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The heavy hand on Venezuela's streets | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...avy-hand-on-venezuelas-streets venezuela crime maduro us intervention
shared by Arabica Robusta on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Given endemic police corruption and Venezuela’s strong military tradition, it was little surprise that Maduro recently turned to the armed forces to serve as a defacto police force, as a short term – but increasingly permanent - solution to widespread insecurity.
  • The high rate of corruption is due in large part to increasing penetration of organized crime into many federal, state and municipal institutions.
  • While observers and analysts have applauded the reform initiative, it has not yet led to improved law enforcement. One problem is that it remains underfunded – some measures, such as the wage increase, have yet to be implemented.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • However, perhaps one of the biggest challenges to the reform’s success is public perception of this more humanist approach. No hard statistics have been released, but anecdotal reports indicate a paradoxical response from the public: they are in favor of the idea of a more holistic, community-based strategy, but when confronted with continuous soaring crime rates, want an immediate response. Those in poor, high-crime areas see PNB tactics as “soft” and ineffective, according to Venezuela experts David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson. 
  • President Maduro does not have this luxury. His short tenure in office has been marred by diplomatic gaffes, power outages, food shortages, massive inflation, high murder rates and corruption scandals and the lack of political prowess to distract the public.
  • Chávez did not put in place an institutionalized, adequate plan to target Venezuela’s insecurity before he died in March, and after seven months, it does not look like Maduro has a sustainable plan either.
  • Chávez did not put in place an institutionalized, adequate plan to target Venezuela’s insecurity before he died in March, and after seven months, it does not look like Maduro has a sustainable plan either.
  • Chávez did not put in place an institutionalized, adequate plan to target Venezuela’s insecurity before he died in March, and after seven months, it does not look like Maduro has a sustainable plan either.
  • Chávez did not put in place an institutionalized, adequate plan to target Venezuela’s insecurity before he died in March, and after seven months, it does not look like Maduro has a sustainable plan either.
  • Chávez did not put in place an institutionalized, adequate plan to target Venezuela’s insecurity before he died in March, and after seven months, it does not look like Maduro has a sustainable plan either.
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Pambazuka News - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...48819 africa codesria corporations delta epas european hegemony industry mend mosop multinational niger nigeria pambazuka petro-capitalism petroleum shell union
shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Jun 08 - Cached
  • In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.
  • In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil – one of Rodney’s targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France’s Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
  • Although it was six months ago that the European Union’s ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships -- including crisis-ridden Cote d’Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries -- into the trap of signing interim “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.
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  • “We can’t continue to deal with incompetent, weak, corrupt, supine governments,” explained Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. “But these are not factors of the same order of magnitude. The domination of African countries by neocolonialism and the subordinate stance by African governments are not the same. We must be clear where the main driving force comes from: outside Africa. We have to tackle the source.”
  • Since 2002, the EPAs have supplanted the agenda of the gridlocked World Trade Organisation, just as bilateral trade deals with the US, China and Brazil are also now commonplace. A united Europe deals with individual African countries in an especially pernicious way, because aside from free trade in goods, Mandelson last October hinted at other invasive EPA conditions that will decimate national sovereignty: “Our objective remains to conclude comprehensive, full economic partnership agreements. These agreements have a WTO-compatible goods agreement at their core, but also cover other issues.” Those other “Singapore” issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don’t hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like South Africa’s affirmative action).
  • As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”
  • African countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads and railways); rapidly fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation; labour productivity problems arising from poor education, health and housing provision; vulnerable market institutions (such as immature financial systems); and poorly-functioning legal frameworks. The EU has no interest in reversing such fundamental structural economic challenges.
  • From early on, African civil society movements – especially the African Trade Network - called on elites to halt the negotiations. But it has not been easy to develop a strong coalition, as Third World Network director Yao Graham concedes: “Unions have been too syndicalist, while our justice movements have been exhausted fighting structural adjustment. The local private sector has been absent. But in some regions, like West Africa, agricultural producers have been well organised and opposed to EPAs. Links to the Caribbean are weak. But we are working behind enemy lines with progressive allies in Europe, including within the Brussels parliament.”
  • because Mandelson is squeezing so hard, he may be single-handedly breaking the links between elites. Led by Senegalese and Malian politicians, most of the African officials at the conference agreed with the left intelligentsia that dangers now arise of: - regional disintegration (due to EU bilateral negotiations and subregional blocs) and internecine race-to-the-bottom competition:
  • Arabica Robusta on 29 Jun 08
     
    In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.
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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?
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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"?
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  • 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.
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Pambazuka - Development aid: Enemy of emancipation? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...70978 africa news ngos pambazuka crisis process social movements development industry civil society international
shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • In Africa there have historically been two types of civil society, those that have collaborated with the colonial power and those which have opposed it.
  • Are the big NGOs (non-governmental organisations) harmful towards Africa? FIROZE MANJI: Let’s not talk about their motivations, which are often good. The question is not about evaluating their intentions, but rather the actual consequences of their actions. In a political context where people are oppressed, a humanitarian organisation does nothing but soften the situation, rather than addressing the problem.
  • I have become anti-development. This wasn’t the case before. Let’s have an analogy: did those enslaved need to develop themselves, or to be free? I think that we need emancipation, not development.
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  • These last 20 years we have faced a major change: the financialisation of capitalism. Now, nobody can do anything without capital. Finance controls each and every sector of society.
  • Immediately after Kenya’s independence (1963), a great many important liberation figures were imprisoned, exiled or killed, such as Patrice Lumumba in Congo and Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso. Each time a leader had the courage to rebel, Europe and the United States forced them to back down. We then came to know an empty period until the mid-1990s, when people began to resist and organise themselves again. Today in Kenya, spaces for discussion and debate are not lacking. It’s vibrant, alive and a general trend, including in Europe.
  • Look at Tunisia: you hear that the revolution was caused by Twitter – this can’t be serious! Pens were also used as a means of information and mobilisation. Does this mean that pens caused the revolution? This illustrates a tendency towards technological determinism, towards hi-tech fetishism. We imagine that mobile phones, SMS (short message service), Twitter and Facebook have a power. This type of discussion tends to underestimate the role of those who use them.
  • In Tunisia, protesting in the road called for a lot of courage. A protestor who embraces a soldier, as is seen in a photo, is not produced by technology. It’s thought that this can resolve everything, but a third of Africans have one and there hasn’t been revolution everywhere.
  • Take for example agriculture: the bulk of what’s produced in Africa goes to feed Europe, multinationals and supermarkets. In Kenya we produce millions of flowers. Every day, they leave for Amsterdam. The amount of water used and the chemical products involved destroy our environment. While this goes on, populations have difficulty gaining access to water and food. The countryside ought to be used to produce food!
  • Agricultural production needs to be democratised.
  • I think that Latin America is a dozen years ahead of us. Structural adjustment policies began there two decades ago. I think that in Africa a popular movement will rise up from this from 2020. Chávez is not an exception; he is the product of his history, of a movement for emancipation, like Lula. The question is, how can we ourselves politicise this process? It’s not easy; there’s no technical solution. Workers and farmers need to become organised. This takes time. The positive thing is that this point is now discussed; this wasn’t the case 10 years ago.
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Pambazuka - Protests across Africa: Different attention for different countries? - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • As Gaddafi finds new ways to attack Libyans, Libyans unleash their fury against his deployment of mercenaries from West and East Africa as migrant workers from south of the Sahara face increasing attacks and are prevented from leaving the country. Given the racism in Libya and low status of foreign black workers, it was only a matter of time before innocent people were attacked.
  • The language and subtext being used in some of the reports is cause for concern. In a video by Al Jazeera, ‘Immigrant workers under suspicion’, the US-based Frontlines of Revolution uses the headline ‘White Arab supremacy: Revolution or Moor black oppression?’ There is no doubt that there that racism is rife in Libya and that black foreign workers are being targeted, but language like this and lack of historical or political context only inflames the situation
  • Nonetheless, the assault on black Africans is disturbing, not least because the uprisings in North Africa have been framed within an Arab/Middle East context, not just by Western media but more importantly by Al Jazeera, which itself has become part of the revolutionary story. This in itself further antagonises Arab–African/Arab–black tensions and also raises the monumental question as to who is an African and what do we mean by Africa. Pambazuka News editor Firoze Manji addresses this in a recent interview with Al Jazeera – could this possibly be a response to growing criticism of their framing the North African uprisings solely in an ‘Arab’ context?
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  • ‘They wanted to stop us from protesting, we protested. We have a non-violent philosophy, which we maintained in the face of extreme violence. An incredible force of young Cameroonians. We started out almost 300 and ended up less than 50 but (being a) nugget has banished fear, for ourselves and for many other Cameroonians. The population did not join us in droves, but: not one person out of hundreds complained about the blocking on the road; If we ever doubted it, we now have extreme clarity on the absolute need for change and the absolute need for unwavering determination in bringing it about in our country.’ Six members of Cameroon O’Bosso have been arrested and remain in detention.
  • I am sure global corporate media are aware of what is happening and it’s clear that choices are made on which conflicts and revolutions are covered.
  • The mistake the media and activists in the West make is to believe that the voice of revolution has to be highly vocal and visible to their world. On the contrary, there are thousands of activists and social justice movements from across Africa and the diaspora who are totally committed to achieving political and social change in their respective countries. It just takes a little effort and time to know what is happening.
  • As informed citizens and if we are to see ourselves as part of the revolutionary process, then we need to try and grasp an understanding of the layers of narrative and actions which are taking place, not just across Africa but on a global level.
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Cameroon: Corantin Talla "Cameroon under the dictatorship of Paul Biya has no good imag... - 0 views

www.camer.be/index1.php development africa international news governance cameroon biya
shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Recently, i have organized a series of protest in front of the Cameroon embassy in Washington DC, attended by hundreds of Cameroonians and sympathizers of Cameroon; and in reaction to that the ambassador of Cameroon in the USA requested your help to polish the image of Cameroon.
  • Therefore, we will react promptly to any attempt by your agency to convey false positive images of Cameroon in a subjective manner without hearing from the Cameroons of all sides of the political spectrum as well as the ordinary Cameroonians who are suffering because of the bad governance of President Paul Biya.
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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.
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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.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • 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.
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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.
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Pambazuka - Speaking truth to power: Africa and development - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • He has headed the South Centre which is responsible for devising policies for the South by the South.
  • In essence, in political-economic terms, kleptocratic capitalism is a system of economic production and exchange based on fictitious wealth without going through production of real wealth and political governance controlled by “looters and daytime robbers”.
  • there are occasional reports from UN agencies that cannot hide the truth. In a recent paper-- “Governing development in Africa - the role of the state in economic transformation”, 22 March 2011-- the UN ECA argues that despite high growth rates in Africa there has been no improvement in employment and welfare of ordinary people.
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  • Do you think that Green Capitalism is a satisfactory response from the status quo to address the challenges of climate change, peak oil and resource scarcity in Africa? YASH TANDON: I am afraid not. It does not solve the problem of the control of Africa`s resources – including oil, minerals, land, water and forestry – by global corporations.
  • I doubt that China and India are driven by the motive of “helping Africa to develop”. They are in Africa because they need Africa`s resources, and openings for investing their capital. Nobody from outside is going to develop Africa. That is Africa`s responsibility. Therefore African governments must negotiate trade and investment terms with India, China -- and others -- with knowledge, skill and shrewdness.
  • the SC seeks to provide a policy platform for the countries of the South to coordinate their negotiating positions on issues ranging from trade agreements to intellectual property, climate change, human rights, health and human security.
  • Nonetheless, there are policies that the present government has put in place that are sensible – for example, on putting limitations on capital account and ownership of banks – but Ethiopia is still too dependent on aid from outside. This constrains its ability to shape its own development path.
  • Development comes from a deep understanding of the situation Africa finds itself in contemporary times. Development is always self-development. It cannot come from outside. Pain and sacrifice are necessary ingredients of development, both for individuals and for nations. The “soft bed” of foreign aid is the road not to development but to slavery.
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Memo From Africa - France Stirs Ill Will as It Consorts With Region's Autocrats - NYTim... - 0 views

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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.
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Hands off Africa! | Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • There’s no doubt, either, that both Libya and the Ivory Coast have reinforced many peoples’ opinion that the West will support “change” and “democracy” only when its own interests are advanced.
  • When you consider just how many seriously flawed African elections have gone by recently without the slightest objection from France, the U.S. or the U.N. — Gabon, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda – it’s painfully obvious that Western support for African democracy is highly selective. With all the despots who have been in power for decades in Africa, how did Gbagbo suddenly become so terrible?
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Toying with the law? Reckless manipulation of the legislature in Museveni's Uganda | op... - 0 views

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  • Among the many factors impacting on the bill’s fortunes over time, however, its use as a political instrument by various actors at specific moments has been widely acknowledged. Less commented on has been the degree to which this fits in a broader pattern of behaviour in Uganda since the mid-2000s, and the implications of this trend for Uganda’s fragile democracy.
  • These issues are explored in a new research article on the politics of lawmaking in Uganda, which examines how the government uses the legislature to make political gestures aimed at outmanoeuvring particular opponents, often stimulating violent urban protest and even more violent government crackdowns in the process.
  • The politics of this odious law is further laid bare the more that it is trumpeted as evidence of independence at home while being dismissed as meaningless abroad.
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  • The fact that Uganda’s law-making processes are frequently protracted, contested and highly visible clearly relates to the fact that the country has undergone substantial democratization since Museveni took power in 1986. Often, if not always, parliament really does fight back and the media really does expose the details of political debate. The government cannot avoid new laws being scrutinised, and in this respect it is unsurprising that law-making processes should become difficult and politically charged. Yet the relationship between democratization and law-making is not as straightforward as this might suggest.
  • In Uganda, more often than not the politics is bound up in the drafting, debating, postponing, opposing and (sometimes) eventual passing of the law; essentially, the symbolism of the law, after which implementation commonly recedes into the background.
  • there is another other side to the democratization coin: it has spurred the executive to develop a toolkit of strategy and tactics to manipulate these democratic institutions and exploit them for political gain.
  • It is perhaps a measure of the government’s tendency to view the legislature as a place for forging symbolic political gestures, rather than generating laws to bring about concrete changes to the country, that one of the bills being currently drawn up is a ‘Patriotism Bill’  which aims to legally obligate people to ‘love their country’.
  • Although the government may be more concerned with the political manoeuvring a bill facilitates than the effect of the law-as-implemented, the letter of the law is often taken very seriously by others, both internally and abroad.
  • Having soured many alliances through the Anti-Homosexuality Act, it would not be surprising if Museveni now used a new piece of draft legislation, which is essentially an ‘anti-NGO’ bill, to try and gain traction with donors again, agreeing to pull back on the new law if aid keeps flowing. In other words, now that the ‘Anti-Homosexuality’ legislation has passed, it cannot be used for political bargaining, so the government has drawn up a new bill with the potential to fulfil that role.
  • Herein lies the recklessness of such legal manoeuvring. New laws, whether passed or merely proposed, are meaningful to those they are seen to ‘target’, and as the journal article argues, can be linked to many of the violent protests in Uganda in recent years. New laws are also something taken especially seriously by foreign donors; unlike many of the other shortcomings or crimes of the Ugandan government, when something egregious is codified into law it invites aid cuts that can make life even harder for many Ugandans.
  • the ‘legal gymnastics’ we see are a feature of entrenched semi-authoritarianism rather than full dictatorship.
  • In more ‘total’ dictatorships, oppressive laws can be passed quietly and swiftly, with no such ‘gymnastics’ necessary: Uganda only has to look over its southern border to Rwanda, or back to its own history, to see that.
  • Unlike in situations of ‘total dictatorship’, Uganda’s democratic institutions are active enough to cause the government serious headaches. The country thus finds itself stuck in a cycle of semi-authoritarian democratic manipulation.
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Quiet legacies and long shadows: the Obama era of counterterrorism in the Sahel-Sahara ... - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • President Obama has been widely criticised for the late timing of this summit, 14 years after China started holding its regular Africa summits, and his failure to prioritise the continent earlier in his presidency. In the eyes of many commentators, this is Obama’s attempt to etch out a legacy in Africa.
  • Indeed, as a recent report from Oxford Research Group and the Remote Control project shows, for all the talk of the US lacking engagement with Africa, military forces under the new US Africa Command (AFRICOM, a legacy of the late Bush administration) have been pursuing a quiet but sustained “pivot to Africa” under the Obama administration.
  • September 11 is the key date for US engagement in the Sahel-Sahara, but 2012 not 2001. This was the date that jihadist militants stormed US diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the US Ambassador and three other citizens.
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  • Its one drone base in Niamey, Niger can cover most of West Africa–and North Africa is covered by drones operating from Sicily–but there are gaps, notably around Senegal and Chad.
  • AFRICOM and its allies are testing an open-ended, “light-touch” approach, with few boots-on-the-ground and a reliance on special forces, drones and private military companies. 
  • Increased ISR capabilities have also depended on use of private military and security contractors (PMSCs), who have run key elements of AFRICOM’s covert counter-terrorism operations in the region. Using unmarked, civilian-registered aircraft, they provide ISR operations, transport special operations forces, and provide medical evacuation and search and rescue capacities.
  • But it is France–the old colonial power, Saharan gendarme or legionnaire–that has most at stake in the Sahel-Sahara and on which the US so-far depends. Last week, France formally redeployed its military forces under Opération Barkhane, which sees French land, air and special forces establish an indefinite regional presence at eight bases and several other forward operating locations across five or more Sahel states. US forces and aircraft have a presence at least three of these bases (Niamey, N’Djamena and Ouagadougou) and probably use several others for “contingencies”.
  • Just as there is little mention of this rapidly expanding presence, so too is there little discussion of the effectiveness of this new approach to counterterrorism and the impact it will have on stability, governance, and accountability in a fragile region.
  • The US has made sure this week not to be seen to engage with selected authoritarian African regimes, withholding invitations to Sudan’s ICC indicted Omar el Bashir, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Eritrea’s Somalia-meddling Isaias Afewerki. Yet, in a nod to similarly uncritical alliances of the Cold War era, its expanding military engagement across Africa has depended on relationships with similarly dubious governments. Djibouti, Uganda and Ethiopia, the increasingly undemocratic pillars of US campaigns against Somalia’s al-Qaida franchise, are the most blatant examples.
  • Outside of the limits of this week’s summit, the trend towards covert or “plausibly deniable” counter-terrorism–PMSCs, drones, rapid reaction special forces–and barely restrained mandates to wage war is indicative of the real and increasing power over Africa policy exercised by Defense departments in both Washington and Paris.
  • The elected Malian government seems to have interpreted its post-2013 French and UN guarantees of security enforcement as reason not to pursue a peace process with northern separatists. Similarly, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara has shown no urgency in seeking reconciliation with supporters of the former regime since French and UN troops helped him to power in 2011. Governance, human rights and non-military solutions to existing conflict are thus considerably undermined by the securitisation of policy in the Sahel-Sahara.
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Pambazuka - Where are the people who are going to change things? - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Compaoré is not alone in extending presidential term limits. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda disposed of them altogether when he amended the Ugandan constitution. Yet both these men deposed their predecessors on the grounds of incompetence, repression and corruption.
  • Despite what melancholic lyrics may suggest, they exist – the men and women who want to change things. In the months leading up to the 2006 elections in Uganda, there were demonstrations outside the Central Police Station and the High Court where an opposition presidential candidate, Dr Kiiza Besigye, was first detained and then brought to trial. The big open air Nakasero Market is located a mere 200 metres from there. On one of the trail days, I found the market deserted. Everyone was at court, I was told.
  • The West was willing to help with the rehabilitation. The only condition: that the leaders sign up for IMF economic structural adjustment programmes. Should someone who actually needs micro-finance really borrow a large development loan without hope of ever paying it off? Was there really a choice? For Sankara there was. He declined all offers. His disagreement with what he called “debt imperialism” became the centrepiece of many of his speeches. “We can produce enough food to feed ourselves….Malheureusment, for lack of organization we still need to beg for food aid. This type of assistance is counter-productive and has kept us thinking that we can only be beggars who need aid…I am asked ‘Where is imperialism?’ Just look at your plates, you see imported corn, rice or millet. C’est ça, c’est ça, l’ímperialism. Let’s not look any further [i].”
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  • It is heartbreaking to watch the video footage [iv] of Sankara appealing to his fellow presidents to repudiate unfair debt agreements with IMF and other foreign creditors at the Organization of African Unity Summit in 1987. He accused them of degrading their people. He says, only half-jokingly, that if they do not support him he is going to be assassinated: “I may not make it to the next meeting.”
  • On the face of it, General Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, seemed of similar mettle to Sankara. Anecdotes confirming his revolutionary credentials arrived thick and fast in the diaspora. It was said that at State functions he drank from plastic (or was it tin?) mugs rather than long-stemmed wine glasses. (It is possible he was merely adjusting from the bush war.) He too repudiated debt as a solution to all that ails Africa. But after an attempt to barter trade with neighbouring countries he gave in to the beckoning finger of the North.
  • His daughter was flown to Germany in a Lear jet to give birth to her child at a cost of GBP 70,000 if you believe the British media or GBP 20,000 if you believe Government. In either case, his official statement was clear, “When it comes to medical care for myself and my family there is no compromise [vi].” The families of the 16 women a day who die in childbirth for lack of essential drugs, properly motivated (or simply paid) staff and lack of equipment held their peace.
  • A pattern emerges. Genuine agents of change die young. Either they do not make it to State House or they die while there (with the possible exception of Jerry Rawlings in Ghana). Such is the dynamic. The rest capitulate early while continuing to assume the demeanour of revolutionaries. They can do so because Western powers are willing to turn a blind eye to their increasing profligacy in return for their signatures on a succession of documents keeping their countries in debt bondage.
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Pambazuka - On sub-imperialism and BRICS-bashing - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...91832 africa development international governance pambazuka patrickbond
shared by Arabica Robusta on 13 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • It is obvious that in the conceptual framework of the sub-imperialist theorists there is simply no room for regionalism in Africa or regional struggles against the imperialist countries of the US and Europe. I find this most disempowering. For the last almost 30 years some of us have been actively engaged in battling against Europe’s attempt to impose a totally iniquitous ‘Economic Partnership Agreements’ (EPAs) on our countries – among them, for example, that our countries stop all domestic production and export subsidies. The latest deadline for signing the EPA is October 2014. If we fail to sign it, Europe will impose sanctions on Africa. Civil society organisations – such as the Southern and Eastern African Trade and Information Institute (SEATINI) and the human rights organisations in the region - have been carrying out a sustained struggle against the EPAs and have so far succeeded in holding back their governments to signing the EPAs. Should they stop doing their campaigns?
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Pambazuka News : Issue 719 - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • ‘In the 18 months or so since her appointment, Phiyega and the SAPS have stumbled from one crisis to the next’, reported the Mail and Guardian in a sad account of her performance so far.[7] It’s important to note too that the saga surrounding Transnet for pension plundering during Phiyega’s tenure is ongoing.[8] ABSA is but a part of the world’s biggest bank, Barclays, an institution not adverse to criminal activity either. ‘Ed Miliband demands criminal probe into Barclays interest rate rigging scandal as £3.2bn is wiped off bank in share plunge’, roared a recent Daily Mail news story.[9] The fine the bank got amounted to a tee-hee-hee slap on the wrist; relatively speaking black folk in South Africa have been hit far harder for nicking bread to eat. Of course both instances are damning by association only, but certainly a murky background worth noting if only for the standard business practice and the fluid line between business and politics.
  • He calls it ‘No-Fly Zone For Legal Eagles’, written in 2015: ‘The presidency is working to remove police and prosecutors who refuse to suspend actions against highly influential people. The decline in independence of South Africa's top criminal justice institutions is accelerating as President Jacob Zuma redoubles his efforts to immunise himself and his entourage from prosecution over corruption. That is the verdict of a growing number of legal experts as more and more senior police officers and prosecutors are removed. Corrupt business links with the governing African National Congress and the Presidency are mounting, so the pressures on prosecutors and investigators to be soft on them multiply. State officials are increasingly facing administrative suspension if they do not comply.’
  • the decision by opposition political parties to institute their own militias isn`t an act of mere emulation. Rather, it is a protest against how the ruling party and government have been handling democratic transition in the country, at least, and a failure of the establishment to uphold the constitution, at most.
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A tribute to Sam Moyo - a giant of agrarian studies | zimbabweland - 0 views

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shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • In Zimbabwe’s land debate nearly everyone at different times disagreed with him, but they all listened. Whether inside the state and party, among opposition groups or with the World Bank and other donors, no one could ignore what Sam had to say. And his influence in seeking a more sensible line has been enormous.
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