the South African capitalist state

Extract and adaptation of an article by the anarchist group Zabalaza.

"The ongoing violence of the state at Marikana, therefore, lays bare the true nature of the state; and the role it plays in protecting the ruling class (made up of capitalists and high ranking state officials).  For capitalism to function, and for class rule to be maintained, a state is vital. It is central to protecting and maintaining the very material basis on which the power of the elite is derived. Without a state, which claims a monopoly on violence within a given territory, an elite could not rule nor could it claim or hold onto the ownership of wealth and the means of production. In fact, the state as an entity is the defender of the class system and a centralised body that necessarily concentrates power in the hands of the ruling classes; in both respects, it is the means through which a minority rules a majority. Through its executive, legislative, judiciary, military and policing arms the state always protects the minority ownership of property (whether private or state-owned property), and tries to squash any threat posed to the continuing exploitation and oppression of the working class. As Marikana and other protests and strikes show that includes shooting rubber bullets, tear gassing people, raiding houses, arresting people, threatening people, humiliating people, torturing people, and even killing those that pose a threat.

The post-apartheid state in South Africa has played an instrumental role in maintaining the situation whereby poorly paid black workers remain the basis of the massive profits of the mining companies, including Lonmin. In South Africa, black workers have historically been subjected to national oppression; and this has meant that they were systematically turned into a source of extremely cheap labour and subjected to institutionalised racism. The history of very cheap black labour enabled white capitalists – traditionally centred around the mining houses – to make huge profits, and it is on this basis that they became very wealthy. The post-apartheid state has continued to protect and entrench this situation; it has maintained an entire legal and policing system that is aimed at protecting the wealth and property of companies, like Lonmin, from the black working class in South Africa.

Since 1994 the entire working class has fallen deeper into poverty, including sections of the white working class, as inequality has grown between the ruling class and working class as a whole. It has, however, been the black working class that has been worst affected.  While it is clear that the black working class remains nationally oppressed, the situation for the small black elite, nevertheless, is very different. Some, through their high positions in the state, and hence having control over the means of coercion and administration, have joined the old white capitalists in the ruling class. Others, have also joined the ruling class, but through the route of Black Economic Empowerment. This can be seen in the fact that all of the top ANC linked black families – the Mandelas, Thambos, Ramaposas, Zumas, Moosas etc. – have shares in or sit on the boards of the largest companies in South Africa, including the platinum mining companies. In fact, Ramaphosa not only owns shares in, and is on the board of, Lonmin; but a number of functions at Marikana and other platinum are outsourced to various companies he has interests in, like Minorex. He too has shares in the largest platinum mine in the world, Modikwa, through African Rainbow Minerals. The wealth and power of this black section of the ruling class in South Africa too rests on the exploitation of the working class as a whole, but mostly and specifically on the exploitation and national oppression of the black working class. Hence, this is the reason why the black section of the ruling class and the state its members are part of has been so willing to take action – whether during platinum strikes, Marikana, other strikes in general – against the black working class.

The anarchist Bakunin wrote that due to the centralised nature of states, only a few can rule: a majority of people can never be involved in decision making under a state system. As a result, he stated that if the national liberation struggle was carried out with “ambitious intent to set up a powerful state”, or if “it is carried out without the people and must therefore depend for success on a privileged class” it would become a “retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary movement”. He also noted that when former liberation heroes enter into the state, because of its top down structure, they become rulers and get used to the privileges their new positions carry, and they come to “no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people”.   Former liberation heroes in South Africa rule in their own interests, they wallow in the privileges of their positions, they have joined white capitalists in the ruling class, and they exploit and oppress the vast majority of the people in the country.

The state cannot simply rule by force alone – force is ultimately the last pillar upon which its power rests – but for its own stability and that of capital, it also tries to rule through consent. To do so, it pretends to be a benefactor of all; while in reality facilitating, entrenching and perpetrating exploitation and oppression. Certainly, most states today do have laws protecting basic rights, and some provide welfare – including the South African state. Such laws and welfare, however, have been won through massive struggles by the oppressed, and that should not be forgotten; states simply did not hand out these rights. But even where such laws exist, and sometimes they exist only paper, the state tries to make propaganda mileage out of them.  The anarchist Malatesta argued that the state: “cannot maintain itself for long without hiding its true nature behind a pretence of general usefulness; it cannot impose respect for the lives of the privileged people if it does not appear to demand respect for human life, it cannot impose acceptance of the privileges of the few if it does not pretend to be the guardian of the rights of all”. As struggles go forward it is important that the working class is not duped by the duplicity.

 The state and bosses have stolen from the working class, and it high time the working class got some of this back. A fight must be taken to the state and corporations, and the working class must mobilise to have its demands met. As part of this, we must, however, have no illusions about what the state is; who it is controlled by; who it protects; and what its function is. As such, the working class must mobilise outside of and against the state and force it to give back what has been stolen, but it should not have illusions in doing so that the state protects workers or the unemployed.

It is vital for the future of working class struggles that mineworkers and at Marikana win their demands. If they do, it could rejuvenate workers struggles across the country, which have been on the decline since the late 1980s. In fact, workers need to win better wages and safer working conditions. In the long run though, and if inequality and injustice are to be ended, the working class needs to take power and run society through its own structures. This means confronting the state, which is not theirs. This too means abandoning faith in the state to nationalise companies, which would essentially mean ownership by a state bureaucracy; not the working class. Indeed, calling for nationalisation builds illusions in a higher power: the state; and it does not show faith in, or build the power of, the working class itself. The state is not a lesser evil to capitalists; rather they are part and parcel of the same system."

The poorest countries in the world

1. Haiti

    Poverty rate: 77 percent
    Population: 10,123,787
    GDP: $7.35 billion (66th lowest)
    GDP per capita: $726 (22nd lowest)

The World Bank notes that more than half of Haiti’s population lives on less than $1 a day, while about 80 percent of the country lives on less than $2 a day. The country’s estimated unemployment rate as of 2010 was 40.6 percent. The impoverished nation is in a state of rebuilding since a devastating earthquake hit the country in 2010. According to a USAID report, the death toll from the earthquake was between 46,000 and 85,000, while the official figure by the Haitian government estimated the death toll at 316,000. The World Bank estimates that damages from earthquake totaled $8 billion, or about 120 percent of gross domestic product.

2. Equatorial Guinea

    Poverty rate: 76.8 percent
    Population: 720,213
    GDP: $19.79 billion (99th lowest)
    GDP per capita: $27,478 (40th highest)

Oddly enough, the country with the second-highest poverty rate in the world has a GDP per capita of $27,478, well above the average worldwide figure of $10,034. However, while extraction of oil and gas has led to economic growth, most of Equatorial Guinea’s population still relies on subsistence farming. The government has been criticized for the mismanagement of its revenue from energy resources. The health and well-being of its citizens would support the critique. Despite its oil wealth, the nation is among the worst countries in the world for life expectancy, at just 50.8 years, and for primary education enrollment, at just 56.3 percent of the relevant population.

3. Zimbabwe

    Poverty rate: 72 percent
    Population: 12,754,378
    GDP: $9.9 billion (72nd lowest)
    GDP per capita: $776 (25th lowest)

Zimbabwe has effectively had one leader, Robert Mugabe, since it became a sovereign nation in 1980. Mugabe’s tenure has been marked by a violent land redistribution program that has harmed agriculture -- a sector that has served as a source of exports and jobs for the nation. Until 2009, Zimbabwe also experienced a problem with hyperinflation. One dollar was worth 9,686.9 Zimbabwean dollars in 2007 and a stunning 430,972.7 Zimbabwean dollars in 2008. In 1993, the nation's poverty rate was just under 35 percent of the population. Since then, the poverty rate has more than doubled to 72 percent.

4. Congo (Democratic Republic)

    Poverty rate: 71.3 percent
    Population: 67,757,577
    GDP: $15.64 billion (91st lowest)
    GDP per capita: $231 (the lowest)

The Congo has suffered from corruption and conflict in the past 15 years that have “dramatically reduced national output and government revenue, increased external debt, and resulted in the deaths of more than 5 million people from violence, famine and disease,” according to the CIA World Factbook. The agency notes that while mining growth has helped boost the country’s economy, much of its economic activity still takes place in the informal sector, which is not counted in GDP statistics. Health and education are very poor in the country. Out of 1,000 children born, 111.7 will die before their first birthday, which is the highest rate in the world except for Sierra Leone. Primary school enrollment of just slightly over 33 percent is the second worst in the world.

5. Swaziland

    Poverty rate: 69.2 percent
    Population: 1,067,773
    GDP: $3.98 billion (47th lowest)
    GDP per capita: $3,725 (82nd lowest)

A number of factors combine to limit Swaziland’s economic growth, including an over-reliance on exports to South Africa. In addition, the country’s workforce is largely concentrated in subsistence agriculture, even though the country faces serious concerns about overgrazing and soil depletion. While these factors harm the nation’s economy, health concerns are likely one of the major factors preventing Swaziland’s population from escaping poverty. Few nations have a lower life expectancy at birth than Swaziland, where the average person is expected to live just 48.3 years. One of the reasons for the low life expectancy is the high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS among those 15 to 49 -- at 25.9 percent it is the highest in the world.

6. Eritrea

Poverty rate: 69.0%
Population: 5,415,280
GDP: $2.61 billion (40th lowest)
GDP per capita: $482 (8th lowest)

While hopes for economic growth rest on several international mining projects, 80% of Eritrea’s labor force is employed in the agricultural sector. However, agriculture only represents 11% of the nation’s GDP, with industry comprising 34% and services making up 55%. The country’s only political party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, has implemented policies that rigidly control the use of foreign currency and favors party-owned businesses in the economy. Making matters more difficult for Eritrea, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on the country in 2009, accusing the government of supporting anti-Ethiopian insurgents in Somalia. Eritrea’s primary school enrollment is only about 33.5%, which is the third-lowest rate in the entire world.

7. Madagascar

Poverty rate: 68.7%
Population: 21,315,135
GDP: $9.95 billion (73rd lowest)
GDP per capita: $467 (7th lowest)

Located in the Indian Ocean east of continental Africa, Madagascar is an island nation of more than a 350,000 square miles in size. Until the mid-1990s, Madagascar called itself a 'socialist' nation. Though it has since embraced World Bank- and IMF-endorsed economic programs for privatization and participated in the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act, the nation has had difficulties meeting the standards expected by these organizations and programs. Despite these programs, the nation’s economy remains largely dependent on agriculture for employment, with 80% of all employed persons working in the sector. In 2011, the country’s GDP per capita was just $467, making Madagascar one of 11 nations with a figure below $500.

8. Burundi

Poverty rate: 66.9%
Population: 8,575,172
GDP: $2.33 billion (38th lowest)
GDP per capita: $271 (2nd lowest)

In 1993, political differences between Burundi’s two largest ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi, triggered widespread ethnic violence that lasted almost a dozen years. Although this civil war has ended, ethnic conflicts in the region continue. The prolonged conflict, however, is not the only factor keeping Burundians in poverty. Although the country also has limited natural resources and agriculture accounts for just 31% of GDP, more than 90% of the working population is employed in the sector. According to the World Bank, Burundi remains one of the world’s poorer countries on a per capita basis — only one country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, had a GDP per capita figure lower than Burundi’s $271. Burundi’s infant mortality rate of 87.8 deaths per 1,000 live births is more than double the rate worldwide.

9. Sierra Leone

Poverty rate: 66.4%
Population: 5,997,486
GDP: $2.24 billion (36th lowest)
GDP per capita: $374 (4th lowest)

Sierra Leone has significant mineral, agricultural and fishery resources that could lead the country to economic growth. Political stability is slowly helping to improve the fortunes of the country as it recovers from the civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002. But while the military has been in charge of the country ever since the war, issues such as corruption still exist. The country has to rely on international aid from organizations such as the International Monetary Fund in order to remain financially solvent, and inflation of 18% in Sierra Leone is a serious problem. Sierra Leone has the highest rate of infant mortality in the world, with 113.7 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Sierra Leone’s life expectancy of just 47.4 years old is the second lowest in the world.

10. Sao Tome and Principe

Poverty rate: 66.2%
Population: 168,526
GDP: $248 million (5th lowest)
GDP per capita: $1,473 (48th lowest)

Sao Tome and Principe, a country of fewer than 200,000 people off the western coast of Africa, has relied heavily on cocoa production since it became an independent state in 1975. However, production has declined substantially due to drought and mismanagement. While the country stands to benefit from the recent discovery of oil from the Gulf of Guinea, the World Factbook notes that production is likely several years away. Unlike most of the countries on this list, Sao Tome and Principe has a primary school enrollment of 98.3%, which is substantially above the world rate of 88.8%

fact of the day

Africa has 2535 ultra-high net worth individuals with a total net worth of $329-billion.

not a drop to drink

Since 2010, Ghana has produced oil. It’s one of the world’s leading gold and cocoa producers. Ghana is a wealthy country, as is Africa as a whole.

70% of Ghanaian homes don’t have a WC or a pit latrine. Piped water, if you have it at all, is intermittent.

In Accra, you’re unlikely to have a WC plus individual cesspit unless you’re in the elite minority, and pit latrines are largely rural. You therefore have a few options. You can defecate in a bucket or a pan and pay for your 'night soil' to be taken, probably manually and illegally, perhaps twice a week, to a cesspit whose contents are then emptied by sewage tankers. You can walk to and then queue for a public latrine, most likely a subhuman hangover from colonial days where you pay for a bit of newspaper to wipe yourself and where there may be six stalls serving 1,000 people. You can defecate in a plastic bag and deposit it in the storm drains that line your street. You can defecate in a storm drain. You can defecate on the beach. Men often urinate in drains. Women sometimes put a bucket under their skirts. The only area with underground piped sewers is the ex-colonial enclave, round Osu, where the president lives and Ministries are located. At the wittily-named Lavender Hill, near some of the poorest areas in town, sewage tankers squirt raw sewage into the sea.

If you have piped water, it’s not safe to drink, however rich or poor you are. If you can afford it, you buy either sachet water or bottled water to drink. Bottled water is expensive, on average GHc2 (US$1.9) a litre when the minimum wage is GHc4.48 (US$2.66) a day. The media periodically report sachet water scams. In any case, your tap will be dry perhaps 75% of the time, depending on your topological relationship to the local pumping station. If you can afford it, you install a huge polytank (a cylindrical plastic container) on a tower in your garden, plumb it into your domestic system, and fill it up when the taps are running. If you can’t afford it, you store water in jerry cans wherever you have room. You might seek professional help to fix your water meter, illegally. If you don’t have piped water, and you’re not paying bills to the Ghana Water Company, you might employ a professional to plumb you into a mains water pipe, illegally. If you don’t, you must buy from a water tanker, or from a stand pipe, which is more expensive than tap or domestically stored water. Fetching three buckets of water a day can cost you between 10% and 20% of your daily income. Thus, the poorer you are, the more you’re likely to pay for water in absolute terms.

Political independence did not bring economic independence.

A political survey

The New Scramble for Africa

At the end of the 19th century there was a scramble for African resources and land by the capitalist nations of Europe. Over a century later there is now a new scramble for Africa. There is no mystery to why a new scramble for resources in Africa is taking place because all over the world there is a struggle by competing nation states for raw resources, the protection of trade routes and establishment of spheres of strategic and political influence. And there is continuing competition and conflict between China and the US for African oil and access to other raw resources both countries are desperate to secure for themselves

The competition for resources between nation states takes place because we live in a world-wide capitalist social system based on the class ownership of the means of production and distribution in which social wealth is produced as commodities by propertyless wage workers to be sold with a view to profit. Capitalism is a class society with a privileged minority living off the labour of an exploited majority working class. Capitalism exists equally in the US as it does in China and Africa.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds a powerful case against capitalism; that it is a “fetter on production”, it is a system of class exploitation, it causes all the social problems faced by the working class and human needs are only met under capitalism to the extent they can be paid for. Workers, the real wealth creators in society, are forced to live off wages and salaries and what workers receive is limited by the rationing imposed by the wages system. For billions of others locked out of markets because they are subsisting on a few dollars a day it means absolute poverty, starvation and often death. This is the lot of millions of men, women and children in Africa.

The problems of the working class are the last thing on the minds of US and Chinese politicians and oil companies as they compete for oil around the continent of Africa. In fact, the scramble for oil and raw resources is not new and it is useful to place China’s involvement in the African continent into a historical perspective; namely the “scramble for Africa” in the 19th century. Capital shapes the world in which we live and it has been doing so for hundreds of years.

For centuries, beginning with the slave trade, Western capitalism has systematically exploited the African continent. In fact Marx had viewed the rape of Africa as one of the principal generators of primitive accumulation by:

"…the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting of black skins” that "signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production” (Karl Marx, CAPITAL VOL I (New York: Vintage Books, 1977 p. 915)

But the abduction and enslavement of millions of Africans was only the start. In the late nineteenth century, in what became known as the "scramble for Africa," the continent was arbitrarily carved up into colonies by the leading European powers, which violently subjected tribes and plundered the continent of its rich natural resources.

Why?

Here is the 19th century imperialist Cecil Rhodes’ answer to this question:

"We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories…In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war; our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question" (quoted from R. Dumont and N. Cohen, THE GROWTH OF HUNGER: A NEW POLITICS OF AGRICULTURE. Marion Boyars, London 1980)

British capitalism then and Chinese capitalism now! Plus ca change.

In the post-independence eras, African states became pawns in the world economy, subject to Cold War rivalries, their path to development as autonomous capitalist nation states largely blocked by their debilitating colonial past. Dictatorships replaced dictatorships; corruption and theft enriched the indigenous ruling class while, war, famine and death was a common feature for the rest of society.

Here are the Facts of life for the continent of Africa from an organisation food4africa:

* 315 million people – one in two of people in Sub Saharan Africa survive on less than one dollar per day
* 184 million people – 33% of the African population – suffer from malnutrition
* During the 1990s the average income per capita decreased in 20 African countries
* Less than 50% of Africa’s population has access to hospitals or doctors
* In 2000, 300 million Africans did not have access to safe water
* The average life expectancy in Africa is 41 years
* Only 57% of African children are enrolled in primary education, and only one of three children complete school
* One in six children dies before the age of 5. This number is 25 times higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in the OECD countries
* Children account for half of all civilian casualties in wars in Africa
* The African continent lost more than 5,3 million hectares of forest during the decade of the 1990s
* Less than one person out of five has electricity. Out of 1.000 inhabitants 15 have a telephone line, and 78 out of 1,000 people surf on Internet.
http://www.food4africa.org/index.asp?pgid=42

Africa remains a continent abundant in natural resources which could be used to meet the needs of all society, but these resources manage to enrich only a handful of African rulers and foreign capitalists, which now includes capitalists from China and India.

As Marx and Engels noted in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO:

"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…it creates a world after its own image"

And that image is exploitation, plunder, death and destruction on a truly global scale. For the population of Africa it means continued civil war, abject poverty, plunder, dictatorship, violence and hardship. However the world’s working class does not need to exist in a world created after capitalism’s own image. The working class needs to retain a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country but without the bourgeoisie and its coercive State.

What needs to replace the new scramble for Africa is the establishment of Socialism; the establishment by a Socialist majority throughout the world of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society.

Chinese Capitalism and Africa

Following the economic reforms in the late 1980’s China-Africa trade has grown from $6bn (3.75bn) in 1999 to more than $90bn (£56bn) in 2009, roughly split equally between imports and exports: Africa's natural resources – oil, iron, platinum, copper, and timber – flowing east to feed China's factories, and finished goods, from flip-flops to trucks, travelling the other way. Each year Beijing provides billions of pounds in grants and loans to African governments to secure raw material deals or to finance infrastructure projects that could benefit its companies.

Western anxieties over the relationship between China and African countries were highlighted by WikiLeaks's recent release of a US embassy cable in which Johnnie Carson, the US assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, said:

"China is a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals. China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. China is in Africa for China primarily."

He could, of course, be describing the US or any other capitalist nation. The memo warned of: "tripwires", asking:

Is China developing blue water navy? Have they signed military base agreements? Are they training armies? Have they developed intelligence operations? Once these areas start developing then the United States will start worrying.

But are the Chinese Colonists behaving in the same way that the European Nation States were in the 19th century? When you look at the numbers of Chinese companies operating in Africa, you could say yes. Chinese capitalism is colonising parts of Africa and setting-up businesses in a similar manner to the European powers of the nineteenth century.

African governments have defended the ties between African States and China. On a recent state visit to Beijing, Jacob Zuma, the South Africa president, said:

"China is there discussing with the brothers and sisters in Africa to create a mutually beneficial kind of relationship … different from former Western colonialists [who simply took] things by force" (GUARDIAN 24th 2010).

Of course, the “mutually beneficial kind of relationship” Jacob Zuma has in mind is the enrichment of himself and his class. The working class in South Africa will continue to live in exploitation, squalor and poverty.

The scramble for Africa now includes Indian capitalism.

In 2010, India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh accompanied by dozens of business leaders held trade talks in Ethiopia as India tried to catch up with China. The Prime Minister led a trade delegation to an economic summit in Addis Ababa to increase Indian capitalism’s presence on the African continent.

Bilateral India-Africa trade has grown from about £620m ($996) in 2001 to £28.5bn ($46bn) in 2010. India's aim is to reach £43bn ($69bn) by 2012. Some 250 Indian companies have invested in African countries, mainly in telecommunications and chemical and mining businesses.

But India remains about a decade behind Chinese capitalism in investing in Africa. China says its two-way trade stands at £75bn ($129bn), a 43.5% increase on the previous year, and up from just £620m ($996) in 1992. Chinese companies have built roads, bridges, railways and power stations in return for access to cheap labour power, markets and resources.

The fierce competition between Chinese and Indian capitalism for resources, minerals and food to meet the demands of their respective economies is not so dissimilar to the first scramble for Africa in the late 19th century.

According to a report in the GUARDIAN:

"India is especially focused on energy. The country imports 70% of its oil and has turned to new suppliers such as Nigeria, Sudan and Angola to reduce its dependence on the Middle East. It also needs uranium for its ambitious civil nuclear programme"(23rd May 2011)

Capitalism, Chinese style

Chinese capitalists treat the continent of Africa as through it was the Wild West –a Wild West Capitalism as it were. Sinopec, an oil firm, has explored in a Gabonese national park and another state oil company has created lakes of spilled crude oil in Sudan.

Workers employed by Chinese companies at times fare little better than the environment.

At Chinese-run mines in Zambia’s copper belt workers must work for two years before they get safety helmets. Ventilation below ground is poor and deadly accidents occur almost daily. To avoid censure, Chinese managers bribe union officials while difficult shop stewards are sacked and workers who assemble in groups are violently dispersed – the beating of workers is common.

Tensions came to a head in 2010 when miners in Sinazongwe, a town in southern Zambia, protested against poor conditions. Two Chinese managers –who were most probably workers themselves - fired shotguns at a crowd, injuring at least a dozen.

This has not stopped the workers striking for higher pay and better working conditions. About 2,000 Zambian workers at NFC Africa Mining, majority-owned by China Nonferrous Metals Mining Corporation, went on strike in October 2011 for better pay and working conditions.

In the South African town of Newcastle, Chinese-run textile factories pay salaries of about $200 per month, much more than they would pay in China but less than the local minimum wage. Unions have tried unsuccessfully to shut the factories down but the Chinese employers point out that many South African firms also undercut the minimum wage, which is too high to make production pay. Without the Chinese, unemployment in Newcastle would be even higher than the current 60%. Workers say a poorly paid job is better than none; highlighting the Socialist argument that minimum wage legislation rarely works.

Tens of thousands of “frontiersmen” from China have moved out across the continent. Sanou Mbaye, a former senior official at the African Development Bank, claims more Chinese have come to Africa in the past ten years than Europeans in the past 400 –there is supposed to be 1 million Chinese workers in the continent of Africa. First came Chinese workers from state-owned companies, but more and more arrive individually or stay behind after finishing contract work. A recent Chinese government survey of 1,600 companies shows the growing use of Africa as an industrial base. Manufacturing’s share of total Chinese investment (22%) is catching up fast with mining (29%).

Governments in Africa have courted Chinese investment to secure lucrative deals with the indigenous ruling class. Some countries made industrial investments a precondition for resource deals. In Ethiopia two out of three resident Chinese firms are manufacturers. Yet the Chinese did not need much encouraging. The continent—soon to be ringed with Chinese free-trade ports—is a stepping stone to a commercial presence around the globe.

To this end, the government in Beijing is encouraging all sorts of activity in Africa. Construction is a favourite, accounting for three-quarters of recent private Chinese investment in Africa. The commerce ministry recently said that Chinese companies are signing infrastructure deals worth more than $50 billion a year. For investment in African farming, China has earmarked $5 billion of investment.

Perhaps the most significant growth in Chinese activity has been in finance. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has bought 20% of Standard Bank, a South African lender and the continent’s biggest bank by assets, and now offers renminbi accounts to expatriate traders. Other mainland banks have opened offices too, and from their sleek towers they make collateral-free loans to Chinese companies.

In just a few years China has become the most aggressive investor-nations in Africa. This commercial invasion is without question the most important development in the sub-Sahara since the end of the Cold War that is redrawing the global economic map. One former U.S. assistant secretary of state has called it a "tsunami." Some, like THE ECONOMIST, are even calling the region "ChinAfrica."

There is already more Chinese living in Nigeria than there were Britons during the height of the empire. From state-owned and state-linked corporations to small cockroach capitalists, the Chinese are investing across the continent bringing with them as many as 1 million Chinese workers to build and run the facilities.

Whether it is indigenous African workers or workers from China the social wealth being created is coming from workers’ exploitation; the generation of surplus value realised as profit when the commodities are sold on the market.
 
The Politics of Oil

In a recent paper China’s Oil Rush in Africa (2006) published by the Institute for Global Security (IAGS), a Washington based think tank, the US has become increasingly alarmed at the impact of China’s investment in Africa to meet its own oil demands.

The Institute offers advice to US Government agencies on energy security. Many of its authors have military backgrounds. The author of the report on the threat of Chinese capitalism to US oil interests was Cindy Hurst a political-military research analyst with the Foreign Military Studies Office and an officer in the US navy reserve (http://www.iags.org/chinainafrica.pdf)

The United States, at present the largest world economic and military power, consumes a quarter of the world's oil but possesses only 3 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves. West Africa alone has 15 per cent of the world's oil, and by 2015 is projected to supply up to a quarter of U.S. domestic consumption.

U.S. oil imports from Africa-which come mostly from Nigeria and Angola, but also from Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon - surpassed those from the Middle East for the first time in 2007.

China, meanwhile, is also heavily involved in the new scramble for Africa, driven to seek reliable sources for oil by its own growing domestic needs. China's oil consumption has doubled in a single decade, and oil imports now comprise more than 40 per cent of its total oil consumption. By acquiring the Canadian company Addax Petroleum in August 2009, China Petrochemical Corporation SINOPEC acquired a number of petroleum exploration and production licenses in Nigeria. A few months later, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) offered Nigeria $50 billion to acquire the state shares in twenty-three licenses that are operated by European and US companies (Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Eni/Agip, ExxonMobil and Chevron). The Chinese goal is to tap into the African market and compete with the Western firms as any capitalist country does (www.afriqueavenir.org/en/2010/06/23/rise-of-african-oil-production).

There is intensifying global competition for control of oil and gas production and supply. Worldwide, a new generation of mainly state-owned companies, such as China's CNPC, Saudi Arabia's Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, Venezuela's PDVSA, and Iran's NIOC now control one-third of the world's oil and gas reserves and production, while the major Western companies; ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell control just one-tenth of production, and only 3 per cent of reserves. This intense competition for resources was spelt out in a recent paper by the academic, David Goldwyn:

Africa plays a strategic role in U.S. and global energy security. It is a critical supplier of new source production to global and U.S. oil supply. It is a natural gas supplier, with enormous potential to meet increased future demand in a carbon constrained world. Africa remains open to foreign investment and is one of the few continents that have not dramatically reduced access to investment in recent years. If the continent meets its potential, it may increase its production dramatically over the next two decades, serving as a pillar of global energy security by providing a major source of diverse oil and gas supply. The risk of instability in many of Africa’s key energy producers is high and rising, posing a threat to the stability of these nations and their neighbours, as well as U.S. investment and the global economy (Pursuing US Energy Interests. http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/csis_africa_review-energy_prepbub_draft.pdf)

The dependence of the United States and other developed nations on oil from developing countries is only going to increase during the 21st century creating tensions and conflict. 90 per cent of new supplies will come from developing countries in the next 40 years. That marks a big shift from the past 30 years, when 40 per cent of new production came from industrialized nations.

Thus the new scramble for Africa is a struggle between major competing national powers for control of potential and actual energy sources and profits at a time when they control fewer resources themselves. The race is all the more important given that conflicts and tensions in other energy-rich areas such as Iran and Venezuela. In the coming decades the US directly or indirectly through its proxy states, like Israel, will engage in conflict with Iran and are no doubt working on “regime change” in Venezuela.

The interest in African oil on one level is nothing new. As Exxon states in its publicity hand-outs, the company has been in Africa for a century while Nigeria has been an exploration hub for the continent for decades.

The Horn of Africa has also been the site of Western corporate investment for a number of years where Western companies including Conoco-Phillips, Chevron, and Total held Somali exploration concessions before the country slid into civil war in 1991. But interest in East African oil has become more pronounced over the past twenty years or so. To date, Tanzania has licensed at least 17 international companies exploring for both offshore and onshore energy sources in the country. Firms that hold exploration blocks in Tanzania are Oslo-listed Artumas Group Inc (AGI), France's Maurel & Prom, Norway's Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell, Petrobras of Brazil and UK’s Aminex.

Petrobras alone has invested $11 million in Tanzania, and plans to spend another $14 million to develop Mtwara port. Tanzania's government puts the east African country's proven natural gas reserves at 7.5 trillion cubic feet. "Oil remains the prize in off-shore East Africa. Gas has been found but no commercial oil has been found yet despite increasing evidence for its potential presence," said Mr Mike Rego, exploration director for Aminex, which is active in the area (http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/sunday-citizen/41-sunday-citizen-business/16825-africas-oil-scramble-heads-east.html).

Despite its continued instability, Somalia is now seen as a likely country for investment for oil exploration as the rush is on to get there first; the US and Britain or China. The Somali Prime Minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, speaking to the Observer after meeting Hillary Clinton and David Cameron at the London Somalia Conference recently, said that in the future a share of natural resources would be offered in return for help with reconstruction (GUARDIAN 25th February 2012).

Increasing oil and raw material prices have produced a boom in some African countries, as well as a marked jump in foreign investment, especially by Western and Chinese capital. By 2005, foreign direct investment had almost tripled over the previous five years. ExxonMobil has recently developed the Chad-Cameroon pipeline that runs through war-torn areas in Central Africa, the largest single investment in Africa. ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company, invests 22 per cent of its capital expenditures in Africa, and gets 30 per cent of its oil from Africa. Nigeria has been identified as one of the key destinations in West Africa, Exxon Mobil Corporation has recently set out a $185billion investment plan over the next five years in Nigeria alone (PREMIUM TIMES April 5th 2012).

Angola, received a $902 million tender in 2007 from Eni, the Italian oil company, to secure the rights to drill offshore, one of the highest fees ever paid by an oil company and its current equity production is approximately 130,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (ZACS INVESTMENT 23rd November 2011). And the US oil company Chevron recently announced a $1.9 billion investment for the exploration of 70 million barrels from the shared Angola-Congo cross-border Lianzi field in north-western Cabinda province and south of Brazzaville (ANGOLA PRESS 1st March 2012).

In an interesting article, "Africa: Next U.S. oil war venue” published in BLACK STAR NEWS (April 17, 2007), the journalist Bruce Dixon wrote:

"The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military build-up on the African continent is well underway. From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials."

And he went on to say:

"They've (the military) conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets. Their new bases are not bases at all, according to US military officials. They are instead "forward staging depots", and "seaborne truck stops" for the equipment which American land forces need to operate on the African continent. They are "protected anchorages" and offshore "lily pads" from which they intend to fight the next round of oil and resource wars, and lock down Africa's oil and mineral wealth for decades to come."

The 21st century scramble for Oil in Africa may not necessary end in armed conflict between the leading capitalist powers like the US and China although client states continually collapse into civil war. Conflict exists throughout Africa due to either competition between one ruling group being beneficiaries of investment money from client States to the exclusion of the other or struggles to hold land rich with mineral reserves and oil in order to sign deals with China or western Capitalism.

The world’s resources should not be the preserve of a minority. Africa has the potential to provide sufficient food, housing and general welfare for its inhabitants. The impediment preventing the needs of Africa from being met is capitalism, national capitalist rivalry over the world’s resources and the profit motive overriding human need. The problems of the people of Africa are bound up with the problems facing the world’s working class. And the cause of these social problems comes from the private ownership of the means of production by the capitalist class. To replace the anti-social objective of profit-making with the Socialist objective of production for use requires, first, conscious political action not only in Western Europe and the US but in China and Africa too.

From the journal Socialist Studies.

Uganda's 50 years of independence

 In Uganda's pre-colonial era, land was communally owned and everyone worked together to produce a good harvest for the family and community; however, the colonial state, which was inherited at independence, was designed to serve the interest of its owners. The establishment of British rule in Uganda came with a typical colonial economic exploitation strategy to make money for the British empire. It grabbed the best land without any consultation. Many young men ran away from forced labour in the north only to end up as forced labourers in plantations in central Uganda. To reinforce the efficiency of an exploitative economic system, the colonial government imported Indian workers to build the Uganda Railway. With the railway done, these coolies, as they were known, took to farming, growing cotton, tea, coffee and sugar, supported by cheap labour from Rwanda, Burundi and northern and north western Uganda.

In 1986, Yoweri Museveni took over power with young, energetic, ambitious graduates, who had left college to join the guerillas and found themselves ministers only within five years. The new team, driven mainly by liberation war slogans and ideals, soon had to grapple with tough political and economic challenges, including a collapsed economy, empty shops, food shortages and silent industries following many years of conflict and the economic war of Idi Amin.

The new leaders attempted to introduce medieval-times trade regimes such as barter trade into a modern international trade arena largely controlled by institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But while this registered a few successes, such as importing government vehicles in exchange for coffee, it was simply too complicated a system in the context of contemporary international finance and trade regimes.

Within three years, the "revolutionaries" started waking up to the realities of global geopolitics and international trade and finance which had set up shop in Uganda with their true might. Trying to appease these forces would result in the return of confiscated property to the Asians who left in 1972; liberalization and privatization of government parastatals; a tight fiscal and monetary policy discipline and deregulation of investment processes to make them more attractive to foreign direct investments, amongst others.

The "revolutionaries" stooped to accept these rules of the game – urgently liberalising and privatising the Uganda economy. This policy was also exciting for the new team which also saw in privatization the opportunity to acquire personal wealth.

Among the results of the policy included major privatization of social services such as education, health and electricity supply, which simply increased their costs to unacceptable levels for the average citizen; liberalising the economy through the deregulation policy that made it easier for foreign direct investments to flow into Uganda with tax exemptions; closing the ministry of cooperatives, selling off all disposable property of the cooperative unions without consulting shareholders; adopting a new land policy that makes it very difficult for landlords to evict squatters, weakening their ability to create investments using their land, yet at the same time encouraging the commercialization of land ownership.

The beneficiaries of these policies remain small but very powerful groups – the politically connected elite.

Taken from here

Africa's Forgotten Despot

The Gambia is one of Africa's smallest countries. One third of the Gambia's 1.8 million population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. As a result, the country has increasingly depended on foreign aid, while vanity projects continue. According to 2010 World Bank figures, the nation's gross national income per capita was $450. Much of the soil is unsuitable for farming, and only about a sixth of the land is arable. Farming relies heavily on peanuts, which are grown mainly for export, and farmers are therefore vulnerable to price variations on international markets.

The Gambia's president, Yahya Jammeh, announced last month that all 47 death row inmates would be put to death by mid-September – the nation's first executions since 1985 but you won't hear the West protesting. On 23 August, the killings began. Three days later, nine prisoners had been shot by firing squad. None of those killed were allowed to say goodbye to their families.

The army lieutenant illegally seized power in 1994 and has never considered giving it back. Critics say his iron-fisted regime's mismanagement of the economy has wasted millions, much of it thrown away on a search for oil that has so far proved fruitless. The Gambia has held three elections in the last 18 years under conditions that ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, said were not conducive for the conduct of "free, fair and transparent polls". In the 2006 election Jammeh said: "I will develop the areas that vote for me, but if you don't vote for me, don't expect anything." In a country where many villages do not have clean running water, electricity, or easy access to health care – and where a good monthly wage is less than £15 – this statement could have been a matter of life and death to some. Jammeh's made a messianic claim in 2007, that he could cure AIDS with the mere touch of his hand and has called for the beheading of all homosexuals

Little change

Three weeks after South African police shot dead 34 miners at the Marikana mine in the worst case of police violence since the end of apartheid, there is still no sign of a breakthrough in the pay dispute. It has highlighted one of the world’s biggest wealth gaps.

South Africa's wealth is spread more unevenly than in any other country in the world. Nearly 20 years after apartheid, a tiny minority, mostly white, holds most of the wealth, and a huge majority, overwhelmingly black, still lives in poverty. In South Africa today, by far the most important class struggle is between labour and capital. Leaders of both workers and employers come and go, but the same basic struggles between these two classes continue. Citigroup estimated in 2010 that South Africa had the world’s richest mineral deposits, worth $3.5 trillion. In the mining industry a handful of huge multinational mining monopolies make billions of rand of profits, extracted from the labour of workers who toil in the most wretched, unhealthy and dangerous conditions underground, for wages that come nowhere close to the value that their labour creates for their employers. The rock drill operatives (RDOs) at the centre of the dispute perform a more dangerous, unhealthy and difficult job than anyone else in the world. They face death every time they go down the shafts. Yet their monthly earnings are just R5600. Lonmin's financial officer, Alan Ferguson, who earns R10,25m a year, or R854581 a month, 152 times higher than an RDO.

Cleaners in Metros earn R13,51 and R10,07 an hour in KZN. Domestic workers earn a meagre R1639,82 in metro areas. Farm workers who toil under all conditions of weather and seasons earn R1503,90. Hospitality workers earn R2240,60. The security guards on duty for 12 hours earn R1828.

Today the top 10% of the rich accounted for 33 times the income earned by the bottom 10% in 2000. This gap is likely to have worsened when you consider that we lost 1,17 million jobs due to the global economic crisis of 2008. In 2008 the top 20 directors of JSE-listed companies, who are still overwhelmingly white males, each earned an average of R59m a year, while on average an employee earned R34000 in 2009. The richest decile earns about 94 times more than the poorest decile. Africans, who constitute 79,4% of the population, account for 41.2% of the household income from work and social grants, whereas whites, who account for 9.2% of the population, receive 45.3% of income. The poorest 10% of the population share R1.1bn, while the richest 10% share R381bn. Since the African National Congress took power 18 years ago to end whites- only rule, 60 percent, or about 23 million, still live in poverty and 28 percent are jobless, according to government data. The gap between rich and poor in South Africa is worse than Honduras and the Central African Republic, according to the World Bank. The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, was 0.63 in South Africa in 2009, the highest of 25 developing nations surveyed by the World Bank. The index was 0.59 in 1993. ( zero means society is totally equal, while a reading of 1 means the society is completely unequal.) “Black income really hasn’t changed,” Peter Attard Montalto, an economist at Nomura said “That shows that the amount of progress made by the ANC is clearly limited.”

 Poverty and inequality are named routinely among the key challenges facing South Africa today. Four out of every 10 South Africans have no job or adequate social security. Black people will tell us of their continuing humiliation by poverty.

The bulk of South Africans who do not have medical aid and therefore use the crisis-ridden health institutions. A white person born in 2009 expects to live for 71 years, whereas an African born in the same year expects to live for 48 years. The health and well-being of South Africans is worsening rather than improving, according to a key indicator. Globally, tuberculosis (TB) rates are declining, but in South Africa rates are up. TB is four times as common in South African adults as among Zambians. "TB is the child of poverty, but also its parent and provider," said Nulda Beyers from the Desmond Tutu TB Centre at the University of Stellenbosch. "The factors promoting the development of this disease are largely social and environmental," said Beyers.

This negative trend is mirrored in the country's maternal mortality rates - the number of women who die during or after childbirth. While neighbouring African states are seeing a decline in maternal deaths, South African rates are rising.

Capitalism creates inequality. When the the word ''freedom'' was used surely it did not mean 'freedom to exploit others.

post-apartheid capitalism

In the shadow of Lonmin's Marikana mine in South Africa ramshackle settlements cluster around this mine operated by the world no. 3 platinum producer and around others in the North West Province, the world's prime platinum mining region. The mine and its squalid settlement was the scene of labour violence last week which killed 40 miners, two police and two security guards, the deadliest security incident in South Africa since the end of white minority rule 18 years ago.

"This is no way to live or grow children. Fifty people share one toilet. We don't have water," said a woman who identified herself as Pinky, the wife of a striking rock drill operator at Marikana who shares a one-room tin box with her husband and two children.

"You work so hard, for so little. You might as well be dead," said a 23-year-old Lonmin worker

A report this week by the Bench Marks Foundation, a church-linked organisation that monitors corporate responsibility, found that living conditions for South Africa's black miners on the platinum belt were the worst in the country. "The conditions in the township constructed by Lonmin are appalling. There are broken down drainage systems spilling directly into the river at three different points," Bench Marks Foundation executive director John Capel said, adding this situation had been left unattended for the last five years.

Nelson Mandela's ANC promised a better life for all when it took power with the end of apartheid in 1994. But despite being Africa's largest economy income disparity and unemployment have mushroomed while chronic joblessness has helped entrench a massive underclass. These circumstances, combined with ballooning living costs and a demand for better pay, led to the violent strike by Marikana workers which culminated in the police shooting of 34 miners on Thursday. They died in a hail of gunfire.

Mali's misfortune

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

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

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

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

We told you so

 A massacre by South African police left 34 striking workers dead and 78 wounded. A T-shirt worn by a protest rally organiser seemed to offer a explanation, stating: "Fuck capitalism.". It was the promise of a militant union that sparked violence at Marikana, where the ANC-aligned National Union of Mineworkers has been losing support. The 360,000-member National Union of Mineworkers leader, Cyril Ramaphosa sits on the board of Lonmin, which owns the platinium mine where the shootings occurred. The NUM has lost all credibility. Its already well-paid secretary, Baleni, was awarded a salary increase of more than 40% last year and his total salary package is just more than R105 000 a month.The union has accepted wage settlements that tied workers into years of meagre increases. At the Lonmin mines its membership has declined from 66% of workers to 49%. "Lonmin treat us like dogs," said Thembelani Khonto. "When you're underground, it's like you're a slave and they don't know you. But on the surface people who don't do anything in offices are earning more than us."

Dissident and expelled union activists started a new union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. The AMCU placed a pay demand for rock drillers (who are the core of this strike and do the hardest work underground). The union's support in the Lonmin mines shot up to 19% by last month, and it embarked on an illegal strike to force its pay demand. The AMCU is also organising among poor workers and their shack settlement communities, which have become no-go zones for police. For these settlements, this is a strike against the state and the haves, not just a union matter.

Socialist Banner in many previous posts have exposed the ANC of continuing the apartheid-era exploitation of the working class and sadly concludes that the latest bloody episode in South Africa's class war vindicates our position.  The Sowetan newspaper in an editorial also questioned what has changed since 1994. "It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects. It is continuing in a different guise now."

While workers bleed the capitalists response is predictable. World platinum prices rise and Lonmin shares slump

TOO POOR TO DIE

In Rwanda, where 60% of people live below the poverty line and land is scarce, burying the dead comes at too high a price. A new bill before Parliament would introduce cremation, a totally new custom in this country.

 The prices of tombs in Rwandan cemeteries are exorbitant for the poor seeking to bury their dead. “In Kigali and elsewhere, people sometimes have to abandon their dying family members out of fear that they won’t have enough to pay for the funeral,” says a villager. In Rusororo, a town 20 kilometers from Kigali, a funeral costs from $25 to $1,500 depending on the size of the grave and the materials used.

 Moreover, cemeteries take up space in arable lands that aren’t cultivated. Yet, the country has over 390 inhabitants per square kilometer -- over 800 in some areas -- and farms are getting smaller and smaller (an average 0.2 hectares in the more populous north of the country). But farmers have to wait at least 20 years to cultivate cemeteries once they have stopped being used. “Some families believe the land where their family members are buried is sacred, and prefer to keep it uncultivated,” explains an Eastern villager.

  “You can easily tell the rich from the poor in a cemetery,” says a Gasabo villager. The tombs of the rich are built durably, with tiled walls and written inscriptions for identification.

Poor unlikely to escape poverty

Children born into poor families unlikely ever to escape poverty or reap the rewards of living in Africa’s largest economy even 18 years after the end of apartheid. A child’s gender and ethnicity at birth, combined with a lack of education, largely determines that person’s chances of success in life. Equally significant is the World Bank's observation that the richest 10 percent of South Africa account for 58 percent of the nation’s income, while the bottom 10 percent accounts for 0.5 percent.  The bottom half earns less than eight percent of the nation's income.

Sandeep Mahajan, who headed the World Bank report said "Our results show that a South African child not only has to work harder to overcome the disadvantages at birth due to circumstances, but having done so, finds that these re-emerge when seeking employment as an adult,"

Labour analyst Andrew Levy said "History has shown that societies that have emerged from any kind of unjust system of governance struggle with inequality," said Levy. But he added that the new government "could have done better".

Famine ends but hunger remains

400,000 famine victims who fled to the city for aid at the height of the crisis are still living in one of the many refugee camps outside Mogadishu. The WFP said on Jul. 18 that although there is currently no famine in Somalia and malnutrition rates have improved considerably over the last year,

One-year-old Miriam Jama was born just as the United Nations World Food Programme declared famine.  Weak and visibly malnourished, Miriam, like the rest of her family, hardly have enough food to eat.

“We get barely enough to keep alive. Famine may have ended, but for us hunger has not,” Hawa Jama, Miriam’s mother, tells IPS.  Her family receives only 25 kilogrammes of grain, 25 kgs of flour, and 10 litres of cooking oil for a month. It is hardly sufficient to feed this family of seven. But they are not the only ones hungry here. “I don’t want to be dependent on handouts from aid agencies, which are never enough here.

Water and sanitation are also poor at the camps as the number of toilets remains inadequate, and the water trucked in does not meet the international requirement both in quality and quantity, says Mohamed Ali, a local human rights activist. “I think what we have achieved since the famine was declared back in July last year is that people are not now dying because of hunger. But hunger is still there and there are no systematic programmes to help refugees stand on their feet by creating income schemes and repatriating them back to their communities,” The food situation has worsened as international aid agencies scaled down their humanitarian operations after the U.N. declared the end of the famine in February.

The U.N. Refugee Agency reported on Jul. 18 that the Somali refugee population has exceeded one million. Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex alone houses 570,000 people. And 3.8 million people in Somalia remain in crises and are in urgent need of assistance, while an estimated 325,000 children are acutely malnourished. Life in the camps is a difficult existence as refugees complain that camp administrators and local officials steal food aid and practice nepotism and favoritism in aid distribution. In addition, the Somali government’s national Disaster Management Agency, which was formed to deal with the famine, has been called ineffective and corrupt. “The agency has not been effective in its work and is one of the agencies that failed the people in need. Corruption is widespread among the organs of government and this agency has its share,” a local aid worker, who asked for anonymity, tells IPS. The official says “layers of corruption” from international agencies, their local partners, government officials, as well as those running the camps continues the cycle of hunger for the displaced refugees.

 “I don’t like to complain, but this is a matter of life and death for us. Those responsible for running our camp are not giving us all the aid and favour others. We tell every foreign official who comes to visit, but nothing is done about our predicament,” Mumino Ali,

Sharing to survive

60 percent of the population of Mauritania live on less than one US dollar a day. "No one can eat alone - many people do not have enough," said Moussa. "All neighbours cook and eat together. Everyone eats in batches - first the children, followed by the elders, and then the more able-bodied...We will all help each other,” said Moussa, “with support from our relatives in towns and other countries."

In November 2011, the Mauritanian government launched the Plan EMEL (Hope), a strategy to provide subsidized cereal and livestock through government shops. "The plan only targets people who have been identified as extremely vulnerable - child- and women-headed households - and if you want to buy from the shop you still need money. I did not have any," said Penda Boubou, 82, a grandmother. Boubou said she would have died if the NGO, Oxfam, had not stepped in with cash transfers. Boubou receives about $50, with which she supports the 15 members in her household.

Source

Quenching a thirst

A newly discovered water source could supply half of Africa's driest sub-Saharan country with 400 years of water, reports Matt McGrath of BBC. The new aquifer – called Ohangwena II – flows under the border between Angola and Namibia, covering an area of about 43 miles by 25 miles on Namibia's side.

The water is up to 10,000 years old and cleaner to drink than many modern sources.

 Currently the 800,000 people living in the northern part of the country get their drinking water from a 40-year-old canal that brings the scarce resource from Angola.Ohangwena II could change the nature of farming in the area, which has only been viable near two rivers in the region, and could act as a natural buffer for up to 15 years of drought.

Natural pressure will make the water easy and cheap to extract.

However, the new supply sits on a smaller, salty aquifer, raising the possibility that unauthorized drilling could lead to the water sources contaminating each other.

The new apartheid

Rina Venter, the National Party's health minister, talks of how F W de Klerk, the last apartheid president, had asked her to get rid of racial discrimination in the country's health system. Venter convened the state law advisers and repeated the request to them - only to find out that there were, in fact, no laws in place to segregate state hospitals and never had been. Hospital administrators and doctors had implemented an inhumane system largely because they believed it was expected of them to do so.

 Now South Africa's healthcare system can essentially be divided into public and private. Out of 49 million people, some 8 million are covered by health insurance, referred to as medical schemes. It is a system where the scheme makes no profit but those who are paid from it - private hospitals, doctors, et cetera - do. Up until a short while ago, the division may have appeared racial. Most of those with health insurance were white, while blacks mainly used the public health system. But now, of the eight million with health insurance, approximately half are black. The private healthcare system features world-class hospitals, the most advanced equipment and the best doctors - for most will work where they can earn the best salary.

The majority of those using the public health system are still black and poor. The starkest contrast between public and private healthcare in South Africa is to be found not in the colour of its patients but in the facilities it offers. Run-down buildings, missing medication and widespread corruption characterise the public health system, and not a day passes without a story about broken equipment leading to deaths or facilities closing because they cannot afford to pay their creditors. 40 million South Africans - and an additional approximately three million refugees - must rely on a system that is falling apart.

It is a different apartheid.

"Our people need proper housing, not ghettos like Soweto." These were the words of Nelson Mandela to tens of thousands at Soweto's Soccer City Stadium just one day after his release from 27 years behind bars in 1990. Soweto, whose name is taken from the first two letters of "South Western Townships", was known as the capital of black South Africa. Originally established for labourers in western Johannesburg's mines in the late 19th century, it became home to black families forcibly removed from areas around Johannesburg and other parts of the country.

Today, Soweto has become a microcosm of the prosperity, poverty and everything in between experienced by the black population of today's South Africa. "Our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities," read the Freedom Charter. However, just opposite the raitracks near Water Sisulu Square are rickety, one-room homes with roofs made from corrugated zinc. Inside the narrow alleyways where children run shoeless lives 41-year-old Bob Nameng, the founder of Soweto Kliptown Youth. SKY provides shelter to more than 70 black children from impoverished communities in and around Johannesburg. Nameng listed a number of difficulties that Kliptown and other poor Sowetan communities face, and said the government is making little effort to fix them. "The situation is getting worse and worse," he said. Crime, drug use, HIV and rape continue to be real fears for communities across the country, and especially in densely populated areas like Soweto.

Shops like McDonalds, KFC, Timberland and Levi's opening at the Maponya Mall which has received widespread praise as the first of its kind in an area like Soweto. Nameng isn't excited. "I feel it's a monster, it's swallowed so many small businesses. It's deprived so many poor women and youth a chance to be able to put bread on their table." The poor people from the area now have to travel miles into Johannesburg to find affordable goods that are no longer available in Soweto. Nameng, like many blacks in South Africa, have grown disheartened by the post-apartheid era as most of the country's land and wealth has remained in the hands of the white minority. "At first we were complaining about the white government, which was the oppressor. Fine, so we've got a black government now in power. What now? It's the same old boring song," Nameng said

Namibia - the statistics lie

United Nations Resident Representative, Musinga Bandora, says poverty and inequality are of the most pressing social issues in Namibia.

 Unemployment has exceeded 50 percent.

 Although Namibia's per capita income of US$4,820 places it in the World Bank's upper-middle income grouping, average income paints a misleading picture since Namibia's income distribution is among the most unequal in the world, with a Gini coefficient estimated at 0.58 by the latest (2009/10) household survey. Namibia is ranked 120 out of 187 countries surveyed in the 2011 Human Development Report.

Egypt's workers unions

The independent trade unions that have sprung up across Egypt over the last 17 months face an uncertain future, caught between Islamists and the military and operating under labour laws that have not changed since Hosni Mubarak was in power. The dictator’s downfall, however, gave union activists more room to operate. Workers have set up over 500 independent syndicates in recent months. The majority have affiliated with two autonomous labour bodies, the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) led by Abu Eita, and the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) headed by former steel worker Kamal Abbas. EFITU, formed just five days into the uprising against Mubarak, claims an affiliated membership of 281 independent unions comprising over two million workers. The younger EDLC covers about 250 independent unions. The pair, separated primarily by their policies of incorporation, has emerged to challenge the state-backed ETUF, which still claims nearly four million members.

“The government and business owners don’t want to respond to workers’ demands or give them rights, so they are opposed to seeing workers establish independent syndicates,” says Kamal Abu Eita, a leader of the independent union movement.

Under Mubarak, all unions were required to be part of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which propped up the regime by blocking any industrial action that would undermine the state’s authority or supply of cheap labour. Membership in the state-controlled body was mandatory for most public sector employees, and union dues were automatically deducted from their salaries. Activists say the colossal labour organisation worked to prevent its four million members from holding strikes or negotiating for better salaries. It also mobilised large numbers of workers for pro-government rallies and bussed them to polling stations during general elections to vote for the ruling party.

“Successive regimes recognised the power of organised labour and used ETUF to control it,” Tamer Fathy, an expert on labour movements tells IPS. “It was basically an arm of the regime since its creation in 1957.”

ETUF is proving to be a multi-headed hydra. The mammoth organisation was weakened by rulings that dissolved its executive board, put its leadership under investigation for corruption, and pulled the plug on 15 million dollars in annual government subsidies. Yet its core remains intact. The interim board appointed to administer ETUF is stacked with members of its old guard, while the federation continues to benefit from undemocratic systems set up by the former regime. One example of this – facilitated by state institutions – is mandatory membership dues. Workers who join independent unions are obligated to pay ETUF dues, even if they cancel their membership.

“There’s really no way around it,” explained Nihal El-Banna of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS), a local labour rights group. “Many professions in Egypt require a licence, but when you go to renew it you must submit a document that proves you paid your annual (ETUF membership) dues. Without this, you can’t renew your licence.”

Cracks first appeared in ETUF’s hegemony six years ago when factory workers in the northern industrial town Mahalla El-Kubra defied their stooge government union leaders and went on strike to demand unpaid bonuses. Their defiant action resonated with the exploited working class, igniting a wave of wildcat strikes that enveloped every economic sector – and has continued to this day. The nascent labour movement provided fertile ground for the birth of Egypt’s first independent unions, but little nutrient to sustain them. The four unions that emerged while Mubarak was in power faced hostile workplaces, constant intimidation and harassment from ETUF, and a barrage of legal challenges.

“There is no existing law to govern independent unions, only a declaration of freedom of association issued in March 2011,” explains Nihal El-Banna “We still need a legal charter to define and organise independent unions – for instance, what they should look like, or the minimum number of members for them to be recognised.”

Many activists believe Egypt’s two main powers, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, are trying to rebuild ETUF as a counterweight to newfound syndical liberties. They claim the generals – opposed to organised labour – have sought to contain worker movements by criminalising strikes and preserving Mubarak-era labour laws.

“The military would prefer a single, official trade union federation that the state can control,” says El-Banna.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders once supported trade syndicate pluralism, but now favour a model that prohibits workers from organising more than one union within any given enterprise. Legislators affiliated to the Islamic group have attempted to hijack the proposed Trade Union Liberties Law – originally intended to support independent unions – and transform it into a bill that bars union pluralism.

But defiant labour leaders point out that they did not wait for Mubarak’s permission to establish independent unions, and they have no intention of waiting for his successors to approve them.

Nothing is black and white

In 2010 the median monthly earnings for black South Africans was R2167. The figure for whites was R9500. So on a relative scale it is true that whites are considerably better off than black South Africans.

However, a point that is seldom made that in 2009 half of white adults earned less than R100,000 per annum. Consider also that black South Africans earning between R100,000 and R300,000 per annum may soon outnumber their white compatriots by two to one. Only 15% of whites end up in private schools.

Blaming blacks or whites or apartheid or whatever for the inequalities we now confront will not get us anywhere. Rather it is time to point out that it is capitalism which is at fault, the few possessing the wealth and the many serving their needs.

Divided Ethiopia

Ethiopia is a country of contrasts and contradictions.  Most Ethiopians live in brutal poverty, their per capita income among the lowest in the world. One in 10 Ethiopians is chronically food insecure, and nearly one in five go hungry in drought years. With almost half its people under the age of 15 and an average fertility rate of nearly five children per woman, Ethiopia's population is the fifth fastest-growing in the world. Ethiopia is a nation where small farmers struggle to eke out a living on tiny, degraded plots of land: in the densely populated highlands, roughly half the land is significantly eroded.

Yet it is one of the so-called "African lions:" its economy grew at a brisk 7.5 percent last year, more than twice the rate of emerging economies as a whole. Ethiopia is also the target of aggressive "land grabs." Since 2008, the government has leased or sold nearly 10 million acres of prime farmland in the less-populated lowlands to investors from China, India, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. According to Oxfam International, Ethiopia now supports the export of fruit, vegetables, and flowers worth $220 million a year. Those exports boost the nation's foreign exchange, but they may also undercut the food security of poor farmers and reduce production for the domestic market. One displaced farmer told Human Rights Watch, "We want you to be clear that the government brought us here...to die....They brought us no food, they gave away our land to the foreigners so we can't even move back."

It is helpful to remember that there are many Ethiopias. Ethiopia's regions are as distinct as, say, Arizona and Minnesota. It is also helpful to set aside any preconceived notions about population and food. Malthusians argue that population growth inevitably leads to hunger, as the resource "pie" is divided into ever smaller slices. The most obvious flaw in this theory is that technology has thus far allowed the size of the pie to increase. Another is that food and other resources are not distributed equitably; some people get much larger servings than others. The pie as a whole may be big enough for everyone, but only the slices of the poor continue to shrink.

Algeria's 50 years of independence

5 July 2012 marked Algeria’s 50th anniversary of national independence from 132 years of the French colonial control at the heavy price of a bitter eight-year armed struggle. 300,000-1,000,000 Algerian deaths, large-scale repression, torture and military removal of millions from their homes. Algeria’s liberation from a major Western power was well-publicized by the writings of Franz Fanon.

Yet for most Algerians it is hard to celebrate. What is there to celebrate when only 20 years ago, the military moved from the background to the fore with a coup d’etat cancelling elections and quickly leading to a decade of horrendous civil war between the military and Islamists, causing the deaths of some 200,000. The post-independence regime continues to produce a constant stream of exiles abroad.

Nevertheless, from a different perspective, Algeria has much to celebrate. From 1962 to the present, many grassroots Algerians have steadily resisted, in a variety of ways, the greed, power schemes and repression from above.  In the first year of independence and after, thousands of Algerian workers spontaneously and with the encouragement of the nationalist trade union took over operation of modern farms and units in industrial and other realms abandoned by Europeans fleeing to France and set to work to self-manage the grassroots re-booting of the national economy. Even though opposed and sabotaged by the military, bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie who resented this growing horizontalist sector of hundreds of thousands and the general challenge to elite power and privileges it represented, many self-management workers struggled for several years to maintain and embrace this attempt at "socialism" from below.

In 1980 emerged a largely spontaneous wave of massive protest and resistance among the proud Berbers of Kabylia, based on long-standing grievances against regime authoritarianism, its disdain for rich Berber linguistic and cultural identity as well as its neglect of the region’s economy. This “Berber Spring” was the first large-scale political challenge to the regime since the early 60s. The later Kabyle insurrection of April 2001 was followed by mass demonstrations and a widespread horizontalist “assemblies movement,” also showed a large-scale rejection of the regime. Virtually the entire region of Kabylia rose up in defiant protest, besieging police stations with rocks and fire bombs while also burning government and political party offices. Other Kabyles formed local grassroots councils based on centuries-old Kabyle horizontalist principles and confederated together from the bottom up. This rising massive defiance and spontaneous self-organization threatened to spread elsewhere in Algeria and to mobilize a national uprising against the regime until the regime repressed it. However, the self-organized assemblies movement persisted for several years.

 A similar but larger protest by thousands of young people took place in the capital, Algiers, in October 1988—without an explicit political program, but demonstrating through their choice of targets (government and FLN party offices and opulent retail stores) their contempt for political and economic elites prospering at the expense of most Algerians. This explosion of massive street demonstrations over several days was then repressed by gunfire, arrests and torture and used by the regime to justify and manipulate a partial liberalization of politics and economic policy. In this brief moment like the recent Arab Spring, many hoped for a genuine multiparty pluralist political system with respect for free expression and human rights. A new outspoken human rights league developed in this period along with new media, independent women’s rights groups and autonomous trade unions separate from the regime’s  largely submissive UGTA union federation. In the end, however, the combination of a growing and increasingly confident and demagogic Islamist movement, including a strong radical component, and manipulation by the dominant military to block genuine democratization culminated in a cancelled legislative electoral process (about to be won by Islamists) in January 1992. What followed was a long nightmare decade of repression, massacres, tortures, assassinations, “disappearances” and rapes committed by both sides.

Nevertheless, the human rights league, autonomous trade unions, women’s rights groups and other grassroots organizations continue to survive and to take strong political stands.The rigged lections are boycotted by large numbers, most recently a month ago for the national assembly. The continued habit of boycotts by alienated voters and further appeals for abstention by opposition figures produced another humiliating grassroots rejection of the system. While the regime claimed a 42% participation rate of eligible voters, the lack of transparency in vote-counting and other traditional forms of electoral manipulation led critics to suggest a much lower rate and fraudulent victories. As well, even among those who voted, admitted the government, about 22% of cast ballots were faulty or blank.

Each year sees thousands of more-or-less spontaneous local demonstrations, riots and confrontations, the only way aggrieved people can gain “dialogue” with oppressive officials. Whether at the level of local daily life or in broader social movements large numbers of grassroots Algerians over the past five decades have refused to accept the authoritarian and corrupt regime imposed since independence and continued the “national liberation struggle” against the national bourgeoisie. Chawki Amari suggested two years ago in El Watan, a leading Algiers newspaper, that Algerians are by nature anarchists who Bakunin would have no trouble recognizing. Every substantial political upheaval is rooted in millions of individual rebellious attitudes and behaviors nourished anonymously over generations until the right conjuncture of economic and political factors breaks through existing bonds of oppression.

It is this struggle which is to be celebrated.

Adapted from here

Boom times?

Zambia is expected to be among the top 10 fastest-growing economies in the world between 2011 and 2015. In fact, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, it will be one of seven sub-Saharan African countries on that list, making Africa the fastest-growing continent over that time. No surprise, then, that multinationals are increasingly recognising the potential of the resource-rich region and its rapidly growing population. The United Nations has predicted foreign direct investment could more than double by 2014 to as much as $100bn (£64bn). Despite the recent strength of Zambia's economy, on paper at least, the proportion of the population living in poverty is still at 60 per cent, with this figure significantly higher in areas.

While the mine operators and the oil and gas drillers have long been alive to Africa's possibilities, a rising "middle class" means an opportunity for consumer goods companies. With consumer spending set to rocket to $2.2 trillion in less than 20 years, according to the African Development Bank, there has been no shortage of multinationals making their move into sub-Saharan Africa.

Unilever, whose biggest brands in the region include Sunlight soaps and Stork spreads, plans to nearly double its revenues from Africa within five years. The continent (excluding north Africa) was recently made one of the company's eight operating regions across the world, headed by Frank Braeken, who says he has seen "a tremendous surge in investor interest". Asda's owner Wal-Mart has recently spent $2.4bn on a majority stake in the South African retailer Massmart while earlier in the year Diageo, which already sells more Guinness in Nigeria than in Ireland, splashed out almost £150m on Ethiopian brewer Meta Abo.

 High incidence of poverty, hunger and joblessness are the major causes of instability in Africa, said Kenya’s Ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the Africa Union, Dr. Monica Juma said. At least one-fifth of all African people live in countries seriously disrupted by armed conflict and that sometimes it’s hard to till land, secure employment and earn money.Lack of the above will fuel poverty as a result of low productivity, a situation that may force the youth to cause instability as they do not have economic hope, they said.Juma told the forum that the shaky situation of under privileged, hungry people is fodder for extremism especially for people who want to survive. “Once unleashed, it becomes a vicious cycle that endangers not just one country but spills over, as has been seen in many countries in Africa,” she said, adding poverty, anger and hopelessness fuels the fire of insecurity and threatens peace. “They (youth) therefore end up being a ready reservoir for violence and terror when there are lack of economic opportunities, “ she said.

Nigeria: dying of pollution and poverty

Nigeria's Center for Disease Control says poverty and pollution have reduced the national life expectancy to 47 years old, one of the lowest in West Africa. Before the country’s Center for Disease Control announced that they calculated a reduction in the national life expectancy figures last week, the World Bank said Nigeria’s life expectancy was just above 51 years old, almost 20 years less than the world average

 There’s a problem in Nigeria that no one disagrees with: when people here die young, they usually die from diseases that could have been prevented or treated.

Doctors say child mortality is rising in places like Zamfara State in the north, where a lead poisoning outbreak has killed more than 400 children under the age of five since March 2010.

Families in the southern Niger Delta region, an area activists call “the world’s largest oil spill,” say their children’s immune systems are weakened from drinking toxic water, and that children frequently die from diseases like cholera and malaria.

 Dr. Adamu Onu, a family practitioner in Abuja, says health crises across the country have the same root cause: poverty. Earlier this year, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics released a report that said the number of people living in “absolute poverty” has increased from 54.7 percent in 2004 to nearly 61 percent in 2010. He says most of the people in Nigeria simply don’t have access to health care because they live far away from the nearest clinic and don’t have the money or the means to travel to the city. Dr. Onu says there are almost no doctors in the countryside where most of the population lives.



John Brisbe, an elder in a fishing community in Delta State, says when children in his remote region get sick they often die because it can take up to six hours to get to the hospital in a canoe. "They are not taking care of any of our communities.  So we are suffering," he said. "Different types of sickness are harming our children because of this river water that we are drinking."


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Uganda's fight for gay rights

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda.

Uganda has announced a ban on 38 non-governmental organisations it accuses of undermining the national culture by promoting homosexuality.

Simon Lokodo, the country's ethics and integrity minister, claimed the NGOs were receiving support from abroad for Uganda's homosexuals and "recruiting" young children into homosexuality. "I have established beyond reasonable doubt that the 38 NGOs, if not even more, exist not for humanitarian reasons but to destroy the traditions and culture of this country by promoting homosexuality," he said. "We found that, on the pretext of humanitarian concerns, these organisations are being used to promote negative cultures. They are encouraging homosexuality as if it is the best form of sexual behaviour." The former Catholic priest said he believes the ban will come into a force next week. "If the NGOs continue to operate, they will be doing so illegally, they will be apprehended and will have to face a court of law."

Frank Mugisha, head of the NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda, said the minister's ban was part of a wider assault on civil society in Uganda. "The government is trying to use homosexuality to crack down on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," he said. "If NGOs are closed down, they will not be able to support human rights. Simon Lokodo is very homophobic but it's coupled with politics. He's trying to gain popularity and make his name."

Sexual Minorities Uganda would defy any ban, insisted Mugisha.

East Africa's Gas

Massive offshore gas discoveries in East Africa are catapulting the region into a major player in the global energy arena. Off the pristine beaches of Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, multinationals have struck gas -- well upon well upon well. Planned investments worth tens of billions exceed the gross domestic products of some host countries.

East Africa’s coastal region, stretching out to Seychelles holds 441.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s about 50 percent more than in Saudi Arabia. Statoil and Britain’s BG together have discovered around 16 trillion cubic feet in Tanzania.

“The gas discoveries offshore in Mozambique and Tanzania are large and world-class, with potential for more to come, including prospects for an oil leg,” said Duncan Clarke, CEO of oil consulting company Global Pacific.“These finds will lead to LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants ... and will make the zone akin to the Northwest Shelf in Australia, which can produce 23 billion cubic meters a year"

Houston-based Anadarko in June announced new finds in northern Mozambique which brought its estimated recoverable resources to up to 60 trillion cubic feet. The company has proposed $15 billion in investments to set up LNG facilities. Mozambique's GDP last year was $12 billion. Mozambique expects that within five years, the new industry will account for 13 percent of the economy.

Governments have come under fire for signing opaque contracts for capital-intensive mega-projects that don't create many local jobs. Questions remain how locals will benefit from the multi-billion-dollar industries. While Mozambique is booming, last year its economy created only $400 per person.

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Angola's ghost town

The state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) has built a town in Angola. And it's practically empty. Just outside Angola's capital city of Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba a residential development of 750 eight-story apartment buildings, a dozen schools, and more than 100 retail units, a $3.5 billion development of 12,355 acres (5,000 hectares) that was built to house about 500,000 people. But the apartments in the complex cost somewhere between $120,000 and $200,000. None of which helps the average Angolan given the country's per capita GDP of $5,144 per year. Two-thirds of Angolans who live on less than $2 a day. In Angola there is just the very poor and the very rich so there is no-one to buy these sorts of houses

The jewel in Angola's post-war reconstruction crown, Kilamba is the star of glossy government promotional videos which show smiling families enjoying a new style of living away from the dust and confusion of central Luanda where millions live in sprawling slums. But the people in these films are only actors, and despite all the hype, nearly a year since the first batch of 2,800 apartments went on sale, only 220 have been sold.

The government has recently announced a portion of the apartments at Kilamba will be designated social housing, which people on low incomes can rent long-term at low prices. No-one is quite sure how that scheme will work or who will be eligible, and cynics have dismissed it as a vote-winning stunt ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on 31 August.

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