The land grabs go on

 Herakles Farms (HF), is a subsidiary of the venture investment firm Herakles Capital which uses on its website such  phrases as "sustainable", "poverty reduction" and "environmentally benign". Its CEO,  Bruce Wrobel, declares: "Throughout my entire life I have considered myself to be an environmentalist and an activist for the poor."

Yet the company is constructing what it claims will be among "the largest palm-oil plantations in all of Africa" - an area roughly 12 times the size of Manhattan - in a fragile biodiverse region in Cameroon. Last year, after complaints about Herakles to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) highlighted the company's alleged environmental violations, Wrobel made no attempts to set the record straight. Instead, Herakles resigned from the Roundtable before the claims were to be investigated, spuriously stating that they "remain committed" to RSPO's standards.

 In communications with investors, Herakles assures that it has "secured a 99-year lease... and also received all required permits and approvals to commence field operations". But in an internal communication, a senior Herakles official states unequivocally: "We do not have the required government approvals for field planting." Cameroon's Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife has on numerous occasions - the most recent, just last month - formally warned the company to stop felling trees until it receives the necessary approvals. Among these missing approvals is a signed presidential decree required to validate the leases of all land concessions of more than 50 hectares on public lands in Cameroon. Yet despite its many reproaches, Herakles proceeds with impunity.

The company  dangled the promise of hospitals, jobs, food security and "tremendous long-term benefits", and managed to gain pockets of consent in the area, to which it now clings as proof of its right to operate. Their dreams of local people stronger infrastructure began to evaporate at the moment when, instead of hospitals and jobs, the only new features to materialise in the area were  perimeters and warning signs, flaunting the fact that their land rights had been forfeited.

 Herakles Farms have exploited images of poverty and hunger, and couched their efforts in the language of sustainability, allowing them to handily reap profits from Africa's resources while undermining national laws, local communities and the environment.

From here

South Africa's Xenophobia

As the largest economy on the continent, South Africa has attracted foreign Africans from as far afield as Nigeria, Ethiopia, the DR Congo and as close as neighbouring Botswana. They come as political refugees or economic migrants, with one goal: a better life. Following the end of apartheid in 1994, thousands of Chinese and South Asian foreign nationals have been living and conducting business across the country. Despite attracting the biggest number of asylum seekers in the world, The Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) found that South Africans receive foreigners with a jaundiced eye.

Instead of South Africans thriving on its much-vaunted multicultural identity, foreigners have been painted in the popular imagination as criminals, job snatchers, and parasites arriving in throngs to eat at an economy battling to feed its own people. In 2011, around 120 foreign nationals were killed, of whom five were burnt alive. In 2012, 140 foreigners were killed and 250 others injured in violent attacks across the country, reported the African Centre for Migration & Society  in Johannesburg. In 2013, the Centre estimates that at least three attacks on foreigners take place weekly. With just one perpetuator brought to justice for the 2008 violence, the South African judiciary is allowing for a culture of impunity to settle, as the foreigner is institutionalised as a soft target, unlikely to enjoy state protection on any level. Foreign nationals entering the country and trying to integrate into society narrate tales of daily strife with authorities. They report harassment at police stations, neglect at hospitals and abuse at immigration offices. The way the state treats foreign nationals essentially represents the way ordinary people treat foreign nationals.

Biniam Misgun, lecturer in the School of Sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban explained "If people were not fighting over a bag of corn or sugar, it [the situation] might be a little different."

 SAMP  found that more than 50 percent of South Africans believed foreigners constituted a majority of the country's population while 63 percent of South Africans wanted electrified fences on the country’s borders. In reality, foreign nationals amount to less than five percent, or 2.2 million people out of a population of around 50 million. The study found that xenophobia is firmly embedded across all economic and social strata of South African society but with incidents of violence are more likely in impoverished areas where a riot can sometimes be the only way to the draw government attention. In the  township of Diepsloot in Johannesburg was a scene of chaos after a Somali shopkeeper killed two Zimbabweans he suspected to be thieves on the evening of Sunday, May 26. Angered by the shootings, Diepsloot residents turned their attention on the Somalis, Pakistanis and other foreign nationals doing business in the township. Nineteen foreign-owned stores were attacked in a frenzy of xenophobic violence and looting over the next two days. In Port Elizabeth a Somali man, was stripped naked, his genitals pelted with rocks, stones smashed over his head all the while receiving kicks to the face, became the latest victim of xenophobic violence in the country.  Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, died of his injuries. Good is just one of the victims of the xenophobic violence that flared through northern Port Elizabeth and up to four other towns and cities across the country last week. Five other Somalis were injured in the violence and almost every Somali-owned business in Port Elizabeth’s Booysen Park was burned or looted.

“ South Africa wants to promote solidarity and unity on the African continent and yet there is move towards a more restrictive asylum regime," Sicel'mpilo Shange-Buthane, executive director of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants , in Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera.

We can feed the world

It is so ingrained that many people cling to the idea that Africa can’t feed itself—and maybe never will. That conclusion, however common, is wrong.  In Uganda in East Africa and in the 15 countries of West Africa, food production now outpaces population growth.  10 African countries are posting annual output increases of 6 percent, more than twice the rate of population growth.  Even infamously food-insecure Malawi and Ethiopia are growing record amounts of crops and even export surpluses to their neighbors. Long ignored, Africa’s “forgotten” crops, including cassava, sunflower seeds, and cowpeas, are being re-discovered and have in the last two decades rapidly expanded in production.

This in spite of use of high-quality seeds and fertilizer is minimal.  Africa has the greatest amount of idle arable land on the planet. For example, the Guinea Savannah zone covers around 600 million hectares in West Africa—through Uganda and Tanzania and encompassing Malawi, Zambia, Angola, and Mozambique—which is around one-third of the total area of sub-Saharan Africa. Of this, 400 million hectares can be used for agriculture. However, less than 10 percent of this area is being cultivated today. Less than 5 percent of land in the sub-Sahara being  irrigated.

 African farmers in the early 1960s supplied 8 percent of the world’s tradable food. That figure stands at less than 2 percent today. Sub-Saharan Africa can produce enough food to feed its peopleand can feed some of the rest of the world too.

South Africa “Most Unequal” Society in the World

Many of South Africa’s Black political elite “have used the opportunities to accumulate at the expense of the vast majority,” said Molefi Ndlovu, a community activist and researcher at the Center for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban. “That’s why we can speak of South Africa as being the most unequal society in the world, more than Brazil and other places,” said Ndlovu, speaking on the latest edition of Black Agenda Television. “It makes a lot of us a bit nervous about exactly where is the soul of the” [ruling African National Congress] party going.”

The New Slave Trade

Malawi is to export up to 100,000 of its young people as migrant workers. It involves sending young Malawian men and women aged between 18 and 25 to jobs in factories and on farms in Korea. Opposition MPs in Malawi have called the deal "slave labour".

"We always cry about brain-drain and encourage Malawians in the diaspora to come back home and yet here we are exporting the cream of our labour force abroad. It doesn't make sense at all," Stevyn Kamwendo, for the DPP, told parliament .

Snouts in the trough

In Nairobi, Kenya, protesters let loose pigs to show their contempt at the politicians. Protesters said they took action over "greedy" MPs.


MPs are demanding a monthly salary of about $10,000 (£6,540). Kenya's Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has recommended that their salaries be pegged at around $6,300 a month. Kenya's MPs are among the highest paid in the world. MPs say they deserve a $10,000 salary because they work very hard. MPs in the previous parliament awarded themselves a $107,000 retirement bonus in one of the last sessions before the election.

The average annual salary in Kenya is about $1,700.
Riot police hit protesters and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Half a century of "Unity"

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) (re-named the African Union in 2002), was established on May25 1963 by the independence-era African leaders as the outward expression of the desire of the people of Africa for true political and economic independence. The OAU provided a body for the African leaders to discuss common African problems and a forum for resolving contentious issues facing the continent. The 53 members contain some of the poorest countries in the world. Some pan African proponents such as Nkrumah and Gaddafi called for a “United States of Africa”. The Pan African vision has as its basic premise that we the people of African descent throughout the globe constitute a common cultural and political community by virtue of our origin in Africa and common racial, social and economic oppression. It further maintains that political, economic and cultural unity is essential among all Africans, to bring about effective action for the liberation and progress of the African peoples and nations

A failed venture by all accounts. There is a marked reluctance of ruling elites to cede sovereignty to a central authority and integration. Sovereignty makes a life of privilege possible by giving African rulers and their collaborators privileges and advantages unavailable to anyone else: management and direction of foreign aid; income from movement of goods within jurisdictions and between them, through tariffs and licenses; borrowing and taxation powers. Unrivalled opportunities for corruption. Sacrificing independent statehood would almost certainly would be not entered into freely by various ruling classes.

The OAU’s inability to prevent the genocide in Rwanda in April 1994, stop the collapse of Somalia state and the Eritrean/Ethiopian wars were all clear manifestations of its impotence. The OAU could not intervene military but the present AU is indeed exercising that power, mostly as a paid proxy force for Western nations’ interests rather than a truly independent entity, acting on humanitarian reasons.

What difference has the AU made to the lives of the ordinary Africans? It is envisaged that an African common parliament, court of justice, central bank and currency will be established in the next few years, like in the EU. Through the parliament and court of justice, it is hoped that the continent's people will have greater say in the running of the affairs of the continent while the court of justice will promote respect for human rights by ensuring that violators of human rights and perpetrators of crimes like genocide are punished. Furthermore, it is expected that by establishing an African common market, currency and central bank, obstacles to the economic integration of the continent will be dismantled thus paving way for economic prosperity and higher living standards for the poverty-ridden peoples.

It will be no more successful than the now defunct OAU in uniting the continent and developing its economy. This is essentially because the same old, rotten capitalist economic system remains intact. If the European Union cannot guarantee decent living for workers of Europe, how then can the weaker African Union be expected to liberate Africans from endemic poverty and misery? Only by the African working class and peasants organizing and struggling to overthrow capitalism by putting the continent's resources under common ownership and with full democratic control and management by the working people themselves, will it be possible to end exploitation and use of the resources of the continent for the needs of its peoples. Africans in the various countries on the continent need to build independent workers’ parties aiming to establish socialism and the unity desired will be in the form of a world socialist movement, not just continental unity but a global union.

The invisible trade

Africa lost up to $1.4tn in illicit financial flows in 1980-2009, far exceeding money coming in over the same period. The joint report from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a US research organisation, says the continent has been a long-term net creditor to the rest of the world. "The traditional thinking has always been that the west is pouring money into Africa through foreign aid and other private-sector flows, without receiving much in return. Our report turns that logic upside down – Africa has been a net creditor to the rest of the world for decades," said Raymond Baker, president of GFI.

The resource drain from Africa over the last 30 years is almost equivalent to Africa's current GDP

Illicit financial flows involve the transfer of money earned through corruption, bribes, tax evasion, criminal activities and transactions involving contraband goods. Even the estimates of illicit financial flows – large as they are – are likely to understate the problem as they do not capture money lost through drug trafficking and smuggling. The natural resource sector is usually the main source of illicit financial flows

Multinationals are the new colonialists

All the business journals and websites at one time have led with stories of Africa’s economic success. But if Africa is on the rise, it is on the rise for the elite and the multinationals, not for Africans workers themselves. Very little of the increased wealth is trickling down to ordinary Africans from latest boom.

The truth about extreme global poverty according to Jason Hickel is:
"During the colonial period, the gap between the richest countries and the poorest countries widened from 3:1 to 35:1, in part because European powers extracted so much wealth from the Global South in the form of resources and labour. Since then, that gap has grown to almost 80:1."

The reason is simply that multinational companies, supported by policies of the IMF and The World Trade Organization, have had access to cheap labour and resources and have been able to extract more out of Africa at the expense of the poor. China has come to the fore and China's priority is simply to develop and benefit the Chinese. They continue to invest heavily in Africa's resources while exporting their consumption goods back to Africa. In all cases Africa loses.

The sad part of all this is Africans are actually getting excited about all this, especially politicians who have failed to think beyond the colonial experience.

Nairobi's War-zone

In Kenya, they hold elections, but no major political party represents the interests of the impoverished majority. Capitalism serves only a very small minority of the immoral rulers. Statistics are manipulated and twisted, while the media is subservient to local and foreign regimes. The MPs are enjoying some of the highest government salaries anywhere in the world, almost no funds are allocated for the improvement of life in the slums. The majority of the people in Nairobi live in slums.


Kariobangi is a shantytown, near an enormous slum called Mathare, in the middle of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
“You die if you get sick here. Life is so cheap. Of course people die from cancer and other ‘complicated’ illnesses, because there is no way they would be treated for free. But they also die of easily preventable diseases like malaria. All we can get here are pain killers, sometimes.”
Living in slums is like living in a war zone: day after day, year after year, until one is hit, stabbed, burned; until one falls. It is a battleground. Everyday something terrible happens. The doctor at the dispensary in the middle of Kiriobangi, calculates that on average, around ten people die a violent death during a weekend, in this slum alone.
Read full article here

Selling and Buying Sierra Leone

In southern Sierra Leone the Paramount Chief is the supreme traditional authority in the Kpaka Chiefdom. The Paramount Chief leased their land to a foreign company without consulting the people nor without the consent of the family heads who are the customary landowners. They have never even laid eyes on the lease agreement, which was signed in January 2011 by the Paramount Chief. It gives an Indian company, Biopalm Energy, control of nearly 20,000 hectares (close to 50,000 acres) of land in Kpaka Chiefdom for 50 years, with a possible extension of 21 years. The lease in Kpaka Chiefdom is just one - and indeed the smallest - of eight registered agreements in seven of the 12 chiefdoms in Pujehun District. Three of them are held by Biopalm Energy, which is acquiring vast land holdings in Africa and Asia to "become the largest global player in the production of sustainable palm oil." According to Green Scenery, the Siva Group is now the largest landowner in Pujehun District, with close to 100,000 hectares, nearly one quarter of the total area of the entire district. The company is part of the complex corporate web of the Siva Group, an Indian conglomerate registered in Singapore and owned by the elusive Indian billionaire, Chinnakannan Sivasankaran.


The Sierra Leonean NGO Green Scenery calculates that in the past three years in Pujehun District, large investors, primarily representing foreign interests, have taken out long-term leases on at least 248,219 hectares [613,362 acres] - more than 60 percent of the total area of and 81 percent of all the arable land - in Pujehun District. Most of the investors that have leased farmland in Pujehun District plan to use it not for food production, but for industrial plantations of oil palm. Annual rents vary from about 23 US cents to US $12.35 per hectare [9 cents to $5 per acre). Green Scenery warns that the poor compensation rates and the concentration of land in the hands of a few corporate investors will leave local farming communities with very little to live off after their land is converted to giant plantations and they've lost their farm fields, forest fallows and valuable economic trees.

In the Malen Chiefdom Socfin Agricultural Company (SL) Limited, a subsidiary of the giant Luxemburg-registered Socfin Group, has leased 6,575 hectares [16,247 acres] for oil palm plantations, and is looking to double its land holdings. The situation was so tense that in late 2012, aggrieved landowners in Malen Chiefdom called on the Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission to come to their assistance.
Five other large land leases in Pujehun have been taken out by four different companies, which involve a very small group of associates from Sierra Leone and the UK. Since 2009, using seven different companies, these individuals have been involved in eight leases totalling close to 265,000 hectares of land in Sierra Leone. Two of those companies - and thus the land leases - have already been sold off to Biopalm Energy, one for US $5 million and another for $1.5 million.



In 2011, another company, Redbunch Ventures Limited, secured a lease for nearly 45,000 hectares in Barri Chiefdom in Pujehun District. Redbunch was subsequently taken over byAgriterra, a cattle and grain-trading business, when it acquired the parent company, Shawford Investments Inc. Such deals smack of speculation and quick profits.

According to a former agent for Quifel Agribusiness (SL) Limited, a subsidiary of Quifel Natural Resources of Portugal, it has three leases in Port Loko District in northern Sierra Leone, although staff in the Registrar's office could find just one. In 2010, a Quifel country representative reported that the company held a total of 120,000 hectares [296,526 acres]. Another large chunk of Port Loko District (41,582 hectares, 102,751 acres) is owned by one of the companies that Biopalm Energy purchased, Sierra Leone Agriculture. And yet another has been leased by West Africa Agriculture (32,441 hectares, 80,163 acres), a company that is linked with the same British and Sierra Leonean individuals that have scooped up so much land in Pujehun.

Addax Bioenergy Limited, a subsidiary of the Malta-based Swiss company, Addax & Oryx Group, originally acquired 57,000 hectares [140,850 acres] straddling two districts in the north of the country. The land is for sugar cane plantations to provide the raw stock for ethanol for export to Europe. According to Derek Higgo, Health, Security, Social Affairs and Environment Manager of Addax Bioenergy, by March 2013 the company had surrendered more than half of the land, but still held about 24,500 hectares [60,541 acres].

The Sierra Leone government is providing the Chinese company Hainan Natural Rubber Group ,000 hectares [333,592 acres] of land in the country for rubber and rice in exchange for a 10 percent share. An Italian company, FNP Agriculture Limited, holds a lease on 15,000 hectares [37,066 acres] in the north of the country. Other investors claiming large land holdings in the country include the British firm Lion Mountains Agrico. Ltd (14,000 hectares or 34,594 acres), and another British firm, Whitestone Agriculture (SL) Ltd. (542,279 hectares or 1.3 million acres) in the north of the country.

José Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, compared "land grabs" in Africa to the "Wild West" and said that a "sheriff" was needed to restore the rule of law. Sierra Leone has become part of the "Wild West."

Eritrea's Tyranny

Eritrea has jailed at least 10,000 political prisoners, many in "unimaginably atrocious conditions", rights group Amnesty International said in a report. The exact figure is impossible to know.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive, secretive and inaccessible countries in the world. Anyone who challenges President Issaias Afeworki is jailed without trial.


Political opposition is banned, independent media quashed and religious minorities targeted. Reporters Without Borders lists Eritrea below North Korea as the worst country in the world for press freedom

"The government has systematically used arbitrary arrest and detention without charge to crush all opposition, to silence all dissent, and to punish anyone who refuses to comply with the repressive restrictions it places on people's lives," said Claire Beston, Amnesty's Eritrea researcher.

Underground dungeons and shipping containers are used to house the prisoners.

Capitalism is to blame

The capitalist system is the real enemy in South Africa, so says Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
Speaking at a seminar hosted by Wits University's African Centre For Migration and Society in Johannesburg on Friday, Vavi said problems such as xenophobia, corruption, gender-based violence, and substance abuse were rooted in economic misery.

"All of these are rooted in another set of three, even bigger demons: unemployment, poverty, and inequality, which provide a fertile breeding ground for all the others."

More on the Zambian Political Scene

On the local political scene the former MMD president Rupiah Banda has gain appeared in court (15 April 2013), where he was found with a case to answer: it is alleged that President Banda had abused his authority by concealing 12 light trucks donated to him by the Chinese contractors in 2011. He was arrested and released on bail,. It is a foregone conclusion that Banda will never be locked up in prison – the whole thing is designed to polish the image of the PF government in the eyes of the Western Donor Community.

The political habit of removing political immunity of every defeated political statesman is in itself a total disgrace in as far as human dignity is concerned,. It remains to be seen whether corruption, which is a crime against private property can be stopped for good here in Zambia. Zambia is a capitalist country – it does not matter whether the president visits China to open up doors for economic co-operation. Zambia is not deviating to the left under the PF government. What is sickening is the sudden disintegration of the MMD ever since it was defeated by the PF. The MMD under the leadership of Nevers Mumba has lost its political credibility – it is no longer a regional or ethnic party – it is fragmented and without a distinguished political power base. Dr Mumba – a disgraced evangelist does not possess a political charisma to win a majority following in Zambia today.

The UPND under Hakainde Hichilema has lost its long-cherished tribal support in Southern Province, given the failure to win a parliamentary seat in Livingstone. UPND members of parliament are deserting it and joining the ruling PF government. The PF is no longer restricted to the Copperbelt and Lusaka. It is now represented in every province of Zambia. Fears of an impending slide towards a one-party political state are validated by the evidence lack of political discipline within the fragile political opposition. In capitalism political unity can only be rallied under a political ideology that explains the reality of nationalism and patriotism. Thus there are no solid facts in the rumours emanating from the UPND that President Sata has gone flat out to liquidate the MMD and UPND. There is a degree to which Zambia may slowly be sliding into a one-party political state unless the opposition political parties develop into popularity to act as counter checks to the political and economic policies of the PF. What remains is for the political opposition to utilise the existing media freedoms to help re-organise itself. In politics the printed word is an effective tool of political propaganda. This is what the WSM is doing in order to disseminate the working-class political consciousness.

KEPHAS MULENGA,
Kitwe, Zambia

More from Zambia

On 25 March 2013 the former republican president Rupiah Banda was charged and arrested for being in a fraudulent involvement in an oil scam deal. This is a case in which it is alleged that Banda signed an oil contract with Nigeria, whose financial benefits were siphoned off in his private account. He was released on a police bond of K500 million, and will keep on to appear in court soon. But what many people in Zambia fail to appreciate is the fact that there was a global economic crisis immediately Banda took over as president of the MMD in 2008 – whose economic significance led to his fall of Banda in 2011. The adverse economic conditions prevailing in the years 2008-2011 made the PF political slogan of Don't Kubeba [don't tell them] more appealing to the Zambian workers and students. It is also a fact that the PF came to power when the adverse economic conditions had started to improve in western Europe and the USA.


Thus President Sata’s first year in office was characterised by favourable copper prices on the world market. Thus any further economic success enjoyed by the PF government remains to be argued on the rejuvenated global economic prospects. When we take into perspective the politically motivated frays of tribal and ethnic comments emanating from the UPND – together with the adverse economic conditions suffered by the Zambian workers under the MMD, there is a concern for a compelling comparison between economic liberalism and a one-party dictatorship.

It is a fact that twenty years after the collapse of "Communism" in both Europe and Africa – African countries have been rocked by election motivated street riots and student demonstrations. In Zambia the dawn of political pluralism has given rise to tribalism and nepotism. Third world countries, Zambia in particular must be fair to themselves by distracting themselves from the falsehood circle shared by defenders of capitalism hat public sector investment, price regulations and subsidies on fertilisers are a representation of the failure of socialist-oriented economic dogma.

It is still believed by Dr. Kenneth Kaunda that UNIP lost the 1991 general election to Fredrick Chiluba due to an exorbitant increase in the price of meali meal. The street riots that broke out in 1986 when people in urban areas took to the streets and looted shops was a consequence of spiralling oil prices and falling copper prices on the London Stock Exchange – and was therefore not a consequence of increased meali meal prices. It was also plain that "Communism" is conceived under a one-party state had come to an end in both eastern Europe and Africa.

Dr. Kaunda went to nationalise private-owned mealing companies and introduced food rationing. But this only heped the emergence of a black market and more shortages of essential commodities. When the MMD came to power it introduced privatisation, and parasitical firms were hastily sold at knock-down prices. This led to short-term unemployment. Fredrick Chiluba, though and avid political demagogue, failed to implement any sound economic policies when he was in power. The coming Levy Mwanasa signalled a new beginning in the political misfortunes of the MMD lawyer by profession Mwanawasa completely dismantled the MMD from its patriotic sentiments, founded upon the charismatic status of Fredrick Chiluba. Ethnicity and tribalism resurfaced within the MMD and the movement lost its Bemba-speaking political membership – the MMD had a strong political membership in Northern Province. In today’s modern world political statesmen are everywhere; the last and only individuals singled out to bear the brunt of political and economic misfortunes of the nation state. This is because political statesmen are everywhere entrusted with constitutional political power and privileges above everyone else.
This political privilege and power is fanned by the flames of patriotism and nationalism.

The global economic crisis that begun in 2008 witnessed the sudden collapse of copper prices at the London Stock Exchange. In Zambia this translated itself into the abrupt closure of some mining firms––unemployment shot up overnight in urban areas. And, without any seemingly vibrant and pragmatic response from President Banda, the MMD became very unpopular within Copperbelt mining.

Though and Security Mining Minister Fackson Shamenda may have displeased a number of organisations when he announced the banning of employing non-Zambian expatriates as Human Resource Managers, he was only responding to the hue and cry that has reverberated among urban workers. Discredited among workers in companies controlled by non-Zambians or ex-patriots Human Resource Managers intensified under the MMD government.

The ban is aimed at appeasing the expatriate Human Resource Manager against the vile seductions of victimisation, ill-treatment and racial abuse. Foreign Human Resource Managers are known for imposing harsh and draconian conditions of service on the local labour force.

In order to deliver on the election promises the PF has introduced a minimum wage (pay rise) to general workers from K415 to K1230. It has also created 9700 jobs in the Civil Service through employing teachers, nurses, policemen and agricultural extension officials. President Sata is bent on increasing a huge Public Service that is absorbing 70 percent of government expenditure. Being a seasoned and pragmatic politician, Sata has seen the economic advantages in the diplomatic relations with China.

The PF government is relying on Chinese investors to develop the country in terms of building hospitals, schools and constructing roads. But this is a surprising about-tune from Sata’s well-known anti-Chinese political statements when he was in opposition. All said, it becomes a matter of grave concern to note that both the MMD and the UPND have lost their regional and ethnic support ever since the PF came to power. Opposition members of Parliament are deserting the MMD and UPND to join the ruling PF. Fears about Zambia becoming a one-party state are consequences of these resignations.

We in the WSM are the only effective political opposition that shall always remain intact to analyse the social and political vices perpetrated under capitalism – how innocent and sometimes well-meaning politicians try and fail to make capitalism work in the interest of the workers, both in the Western developed countries and Africa. Capitalism as a system lives on and survives through boom and bust, and will forever remain to be so unless the workers who comprise the majority try to replace it with socialism – the last and only remaining political and economic alternative to capitalism.

K. MULENGA, Kitwe, Zambia

Business malpractice

Tax avoidance, secret mining deals and financial transfers are depriving Africa of the benefits of its resources boom, ex-UN chief Kofi Annan has said.
Firms that shift profits to lower tax jurisdictions cost Africa $38bn (£25bn) a year, says a report produced by a panel he heads.

"Africa loses twice as much money through these loopholes as it gets from donors," Mr Annan told the BBC.

It was like taking food off the tables of the poor, he said.

Between 2010 and 2012 five under-priced mining concessions were sold in "highly opaque and secretive deals" in the Democratic Republic of Congo, depriving the country of $1.3bn in revenues, double DR Congo's health and education budgets combined.

In Zambia between 2005 and 2009, 500,000 copper mine workers were paying a higher rate of tax than major multinational mining firms.

Africa's hunger

Food production in sub-Saharan Africa must rise by 50% to feed an estimated population of 1.3-billion by 2030, according to a report.

12 sub-Saharan Africa countries are severely affected by food security problems. These include Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique and Lesotho. It shows only four countries in the region have high food security — SA, Gabon, Angola and Nigeria. Food security is closely entwined with poverty — food MAY be available but unaffordable for many people in the region.

In the 40 years to 2010, per capita world food production grew 17%, while in Africa it fell 10%.

Sub-Saharan Africa has 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land. It imports an average of $50bn of food annually. Yields on staple crops such as maize, rice, groundnuts and sorghum in sub-Saharan Africa are only one-third to two-thirds of the global average. Grain yields generally are 40% lower than those in the rest of the developing world.

At present, eight sub-Saharan African countries are suffering from lack of water and that number will increase to 18 by 2025, affecting 600-million Africans.
Africa has 13 tractors per 100 sq. km., far below the global average of 200.

Inequality and corruption

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to six of the top 10 most unequal countries in terms of economic disparity. In 2010, Africa’s oil, gas and mineral exports amounted to $333 billion in 2010. But illicit financial outflows from Africa are estimated at up to $200 billion annually, dwarfing the development aid it receives.


Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said: “Too often extractive industries in collusion with corrupt government officials cheat Africa of its wealth and potential for social spending. African citizens must get their true share of extractive industry revenues and royalties paid to their governments.”

The Somalian Famine Toll

Nearly 260,000 people died during the famine that hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012, a study shows.


Half of them were children under the age of five, says the report by the UN food agency and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

An estimated 4.6% of the total population and 10% of children under five died in southern and central Somalia. In Lower Shabelle, 18% of children under five died and in Mogadishu 17%.

"The report confirms we should have done more before the famine was declared," said Philippe Lazzarini, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "Warnings that began as far back as the drought in 2010 did not trigger sufficient early action,"

The number of deaths was higher than the estimated 220,000 people who died during the 1992 famine.

The Chinese Soft Power in Africa

China, which, through state-run company Poly Technologies Inc (PTI), donated a swimming pool and sports complex to the armed forces of Ghana in 2011. As well as the Olympic-size pool, complete with sun loungers, there's a gym, with weights and cardio equipment, and a studio where soldiers and civilians mingle over step aerobics, the Tae Bo fitness system, a weight loss programme and African dance. There are tennis courts, seven-a-side football pitches, volleyball, beach volleyball and a restaurant run by the Southern Fried Chicken franchise.


The country's ability to host the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations was given a huge boost by a $100m (£65m) soft loan from China for new stadiums, and construction is about to begin on a stadium in the colonial-era capital Cape Coast in central Ghana, for which China donated $30m.

"China has offered to build our new 15,000-capacity stadium at Cape Coast, without asking for anything in return," says Michael Frimpong, director of public relations for Ghana's ministry of sport.

Nothing in return?
PTI, for example, is one of China's top three arms manufacturers. It is a subsidiary of the state-controlled outfit China Poly Group Corporation, based in Beijing. Critics accuse PTI of exporting weapons to repressive regimes such as Burma and Zimbabwe, which paves the way for resource extraction by Chinese-owned firms.

And there is more to Ghana's relationship with PTI than treadmills and abdominal crunches. In 2011, a month before the new complex was completed, Ghana commissioned two 46-metre patrol vessels worth almost $40m from the company. Ghana has also entered into high-profile bilateral agreements with China such as a $10bn loan for infrastructure projects and a $3bn loan for its oil and gas sector. A source at the Chinese embassy said it had registered more than 300 Chinese companies that have opened an office in Ghana.
"China has a longstanding practice of offering package deals to countries in Africa," said David Shinn, professor of international affairs at George Washington University and co-author of China and Africa: A Century of Engagement. "They include very large concessionary loans that must be paid back, frequently with raw materials. These loans are often used to construct large infrastructure projects tied to Chinese companies and sometimes a component of Chinese labour. It is not unusual to include grants in kind [which] very often come in the form of a stadium, government building, or sports complex." Shinn adds: "In terms of the total package, the grants are usually a modest component and fall in the category of public relations. The idea is to garner good publicity for China."

The Chinese government has backed 1,700 projects on continent in 50 countries since 2000 in apparent attempt to win favour. $75bn (£48bn) on aid and development projects in Africa in the past decade (compared with $90bn the US committed over that period).

In Liberia, China has put millions towards the installation of solar traffic lights in Monrovia and financed a malaria prevention centre. In Mozambique, China's projects include a National School for Visual Arts in Maputo. In Algeria, construction has begun on a multimillion dollar 1,400-seat opera house in the Ouled Fayet suburbs of western Algiers. China has also sent thousands of doctors and teachers to work in Africa, welcomed many more students to learn in China or in Chinese language classes abroad and rolled out a continent-wide network of sports stadiums and concert halls.

The "China-Zambia Friendship Hospital" opened in August 2011 and includes casualty, dental and maternity wards as well as laboratories. It has 159 beds, treats 2,600 patients and delivers 260 babies each month on average. John Kachimba, medical superintendent and consultant urologist, said "I believe it was a gift from China. I think it was just a sign of friendship. They built this, they built a stadium in the copper belt." It was also certainly good PR, he says. "Looking at the hospital, your impression of them will be much better than looking at a mine with poor safety standards and controversy over wages. For them, the hospital is definitely a positive thing."

Many of the cultural and sporting projects across the continent are probably "upfront sweeteners" to win government favour, a "downpayment" for future commercial deals, suggests Stephen Chan, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Chinese medical teams have worked in Africa since 1963, but recently their objective has expanded to include promotion of China's pharmaceuticals such as antimalarials, according to Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said a combination of economic interests and the need to expand its political influence and improve its international image was driving Chinese health aid in Africa.

Last summer, the then Chinese president Hu Jintao announced an expansive aid programme that will offer 18,000 government scholarships and train 30,000 Africans "in various sectors" by 2015. China advertises these programmes as a kind-hearted diplomatic gesture – the terms "equality", "all-round co-operation" and "mutual gain" pepper its state media reports and programme descriptions. Experts say they're a calculated, long-term investment to win the hearts and minds of Africa's future leaders, many of whom fear China's investment in the continent may come with invisible strings attached. Mahamat Adam, a Cameroonian business consultant and former member of the China-Africa Business Council, said "It must be understood by the Africans, they are not there to do philanthropy or help, they are there to do business. The Chinese are here to work for us, but they're here for their own interests first."

BP Profits

Angola is one of BP’s four most lucrative “high-margin” regions that contribute a disproportionately high share of its profits. Generous contracts give BP an operating cashflow margin in Angola of almost $60 a barrel, according to Deutsche Bank – more than double BP’s global average. After costs, BP can expect about $40 profit for each barrel it produces in Angola, compared with as little as $1 elsewhere.


Angola is Africa’s second biggest oil producer, with oil accounting for about three-quarters of government revenues. But, as the US Energy Information Administration notes, “much of the oil wealth in the country does not find its way to the average citizen”.

36% of the population live below the poverty line and a short distance from BP’s offices in Luanda, barefooted children pick through mountains of rubbish in the slums. Angola consistently ranks as one of the world’s most corrupt countries

Nigeria's champagne class

It is alright for some.

 Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing consumers of champagne. Nigeria spent N9.4billion ($59 million) on consumption of champagne last year.

Prices at clubs can vary widely here, with a standard bottle of Moet & Chandon running around N19,200 ($120), while bottles of Cristal can come in at 144,000 ($900) or more. Store prices tend to be much lower.


World Bank calculations from 2009-2010 showing some 63 per cent of Nigerians live on less than N160 ($1 dollar) per day. 46 percent of the country’s population living in poverty.

we can feed ourselves

The number of people who go hungry in Africa’s poorest countries is growing despite advances in food production, say Oxfam researchers . A new report by the global anti-poverty group says more than 230 million people – or one-in-four Africans living south of the Sahara – are undernourished, up 38% from 20 years ago. In the same time, it contends that Africa can produce the food it needs to reduce hunger and improve nutrition.
  The EU alone imports 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural exports.

Cameroon's Land Grab

As part of the land-grab trend that is accelerating across Africa, thousands of Cameroonians have been displaced from their homelands to make way for large-scale agribusiness projects.


Inhabitants of Adjap, deep in the heart of the tropical rainforests of southern Cameroon are living life on the margins. Over the years, its people have watched their ancestral forest lands continually annexed by the government and ceded to foreign agribusinesses and logging companies.

“Our ancestors settled here in 1903. We considered the land ours until 1947 when the colonial government suddenly seized it as private state property, arresting anyone cutting down trees for firewood or to build”, explains Adjap tribal chief, Marcellin Biang.

The Adjap natives have eventually been squeezed into a 14,000-hectare strip of land – less than a third of the near 50,000-hectare expanse they controlled under pre-colonial customary jurisprudence.

In Akom I, chieftain Luther Abessolo says his subjects are increasingly lazy as a result of the prevailing tenure insecurity. “We live in utter uncertainty because the government can decide to seize our land at short notice anytime. Our people lack motivation to cultivate the land”

14,000 villagers in Cameroon’s southwest whose existence – as well as that of numerous endangered floral and faunal species – is under threat. US-owned agribusiness, Herakles Farms, is razing some 73,000 hectares of dense natural forests for a $600 million oil palm plantation despite local objections. Some locals have been arrested for protesting. Herakles officials say that the company has legitimately leased the land for 99 years, but Greenpeace insisted in February that the meagre 50 cents per acre per year rent to the government, the absence of a presidential decree authenticating the concession, pending lawsuits, and flawed environmental impact assessments, among other things, call the investment into question.

Research released in March by Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) indicate that over 10 million of Cameroon’s estimated 22 million hectares of forest lands have already been committed to various concessions, and that some $18 billion has been pipelined for investment in the agribusiness, forestry, mining and infrastructure sectors in Cameroon. The organisation has been pressing for government forest land policy reforms that recognise and restore land ownership rights of local communities. RRI warns the tenure crisis is worst in Africa, where only 0.4% of forest land is formally owned by local people, as opposed to around 24% in Asia and Latin America.

Across West and Central Africa, an escalating number of poverty-stricken men, women and children in rural areas are being chased off ancestral lands they have relied on for generations for farming, grazing and hunting. They are increasingly squatters and low-paid labourers for the incoming foreign investors and local elites.
“When the government takes this land and gives it out in a lease for 40, 50 or up to 99 years, the people often lose access to these commons resources”, Michael Richards, Natural Resources Economist with the UK-based Forest Trends, notes. “In some cases, they do allow access for the extraction of certain products. But in other cases, they put great fences which stop communities having access.” Land grabbers also usually obtain unlimited rights to water use, Richards adds, implying curtailed availability for downstream users.

From here

Understanding nature

Misperceptions of the drylands as barren and empty are leading to their mismanagement. When most government planners look at Kenya’s Isiolo County, they see barren, dusty land. But pastoralists who live there see something else entirely.


Local government holds land in trust for the communities. But because the government rarely sees the land’s true economic value, "if an investor comes in there is a risk it will be given away," said Ced Hesse, a principal researcher in Institute for Environment and Development’s climate change group.

In neighbouring Tanzania, the Ministry of Tourism said it would set aside 1,500 square kilometres bordering the Serengeti national park as a corridor for wildlife, blocking local Maasai communities from accessing their pasture land but granting access to a Dubai-based luxury hunting and safari company.

Zimbabweans - $1.16 a day

An average person in Zimbabwe survives on US$1.16 per day, according to figures released by the Zimbabwe Statistical Office (ZimStats) under the Poverty Income Consumption and Expenditure Survey.


The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day.

Africa's capitalist boom - No silver lining

Sub-Saharan Africa is set to grow by 5.6 percent this year, according to latest figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with 18 countries hitting at least six percent. Yet the continent’s boom has failed in recent years to significantly dent poverty levels, economists say.

Africa’s oil and mining, telecommunications, banking and retail are all flourishing, construction is booming and private investment inflows surging. But the continent’s poor are still not riding the wave.
“More than a decade of strong economic growth has reduced poverty in sub-Saharan Africa – but not by enough,” said the World Bank last week. Growth has been less poverty-reducing than elsewhere in the world; and despite the faster growth in resource-rich countries, levels of poverty are falling at a slower rate , it said. More than a third of the world’s extreme poor still live in sub-Saharan Africa. And it is still the only region in the world where the number of poor people rose “steadily and dramatically” between 1981 and 2010. “Higher economic growth does not automatically translate into higher poverty reduction,” states the report.

“The poverty rate is not going down at the same rate that the growth rate is going up,” said Soren Ambrose, economist of anti-poverty group ActionAid in Nairobi. “The mining companies were given attractive deals: those companies come in and do their business and as a result the growth rates are up.” But, he added: “Not much remains, the amount that is left in the country is not so much.”

Planet Earth Day

Farmland investment company Agcapita's website touts land for sale: "Agcapita believes farmland is a safe investment, that supply is shrinking and that unprecedented demand for 'food, feed and fuel' will continue to move crop prices higher over the long-term.”


Scarcity begets a good speculative market -- too bad that scarcity in this case means hunger.

Whether it is development, speculation on food prices land for food is under attack. In places like Ethiopia, land was nationalized during a socialist past cash-strapped governments are selling the “people's land” to the highest bidder. The goal is ostensibly industrial farming, often for biofuels to take advantage of the new European mandate for alternative fuels. However, actual farming efforts often seem half-hearted. Often in speculation, land is held by the elites to await future prices. Whether or not it is used during that wait is immaterial.

Villages have been burned and resisters brutally murdered. In Tanzania, the removals were not for farming but for giant safari parks for wealthy tourists. The result is starvation for people who have been on the land as long as anyone can remember. "Poaching" is sometimes a matter of traditional users trying to maintain their sustainable way of life on land where wealthy hunters pay thousands to shoot for sport.

Going, Going, Gone! Land grabs makes every day Earth Day.

A lucrative business

In the remote Congo region of the Uvira highlands many people still believe that sickness, death or accidents do not “just happen” – they are caused by individuals, that must be identified and neutralized. This is done through a tribal justice system based on traditional customs and superstition.


Witchcraft trials are not free, and are an important source of revenue for the tribal chief. Before the dispute can be brought to the court, each party has to pay a mandatory fee of $200 – the price of a cow – whether they can afford it or not. The tribal judges are bribed to hand out false verdicts.

Vincent Lindalo, a local human rights activist, wants to encourage locals to denounce the trials.

"Because they are ignorant of the judicial system and are poor, they believe it is impossible to win a trial against a tribal chief,” says Lindalo. “Many people believe the chief is untouchable, because of his position, or that their ancestors’ wrath will fall on them if they accuse the chief of wrongdoing.”

Corrupt capitalism

Simandou, a mountain in the remote interior of the impoverished west African country of Guinea that is so laden with iron ore that its exploitation rights are valued at around $10bn.

Beny Steinmetz, an Israeli tycoon was estimated by Forbes magazine to have a net worth of $4bn, acquired the rights to extract half the ore at Simandou by pledging to invest just $165m to develop a mine at the mountain. Shortly afterwards, he sold half of his stake for £2.5bn. The rights to extract iron ore from Simandou had been held by Rio Tinto until late 2008 when Conté stripped the Anglo-Australian mining giant of half its stake. Apparently, the president signed the necessary paperwork while on his deathbed, one of the final acts of his dictatorial government. BSG Resources then acquired those rights, agreeing in return to invest $165m to develop what it described as "a world-class integrated mining project".

In April 2010, Steinmetz negotiated to sell half his company's stake – a quarter of the mountain's ore – to Vale of Brazil, the world's biggest iron ore miner. BSG Resources and Vale formed a joint venture company called VBG which would produce around 2m tons of iron ore a year.

When Vale agreed to pay $2.5bn, one veteran of African mining was quoted in the financial press as saying that Steinmetz had hit "the jackpot".

The US justice department decided to mount an investigation into circumstances. Unknown to either Steinmetz the FBI launched an investigation in January into whether payments allegedly made on behalf of Beny Steinmetz Group Resources, the Guernsey-registered mining arm of the tycoon's business empire that acquired the rights, were in breach of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Frederic Cilins, an agent for Steinmetz's company, was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, after federal agents had covertly recorded a series of meetings. The recording shows, it is alleged, that Cilins plotted the destruction of documents which it is claimed could have shown the Simandou exploitation rights were acquired after millions of dollars were paid in bribes to Guinea government officials. Cilins had in the past offered to pay $12m in bribes in order to influence the award of mining concessions. He had also paid out several million dollars, and had called the meetings in order to arrange for the destruction of documents concerning bribe payments and mining concessions.

Steinmetz has been embarking on litigation at the high court in London, accusing Mark Malloch-Brown, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister and deputy secretary general of the United Nations, of being involved in a smear campaign against BSG Resources.

Guinea, a former French colony, has almost half of the world's bauxite reserves and significant reserves of iron ore, gold and diamond reserves, but the majority of its 11 million people live in poverty as a result of years of corruption.

African telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim, for example, asked publicly: "Are the Guineans who did that deal idiots, or criminals, or both?"

The struggle doesn't continue

In Mozambique the Frelimo Fourth Congress in 1983, the call went out to "Defend the Fatherland, Overcome Underdevelopment, Build Socialism". The national anthem of the time promised to make Mozambique "the grave of capitalism and exploitation". Frelimo's own anthem described party members as "soldiers of the people, marching forward in the struggle against the bourgeoisie".


It was not to be. Mozambique joined the World Bank and the IMF in 1985. Western donors, even friendly ones in Scandinavia, made it clear that a programme with the IMF was a condition for continuing assistance. Some may have viewed it as a temporary diversion, assuming that the march towards a classless society would resume in the near future. But it was not to be.

In 1989, Frelimo quietly dropped Marxism-Leninism from its statutes. The following year it was no longer a "People's Republic", but just "the Republic of Mozambique".

Frelimo's slogan "A Luta Continua!" ("The Struggle Continues!") is rarely heard nowadays.

The benefits of economic growth are not being spread throughout society, and poverty reduction has faltered. The household surveys by Mozambique's National Statistics Institute showed that the number living below the poverty line fell from 69% in 1997 to 54.1% in 2003. But the next survey, in 2009, suggested that the government's efforts to alleviate poverty had stagnated, and that the poverty rate was now 54.7%.
A growing gap between rich and poor is evident from the boom in luxury housing built in the fashionable parts of Maputo, and the explosion in car ownership. Traffic jams, unheard of 20 years ago, are now a regular feature of Maputo life. But the majority of Mozambicans still live in huts or shacks, and depend on buses for their transport. 64% still have no electricity.
Frelimo policy has somersaulted in the past three decades, but the party's grip on power remains strong

Woo-woo cures

Gambian dictator, Yahya Jammeh, continues to insist that he has a cure for HIV/AIDS. While people might think he is a lunatic and that his claims are bizzare and should be ignored, many sick people in Gambia take him seriously. They go to the state house to receive “free treatment"with no proof of efficacy or effectiveness from his ‘Excellency’.


Jammeh, who came to power in 1996 through a military coup, has repeatedly declared that he could cure HIV/AIDS and asthma using natural herbs with some banana and peanuts and by reciting prayers and some verses from the Koran. He has refused to reveal the ingredients he used in preparing some of the concoction. Jammeh had no medical training. He claimed to have inherited the “healing power” from his father. There is no evidence that Jammeh has inherited any form of healing power from anybody. He is a quack taking advantage of the situation of poverty, disease and poor medical care in his country. During his ‘healing session’, he carries a copy of the Koran and his muslim beads to attempt to give the process some legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the majority muslim population in the country.

Jammeh’s cure claims have been dismissed by medical experts globally. And many people are particularly concerned that Jammeh’s reckless and irresponsible cure claims could undermine efforts to combat the AIDS pandemic in Gambia and in other parts of the region. It is difficult to know the number of people who must have died since Jammeh came out and started administering his unsubstantiated and quack cure claims.

Famine - it need not happen

Up to two million people are estimated to have died in drought-related emergencies since 1970.


“Where there are normally successive failed rains; then you have a process whereby you have subsequent harvest failures then people adopt coping strategies," explained report author Rob Bailey. "They start selling off assets, running down food reserves, taking on credit - they get themselves into an increasingly desperate situation." After a period of time the coping strategies become exhausted, triggering a famine. The whole process can take 11 months from start to finish, and that is why there is an opportunity to intervene early. "Yet despite this very significant opportunity and despite analysis showing that when you do intervene early it costs less and you save more lives, it does not happen. Ultimately, early action requires government action."

"It requires donor governments - like the UK and US - to write a cheque early on before the crisis is at its worse phase, and that is a big ask for governments to do because governments are primarily concerned with managing the political risks to themselves.
The 2011 famine in Somalia was probably the single most documented and monitored evolution of famine in history. But still no early action happened. Early warning systems were first introduced in the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions in the early 1980s when it was first realised that it was possible to track the "chronology of famine". Things have got a lot more sophisticated so now there are early warning systems that use satellite to estimate harvests more effectively, how much pasture is available. We have more much more sophisticated weather forecasting models.They also use a lot more household-gathered data, where infants are weighed and malnutrition is quantified. Also, it is monitored whether certain coping strategies, that are recognised as pre-famine indicators, are becoming established. It is very rare that you can have a risk that can be so well understood and predicted, and give us such an opportunity to intervene and mitigate it.
Drought-related emergencies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions, are unlikely to go away in the future, projected scenarios show.


Taken from here

Zambia: Politics of Poverty

When President Michael Sata came into power in September 2011 he promised the people of Zambia that the Patriotic Front government was going to create new jobs and put money in people’s pockets in just 90 days. The ‘Don’t Kubeba’ political taboo still lives in people’s minds—the political and economic injustices committed upon the Zambian people by the MMD. President Sata has no ideology of any kind. I have never heard him define his political and economic programmes as socialism.


It is a foregone conclusion that in Africa politics is haunted by ethnic and tribal loyalties. Every political party that is elected to power starts to defend its position through suppressing and intimidating the political opposition. The so-called fight against corruption is doctored by revenge and tribalism. This was very evident during the reign of Levy Mwanawasa—we saw how Mwanawasa hunted and victimised members of the Chiluba administration. It was only when Rupiali Banda came in power that Fredrick Chiluba was rescued from corruption allegations. The fight against corruption brought into question the relevance of the judiciary in Zambian domestic politics. The Director of Public Prosecutions is the only person who can override the decisions of the High and Supreme Court judges. The schism between parliament and the judiciary exists. The President does interfere in the workings of the judiciary (he has constitutional power to do so). The suspension of two High Court judges and one Supreme Court judge by the President in May 2012 did not raise eyebrows in political circles because Sata was merely invoking chapter 58 of the Zambian Constitution that provides for the Head of State to remove or suspend a judge.

President Sata suspended the three judges because on the grounds that they interfered or behaved inappropriately in a court case between the Bank of Zambia vs Post News paper and Mutembo Nchito. This is a matter in which the Bank of Zambia was restrained from formalising the purchase of Zambia Airways by Post News Paper. But the suspension of the judges was foreshadowed by the appointment of Mutembo Nchito as Director of Public Prosecutions by President Sata in 2012. What is called corruption in Zambia is mostly stage-managed by politicians. Calls for the lifting of former president Rupiali Banda’s political immunity is a case in point,. Banda was recently approached by the Anti-corruption Commission to answer corruption allegations—Banda refused, citing his political immunity. The former MMD president seemingly enjoys political sympathy from overseas ??? community. In 2012 Banda was ceremoniously invited by the Boston University Senate to give a series of political lectures in the USA. Again (20 February), he was invited by the Carter Election Monitoring Team to preside in the monitoring of presidential elections in Kenya. We can easily see how the fight against corruption is being used to decimate the MMD.

The most controversial and outspoken political figure in the PF today is the party secretary General MV Wynter Kabimba. This is the man who, together with Michael Sata helped to fund the Patriotic Front in 2003. When Mr Kabimba was recently summoned by the Anti-corruption Commission to answer for certain corrupt allegations, he openly refused to do so. He was quickly rescued by Sata, who went on toe restrain the Task Force on Corruption from investigating Kabimba. But his compatriotcolleague, the former Foreign Minister Given Lubinda did not survive. He has been suspended from the PF for six months. It was alleged that Lubinda had revealed some Cabinet secure information to the UPND MPs. It is more than a coincidence that Lubinda is a Tonga from Southern Province, whereas Kabimba is a Bemba (like Sata). The PF government is wholly staffed by Bemba-speaking politicians. It is a fact that were Given Lubinda dismissed from the PF—he would have joined the UPND.

The UPND, led by Hakainde Hichilema is a complete political disappointment in the sense that it remains an ethnic party—it is mostly composed of Tonga-speaking political cadres. It has a mass following in Southern Province. The much-lampooned about Mapatizya Formula is a cold-blooded recipe for political violence carried out by the UPND to murder and terrorise members of the Patriotic Front.

It is appalling to see how a well-educated person like UPND president Hichilema succumbed to ethnic and tribal politics. Indeed, the UPND are being quickly decimated from parliament and beyond—the PF keeps on to win every parliamentary constituency that is contested.

The PF does not want to be seen making the same mistakes made by the MMD for twenty years, viz. by creating a huge public service that was not answerable to the needs of ordinary Zambians. The PF government has started to regulate the private sector, and henceforth introduced a minimum wage pegged at K1250 for general workers—both the church and the labour movement has praised the PF for the gesture. The Ministry of Lands [?], together with the Ministry of Works and Supply have been re-organised to curb corruption. Though President Sata may seem too be sincere at heart, yet capitalism as a system will disappoint his political and economic ambitions.

K MULENGA,
Kitwe,
Zambia

The slave wars

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


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

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

No Choice

In Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya the opposition had either been totally smashed or is rotting in jail. Alternatively, it has ceased to exist. Elections are fights between corrupt politician A and corrupt politician B, both campaigning along ethnic lines and on behalf of their vested mercantile interests who ‘compete’ over who will be the one to get his snout into the trough at the end of the ‘democratic electoral process’. Politicians do not use the rhetoric ‘Socialism or death!’ (whatever they take to mean socialism to be.) Nor do they campaign on the promise of ‘Let’s liberate our people from misery!’ The accepted political agenda is the more modest: ‘It’s our time to eat!’


In the recent Kenyan elections, not one single Presidential candidate dared to raise the essential issues exposing the neo-colonialism of the muli-nationals. Nor did any candidate protest being a military proxy for other powers.
In Rwanda, where the regime is co-responsible for the loss of millions of human lives in DR Congo, there is, at least, no charade about democracy. It is courted by ‘world leaders’ like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. The most prominent opposition leader in Rwanda, Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, is in prison. Her name much lesser known than Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi when she was in detention. Ingabire considers herself relatively lucky because many other Rwandan opposition figures have already been murdered.
Museveni, the President of Uganda, has held the reigns of power since 1986. He wears a cowboy hat which is indicative of his personality - a cowboy. Brutal civil war is raging in the north of Uganda. There, according to countless reports, the military are ordered, periodically, to rape but that is not preventing the West using Ugandan troops as ‘peacekeepers’ all over Africa, particularly where their interests lie. He is another loyal mercenary of the West in the region, Uganda is deeply involved in Somalia, Sudan and above all, in DR Congo. For the West, Museveni has been a very effective ‘buffer’ against Sudan. He is, of course, very useful for US interests in DR Congo. US gives Uganda money and they give them the bodies that they want removed.
Museveni hates gays, and he occasionally threatens them with capital punishment. To give the credit where it is due, there actually is, at least, some opposition in Uganda. Its members periodically protest; they write books and articles, arrange demonstrations, and even end up in prisons. But they too are also very careful not to alienate the West.

In these African countries, as elsewhere, there is very little talk about alternative political and economic systems.

one world - one people - workers united

Over two million families solely depend on Lake Malawi for their livlihoods. The 29,000-square-kilometre tranquil lake is a tourist spot, source of revenue and food for local populations. But since July 2012, it was discovered that the lake could potentially be a lucrative oil and gas source, and it rekindled a border dispute between the southern African neighbours over who owns the lake. Malawi claims sovereignty over the entirety of the lake that straddles the borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. Meanwhile, Tanzania says 50 percent is part of its territory. In October 2011 Malawi’s late President Bingu wa Mutharika, awarded a contract to British Surestream Petroleum to start gas and oil exploration on the eastern part of the lake, and then a second exploration licence in December 2012 to a subsidiary of South African firm SacOil.

Richard Kilumbo, a resident from Kyela district, which borders Lake Nyasa, told IPS that he could not understand the reasons for the dispute explained “We have relatives from Mzuzu, Malawi and were going to attend a wedding (there last year). We are shocked and panicked to find we are making preparations of war against our neighbours. We do not know why this is such big thing amongst our leaders. We heard people were talking, we thought we were free to walk and enjoy life...There really is no trouble on the ground, none at all. Fishermen from Tanzania are carrying on as usual, and although we know it’s in the news, we’ve no idea why,”

“There’s no border dispute among the local community, it is a dispute among politicians, a political performance at higher levels, eying elections in Malawi in 2014 and Tanzania in 2015. Unfortunately, the local communities are pawns. They lack access to information and education to understand the implications and seriousness of this,” local environmental journalist who has followed the story for many years, and writes regularly on it for Swahili newspapers Felix Mwakyembe, told IPS. “This lake should be used to improve the lot and livelihoods of local people, on both sides. The lake is a resource – instead it’s being used as part of a political game to further political careers,”

We can feed ourselves

Ton Dietz, the director of the Afrika Studie Centrum, based in Leiden, Netherlands, one of Europe's leading think tanks on Africa, questions the image of Africa so commonly seen as a hungry continent. His research showed that total basic food production in Africa has actually not only kept pace with population growth, but has increased proportionally faster than has the population. Overall Africa produces more than enough food to feed itself.

Research has shown that the amount of calories consumed per person had actually increased in all of west Africa, but had decreased in all east African countries between 1961 to 2009 despite the region having some of the most fertile agricultural land available on the continent.
In 1961 every nation in Africa produced domestically more than 100 percent of its domestic food supply. Now most African countries produce less than its domestic supply and therefore are becoming more dependent on food imports, even though they grow enough food to feed themselves.
In Benin, Mozambique and the two Sudans all show large drops in the portion domestically produced, and large increases in imported food and stock variations. Sudan and Mozambique can be partly explained by the wars that plagued both, but during the first part of this century Mozambique has had a domestic peace in a nation with extraordinary agriculture potential. The research showed that post-harvest loss is the major problem in the Sudans and not weather conditions. The same is true for Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Mozambique. Africa lacks infrastructures for adequate storage and refrigeration.

Somalia's drought was man-made

 Global warming may have contributed to low rain levels in Somalia in 2011 where tens of thousands died in a famine, research by British climate scientists suggests.  Between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine.

 Peter Stott of Britain's Met Office said that the evidence is "very strong" that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study indicates that both natural causes -- La Nina and the short rains -- and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought. Between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Stott said.

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels -- coal, oil and natural gas -- which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, of which the contribution of Somalian people is negligible yet they bore the brunt of the consequences.

Kenyan Election

The majority of Kenyans live in misery. Two thirds of the population of the capital lives in slums. People want change. All of them are talking about change. "Change" is on the lips of the people forming those endless queues. But what kind of change?

In a state where the majority of people live on less than US$1 a day, the local MPs enjoy some of the highest take-home salaries paid to politicians anywhere on earth –more than US$123,000 a year. For comparison, British MPs earn the equivalent of US$99,000. Why would the rich want to change anything?

The elections have been described, in advance, as ‘democratic’, by both the local and Western mainstream media. In the case of Kenya, elections are also ‘democratic’, because there are eight Presidential candidates, and countless candidates running for MP, Senators and governors. It does not matter that not a single Kenyan Presidential candidate has been truly ready to represent the interests of the people. In the language of Western propaganda, democracy is measured only by the number of political parties and candidates; and not by their agenda. Change is definitely not on any candidate’s list. Their allegiances are to their tribes and to their business interests, to their deep pockets, neither to ideals nor to the nation.

 The two main Presidential candidates, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, belong to the two most powerful political dynasties. Uhuru Kenyatta, is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president. Raila Odinga is the second son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, one of Kenya’s Independence heroes, and the nation’s first vice-president. No real changes to the system have been proposed by either candidate.  None of the essential issues have been discussed in the pre-election campaign such as the brutal capitalist system that is destroying the lives of millions.

While the Kenyan elites are harvesting millions of dollars from their collaboration with former and present-day colonizers, In many parts of Kenya, people are dying from hunger and disease.  If Uhuru wins or if it is Raila who wins, what difference does it really make? There is no change. The war against the poor goes on.

poverty amidst plenty

Despite food production increasing by over 35% between 2011 and 2012, due to good rains, improved cultivation practices and expanded area under cultivation in addition to the 40% population of South Sudan already at risk of food insecurity, the report anticipates more than one million people are likely to be severely affected.

At least 4.1 million people in South Sudan are likely to be food insecure this year, a new report released by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) reveals.

The Wabenzi Election

According to the World Bank, almost half of Kenya's 41.6 million people live below the poverty line of $1.25 a day. 20 percent of Kenyans suffered from food poverty, such that their entire income is not even enough for purchasing food. Between independence in the 1960s and the 2007 election, Kenya's constitution was amended around 30 times, each time bolstering the power of the presidency at the expense of the judicial and legislative branches of government, and, ultimately, at the expense of the Kenyan people.

"Wabenzi" is Swahili  slang for those who own a Mercedes Benz. Fifty years after independence, the Wabenzis in Kenya are still in a class of their own. They can afford a decent meal in the upmarket restaurants in Nairobi's leafy suburbs; take their kids to schools abroad or in the local exclusive £20,000 term academies. When sick, they can jet out to Europe and the US for treatment and skip the crowded Kenyatta National Hospital. Although it is Kenya's largest referral hospital, it is under-funded and sees queues for hours on end of patients seeking medical attention. For the last three months, nurses in public hospitals have been on strike, and nobody seems to care. Shortly after independence in a swift and seamless transformation, the new public servants became flashy tycoons. They had the money and political power. Some of them had just arrived from the world's top universities or had managed to enter into the boards of blue-chip companies as a thank-you note for being loyal to the colonial regime. The Wabenzi and their children are party animals. In their parking yards, one can spot a wide assortmant of vehicles, such as Jaguars, Range Rover Sport, Land Rovers, Escalades, Mercedes Benz, BMWs and Hummers. These are the signature status symbols of Kenya's nouvelle generation. Some even own private helicopters, vintage vehicles, and real estate. And that is besides the thousands of acres of plantations that are cultivating either tea, coffee - or even simply lying fallow. Some are into the stock market and own major shares in leading companies.

They use taxpayers' money to live large. They love the thrill that accompanies this power status - motorcycle outriders, menacing soldiers, and ministerial Mercedes hurtling at speed. Kenya's political elite cling to their pay and to their allowances. For the lesser Kenyans it is austerity, but not the Wabenzi. Kibera is one of Africa's poorest slums. And yet last year, the country could afford to refurbish parliament with 350 seats, each costing about $3,000. That is the kind of opulence that the Wabenzi love. Only 10 percent of Kenyans lived in opulence, 33 percent barely eked a living while 57 percent live below the poverty line and in squalid conditions. It is the poor that  become pawns in a political chess match when the 10 percent return every five years in search of political power and might in the general elections. The country's leaders line their pockets while Nairobi's slums swell with the desperately impoverished.

 Kenya's capital streets are awash with red and orange. Red: The colour of TNA candidates Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. Orange: The CORD coalition of Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his allies. A small fortune is being spent to buy votes. "We have never seen a campaign like this," a taxi driver said. "There is so much money being wasted."

After the 2007 electtion as many as 1,400 people died in the span of 59 days, while 600,000 people were displaced from their homes. Kenya slipped dangerously close to outright civil war. Gangs of youths roamed through many of Kenya's slums, torching homes, as riots spread across the country. Adding fuel to the fire of unrest, news reports emerged showing police officers shooting unarmed protesters amid the chaos. a church in the northern Eldoret district was burned to the ground. It was packed with women and children. 17 were burned alive.

 "By this time, there was a great resentment and dissatisfaction among the people about having a leadership underwritten by corruption and corrupt networks," Kiama Kaara, a political analyst with Kenya's Debt Relief Network, told Al Jazeera. "There was a realisation among people that the leaders were not any different [from one another] and wanted to control, and to benefit from controlling the nation's resources for their personal benefit and their personal gratification. This built frustration for Kenyans across the board."

Source

Land grabbing - Ethiopian style

Despite the defence of land-grab by the Ethiopian embassy in a recent issue of the Indian newspaper, The Hindu, the  prime focus of the policy of the government of Ethiopia is NOT ensuring food security of its citizens but faciliating the export of food to accrue profit. Nor is the land being leased unused and mostly inaccessible. Nor is the re-location of people peaceful.

Over 80% of the 85 million population of Ethiopia live in rural areas, in settlements and villages, and work in agriculture. Many are small-scale farmers who, according to government figures, farm “eight percent (about 10,000,000 hectares) of the national land area”, and traditional pastoralists who have, for generations, lived simple lives. Huge tracts of agricultural land with water supplies are being leased to foreign companies for food export. The Oakland Institute, a US- based policy think-tank and leader in the field, have produced in-depth reports on worldwide land sales stating that, between 2008 and 2011, “3,619,509 hectares were transferred to domestic investors, state-owned enterprises and foreign companies”. Amounting to a third, if government figures are correct, of the land farmed by Ethiopians themselves, an area the size of a small country, e.g. Holland. The government proclaims land sales are part of a strategic, long-term approach to agriculture reforms and economic development, that foreign investment will fund infrastructure projects, create employment opportunities, help to eradicate hunger and poverty and benefit the community, local and national. What growth there will be will benefit onl the rich, privileged minority, mainly members of the ruling party.

With the coming of industrial-size farms in Ethiopia, local people, villagers and pastoralists deemed superfluous to the government’s, economically-driven development plans are being threatened, and intimidated by the military; forcibly displaced  their homes destroyed and herded into camps. Along with vast agricultural complexes, dams are planned and constructed, water supplies re-directed to irrigate crops, forests burnt, natural habitats destroyed. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced.

In Ethiopia, land sales are occurring in six key areas. Oromia and Gambella in the south, Amhara, Beneshangul, Gumuz, the Sidaama zone, or SNNP and the Lower Omo Valley – an area of outstanding natural beauty with acclaimed UNESCO World heritage status. Genocide Watch considers the Ethiopian government’s conduct in Omo and Oromia “to have already reached stage 7 [of 8], genocidal massacres” It is a regime whose loyalties rest firmly with investors, corporations, multi-nationals and the like, and who cares little for the people living upon the land, or indeed in the cities.

Conditional within land lease agreements is the requirement that the government will clear the area of ‘encumbrances’, meaning indigenous people. The national Villagisation program aims to move people from their ancestral homes, over four states, into large settlements is well under way, as these 2010 figures from Cultural Survival show, “by February 1987, 5.7 million people (15 percent of the rural population) had been moved into 11,000 new villages. By the end of this year, 10 million rural inhabitants (25 percent of the population) are expected to be villagized in 12 of Ethiopia's 13 provinces.” This mass movement is being carried out without consultation or compensation, contrary to federal and international law, which requires the free, informed and prior consent of the people, no matter the official claims to the contrary.

“Fear and intimidation” is endemic, not just in areas associated with land sales, but throughout the country; suppression is common and freedom of expression greatly restricted. The media – TV, radio, press as well as print companies, are state-owned, so too the sole telecommunication company, restricting access to the internet, which is monitored. The judiciary is simply an extension of government, lacking credible independence, the political opposition marginalised and completely ineffective. International media are frowned upon and, in some areas (e.g. Ogaden) completely banned.

What about the bumper benefits promised, particularly the numerous employment opportunities? The Oakland Institutes states, “the basic facts and evidence showing growing impoverishment experienced on the ground”. It turns out industrialised farming is highly mechanised and offers few jobs; overseas companies are not concerned with providing employment for local people and care little for their well-being, making good bedmates for the ruling party. They bring the workers they need, and are allowed to do so by the Ethiopian government, which places no constraints on their operations.


Full story here