Land-Grabbing Threatens Our Security -Kono Mayor

Mayor of Kono City Council, Sahr Emerson Laminah has described the increasing rate of land-grabbing as a menace and nightmare in the district that has the potential for creating confusion in the country.
Sahr Emerson Laminah made the alert at the foreground of the Koidu City Council during the launching of the campaign against land grabbing by Actionaid Sierra Leone.

The Actionaid Sierra Leone’s Campaign describes land grabbing as that which are not based on free, prior and informed consent of the affected land users and owners; not based on thorough assessment, or are in disregard of social, economic, environmental impacts.
It further describes it as that which is not based on transparent contracts that specify clear and binding commitments about activities, employment and benefits sharing; and not based on effective democratic planning, independent oversight and meaningful participation and realistic compensations for land and associated resources.

The Mayor urged Actionaid Sierra Leone and other civil society organization to intensify the campaign and lobby with Constitutional Review Committee for the policy against land grabbing to be included in the new constitution.
Representatives of civil society organizations including Ibrahim Bockarie, the Focal Person for Campaign for Just Mining confirmed that land-grabbing is on the increase and thus posing serious challenges and problems in Kono.  ”Large portions of land in nine chiefdoms in Kono District have already been leased to multi-national companies, thereby depriving the locals from benefiting from their land resources” he stated.

The Kono District Manager of Actionaid Sierra Leone, Mohamed Fofana described the act of land grabbing to be a gross violation of human rights as families and poor communities from benefiting from the nature.
Most of the speakers including the Communications and Campaign Coordinator Aruna Augustine Kamara urged government to formulate regulatory frameworks that would guarantee fair land management in the country.

from here

“There Is Too Much Peace In The World”

“We need wars. We need conflicts. We need tensions in the world to maintain our status”

Every year, the world elite nations and their allies spend over one trillion dollars ( or 1,000 billions dollars) on military equipment and getting ready for war.
They need to justify those gazillions dollars spending in the eyes of their citizens. The people will not accept that all that money spent on military when they are confronted with unemployment, poverty, and lack of opportunities.

Reasons why you now see some countries sponsoring terrorism, arming oppositions groups in foreign countries, setting up “flowers”, “seasons”, and “colors” revolutions around the world, training paramilitary forces to destabilize weak countries, and creating havoc that makes the world insecure and dangerous place.
Also, the rise of fear mongering medias, extremists groups, religious fundamentalists, apartheid, fascist and violent ideologies are to be added to the new schemes the world elite needs to maintain the illusions of their legitimacy.

“There is too much peace in the world” said the old and declining empires with powerful guns.
“If there is no conflict, let’s start new ones. Without terrorism, why would people need us. Without fear and danger at every corner, what would we be useful for”.
Many conflicts you heard about are not natural conflicts. They are certainly based on real concerns and issues, but their militarization is often the work of the old empires desperate to maintain their status, and crony capitalism.

from here

Boko Haram

 Sometime after the US attack on Afghanistan a group calling itself “Taleban” was formed in the north east of the country. About a year later, in 2002, this obscure Salafist group was led by a charismatic, but not too well-educated preacher called Mohammed Yusuf. It called itself the People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad. Hausa locals found that a bit of a mouthful so nicknamed it (perhaps satirically) “Boko Haram” (or “Western education is forbidden”). To say that it is obscurantist is no exaggeration. It looks backwards to an idealised Islamic past although like other modern Islamic radicals, such as those who tried to destroy the centre of Islamic learning in Timbuktu a couple of years back, it does not revere the scholarship of that past. It campaigns for an extension of sharia law to all Nigeria, blaming all Western influences for the situation in which the country finds itself. It was not originally violent but its anti-western agenda appealed to many young (men) who found themselves without jobs or lives without meaning.

In 2009 the group seems to have become frustrated that the local government in the north-eastern state of Borno would not adopt sharia law so launched an armed uprising there. The Nigerian Army reacted with brutal and indiscriminate ferocity, killing innocent civilians as well as Boko Haram members. They captured Mohammed Yusuf and murdered him, declaring that Boko Haram had been defeated. In fact it now passed under the leadership of Yusuf’s deputy Abubakar Shekau who formed links with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, probably involving some training, financing and weapons procurement. However these links should not be exaggerated and judging from the silence in 2014 Boko Haram’s atrocities have not won the approval of other jihadists linked to al-Qaida. Indeed it appears that they are increasingly divided with a new group Ansaru being formed which has condemned Boko Haram’s indiscriminate killing of both Muslims and Christians as “un-Islamic”.

The civil war that has now raged for 5 years has now gone beyond the three poverty-stricken north eastern provinces (Yobe, Borno and Adamawa) where Boko Haram is based. The Army is now deployed in 25 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The consequences of the civil war for the local populations have, as always, been dire. 12,000 have been killed and at least 300,000 have become refugees both within and without Nigeria’s borders. The Army which began the campaign with brutal bravado and indiscriminate massacres (all denied by the Government but all confirmed by Amnesty International) is regarded by north-easterners as no better than the insurgents. Now soldiers are so scared to enter Borno that troops posted there recently mutinied after 11 of them were killed in an ambush. The corruption which is endemic to the society is nowhere more obvious than the Army. Once seen as the “best” in West Africa and deployed on many peace-keeping missions it has degenerated over the last few years, despite an increase in its budget to $5.8 billions. No-one seems to know where this money goes. They spent $15 million a few years back to buy drones which have heat-seeking devices from Israel. They would have been useful in tracing the Chibok girls but they have never been used because no maintenance has ever been carried out on them. And now they seem to be outgunned by Boko Haram, which includes child soldiers in its ranks, and seems to be getting more sophisticated weapons believed to have crossed the Sahara after the fall of the Ghaddafi regime in Libya. With the Army’s reputation for committing atrocities such as summary execution, rape and mass murder well documented, Western states have been more reluctant to send arms and know-how compared to the good old Cold War days when massacring Biafrans was no problem.

But the hashtag campaign #Bringbackourgirls initiated by the parents of the kidnapped girls which began as an attempt to pressure the Nigerian Government may have stirred consciences amongst the rich and powerful in the West. Unfortunately this has not really been good news for the girls. Boko Haram (or at least one faction of it) was prepared to negotiate their release (in exchange for releasing the families of Boko Haram members) but by this time Jonathan was in Paris in a summit of the leaders of Nigeria and its neighbouring states. This was called by President Hollande who has already committed French troops to Mali. Chad, and the Central African Republic to fight Islamist groups. Whilst there Goodluck Jonathan called off negotiations with Boko Haram presumably with the advice (pressure?) of his host in Paris. If this is true it is piece of hypocrisy on Hollande’s part as the French Government have already paid out millions of dollars to Boko Haram to free French people abducted in Cameroon. Presumably such (never acknowledged) payment has given a huge boost to the insurgents’ arms funding. The hypocrisy of imperialist policy doesn’t just apply to France. The hash tag campaign has also given the US and Britain the excuse to get in on the act in the form of sending troops (“advisors”) and “assets” (drones) to the area. For the US it suits the plans of its Africom (United States Africa Command) which in 2013 carried out 546 “military operations” throughout the continent. These are not humanitarian missions but are intended to support US interests in Africa in its increasingly global rivalry with China. Another drone campaign like that in Pakistan is all Boko Haram need to win more support.

In January Goodluck Jonathan sacked a number of military leaders for their failures against Boko Haram. However, after more disasters like the Chibok abductions, it has now finally dawned on the government that the Army cannot defeat an insurgency in a jungle terrain of thousands of square miles and which has its roots (and support) in the socio-economic malaise of the northern states. Late in the day they have now decided to launch a multi-billion dollar so-called “Marshall Plan” for the north to create an infrastructure and develop agriculture. But first they have to send in relief as the Department for International Development estimates that 4.3 million people’s food situation is described as “dire”. Given the chronic corruption of the Nigerian state we can only assume that the bureaucrats in Abuja will be rubbing their hands in anticipation. If any of this actually makes any difference it will be a triumph of optimism over history. Nigeria is just one of the grossest examples of how the greed of a local élite, inextricably linked to the global capitalist system in an epoch of rampant imperialism, is capable of inflicting misery on millions of their “own” citizens to hold onto their wealth It is just one of the many reasons compelling internationalists to continue to fight for a better world than this rotting system can ever offer.

The above is an extract from a longer article on the Internationalists website of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

South African Sugar Strike

5,500 employees working in the KwaZulu-Natal Natal and Mpumalanga regions stopped work in support of their demand for an 11 percent wage increase on May 27, the sugar industry’s first pay strike in 17 years. A protest march is planned for June 4 in the city of Durban.

The Food and Allied Workers Union is also requesting a 40-hour working week, a monthly housing subsidy of 800 rand ($75) and permanent employment of fixed-term contract staff.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-02/south-africa-sugar-workers-march-at-remgro-tsb-to-support-strike.html

The Dark Side Of The European Union

Apologies - this is a little late, however still relevant:

The EU is the Union of European countries.
The AU is the Union of African countries.
Tomorrow, there will be an EU-Africa Summit in Brussels.

Now here comes how rogue the EU is.
1. The EU refused the meeting to be between EU-AU, because the EU doesn’t want to deal with Africa as a unified continent, but each individual states.
2. The EU sent individual invitation to each african country, then the AU asked its members not to attend the meeting, because of the way the EU is trying to divide and conquer.
3. The EU first refused to invite Mugabe, a democratically elected president, but sent an invitation to the president of Egypt who is excluded from the AU because of taking power by a coup.
4. When Many Africans sided wit Mugabe, the EU then granted him a visa, but refused to give visa to his wife to come with him.
5. When Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa expressed his concern over the dubious methods of the EU in Africa, he got shunned.
Regardless of the fact that the AU (African Union) asked its members states not to attend the meeting, over 40 puppets Africans president will be tomorrow in Brussels to get instructions on how to let multinationals loot their countries in exchanges of some gifts.
Now, you may ask, how could the EU force Africans to act against their own interest. They can because before anything EU is a war machine, they have guns and they can make a coup in any country when they want. Most of the presidents are afraid to be victim of coup.
In fact, During the last 50 years 21 African presidents were Killed in office, and since 2008 altogether 13 presidents died in office in the world, 10 were African presidents.
Even the logo of the so called partnership shows the EU swallowing Africa, a continent 3 times bigger than the whole Europe, and million times richer.

Here is the propaganda website for the EU colonial pact with Africa : http://www.africa-eu-partnership.org/
They say they will open EU market 100% to african products, but … But … Africa does not produce “anything” except exporting raw materials (which the continent doesn’t have any problem selling anyway). In exchange Ecowas 16 countries will open their 300 millions consumers market 75% during the next 20 years to EU multinationals to crush the soul out of local producers (like they are already doing in agriculture) and kill any dream of african industrialization and economical infrastructure building.
It’s just plain stupid deal, but to make it easy to accept by the puppets african leaders, EU promised about 6 billions euros corruption money (also called aid) for the local elite to get new cars, new houses, etc.
While we were focused on the Ukrainian crisis, the EU tried to bribe 16 governments in West Africa to sign a colonial pact that will help its multinationals to loot more Africa, and impoverish the average african.
In fact the EU succeeded to bribe about 15 governments, who were ready to sign the so called new partnership with EU, but fortunately for us the big Nigeria refused to sign such a deal.
I suspect the EU would prepare a coup in Nigeria soon (with the help of France) to trow the nigerian government, and ask the new puppet to sign the colonial pact.
Africa is not poor, Africa is constantly agressed and impoverish by Europeans.
 
from here

Senhuile CEO Arrested, Accused Of Embezzlement

Radio France Internationale | 24 May 2014

Update on status of land grab in rural Senegal by Senhuile SA

Last month, Oakland Institute released a report about the 37 villages in the rural Ndiael region of Senegal who had their land illegally confiscated by Senhuile, an Italian-Senegalese agribusiness project. We have an update on the issue. Benjamin Dummai, the CEO of Senhuile, was fired by the company's board of directors this past week and was arrested by Senegalese authorities. According to the local press, Dummai is accused of embezzling nearly 300,000 euros. Frédéric Mousseau, the Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, gives RFI's Laura Angela Bagnetto an update on the palm oil project that has occupied 20,000 hectares in northern Senegal:

Listen to the interview: 

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from here

The tentacles of US power

United States special operations forces are in Libya, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali  to train and install small teams of elite counter-terror commandos.

The US Department of Defense has spent almost $70 million to assist in training a counterterrorism battalion in Niger, as well as a similar team in Mauritania as well as $16 million spent on training and equipping two companies of Libyan troops and associated support elements. The Libyan venture ended in chaos when at a secret military base outside of Tripoli,  militiamen seized “hundreds of American-supplied automatic weapons, night-vision goggles, vehicles and other equipment” from the compound.

The US has also established a network of surveillance aircraft in Africa, including a facility in Niger that assists French forces combating militants in Mali. In addition, the US has installed an unmanned drone site in Chad.

http://rt.com/news/161852-africa-pentagon-training-forces/

Desperate For School

DOYABA/SIDDHO/N’DJAMENA, 26 May 2014 (IRIN) -

 Some 40,900 children and thousands more youths displaced by the violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) are stuck in transit camps in southern Chad with no formal school to attend, few to no training opportunities, and no jobs, leaving them with no sense of what the future will bring.

“There is nothing to do here - we do nothing all day,” said Ibrahim Oumar, 25, in Doyaba transit camp near Sarh, which houses mainly Chadian returnees from CAR, many of them born in CAR. Oumar studied finance at college. “I’d do anything I could work-wise. One day I’ll return [to Bangui] to finish.”

Abdou Aziz Tarik, 17, from the CAR capital Bangui, told IRIN: “With school you can do something. Without it you’ll achieve nothing.”

Displaced teachers have set up informal schools in some sites. For instance, in Doyaba transit camp, they set up a school in which 3,200 primary and pre-school children have enrolled. But none cater for the needs of secondary school students. Some 4,000 of the displaced children have been relocated to pre-existing schools but as yet no children are being formally educated in camps, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Some 97,000 refugees and returnees have fled CAR over 2013 and 2014 seeking safety in Chad, according to the UN Refugee Agency.


Read more about this here

Workers Against Mine-Owners

Astrike by platinum mining workers since January 23, 2014, demanding a basic monthly salary of R12 500, has shown the spotlight on the industry's racially skewed remuneration structure. The strike has reignited debate on glaring and continuously widening income inequality in the continent's economic powerhouse.

It has glaringly exposed the plight of mine workers, most of whom work underground, doing bone-breaking rock drilling jobs, yet they continue living in squalor, leading lives weighed down by debt, while in comparison, mines management take home hefty salaries. Communities surrounding mines around Marikana in the platinum belt, are equal to squatter camps, an enduring legacy of apartheid.

The four-month long strike has exposed the governing ANC cosy relationship with mining capital.

More than 70 000 Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) members have been on strike at the world's three largest platinum producers; Anglo American Platinum Ltd, Impala Platinum Holdings and Lonmin Plc, seeking a basic salary of R12 500 a month, from R4 500. AMCU is led by Joseph Mathunjwa, whom the South African media says is 'waging a class war against white capital'. Mathunjwa raised the tempo in the country's longest running labour dispute, saying that 20 years after South Africans attained self-rule, the workers are still wallowing in grinding poverty.

"Yes, 1994 was a breakthrough whereby we achieved democracy. But what matters most is minerals and money, you can have all this democracy, human democracy but if you cannot feed your family, it means nothing. After 20 years there is no South African who can show his hand and say I have benefitted from the minerals of this country," Mathunjwa argues. "Workers are on strike not because they like it, it's the reality they face every day (which forces them to strike). From 1652 to date, the pay structure of the workers is still the one that was designed by the British colonialists and was confirmed by the National Party. In 1994, we hoped the status quo would change."   Mathunjwa said, “So it took a black mineworker to get to R4 500 about 17 years. So we are 20 years in democracy and nothing has been done."

"The companies can afford it, we know they manipulate prices of commodities, dodge tax through tax havens. While our members are on strike (Amplats CEO Chris) Griffiths can earn a bonus, they have got the money, it's just that they are greed, arrogant and insensitive," Mathunjwa said.

Mining companies say they have lost more than R17.9 billion in revenue and workers almost R7.9b in income. AMCU maintains that companies can afford and should pay a basic salary of R12 500. Producers have offered to stagger the R12 500 over four years up to 2017, an offer flatly rejected by the incensed workers. Mathunjwa argues that while the lowest earning rock drill operator, who works underground, has a basic monthly income of R4 500, the amount pales into insignificance compared to basic pay in other resource countries such as Brazil (R25 000) and Australia (R80 000).
 But it's not the comparison with Brazil, nor Australia which irks miners, it's the salary drawn by senior management. Anglo American Platinum chief executive, Chris Griffiths, was paid R17.6 million in cash and payment in equity, including a basic salary of R6.7 million in 2013 who added salt to the wound by saying "Must I run this company and deal with all this nonsense for nothing? I am at work. I am not on strike. I am not demanding to be paid what I am not worth."

From Here

Corruption: It takes two to tango

The question that haunts every caring and concerned African is, “With all our vast resources, why are we poor?”

Africa is a resource-endowed continent but sadly the continent is reeling in poverty. With its vast resources that are finite in nature mostly in the mining sector, the continent is trailing other continents in terms of socio-economic development and as a result Africans are poor.

Professor Mthuli Ncube, chief economist and vice-president of the African Development Bank, agrees: “The African continent is resource-rich. With good resource husbandry, Africa could be in a position to finance much of its own development.”

It is estimated that Africa has lost over US$1.4trillion in illicit financial outflows in the last three decades, which is about US$50billion to US$80billion yearly. Illicit financial flows siphon revenue out of poor countries, robbing them of much-needed assets and forestalling economic development,” said Global Financial Integrity, a United States-based research and advocacy organisation, director Raymond Baker.

“It is clear that the principal source of this illicit outflow, are in fact the multinational companies. The estimate that we have is something like 60 percent of the outflows originate from the activities of large commercial companies that operate from Africa,” disclosed ex-President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki, who is also the chairman of the panel on illicit financial outflows set up by ministers of finance in Africa.

Anne Versi, writing for the African Business Magazine, said: “... While the outside world has always been very quick to pin the corruption label on Africa, we have always argued that it takes two to make this deadly dance work. Now it is obvious that powerful multinationals are as complicit, in fact more so, in sucking Africa’s lifeblood as the worst local despot.”

According to estimates by Global Financial Integrity corrupt activities such as bribery and embezzlement make up only about 3 percent of illicit outflows; criminal activities such as drug trafficking and smuggling make up 30 to 35 percent and commercial transactions by multinational companies make up a whopping 60 to 65 percent.

Mbeki said there are “a whole number of ways” these multinationals cause illicit flows of funds which include trade mis-pricing, transfer pricing, mis-invoicing and others.

The media has kept silent and has not raised a middle finger against what its governments, intelligence services, corporations and businessmen are doing to Africans.

From here

Ethiopia -enough is enough

"We are living in extraordinary times, times of opportunity and change, times of great hope. With elections due next year now is the time for the various ethnic groups and factions inside and outside Ethiopia to unite, and speaking with one voice demand their rights, to freedom and justice and to live with hope in their hearts."
The above is  quote from an article by Graham Peebles. 

The whole article is worth a read.
http://www.countercurrents.org/peebles230514.htm

Quote of the Day

“The reality is that foreign investors come to Africa to make money and not to be part of the solution to Africa’s economic problems." Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the annual meeting of the African Development Bank in Kigali 

New Alliance For Food Security And Nutrition In Africa

Two weeks before the G7 Summit of June 4, 5 in Brussels, FIAN International raises grave human rights concerns about the G8 initiative "New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa" in a policy paper published today.

Titled "G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa: A Critical Analysis from a Human Rights Perspective", the policy paper argues that this initiative ignores general human rights principles and contradicts a human rights-based framework in key issues relevant for those most affected by hunger and malnutrition: small-scale food producers. FIAN calls on the G8 governments to stop this public-private partnership initiative that includes more than 150 companies - among them the biggest transnational corporations in the food and agriculture sector. Moreover, FIAN highlights the G8 initiative also ignores general human rights principles, like effective participation, and lacks human rights risk analyses and reference to adequate accountability mechanisms.

FIAN criticizes the G8 initiative as bluntly equating the opening of agriculture and food markets to foreign investors with combating hunger and malnutrition. An explicit expression of this erroneous understanding is the "success" indicators of the initiative: in most of the New Alliance Cooperation Frameworks for countries, the World Bank Doing Business Index and "increased private investments" are the key indicators. This alone shows the initiative is excessively biased towards the corporate sector.

FIAN's policy paper directly contrasts policy actions of the G8 initiative in four key areas: seeds, land, social protection/income, and nutrition with a human rights framework.

The results speak for themselves: For example, where the UN-Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food asks governments to implement farmers' rights (as defined in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources), the G8-led initiative pushes for the "implementation of national seed regulation" for greater private sector involvement.

Similarly, where the human right to adequate food and nutrition includes improved access to land for small-scale food producers "to feed oneself" and for those groups directly affected by land grabbing, the corporate-driven agenda of the G8 initiative is concerned about an easy and cheap process of land allocation for investors.

An increase of private sector involvement is furthermore evident in the area of social protection - an area which has traditionally been the sole responsibility of the state. The role of the state in relation to social protection is reduced through the creation of a climate beneficial to foreign investment by formulating corporate-friendly policy frameworks and opening up social protection-related areas to private investors. Also, the income-generating measures propagated by the G8 need to be assessed carefully due primarily to the fact that the strategy of the Alliance is geared toward land acquisition for private corporations focusing on large-scale, capital-intensive, and extensive agriculture which requires reduced labor input. Furthermore, the G8's simplistic understanding of the nutritional dimension of food production has resulted in the proposal of a limited economic model. It neglects the fact that food and nutrition security does not simply entail the increase of caloric intake, but rather a consistent access to diverse and nutritious diets (in terms of quantity and quality), culturally-adequate food, the recognition of the important role of protecting women's rights and their nutrition, as well as access to basic public services to ensure nutritional well-being and human dignity.

In conclusion, FIAN's policy paper fundamentally questions the legitimate role of the G8 in regards to food security and nutrition. It reiterates the demand that G8 countries implement the decisions by Committee on World Food Security (CFS), such as the Guidelines on the Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, and do not sideline and weaken the CFS as the foremost legitimate and democratic multilateral governing body on food security and nutrition with such an initiative.

from here

China and its African neo-colonialism

David Owiro, project officer at local think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), tells IPS that  “China’s interest in Africa is primarily based on Africa’s mineral wealth.” Angola is rich in diamonds and their longstanding relation with China is built on that natural wealth, adding that “Angola’s capital Luanda is home to nearly three million Chinese.”

 During the May 4 to 11 trip, Li attended the World Economic Forum on Africa in Abuja, Nigeria, and visited Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya.

During his visit to Kenya, Li and the government signed 15 deals — particularly relating to construction and agriculture. This included the controversial Standard Gauge Railway deal where China will fund and build a 3.8-billion-dollar railway from Kenya’s port of Mombasa to Nairobi in the project’s first phase. The railway will eventually connect Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. Under the terms of the agreement, Exim Bank of China will provide 90 percent of the cost and Kenya the remaining 10 percent.

“The project is too expensive and makes no economic sense. The period it will take Kenya to repay China for this loan has also not been made clear,” Owiro says.  Owiro also said, China is currently not transferring any technological knowledge “all the Chinese-driven construction in Africa is done by the Chinese themselves. It is only after an outcry during the building of Nairobi-Thika Superhighway that the Chinese brought in a few Kenyans to do a few manual jobs”.

Ken Ogwang, a Nairobi-based property developer and economic expert, says that there are about 2,500 Chinese firms in Africa, but the continent is still getting a raw deal.
“Studies have shown that Chinese firms in Africa create very minimal sub-economies. Where Chinese companies have been building roads, you expect locals to begin earning from feeding the constructors, housing them and so on,” he tells IPS. But, as Owiro explains, this does not happen. “The Chinese build their own campuses, and bring in what they need.

Saving Babies

In 2012, the world's worst death rate for newborns was in Sierra Leone, with 49.5 deaths for every 1,000 live births.

In Somalia and Guinea-Bissau, it was 45.7 deaths for every 1,000 live births, and only marginally better in the other African countries in the group: Angola, 45.4; Lesotho, 45.3; the Democratic Republic of Congo, 43.5; Mali, 41.5; the Central African Republic, 40.9; and Cote d'Ivoire, 39.9.

 Pakistan was the only non-African country in the world's worst 10.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the top five countries for newborn deaths, with 118,000 babies dying a year. Newborn deaths in Nigeria total 267,000 a year.

"If current trends continue," a press release accompanying the studies says, "it will be over a century before a baby born in Africa has the same chances of survival as a baby born in North America or Europe."

 Professor Joy Lawn, a Ugandan-born pediatrician at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AllAfrica "There has been a fatalistic acceptance from both communities and governments" but 70 percent of newborn deaths are preventable with currently available techniques.  Low-cost medical therapies have been developed, such as a class of drugs known as antenatal corticosteroids that can be given to a mother before birth - for about 50 cents - to improve the maturity of babies lungs. "A single injection", Lawn says, "can halve the risk of a baby developing lung complications. It's very evidence based."

Nearly three million newly-born children die each year worldwide, and another 2.6 million babies are stillborn. Nearly half of these deaths occur during labour and almost all go unrecorded.

Dr. Gary Darmstadt at the Gates Foundation says that despite "considerable advances" in healthcare for newborn babies, "further progress has been hindered by disappointing levels of investment, poor coordination globally and with countries, and inadequate translation of attention into effective national policies, health care programmes, and evaluation and monitoring of newborn health...Despite the evidence showing that there are feasible and affordable solutions to this problem - which include political prioritisation, increased investment, and concerted country action - poor global leadership, and inadequate coordination, evaluation, and accountability, are hindering progress."

A weaker ANC

1) 26 million people in South Africa today face abject poverty, 25 million of these are African
2) In 2004, 48% of South Africans were living below R524 a month, in 2011 this increased to 52.3%
3) There are now more people in South Africa living in shacks as there were in 2009 (13.4% in 2009, 14.1% in 2012)
4) In May 2008 there were 5.1 million unemployed people in South Africa, today there are more than 7 million
5) South Africa remains the most unequal country on the planet, our Gini Coefficient, which is a measure of inequality, increased from 0.66 in 1993 to 0.7 in 2008.
6) Between 2009 and 2012, 271,000 jobs in manufacturing have been lost and between 2007 and 2010, manufacturing declined from 17% of GDP to 15%.

The ANC received 62.15% of the valid votes cast, but 64% of South Africans did not vote for the ANC. Combined, out of the total potential and actually registered voters in South Africa today, analysis of election statistics confirms that the ANC has been, this year, elected into government by a mere 36 per cent of all those who were eligible to vote. There is diminishing support for the ANC in the voting trends since 1994. From a high of 53.01% in 1994, the ANC has disastrously dropped to 36.39% of the share of votes in 2014. This is the true story that reflects the reality of the loss of confidence in the ANC.

From here 

Militarizing humanitarianism

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Africa is the U.S. military's next frontier.
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the newest of the U.S. military's six regional commands, has rapidly expanded its presence on the African continent.

Emphasising a "3D" approach of "defence, diplomacy, and development," the White House describes AFRICOM's charge as coordinating "low-cost, small-footprint operations" throughout the African continent. Yet despite efforts to market AFRICOM as a small operation, recent reports have revealed that the command is "averaging more than a mission a day" on the continent, and has anywhere from "5,000 to 8,000 U.S. military personnel on the ground" at any given point. The US military has attempted to put a friendly face on its expedition to Africa.

New York Times, Eric Schmitt marveled at AFRICOM's Operation Flintlock, a multinational and multiagency training operation in Niger. Schmitt wrote glowingly about fighting terrorism with mosquito nets: "Instead of launching American airstrikes or commando raids on militants," he wrote, "the latest joint mission between the nations involves something else entirely: American boxes of donated vitamins, prenatal medicines, and mosquito netting to combat malaria."
Humanitarian and development missions like the ones outlined in Schmitt's article are at the forefront of AFRICOM's public relations campaign. But promoting AFRICOM as a humanitarian outfit is misleading at best. To put it simply, these projects are a Trojan Horse: dressed up as gifts, they establish points of entry on the continent when and where they may be needed.

Under the auspice of development and conflict prevention, AFRICOM regularly undertakes humanitarian projects in countries unmarked by permanent war or conflict. AFRICOM relies heavily on social media to showcase these projects and to portray itself as collaborative with African partners, dedicated to humanitarian aid, and trustworthy in the eyes of local peoples.
The command's Facebook and Twitter accounts are updated daily, and include postings on anything from participation in global humanitarian campaigns such as World Malaria Day to reports on medical missions, sound bites from local recipients of AFRICOM aid, and photos of troops distributing toys to children. Less is said about the expansive presence of American military personnel and technology on the ground and in the skies. AFRICOM conducts aerial and ground operations with U.S. troops, private military contractors, and proxy African military operatives trained and equipped by the United States.

Not surprisingly, given the ongoing U.S. interest in securing new fuel sources and growing concerns over China's influence in the region, many of AFRICOM's efforts are located in oil-rich regions – specifically Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and the Gulf of Guinea. The Gulf of Guinea, which hugs the Western coast of Africa, has received heightened interest of late given its proximity to the Sahel and Mali, an alleged increase in pirating, and notably, both on- and off-shore oil deposits. In Takoradi, Ghana, for example – a place affectionately nicknamed "Oil City" -AFRICOM trains Ghanaian troops, conducts humanitarian missions, and meets with local chiefs, NGOs, and fishing communities. Of course, U.S. spokesmen have attempted to distance the United States from any interest in the region's oil. A recent report from the Army War College dismissed claims that AFRICOM is protecting U.S. oil interests, but nonetheless argued that private American oil companies are the "best corporate citizens that African leaders and their publics could hope for." Its daily operations and talk of "sensitising" West African nations to the idea of a permanent Marines "crisis unit" in the region make clear that a more permanent U.S. presence on the continent is its true intention.

Humanitarian projects allow military personnel to train in new environments, gather local experience and tactical data, and build diplomatic relations with host countries and communities.
As activists with Women for Genuine Security have explained, this use of relief and humanitarian aid to "further larger geopolitical and military goals" – a practice they have dubbed "disaster militarism" – is a general strategy employed by the U.S. military worldwide.
For example, a 2010 report from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University found that in Kenya, humanitarian projects by the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, a multi-branch military operation in East Africa, provided "an entry point" to "facilitate a military intervention, should the need arise."  The U.S. military's "lily pad strategy" of speckling the globe with tiny military installations small-scale troop build-ups allow the United States to establish "goodwill" with local communities, planting the seeds for larger concentrations of troops and activities later on. As Women for Genuine Security puts it, "co-mingling humanitarian relief and military operations" contributes to "civilian confusion, public distrust, and questions of transparency and accountability."

 AFRICOM's humanitarian undertakings are not gestures of goodwill or conflict-deterrence, but rather the militarised U.S. approach to foreign policy in Africa.

From here

Somalia's Child Labour

War and famine in Somalia have forced Halima, and thousands of others like herself, to abandon the dream of education and become workers instead. UNICEF statistics from 2011, the last time such data was collected, show that half of all children between the ages of five and 14 hailing from the country’s central and southern regions are employed. In Puntland and Somaliland, which have been more stable than other parts of Somalia for the past two decades, more than a quarter of all children work for a living.

The grueling jobs for which they are hired – mostly manual and domestic labour – pay little but demand a lot. Twelve-year-old Halima Mohamed Ali says she works as a nanny for five children from “sunrise to sunrise”, cooking, ironing, washing floors, bathing the children, and finally putting them to bed before calling it a day.  Her 50-dollar monthly salary is a lifeline for her family of five, who have no other breadwinner.  Ali told IPS, “If I miss even a single day of work, my family will go to bed hungry.”

 According to Mohamed Abdi, programme manager of Somali Peace Line, an organisation that promotes and protects the rights of children, “Hundreds of girls are brought to Mogadishu from rural areas where there is extreme poverty and famine conditions … to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes. They work long hours for food, lodging and low wages, which they send back to their families.” The “Lucky ones” like Ali get paid on a regular basis many others have their meagre salaries withheld for months, are cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. “When we try to convince parents not to send their children to work, they ask us for alternative sources of income, which we cannot provide,” he admitted.

In addition to being vulnerable to informal labour conditions such as long hours, children like 11-year-old Hassan Abdullahi Duale also receive lower wages than their adult counterparts, even when they perform all the same functions. Duale – the only boy in the family – left school and took a job in a car-repair centre where he works 12-hour days to support his mother and two young sisters. “On a good day, when there are lots of cars to fix, I earn 50 Somali shillings (about 2.5 dollars) a day. On bad days, I am just given my lunch and sent home with nothing,” said Duale

 70 percent of the population of 10.2 million are classified as “low-income”, with 73 percent of all Somalis living on less than two dollars a day. The unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, with 54 percent of all Somalis between the ages of 15 and 64 out of work. The director-general of Somalia’s ministry of human development and public services, Aweys Sheikh Haddad, said his country’s constitution bans child labour, adding that the government recently ratified an International Labour Organization (ILO) convention forbidding the worst forms of child labour. But challenges in law enforcement mean these commitments on paper have not amounted to much in practice. Various studies and reports have found children as young as five years old engaged in virtually every industry, from construction to agriculture. Only 710,860 youth out of 1.7 million primary school-aged children are enrolled in any kind of education.

The US's New Normal In Africa

Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been ramping up missions on the African continent, funneling money into projects to woo allies, supporting and training proxy forces, conducting humanitarian outreach, carrying out air strikes and commando raids, creating a sophisticated logistics network throughout the region, and building a string of camps, “cooperative security locations,” and bases-by-other-names.

All the while, AFRICOM downplayed the expansion and much of the media, with a few notable exceptions, played along.  With the end of the Iraq War and the drawdown of combat forces in Afghanistan, Washington has, however, visibly “pivoted” to Africa and, in recent weeks, many news organizations, especially those devoted to the military, have begun waking up to the new normal there.
While daily U.S. troop strength continent-wide hovers in the relatively modest range of 5,000 to 8,000 personnel, an under-the-radar expansion has been constant, with the U.S. military now conducting operations alongside almost every African military in almost every African country and averaging more than a mission a day.

This increased engagement has come at a continuing cost.  When the U.S. and other allies intervened in 2011 to aid in the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, for instance, it helped set off a chain reaction that led to a security vacuum destabilizing that country as well as neighboring Mali.  The latter saw its elected government overthrown by a U.S.-trained officer.  The former never recovered and has tottered toward failed-state status ever since.  Local militias have been carving out fiefdoms, while killing untold numbers of Libyans -- as well, of course, as U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in a September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the “cradle” of the Libyan revolution, whose forces the U.S. had aided with training, materiel, and military might.

Quickly politicized by Congressional Republicans and conservative news outlets, “Benghazi” has become a shorthand for many things, including Obama administration cover-ups and misconduct, as well as White House lies and malfeasance.  Missing, however, has been thoughtful analysis of the implications of American power-projection in Africa or the possibility that blowback might result from it.

Far from being chastened by the Benghazi deaths or chalking them up to a failure to imagine the consequences of armed interventions in situations whose local politics they barely grasp, the Pentagon and the Obama administration have used Benghazi as a growth opportunity, a means to take military efforts on the continent to the next level.  “Benghazi” has provided AFRICOM with a beefed-up mandate and new clout.  It birthed the new normal in Africa.

From Nick Turse, for more read on here



 

Land Of Dust - Post-Apartheid South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, 15 May 2014 (IRIN)

"We're not celebrating anything" two decades after the end of apartheid, said Shawn Yanta. "Only the rich are celebrating. The  working class are still struggling to get on with living."

Yanta lives in Stofland in the Hex River Valley of South Africa's Western Cape. The dawn of democracy in 1994 delivered a boost to this region's table grape industry, as it brought an end to international boycotts of South African produce.

The Western Cape produces more than 80 percent of the country's table grapes and the Berg and Hex River Valleys are the country's primary production areas. Table grapes are among the world's most traded fruits and the prevailing climatic conditions in these valleys provide an unusually long eight-month window for production.

But that revenue does not translate into the betterment of the lives of the fruit pickers, who are trapped in poverty and neglected by the government and social services.

IRIN's latest film, Land of Dust, looks at the conditions of the workers in the Hex River Valley, where long hours, low wages, poor health and education opportunities, are the rewards of farm employment. Conditions which have changed little since the end of apartheid.

from here