwhelming evidence that foreign aid has helped to under-write the misguided policies of the corrupt and bloated government bureaucracies across Africa. The Oxford International Group study revealed that the external stock of capital held by Africans in overseas accounts, was between $700billion and $800 billion in 2005, and nearly 40% of Africa's aggregate wealth was stacked in foreign bank accounts in Europe, United States and Japan. A former U.S Ambassador to Ghana, Edward P. Bryan, admitted that foreign donors have allowed what he describes as “a small, clever class that inherited power from the colonial masters to take us to the cleaners.” It will take a lot of resources and time to turn Africa around. In March 1990, a Paris daily, Le Monde wrote, “Every franc given to impoverished Africans, comes back to France or is smuggled into Switzerland by African bureaucrats and politicians.” And critics contend that donor agencies knew or should have known the motivation and activities of corrupt African leaders who spirit away billions into Swiss Banks and other western bank accounts. Even famine relief aid is not spared. As early as the late 1980's, a former head of Medicine Sans Frontiers, Dr. Rory Branman, lamented the failure of aid to Africa, saying, “We have been duped.” The Western governments and humanitarian groups”, he said, have “unwittingly fueled and are continuing to fuel an operation that will be described in hindsight in a few years' time as one of the greatest slaughters of our time.” The World Bank admitted that in most cases Western donors knew that up to 30 per cent of the loans to African countries and governments went directly into the bank accounts of corrupt officials, yet The Bank considered these officials and their governments as partners in development.A major debilitating by-product of foreign aid to Africa is the culture of corruption that has taken root at every level of every government. Today, corruption has become the way of life in every country in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the theft, bribery and embezzlement of aid, and other government resources are so endemic, they are not considered as crimes. African politicians and government officials have engaged in corruption practices, and a 2004-2005 World Bank Report showed that $148 billion were embezzled out of Africa by politicians and bureaucrats; a significant amount of it being aid and loans earmarked for development activities to benefit Africa's poor. Without transparency, accountability, and good governance, Africa's future will continue to remain bleak.

Because it is tied with geo-politics, trade and banking, foreign aid cannot be classified purely as gift-giving. During its first four decades, victory in the Cold War was the compelling and pre-eminent drive in the regime of aid giving. Today, experts have identified the predominant motives for aid giving as strategic socio-political, mercantile, and humanitarian and ethical. Official aid is seldom the tool of altruism alone, because the direction of foreign aid is dictated by political and strategic considerations, much more than the economic needs and policy performance of the recipient. However, the motives behind aid never come in fixed and stable proportions. Perhaps the one safest generalization to make is that foreign aid, when used alone or in combination with other policy instruments, has a unique ability to allow the donors to demonstrate compassion, while simultaneously pursuing a variety of other ulterior motives and objectives.

Black Empowerment - or - Crony Capitalism

The Economist carries an article on South Africa's Post-Apartheid policy of “black economic empowerment” (BEE).

Instead of redistributing wealth and positions to the black majority, it has resulted mainly in “a few individuals benefiting a lot,” President Jacob Zuma says.The richest 4% of South Africans — a quarter of whom are black — now earn more than $80,000 a year, 100 times what most of their compatriots live on.

The idea of legislating for black economic empowerment was originally promoted by big white businessmen to ward off post-apartheid calls for nationalisation. If a few well-connected black people were given chunks of the action, big business would, they hoped, be left alone. In that sense, BEE has been a roaring success, as whites still own the bulk of the country’s wealth. Whites still hold three-quarters of senior jobs in private business whereas blacks have 12%, the exact reverse of their share in the working population. Among the 295 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), blacks account for just 4% of chief executive officers, 2% of chief financial officers and 15% of other senior posts. In non-executive ones, they do a bit better, accounting for just over a quarter of board chairmen and 36% of directors.

rice

UNICEF estimates 40 percent of under-five children in the arid Sahel are chronically malnourished because they lack the vitamins and minerals needed to bolster their immune systems and mental skills. Another estimated 300,000 die every year from malnutrition.

“Rice is a poor source of essential vitamins and minerals, either because these compounds are not present in rice, especially when it is polished [white], or they cannot be absorbed by humans,” UNICEF nutrition specialist Roland Kupka told IRIN. “Diets that are primarily based on polished rice may thus lead to deficiencies in iron, zinc, vitamin A, and thiamine [B1] deficiency, which in turn impair growth, immunity, and mental development among children.”

Rice does little to boost nutrition, unlike vegetables.

The director of Africa Rice Centre, Papa Abdoulaye Seck, told IRIN “Rice is a strategic commodity… We can do business with rice. Imagine if the US$2 billion dollars [2006 estimate] that Africa spends on rice imports every year were reinvested in the agricultural sector - do you think Africa would now have 265 million starving people?” asked Seck, referring to an estimate from UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Blood and Treasure

The tragic and often bloody conditions of the Congo is rarely out of the news and it is often commented upon . Socialist Banner read this about the Democratic Republic of Congo .

One of the world's richest countries is also one of its poorest.As far back as Congo's history is recorded, the wealth from this vast natural treasure house has flowed almost entirely overseas, leaving some of the planet's best-endowed land with some of its poorest people. It is often heard, "We wouldn't have so much trouble if we weren't so rich."

Gold is only one of a half-dozen or more lucrative minerals to be found in Congo, and together they constitute what may be the worst case on Earth of what has come to be known as the "resource curse" . As inevitably as oil drew the United States into Iraq, it is the temptations of this wealth—more than ethnic rivalries, the legacy of colonialism, or anything else—that has turned Congo into the horrific battleground it has been in recent years. A country with a lavish array of natural riches and a dysfunctional government is like a child heiress without a guardian: Everyone schemes for a piece of what she's got. Multinational corporations prefer a government weak enough not to tax and regulate heavily but strong enough to guarantee order.A failed state fails its people in many ways, and one of them is that, in a world of powerful corporate players, a weak and corrupt government has no bargaining power.

Congo has been in the grips of a fiendishly complex and brutal war whose exact toll no one knows. It may well be in the millions if you count those who died because fleeing their homes or living in packed, disease-ridden refugee camps cut them off from adequate food and medical care. Women and girls by at least the tens of thousands have been gang-raped by government soldiers and rebel militias. This has not been a civil war driven by ideology, but rather a multisided free-for-all driven by plunder.The warring militias assume that multinational corporations would have few scruples about dealing with warlords if the stakes were high enough. They turn out to be right.Congo has virtually no public health system, and AngloGold Ashanti,the world's third-largest gold mining company, a multinational company spending millions prospecting for gold in the desperately poor community, have largely ignored pleas for help.While spending millions of dollars prospecting, it has made only small contributions to a local hospital, schools, a soccer tournament, and the like, keeping at arm's length a coalition of local groups and churches lobbying for this desperately poor community. "Of everything we've put in our list of demands and grievances," says Richard Magabusini, an elected chief .
AngloGold Ashanti recently finalized a series of agreements with the government. Four other multinationals—based in London, Canada, and South Africa—have likewise concluded closed-door agreements over mining rights. No one will ever know what Congolese government officials may have reaped from these deals in the way of quietly promised jobs, favors, or money under the table, in a country where such rewards are routine. As the company takes its slice of the African cake, only a tiny percentage of the proceeds from those 2.5 million ounces of gold is likely to stay in Congo—and even then, much of what does will probably leak into high officials' private bank accounts.More than 97 percent of Congo's gold leaves the country without ever being taxed, according to one recent estimate by the Ministry of Mines. AngloGold Ashanti mined more than $1.5 billion worth of gold in neighboring Tanzania between 2000 and 2007, but only 9 percent of that money has remained in the country as taxes or royalties. Where do the profits go instead? A good chunk comes to the United States, for even though the company is based in South Africa, its largest single shareholder—hedge fund billionaire John Paulson—lives on the Upper East Side and summers in the Hamptons. He owns 12 percent of the company, and a number of other Americans have shares.

The big money in gold mining comes to those who can afford to dig massive mines and build refineries to process the ore. But those who cannot, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people in Congo's northeast—including some 10,000 children—dig for gold literally by hand, much the way men did in California in 1849. Sometimes, risking great danger in the hope of richer ore, these freelance miners slip into abandoned, partly flooded underground mines with rotted roof supports and hack out new tunnels. Health and safety regulations are in long-forgotten law books only, and no one even records the number of miners maimed or killed each year.

In the 60s, many Americans boycotted Californian grapes to help farmworkers unionize; in the '70s and '80s, many boycotted South Africa to help the anti-apartheid movement. In the late 1990s there was the push to ban "conflict diamonds," which led to the 2002 agreement, now signed by some 75 countries, to boycott diamonds produced by armed rebel groups in Africa and elsewhere. Shouldn't we help war-torn Congo by boycotting "conflict minerals"? Unfortunately, it's not clear that a boycott would do much more than put tens of thousands of miserably paid miners out of work. Take the rather toothless conflict diamonds accord (which came about only because the international diamond cartel saw "blood diamonds" undercutting its inflated prices): It already applies to Congo, but makes no practical difference since the country's diamonds, like the overwhelming majority of its other exports, don't come from areas currently at war.The real problem is not conflict minerals, but the fact that Congo's long-suffering people reap only a tiny share of their country's vast wealth.

denying people water to live

World Water Day has just been , marking 8 years since the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of Botswana had access to a regular supply of water in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.In 2002, the Botswana government cut off and sealed a borehole, which the Bushmen relied on for water, in an attempt to drive them out of the reserve. Despite the Botswana High Court’s 2006 ruling that the Bushmen have the constitutional right to live in the reserve, the government has refused to allow them to re-commission their borehole. It forces the Bushmen to make 300 mile round trips to fetch water, yet the government has allowed the opening of a safari lodge in the reserve, complete with a swimming pool for tourists, and has drilled new boreholes for wildlife only.

The government’s treatment of the Bushmen was recently condemned by the UN Special Rapporteur for indigenous peoples, who accused it of falling short of ‘the relevant international human rights standards’. He also found that those Bushmen who have returned to the reserve ‘face harsh and dangerous conditions due to a lack of access to water’

At least one woman has died from dehydration since the borehole was cut off.

White apartheid

We read of Coronation Park, in Krugersdorp west of Johannesburg, a leafy former caravan site beside a water reservoir and a public picnic park frequented by middle-class families at weekends.Ringed by yellow-brown hills of earth dug up by generations of gold miners, the park was used by the British as a concentration camp for Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war at the start of the 20th century. Now it's home to some 400 white squatters living in cramped tents and caravans and sharing a single ablution block.. The local council cut electricity to the camp after failing to evict the white squatters. The council wanted to develop the area into a wide screen viewing area for soccer matches ahead of the soccer World Cup, which South Africa hosts in June and July.

At least 450,000 white South Africans, 10 percent of the total white population, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive, according to civil organisations and largely white trade union Solidarity.

White poverty in South Africa is a politically sensitive subject that gets little attention, but it is not new.The weakest and least educated whites were protected by the civil service and state-owned industries operating as job-creation schemes, guaranteeing even the poorest whites a home and livelihood. But with that economic safety net now gone, South Africa's unskilled whites find themselves on the wrong side of history, gaining little sympathy from those who perceive them as having profited unfairly during the brutal apartheid years.Formerly comfortable Afrikaners recently forced to live on the fringes of society see themselves as victims of "reverse-apartheid". South African President Jacob Zuma visited a white squatter camp near the capital Pretoria last year ahead of his election, saying he was "shocked and surprised...The vast number in black poverty does not mean we must ignore white poverty."

water crisis in Africa

UNICEF noted that more than 155 million people, or 39 percent of the population in West and Central Africa, do not have access to potable water, with only eight of 24 countries in the region on track to meet key poverty-reduction targets by 2015.Six countries have less than 50 percent drinking water coverage: Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Mauritania and Sierra Leone. Many countries have suffered drops in food production due to erratic rains.

UNICEF said the water situation in West and Central Africa "remains a major concern," with the region home to the lowest coverage of potable water worldwide.

Also of concern is the fact that 291 million people have absolutely no access to sanitation in West and Central Africa, the region with the highest under-five mortality rate of all developing regions at 169 child deaths per 1,000 live births.

agro-fuels in Ghana

In Ghana the Project Officer of General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), Mr. Joseph Owusu Osei in an interview said that due to the energy crisis the world over, there is a shift to bioproduction, hence countries like Russia, the US and China have moved to Ghana to acquire large tracts of lands in the country.He said the activities of the multinational companies have left a lot to be desired.

A study conducted by Action Aid Ghana (AAG) and FoodSPAN in four regions in Ghana has revealed that the production of biofuel is fast affecting food crop farmers in the regions.The study indicated that its production was having adverse effect on food security, environment, human rights and in general, livelihoods of the affected communities.

The companies involved in the production of the biofuel import labour from outside the communities where production sites were located, and "there were drastic lay-offs as the project progressed from land preparation and planting stages."

Fertile arable lands suitable for crop production were being used for jatropha.It observed that the large scale production also involved the use of heavy machinery resulting in wanton destruction of forest, vegetative cover, biodiversity and economic trees including dawadawa and shea-tress production. In Bredi Camp, a farmer named Mageed bemoaned that his life and that of other community members have been adversely affected as they no longer have land to produce maize, cassava and yam, adding that they were neither consulted by the Omanhene of the area nor the biofuel company before they took over the land, and that they have not been compensated for the displacement.

cities of slums

Regionally, today, sub-Saharan Africa has the largest slum population where 199.5 million (or 61.7%) of its urban population live in such areas. A new report by the United Nations organisation UN-HABITAT makes intersting reading , full of facts and figures , some of which are quoted below .

Three South African cities top the list of the most unequal cities in the world, when measured on income-based data gathered in a UN-HABITAT survey of cities in 109 countries from all regions.Buffalo City (East London), Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni (East Rand) as extremely unequal.Not far behind are cities with inequality well above the national average. In decreasing order, they include Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (only two-thirds of the population had access to piped water and only 44% to adequate sanitation) ; Nairobi, Kenya; Maseru, Lesotho.All feature income-based Gini values above 0.52, which ranks as “very high”.Nearly two-fifths of Lagos residents live in overcrowded housing, and a quarter have no access to adequate sanitation. The city is also unable to provide jobs for its growing population, with 40% of males and 12% of females unemployed in 2006.

In Namibia and Niger, lack of sanitation and durable housing are also responsible for high rates of diarrhoeal diseases among children, with a prevalence of 17.6% in Namibia and 29.9% in Niger, compared with 11.6% and 16.7%, respectively, among children from non-slum households

Although they can boast some of the highest urban growth rates, East African countries remain the least urbanized in the world and will only begin to experience an urban transition by the middle of this century. Only 22.7 per cent of the region’s population was classified as “urban” in 2007,However, high urban growth rates in East Africa are not anywhere near the “tipping point” where a national population becomes predominantly urban. United Nations projections indicate that by 2030, only 33.7 per cent of the region’s total population will be urban. For most countries – except those already highly urbanized, such as Djibouti, Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles – the transition will only occur after 2040, with the exception of Mozambique, Somalia and Zimbabwe, where it is expected by 2030.
The low rates of urbanization in East Africa result from a variety of factors, including low industrialization, overdependence on subsistence agriculture, inadequate or outdated land policies, lack of prourban development strategies, insufficient investment in secondary and small cities, past colonial policies that discouraged rural-to-urban migration, and apparent lack of political will to address the “urban question” and turn cities and towns into engines of national growth. Another particular aspect of the urbanization process in the least urbanized East African countries is that of “divided loyalties” – conflicts between communal loyalty and obligations to ancestral rural land, or to clan and family ties, on the one hand, and the need to adapt to and participate in a modern, urbanizing world, on the other hand. This phenomenon prevents many rural migrants from fully embracing the city as their home or engaging with local authorities to demand better services and rights. Consequently, many cities in the region can be described as hosting “transplanted villagers” who are yet to be turned into truly urban citizens whose loyalties, investments, livelihoods and future prospects are intimately linked with the cities where they live.

There are no nice capitalists. Capitalists in Africa are just as ruthless and just as exploitative as their First World brethren. The debate over globalisation is a ruling class debate over how they divide the spoils from their collective exploitation of us. A peasant gets peanuts for growing peanuts because that is the going rate for peanuts in the world economy. If the price of peanuts is raised, the local exploiter will gain at the expense of the First World importer, and the peasant still gets peanuts. The only way to ensure that every single human being on the planet has an equal chance to enjoy a life free from material deprivation is a world where all the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, these can be used to provide enough for all without plundering the Earth's resources or polluting the biosphere. We are not claiming that this would be an easy task – there will be problems of co-ordination and co-operation to solve, not to speak of having to clear up the mess left by the profit system – but it is technologically possible as well as socially desirable.

Another world is possible but it has to be a non-capitalist – a socialist – world.

blue skies on the horizon

Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy, two US-based academics, find that in the 10 years before the credit crunch began, poverty rates fell and inequality declined right across the continent of Africa.

"Our results show that the conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. In fact, since 1995, African poverty has been falling steadily," the authors say. "Moreover, contrary to the commonly held idea that African growth is largely based on natural resources and helps only the rich and well-connected, we show that a great deal of this growth has accrued to the poor."

Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy say that by 2006 the African poverty rate was 30% lower than in 1995, and 28% lower than in 1990. They say the Gini coefficient, an international benchmark for social inequality, has declined consistently, if slowly, since the early 1990s.

The findings in the report, published by America's National Bureau of Economic Research, contradict the views of the World Bank and the United Nations, which established the millennium goals in 1990.

Some development experts are not convinced. Stefan Dercon, of Oxford University, said the authors placed too much weight on government statistics such as GDP, and ignored other data. "They believe the evidence that many of us would least trust and throw away the evidence we tend to think is fairly accurate. Painstakingly collected household consumption and income surveys, especially when over various years using the same method in each year, give a rather detailed picture of whether there is massive enrichment or not. And unfortunately, the evidence for Ethiopia, where I have been doing this for years, doesn't show such massive improvement."

So it could be good news or still bad news . But for sure , its old news . The world economy DID suffer a drastic downturn in 2008, and has not yet recovered. Poverty is certainly more widespread today than it was in 2006.This study does nothing for the people who are starving and living in slums, whether they are millions, billions or just hundreds of thousands we should not let anyone anywhere not be able to buy food .

Little Optimism

8.4 million people skip meals daily to cope with the biting economic hardships in the country, according to findings of a new survey.

The Social, Political and Economic Barometer (SPEC) indicates that 17.2 million people have also drastically reduced expenditure on essential households items in response to spiralling prices of basic commodities.

A whopping 19.6 million people feel their respective families' economic situations had worsened.

Some 1.6 million people resorted to borrowing from commercial bank .

Child poverty alongside "Youth" riches

A new OECD working paper on trends in poverty and income inequality in South Africa has found that more than half of all South Africans (54%) are poor but, among children below 10, as many as two out of three are poor. "This implies that among all poor South Africans, one in three is a child," said the OECD.


The national poverty line of 515 rand a month, or about US$4 a day, which is used for national policy making. International comparisons of lower-income countries often use the World Bank poverty line which is US$2 a day. Under this lower line, the aggregate poverty rate in South Africa is 30% but if the standard OECD poverty line, which is below half the average income, the poverty rate is 26%.

The report, based on the most recent information on incomes available, for the year 2008, indicated that South Africa's levels of income inequality and income poverty did not decrease between 1993 and 2008. According to some estimates, aggregate inequality even slightly increased. Inequality between racial groups decreased, especially during the 1990s. This did, however, not lead to a decrease in the aggregate because inequality within population groups increased, especially among Africans.Rising inequality within the labour market - higher unemployment and greater wage inequality - lies behind the increased levels of inequality.

"Poverty has increased, especially in urban areas...Race-based redistribution may therefore become less effective over time relative to policies addressing increasing inequality within each racial group and especially within the African group."

While at the same time we read that Julius Malema , head of South Africa's ANC youth league , has been accused of making 130m rand (£11m or $17m) from state contracts since 2008.He reportedly used some of his earnings to buy two lavish homes and three luxury cars, including an Aston Martin.
Malema has always presented himself as someone who understands poverty, because his mother was a single parent who worked as a cleaning lady in rural Limpopo.

Little changes -Little change

Socialist Banner reads

Every government claims to be in place for the purpose of making life more pleasant for its people, through poverty alleviation or eradication programmes. But government after government has consistently failed to truly alleviate the poverty of the masses.Despite the enormous wealth of Nigeria , poverty still has a strong grip on a large chunk of the populace. It shows that the anti-poverty programmes have largely failed.Every year, huge sums are appropriated for the purpose of fighting poverty yet, the malaise still manages to widen its reach on the Nigerian people

Rating agencies have continued to show that the indices of poverty in Nigeria are even worsening, with over seventy per cent of the population said to be living below poverty lines-living on less than a dollar a day. With many still having great difficulty affording three square meals a day, or unable to attend to health challenges, or even a decent accommodation, the Human Development Index (HDI) of Nigerians is bound to be low. Rather than improving, the poverty level of Nigerians is rather increasing. One thing that this shows is that all claims to poverty alleviation in the country are sheer sloganeering.

Bodies like the Ministry of Social Development and Welfare, which used to impart skills on the populace, are no longer visible. The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) which ought to train school leavers in various skills to enable them be self-employed and self sufficient has not been empowered to play its role. The NDE, over the years has been starved of funds to carry out its functions. Anti-poverty projects and programmes have consistently failed to achieve their goals.

Aside from the obvious fact that extreme poverty engenders widespread hunger, malnutrition, lack of clean water, death from easily preventable diseases, lack of access to healthcare, inadequate shelter, illiteracy and general lack of education, the poor also suffer from a plethora of other, less obvious inequalities. They have no influence decisions which affect their lives and livelihoods. They have no bargaining power. They have no lobbyists. They have no importance alongside corporations. They are there to be ignored, discounted.

The marginalisation of the masses is no accident, no simple mistake or miscalculation but an inevitable consequence of the deliberate policy of those who hold the power; those whose aim is to accumulate more and more of the land, resources, wealth of any kind or just money, because this is what the capitalist system from which they benefit requires of them and deliberate policy, too, of those in governments who do their utmost to assist, sometimes in the hope of gaining a few steps on the ladder. Those at the top has no will to fix the system except to their own advantage .

Uganda's Foreign Legions

Socialist Banner has previously drawn attention to the number of Ugandan's fighting for the interests of the capitalist class in Iraq to escape the effects of capitalism and our attention has once more been drawn to the issue by this article.

An estimated 15,000 Ugandans have been deployed to Iraq by private security and recruitment agencies. The Ugandans protect military bases, airports and oil drills there. Some call it lucrative work. Others call it slavery.

The driving force behind the massive recruitment of Ugandans is the creeping privatisation of war. A trend catalysed by the British-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The incessant search for affordable cleaners, mechanics and security guards has led the Americans to Africa, which has a surplus of labour and a weak job market. Widespread military experience makes Uganda all the more suitable as a recruitment area. Moreover, many inhabitants of the former British colony speak decent English and Uganda is a military ally of the US. Ugandans are scrambling to get jobs in Iraq, even though the salaries are constantly being reduced and the work environment is anything but pleasant.

“Ugandans are exploited in Iraq. This is modern day slavery,” said Gideon Tusigye deployed to Iraq in 2006 and 2007 as an army physician.

Sam Lyomoki, a member of parliament who has long been a champion of employees’ rights, called for an inquiry into the maltreatment of Ugandans in Iraq said “They [the recruitment agencies] lie,” said Lyomoki. “These companies, which are often politically connected, are looking to turn a profit at the expense of Ugandans.”

Askar Security Services, which has deployed 5,000 soldiers, is run by the sister-in-law of general Salim Saleh, who is the brother and military advisor of the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. Mwesigwa Rukutana, who was minister of employment until last year, owned a company that recruited Ugandans for work in Iraq. Rukutana is now minister of higher education.

Recruitment agencies currently have their eye on Afghanistan, which they hope will provide them with new business once Americans withdraw from Iraq.

No Green Revolution for Africa

the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon "free trade" that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study.Market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were supposed to aid economic growth have actually backfired in some of the poorest nations in the world, and just in recent years led to multiple food riots, scientists report Feb 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The sophisticated techniques and cash-crop emphasis of the "Green Revolution" may have caused more harm than help in many locations, the study concluded.

Poor farmers who had no land security, made $1 a day and had their life savings of $600 hidden under a mattress. "These people were then asked to compete with some of the most efficient agricultural systems in the world, and they simply couldn't do it," said Laurence Becker, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. "With tariff barriers removed, less expensive imported food flooded into countries, some of which at one point were nearly self-sufficient in agriculture. Many people quit farming and abandoned systems that had worked in their cultures for centuries."

Many people in African nations, Becker said, farm local land communally, as they have been doing for generations, without title to it or expensive equipment -- and have developed systems that may not be advanced, but are functional. They are often not prepared to compete with multinational corporations or sophisticated trade systems. The loss of local agricultural production puts them at the mercy of sudden spikes in food costs around the world. And some of the farmers they compete with in the U.S., East Asia and other nations receive crop supports or subsidies of various types, while they are told they must embrace completely free trade with no assistance.

"A truly free market does not exist in this world," Becker said. "We don't have one, but we tell hungry people in Africa that they are supposed to."

Historically corrupt governments continue to be a problem, the researchers said."In many African nations people think of the government as looters, not as helpers or protectors of rights,"

Black Diamonds of South Africa

Once again , Socialist Banner demonstrates for fundamental change to our lives it has to be the system that we change and not just only swapping our the rulers around .

We read the poor represented 72 percent of the population of South Africa in the last year of apartheid in 1993. It now stands at 70 percent.

According to the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, seven out of 10 South Africans are poor, if the upper poverty line of R949 per person per month is used.Using the lower poverty line of R515 a month, there were about 22 million poor people in South Africa in 1993 and this rose to 26 million in 2008.

The report, titled Recession and Recovery produced by the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation said social assistance grants over the past 15 years "has done little to reduce inequality". Last year South Africa overtook Brazil as the country with the biggest gap between rich and poor.

Agnes Ntnluli said: "Now we are free but we are not happy ... we have no jobs, we are hungry"

“Before [in the apartheid days] the pass laws were a problem. Then they would have bulldozed us away...now they just leave us here with nothing, just stinking toilets,” said Beauty Busisiwe Kubheka.

The new black middle class hang out in trendy coffee bars and restaurants. These “black diamonds” are the most visible sign of capitalism's progress.
“They are the new generation. They look down on us. We were just foot soldiers in the liberation struggle and have not really benefited... ” Benjamin Mabala said.

Azar Jammine, the Econometrix chief economist, notes that South Africa remained one of the most unequal societies in the world. Citing Bureau for Market Research figures,75 percent of South Africa's population earned less than R4,000 a month while 4 percent earned more than R60,000.
He believed that growing inequality - fuelled by the upper income earners regularly increasing their incomes by up to 50 percent a year - appeared to "have exacerbated the crime rate" as the destitute turned to crime to survive.

“I remember when Mandela came to Soweto after leaving prison to give a speech. The place was crazy. Everybody believed a new world was coming. Now, we are very much disappointed. They don’t meet our needs. When it rains the shack leaks. It is worse than before, though now they say we have freedom of expression” Mrs Kubheka said.

Just having the vote and an end of racist laws do not make people free.

A former Robben Island prisoner, Mzi Khumalo, took over a major company, JCI , and he was asked whether he would be sympathetic to the unions. "I have spoken to the unions at JCI and made it clear: we are here to run a business. I'm not for any of this brotherhood stuff." Guardian, 22 April 1999.

More Corruption

Further to the previous blog , Socialist Banner's attention was drawn to yet another article on Africa's corruption and Western complicity .

A US Senate report says that, in 2007, President Omar Bongo of Gabon brought $1m in shrink-wrapped $100 notes into the US in a suitcase; that Teodoro Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea's president, moved "more than $100m in suspect funds through US bank accounts, including $30m to purchase a residence in Malibu"; and that, between 2000 and 2008, Jennifer Douglas, fourth wife of a former Nigerian vice-president, "helped her husband bring more than $40m in suspect funds into the US".

Several African leaders, their relatives and associates use Western banks, including British ones, to move hundreds of millions of dollars out of their countries and into accounts and companies they controlled. The banks through which these funds were channelled include Bank of America, Citibank Private Bank and HSBC.The report also says that a number of US professionals – lawyers, lobbyists, and estate agents – were used "to funnel millions of dollars in illicit money into the United States". It adds, in remarkably forthright language for an official report, that "politically powerful foreign officials, and those close to them, have found ways to use the US financial system to protect and enhance their ill-gotten gains".

Teodoro Obiang,is now the subject of a US criminal investigation. His salary, as minister of agriculture and forestry, is $60,000 a year. Yet, between 2004 and 2008, according to the senate report, he moved "more than $100m in suspect funds through US bank accounts, including $30m to purchase a residence in Malibu and $38.5m to purchase an aircraft". The home was the sixth most expensive home bought in the US that year, and Mr Obiang's spending did not stop there. Two US lawyers set up shell companies for Mr Obiang, and the report lists some transactions through an account for one of them, called Beautiful Vision, at Bank of America. In one four-week period in late 2004, cheques made out included: $82,900 to Naurelle Furniture; $137,312 to Ferrari of Beverly Hills; a further $332,243 to Ferrari; $80,287 to Gucci; $59,850 to "Soofer Gallery Rugs"; and a total of $338, 523 to Lamborghini Beverly Hills. Further cheques in the first half of 2005 were: $55,193 to Dolce & Gabbana, and $58,500 for the installation of a Bang & Olufsen home cinema system.
Back in West Africa despite Equatorial Guinea being sub-Saharan Africa's third biggest oil producer, life expectancy for men is only a fraction more than 50 years, and the infant mortality rate is 12 times worse than in the US.
Omar Bongo died in 2009 and his place was taken by his son, Ali. Both men, says the report, "amassed substantial wealth while in office, amid the extreme poverty of its citizens". US investigators discovered that Ali Bongo's wife, Inge Lynn Collins Bongo, formed a US trust in her maiden name, opened accounts in its name in California and used them to receive "multiple large offshore wire transfers... and used the funds to support a lavish lifestyle and move money along a network of bank and securities accounts benefiting her and her husband".

BAE corruption in Tanzania

BAE deal with Tanzania: Military air traffic control – for country with no airforce.

Cabinet ministers Claire Short and Robin Cook had tried to stop the sale of the hugely expensive radar to the poverty- stricken Tanzanians. But, Tony Blair as prime minister, overruled them and insisted that the deal had to go through.

Cook ruefully muttered that it seemed that Dick Evans, BAE's then chairman, seemed to have "the key to the garden door of No 10".

The World Bank and the International Civil Aviation Organisation judged that the 2001 £28 million purchase was unnecessary and overpriced. The Serious Fraud Office discovered that a third of the contract's price had been diverted into secret offshore bank accounts. The SFO believed that this money was used to pay bribes to Tanzanian politicians and officials.

The SFO discovered that the money had gone into a Swiss bank account controlled by Sailesh Vithlani, a middleman of Indian extraction with a British passport.

He left Tanzania after the country's anti-corruption unit accused of lying to investigators. He is listed as wanted by Interpol.One Tanzanian politician, Andrew Chenge, was forced to resign in 2008 after investigators discovered more than £500,000 in a Jersey bank account he controlled.

The arms giant yesterday agreed to pay out almost £300m in penalties, as it finally admitted guilt over its worldwide conduct.BAE will not face international blacklisting from future contracts, because it has only admitted false accounting, not bribery.The SFO said it was no longer in the public interest to pursue individuals now that it had settled the case with the company.

Dick Olver, the chairman, admitted that BAE "made commission payments to a marketing adviser and failed to accurately record such payments in its accounting records ... The company failed to scrutinise these records adequately to ensure that they were reasonably accurate and permitted them to remain uncorrected."

Uh-huh , just a book-keeping oversight , wasn't it , and of course those are not worthy of criminal proceedings.

Clare Short Development minister at the time , said "Everyone talks about good governance in Africa as though it is an African problem, and often the roots of the 'badness' is companies in Europe."

Un-natural resources

"Too often the political, ethnic or geographic aspects of war are considered to the exclusion of its economic drivers ... In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, natural resources must be recognised not only as part of the problem but also as an essential part of the solution," said Mike Davis of Global Witness.

Socialist Banner have been on record that it is indeed economic causes that have been at the root of all conflicts .

The Global Wtness solution calls for UN peacekeepers to be mandated to deal with the economic dimensions of conflict. "The problem with natural resources is not so much the nature of resources themselves, their abundance or their scarcity, but how they are governed, who is able to access them and for what purposes"

Indeed , Socialist Banner agrees that the problem is fundamentally who controls natural resources - a capitalist class through their their respective nation-states , or the workers through a common-wealth of free associations .
Although there is criminal incompetence of Africa’s post-colonial black elites (the people who call themselves presidents, prime ministers, and in some instances kings and princes of the continent have waged war on their own people and plundered the continent’s wealth to ever bulging Bank account in Switzerland), the main problem of the continent is capitalism.

Culture and Tradition

It is common to hear some people talk about their cultural tradition. Some people believe that a person without a distinct cultural tradition is lost. Thus we may infer that it is culture and tradition that distinguishes and defines humanity into racial, ethnic and tribal boundaries.

When Europeans came to Africa they did not outrightly pacify African cultural and traditional ways of life. It was the Christian missionaries who used the word of God to indoctrinate the natives to forego some of their ‘disgusting’ customary beliefs and practices. It is Christian and Islamic traditions that keep on to undermine African cultural and traditional ways of life.

Political ideology may also help to lessen racial ethnic and secular animosities. We saw the process at work in countries ruled by Communist regimes where religious and ethnic allegiances were banned.

Indeed culture and tradition conceived under complex capitalist societies may colour eccentric bourgeois intellectual and political pasttimes—because the fundamental social and economic development of every country comes to epitomise the cultural traditions of the capitalist class.

In fact economic production conceived under wage labour promotes cultural and traditional integration. Culture and tradition exist but it is alarming to note that certain cultures and traditions are deemed to be primitive.

Thus African cultural and traditional ways of life come to be defined as ‘backward’ in the sense that European civilisation has come to supplant ethnic and tribal exclusiveness. The very word ‘civilisation’ brings to mind the feeling that races and tribes are more superior to others in terms of their cultural and traditional accomplishments.

Thus the term ‘primitive’ is a political and racial derivative that tends to emphasise the attributes of social and political hegemony. Africa has a rich cultural heritage and this can be read in the people’s accents, art and folk music.

In Zambia during the UNIP-led government of Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s traditional and cultural ways of life were rigidly enforced. Music and art were censored in order to promote what was called ‘indigenisation’.

But what transpired was something unforeseen—a Bemba tradition and linguistic presence came to impose itself upon the country. Indeed the Ichibemba language is now a national lingua franca and second to English.

It may seem, that in today’s complex capitalist society, culture and tradition do not define an individual’s social identity in abstract terms. A person’s cultural and traditional identity comes to be determined by the degree of his economic and financial incentives. Social or political freedom without economic and financial privileges is a hoax. Poverty conceived under wage slavery may easily give rise to xenophobia. Socialism will give rise to a change to cultural and traditional ethnics—based upon the primitive accumulation and distribution of wealth.
KEPHAS MULENGA

The Robber Oil Barons

With the promise of new oil production in the near future both the Ugandan government and the oil companies involved have been busy painting a rosy picture of bumper revenues and a country transformed. We are promised that Uganda will be turned into a middle-income country by $2bn a year in hard cash.The truth , however , remains that Uganda's oil production sharing agreements point towards a resource extraction programme designed for company profit, not country development.The campaigning group PLATFORM published three of the production sharing agreements the government has spent years keeping a closely guarded secret and contain a series of provisions that undermine any hope of changing course.

The international oil companies, including Tullow Oil, backed by a $1.4bn loan arranged by the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Heritage, run by former mercenary Tony Buckingham are set to reap huge sums at Lake Albert - as much as a 35% return on their capital investment. That's three times what's internationally recognised as a fair profit.The oil contracts are structured so that price risk lies primarily with the state, while the private companies are virtually guaranteed a healthy return even if the market slumps. As the oil price rises, investors will make a higher and unlimited profit, taking close to one quarter of oil revenues, whether each barrel is fetching $70 or $200.The 20-year contracts, consistently weak or completely silent on human rights protection, also include a sweeping "stabilisation clause" - article 19 requires the Ugandan government to compensate the companies for any future change in the law that affects their profits - designed to militate against improvements in environmental standards.Possible future legal disputes between the two sides will not be resolved in Uganda, but in London: at the Energy Institute, whose president will pick the all-powerful arbitrator and for those in any doubt about the bias of the institution, it is currently headed by James Smith, chairman of Shell UK , another oil company mandarin.

Uganda secured one of the best deals in the world for its oil exploration according to claims by Tullow Oil , yet the Norwegian experts advising the government have expressed serious reservations: a review of Uganda's contracts commissioned by the Norwegian Agency for International Corporation in 2008 concluded that the profit-share model adopted "cannot be regarded as being in accordance with the interests of the host country".

Oil always promises growth, affordable energy and employment; from Nigeria to Angola, Sudan to Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, it has delivered only poverty and repression in Africa.While increased oil revenues give the impression of superficial growth, the sudden influx of cash distorts the economy and exchange rates, undermining alternative sectors, including agriculture and industry, that employ and feed far greater numbers. The ingredients for the so-called "oil curse" are all in place: contract secrecy, government corruption, commercial disinformation campaigns, with environmental protections ignored , and a simmering border dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo frozen rather than resolved. Lake Albert's oil is likely to prove yet another reason for the Kampala elite to ignore the struggling north and eastern regions of Uganda as the nation's focus shifts west to the oil fields. The transition to a sustainable energy economy will be put back two decades or more, while political tension will only increase.

For all the work of the country's 8,000 NGOs, the 30% budget support from donors and the rhetoric of international aid, it is these botched oil contracts and the financial interests of those oil companies that will do most to define Uganda's future.Uganda will not be transformed into a new Norway.

Chinese profits in Africa

THE boom in China's investments in Africa over the past 17 years was driven more by simple profit motives than complex political and strategic considerations, an academic and government spokesman said .

Zhong Jianhua, China's ambassador to SA, said during a debate at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg to mark the launch of the China Africa Network, that if business investments were made for political reasons, they would hardly be sustainable."I wish I could give political instructions to business people. There may be some cases where people come here for political considerations but most business people come to SA, as in any part of the world, without political motivation..."

Last month the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University circulated an article warning that China's expanding interests in Africa threatened the environmental, economic and political stability of African society. Last year China became SA's biggest trading partner.

We readThe conventional wisdom among Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and (South African Communist Party) SACP strategists, and many other commentators, in business, civil society and opposition parties, is that exploding poverty should naturally strengthen the power of the Left within the African National Congress (ANC) tripartite alliance. Yet the reverse may actually hold true.Rising poverty may actually strengthen populist, and tribalist and narrow nationalist politics in South Africa, rather than Left or progressive politics.

One of the costs of severe mass poverty is mass alienation, mass family breakdown, mass breakdown in individual self-esteem, especially in our country, where self-worth is now increasingly measured in how much money one has. Mass poverty may also cause mass rejection of democracy as solution to problems. In the South African context, in moments of crisis, people often seek solace in tradition, tribe, identity and patriarchy, to affirm, gain dignity or self-respect. These frequently are translated into over-assertions of African or blackness, or ethnicity expressed in over-emphasis on Zulu-ness or Xhosa-ness as the main source of identity.

In fact, rapid changes in society, associated with increased poverty, and alienation – and the Sanco leadership’s inability to respond to this – are partially to blame for the organisation being on the verge of extinction. Some populist leaders in the ANC with a more developed political antenna have already exploited these changes in society, caused by mass poverty. They have made their platform adopting supposedly left positions such as ‘nationalisation’, when it comes to economics; but combining it with social conservatism, approving of polygamy and virginity testing; and adopting muscular policies to deal with social problems, such as the ‘shoot-to-kill’ and ask questions later policy to bring down crime.


Increasing poverty and job losses will reduce the membership base, coherence and strength of Cosatu. Most of those who lose jobs are typical trade union members. The poor – jobless, homeless, rural peasants and young, are now in electoral terms the overwhelming majority. With a smaller base, the trade union federation will face the danger of becoming a ‘labour aristocracy’, of organising only a small working class base who has jobs.The SACP is organised as an elite movement, with a relatively small membership, typically trade unionists, students and those working in civil society. As more and more South Africans become poorer, the membership of the SACP, many also become unrepresentative of the majority mass poor.

Politics of Poverty and Political Parasites

ZAMBIA’S lack of development and widespread poverty is man-made, Zambians for Empowerment and Development (ZED) interim president Dr Fred Mutesa has said.

“Politics of poverty breed political parasites which are as deadly as killer bacteria that invade the human body. Unless this is clearly understood, the national cake will continue to be shared by a minority population while the majority of Zambians remain trapped in abject poverty..."

Zambia has the perfect conditions to become one of the most highly developed nations on the African continent. The country has abundant natural resources which make it the envy of many countries in the world.Minerals of all types and precious stones are buried in the soils of Zambia. The country is teeming with rich wildlife which if properly harnessed can make Zambia the destination of choice for tourists from all over the world. Zambians are among the most peaceful people on the African continent. People of different ethnic backgrounds live peacefully side by side each other. Despite all this development potential the majority of Zambians cannot afford a decent standard of living. They live in dehumanising conditions, which condemn them to a hopeless future.

"...The driving force behind politics of poverty is selfish ambition, seconded by greed and corruption. As long as our nation is run by politicians whose number one priority is to milk the system for selfish gain, nothing much will happen. To get what they want the average Zambian political predator will lie, bribe, steal, circumvent the law, insult and intimidate opponents. The end-effect of such a political culture is the disempowering of ordinary citizens to keep them in the chains of perpetual poverty and ignorance so that they can easily be manipulated.”

Democracy in Ghana

Dear Comrades,
Reflecting in this letter on a chance acquaintance with Ghana which is now "independent" as members of the British Labour Party would describe it.

The Scandinavian Express speeded towards France. Seated next to me in the compartment was a Swedish psychoanalyst who had decided to exchange "Socialism" for an Italian monastery. A tourist pamphlet was sticking out of his pocket and began: "When the plane lands you are standing on the threshold of a great adventure—Great Britain."
The boat shrugged lazily out of Marseilles harbour into the Mediterranean towards West Africa. For every one African on the boat there were two nuns all crossing themselves at the same time. My berth companion was a young French missionary (sent out to soften up the natives) who was later to read me pieces from the Old Testament and tell me that because I was an African my soul needed saving.

My seat at the dining table was next to an American woman tourist of 65 years, dressed and behaving like a girl of sixteen. Facing her sat a coloured Ghanaian woman married to a wealthy Swiss business man. She told us that because everyone in Switzerland were "equal" she had left her child there to be educated in one of the "best" schools. It was much nicer to have it grow up with ex-Kings and retired millionaires rather than just Africans.

A young Ghanaian girl journalist sat on my left who had been imprisoned with her "idol" Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, when capitalism was being run by the Labour Party. It was, however, interesting to see that she was beginning to understand that Africans were just as capable to administer capitalism as the white man. The poisonous black capitalist boiling pot of intrigue had disappointed one more. Yet she still insisted that the white Africans were interlopers and should be removed, which seemed like race prejudice in reverse.

The journalist had invited me to stay with her friend on reaching Takoradi. The next morning the boat arrived at Takoradi harbour. The police stood around looking like mixtures of male nurses and museum attendants.

After a confiscated passport and the refusal to accept the invitation of accommodation, together with a fantastic questioning. I was quickly deported to Nigeria, which was my destination. This ended my brief visit to the "model democracy".

Speaking on "democracy" in Ghana, Mr. Gaitskell, that great "socialist," said: "It is not possible for us in Britain to determine how you will develop your democracy. It is your affair, but I think in every new country emerging into nationhood certain principles must be observed. They are national unity, a high degree of personal leadership, and thirdly, and the most important, the preservation of individual liberty at all costs."

How easy these words slip off the tongue of a leader committed to try and reform capitalism. The detentions, deportations and imprisonments by Mr. Nkrumah's government are politely called developing "democracy," supported by the Communists and the shifty Liberal, not to mention the Conservatives, who might have made the same speech themselves. One wonders just how much "individual liberty" the British worker enjoys under his "democracy." What a garnish to hide the stench of British capitalism!

But there is still hope whilst Pacifist Fenner Brockway looks to God and black nationalism to "liberate" the African workers:

"God speed to the new leaders of Africa in the vast arena of constructive tasks which spreads before them! " Yes, constructive tasks of maintaining the capitalist system in Africa.
Fraternally yours,
OBAJTMI.
Stockholm, Sweden

(Socialist Standard, March 1960)

Cab-Ride to Capitalism: Servitude by the Majority

Socialist Banner thought it worthwhile to re-post this article from the magazine Socialist Standard .

It only takes a cab ride in a city to see which class has the most power and influence in capitalist society
Everyday taxicab rides may appear to be lacklustre experiences that are quickly forgotten. However, this might not always be the case. Sometimes our views of events may become clouded and we cannot see things for what they really are. However, after taking many cab-rides in an urban city, I began to see things in a different way. On one of my jaunts in a taxicab I decided to investigate what it is that made people come to developed capitalist countries from less developed parts of the world.

In speaking to a cab driver, who left Ethiopia to come to Canada, I found my answer. I asked, “do people tend to be more happy in Western societies than in Ethiopia?” He answered that, “Ethiopia was a poor country.” In his words I could see the influence capitalism now had on his life: he equated how much money one has to how happy they are in life. This is reminiscent of one of the trademark idioms of capitalism that money can buy happiness. This is now disputed even by some who are otherwise supporters of capitalism, but if it were wholly refuted then this could undermine the entire capitalist system. Unfortunately, many people do believe that money can buy happiness in the owning class and force those who do not make as much money into the service industry, which in its very nature seeks to serve the owning class.

Your life is influenced by where you are born

Your life is partly determined by where you are born. For example, if you are born in Ethiopia then your life will be determined by Ethiopian standards and culture. In the United States, Canada or the UK your life is determined by a more developed capitalist system. Someone may come from Ethiopia to experience the “freedoms” countries like these employ, but there is another factor at work here: class. It is easy to show that the system boasts of false promises: Sally wishes to go to university, but Sally’s parents cannot afford to pay for it because in the capitalist system one must pay for everything. Sally’s life path has now been influenced by what class she was born into. Therefore, what the Ethiopian will notice is that “freedoms” have a price and are largely determined by what class one is born into.

Along the same lines, immigrants often receive low paying work in the service industry once they enter the developed capitalist system and they can never afford the education to gain higher paying jobs. As a result they stay in the service industry their entire lives, being some of the most lowly-paid members of the working class of wage and salary earners. It is education and money that allows one to move up in a capitalist society but even if one is to move up the ‘social ladder’, it is only usually to a less badly paid section of the same subservient class.

Finding and maintaining a job is difficult enough for people in poor countries and therefore receiving an education is but a luxury. In fact, the cab driver I spoke to said that he was working to make sure that his daughter would be able to go to university. He has to spend his years driving a car all day long so that his daughter will not have to do the same job and will have a better future. If someone cannot improve their station in life because they have no money to begin with, they also cannot afford to improve their station through higher education. This means that they are left work for the class that owns and controls society. This is because capitalism is not really based on merit, but on how much money one has. This is irrational as merit should never have a price, it should be free and depend on nothing but itself.

The capitalist system is marketed on its promises of equality and freedoms through purchasing power. Prospective immigrants are given rhetoric about how capitalism makes anything possible – if one has money. However, nothing appears possible, let alone free and equal about the owning class being served daily by an exploited working class, who are actually the majority and whose freedom is rationed and limited by their pay packets and salary cheques.

Moreover, how successful you will be in life is largely determined by what class you are born into, and is out of your control. The cab driver from Ethiopia realised that he, or his daughter, would not be able to influence society in a poor country because all of the rich capitalist countries such as those in the G8 are the most influential and have the highest standards of living. However, even though he came to one of these developed capitalist countries, he will almost inevitably remain in the service industry for the rest of his life. This is because capitalism is not based on talent or merit like a truly equal system would be such as socialism where everyone would have an equal opportunity to pursue their true interests in life. In capitalism, your success typically still depends on how rich a family or area you are born into and what kind of a reputation it has. If you are unlucky and are born into the majority, the working class, it is likely that you will remain there to serve the upper class for the duration of your life.

Capitalism Promises Freedoms, But for Who?

It is taught in school that capitalist countries are mosaic countries, small units of various cultures existing within a larger schema or government. This view is marketed so that potential immigrants will not have to leave their customs behind and still be able to reap the so-called rewards of capitalist society. In reality, what exists is a melting pot where these cultures are eventually assimilated. The opposite of a mosaic, melting pot, a term with a negative connotation, is often used to describe societies experiencing large-scale immigration from many different countries that seem to “melt” into the existing society. For example, Muslims are being assimilated into Western culture by way of developed capitalism. Only those who assimilate into the capitalist system are able to experience the "freedoms" it promises, but at often cost to their culture. It follows that people who come to developed capitalist countries work to serve the needs of the majority, who are of a different culture, often by forgoing their own so that they might fit in the prevailing market-driven norms.

Two of the most prominent examples of the melting-pot theory are the African Americans who were enslaved by white people through trade and the Native Americans who were wiped out, enslaved or displaced during European colonization. Though these cultures, mainly the African Americans, regained somewhat of their dignity many years later, they still lost the connection to their homeland, lost their culture and were forced to “melt” into the capitalist system.

The natives of North America are an example of not only assimilation to benefit the capitalist class but of the deception of such a system. The natives did not have money or a use for money until the European settlers arrived. These initiated trade and the natives would work hard to gather furs. They would sell their furs, specifically beaver pelts, which were very expensive items in European society at the time. In return they would receive trinkets such as forks as well detrimental items like firearms and liquor. Further, the economy that was run during colonization was one that the Europeans implemented and operated themselves, i.e. capitalism. Also, when the natives finally became wary of the situation, they lost their land. Treaties for land exchange were deceitfully created in a language foreign to them so that they could not have possibly known that they were signing away their land. They were taken advantage of and most importantly, lost their autonomy and freedom. Additionally, the native clans that do remain in North America are being assimilated, or waiting to be assimilated, into society. One way where this can be seen is through the media impact on younger generations who are lured into Western society with its market-driven imperatives and away from their cultural heritage.

Servitude

It seems almost unbelievable to think that servitude exists today in a society that is supposed to be ‘meritocratic’. This is because it is unnecessary that there should even be a servant class in society at all, even if the modern form of slavery is wage slavery.

There is no doubt that if one were to ask the Ethiopian cab driver if he would drive a cab all day if he didn’t have to, he would say no. The majority of people work unsatisfying and unchallenging jobs in the service industry and this is not necessary. It is socially demeaning and it is servitude, plain and simple. Capitalism has wrought its negative influences on the African Americans and North American natives. These people were exploited and subordinate classes until they melted into the capitalist society causing social alienation and loss of cultural identity. Further, those that work in the service industry today are not far off from these fates. Their lives may be better now that they can purchase “freedom” but it is at a great cost to their dignity as they spend their lives in servitude based on the amount of money they (do not) have instead of what talents they possess. Moreover, it only takes a cab ride in a city to see which class has the most power and influence in a capitalist society and chances are it isn’t the class of the Ethiopian behind the wheel.

JESSICA FORDHAM (Socialist Party of Canada)

The Last Frontier

We have reported previously on the land grab taking place in Africa and once again we read of more developments

Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg. The jobs pay less than the World Bank’s $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.
“My business is the third wave of outsourcing,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, themanaging director of Karuturi Global said “Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food.”

“African agricultural land is cheap relative to similar land elsewhere; it is probably the last frontier,” said Paul Christie, marketing director at Emergent Asset Management in London. The hedge fund manager has farm holdings in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Under the agreement with Ethiopia’s government, Karuturi pays no rent for the land for the first six years. After that, it will pay U.S. $1.18 per hectare per year for the next 84 years. ( Land of similar quality in Malaysia and Indonesia would cost about $350 per hectare per year ).

“This strategy will build up capitalism,” president of Ethiopia’s Gambella region said . “The message I want to convey is there is room for any investor. We have very fertile land, there is good labor here ...”

The government plans to allot 3 million hectares, or about 4 percent of its arable land, to foreign investors over the next three years.

Workers in Elliah say they weren’t consulted on the deal to lease land around the village, and that not much of the money is trickling down.
“These Indians do not have any humanity,” Omeud Obank who guards the site 24 hours a day, six days a week said, speaking of his employers. “Just because we are poor it doesn’t make us less human.”