Africa needs socialism, not capitalism

Is capitalism really going to be the answer?

Sub-saharan Africa has one of the highest number of hungry people and has a growing youth population in need of jobs.

“Africa is not poor financially but it needs to get its house in order,” Stephen Karingi, director of regional integration, infrastructure and trade at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), told IPS during the commission’s Ninth African Development Forum, “For too long we have allowed the narrative of Africa to be one about raw materials and natural resources coming out of Africa, yet Africa can take advantage of its own comparative advantages, including these natural resources, and become the leader in the value chains that require these raw materials.”

The continent must embark on reforms to capture currently unexplored or poorly-managed resources,”Carlos Lopes, ECA executive secretary, said.

We need to get our policies right and allow for the kind of investments that people [can make] in Switzerland,” macroeconomic policy division head at ECA, Adama Elhiraika, told IPS.

“Given the size of Africa, there is need to promote free movement of capital, which is as important as the free movement of goods and services in boosting trade and investment.”

Research by the ECA shows that the total illicit financial outflows in Africa over the last 10 years, about 50 billion dollars a year, is equivalent to nearly all the official development assistance received by the continent.

This blog has often exposed the exploitation and poverty of workers in South Africa, the most developed country on the continent. Is that really the template other African workers wish to follow and not to be more ambitious and aspire towards a genuine social society?

The possibilities exist for the transformation of Africa. Northern Ethiopia suffered significant soil erosion and degradation — with farmers driven to cultivate the steepest slopes, suspending themselves by ropes — before attempts were made to counter ecological destruction. Since then approximately 250,000 hectares of degraded land in Ethiopia’s highland areas of Amhara, Oromia and Tigray — in which over 50 percent of Ethiopia’s 94 million people live — has been restored to productivity. This has been achieved through promoting sustainable land management practices such as the use of terracing, crop rotation systems, and improvement of pastureland and permanent green cover, benefiting more than 100,000 households.  Its holistic approach increases water availability for agriculture and agricultural productivity. The introduction of improved cooking stoves combined with newly established wood lots at farmers’ homesteads reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pressure on natural forests. Ethiopia’s abundance of waterways offer huge hydro-electric generation potential. By focusing on cities, land use and renewable and low-carbon energy sources, while increasing resource efficiency, infrastructure and stimulating innovation, it is claimed a wider economy and better environment are achievable for countries at all levels of development.

Getahun Moges, director general of the Ethiopian Energy Authority, tells IPS. “I believe every country has potential to build a green economy, the issue is whether there’s enough political appetite for this against short-term interests.”

Socialist Banner would describe this official as being overly optimistic. It is not merely short-term political governance that holds back Africa but the longer-term and deeper-rooted nefarious effects of world capitalism and global corporations.

Fifty Years On The Colonised Kenyans' Struggles Continue

The 1200 acres of Twiga Farm lie in the heart of Kenya in Kiambu County, northeast of Nairobi. The area, with its green hills and fertile fields, first attracted land grabbers in the form of white settlers during the colonial regime. The Kikuyu, who had lived and cultivated these lands for centuries were forcibly reduced to being workers on the white farms. The British established a property registration system that individualized and commercialized land - contradictory to the Kikuyu tradition of sharing and valuing land. Most Africans had no access to or representation in this system, and so no means to protect their land. The legacy of this system is still being felt in many of the disputes over land seen since independence. 

In 1963, the year of independence, the Kenyan government took a loan from the British government to buy back their land from the colonialist. By then Kenya was well set on its capitalist path and the largest chunks of land went to the new Kenyan political elite, who had the resources and power to buy it. It is no coincidence that the current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the first president Jomo Kenyatta - himself a Kikuyu - is believed to own the largest parcels Kenya's privately held land today. Other Kikuyu, who were the largest group that were dispossessed, were relocated to other areas of the country. This seemed to work until 1992, when the end of the Cold War prompted the spread of neo-liberal democracy through an influx of conditional aid money combined with national demand for democracy.

In the first multiparty election since 1964, the political elite fomented issues over land to rally support along ethnic lines. The results were instances of Post- Election Violence since 1992 with the worst happening in 2007/2008. The clashes, however, produced Internally Displaced People, who fled their lands and the mismanagement in resettling them or rather in addressing the malfunction and injustice of the land tenure system caused further tension. Lastly, the era of investment has fully set root in Kenya, causing legal and illegal evictions, as land becomes lucrative to national and international elites to extract resources and other investment projects. Yet, citizens have been convinced to believe that land issues are a matter of scarcity and rivalries between communities, rather than as a result of land grab by national and foreign elites, companies or as part of skewed 'development schemes'.

The case of Twiga Farm can be understood against this background. After Kenya got its independence, the British settler who 'owned' the land in the colonial system, gave it back to the people who had worked for him instead of paying out their retirement funds. The people of Twiga divided the land among them, built a school and a dispensary, and made a little town. The farm was even allocated a voting station since 1964- a sign that it was recognized as a legitimate community. However, Twiga Farm residents were never issued with modern title deeds. This was not unusual at the time and indeed is the case for many communities, especially those whose land was not seized under colonialism as it was a long way from the capital city, or not particularly fertile. 

It is especially these communities that are in danger of land grabs today, as new technology (e.g. in oil exploration) has made their lands lucrative for investment. The thousands of acres fertile land on Twiga Farm worth billions of Kenyan Shillings (millions of dollars) were bound to attract the interest of other forces. 

In 2004, the company Mboi Kamiti claimed ownership over the land. The police threatened residents with eviction, but they responded by taking the case to court and the chief magistrate ruled in their favour declaring the residents as legal owners by right of adverse occupation. The company, however, did not give up. They went back to court in 2012, ready to dispute the original ruling, but their connections in political ranks seemed to have spared them the bothersome process. On December 20 2012 residents of Kiambu were surprised by bullets flying over their heads and bulldozers demolishing their houses. Eyewitnesses report planes flying over the maize fields, spraying bullets. Four people were shot that day and close to 4000 families displaced. The Provincial Commissioner, the local mayor and police officials at scene accused the residents of having illegally built on the land to justify the evictions. Within 6 hours of the eviction, the police themselves built a police station out of trailers and iron tents on the property. Many of the displaced people were elderly; people who have been born on the land and cultivated it their whole lives. In the course of a single day, they and their families were ejected, and robbed of shelter and livelihood. Some were forced to set up camps by the roadside, and are still there today. 

In a global neo-liberal framework that demands pro-corporation, pro-profit development lead by investments, they are only one example of the massive land grabs and evictions taking place in Kenya and in Africa. The collusion of local, national and international money and power is more and more legalizing the disowning of people of their lands in the name of economic growth, development or investment. 

the whole can be found here

In a global neo-liberal framework that demands pro- corporation, pro- profit development lead by investments, they are only one example of the massive land grabs and evictions taking place in Kenya and in Africa. The collusion of local, national and international money and power is more and more legalizing the disowning of people of their lands in the name of economic growth, development or investment. It is a powerful partnership to stand up against. - See more at: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/24039#sthash.ofj3wdGA.dpuf

South Africans Going Hungry

 One in four people in South Africa do not have enough to eat, and half the population is at risk of hunger, despite the country producing more than enough food. Despite the nations’ farms producing enough calories to feed every one of its 54-million citizens, half of South Africans either face hunger or are at risk of hunger.  To cope, people skip meals, eat smaller portions or make do with cheap, poor-quality food.

According to Oxfam, low incomes, rising costs, a lack of access to productive resources and climate change are amongst the reasons causing 13 million people to go to bed hungry. One family of four was found to live on just R6 (USD$0.54) a day.

 “The children wake up hungry in the middle of the night. At times we feel it would be better if someone adopted them to give them a chance in life,” says Elzetta Vooges, 23, from the Eastern Cape. Elzetta describes feeling she is “rated the cheapest of the cheapest”.

Women and girls face hunger more often than men. They earn less than men for the same work, cannot work as many hours and find it harder to get jobs.  Despite this, they are often responsible for providing food for the family.

In the nine municipalities the price of staple foods, like maize have increased. Electricity prices have escalated by over 200% cumulatively since 2010, forcing people to choose between food and fuel.  The inequality of access to food across South African households is stark - the poorest spend 50% of their incomes on food whilst the richest 10% of the population spend only 10% on food, meaning any increases in prices hits the poorest pockets the hardest.

Access to food is also limited by food retailers’ control over pricing and availability. Five retailers control 60% of the formal retail market, leaving small and informal traders finding it hard to compete.  The food industry has been plagued by collusion and price fixing scandals. Prices are inflated whilst farmworkers often struggle to survive in meager wages, or face losing their jobs completely. Without access to land, water and  tools many poor communities don’t even have the ability to produce their own food.

 Changes in the climate are now taking its toll and that means some cannot grow or store food as they once used to.  “We used to eat fresh food from our gardens, but now it’s impossible because of the high temperatures that make it impossible for us to work in our gardens” explained Community member from Eastern Cape.

Oxfam’s Rashmi Mistry said: “The right to sufficient food is enshrined in the constitution but government policies have failed for one in four South Africans.  October has been adopted by the government as food security month but just increasing production and creating one giant food mountain will not help the poorest and does not go far enough to address the root causes of hunger.  We need better implemented policies that are developed with those most affected by hunger and backed by legislation that holds everyone to account for people having enough to eat.”

From here

Corrupt ZANU-PF Linked Public Officials Behind Illegal Structures

Thousands of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare and surrounding areas are facing eviction from their homes as local authorities embark on an operation to demolish all illegal structures. At the end of last month, city authorities turned 70 residential and business buildings into rubble overnight in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza, 25km north of Harare, and served 324 settlers in the high-density suburb of Glen Norah with 48-hour eviction notices. 
However, the demolitions in Glen Norah did not proceed, as residents armed with axes, knobkerries and other objects faced off with police who eventually retreated.  Last week, hundreds of houses in Epworth, a high-density settlement southeast of Harare, were also demolished before a high court ruling on 10 October granted residents a temporary reprieve.

A government audit of illegal structures made public in December 2013 found that more than 14,000 residential stands in and around Chitungwiza had been illegally sold by housing cooperatives, councillors and village heads, all of them with ties to Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF. Much of the land where stands were illegally created for the building of homes and businesses, had been earmarked for other purposes such as for clinics, schools, cemeteries, roads and wetlands.
Following the release of the report, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Deputy Minister Biggie Matiza was quoted in the state-owned daily, The Herald, as committing to a “well organized, humane” process in demolishing the illegal structures that would ensure all affected families were offered alternative land.

However, residents like Eleanor Magaya, whose house in Chitungwiza faces demolition, have not been offered alternative land. “I will not leave my home,” she told IRIN. “I am living in fear that the demolishers can come and I can’t even sleep. They have served us with a seven-day ultimatum to vacate the area as it is reserved for recreational purposes and built on wetlands.”Magaya showed receipts of payment she made for the stand to former ZANU-PF Chitungwiza Councillor Frederick Mabamba, who was behind one of the housing cooperatives identified in the government audit as illegally selling stands in the area. “We were even given the go-ahead to start building and occupy the land before the general elections [in July] last year,” she said.

 

read more here

 

 

Africa: We Don’t Want Aid. Please Keep It For Your Local Poor!

By: Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN

 

 

Africa: We don’t Want Aid. Thanks.
Europe: No, No you don’t understand you need Aid.

The most fierce defendants of Aid to Africa are now mostly non-africans, while most africans are asking to stop it.
Take the example of one small east african nation Eritrea. They declared self-reliance and shut all NGOs and relief organization offices.
They refused to accept aid. Since then they’ve started building their country and have good results.

“Keeping with its self-reliance policy, the government of Eritrea stopped requesting any financial assistance from the United States since 2005, and fully cut-off all third party NGOs that were financially sponsored by the United States after 2006. The Eritrean government believes that foreign assistance breeds a culture of dependency that shackles African countries into a cycle of poverty”.
One Eritrean official declared “Aid only postpones the basic solutions to crucial development problems by tentatively ameliorating their manifestations without tackling their root causes. The structural, political, economic, etc. damage that it inflicts upon recipient countries is also enormous.”  

But it doesn’t came without cost. The nation paid a big cost. The western countries started bulling and demonizing the government.
According to wikileaks, once in 2008, Hilary Clinton was found to say, “Eritrea is bad example of good governance”.
The BBC vested journalist Ed Harris warned “Self-reliance could cost Eritrea dear“.
The Economist ridiculed the country  “A myth of self-reliance: Eritrea’s people pay the price for their government’s pride“
What a bad example Eritrea is showing!
What if more African countries would follow their example!
Self-reliance ideology is a threat to the well proven exploitation scheme in place around the continent.

The country ended up in economic sanctions under the pretext that the country is helping alshebab in Somalia. But the truth is pretty clear Eritrea stands against all forms of neocolonialism, political, economical, etc.
In a previous post I’ve called on Africans to Kill The NGOs, Chase The Charlatan Experts, Be Wary Of IMF & World Bank, because the hard truth about aid is this:
The mission of the fisherman is not to feed the fish. If the Fish doesn’t Understand that, It’s the Fish problem. If it’s Free, you are the Product!
And, as Thomas Sankara put it “He who feeds you, controls you…”

Obviously, if foreign aid would develop any place, Africa will be the most developed continent in the world.
International AID is currently doing more harm to Africa than good. It became the main tool used by foreign governments and organizations to corrupt the African elite, and get them to behave so irrationally toward their own populations and the basic interest of their countries.
Aside corruption and the criminality, International Aid is the root of the 5 Stars colonization disease that cripple the African elite which dislikes the responsibility and the self sacrifice that comes with being in control of a nation destiny. As far as they enjoyed the status offered by their positions, they never liked the responsibilities demanded by the jobs, therefore they use international aid programs as substitute to their responsibilities.

If Africa needs any aid, the most urgent one is to get rid of the 40 billions corruption industry (called International Aid) that shackles its youth and elite, cultivates and maintains the beggar mentality.

Africans don’t want aid. Please keep it for your local poor! Help your neighbors in the West!

taken from here

 

Eritrea's Mining Industry

The small east African country of Eritrea has started a mining industry and is doing it right. To start with Eritrea is receiving 40% of the profits generated by its first gold/copper mine.

Compare this to Tanzania where Anglo-American mining company operates one of the worlds largest gold mines and pays a whopping 4% royalty to the government.

Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the USA forced sanctions against Eritrea through the UN Security Council in 2009, not to punish Eritrea for allegedly supporting “terrorism” (i.e. Al Shabab in Somalia) but in an attempt to sabotage the start of Eritrea’s mining industry.

40% vs. 4%? Small wonder that Eritrea’s deal threatens western interests for if the rest of Africa takes note and begins to follow suit in the deals cut allowing exploitation of the continents resources Pax Americana and its vassals are facing a serious problem.

From Thomas C. Mountain who has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006.

Read it all here

Mozambique's Peasant Union Vs The Great African Landgrab

Maputo -- With a shimmering coastline stretching for more than 1,500 miles along the Indian Ocean, heartland game parks rivaling the Serengeti and a cornucopia of natural resources -- located mostly in land used by humble farming communities -- Mozambique is getting quite a lot of attention these days as one of Africa's most upcoming investment hubs and in vogue destinations. Investors have not wasted any time in carving out their stake in the country two decades into the relative stability following a 16-year civil war on the heels of independence.

The cash-strapped Mozambican state technically owns all of the land within its borders, offering leases that are renewable up to 99 years to foreign governments and corporations for agribusiness or extractive industrial megaprojects. One such example is ProSavana, a Japanese and Brazilian-led development project with the blessing of the Mozambican government. ProSavana has earmarked land in the Nacala Corridor spanning three provinces and affecting 19 districts for monocrops such as soy for export.

ProSavana, not unlike related land deals for coal and gas extraction, comes with hefty promises of economic growth marked by mass job creation and export potential. But under the surface, investments all too often uproot lives and livelihoods for those who depend on small-scale farming, fishing and pastoralism -- more than 70 percent of the population in the case of Mozambique. Many point to these projects as undisputed resource grabs woven into the fabric of a greater neocolonial project in Mozambique and throughout Africa.

"The idea of mass job creation is a myth," said Vicente Adriano, staff researcher for the Mozambican Peasant's Union (UNAC), "The bottom line is that these projects create dependency within the class that has been historically, and continues to be, neglected by government policies and development plans." As a social movement, UNAC members pride themselves on being a revolutionary bunch. "Mobilization through resistance creates alternative forms of political sovereignty," Adriano offered.

It was in that spirit that UNAC brought both its lead organizers and vulnerable farmers from each of Mozambique's ten provinces together in Maputo on October 1st and 2nd for its third annual peasant-led international conference on land. The conference came as the culmination of a series of regional Mozambican gatherings, where delegates shared concerns and discussed crosscutting strategies as means of opposition to land and resource grabs.

"Our land is being occupied without our consultation," shared Helena Terra, a peasant from the central region, an area marked by small-scale vegetable and grain production that is now threatened by massive foreign-owned eucalyptus crops and coal exploration in residential areas. Terra explained that the once potable water in her village was now polluted by industrial activity, and unsafe for consumption. Water is not her only concern. In 2015, new coal projects seek to displace at least a hundred families -- but with the help of fellow UNAC organizers, Terra is undertaking legal measures to attempt to recover the land.

"United as farmers, we have to solve these problems ourselves, and not wait for outsiders," said Augusto Mafigo, UNAC's president. The agricultural group's tactics -- from agroecology for food sovereignty to agrarian reform -- are grounded in political education and horizontal learning exchanges among its members, as well as with other African and international movements. Last week's conference featured a presentation from the Venezuelan ambassador, representing a country that has been working to radically reorient its food system to serve its poor majority. Another example was an intervention on seed saving and agrarian transformation from neighboring Zimbabwe Small Holder Organic Forum (ZIMSOFF), which UNAC works closely with through their joint participation in Via Campesina.

Now the largest transnational agrarian movement in the world, Via Campesina has member organizations in 73 countries -- representing over 250 million peasants -- that fight for access to and control over land and its resources. "Via Campesina is a connection to what people want, as opposed to the very different reality of what is happening on the ground," said Renaldo Chingore, a leader in both UNAC and Via Campesina at the Africa regional level. Ten years ago, UNAC became Via Campesina's first African member. Today it plays a headlining role in supporting its regional and global growth, at a time when Africa is a priority for outreach and expansion -- due in large part to land and resource grabs such as those in Mozambique redefining the norm.

Against such policies and sizeable odds, peasants throughout Africa are determined to hold onto -- quite literally -- the roots of their ancestors. UNAC's experience in the Mozambican field may just provide a game plan for doing so.

from here

Ebola and American humanitarian intervention

Control Grab

The Policy Coordinator on EU Agrofuels Policy Roman Herre argues that land grabs should be called “control grabs,” seeking not merely land, but “the power to control land and other associated resources such as water in order to derive benefit from such control.” It is increasingly true that without any sort of global accountability, speculation and land grabs in the Global South is becoming the insurance policy for anxiety over a pending European financial collapse. At the same time, both ecological crisis and human rights catastrophes have exposed the underbelly of the financial “great game.”

In Kenya, for example, the World Bank has funded the displacement of thousands of Indigenous Sengwer people in order to pursue a development regime that includes the environmental conservation of the Cherangany Hills, the Sengwer’s homeland, as a kind of indulgence for the sins of deforestation, industrial pollution, and other environmental problems. According to the World Bank, the conservation would build “institutional capacity to manage water and forest resources, reduce the incidence and severity of water shocks such as drought, floods, and water shortage in river catchments, and improve the livelihoods of communities participating in the co-management of water and forest resources.”

After restructuring the project in 2011, the World Bank acknowledged that they “would not be able to implement the land related commitments,” effectively shirking responsibility to the Sengwer, even in the extremely modest form of land-titling. The UN identified numerous issues with the dispossession, but according to the Forest Peoples Program, a management response from the World Bank leaked earlier this week is rife with denial, proposing a basic training for staff in Kenya rather than forwarding a rational response plan.

From here

South Sudan - The Man-made Famine

In South Sudan President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar are seen by many as dragging the country towards the abyss. Thousands have been killed and nearly two million have fled their homes since their war broke out last December. Oxfam and other agencies have warned that an expected upsurge in violence could wipe out recent gains in food security and push the number of severely hungry people up by a million in the first three months of 2015. Describing it as a shift from crisis to catastrophe, they say parts of the country could slide into man-made famine early next year. Nearly 100,000 people are crammed into UN compounds across the country for their own protection, often in inhumane and unsanitary conditions. But the biggest crisis in Akobo, he says, is food security. Harvests, markets and trade routes have been disrupted. One in three children are acutely malnourished, with consequences including increased vulnerability to malaria and failure to attend school. A small paracetamol tablet has risen in price from 10 to 25 South Sudanese pounds (roughly $3 to $8). Food is also scarce.

Peace remains a distant prospect, with Kiir and Machar seemingly hellbent on a military solution. Kiir told the UN general assembly last month: “The conflict in South Sudan is purely a political struggle for power, not an ethnic conflict as reported.” Yet violence has broken out along ethnic lines in many parts of the country, pitting forces loyal to Kiir, a Dinka, against those of his former deputy Machar, a Nuer.

Koang Rambang, Akobo’s county commissioner, predicts famine and even genocide said  “People call us the rebels but this is the resistance movement to the onslaught, the killings by Salva Kiir. I have no interest in rebelling to go running in the bush for no reason. But if someone wants to kill me because I am Nuer, then I have no choice.”
While in predominantly Dinka areas of South Sudan there are similar accounts of brutal treatment at the hands of the Nuers.

 A report last month by the Enough Project noted: “The country’s competing privileged elites are sacrificing their own people’s lives to secure the political and economic benefits – including massive state-corroding corruption – derived from control of the state.” Political and military leaders maintain “lavish homes” in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa and Australia, the report continued. “Families of the leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties are living in neighbouring countries and their children are attending the finest schools available. Meanwhile, the education system back in South Sudan has collapsed.” The Enough Project has called for punitive measures including seizing the homes, bank accounts and shell companies of anyone undermining the peace process.

Tariq Reibl, head of Oxfam’s programme in South Sudan, said: “If famine comes to South Sudan it will come through the barrel of a gun. This is a man-made crisis, not one caused by the vagaries of the weather, and though humanitarian aid is vital it cannot fix a political problem.
“The international community is much better at saving lives than it is at helping solve the political problems that put lives in peril. Nine months of the softly-softly approach to peace negotiations has failed. If the international community really wants to avert a famine then it has to make bold diplomatic efforts to bring both sides to end the fighting.”

The failing aid

$250bn (£157bn) of financial assistance pledged to fight poverty between 2000 and 2012 never left western donor nations.  The advocacy group ONE said that one-sixth of the total money promised in aid was actually spent on debt relief, administrative costs or was spent hosting foreign students and refugees.

 Collectively donor countries were spending 0.29% of national income on aid, well below the UN target of 0.7%. The report said that western aid was not being targeted at the least developed countries (LDCs). Donors spent 0.09% of their aid budgets in LDCs in 2012, compared to the UN target of 0.15-0.2%.

“LDCs remain highly dependent on aid, which accounts for over 70% of their external flows and is equivalent, on average, to half of their tax revenues”, ONE reports. It called for 50% of donor financial assistance to go to the world’s poorest nations.

 African governments were not meeting their own commitments to allocate sufficient public spending to areas such as health, agriculture and education.

“Most countries still have a shockingly low level of per capita spending, owing to a limited tax base and the loss of potential government revenue through corruption and illicit financial flows,” the report said. Between 2010 and 2012, only six of 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa met their pledges to devote 15% of their national budget to health. Only one of 33 countries met a commitment to spend 9% of public money on education.

From here 

FOLLOW A PAN AFRICAN CONVERSATION ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

The Transitional Justice Tafakari Forum
Date: 6-10th October 2014
Venue: Kampala
Theme: Towards a self sustaining Transitional Justice in Africa

Fahamu in its efforts to create spaces for dialogue and debate to amplify Africa-centred voices, perspectives and solutions has partnered with Refugee Law Project, a Uganda based organisation to organise a dialogical space for conversation and reflection on the complexities of the current transitional justice policies and processes in addressing the concerns of post-conflict societies in Africa.

The forum brings together representatives from the Civil Society, legal scholars/practitioners, researchers, anthropologists, economists, sociologists and activists working with communities that have been victims of collective violence from Burundi, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda.

The Tafakari Forum happening on the 6-7th October 2014, at At Speke Resort Munyonyo, Kampala, Uganda followed by an Oral History Tour in Northern Uganda on the 8-9th, 2014.

It aims at realising the following:
* Advance on the ongoing critical analysis of Transitional Justice
mechanisms in Africa to unearth their complexities, contestations and
contradictions in promoting accountability for past atrocities, justice for victims of violence and reconciliation;
* Deriving of context-based action points in promoting self-sustaining Transitional Justice processes that are considerate of the African realities and contexts.

You can follow the conversations on Twitter #TransitionInAfrica and on live streaming at http://www.ustream.tv/broadcaster/19024495 and engage in this crucial Pan Africa dialogue.

Pambazuka News invites articles on the question of Transitional Justice in Africa to help readers make sense of the debate in order to effectively play their roles as citizens of Africa.

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/announce/92972

from here

Uncertain Future For South Sudan

The failure of peace talks and the end of South Sudan’s wet season could unleash fresh fighting between government forces and rebel factions, propelling millions of people in the world’s youngest nation back towards a man-made famine, analysts and humanitarian workers warn.

Nine months of bad-tempered negotiations have yet to produce a firm ceasefire, let alone a political deal to end a conflict punctuated by atrocities. Skirmishes have continued in areas close to where thousands of civilians are crammed into UN bases. There are fears that both sides have used the seasonal lull to re-arm.

Surging violence would roil plans by the UN and humanitarian partners to use the dry season to patch up roads and other infrastructure and pre-position critical supplies before the meagre returns from the current disrupted harvest run out in early 2015. The rains usually begin to ease by late October.

“It is going to be a combination of a quieter environment for the people of this country, plus the continuation of a large aid operation, that will help people get through the dry season,” Toby Lanzer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, told IRIN. “If either of those two are absent, disaster will occur.”

more here

African Palm Oil: Peasants Pay The Price

Cultivation of oil palm is expanding rapidly around the world. These new monoculture plantations mean the destruction of rainforests, labour exploitation and brutal land grabbing.
Oil palms can only be cultivated profitably in an equatorial belt occupied by by peasants and indigenous peoples and the tropical forests they depend on. Thus the story of the expansion of oil palm plantations across Asia, Latin America and now Africa is also a story about the often violent displacement of these peoples and the destruction of their forests and farms.
Over the past fifteen years, foreign companies have signed over 60 deals covering nearly 4 million hectares in central and western Africa for the development of oil palm plantations.
Previous attempts at industrial cultivation of oil palm in Africa have largely failed and production has remained in the hands of small-scale producers, the majority of them women. The renewed interest in Africa is a reminder that the aggressive expansion of oil palm is not simply about land. It is about a larger struggle over food systems and models of development.
Will African palm oil be produced by African peasants or multinational corporations? Will palms be grown on mixed farms and semi-wild palm groves – or will peasants be driven out to make way for large scale, industrial plantations?



from here

► Read the report

Ripping off the Patient

The president of the Zambia Medical Association Dr Munjajati recently revealed that the current health delivery system in the country cannot protect patients seeking private medical attention from flagrant overcharging. His remarks tend to highlight the fact that Zambia has a two-tier health system within public hospitals. Fee-paying hospital wards were introduced in 1980 by the UNIP government of Dr Kaunda. Those with enough money could be hospitalized in fee-paying wards in order to receive proper medical treatment .

The reluctance of the current Patriotic Front government to boldly check and regulate the operations of privately-owned hospitals and clinics is because to do so would be against the government’s policy of economic liberalization. Private health care is encouraged in the belief that an increased role for entrepreneurs and competition in the delivery of healthcare will result in a more efficient and effective healthcare system. Thus the search for financial gain determines the quality of healthcare systems. But the values of free enterprises and the economic benefits that may flow from a more efficient healthcare system can only be achieved at the cost of other and more important values – including a concern for fairness, the dignity of people and community-centred ethics that places people before profits.

Caring or looking after the sick is a calling of special dignity and importance. The striking nurses were dismissed by the Labour Minister in 2013 on the allegation that they had failed to uphold the oath of allegiance they swore when they graduated from Health College – to serve others out of compassion. To go on strike for reasons of salary increments was anathema to the values that guide governments and their civil servants. This is the oath to serve the people out of love and compassion, without regard to the standard of prevailing salaries and poor conditions of service. In that case, by the same standard, it would be the task of every government to make access to healthcare as free as possible. But they don’t.

There are relatively small amounts of legislation regulating the operations of health facilities compared to laws governing health personnel. The existing legislation regulating the operations of both private and public health hospitals was introduced by President Michael Sata when he was minister of health. In 2002 the MMD government went on to introduce consultation and medical fees in both public hospitals and clinics. Economic liberalisation entailed the acceptance of the lurid fact that free health care and education was a cost to the government. Hospitals, schools and colleges were de-centralised under health and education boards.

Under the system of private healthcare, the opportunities for ripping off patients seems endless. There is nothing in place to regulate the prices that are charged by service providers and hence the price differences in goods and services from one private health provider to another. Grading of private health facilities does not exist on the ground due to the salient professional ethic surrounding medicine. Due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the mystery surrounding the disease and its causes, Zambia has seen a proliferation of traditional herbal therapies and traditional healers. It is not illegal in Zambia today to sell and advertise traditional herbal medicines that have not even undergone a laboratory scrutiny.

The introduction of free male circumcision in public hospitals emphasises that lack of a regulatory framework. The public health system exists in a state of corruption. Private surgeries are stocked with medicines siphoned from public hospitals. There is no treatment protocol and this results in over-servicing; a private doctor will prescribe ten supplementary drugs for the sake of advertising his business. Most private hospitals are under the control of lay managers whose primary interest is to make a profit. Thus under the system of private health care doctors promote profit-producing drugs, surgeries and tests. Medical treatments and counselling that lack profit potential are discouraged. The commercialization of private healthcare has led to the abandonment of human virtues that are essential for a community - caring for old people, compassion and charity, especially for the less privileged members of the community.

The zeal and altruism that is displayed by doctors and nurses in their primary concern for the alleviation of pain and sickness has been hijacked by the profit motive. Indeed the prevailing ideology says that political states or governments have a duty to protect the interests of the citizenry, through providing them with law, security and healthcare. But the provision of healthcare under capitalism is hamstrung by the principle of free enterprise with its competition and profit. The income and wealth disparities between the working and capitalist classes translate themselves into standardized economic, political and social programmes. The vision of free healthcare, and other services cannot obtain under a capitalist state. It is only in socialist society that health care will be characterized by its capacity to serve the good of every member of society. The sense of responsibility by those engaging in providing free medical care will demonstrate the individual and social virtues necessary for the wellbeing of a classless, moneyless and stateless society – socialism.

K. MULENGA

Questions Re US Response To Ebola Outbreak In Liberia

On September 16, President Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. Obama's announcement comes on the heels of growing international impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government's "infuriatingly" slow response to the outbreak.
Assistance efforts have already stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to foreign healthcare workers over Africans.

After two infected American missionaries were administered Zmapp, a life-saving experimental drug, controversy exploded when reports emerged that Doctors Without Borders had previously decided not to administer it to the Sierra Leonean doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who succumbed to Ebola after helping to lead the country's fight against the disease. The World Health Organization similarly refused to evacuate the prominent Sierra Leonean doctor Olivet Buck, who later died of the disease as well.

The Pentagon provoked its own controversy when it announced plans to deploy a $22 million, 25-bed U.S. military field hospital—reportedly for foreign health workers only.
One particular component of the latest assistance package promises to be controversial as well: namely, the deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia, where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) will establish a joint command operations base to serve as a logistics and training center for medical responders. see earlier post here

Few would oppose a robust U.S. response to the Ebola crisis, but the militarized nature of the White House plan comes in the context of a broader U.S.-led militarization of the region. The soldiers in Liberia, after all, will not be the only American troops on the African continent. In the six years of AFRICOM's existence, the U.S. military has steadily and quietly been building its presence on the continent through drone bases and partnerships with local militaries.

The U.S. operation in Liberia warrants many questions. Will military contractors be used in the construction of facilities and execution of programs? Will the U.S.-built treatment centers be temporary or permanent? Will the treatment centers double as research labs? What is the timeline for exiting the country? And perhaps most significantly for the long term, will the Liberian operation base serve as a staging ground for non-Ebola related military operations?
The use of the U.S. military in this operation should raise red flags for the American public as well. After all, if the military truly is the governmental institution best equipped to handle this outbreak, it speaks worlds about the neglect of civilian programs at home as well as abroad.

whole article here

The Predatory Agricultural-Industrial Complex In Africa

Controlling seed means controlling food production. Africans must choose how they farm. They must not become perpetually indebted to a predatory, profit-driven agricultural-industrial complex.

In order to address Africa’s poor agricultural productivity international players are intent on criminalising traditional seed saving practices. This thrust is directed by a triumvirate of corporate interests, actively assisted by first world governments and front organisations parading as non-governmental organisations.

Africa lies at the frontier of international agricultural intervention for several reasons. Firstly the continent lags badly in agricultural productivity. This is largely due to poor investment and agricultural support.
Secondly, Africa has more unexploited arable land than any other continent. Africa’s vast area, inadequate historical investment or support into agricultural development makes it an attractive investment destination for speculators and development alike.
Thirdly Africa’s population is set increase from its present 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion by 2050. Because of endemic food insecurity, agricultural development is a moral and economic obligation for both the African and the international community.

These facts have resulted in a new rush to assist Africa to help itself. However this assistance is motivated by often conflicting aims and consequences. While speculators seek to cash in on opportunities, philanthropy and development are not neutral either.
Africa has a history of exploitation. It continues to haemorrhage money, losing tens of millions of dollars daily in illicit flows. Speculation, aid and assistance are seldom unconditional.
This is borne out by the recent drive to impose an unsuitable, first-world intellectual property regime on the sale and trade of seed. This will worsen this problem by firmly placing control of the agricultural supply chain into corporate hands, further disempowering the smallholder farmer community.

Western agencies have long portrayed subsistence farming as inefficient, not just in terms of productivity but primarily because of its failure to contribute to capital flows. This sector circulates very little money through the agricultural supply chain, even when farmers are food secure. This lack of financial clout renders the sector profoundly vulnerable.
It is incorrect to portray smallholder farming as inefficient and unsuitable. In fact it is more conducive to community and regional food security than large-scale industrialised agricultural production methods.
This was underlined by a World Bank and UN expert report which explained how food security relies on a “multifunctionary” approach to agricultural production. Farming is about more than only producing food; it is also about culture, medicinal plants, the maintenance of ecological integrity, self-sufficiency, governance, public participation and inclusion.

Several institutions have emerged to drive the improvement of African food production . . . .
  . . . The most obvious risk is the direct intervention of the world’s largest seed companies. While these powerful entities purportedly wish to assist, they have applied constant pressure to impose this restrictive intellectual property regime.
South Africa has been a springboard for this intervention into sub-Saharan Africa. Its own seed market is effectively controlled by the world’s two biggest seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont’s Pioneer. Because of their investment into seed research and genetic material – for instance Monsanto purchased Malawi’s national seed company, while Pioneer recently acquired South Africa’s last large seed company Pannar in 2011 – they maintain tight control of their investments through intellectual property regimes.
These companies also sell genetically modified (GM) seed and agricultural chemicals. While both AGRA and the Gates Foundation have supported GM technology as a real solution to food security, the IAASTD report downplayed any significant potential. Experts feel GM is a technical response to broader, more systemic problems like poor infrastructure and concentrated supply chains.

Grassroots opposition has emerged as it is felt that UPOV 91 will effectively outlaw traditional seed saving and sharing. A statement drafted by more than 75 representative national and regional agricultural organisations strongly objects to the ARIPO protocol and calls for its withdrawal.
Despite this, powerful vested interests remain fixated on securing control of African agricultural production through force, artifice and stealth. This is directly counter to the principle that equality of fair opportunity be afforded to both innovators and those who develop and rely on traditional seed exchange.

Using first world mechanisms to perpetuate the colonial model is by definition neo-colonial.
Controlling seed means controlling food production. Africans must choose how they farm. They cannot be allowed to become perpetually indebted to a predatory agricultural-industrial complex.


full article here

Public-Private Partnerships - Who Has The Upper hand?

A seat at the table? Ensuring smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships

(Note from the editors: The report contains land grab allegations in the Malawi section, involving African Development Bank and EU funding)

Governments and NGOs are increasingly partnering with the private sector to tackle global hunger and poverty. A seat at the table? Ensuring Smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships, a study of agricultural PPPs in Ghana, Malawi and Kenya, identifies examples of PPPs failing to engage effectively with smallholder farmers.  This can lead to partnerships that miss or ignore smallholder farmers’ priorities or in the worst case scenario, actually aggravate local social and economic disparities and exacerbate poverty

The report asks governments, donors and companies to go further to ensure that smallholder farmers are given the opportunity, space and information to play an active role in the design and development of agricultural PPPs – should they wish to participate in them.

A seat at the table?  Ensuring Smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships – Full report
A seat at the table?  Ensuring Smallholder farmers are heard in Public-private partnerships – Executive Summary

from here

Who Gains From 3,000 US Troops In Ebola Affected African Regions?

Demilitarising Epidemic Diseases In Africa

President Obama has responded to the Ebola crisis in Africa by sending 3,000 military personnel to the affected region. The real beneficiary of this militarised messianism is, in fact, the military-industrial complex back in the US.

The international system has long become inured to the relentless hiccup of African insecurity malaise. Major clichés and few strong allegories conjure up the spasms of this ongoing malaise to the point of oversimplifying the field of African security. A cascade of crises encapsulated by patterns of sociopolitical ‘fragility’, ‘failure’, and ‘vulnerabilities’ has been plying the continent’s security environment with regards to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Ebola outbreak in West and Central Africa, as well as the hydra of terrorism and bout of violent conflicts. To be sure, the continent as a surrogate ideological battleground between Western democracies and a soviet-centric security dilemma has been put to rest. Noticeably today, a post 9-11 terror-centric security messianism has been perking up on Washington’s foreign policy chariot wheels in Africa. This security messianism is characterized by an insulated minimalist engagement riding on a missionary rhetorical commitment to African security.

Not surprisingly, the continent is broadly painted under a missionary diplomatic utopia that promises to terminate the ills of Africa. Putting aside some headier geopolitical matters, President Bush in July 2005, with an evangelical tone, made the confession that the U.S. ‘seek[s] progress in Africa because conscience demands it.’ Binding tightly moral imperatives with security concerns, Bush exited the White House cementing his signature legacy as the AIDS president. He left behind a strong savoury trademark of his long-standing gig to defeating the tides of malaria and AIDS on the continent. By the time he left the world stage, President Bush had increased aid to the continent by more than 640 percent. In humanitarian aid, the continent was the beneficiary of more than $5 billion a year. The $46 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was instrumental for at least 2 million people who received antiretroviral drugs.

To be sure, the fine apostles of HIV/AIDS policy wonk have been battling out support for access to drugs and treatment for AIDS patients. As a result of this global battle, expensive treatment and drugs for AIDS had garnered public resources and attention as well. Ironically, expensive drugs and treatment have been raining down on environments without proper hospitals, qualified medical doctors, and poorly equipped clinics. While antiretroviral drugs are available to patients, the resources to training health workers and building schools of medicine have been drying up. Tellingly, American Ebola victims from the West and Central have to be flown home to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for treatment. Though the much-hyped PEPFAR project christened President Bush as the healer- in- chief on African shores, the everlasting romance between militarized health foreign policy and security is hard to disconnect. As a shining jewel on President Bush’s chest, PEPFAR stands out as a corporate bonanza for US pharmaceutical corporations to harvest safe vouchers from financial manna. Oil corporations such as Mobil Oil and Chevron own a share of some HIV-medicine patents and medication. Not only had US foreign policy aid to HIV made vast profit for US firms, but it softly tied up HIV/AIDS’ industrial headquarters to oil corporations and the creation of the unified command for Africa to oversee security and conduct military operations as necessary.

Of course, the hotly touted Obama’s West African foreign policy pledged a major US military-led surge to stop the Ebola virus as a global health and national security threat. Far from throwing a monkey wrench on military expansion, such a foreign policy vision has not divorced from a militarized version of epidemic diseases. On September 16, 2014, President Obama made public his decision to establish a joint military command headquarters in Liberia by quickly dispatching 3,000 US troops to Monrovia and Senegal. The Ebola outbreak crafted its own response to the military footprint on the continent. The Obama administration pledged $ 1.26 billion to fighting against Ebola that has already claimed more than 2,800 lives in West Africa. The crisis has spurred the opportunity to hew a close look at some nichified source of security fixes in order to reinforce the post-9-11 security quandaries.

President Obama’s quick policy stand is not unprecedented. The root of the militarization of Washington foreign policy goes back to 1947 with the Cold War. The National Security Act of 1947 amends the US armed forces as intrinsically embedded with national security policy in peacetime. To be sure, demilitarizing epidemic diseases in West Africa will divert resources to building roads that lead to good hospitals and schools of medicine to train public health personnel for the continent.

  by Narcisse Jean Alcide Nana from here

 

Ebola Update - Inadequate Worldwide Response

The number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could reach as many as 1.4 million by January, according to new estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The agency describes the current outbreak of the virus sweeping West Africa as the largest Ebola outbreak in history. It has already infected over 5,800 people, with over 3,000 of them appearing in Liberia alone. Over 2800 deaths have occurred as a result of outbreak, as already weak public health systems have been strained amidst what health experts charge has been a "totally, and lethally, inadequate." international response.

Health workers and observers have stressed that the number of cases may be vastly under-reported.
The estimates revealed Tuesday by the CDC are based on a modeling tool to project hypothetical scenarios. It found that if additional interventions to stop the outbreak are not taken and communty practices like unsafe burials continue, Sierra Leone and Liberia could see between 550,000 and 1.4 million cases by January 20, 2015, with the higher figure accounting for under-reporting of the virus.

In a more optimistic scenario, which includes a higher percentage of infected people being treated in a proper health care facility and safe burial practices occurring by December, the modeling found that the epidemic in the country could be nearly stopped by the end of January.

Ending the epidemic there, the CDC found, requires getting 70 percent of affected persons to an Ebola-treating health care facility or community setting where the virus can be contained--a fact that puts into focus the as-of-yet inadequate worldwide response to step up to the needs of the epidemic.

In an article published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Doctors Jeremy Farrar and Peter Piot write that the epidemic "was an avoidable crisis."
"We are concerned that without a massive increase in the response, way beyond what is being planned in scale and urgency, alongside the complementary deployment of novel interventions (in particular the use of safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics), it will prove impossible to bring this epidemic under control," they write.

from here

Ebola Agony

The current Ebola outbreak is the worst the world has ever seen, with 4,963 reported cases thus far and 2,453 deaths as of 13 September, according to WHO.

Pierre Trbovic, an anthropologist from Belgium working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the ELWA Ebola Treatment Centre, one of two in the capital, Monrovia, was forced to turn patients away: He had no choice - the centre was full and could not safely admit more patients.
"The first person I had to turn away was a father who had brought in his sick daughter in the trunk of his car. He was an educated man, and he pleaded [with] me to take her, saying while he knew we couldn't save her life, we could save the rest of his family from her. At that point I had to go behind one of the tents to cry," says Trbovic.

MSF President Joanne Liu, in a speech to UN member states in Geneva on 16 September, blamed a lethargic international response for the spiralling crisis.
"Sick people are banging on the doors of MSF Ebola care centres because they do not want to infect their families and they are desperate for a safe place in which to be isolated. Tragically our teams must turn them away. All for a lack of international response," she said.

An MSF aid worker wrote  "I wake up each morning. wondering if this is really happening or if it is a horror movie. In decades of humanitarian work I have never witnessed such relentless suffering of fellow human beings or felt so completely paralyzed and utterly overwhelmed at our inability to provide anything but the most basic, and sometimes less than adequate, care."

From here

An Ethiopian Billionaire’s Outrageous Land Grab

The man who stole the Nile: An Ethiopian billionaire’s outrageous land grab 

By Frederick Kaufman

Forget about diamond heists, bank robberies, and drilling into the golden intestines of fort Knox. In this precarious world-historic moment, food has become the most valuable asset of them all—and a billionaire from Ethiopia named Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi is getting his hands on as much of it as possible, flying it over the heads of his starving countrymen, and selling the treasure to Saudi Arabia. Last year, Al Amoudi, whom most Ethiopians call the Sheikh, exported a million tons of rice, about seventy pounds for every Saudi citizen, the scene of the great grain robbery was Gambella, a bog the size of Belgium in Ethiopia’s southwest whose rivers feed the Nile.

Read the full article in PDF 

Israel's war against migrants

They are "a cancer in our body", and "a threat to the social fabric of society…national security [and the] identity and existence [of the] Jewish and democratic state". As "infiltrators", they should be "encouraged…to leave" and "locked…up to make their lives miserable". These are the words of Israeli Parliamentarian Miri Regev, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and of the current and former Israeli Interior Ministers Eli Yishai and Gideon Saar, described by the UN refugee agency as "xenophobic statements made by…public officials who…stigmatise asylum seekers."  Israeli authorities know that they can't deport Eritreans and Sudanese to their home countries because of serious human rights concerns in both countries, not to mention that Sudan's relations with Israel are so bad that it considers people who flee there to be criminals. Yet the authorities have done everything they can to make their lives so unbearable that they leave.

 Since January 2013 - six months after Israel introduced an unlawful policy of indefinitely detaining as many "infiltrators" as possible to coerce them into leaving - almost 7,000 people, mostly Sudanese, have buckled under the pressure and returned home. Another 44,000 Eritreans and Sudanese in Israel's cities live in constant fear of receiving orders to report to a remote desert detention centre near the Egyptian border where, the authorities say, they will be confined until they also agree to leave the country.

 Four out of every five Eritrean asylum seekers worldwide last year were recognised as refugees, while by the end of June, Israel had only recognised just two Eritreans as refugees. Israel has also rejected 100 percent of Sudanese asylum claims, though globally 67 percent of Sudanese asylum seekers are given some form of protection.

From here

Ethiopian Dictatorship

 Ethiopia’s ruling regime is following a nationwide policy of violent suppression and constitutional vandalism.

 Human Rights Watch state the government “regularly use abuse to gather information…. Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill treatment at the main detention center [Maekelawi Police Station] in Addis Ababa.” Journalists who challenge the government are intimidated (so too their families) and silenced. Many have been arrested, and as the Committee to Protect Journalists reports, “are languishing in Ethiopia’s prisons on trumped-up terrorism charges for doing their jobs.” In their thorough report “They Want A Confession”. HRW documents “serious rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained …include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies.” Public assembly, whilst not being outwardly criminalized is effectively banned, despite the fact that it is a right enshrined like all such liberal freedoms in the legally binding constitution which has no influence over the ruling party, or indeed the judiciary, which functions as a docile enforcer of government criminality.

For a country beset with acute poverty, where it is conservatively estimated 30% of the population (World Bank figures) are living below the ‘official poverty line’ (that’s income of $2 a day), the government somehow manages to administer and fund (to the tune of $340 millions) the largest standing army in Sub-Saharan Africa. They boast 560 tanks, over 80 warplanes, and out of a population numbering 92 million, Global Fire Power reveals, 25 million are armed and ‘fit for service’, with a further 10 million standing by. The men in uniform are kept busy by their political masters – there is a whole nation to suppress and control, including the people of Oromia (who are calling for self-determination) and Amhara. There is the Ogaden region to occupy and forcibly govern, innocent men and women – who seek nothing more threatening than autonomy, their constitutional right – to murder, terrorise and rape. There is Gambella in the far south west and the Lower Omo Valley where women are raped by soldiers, men beaten, indigenous people (who have lived on ancestral land for generations) herded into government camps (the notorious Villagisation project – part funded by Britain and the World Bank) as vast tracts of lands are sold for pennies to international corporations. There is torture to be administered, assassinations to plan and execute, rapes to be performed and surveillance of dissenting voices to be carried out.

Graham Peebles' full article can be read here 

Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants

African Centre for Biosafety | 9 September 2014

 

 

The ACB has today, released its new report titled, "Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants," which shows the extent to which South African agribusinesses dominate the farm to fork agribusiness value chain in Africa-worth billions of dollars.

 Tiger Foods, Pioneer Foods Group, Tongaat Hulett, Astral Foods, AFGRI, Illovo Sugar, Anglovaal Industries (now AVI), Rainbow Chicken (RCL Foods), Clover Holdings and Oceana Group are among the top 20 African businesses operating on the continent. Shoprite, South Africa’s biggest supermarket retailer, already holds 34% of the continent’s supermarket sector. Seven of the ten leading agribusinesses (Tiger Foods, Premier Foods, AFGRI, Illovo Sugar, Astral Foods, Clover Group and Tongaat Hulett) are backed by the South Africa government-owned Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which is responsible for managing the South African Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Commissioner’s Fund.

 These agribusinesses benefit enormously from access to private capital, experience, established distribution chains and both direct and indirect subsidies and incentives offered to them. There are several implications stemming from South African agribusiness expansion onto the continent, including entrenching a culture of corporate consolidation, blocking the emergence of small operators and producers, depressing local innovation systems and negatively impacting on food security.

from here

Download full report here

US - Winning Hearts and Minds In Africa

The U.S. is trying to win a war for the hearts and minds of Africa.  But a Pentagon investigation suggests that those mystery projects somewhere out there in Djibouti or Ethiopia or Kenya or here in Tanzania may well be orphaned, ill-planned, and undocumented failures-in-the-making.  According to the Department of Defense’s watchdog agency, U.S. military officials in Africa “did not adequately plan or execute” missions designed to win over Africans deemed vulnerable to the lures of violent extremism.
This evidence of failure in the earliest stages of the U.S. military’s hearts-and-minds campaign should have an eerie resonance for anyone who has followed its previous efforts to use humanitarian aid and infrastructure projects to sway local populations in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.  In each case, the operations failed in spectacular ways, but were only fully acknowledged after years of futility and billions of dollars in waste.

Today, the U.S. military increasingly confronts Africa as a "battlefield" or "battleground" or "war" in the words of the men running its operations.  To that end, it has built a sophisticated logistics network to service a growing number of small outposts, camps, and airfields, while carrying out, on average, more than one mission each day somewhere on the continent.  A significant number of these operations take the form of a textbook hearts-and-minds campaign that harkens back to failed U.S. efforts in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s and more recently in the Greater Middle East.

In Africa, the sums and scale are smaller, but the efforts are from the same counterinsurgency playbook.  In fact, to the U.S. military, humanitarian assistance -- from medical care to infrastructure projects -- is a form of “security cooperation.”  According to the latest edition of FM 3-24, published earlier this year: 

“When these activities are used to defeat an insurgency, they are part of a counterinsurgency operation. While not all security cooperation activities are in support of counterinsurgency, security cooperation can be an effective counterinsurgency tool.  These activities help the U.S. and the host nation gain credibility and help the host nation build legitimacy. These efforts can help prevent insurgencies...”

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and its subordinate command, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, have spent years engaged in such COIN-style humanitarian projects.  These have been touted in news releases at their websites in lieu of candid information on the true scale and scope of AFRICOM’s operations, the exponential growth of its activities, its spy operations, and shadowy base-building efforts.  Take a cursory glance at its official news releases and you’ll find them crammed with feel-good stories like an effort by CJTF-HOA personnel to tutor would-be Djiboutian hotel workers in English or a joint effort by the State Department, AFRICOM, and the Army Corps of Engineers to build six new schools in Togo.  Such acts are never framed in the context of counterinsurgency nor with an explicit link to U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds.  And never is there any mention of failings or fiascos. 
However, an investigation by the Department of Defense’s Inspector General (IG), completed last October but never publicly released, found failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting such projects.  The restricted report, obtained by TomDispatch, describes a flawed system plagued by a variety of deeply embedded problems.

Across Africa, the U.S. military is engaged in a panoply of aid projects with an eye toward winning a war of ideas in the minds of Africans and so beating back the lure of extremist ideologies -- from that of Boko Haram in Nigeria to Somalia’s al Shabab.  These so-called civil-military operations, or CMOs, include “humanitarian assistance” projects like the construction or repair of schools, water wells and waste treatment systems, and “humanitarian and civic assistance” (HCA) efforts, like offering dental and veterinary care.
Kindness may be its own reward, but in the case of the U.S. military, CMO benevolence is designed to influence foreign governments and civilian populations in order to “facilitate military operations and achieve U.S. objectives.”

 According to the Pentagon, humanitarian assistance efforts are engineered to improve “U.S. visibility, access, and influence with foreign military and civilian counterparts,” while HCA projects are designed to “promote the security and foreign policy interests of the United States.” 
In the bureaucratic world of the U.S. military, these small-scale efforts are further divided into “community relations activities,” like the distribution of sports equipment, and “low-cost activities” such as seminars on solar panel maintenance or English-language discussion groups.  Theoretically at least, add all these projects together and you’ve taken a major step toward winning Africans away from the influence of extremists.  But are these projects working at all?  Has anyone even bothered to check?
The IG did manage to review 49 of 137 identified humanitarian assistance and civic assistance projects, which cost U.S. taxpayers about $9 million, and found that the military officials overseeing CMO “did not adequately plan or execute” them in accordance with AFRICOM’s “objectives.” Examining 66 community relations and low cost activities, investigators found that CJTF-HOA had failed to accurately identify their strategic objectives for, or maintained limited documentation on, 62% of them.
Examining a sample of projects, the Pentagon’s investigators found that 73% of the time CJTF-HOA personnel failed to collect sufficient data 30 days after completion of projects, to assess whether it achieved the stated objectives. 

Winning Hearts and Minds or Losing Money and Influence?

Nearly a year has passed since the drafting of the Inspector General’s report.  During that time, neither AFRICOM nor CJTF-HOA has publicly addressed it or announced any changes based upon its recommendations.  In the meantime, the hearts and minds of allied African military leaders appear unswayed by AFRICOM’s efforts.  Over two days at the “Land Forces East Africa” conference here in Dar es Salaam, I listened to generals and defense analysts from around the region speak on security matters affecting Burundi, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, and Tanzania.  They touched on the key issues -- extremism, terrorism, and piracy -- that the American hearts-and-minds campaign is meant to counter, but the United States was hardly mentioned.  Tanzanian officers I talked with, for instance, were pleased to be receiving American funds, but less so with direct U.S. interventions of any type on the continent.  None I spoke with seemed aware of AFRICOM’S hearts-and-minds work like clean water projects or school construction in underdeveloped rural areas not so very far from where we’ve been sitting.
Even Egan O’Reilly, an Army officer attached to the U.S. Embassy here, whose job is to facilitate “security cooperation” activities, “We’ve done everything from helping bring down trainers for military intelligence courses to building their own schoolhouse for intelligence work,” he tells me.
What about the building of primary and secondary schools, the humanitarian assistance projects?  “I haven’t seen a whole lot of AFRICOM work myself,” replies the West Point graduate and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  "Logistics training and engineering instruction for African militaries, that’s “the important stuff.”  
TomDispatch also sought interviews with U.S. defense attachés in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya for assessments of the humanitarian projects in those respective countries.  The latter two embassies failed to respond to the requests, while a spokesperson for the U.S. mission in Ethiopia thanked me for my interest but told me that the defense attaché “is not currently available for an interview.”  No one, it appears, is eager to talk about the textbook counterinsurgency campaign being carried out by the U.S. military in Africa, let alone the failures chronicled in an IG report that’s been withheld from the public for almost a year.
For the last decade, we’ve been inundated with disclosures about billions of U.S. tax dollars squandered on counterinsurgency failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, stories of ruined roads and busted buildings, shoddy schoolhouses and wasteful water parks, all in the name of winning hearts and minds.  Below the radar, similar -- if smaller scale -- efforts are well underway in Africa.  Already, the schools are being built, already the water projects are falling to pieces, already the Department of Defense’s Inspector General has identified a plethora of problems.  It’s just been kept under wraps.  But if history is any guide, humanitarian efforts by AFRICOM and Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa will grow larger and ever more expensive, until they join the long list of projects that have become “monuments to U.S. failure” around the world.
 
Nick Turse from here with more and links

Resources Or People? No Competition

Botswana government lies exposed as diamond mine opens on Bushman land

Survival International

In 2004, a Botswana Minister said there was no mining nor any plans for future mining anywhere inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. In 2014 a $4.9bn diamond mine opens A $4.9bn diamond mine will open on September 5 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the ancestral land of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen, exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were “no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve.”

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen – in 1997, 2002 and 2005 – were due to the rich diamond deposits. It justified the Bushmen’s evictions from the land in the name of “conservation”.

In 2000, however, Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper, "the relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) communities from [the Central Kalahari Game Reserve] is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine”; and in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, "Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

The mine opening has also exposed Botswana’s commitment to conservation as window dressing. The government falsely claims that the Bushmen’s presence in the reserve is “incompatible with wildlife conservation,” while allowing a diamond mine and fracking exploration to go ahead on their land.

And while conservation organizations have heralded Botswana President Ian Khama’s conservation efforts, they have remained silent on the persecution of the Bushmen and the mining activities in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A Bushman whose family was evicted told Survival, “This week President Khama will open a mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Do those organizations who have been awarding President Khama for his work with the flora and fauna still believe he is a good example to the world? The residents of the Reserve are not benefitting anything from the mine. The only benefits go to communities living outside the reserve, while our natural resources are being destroyed. We strongly oppose the opening of the mine until the government and Gem Diamonds sit down with us and tell us what we will benefit from the mine. ”

The government continues its relentless push to drive the Bushmen out of the reserve by accusing them of “poaching” because they hunt their food. The Bushmen face arrest, beatings and torture, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. The government has also refused to reopen the Bushmen’s water wells, restricted their free movement into and out of the reserve, and barred their lawyer from entering the country.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “When the Bushmen were illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of ‘conservation’, Survival cried foul play – both we and the Bushmen believed that, in fact, diamond mining was the real motivation for kicking the tribe off their territory. Government and its cronies vigorously denied these accusations, but finally we have been proven correct. Meanwhile, organizations such as Conservation International continue to laud President Khama for his environmental credentials and turns a blind eye to his human rights abuses.”

- Download a timeline of events leading to the opening of the Ghaghoo diamond mine (PDF, 639 kB)



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Medical Racism and the African Patient

How medical folklore demonises Africans all over the world

Mandisi Majavu

The current Ebola crisis reinforces the prevailing narrative that black Africans living in Western countries are the diseased ‘other’ who pose a threat to the health of whites

In his book, ‘Infections and Inequalities’, Paul Farmer writes that we live in a world where infections pass easily across borders, while resources, including cumulative scientific knowledge are blocked at customs. The recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is a case in point. The World Health Organisation has warned that the number of Ebola cases could rise to 20,000 largely because the medical staff in these West African countries do not have the resources to deal with the rapid spread of the virus.

West Africa and Western medicine have a history that reaches back to the 19th century. By the early 19th century, the medical folklore, which went hand-in-hand with the European colonial project in Africa, considered the region “the white man’s grave”. The notion of the white man’s grave emerged due to the high death rate of Europeans in West Africa in the 19th century. Scholarly studies show that in quantitative terms the mortality rate during that period was usually between 300 and 700 per thousand per annum for any group of European newcomers to West Africa.

Modern science shows that Europeans died in large numbers in West Africa simply because they lacked immunity to yellow fever and malaria, an immunity that many Africans developed in childhood. However during the 19th century Europeans believed that Africans had something in their DNA, which equipped them to survive the climate in the region. The “Africanist discourse” shaped the thinking of the medical establishment of the time. According to the Africanist discourse, “Africa produces monsters”. Christopher Miller, an academic based at Yale University, explains that the Africanist discourse is a poor relation lexically and institutionally, to the prestigious and well-endowed study of the “Orient”.

In the 21st century, the discourse has changed slightly, so has medical folklore. Today’s medical folklore is characterized by its use of sophisticated codes to talk about diseases and disorders that are associated with black Africans. In his book, ‘The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism’, John Hoberman argues that many diseases and disorders have been “effectively coded ‘white’ or ‘black’, depending on whether they are associated with modernity (white) or socially backward (black) ways of life.” The prevailing view is that black Africans living in Western countries are the diseased ‘other’ who pose a threat to the health of whites. Modern medical folklore essentially regards African immigrants living in Western countries as an infectious “reservoir of diseases” - to use Hoberman’s phrase. Another feature of this perspective is an overarching theme that often ties African diseases to sexuality. Hence, as American scholar Abby Ferber points out, “disease becomes a metaphor in this discourse, invoked again and again.”

Against this background, Australian politicians such as Pauline Hanson have in the past associated African refugees with the threat of diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, AIDS and other contagious afflictions. According to Heather Worth, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, the first settlement of African refugees in New Zealand in 1993 led the public, politicians and government officials to call for mandatory HIV testing. In Israel, blood donated by Africans was, until 2007, discarded by Israeli hospitals because of the belief that Africans are diseased.

The foregoing partly explains the large research output, which focuses on African immigrants and infectious diseases in Western countries. According to Farmer, The history between Western medicine and West Africa teaches that “diseases that predominantly afflict the poor are unlikely to garner funding for research and drug development, unless they begin to ‘emerge’ into the consciousness and space of the non-poor.”

While Ebola explosions largely afflict African people living in poverty and health care workers who serve the poor, the recent Ebola outbreak has put Western Europe on alert. The Guardian reports, “from Austria to Ireland, Spain to Germany, there have been at least a dozen cases of West Africans with mild flu symptoms being isolated until it was established that they were not suffering from Ebola.”

The consensus among scientists is that the Ebola virus does not pose any risk to the general public in Western countries with well-resourced public health care systems. However, African refugees living in foreign countries are often impacted by disease outbreaks such as the recent Ebola eruption in more ways than one. Disease outbreaks pose a threat to the health of refugees directly, but also have a significant impact on the resettlement chances of African refugees to Western countries or any other country for that matter. In fact, research shows that outbreaks of diseases such as measles, rubella and hepatitis A have disrupted the resettlement of African refugees several times since 2004.

What comes to mind is an observation once made by microbiologists, husband and wife team, René and Jean Dubos that ‘‘tuberculosis was, in effect, the first penalty that capitalistic society had to pay for the ruthless exploitation of labour.’’ Medical literature is replete with evidence that the world’s burden of disease disproportionably affects black Africans, just as the husband and wife Dubos team argue, many Africans also know that the poor health situation in Africa exists largely due to colonialism, imperialism and global inequality.


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Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants

The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has Tuesday, released its new report titled, “Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants,” which shows the extent to which South African agribusinesses dominate the farm to fork agribusiness value chain in Africa-worth billions of dollars.

Tiger Foods, Pioneer Foods Group, Tongaat Hulett, Astral Foods, AFGRI, Illovo Sugar, Anglovaal Industries (now AVI), Rainbow Chicken (RCL Foods), Clover Holdings and Oceana Group are among the top 20 African businesses operating on the continent. Shoprite, South Africa’s biggest supermarket retailer, already holds 34% of the continent’s supermarket sector. Seven of the ten leading agribusinesses (Tiger Foods, Premier Foods, AFGRI, Illovo Sugar, Astral Foods, Clover Group and Tongaat Hulett) are backed by the South Africa government-owned Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which is responsible for managing the South African Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Commissioner’s Fund.

Find the Full Report Here: www.acbio.org.za

These agribusinesses benefit enormously from access to private capital, experience, established distribution chains and both direct and indirect subsidies and incentives offered to them.
There are several implications stemming from South African agribusiness expansion onto the continent, including entrenching a culture of corporate consolidation, blocking the emergence of small operators and producers, depressing local innovation systems and negatively impacting on food security.

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