South Africa V Big Pharma

South Africa slammed global drug firms over a covert campaign against its planned overhaul of intellectual property laws to favor cheaper generic drugs. It is not the first time drugmakers have clashed with Pretoria. A decade ago the industry was forced to climb down in a bruising battle with South Africa over AIDS drugs patents and access to generics.

The latest fight reflects tension between an industry that wants to protect its intellectual property, even as it pushes further into emerging markets, and governments from India to Brazil that are determined to increase patients' access to life-saving treatments. South Africa is in the final stages of implementing a new law that would allow generic drugmakers to produce cut-price copies of patented medicines and make it harder for firms to register and roll over patents. The policy would close a loophole known as "ever-greening" that allows a drugmaker to make minor changes to an existing drug or discover a new use for it, and then register it as a totally new find. Under current South African IP law, pharmaceutical companies are able to register drugs as new without being checked.

Pharmaceutical giants have drawn up a $600,000 publicity campaign to mobilize local and overseas opposition to the intellectual property changes. Prepared by U.S. consultancy Public Affairs Engagement for industry lobby Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South Africa (IPASA)  it outlines a plan to delay the reform at least until after South Africa's elections in early May by suggesting the new law would be politically damaging. It threatens that the drug companies would “take action by reducing investment”. IPASA members include Sanofi, Baxter International, Pfizer and Novartis.

Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi said  "This document can sentence many South Africans to death. This is a plan for genocide."

Gays to be jailed in Nigeria

Hundreds of men arrested and tortured by police as legislation criminalising homosexuality takes effect. It is the new law against fundamental freedoms.  It will affect health-care services to 3.4 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS as they will now be afraid to seek treatment in case people think they are gay.

In Nigeria a gay man has been lashed 20 times - the first conviction for sodomy since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a law criminalising homosexuality earlier this week. It contains harsh penalties for homosexual activity and membership in gay rights groups. “Persons who enter into a same-sex marriage contract or civil union commit an offence and are each liable on conviction to a term of 14 years in prison,” the law says. “Any person who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organizations or directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years in prison.”

Dorothy Aken'Ova, with the Nigeria-based International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, told the BBC, "What this act is saying is that they gay people do not deserve to exist,"

European Union Managing Director for Africa, Dr. Nicholas Westcott, has said "We are concerned about the human rights and freedoms of all Nigerians as enshrined in Nigeria's own constitution and as enshrined in international conventions to which Nigeria is a party. And our concern is that this Act contravenes some of those provisions and puts at risk some of the fundamental freedoms that all Nigerian people should enjoy - the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, etc. That is our concern.”

The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the Commission, Catherine Ashton, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said "I am, therefore, particularly concerned that some provisions of the Act appear to be in contradiction with those fundamental rights, which are themselves guaranteed by Nigeria's 1999 Constitution, and to be inconsistent with the legal obligations enshrined in a number of international agreements to which Nigeria is a party,"

UK Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Jeremy Wright, said: “The UK opposes any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Bill also directly infringes on fundamental rights of expression and association, which are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution and by Nigeria's international treaty obligations. We are concerned by the prospect this raises of further action against an already marginalised section of society."

An Islamic court in Nigeria's northern state of Bauchi has put on trial 11 Muslim men accused of being homosexuals in violation of their religion, a religious leader has told the BBC. Under Islamic law, a person can be sentenced to death by stoning if convicted of homosexuality.

Malawi's Tobacco Child Labour

 Malawi has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low export tariffs, cheap labour and lack of regulations. Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every best-selling cigarette brand available in Europe, Asia and the US. But few of the smokers who buy the end product know much about the conditions the tobacco they consume is produced under.

Malawi is one of the least developed nations in the world (ranking 153 out of 169 countries in the Human Development Index) with around half the population living below the poverty line of $1.25 a day and one of the highest numbers of child labourers in Africa – around 1.5 million.

With tobacco sales making up 70 percent of the country's income and a significant part of its industrial activity, it is sadly inevitable that many of these children (aged between five and 15) are being forced by economic necessity to work with their families in the tobacco fields, risking their health, safety, and future. There they are subjected to hazardous manual labour, physical strain, dangerous environments, and long hours; often charged with strenuous tasks such as clearing the land, building tobacco drying sheds, weeding and plucking raw tobacco.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs such as SOS Children, Plan International and others, when the children cut and bundle the tobacco leaves they are put at risk of absorbing toxic quantities of nicotine through their skin. Many suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate. Some are even given the task of applying pesticides with their bare hands – chemicals when handled incorrectly can cause serious neurological problems.

It also affects their development and education - children working in the fields cannot be at school - and so their involvement in the industry inevitably perpetuates a cycle of exploitation, illiteracy, lack of opportunity and poverty that will one day force them back into the fields as adults.

The cigarette manufacturers all insist that they are firmly opposed to the use of children working in their supply chain and that in Malawi. But critics claim that these initiatives are little more than window dressing from a multi-billion dollar industry that ultimately benefits from the country's low production costs.

Over the past two years only 49 tobacco farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi for using child labour. Most received a $34 fine.

They are masquerading around the issue," says Mathias Burton of Malawi's Economic and Legal Social Services Centre. "To ease their consciences, that's why they have this kind of stuff. To say they are fighting child labour. And when they sell their own products ... the profits that they make, what they give out in social responsibility to these organisations is nothing at all compared to what they make."

Dump the ANC !

Following on from the earlier call from NUMSA to disaffilate from the ANC, further developments have arisen.

In a speech to the eighth Pan African Congress at Wits University, suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said workers should consider how they were being represented in government.
“Workers around the world, not only in Africa, have always elected political elites that have implemented policies that do not serve their political and economic interests...Perhaps we need to think very hard about how we should politically organise workers to represent their own interests in the state”

Author and political commentator, William Gumede says “The ANC has unfortunately moved towards a leadership serving the elites and it is now difficult for ordinary rank and file workers to have a direct say in policy direction. Ordinary supporters are being excluded out of the economy while the elite live in a bubble. The social gap is becoming too wide.” He said the clash of classes was also playing out in the unions, which was why some of them, such as the National Union of Mineworkers, were under pressure. The conflict of different class interests could cause further fracturing in trade unions, in Cosatu and the ANC. Gumede estimates that about 40% of the ANC is deactivated at present – either through disillusionment, sidelining, factional battles or apathy.
 He said a strong Cosatu could have fought to take over the ANC from within. If that were not possible, the option was to move out of the alliance and lobby from outside. But, says Gumede, this is a “scary and difficult” consideration for anyone trying to chart a path away from the alliance. They would be cut off from patronage and resources from the state and state-owned enterprises, and would have to survive with no money for a while until they could establish themselves.

The Trauma of being a Migrant

"In South Africa this situation of forced labour is typical," explains Marija Nikolovska, project manager of irregular migration programmes for International Organisation for Migration (IOM) South Africa. "Migrants are unaware of their rights and are afraid to go to the police because they don't want to be deported or are afraid the police will not act." The migrants who manage to secure work often face exploitation, Nikolovska adds. "Those who find employment are paid less than South African workers and sometimes have their salaries withheld for months. If they protest they risk losing their jobs or being reported to the authorities."

Recent figures released by the South African authorities show that of the 2,000 illegal migrants repatriated each week, up to 20% are unaccompanied children. About 350-400 Zimbabwean children cross the border each day without passing official checkpoints, according to Save the Children Zimbabwe.

 While some malaishas (taxi drivers/smugglers) operate solely as middlemen, many are part of a network who rob, sexually assault or enslave the migrants.  Girls are sometimes forced to work as prostitutes, says Natalia Perez, programme director of IOM Zimbabwe. "Beitbridge and Musina are busy transit routes, many young girls work in prostitution where the risk of being exposed to HIV is high." Boys are also vulnerable and can be found begging, sleeping rough or in low-paid jobs. They are sometimes targeted by magumagumas (gangs of robbers) and face mistreatment by the police.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical organisation, more than 75% of the 4,000-5,000 migrants they treat each month have been raped while crossing the border, with nearly 60% violated by more than one perpetrator.

From here

Self-less Interests?

Japan has become the latest nation to join the scramble for Africa’s booty of natural resources.  Japan has announced $20 billion to match China’s $14 billion, which is also driving many others to step in with substantial contributions themselves so as not to get edged out. Japan was falling behind a number of rising countries in Africa”, including the Europeans, India, Brazil, South Korea and Turkey.  Prime minister Shinzo Abe described Africa as “the frontier for Japanese diplomacy”, in comments made to reporters.

Abe  announce more than 60billionYen ($570m) in loans to Mozambique to help finance a transport network to transport coal to a new export terminal. Last year Tokyo promised more than $30bn in aid to African countries over the next five years.  Mozambique intends to build four LNG units with a total capacity of 20 million metric tonnes per year by 2018. Japan is the world’s largest importer of LNG. The visit is intended to shore up the world’s third largest economy’s access to fossil fuels at a time when the Fukushima tragedy has forced Japan to shut down 50 nuclear reactors that accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s energy needs.

Abe stopped off in Abidjan, capital of Cote d’Ivoire, where he met leaders of the ECOWAS regional grouping and promised $ 83.4 million for counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel region.

But what is missing is any sustained effort to address Africa’s long-term problems such as poverty alleviation, getting self-sufficient in food production and bringing wars to an end.That is quite different from doling out money to governments for trade deals and UN votes. Economists expect Africa to create 54 million new jobs by 2020, but 122 million Africans will enter the labour force during that timeframe. Adding to this shortfall are tens of millions currently unemployed or underemployed, making the human and economic consequences nearly too large to imagine.

 Abe is led the first visit by a Japanese prime minister to sub-Saharan Africa in eight years to support Japanese companies’ investments to secure important natural resources. The top Japanese trading houses, or sogo shosha, have already started to pour billions of dollars into projects including Mitsui’s project in Mozambique to produce liquefied natural gas. Sumitomo and Mitsubishi are also targeting the region.  Hiroyuki Takai, head of research at Sumitomo, the Tokyo-based trading house, said the Japanese push would trigger some “competition between Chinese and Japanese companies”.

Not to be outdone by Japan’s diplomatic visit, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi started his visit to Africa, “China fosters relations with African countries based on the principle of “sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith” and tries its best to make contributions to the cause of peace and development of African countries,”

China has invested billions of dollars in the region, on top of billions more in no-strings-attached soft loans that have financed railways, power plants and other infrastructure projects across Africa. Chinese trade with Africa is far larger too, rising in 2012 to nearly $180bn, compared with $25bn for Japan. China arrived in Africa has so far built a ‘befitting’ headquarters for the African Union in Addis Ababa and several presidential palaces for African presidents in exchange for privileged access to the continent’s natural resources and manufactured goods markets.

In 2014, India will be hosting  the Third India-Africa Forum Summit. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking  to expand its sphere of influence in the western Indian Ocean facing the coast of eastern Africa, said that "as we strive to realize our due place in the comity of nations..it goes without saying that the realization of our goal lies in widening, deepening and expanding our interaction with all our economic partners, with all our neighbours, with all major powers."

 Africans continue to obey the commands of other peoples and nations telling them what to do.  Colonial governments once spread hatred amongst peoples to ensure groups did not unite to topple the colonial order, and the embers of their voices are today fanned by corrupt politicians who need ethnic solidarity to fill their personal and party coffers. This is one of the reasons foreign powers can so easily enter Africa and exploit its people. The energy that Africans should be investing to build up the continent together is being spent tearing one another down. It makes Africans cheat themselves and their fellow workers through bribery and corruption.

The Top 10 Dangerous Countries in Africa

10. Ethiopia

Ethiopia comes up at number 10 on our list of 10 most dangerous places in Africa. Ethiopia has been involved in a conflict with Eritrea for more than ten years. Eritrea got her independence from Ethiopia about 30 years ago following a prolonged fight for freedom. The Border disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been going on ever since Eritrea broke free from Ethiopia in 1991. The International Court of Justice had clearly defined the borders between the 2 countries but there is still a tense relationship between the nations. The Ethiopia have not fully withdrawn from the region.

There is also a group known as Oromo Liberation Front which has been labeled as outlaw and a terrorist organisation by the Ethiopian government. The organisation was started in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to promote self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call “Abyssinian colonial rule”

9. Burundi
For the past 15 years, Burundi has known political conflict and for more than a decade, the local and regional peace talks have been initiated. The international community other peace loving organisations have tried to find a way out of the endless Burundian conflicts but the outcome seems to be a worsening state of political, economic and social violence and inequalities. The misaligned political interests have fuelled these instabilities over the years.

8. Zimbabwe
Following the country’s presidential election in 2008 between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, his main rival, both claimed victory in the first round of elections, Zimbabwe has regenerated a wave of renewed violence and instability. with the establishment of a system with two-heads: president as Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister in 2009, the situation has eased off a little bit.

Zimbabwe Peace Project reported a 15% increase in human rights violations that were “directly linked” to the new push for polls in 2012 and 2 years earlier, attempts by the Prime Minister to develop the Constitution have been sabotaged by the camp of Robert Mugabe. Public meetings were banned, arbitrary arrests, looting and ransacking, have pushed the country into violence. In general, Zimbabwean government has remained a troubled coalition characterised by bickering and stalemate. The political impasse has impacted negatively on the benefits of a good governance and stalled Zimbabwe from operating in its full capacity. It has generally constrained peaceful political participation as well as economic progress.

7. Chad
Chad has drastically improved it’s position by striking a more healthy relationship with her neighbouring countries. In the recent past, Chad was politically insecure and volatile. Ethnic clashes, banditry and fighting between government forces and rebel groups contributed to a worsening security situation in the region. It was reported that an estimated 180,000 Chadians were forced from their homes within three years while 285,000 refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Darfur region of Sudan have fled violence in their own countries and live in refugee camps in eastern Chad. The instability also impacted some 700,000 Chadians whose communities have been disrupted by fighting and strained by the presence of the displaced.

6. Nigeria
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to over 155 million people is in the midst of political, economic and social instability. The north, central and south eastern parts of Nigeria are the most affected parts. In the recent times, there has been a sharp increase in religious conflict at the north of the country where the killings of Muslims and Christians have sent nearly 20,000 to their death within the last decade. There has also been an increase in acts of terrorism and inhumanity against government and public structures including churches carried out by a sect called Boko Haram.

The Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) operates in the southern part of the country, attacking the facilities and personnel of oil companies. Kidnappings of expatriates and attacks on oil pipelines are their predilections. The Amnesty programme initiated by the Federal Government seem to have successfully reduced these attacks on government properties But the country is facing a rising wave of kidnapping and corruption.

5. Libya
The crisis in Libya seized the attention of the international community and has been labeled a clear case for when timely and decisive response to uphold response in the face of an imminent threat of mass atrocities should occur. The protests led to the downfall of the authority of Muammar Gaddafi in the east. Since then, international intervention under the authority of NATO has still not managed to completely restore calm in the country.

4. Central African Republic
Despite the signing of a peace agreement in 2008, some groups have not signed the agreement and are still active. The security situation in the Central African Republic is growing more precarious by the day as an insurgent coalition advances toward the capital city of Bangui. In south-east, the troops of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony, continue unabated. This group is part of the most violent in the world, has expanded internationally and is present in the DRC and southern Sudan, where he is engaged in looting and abductions of civilians.

The Central African Republic has recently joined the list. Central African Republic faces a devastating humanitarian crisis that threatens to plunge the population even deeper into misery.

3. Democratic Republic of Congo
A series of landmark and peer-reviewed studies by the IRC and some of the world’s leading epidemiologists conclude that an estimated 5.4 million people died from conflict-related causes in Congo since 1998.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has faced a lot of border insecurity and violence within. The massive influx of refugees after the Rwandan genocide.

To the east, the Allied Democratic Forces-National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), Ugandan rebel movement, is in conflict with the Congolese government. This group is related to the Shabab Somali fundamentalist Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.

2 – Sudan
Sudan is a country that has suffered internal conflicts with serious political, security and humanitarian consequences over the years and the situation in has worsened from the past 2 years. Violence has flared along the border since South Sudan became independent last year. Conflicts have erupted in two border states where communities traditionally allied to the south found themselves north of the border after independence. The conflict in Darfur has killed about 300,000 people, including those due to famine and disease, and 2.7 million people have been displaced since 2003. The peace agreement signed in 2006 between the government and the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the strongest rebel groups, is fragile because all factions did not sign.

In the South, thanks to self-determination referendum in 2011, the conflict in Southern Sudan is in the process of healing. However, the situation in Abyei, remains uncertain.

1 – Somalia
For over 20 years, Somalia has been in the face of a civil war. There has been constant conflict between the Transitional Federal Government which is supported by the United Nations and several groups of Islamist rebels, some of which are close to al-Qaida.

The government of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed seems to control part of the capital Mogadishu, which happens to be the scene of regular fighting between both sides to maintain control.

With Somalia’s stability still foggy, over 20 percent of Somalis under the Office of the United Nations for Refugees (UNHCR) have fled the country controlled by fear.

Taken from here 

Africa's Next Top Model - Another Reality?

 

It all started with that extra faith as Aamito Stacie Queen boarded a bus heading to Nairobi-Kenya for the casting of first edition of Africa's Next Top Model (ANTM).
Next, she was on a plane to South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg) with 12 other contestants where the episodes of the reality TV modelling show were recorded. Right now, she is in the top three and a front-runner for the coveted title of Africa's Next Top Model. The other two models are from Angola and Nigeria.
The show premiered on November 10, 2013 on Africa Magic Entertainment. Supermodel Oluchi Onweagba, a Victoria's Secret model originally from Nigeria produces it. The grand finale takes place this Sunday live from New York.The show is similar to America's Next Top Model, a reality television show created by American supermodel Tyra Banks.
In the run-up to the finals, Aamito beat the two contestants in the photo shoot challenge. Lucky for them, none was eliminated; so, all the three are in the run for the crown. Former Calvin Klein model-turned-photographer, Josie Borain and Remi Adetiba, a New York-based creative director, photographer and The New York Times freelancer, plus Oluchi are the show's resident judges.
Queen, as the six-foot Aamito is commonly referred to by her friends in the Kampala fashion circles, has done exceedingly well through out. She has won four challenges and has held second or third place positions in the rest of the challenges during the show's past nine episodes. Joram Muzira, who has worked with her at his model management agency (JMM), is confident of her win.
"Her chances are very high because she has been doing very well in most of the challenges," he told The Observer.
Already hopes are high in the fashion fraternity in Uganda especially the models. She could be the person to start a rebirth and recognition of models in this country. Aamito has worked with different designers in the region including Ras Kasozi, Kwesh, Gloria Wavamunno, Adele Dejak, Sylvia Owori, and Mustafa Hassanali, among others.
The competition's winner gets a one-year modelling contract with New York-based modelling agency DNA, a product endorsement deal and a cash prize of $50,000.

UPDATE: 
 After an emotional, 9-week rollercoaster, the final 3 were whisked away to New York City, where they had to impress the high-powered agents at one of the world’s top agencies: DNA Model Management. In the end, Aamito from Uganda reigns supreme, and now stands as the first-ever Africa’s Next Top Model. Congratulations, Aamito!

from here and here

War On Kenya's Indigenous Communities

The Kenyan government has sent police troops to Embobut forest area (in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Western Kenya) to forcefully evict thousands of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sengwer and Cherangany communities from their ancestral forestlands.

Reports from community members in Embobut tell of a chaotic situation, as people are threatened and are fleeing their homes with their children and belongings in fear of their safety. 150 police and forest guards including also 30 General Service Unit riot police are massing to carry out the evictions from the three locations of Tangul, Kipsitono and Maron near the forest. More troops may join.

Such a forced eviction would not only be a severe violation of the Kenyan Constitution and international law on human rights, and on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use, but would also be in contempt of an injunction secured at the High Court in Eldoret which forbids any such evictions until the issue of these communities rights to their land is resolved. Article 63 (d) of the Kenyan Constitution recognises the rights of communities to own ancestral lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherers. 

An International Appeal from environmental and human rights organisations from Kenya, Africa and all around the world highlights this violation of these communities' rights. The Appeal was sent on Monday to the Kenyan President and Government as well as to the United Nations authorities concerned with Human Rights and biodiversity, in order to protect the rights of the indigenous communities.

The forced eviction of these indigenous communities is illegal - and even more so if it is carried out through violent acts such as the burning of homes, school uniforms, books and means of livelihood. Such forced evictions have been carried out repeatedly (most recently in May 2013 despite the interim injunction), but this time the Government is serious about permanently removing communities (and this, despite not having undertaken any meaningful attempt to secure peoples free prior and informed consent to such a process).

Evicting these indigenous communities of Embobut against their will from their ancestral lands would be a severe human rights violation. One that the government has tried to justify through public misinformation:

• While the government says that all people to be evicted – including the indigenous inhabitants of the area - are ‘squatters', the indigenous inhabitants of the area are the opposite of 'squatters'.
• While the government claims it is evicting the indigenous communities in order to protect the forest biodiversity, Kenya's official commitments (internationally recognised by the CBD, IUCN, etc.) require the state to secure the forest biodiversity by supporting – not destroying - practices adapted to its local regeneration, including the practices of indigenous communities which have sustained their ancestral forests for centuries.
• The government says it has given compensation for the ‘evictees', but it is recognised internationally and under the Kenyan Constitution that due compensation for evicting indigenous communities from their ancestral lands requires due procedures of consultation and the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of the indigenous communities. Such consultation has not been undertaken, and such consent has not been given. Instead, there has been conflicting advice from Government authorities with some saying (off the record) that the money is given as compensation for the harm caused by past evictions and burnings of homes; while others saying (on the record) that all inhabitants have to leave. If some indigenous inhabitants have accepted compensation for the past harms they suffered in the earlier violent and harsh displacements that certainly does not mean agreement to being forcibly evicted again.

Instead of evicting indigenous communities from their ancestral lands without due consultation, consent and legally approved compensation the government needs to sit down with the communities to find a way of protecting their rights to care for their forest lands in compliance with their traditional indigenous knowledge, innovations and practices and through that to support them to protect their forest. This is required by Kenya's constitution, including in constitutional provisions that make Kenya's commitments under international law an integral part of the law of Kenya. This includes laws in the UN and African regional human rights systems, as well as relevant law on conservation of biodiversity and environment. The State is responsible for respecting the life, culture, will and knowledge of Embobut's indigenous communities, whose life has been adapted through centuries to gain their livelihoods from the regeneration of the Embobut forests and from respecting and protecting these forests on which they depend. 

The forced eviction in Embobut would violate not only the rights of the indigenous communities, but also the many human rights of other vulnerable inhabitants of the area. It is also wrong to treat as illegal 'squatters' those people who have moved into Embobut because they have lost their homes from the effect of landslides or due to past electoral violence, and who therefore have had no place to live. The government is responsible for securing the safety, homes, livelihoods and human rights of these already displaced vulnerable victims as well. This requires much more than giving them a small amount of money and blaming them for not surviving on it.

In conjunction with the authorised UN agencies and international community, but above all through dialogue with the communities themselves, the government and Parliament can duly fulfil Kenya's constitutional and international obligations on indigenous communities' rights, and on their continued conservation and sustainable use of the biodiversity of their ancestral forest lands (see the Appeal). The government needs to determine with all the inhabitants who is willing to leave (and on the basis of what financial or other support), and who is willing to stay (and what sustainability bylaws they wish to codify to ensure their continued use of their forest lands is sustainable for themselves and their future generations). 

Further information here

Ethiopian Migrants Deported From Saudi Arabia

They went in a bid to escape poverty, but few really succeeded, even if they did find work. Many were abused by their employers. Now, 144,000 Ethiopians have returned home, deported from Saudi Arabia, which began a crackdown on undocumented foreign workers in November 2012.
The authorities in Ethiopia were expecting migrants to return, but, anticipating a mere 30,000, they set aside just US$2.6 million to help with reintegration.

“The assistance they are receiving now is short-term, but once they get back to their homes, they will need long-term assistance, like finding jobs and reintegrating into the community, and the government must work towards these goals,” Sharon Dimanche, from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told IRIN.
The government has also banned its citizens from travelling to the Middle East, a move migration expert say will not only lead people to head for new destinations, such as Sudan, but could flout international laws on freedom of movement.

According to Chris Horwood, of the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS), the main drivers of migration from Ethiopia are “endemic poverty caused by economic inequality, poor education and training options.”
He added, “We also know about pressures on access to natural resources and the impact of climate change making some areas very fragile. So people migrate as a coping strategy to poverty and lack of opportunity, and some migrants from Ethiopia particularly identify political oppression (particularly the Oromo).”

In 2010, Ethiopia came up with its Growth and Transformation Plan, a five-year blueprint for economic growth. “Four million jobs have been created in the first three years… We hope, if this trend continues, we will have a substantially reduced number of migrants going out of the country very soon,” Abdulfetah Abdulahi, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, told IRIN.
Yitna Getachew, of IOM, agreed that such initiatives could help stem migration, but said that the effects were unlikely to be immediate. “It takes time before people can begin to feel comfortable with economic prospects at home. The early stages of economic growth - the World Bank estimates that it will exceed 7 percent in Ethiopia between 2013 and 2015, while in 2012, its economy was the 12th fastest growing economy globally - currently being experienced in Ethiopia are likely to increase cases of migration,” said Getachew. “People who hitherto had no money are beginning to get an income, which they can invest in migration by bribing smugglers, migration officials and buying fake documents.”

Read the experiences of individual deported migrants here

Child Labour Linked To Economic problems In Zimbabwe

The company closures, downsizings and retrenchments that have led to the demise of Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector in the past decade, and particularly in recent months, are forcing parents and guardians to send their children out to work to augment household incomes, say labour experts and economists.

An assessment of the manufacturing sector’s performance by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), a membership organization that represents the industry, described the situation as “a crisis” and noted that many companies had downsized or closed their doors in 2012. A 2013 report by CZI found that businesses were operating at less than 40 percent of capacity.

The National Social Security Authority, a government body, estimates that between July 2011 and July 2013, 711 companies in the capital, Harare, went out of business, causing 8,336 workers to lose their jobs.

Chronic power shortages, a loss of markets and a lack of capital to invest in new technologies and machinery have been forcing businesses to scale back or close down in the last decade, but according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the rate of retrenchments increased in the second half of 2013.

This followed the general elections in August, when President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party won a landslide victory. A coalition government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that had helped stabilize the economy after a protracted period of political and economic instability, was dissolved.

“Children, together with women, are bearing the brunt of company closures that, according to findings by our retrenchment committee for the period from July 2013, have resulted in an average of 300 workers being laid off per week,” said Japhet Moyo, ZCTU’s secretary general.

“The situation is likely to get worse in 2014, and while we don’t have figures for children who have been forced to get into commercial work, the figure is certainly set to be higher than the child labour statistics that are officially available,” he noted.

Zimbabwean law, which defines children as persons under 18 years old, prohibits any form of employment for children under the age of 13, while those between 13 and 15 years old can work only as supervised apprentices. Children aged between 16 and 18 may be employed commercially, providing they are supervised.

However, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 13 percent of Zimbabwean children are engaged in child labour, which the International Labour Organization defines as work that is harmful to children’s physical and mental development and interferes with their schooling.

A global child labour index for 2012, released in late 2013 by Maplecroft, an international risk analysis firm, ranked Zimbabwe among the 10 worst performers, out of 197 countries surveyed worldwide, for the frequency and severity of its reported child labour incidents.

“Whenever companies downsize or fold, household incomes suffer and the tendency among parents and guardians is to look to children to help raise money for upkeep by forcing them to engage in commercial work,” said Moyo. He noted that child labour is common on farms and sugar plantations, and in the retail and mining sectors, while girls are often employed as domestic workers – all occupations “where the wages tend to be very low”, he added.

The US Department of Labour’s 2012 report on child labour in Zimbabwe noted that children engaged in mining “work long hours and use dangerous chemicals such as mercury, cyanide and explosives”, while those involved in fishing “perform demanding tasks, and face dangers such as drowning”.

“While the law is clear on child labour, policing is the problem because the relevant departments lack manpower, and government has no alternative ways of fighting poverty among affected families,” said Moyo.

 Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist and former chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), said retrenched employees often lose numerous benefits besides their salaries. “In most cases, when they are retrenched, breadwinners would have [already] gone for long periods without receiving their salaries, [they] can no longer access medical aid and, in some cases, they forgo school fees allowances they would have been getting,” he said.

“While companies have been struggling over the years, even under the Government of National Unity (formed in early 2009 and dissolved in August 2013), it seems an unusual number have been folding since last year’s elections.” Makwiramiti said many other companies are struggling to pay employees their full salaries, while public service employees often receive such poor salaries that they rely on their children to supplement the household income, and even top managers who have fallen on hard times are doing the same.

Full article from IRIN can be found here

The International Criminal Court Fix

A recording of  radio program where Edward S. Herman says that Desmond Tutu is wrong to support the International Criminal Court, given its bias for prosecuting only Africans and only those Africans not working with the United States.

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-edward

How To Rob Africa

Pirate Fishing

"Families have lived off fish for generations," says Issa Fall, who co-ordinates the Fisherman Committee "Fish stocks have been reduced, it's become scarce."

The ocean off West African coasts is home to one of the world's richest fishing grounds. From Morocco up north down to Guinea, sardines, grouper, snapper, shrimp and mackerel are part of a rich marine fauna exploited by fishing vessels on an industrial scale.

"These underwater grounds are now at risk of collapse," warns the Senegalese Fisheries Minister, Haidar El-Ali.

But in an incredibly valuable industry, fines are no deterrent to illegal fishing; foreign vessels always come back and can easily cover or change their identification markings. "Fines represent only a fraction in their operational costs," says Steve Trent, executive director at the UK-based campaign group Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF).

 El-Ali says "Vessels we caught pay a fine and go, but they do it again,"

EJF researchers estimate that West African waters have the highest levels of illegal catch in the world, at about 37% of the region's total. Up to 26 million tonnes of fish, worth more than $23bn, are estimated to be lost annually to what is officially called "Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated" (IUU) - or pirate fishing.

In Sierra Leone alone, one of the world's poorest countries still recovering from civil war, the EJF estimates losses at $29m each year. Senegal's  losses are about $312m a year because of illegal fishing by foreign trawlers, quoting USAid figures.

Maria Damanaki, the EU commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, has recently blacklisted Guinea, Cambodia and Belize. These three countries, some of the most valuable sources of seafood, are now banned from exporting fish to the EU for failing to act on pirate fishing. South Korea has been officially warned it may soon end up on that list. Vessels registered there have been illegally operating off the coasts of West Africa repeatedly.

Financial Imperialism

The European colonists conquered and plundered Africa because they had far superior technology. To this very day, European nations continue to plunder Africa because they posses advance weapon. This time the weapon of choice in the re-conquest of Africa is financial warfare; it is no longer military force. The end result is the same: Western corporations profit, whilst Africa remains underdeveloped and over-exploited. Financial imperialism is the system through which a dictatorship of Western capital exercises authoritarian control over African economies in order to perpetuate the exploitation of Africa, for the benefit of the West’s capitalist class.

Africa is spectacularly rich, yet the natural capital that is extracted from above and below continues to enrich, not Africans, but the people who facilitate Africa's impoverishment: Western capitalists. White minority governments, which ran dictatorships in African capitals, have now given way to white dictatorships directed from Western cities. European nations use debt as weapon against Africa. Debt exploits Africa by ensuring that funds are diverted from local developmental investment strategies towards interest payments into the banks. Africa spends more on debt interest payments to creditors in Europe than it does on investing in education and healthcare.

The West’s tactic is to use the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to load African economies, governments, companies and families with debt, siphon off their income as debt interest payments and then foreclose when African debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting African governments gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public infrastructure, and other property in the public domain. Indebting African companies enables creditors to seize employee pension savings. Profit is indifferent to human suffering.

The main weapon in the West’s arsenal of financial imperialism is the promotion of neoliberal economic policies through Western institutions, like the IMF and World Bank, as well as through local puppet political parties.  Neo-liberalism is the promotion of a combination of counter-developmental economic policies, such as privatization, austerity and structural adjustment that put the interests of foreign capital over local labour.

Corruption is often considered to be one of the greatest diseases plaguing Africa. Truth is, corruption and financial imperialism go hand in hand: corruption is the basis on which the comprador bourgeoisie can arise, prepared to sell the rights of their people to imperialism, provided they receive their cut. In short, financial imperialism fuels corruption just as much as corruption fuels financial imperialism.

Adapted from here

Land Grab in Madagascar

When a Chinese businessman first approached Malagasy farmer Jean Manantsoa, last year with an offer to lease his family rice fields, Manantsoa had no idea of the untapped pockets of potential natural wealth beneath.
"It was a surprise that there was gas beneath my land. Before we thought this was a wonderful thing," says Jean Manantsoa, remembering when he was first told of the riches beneath his rice.
But since I gave it to the Chinese it has been a disaster."

Feeling pressured by the representative of the company, Madagascar Southern Petroleum Company (MSPC), Jean signed an open-ended lease for five million Malagasy ariary a year (£1,420). He received the first year's payment but nothing this year even eight months after the 1 April deadline. Jean now claims his paddies are ruined; a metal drilling bore and concrete slab sits on his rice field and the surrounding brown earth is churned into dry clods.

An investigation by the Forum for African Investigative Reporting (FAIR) has found a Chinese company in Madagascar, with strong links to the government, is accused of unlawfully acquiring land, blighting the environment and leaving farmers destitute. In previously unpublished documents, Madagascar's National Environment Office, ONE (office national pour l'environnement), slams MSPC, owned by one of China and Madagascar's most powerful mining billionaires, Dr Hui Chi Ming. Hui is currently Madagascar's consul in Hong Kong and advises the prime minister and president on economic and Asian affairs. "He's the top of the top", says one Malagasy official who dined at Hui's Hong Kong residence close to when the philanthropist and billionaire appeared on Forbes's 2009 "400 Richest Chinese List" with an estimated wealth of $815 million.

Hui's MSPC is a subsidiary of Hoifu Energy Limited recently announced plans to increase profits through growing "the portion of oil and gas businesses". Neil Bush, the 58 year-old brother of former U.S. president George W. Bush, is one of eight directors.

Madagascar is a resource-rich country but the island's oil and gas wealth has been largely unexplored and extractive industries made up just 0.53% of GDP in 2011, the last assessed year by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

At the turn of the century, officials granted 20 onshore blocks on the country's west coast to a handful of Chinese, British, Australian, American, Indian and Malagasy companies.
Among them was MSPC, which scooped up a 9,260 square kilometer plot — larger than Devon and Cornwall combined — known as Block 3112. Eight years on, Block 3112 is promising and should start producing gas in 2017, according to Hery Zaka Razafindrakoto, the deputy head of petroleum at Madagascar's oil and gas regulator, OMNIS. But since July 2012, the ONE has visited MSPC's Mahaboboka site and questioned the company about what the government regulator identified as "grave failures committed by MSPC with regard to environmental legislation in force." One experienced government official says: "The worksite, from an environmental perspective, was a dump. It was in the worst condition that I had ever seen."


"The Chinese lied to the villagers," says Mahababoboka's Mayor Emile Rakotondravelo from his second-floor office, a concrete building where broken green lino covers the floor.
"The company said that I had already agreed to sign the contracts," something the mayor denies. Without the mayor's consent and signatures, the contracts are invalid under Malagasy law.
"I told them I wanted to legalise the contract before the Mayor," says Manantsoa. "But the company said they had already had discussions with the mayor and gotten his approval."
Accusations of land grabbing in Madagascar are not new. But ONE's response to MSPC is rare, according to insiders, reflecting the increased attention to foreign ownership of the country's natural resources.

"Land and resource grabbing in Madagascar is far from experiencing a downward trend," says Giulia Franchi, land campaigner with the Italian NGO Re:common. "Whether this happens through lease or sale contracts, the actual results for local communities is the same: their land is being grabbed and they lose any possibility to sustain themselves."

Despite MSPC submitting a document confirming it owns no land in the Mahaboboka area "The Chinese bought land through a female employee," claims another official with detailed knowledge of the case. Land registry documents show the purchaser of 74.48 acres and 2.1 hectares at Ankida is Ms Brigitte Monique Andrianifahanana, manager of Gold (Grand Investment Limited). Hui holds 21.98% of shares in a company that last year increased its stake in Gold Grand to 40%. Andrainifahanana is an employee of Hui's company Banque Industrielle et Comerciale de Madagascar and denies any link between Hui and her purchase.

From here 

Nigeria - More land Grab, More Displaced

The North-Eastern Nigerian State of Taraba is on the verge of handing over 30,000 hectares of land to Dominion Farms. The Memorandum of Understanding of the public-private partnership was signed in February 2012. The mega-project is expected to reduce Nigerian rice imports by 15%. But what is been described as the prelude to Nigeria's rice revolution could result in livelihood losses for about 45,000 inhabitants who will have to vacate their lands. This intervention also raises concerns about the depletion of an important grazing area: Mutum Biyu Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State, where the land being given to Dominion is located, is said to metamorphose into a "Lagos of Cows" during the Harmattan season.

Dominion Rice Farms and Integrated Ltd. aiming to cultivate and process mainly rice on an area of 30,000 hectares has taken off by importing equipment and establishing an administration at the site. The company is expected to reduce Nigeria's rice imports by 15%, thereby creating 15,000 jobs. The Taraba State government promises to build a school, a hospital and a road that connects the area of Gassol with the highway between Wukari and Jalingo. There are also plans to reactivate existing silos and Gassol's water treatment plant. The rosy picture of progress arriving in Gassol further includes talks to supply the community with electricity from a hydro power plant that Dominion intends to build. Only 10% of the farm is going to be turned to a plantation and the remaining land is meant to be given out to locals participating in a contract farming scheme - a term suggesting socially inclusive development.


The fertile land at the edge of the Rivers Benue and Taraba is reported to have "laid fallow for decades" and to "belong to the Federal Government" by a Lagos based daily. A visit on the ground revealed that the land is inhabited and farmed by indigenous people who claim ownership of the land through customary rights. Nevertheless, the His Royal Highness, Alhaji Idris Chiroma, Lamido Gassol, who is the custodian of the land agreed to the handover.

In May 2012 a land acquisition notice - oddly marked "secret" - directed affected land property owners to take part in an assessment for compensation. As a result, about 3,000 holders of land titles were identified. However, according to Chief Alhaji Idris Chiroma, the area contains up to 45,000 inhabitants.

• "I am informing you; in Nigeria we don't have a place that we can call our own, especially in Taraba and Gassol. We are extending our cries to the government to look into this topic with compassion. Help us, so we also have a sense of belonging as other Nigerians. We really know we are Nigerians, but the way it seems to us is that government treats as non-citizens. We want the government to know that we are proud to be Nigerian citizens. Whatever has been done in Nigeria should also be extended to us. The cattle routes should be open because that causes the problem between cattle graziers and farmers."
  

His Highness, Ardo Guruza, Mutum Biyu

Future will tell if displaced and landless indigenous people trying to feed their families will have no other option than to work for Dominion. In that case, the proposed contract farming scheme could turn out to be rather exploitive instead of tackling poverty. Anyways, it is doubtable if the work of a farmer in a highly mechanized contract farming scheme is going to differ from the one of a usual plantation worker. According to journalist Mary Mwendwa, Dominion Farms in Kenya employs women largely as casual laborers with an average wage of 1.82 dollars per day.

View complete article here

Nigeria: Landgrabbing for Nigeria's rice revolution

Peter Jopke

The North-Eastern Nigerian State of Taraba is on the verge of handing over 30,000 hectares of land to Dominion Farms. The Memorandum of Understanding of the public-private partnership was signed in February 2012. The mega-project is expected to reduce Nigerian rice imports by 15%. But what is been described as the prelude to Nigeria's rice revolution could result in livelihood losses for about 45,000 inhabitants who will have to vacate their lands. This intervention also raises concerns about the depletion of an important grazing area: Mutum Biyu Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State, where the land being given to Dominion is located, is said to metamorphose into a "Lagos of Cows" during the Harmattan season.
Taraba/Gassol, Mutum Biyu L.G.A. - Dominion Rice Farms and Integrated Ltd. aiming to cultivate and process mainly rice on an area of 30,000 hectares has taken off by importing equipment and establishing an administration at the site. The company is expected to reduce Nigeria's rice imports by 15%, thereby creating 15,000 jobs. The Taraba State government promises to build a school, a hospital and a road that connects the area of Gassol with the highway between Wukari and Jalingo. There are also plans to reactivate existing silos and Gassol's water treatment plant. The rosy picture of progress arriving in Gassol further includes talks to supply the community with electricity from a hydro power plant that Dominion intends to build. Only 10% of the farm is going to be turned to a plantation and the remaining land is meant to be given out to locals participating in a contract farming scheme - a term suggesting socially inclusive development.

- See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22995#sthash.aawICYWM.dpuf

Sierra Leone Farmers Against Corporate land Grab

On December 9, 2013, a meeting was called in Pujehun District over the lease of 6,500 hectares of prime farmland in this southeastern part of Sierra Leone. Local sources said elders called the meeting to allow people to again express their grievances to the Paramount Chief over the lease of land to the Socfin Agricultural Company.

Hundreds were waiting in the village of Libby Malen for the chiefdom authorities to arrive when they learned that nine of their fellow villagers had been beaten and arrested by the police en route to the meeting. More than three hundred people immediately left the meeting to go to the police station in nearby Sahn and demand the release of the villagers.
 They were met along the way by an armed contingent of police who fired tear gas and live bullets into the crowd, leaving many people with serious injuries. One person was shot in the neck and at least 57 people were arrested and badly beaten. Shortly afterwards, a group of thugs, who witnesses report may have been police and/or company representatives, attacked villagers in Libby Malen itself, forcing people to flee into the bushes.

For some time now, those working with the local communities have warned the government and the company over the deteriorating situation in Pujehun.
“The community people are starving at the moment," Frank Williams, networking officer for the NGO Green Scenery, told GRAIN in a November interview. Williams is also the coordinator of ALLAT – “Action for Large scale Land Acquisition Transparency’’ – a civil society coalition formed in 2012 as a watchdog on land issues. "They don't have enough land to do their farm work. Their lands have been taken away from them. The jobs which the company has offered them... they are being paid less than $50 a month. [...] So these are all issues for the community people. We see future conflicts if the government does not come in at once to address these matters.”

Pujehun District, in southeastern Sierra Leone, was badly affected by the civil war which ended in 2002. Today, the district is one of several parts of the country where the government is seeking to attract foreign investment to set up industrial oil palm plantations. But local communities are rejecting the handing over of large tracts of land to foreign companies.
Two companies – Socfin, the local subsidiary of a Luxembourg-headquartered corporation controlled by the Bolloré group, and India-based Siva Group/Biopalm Star Oil – have between them acquired rights to an area of nearly 90,000 hectares across five chiefdoms in the district.
The affected villagers say no proper consultations were held to enable community members to understand the deal before they were required to sign documents, and many are refusing to give up their lands.
The incident in December is only the latest in a series of hostile and increasingly violent reactions by the authorities to communities' resistance to the loss of their land.

In December 2012, 101 members of land-holding families in the Pujehun district wrote to Sierra Leone's Human Rights Commission complaining about the lack of consultation, the destruction of crops and land, and persistent harassment by the district's Paramount Chief, the police and Socfin personnel. Local NGO Green Scenery also carried out a fact-finding mission into the land deals in the District and published a report.
Socfin's local subsidiary responded by filing a suit for defamation against the NGO.
And then in October 2013, says Williams, the company accused several community members of destroying palm trees belonging to it.
“Six people were arrested,” says Williams. “The charges against them – one is incitement, two is conspiracy and three is destruction of company properties. Those are the complaints made against those six arrested by the Socfin company.”
They were held for several weeks before being granted bail at the end of November. One of the six was among those arrested outside the police station in Sahn on December 9th.
Williams says that the community members are committed to stopping the company, despite the violence and intimidation they face. He shares the story of Safiya Vandi, who refused to allow her land – sold without her consent – to be destroyed to make way for a vast oil palm plantation.
“With strong heart and strong mind, the woman stood in front of the bulldozer so that they could not clear her land,” Williams said. “And her interruption stopped the work for that day. And cases like this may likely come up frequently, because community members' complaints are not being listened to.”


This is the third of a series of interviews about resistance to the expansion of industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa.
Members of communities affected by these monoculture plantations and civil society organisations from Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia met in Calabar, Nigeria from 2–5 November 2013. They shared testimonies and analysis of the consequences of the rapid and brutal expansion of monoculture oil palm plantations by multinational companies in different communities and countries.

From Grain here

Modern Life...No Thanks

 Socialist Banner adds yet another post to its list protesting the treatment of Bushmen. 

There are an estimated 100,000 Bushmen across southern Africa, mainly in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. Thousands of Bushmen lived in the vast expanse of the Kalahari Desert for many millennia. But today most have been moved, many argue forcibly, to government-built resettlement camps far from the reserve.

New Xade, a resettlement camp an hour's drive from the nearest town, Ghanzi, in western Botswana. It is the new home of the Basarwa - Kalahari Bushmen. They do not take much pleasure in this honour.

Sisters Boitumelo Lobelo, 25, and Goiotseone Lobelo, 21, are kneeling in front of a basin of dirty water, washing their children's clothes. They speak fondly of life in the reserve, where they would wake up every morning and join the women in the village in collecting berries, nuts and roots to eat. Their eyes fill with anger when they speak of their life here, a desolate village half a day's drive from their original home, which is now part of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

“I miss my home and the way we lived. Life was easy, there were lots of fruits, animals and there were no bars and no beer. Now we are lost," says Goiotseone. She also remembers the day they were forced to leave "The police came, destroyed our homes and dumped us in the back of trucks with our belongings and brought us here. They dumped us here like we are nothing,"

These two are the new generation of Basarwa: they go to school and have learned English and the Tswana language, the most widely spoken in the country. But they say this new life has come at too high a price. "We are getting Aids and other diseases we didn't know about; young people are drinking alcohol; young girls are having babies. Everything is wrong here," Boitumelo says.

Unemployment is high and this community has no expertise to speak of, or at least none that they can use in the outside world. The village's liquor shop has no shortage of customers. It is not uncommon to see young men stumbling out of local watering holes in the mid-afternoon.

When the Bushmen were relocated, each family was given five cattle or goats to encourage them to become farmers. "If you push somebody to a certain kind of lifestyle that he doesn't know, he will be facing a lot of difficulties," says one bushman farmer, Jumanda Galekebone. "Our people don't know how to look after the cows when they get sick, they don't know about diseases of cattle like foot and mouth disease," he explains.

 Modern life has not worked for them. "This life hasn't improved any of their lives. We still get a lot of people going inside the park to hunt and they get arrested. Some of us here are facing court penalties for hunting. It just proves that you can't force change on people."

For a people who have spent most of their lives roaming the land freely, hunting wild animals and gathering berries and nuts for food, this place offers them no chance to live off the land.

"We are used to feeding ourselves - now dependant on government hand-outs, we are being made lazy and stupid," says Mr Sesana. "Now we are being treated like dogs. The dog is the only thing that can't bring its own food home. It has to wait for its owner to give it some food." "The only place where you find Bushmen now in our traditional clothes surrounded by traditional huts is in the local tourism villages," says Mr Sesana. "We are worried that in the future, there will be no-one who would be able to practice the Bushman culture unless they are parading in front of tourist for companies who are using them for business," he says.

The Botswana Bushmen have been at odds with the country's government for more than 15 years, embroiled in several legal battles over their right to live inside the game park - and to continue their traditional lifestyle as hunter-gatherers. At some point they were denied access to water in the reserve. Their boreholes were capped and they were banned from drilling more. The Botswana Appeals Court, in a 2011 judgment on the matter, described the plight of the Bushmen as a "harrowing story of human suffering and despair" and ruled that they be allowed access to water. In 2006, another court ruled that the government's refusal to allow the Basarwa into the CKGR was unconstitutional. A handful have been allowed by officials to return to the park but only those whose names appeared in the court papers. Today many say court orders in their favour have been ignored by officials. They need permits to enter the reserve and are not allowed to hunt. Those found hunting face arrest.

Why were they relocated? The government says the restriction of people on the land is intended to preserve the wildlife and the ecosystems of the vast reserve, which is slightly bigger than Denmark. But human rights groups and the Bushmen believe the real reason is more sinister Mining is one of Botswana's key industries, with diamond mining the leading source of revenue. The ancestral lands of the Bushmen lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. They believe they were relocated to make way for a multi-million dollar mining project. A London-listed diamond producer has begun plans for production about 45km (28 miles) from the eastern border of the reserve. Construction of the first phase of the project began in 2011. It is expected to begin production in 2014, with an initial output of 70,000 tonnes of rough diamonds.

Some believe that the Bushmen's way of life does not belong in modern Botswana society. Some officials have referred to them as "remote area dwellers", a "Stone-Age" people who should be pulled into the 21st Century. President Ian Khama,  has announced that hunting in controlled areas would be outlawed by January 2014. He said the Bushmen would be taught "non-consumptive" ways of using their resources.

 Bushmen argue that their years of living in harmony with the environment prove that their ways are ecologically sustainable. They say instead that this move is an attempt to do away with their culture.

Anti-poaching atrocities in Tanzania

In October 2013, President Jakaya Kikwete ordered more than 2,300 security personnel from Tanzania’s People’s Defence Force, local police and special anti-poaching militias, and wildlife rangers to step up enforcement of a ban on elephant and rhinoceros poaching, which has been growing in recent years. But in November, Kikwete was forced to end the campaign, dubbed Operation Tokomeza, under heavy criticism.

“The anti-poaching operation had good intentions, but the reported murders, rapes and brutality are totally unacceptable,” Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda told the parliament in December.

The scandal has led to the sacking of four government ministers – of tourism, defence, livestock development and home affairs – for failure to rein in the ministries they were leading. Tourism minister Khamis Kagesheki said in October that poachers engaging in the ivory trade should killed “on the spot”.

 The anti-poaching campaign aimed at reducing the illegal ivory trade, has also brought allegations that security forces committed rape, murder, torture and extortion of locals. A parliamentary inquiry found 13 people were murdered and thousands of livestock – the livelihood of many – were maimed or killed.

Presenting a report on the abuses in parliament, the chairman of the committee, James Lembeli, said his team proved beyond doubt that members of security forces spread terror and committed “untold” atrocities against innocent civilians.

The raids forced some people to abandon their homes for fear of being harmed. Abraham Kafanobo, the deputy chairman of  Minziro village in Kagera region near Lake Victoria , told IPS that most residents had since fled and said they feared to return even after the operation had been suspended.

Lawyer and human rights activist Issa Shivji criticised the military and called for a swift investigation of the alleged abuses, saying criminal charges should be brought against security personnel who took part in the operation irrespective of their rank. “It’s not only the shame, it’s a big tragedy to the nation which requires a collective assessment of the people to ask ourselves, where are we going? What prompted security organs, which have the mandate to protect lives, dignity and respect of the people to act so irresponsibly?”

Africa Sinking

War the grim reaper continues to decimate and harvest millions of lives across the failed continent of Africa. On one side you have the tyrannical power elite with money and weapons and on the other side you have the oppressed, helpless and vulnerable.

The United Nations has dispatched a record number of ‘peace-keepers’ in Africa in recent years, deploying soldiers to trouble spots such as the Central African Republic and South Sudan. There are now more U.N. peacekeepers in Africa than at any time in history — roughly twice as many as in the early 1990s. As of the end of November, more than 70 percent of the 98,267 U.N. peacekeepers deployed globally were in sub-Saharan Africa, according to J. Peter Pham, executive director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

Yet the “blue helmets” and thousands of other soldiers sent by the AU and African regional groups have failed to prevent fresh spasms of violence. The peace-keeping forces have cost billions of dollars.

The conflicts across Africa is about a war of resources, it is about oil and strategic minerals.

Poverty and inequality blight much of Africa. Amid Africa’s new economic growth and dynamism, too many of its people — what the economist Paul Collier calls the “Bottom Billion” — continue to suffer from poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and curable diseases. Africa scores poorly in the United Nations Development Programme’s latest Human Development Index — only Mauritius, at 80, and Seychelles, at 46, rank in the top 100 countries. In other words, while some people are making the most of the new opportunities, the gap between them and those left behind has widened.

 Africa is rich in natural resources, culture and in its people and the rest of the world and Africans themselves must be reminded of this and we must continue to set the facts straight.

Rather than Africa rising, it is more Africa sinking deeper into the swamp.

Corruption In West African Countries

Poor public services in many West African countries, with already dire human development indicators, are under constant pressure from pervasive corruption. Observers say graft is corroding proper governance and causing growing numbers of people to sink into poverty.

 More West African countries were perceived to be highly corrupt in 2013 than the previous year due to the effects of political instability in countries such as Mali, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, according to the corruption index compiled by the global watchdog, Transparency International

Bribery, rigged elections, shady contract deals with multinational businesses operating in the natural resources sector, and illicit cash transfers out of countries are some of the more common forms of graft. In sub-Saharan Africa, 90 percent of countries are seen to be corrupt, the watchdog said.
 “There is no doubt that corruption affects pure and sustainable development in West Africa, and there is no doubt that it most often affects the poorest and weakest portions of society.”
As much as US$1.3 trillion has been illegally transferred out of Africa in the past three decades, said a report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based advocacy group monitoring illicit financial flows.

Nigeria’s oil industry has been plagued by graft allegations that gave rise to complaints of neglect and a rebellion by people in the oil-producing southern regions. A draft report released in May 2013 by Liberia’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative noted that nearly all resource contracts signed since 2009 had violated regulations.

 Many political campaigns in Africa are fraught with allegations of irregularities and malpractice. “Not only are elections prone to corruption in the form of vote-rigging and fraud-monitoring, but by the way in which our political elites become entrenched in power,” said Tendai Murisa, director of TrustAfrica’s Agriculture Advocacy and Financial Flows programme.

“Corruption creates a way to perpetuate the regime, and one of the ways they perpetuate the regime is to buy votes, so that really affects the quality of democracy,” said Murisa, noting that a government deemed corrupt inspires little trust in the people, whose voices are often silenced or ignored when they speak out against graft.

Because the poor rely more on public services, they spend the largest percentage of their income on bribes to officials and even school administrators, so corruption pushes the most vulnerable further into poverty. In Sierra Leone, 69 percent of people think the police are corrupt, and in Nigeria the figure rises to 78 percent, said UNODC’s Lapaque.

  “If we just got back 50 percent of what we are currently losing to corruption, it could mean things like advancements in education or better road systems. We could make sure our children are back at school, we could make sure we are maintaining social welfare systems, and we could make sure our healthcare delivery systems are working properly.”


More here

Swaziland's Government Gets Poor Marks All Round

A large majority of people in Swaziland go to bed hungry and blame their government for failing to address their food needs, according to findings from the first formal survey to determine how Swazis view their standard of living.

The results from Afrobarometer, an independent research project that measures public attitudes on social, economic and political issues in 35 African countries, reveal a chasm between the daily struggles faced by most Swazis and the ability of government to address persistently high unemployment, chronic food insecurity and poor service delivery.

The government, which received mostly poor or failing grades for service delivery and corruption, has responded frostily to the survey findings released in December 2013.

Respondents gave poor marks all around to the government’s economic performance, with 58 percent rating management of the economy as "very bad". Two-thirds said government efforts to improve the lives of the poor and create jobs were “very poor”, and 77 percent felt that the authorities had done nothing to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

Participants also expressed disapproval of the job performances of their elected officials, the police and the anti-corruption board, as well as of their Prime Minister, who was appointed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

Government spokesman Percy Simelane, who is employed by the prime minister’s office, declined to comment on the survey findings, saying, “We don’t know the methodology.”

However, the research methodology was published along with the survey findings, explaining that 1,200 adult Swazis had participated and that respondents were equally divided between men and women, with those residing in rural areas outnumbering those living in urban or peri-urban areas by three to one, in keeping with the country’s largely rural demographics. The country’s four regions were about equally represented.

One of the key questions was: “In the past year, how often have you or your family gone without enough food to eat?” Nineteen percent of respondents answered “always” and 46 percent answered “several times”.

Local NGO workers who deal with food security issues commented that the survey findings confirmed their own assessments based on anecdotal evidence. “The polling doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know from conditions on the ground, but it does provide a statistical foundation for our observations,” said a food distribution manager who works for an international aid organization and asked not to be named.

“We get government officials who say the poverty and hunger situation is exaggerated by NGOs. They deny a problem so they don’t have to spend money on it and accuse NGOs of saying things are bad to get more donor funding,” the manager said.

Swaziland has sufficient arable land to overcome its chronic food insecurity, but according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), it lacks the necessary agricultural and land-use policies to empower small-scale farmers.

Two-thirds of Swazis live on communal Swazi Nation Land, which is held in trust by King Mswati. Households are allocated plots by their local chief. Without title deeds, smallholder farmers lack collateral to secure bank loans that would allow them to make their land more productive by purchasing better seeds, fertilizer and irrigation equipment.


Swaziland has not produced enough food to feed itself since the 1970s. It depends on international food aid to bridge a gap that varies from year to year, ranging from two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 million people in 2007 to about one-tenth of the population in 2013, after a better than average rainfall, according to WFP.

“Two out of three Swazis do not get enough to eat. This has been known to government for some time, but government doesn’t see this as a systemic problem but something that can be remedied with food aid,” said Thabo Nxumalo, an agronomist and agricultural consultant in the Manzini region.

“Food aid is supposed to be a temporary solution to an emergency situation. Government sees food aid as a means to avoid having to put into place policies to put an end to food insecurity,” he alleged.

Nxumalo commented that if Swaziland is to overcome its food shortages, in the absence of government willingness to make fundamental changes to the land-use policy, it will be up to international donors to address the problem in the same way that they responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic by financing improvements to the country’s healthcare system.

Donor aid has vastly improved Swaziland’s healthcare system, and a majority of the survey respondents said they had benefited from better service at clinics and hospitals.

“It took the AIDS crisis to improve healthcare. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has really boosted the country’s health system. The AIDS crisis would be out of control without this assistance,” said Valarie Dlamini, a healthcare consultant in Manzini.

The survey revealed that many Swazis also experience frequent water shortages. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they lived without water in their homes - either piped in directly or from a well or borehole on their property - and 29 percent said they seldom have water in their homes, likely because nearby water supplies have dried up.

“That half of Swazis do not have adequate water is surprising because Swaziland’s climate is quite rainy most of the year, and the country is crossed by large and small rivers that flow all year round. This is a matter of service delivery. Government is not providing irrigation and water storage facilities,” said Amos Ndwandwe, who works with the Ministry of Natural Resources to drill boreholes in rural areas.

Two-thirds of respondents said it was “very difficult” to get water and electricity connected to their homes. But those who had these services said paying for them was also a pressing problem.

Nearly half of those surveyed said their families had gone without an income on one occasion over the past 12 months, and 38 percent said they had gone without an income several times during the past year.

Fifty-six percent of respondents described economic conditions in the country as “very bad”, and half considered their own economic situation as “very bad.”

Dlamini expressed surprise that this percentage was not higher, considering that two-thirds of Swazis are estimated to live in chronic poverty, existing on less than US$2 per day. “However, the survey was of people’s perceptions, and many Swazis are used to the way they have to live,” she said.

“In terms of lifestyles, it isn’t much different from the way they grew up and their ancestors lived – mud huts without water and sanitation, food security dependant on the rains, and little by way of government services.”


Posted from here

CAR Catastrophe

Violence in Central African Republic has uprooted nearly a million people, a fifth of the population, and is hampering aid efforts, particularly in the capital Bangui, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said. In the capital alone, more than 510,000 people are displaced - equivalent to more than half the city's population, UNHCR said. Just over half of them are children. The number of people sheltering at a makeshift camp at the international airport has doubled in the past week to 100,000. 

A flare-up in violence between Muslim fighters and Christian militias has displaced more than 200,000 people in the past few weeks alone, leaving a total of 935,000 homeless. Some 240,000 refugees have fled to neighboring countries.

The deployment of 1,600 French and nearly 4,000 African Union peacekeepers has done little to contain the tit-for-tat violence between religious communities.

In Bossangoa, some 300 km (190 miles) north of Bangui, most of the town's Christian population have long since left their homes to move into a camp by the town church, housing some 40,000 people.

A Happy New year to All

We all love that time just before midnight when we cuddle our sweethearts and friends and wish each other a happy new year. We ignore reality. For one time in our crazy and apparently pointless life inside capitalism we celebrate just being alive. One of the reasons that we cannot be too joyful is that we remember what a shit society we all live in.

Happy New Year" we all said to one another on Hogmanay. Even though we meant it sincerely what are the chances of it becoming a reality? Is it likely 2014 will be any better than 2013, or more likely worse?

Make the new year one to organise – to organise for change. In groups and meetings and on the internet we need to band together to fight against the reason most of us fell fearful or miserable - the market economy itself and the politicians who oversee its operation. Without this, our "Happy New Year" greeting will be the empty platitude it usually becomes every year.

Our New Year's wish is that we will not accept the lie that this capitalist system is as good as it gets, that it's "natural", that there is no alternative to "practical politics". The alternative is called socialism. As socialists we want to participate in a progression of the global community to free humanity’s real human potential. Socialists  don’t accept leaders. Begin to free yourself, be confident, be disobedient; think for yourself, ask questions and inquire about the socialist case. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win.