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Arabica Robusta

Mandela's greatness may be assured, but not his legacy - 0 views

johnpilger.com/...-be-secured-but-not-his-legacy

africa development international south pilger

shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Still, he was well used to deferential interviews and I was ticked off several times - "you completely forgot what I said" and "I have already explained that matter to you". In brooking no criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), he revealed something of why millions of South Africans will mourn his passing but not his "legacy".
  • Once in power, the party's official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), was abandoned, with one of his ministers boasting that the ANC's politics were Thatcherite."You can put any label on it if you like," he replied. "...but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.""That's the opposite of what you said in 1994.""You have to appreciate that every process incorporates a change."
  • Few ordinary South Africans were aware that this "process" had begun in high secrecy more than two years before Mandela's release when the ANC in exile had, in effect, done a deal with prominent members of the Afrikaaner elite at meetings in a stately home, Mells Park House, near Bath. The prime movers were the corporations that had underpinned apartheid.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In 2001, George Soros told the Davos Economic Forum, "South Africa is in the hands of international capital."
  • Ironically, Mandela seemed to change in retirement, alerting the world to the post 9/11 dangers of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. His description of Blair as "Bush's foreign minister" was mischievously timed; Thabo Mbeki, his successor, was about to arrive in London to meet Blair. I wonder what he would make of the recent "pilgrimage" to his cell on Robben Island by Barack Obama, the unrelenting jailer of Guantanamo.
  • The apartheid regime's aim was to split the ANC between the "moderates" they could "do business with" (Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Oliver Tambo) and those in the frontline townships who led the United Democratic Front (UDF).
  • Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of "reconciliation". Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long they were willing to accept and collude with the forces that had been the people's enemy.
  • White liberals at home and abroad warmed to this, often ignoring or welcoming Mandela's reluctance to spell out a coherent vision, as Amilcar Cabral and Pandit Nehru had done.
Arabica Robusta

Guinea's anti-corruption activists raise doubts over mining crackdown | Afua Hirsch | G... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...guinea-anti-corruption-mining

africa development international governance industry guinea extractive

shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Guinea's first democratically elected government since independence – led by Alpha Condé, a former doctor of law and professor at the Paris-Sorbonne University in France – is trying to reform and rebrand the country after decades of chronic mismanagement.
  • At the heart of efforts to attract investors are reforms to the mining code, and the creation of a committee to re-evaluate all 18 mining contracts and make recommendations for some to be renegotiated. "We are making an in-depth assessment of the contracts. If there are some imbalances, our mandate is to negotiate with the mining companies in order to regulate them," says Nava Touré, president of the committee.
  • Anti-corruption activists say the process lacks teeth and depends on the goodwill of companies to renegotiate the terms of mining deals, something the government admits.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "The process is more symbolic than anything else. It is really about setting the tone for the future governance of Guinea. But it is important that these messages are sent now, so that any future government can build on them."
  • Some question whether anti-corruption bodies have the power to make a difference. Abdoul Rahamane Diallo, Guinea programme co-ordinator for the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, says: "The problem with all these bodies is that they do investigations, they get reports, but they cannot prosecute.
  • "Sometimes it feels as if the state is disappearing beneath these private enterprises," adds Falcone, whose organisation has 44 staff and a budget of only £75,000 a year. "These companies have the means to influence our politicians and political parties. But fortunately we are beginning to form stronger institutions to take them on."
Themba Dlamini

Graduate Internship Programme Opportunities - 0 views

phuzemthonjeni.com/jobs-indeed

Graduate Internship Programme Opportunities

shared by Themba Dlamini on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Themba Dlamini on 02 Aug 13
     
    Graduate Internship Programme Redflank Solutions Pty Ltd - Sandown, Gauteng Graduate Internship Programme As a Graduate... as a Graduate Intern at Redflank Our Graduate Internship Programme is very intensive...
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Food crisis in the Sahel: Real problem, false solutions - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...66292

food security international crisis development agriculture agribusiness foodsecurity pambazuka

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10 - Cached
  • In addition to the 8 million affected Nigeriens are some 1.6 million Chadians and 500,000 Malians. These statistics are only, however, the visible aspect that institutions and international non-governmental organisations display. They suffer from the limits around reading data on Africa, notably on rural areas and a region of the Sahel in which pastoral traditions and a nomadic lifestyle are a prominent feature.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
       
      reading data on rural areas with strong pastoral traditions
  • n the face of empty granaries, Niger’s people have begun to develop a strategy for survival. ‘In Niger, women cover a desert-like environment in search of anthills in order to dig up and retrieve grains of millet, corn and other crops that the ants have collected,’ tells Charles Bambara, in charge of communications for Oxfam GB in Dakar. In the north of Mali, farmers, keen to allow their livestock to drink, have taken to using the water points actually intended for elephants (in a bid to protect the last pachyderms alive in the country).
  • The disorder of the world food crisis in 2008 did not become hazy, and this new peak comes to remind us that, in the Sahel, the crisis results from an endemic problem. This is a problem that, as the thrust of recurrent fever testifies, is more a question of structure than conjuncture, that these are the failings of agricultural policies that impose their own tough realities, and that the recommended solutions are not different from those pushed in the 1980s with the establishing of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) which sounded the death knell of Africa’s agricultural policies.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The reduced investment imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank had then destroyed the base of an agriculture geared towards food sovereignty. Industrial cultures were promoted which washed the soil (leading to greater soil erosion, the use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser) and disrupted the balance of the systems of production behind subsistence and the generation of complementary revenues on the strength of access to local markets. From this point it was a question of food security, no matter where stocks came from. This was the period in which food aid poured in. Africa was to produce no longer, with African stomachs wagered on agricultural surpluses from Europe, the US and elsewhere. As a result, since 1980 sub-Saharan Africa has been the only region of the world where average per capita food production has continued to decline over the last 40 years.[3]
  • African agriculture has suffered a series of difficulties which, over 30 years, have left it vulnerable to the smallest of changes on both the international market and climatically. Agricultural policies applied by states, under donors’ pressure, have in effect turned their back on policies which, formerly, assured technical assistance to producers, backed up by a price-stabilisation mechanism and subsidies for commodities.
  • We could go even further towards the worst of it and look at the development of biofuels and the extent to which more and more land is being diverted away from food production. Essentially, we will be growing to power cars rather than fill granaries. And in July this year, Burkina Faso has inaugurated its first industrial unit of production, while the country remains vulnerable in the face of a food crisis.
  • ‘Today, in the smallest village, people eat bread, milk and coffee… This wasn’t part of our customs; we used to eat maize-based dough, sorghum and millet. But when you can’t live anymore from your field and you’re reliant on others (neighbours, food aid), you eat what you’re given.
  • The foundation of real food sovereignty lies in the promotion and consolidation of family agriculture, as well as the development of an agro-ecology which offers the best antidote to the wasting-away of fragile ecosystems at the mercy of deregulation.
Arabica Robusta

DEVELOPMENT: Economic Boom Worsened De-industrialisation of LDCs - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

ipsnews.net/news.asp

development Africa international industry news unctad

shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • "But higher commodity prices -- of mainly oil and gas -- have not solved the issues of price fluctuation and dependence on commodity export," he noted. This pattern of growth is "non-sustainable" and "non-inclusive".
  • UNCTAD proposes a "New International Economic Architecture" that goes beyond aid and trade to include technology, commodities and climate change.
  • "In NAMA (the non-agricultural market access negotiations) we have to be able to maintain the (original) developmental perspective of the Round to help countries diversify; get value addition; deal with tariff peaks and escalation; and eliminate all trade distortions. We should not add and add agendas in NAMA."
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  • There is a need for transaction tax on trade in commodity derivatives (financial instruments linked to future prices of underlying assets) and for more schemes to deal with the stabilisation of commodity prices. Panitchpakdi indicated concern over the excess of liquidity driving up the prices of maize and wheat in 2010.
  • Arabica Robusta on 27 Nov 10
     
    "Globalisation has not treated everyone equally," added Zeljka Kozul-Wright, chief of the LDCs section at UNCTAD. "LDCs are on the losing side because of their dependence on commodities export. During the boom period, dependence on commodities export increased while manufacturing sectors declined."
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News - Ghana: Why the North Matters - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...48821

adjustment colonialism development ghana hipc international news structural

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08 - Cached
  • With the introduction of structural adjustment, projects and activities depending on the government were scaled down. While the idea of privatisation could somehow work in the South, as there was an elite and foreign companies to take over these activities, such conditions did not apply in the North. The factories ground one by one to a halt. Commercial farms went into receivership. Employment and income collapsed. The market players, who were to exploit the opportunities afforded by the withdrawal of the government, simply were not ready for it. Whatever economic elite had started to develop either sank back into obscurity or joined their brethren in the south.
  • National policies, ostensibly designed so as not to favour specific parts of the country, end up disadvantaging the North. The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) was originally conceived as a programme focusing on ‘Hunger Hotspots’, and was therefore targeted at the North. For obvious political reasons, the government decided instead to make it a national policy benefiting all districts equally. But with programme management using its discretionary powers, individual districts were able to lobby for additional schools. Inevitably, such districts were politically well connected and close to the physical and political centre. With as end result that Greater Accra, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions receive a whopping 70 % of the total funding for school feeding (leaving the other 7 Regions to fight over the remaining 30 % of the funds). The three northern Regions, home to 30 % of the total poor in Ghana, receive a paltry 7 % of the funding!
  • The distribution of HIPC funding tells a similar story. The Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative was an attempt by the World Bank and IMF to reduce the debt burden of the world poorest countries. One of the first major policy initiatives of the new NPP government when it attained power in 2001 was to apply for HIPC status. A special account was opened, whereby the money which otherwise would have been used for debt re-payment would be channelled to special spending targeted at the poor. But once again the reality was different. While the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy 2003-2005 planned that almost half of the HIPC funds would be used in northern Ghana, in reality this was only 17 %, just about one third of what was planned! The remaining 83 % of the projects went to southern Ghana, for which only 52 % had been planned.
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  • It cannot be denied that northern Ghana has recorded considerable progress since independence.
  • Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08
     
    Unequal and uneven development inherited from British colonialism by present day Ghana continues to divide the North from the South. For Samuel Zan Akologo and Rinus van Klinken "Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Togo are gory reminders" should serve as warning to the Ghanian leadership that it must change course.
Arabica Robusta

Terraviva EUROPE - 0 views

www.ipsterraviva.net/...article.aspx

africa development drcongo international spain terraviva

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08
     
    Spain's relationship with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also received a boost with a recent cooperation agreement signed between Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's minister of foreign affairs and co-operation and Antipas Mbusu Nyamwisi, the DRC's minister of foreign affairs. The agreement is aimed at basic social services and the protection of the human rights of more vulnerable social groups such as children and women, through support for local institutions. In addition to basic health, education and transport needs, there will be collaboration in projects for environmental protection and sustainable development, and scientific and technological research. It is anticipated that the development of this agreement will begin with the setting up of a combined commission for evaluation, planning and monitoring, which will meet every four years.
Arabica Robusta

Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis - 0 views

www.ips-dc.org/...africa_and_the_economic_crisis

development africa international industry governance china news bank pambazuka world economic crisis

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Dec 09 - Cached
brian R liked it
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
  • a multi-stakeholder forum convened in Tunis at the end of November that brought together leading economists, government officials, and civil society representatives.
  • The forum was the first high-profile event of the newly formed Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), chaired by Botswana's former President, Festus Mogae.
  • CoDA is driven by African institutions and carves out greater space for civil society to set the agenda. At the forum, Professor Fantu Cheru of the Nordic Africa Institute urged support for "knowledge production on the continent."  The establishment of CoDA is a big step in that direction.
  • We must, as the Tunis Forum convener Abdoulaye Bathily, Senegalese academic and former minister of environment, urges "redefine Africa's development paradigm, and above all, support the emergence of new practices and citizen actions in Africa's public space."
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - System change not climate change - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...61235

shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09 - Cached
brian R liked it
  • Similarly, should we not consider the implication of toxic waste dumping in Africa by companies such as Trafigura, which dumped truck loads of sulphuric sludge in Ivory Coast in 2006, and the damaging consequences it has for Africa, or the ecological damage caused by Anglo-Dutch Shell in the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria? Surely any deal at Copenhagen should ensure that richer nations are made to dispose of toxic waste safely? Equally important should be fair compensation for the victims of environmental degradation and not the paltry £100 million paid by Trafigura to the Ivorian government in 2007.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09
       
      On a partially unrelated note, why have not Western countries pledged to stop illegal international fishing and dumping of waste off of Somalia, as part of their anti-piracy measures?
  • African NGOs such as the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance and Northern NGOs genuinely committed to climate justice in an egalitarian global community need to consistently mobilise post-Copenhagen to ensure that the movement for climate change does not become a business opportunity for the corporate world to profit from. There is a need for all of us to be aware of the smokescreen that will be presented by the elaborate carbon emissions accounting.
  • The challenge of progressive forces both in the South and North is to demand the realisation of the slogan on one placard hoisted at Copenhagen: ‘System Change Not Climate Change!’
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Nigeria: Goodluck Jonathan - business as usual? - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...63110

nigeria government politics pambazuka yar'adua

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Behind the scenes is the reliance on the military and mobilisation of base sentiments of ethnic and regional forces by each power camp. While the Yar’Adua camp is mobilising the military bureaucrats (who fear for their careers in a new arrangement) to ensure the thin thread tying Yar’Adua to power, the Jonathan emerging bloc is relying on intelligence forces and old military forces to sustain itself, as seen in the removal of Yar’Adua’s National Security Adviser.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 19 Mar 10
       
      Research further. Jonathan removed the entire cabinet, and not just the national security advisor.
  • the US and European capitalist governments’ concern for democracy in Nigeria is underlined by the economic interests of their big capitalist sharks. This explains the ambiguity in their statements, trying to boost support for Jonathan and at the same time giving room for Yar’Adua’s comeback.
  • the NLC’s statement after its last NEC meeting stated the reason behind its lukewarm attitude toward the country’s political crises. It maintained that some anti-democratic forces want to use mass labour action to hijack power through the military. Does the NLC mean that its actions are a recipe for an anti-democratic takeover of power? Is this not a viable excuse for any repressive government that may emerge from this current muddy struggle for power to suspend labour movement and civil society activities? More importantly, how can a mass action of workers and other oppressed people, maintaining opposition to military rule and demanding a sovereign national conference, lead to the emergence of military rule? The NLC’s position only reflects its previously failed policy of political neutrality and collaboration with anti-poor governments, a version of policy of lesser evil-ism.
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  • Rather than demand Jonathan’s enthronement (and thus the continuation of anti-poor economic policies), one expects the labour movement to demand at the minimum a truly democratic sovereign national conference that will determine the economic, political, social and cultural bases of Nigeria’s existence. Such a conference will be determined through the direct election of representatives of workers’ unions, pensioners’ associations, unemployed groups, professional organisations, students’ and youth movements, peasants’ and artisans’ organisations and ethnic nationalities.
victorious !

Changing transition to adulthood in urban Burkina Faso. - 0 views

www.accessmylibrary.com/...ransition-adulthood-urban.html

Africa young adults

shared by victorious ! on 07 Apr 10 - No Cached
  • victorious ! on 07 Apr 10
     
    Free article about 'Changing transition to adulthood in urban Burkina Faso.' at AccessMyLibrary.com. Search information that libraries trust!
Arabica Robusta

The Next Empire - Magazine - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...8018

shared by Arabica Robusta on 25 Apr 10 - Cached
victorious ! liked it
  • Everywhere I traveled in Africa, people spoke in defense of conditionality—the attachment of good-governance strings to loans from the West. “Many people look at Western conditions as a good thing, because nowadays so many things can be discussed openly, unlike the past—like corruption, for example,” said John Kulekana, a veteran Tanzanian journalist. “There are no more demigods here, and that is because of the growth of civil society, which has received lots of help from the West. Former ministers are called to account for their behavior. We are building accountability.”
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 25 Apr 10
       
      Questionable how much Western "governance" and "participation" rhetoric has led to truly broad-based "civil society" involvement in decision-making.
    • victorious !
      victorious ! on 29 Apr 10
       
      Arabica, Your comment honestly made me laugh. Western agencies' attachment of those "strings" was not based on altruism. Rather, these strings were put in place to ensure the agencies could monitor and evaluate activities (economic, political, etc.). The goal has never been "good-governance" or widespread civil "participation." Many African countries are so aid-dependent, they are accountable to donors not their citizens. So those conditionality concerns are just a bi-product of a larger agenda. However, I'm somewhat surprised that you painted all of these conditionality concerns as "rhetoric." There's been more than talk when it comes to these conditionalities. Agencies have actually compelled governments to put things in place that give the appearance of good governance or participation, but support their own agendas. Of course, I don't have concrete proof of these claims. However, "development" as it's commonly called, is big business for aid agencies. I'm still trying to put pieces together.
  • Many African intellectuals bridle at Western criticism of China’s African full-court press. The West, they say, has long patronized their continent, and since the end of the Cold War, has subjected it to outright neglect. And all of that is true. But the question remains: How does their continent overcome a pattern of extractive foreign engagement—beginning with its first contact with Europe, when gold or slaves were acquired in exchange for cloth and trinkets—that is still discernible today?
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Sudan and oil politics: A nation split by oil - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...70056

sudan election bassey

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Before we could settle to savour the change expected from the split, things took a different turn. The war drums sounded, and bullets began to fly. Streams of refugees flooded through our village and soon enough, we were on the move. I still recall seeing starving kids, rotting corpses by the roadside, and I can hear the screams of young ladies who were captured and forcibly married by rampaging troops.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 16 Jan 11
       
      Biafra
  • As aptly captured by a Sudanese academic in a recent Oilwatch Africa meeting, "Sudanese oil has been developed against the background of war, international sanctions, and political isolation. It has been developed at a time of imposing demand by emerging economies like India and China and a time of unprecedented soaring prices of both food and oil and the controversial use of agricultural crops as a source of bio-energy."
  • The reality is that with the available infrastructure, the South cannot export its oil except through the North. In addition, as the date of possible separation drew nearer, new oil blocks that transverse northern and southern areas were being allocated.
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  • Surely, the companies operating here could not hope for a better space for reckless exploitation and incredibly high profit margins. Added to this is the fact that the regulatory regime is largely non-existent and even the conduct of environmental impact assessments are selective.
  • Oil has certainly greased the engines of exploitation, oppression and war in Sudan. It is oiling the machines of separation today. What will it lubricate next?
  • At a time when the continent should be coming together and erasing the arbitrary boundary lines drawn by colonialist adventurers, we continue to fragment. Certainly, this cannot be the only way to overcome poor and parasitic governance.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - The invention of the indigène - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...70061

drc drcongo africa development international governance indigenous mamdani

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • The violence in Congo may seem unintelligible but its roots lie in institutional practices introduced under colonialism, which 50 years of independence have only exacerbated. At their heart is an institution known as the native authority. Since the colonial period, native authorities have had jurisdiction over ‘tribal homelands’. As a system of power, the native authority claims to represent age-old ethnic identity. But ethnicity refers to cultural difference, and there is no necessary link between culture and territory.
  • The colonial system thus rested on a dual system of institutionalised discrimination dressed up as cultural difference: by race in the cities and tribe in the countryside.
  • Ethnic cleansing is rarely spontaneous; it requires elite conspiracies and methodical popular organisation.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 16 Jan 11
       
      "Elite conspiracies ... methodical popular organization" and ethnic cleansing.  Why is it so difficult to draw a bead on the ethnography of these elite conspiracies, the co-opting of the vulnerable, and the planning of "spontaneous violence"?
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • In Katanga, where the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga – a partnership formed in 1906 between King Leopold II, the Société Générale de Belgique and British interests – demanded a flow of cheap labour to exploit the region’s mineral resources, the government obliged with a series of decrees, in 1906, 1910 and 1933, requiring that each ‘tribe’ be identified, separated and resettled in its own ‘homeland’, supervised by its own native authority. One district commissioner complained of his duties that some ethnic groups were ‘totally jumbled’: ‘It will be very difficult to organise them.’ The separation was accomplished between 1925 and 1930, by means of ethnic cleansing.
  • When they confronted the militant Luba trade unions in the mines of Katanga, the Belgians forged an alliance with the indigenous Lunda, and proclaimed a coalition of ‘civilisers’ and ‘authentic Katangans’.
  • The government of the newly independent Congo responded to the secession in Katanga by sending in troops. Ordered to also put down the South Kasai secession on their way to Katanga, the Congolese National Army went on a rampage, slaughtering civilians. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, the Congolese political historian, has argued that the prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, committed his ‘first major political blunder’ when instead of seeking to heal the rift in a ‘bitter inter-ethnic conflict’ between ‘indigènes’ and ‘non-indigènes’, he chose to side with one group against another. His political enemies held Lumumba responsible for the ensuing political violence; on 5 September 1960 Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN secretary general, described it as ‘genocide’. On the same day, the president, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, dismissed Lumumba.
  • A census tagged every villager as a ‘native’ of a particular tribal homeland. ‘Forced relocations,’ Johan Pottier writes, ‘were the norm.’
  • Part constitutional conference, part transitional government, the CNS was meant to be the mechanism that took Zaire into the post-Cold War world of multiparty democracy.
  • The proceedings of the CNS were televised throughout urban Congo, inspiring the growth of civic organisations and strengthening the opposition, but as it prepared to deal with two of the most sensitive dossiers on its agenda – ill-gotten gains and political assassinations – the conference was abruptly closed in December 1992 and never reconvened. This was a sign of the regime’s continuing strength, and the fragility of the opposition. The key weakness of the opposition was that it failed to move away from nativist definitions of political belonging, which fragmented it again and again, to an inclusive understanding of citizenship, which might have appealed to immigrants who had come to Congo at different periods and united them in a single movement.
  • The existence of the Hutu camps, armed and funded, and home to two million refugees or more, had a devastating effect on civilian life in Kivu. It led to the dollarisation of the economy and price rises (including rents) well beyond the reach of local people. As the Interahamwe unleashed a regime of terror against Congolese Tutsi, another wave of younger men moved across the border to enlist in the RPF. Among them was Laurent Nkunda, the future commander of the notorious Banyamulenge militia (Tutsi), wanted for war crimes in Congo and now detained in Rwanda. The anatomy of political life in Kivu began to resemble that of Rwanda just before the genocide, where every political party had its own militia: in Kivu, every native authority began to acquire one.
  • Two conferences have been held to try to halt the conflict in Congo, the first in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1999, the second in Sun City, South Africa, in 2002. The Lusaka agreement required the foreign forces to withdraw and the local militias to disarm under UN auspices. Sun City, by contrast, bore a recognisably South African imprint: opposition groups would participate in the transitional government, the national assembly and the senate, while the militias – numbering anywhere between 50,000 and 300,000 men – would be integrated into the new national army along with former rebels, in a process known as ‘brassage’.
  • Why lump rebels and local militias together when the first were organised along ideological lines as a supra-local army and the second were largely a local phenomenon tied to specific communities?
  • The supreme difficulty in Congo, as I’ve said, is the persistence of the native authority, which, for all the complexities of ethnicity, is still in place as an organising principle. It is now the terrain on which new forms of political authority, flaunted by young men bearing arms, confront older forms steeped in patriarchal tradition. (This same confrontation has also unfolded in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone, where youth-led rebellions have eroded older kinds of authority.)
  • Even the worst perpetrators of violence in Congo must be understood as human actors caught up in a conflict that started with the colonial conquest a century ago. That means shifting the focus from individual acts to the cycle of violence, from atrocities to the issues that drive them. Instead of recognising and facing the real challenge – to reform the native authority so that local militias can be held politically accountable – the ‘international community’ has chosen to induct them into a ballooning, dysfunctional colonial-style army, leaving the native authority to grind along unchanged.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Beyond the privatisation of liberation - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...73591

development africa international industry news governance pambazuka world bank privatization horacecampbell

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 May 11 - No Cached
  • At one level the path toward liberalisation should have been opposed by the SACP, but the South African Communist Party found a convenient formulation to support the capitalist road. Their understanding of the stages theory of Marxism meant that South Africa had to pass through a period of capitalist development before the working class could be ready for an alternative to capitalism. This theoretical understanding of Marxism that twisted the revolutionary ideas of class struggles justified the support for the privatisation of large sections of the economy.
  • Former apartheid capitalists were exultant as South Africa’s ‘entrepreneurs’ traversed the continent behind the diplomatic cover of the African Renaissance. The African capitalists fronting for the old apartheid structures accepted the rules of the capitalist system, the racist hierarchy and ethnic power bases and looked to ways to maintain the system while seemingly opposing the very same system that they propped up.
  • In Zimbabwe, the integration of former freedom fighters into the circuits of the Rhodesian state found a new path. After integrating former freedom fighters into the civil service, into the university, into the army, into the police and into the wider bureaucracy, the freedom fighters wanted the land of the settlers. They turned to the language of third liberation to seize the land of the white farmers. What would have been a righteous act of reversing the theft of land from African workers and peasants became one more vehicle for the liberation fighters to become private capitalists. The conditions of the workers on the land did not change as the state became more repressive and intolerant of the wider society. Repression and the privatisation of liberation went hand in glove in Zimbabwe.
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  • in Mozambique the structures of the popular organs such as the women, youth, workers and peasants were weakened. International and western non-governmental organisations invaded the rural communities while the working people were denied the basic democratic rights for collective bargaining and industrial democracy.
  • Jonas Savimbi had fought tenaciously to be the standard bearer for Western capitalism in Angola. However, very early on the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party) accepted the IMF (International Monetary Fund) terms and conditions for neoliberal capitalism.
  • The MPLA leadership built relations with China to widen their bargaining position with international capital. However, this outreach to China and Brazil did not affect the privatisation process. In fact, Chinese private entities such as the Chinese Investment Fund strengthened the capitalist element of the party by importing conditions of labour relations that denied rights to Angolan and Chinese workers.
  • Liberation had become a business and the victories of the people were being distorted for the wealth and power of the ruling families.
  • Jacob Zuma has demeaned the meaning of links to the ancestors by invoking the ancestral spirits on the side of capitalist accumulation.
  • Within the church, the schools, universities, the old media and other intellectual and ideological institutions the struggles intensified but the white capitalists understood that the black capitalists supported the idea of the superiority of the capitalist mode of production. In essence, these blacks supported ideas of racial hierarchy and sent their children to schools that practised overt racial discrimination. So bold had the whites become that at one of the premier universities, the University of Cape Town, it was decided that there was no need to teach African studies.
  • In this political wasteland, Robert Mugabe appeared attractive and earned massive applause when he visited South Africa.
  • Throughout Africa it is imperative that education for transformation support the calls for social transformation. Private property cannot be nationalised with the same mindset that supports the crude consumption of the black capitalists in gated communities. These capitalists manipulate the workers of South Africa on the basis of racial and ethnic identification, and more significantly, these capitalists promote xenophobia to discriminate against other African workers who believe in the concept of Africa for the Africans.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Copper in Zambia: Charity for multinationals - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...73742

zimbabwe mugabe agribusiness agriculture security foodsecurity development africa international industry news governance pambazuka world bank zambia copper

shared by Arabica Robusta on 04 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Despite the apparent ‘success’ of the privatisation of the Zambian copper industry, the true picture is one of systemic multinational exploitation, national assets sold ‘for a song’ and persistent tax dodging, writes Khadija Sharife.
  • It has been almost two decades since Zambia's ailing copper industry, beset by low commodity prices and skyrocketing debt, was privatised. The process was described by the New York Times in 1996 as, 'Westerniz[ing] the economy with a combination of help and arm-twisting from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the lead lenders for the $6.3 billion in external debt the country is carrying.’
  • Provisions granted to multinationals included stability periods extending for up to 20 years, rendering multinationals exempt from legislation implemented by parliament and other national and legal alterations; the right to carry over losses throughout the 'stability periods'; 100 per cent foreign currency retention, remittance and provision for capital investment deductions; zero withholding tax; and various other fiscal and para-fiscal exemptions ranging from customs duty to environmental pollution and penalties; pension schemes, and contracting of casual workers – accounting for 45 per cent of the workforce, amongst others.
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  • Stated former finance minister Edith Nawakwi: ‘We were told by advisers, who included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that … for the next 20 years, Zambian copper would not make a profit. [Conversely, if we privatised] we would be able to access debt relief, and this was a huge carrot in front of us – like waving medicine in front of a dying woman. We had no option [but to go ahead].’
  • In 2004, UK-based corporation Vedanta Resources acquired 51 per cent of shares in KCM, known as the largest copper mine in the world, for $48 million cash. In the three-month period that followed, the company registered profits of $26 million from KCM.
  • The World Bank's IFC (International Finance Corporation) reported that, thanks to corporate incentives, effective tax rate for mining companies was 'effectively zero'.
  • Despite being the world's copper powerhouse, Zambia is now one of the world's 25 poorest nations. Though copper provides about 80 per cent of foreign exchange earnings, mining employs just 10 per cent of salaried workers, contributes just 2.2 per cent of revenue to the government's tax agency (ZRA – Zambia Revenue Authority) and 9.7 per cent to GDP (gross domestic product). The drastic increase in price was primarily due to China's increased copper needs, rising to US$10,000 per tonne. The bulk of copper in Zambia is exported to Switzerland – on paper, that is.
  • Glencore International AG, based in Baar, Switzerland (the world's leading secrecy jurisdiction), controls over 50 per cent of the world's global copper market.
  • Comparative analysis reveals that Mopani’s costs are much higher than those of comparable mining companies operating in Zambia.
  • Extensive revenue analysis revealed cobalt extraction rates twice inferior to other producers of the same area - a difference deemed unlikely by the auditors and which indicates that some of the ore extracted by Mopani could remain undeclared.
  • Transfer pricing manipulation and breach of the Arm’s Length principle: The company’s production is sold, both locally and internationally, via its main buyer Glencore International AG, who also happens to be Mopani’s parent company. After careful revenue analysis, it appears that the sales from Mopani to Glencore fail to comply with the OECD “Arm’s Length” principle: minerals are sold to Glencore under conditions that would not apply to a third-party buyer… According to the audit, Mopani seems to prefer selling its production to Glencore whenever prices are at their lowest, something a buyer, not a seller, would be likely to do.'
  • This is, of course, a common script for Africa: the bulk of the illicit flight (estimated by Global Financial Integrity at 60 per cent) is often siphoned not by rogue regimes but instead by corporations through 'underpricing, overpricing, misinvoicing and making completely fake transactions, often between subsidiaries of the same multinational company, bank transfers to offshore accounts from high street banks offering offshore accounts, and companies formed offshore to keep property out of the sight of the tax collectors. According to a survey assessing the economic practices of 476 multinational corporations, 80 per cent acknowledge that transfer pricing remains central to their tax strategy.
  • And though prices increased, Zambia’s revenue actually decreased, by 50 per cent from 1.4 per cent (2003) to 0.7 per cent (2004). The government introduced a 25 per cent windfall tax, raised mineral royalties to 3 per cent and corporate tax to 30 per cent. But soon after, mining houses engaged in intensive lobbying. Current Zambian President Rupiah Banda claims that the windfall tax will not be implemented again. In fact, soon after introduction, it was scrapped.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Pollution: Africa's real resource curse? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...73857

development africa international industry governance news pambazuka world bank pollution environment cyanide

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Currently, corporations subscribe to the standards of the voluntary International Cyanide Managament Code. Yet one aspect that the code fails to rigorously address is that of closure.
  • Kabwe’s rehabilitation is part of the broader Copperbelt Environment Project (CEP), largely funded by the World Bank.
  • Describing the Environmental Council of Zambia as ‘very weak’, the CEP revealed that: ‘Existing regulations are seldom enforced. The regulatory dispositions for the mining sector are currently so weak that they do not deter polluters…Identification and monitoring of environmental risks resulting from mining activities is often inadequate.’ Mining corporations operating in Zambia post-1994 were allowed to adhere to the Environmental Management Plan (EMP), taking precedence over national legislation, with little penalties save for on the spot fines of £17 and letters of warning. Like Tanzania, Zambia’s mining contracts remained secretive.
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  • e Villiers said the body appointed to look at the problem favours neutralisation as the best solution to the problem of AMD. ‘Certainly, it will be an economically viable solution, if logistics such as the reservoirs needed for the neutralization to be carried out in (continuously over a very long period of time) can be sorted out, which seems unlikely at the moment. ‘The proposals by corporations to step in with their proposed solutions have apparently been shot down, because they wanted to sell the cleaned water back to Rand Water, making a profit in the process. ‘I’m not sure why mining houses are allowed to pollute while making a profit, and corporations who want to clean up are apparently expected to do so without the benefit of making a profit,’ she said.
  • In an interview with The Africa Report, Turton said that not only will mines evade the legal minimum requirement of the ‘polluter pays principle’ but also profit from it. ‘What’s more, that profit is all but guaranteed, because it will be underwritten by the state in the form of a mooted Public Private Partnership (PPP),’ he said. The deal allows for mining houses to access a R3.5-billion deal with no tendering process, as well as select ‘treatment’ that was described by Turton as the ‘least cost option’ via a process shrouded in secrecy, enabling the WUC to act as both consultant and reviewer.
Arabica Robusta

Memo From Africa - France Stirs Ill Will as It Consorts With Region's Autocrats - NYTim... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13francophone.html

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 14 Nov 09 - Cached
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  • The antigovernment demonstrators think France still pulls the strings, and while French officials deny this, their actions often suggest otherwise. In Gabon, where the election of an autocrat’s son dashed hopes for ending 40 years of rule under the Bongo family, Mr. Sarkozy’s man in Africa, Alain Joyandet, showed up at Ali Bongo’s pomp-filled inauguration, telling reporters that Mr. Bongo “must be given time.”
  • recently noted persistent human rights abuses by Cameroon
  • French officials have discouraged scrutiny of African leaders’ corruption, the fruits of which often end up in Paris. A French good-government group’s campaign to expose and recover the “ill-gotten gains” of three of the most notorious leaders — the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Congo Republic and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea — has been opposed by the prosecutor of the French Republic on the grounds that the group has no standing to sue, and that the facts are “ill defined.”
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  • Transparency International, had set out in detail the leaders’ extensive luxury real-estate holdings in Paris. Last month, an appeals court in Paris agreed with the prosecutors.
  • “People don’t like France because France isn’t helping Africans freely choose their leaders,” said Achille Mbembe, a political scientist and historian at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. “
  • Arabica Robusta on 14 Nov 09
     
    This article can be part of a comparison of US, Chinese and French approaches to Africa, couched in rhetoric of human rights, economic development, and colonialism.
Arabica Robusta

The Electoral Process in Cameroon: What Are the Lessons Learned? - Dibussi Tande: Scrib... - 0 views

www.dibussi.com/...t-are-the-lessons-learned.html

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • In looking at the election, rather than blaming the Government, ELECAM, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), other political parties, and international actors for the irregularities, low turnout and voters’ lack of understanding of the actual voting process, one needs to look at what happened before the campaign ever began.  One needs to examine the root causes of apathy, abstention and division.  I submit to you that some Cameroonian civil society organizations are as guilty of blurring the line between civil society and opposition as the CPDM is of blurring the line between the party and Government. 
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News : Issue 714 (Revolution and Pan-Africanism) - 0 views

www.pambazuka.net/...current

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • A cursory study of Malcolm’s life quickly illustrates the reasons behind his popularity and the desire of so many to move him into their political camps. Malcolm’s well-documented journey from street hustler to world renowned spokesperson and organiser for African liberation reflects the hard work and determination that many of us can only dream about. His fearlessness in articulating the problems of white supremacy and capitalism and his unique ability to take difficult political and economic concepts and break them down for common consumption and understanding were skills that motivated millions since Malcolm first joined the Nation in the 1950s.
  • Malcolm’s final speeches are filled with invectives for Africans in the US to stop expecting freedom in the US, while Africa was subjugated because Africa’s freedom was dependent upon releasing the very same forces that keep Africans in the US oppressed. Malcolm characterised this reality with his statements that Africa “is at the centre of our liberation” and that socialism is “the system all people in the world seem to be coming around to”.
  • The writing on the wall had been provided to Malcolm by his meeting Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. For anyone who doubts the impact these meetings had on Malcolm’s thinking all one has to do is read his own words in his autobiography. Malcolm described his meetings with Nkrumah as “the highlight of my travels” and “the highest honour of my life”. These words are true despite those meetings being ignored in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic film and in pretty much everything else portrayed about Malcolm’s life.
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  • Nkrumah’s book of letters The Conakry Years, which consisted of all of Nkrumah’s personal letters written and received while he was in Guinea after the Central Intelligence Agency’s sponsored coup that overthrew his government on February 24, 1966 (almost a year to the day after Malcolm was assassinated) contains letters Nkrumah wrote to Malcolm and to others about Malcolm, detailing Nkrumah’s efforts to persuade Malcolm to stay in Ghana and become a part of Nkrumah’s staff to work on their Pan-Africanist objective.
  • Nkrumah’s letters mention that he confided in Malcolm that Ghanaian intelligence forces had revealed that Malcolm would be killed within months if he returned to the US but according to Nkrumah, that revelation seemed to spark Malcolm’s desire to return to the fire-hot situation against him in the US. Still, Malcolm collaborated in his recently published diary his intense desire to become a part of this network of Pan-Africanists in West Africa.
  • It’s also worth noting that three short years later another African revolutionary from the US ended up accepting Nkrumah’s offer to move to Guinea-Conakry and become his political secretary. Kwame Ture – then known as Stokely Carmichael – left the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party and agreed to accept the task of building the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).
  • There’s little question that people within the Nation had some involvement. The antagonism between Malcolm and the hierarchy of the Nation of Islam at the time, including National Secretary John Ali, Elijah Muhammad Jr. (son of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad), Minister James Shabazz from New Jersey, Clarence X Gill the Fruit of Islam Captain from New Jersey and others, is well documented.
  • There’s no refuting that Malcolm was diagnosed as being poisoned in Egypt and his recollection of the experience in his diary will make your own stomach tighten up. There’s also no doubt that the French Government, which had no policy of rejecting entry to persons, refused Malcolm entry into their country shortly before his murder while the rumours swirled that their decision was based on their desire to not permit Malcolm to be killed on French soil.
  • We are completely aware that it is the job of our enemies to confuse people about whom we are and who our leaders are, so the Malcolm X postage stamp and every other way the capitalism system makes a concession to recognising the revolutionary Malcolm is only happening because they want to frame his image before we do.
  • It won’t work. Sekou Toure was correct when he said “truth crushed to Earth shall rise a thousand times”. Malcolm was a Pan-Africanist, that’s why there are as many, if not more, tributes to him outside of the US as there are inside. The people of Ghana expressed their understanding of this phenomenon in 1964 when they named him Omawale – "the son who has returned home".
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