Forgiveness doesn't mean ignoring justice

This week’s reviewed blogs are all drawn from the Shackdwellers.org social justice aggregator. The site covers websites and blogs writing on social justice campaigns and issues from across the world.

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Abahlali baseMjondolo report from South Africa on the ongoing struggle between Durban City Council and local traders who are being forced to relocate to make way for a massive development including shopping mall. The traders asked for and were awarded a brief injunction to prevent the city from closing the market or allowing traders to enter. Nonetheless the police continued to harass the traders and in this case fired rubber bullets reminiscent of apartheid rule.

‘Roy Chetty, of Durban, said he had been walking past the market when he saw the police cordon off the area. He said traders with licences had moved into the market's parking area on the officers' orders when they were "viciously attacked" without provocation. "It happened quickly. The traders weren't being violent. The police jumped over the boundary wall and started shooting. People were shot in the face and some in the back," Chetty said.’

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Lagos, Nigeria has been undergoing a beautifying project by the state government which has included limited street lighting, gardens, street names, new buses and taxis and the removal of millions of street hawkers and shackdwellers across the city.

Stealth of Nations comments on the closing down of The Shrine - the club owned by the late Fela and since his death run by his family. The Shrine is so much part of Lagos' history and remains a symbol of the defiance against the tyranny of corruption and repression – a place where the masses make claim to the city.

Fela's original Africa Shrine was shut by the military in 1977, and Fela himself was ‘dragged from the building by his genitals.’ Soldiers threw Fela's mother out the window, and she died from her injuries. Now, 32 years later, a democratic regime has closed the rebuilt club.

‘I know: it's a club. It's noisy and attracts marijuana smokers (Fela was big on that) and stays open till early morning. Still, it is one of the great attractions of Lagos...People salute Governor Babatunde Fashola for being a man of action, but from the outside (I haven't been back to Lagos in six months), it seems like he's taken imperial powers to new heights. And he certainly doesn't understand the importance of the informal economy to his city's survival – and the creative possibilities for harnessing it to create a truly African urbanism.’

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Treatment Action Campaign reports on the death of young AIDS activist, Thembisa Ngubane. Thembisa became well known and to many a heroine when she began an audio diary chronicling the day to day life of herself, family and friends.

‘My mother, she clothed me, fed me, raised me, and now, at the end of the day, she must also bury me. I was supposed to be the one who was going to look after her...That is not right...My mother always said that you must be tough. Even if you are feeling hurt. You must not always be jelly belly, cry, cry, cry, cry.’

‘FORGIVENESS DOESN'T MEAN IGNORING JUSTICE’

The Lubanga Trial reports on the progress of the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo at the International Criminal Court. Lubanga is a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is accused of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. This particular post documents the rape of young girls who were recruited as child soldiers. The witness in this case tells the story of what happened:

‘”The trainers and other guards from the [training"> center took advantage of situation...I clearly said that there was rape – that is, carrying out sexual intercourse with someone who is not willing or doing so by force,” the witness explained. “That is what I qualify as rape.”’

Even more harrowing are the reports that children joined the militia to take revenge for the murder of their families:

‘“They had just arrived from their homes,” explained the unnamed witness, identified as a former soldier in the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) who also trained young recruits…
“Many had lost their parents [in attacks on their villages">… and joined the army in order to get vengeance.”’

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Chase Fire Liberia writes about the Truth and Reconciliation process taking place in Liberia. Here a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, Immaculée Ilibagiza, addresses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia to share her experiences in the hope of passing on the message of forgiveness to Liberian survivors of war:

‘Immaculée told Liberians that the act of forgiveness does not necessarily mean that justice is ignored. Clarifying that there are a whole lot of misconceptions about forgiveness, she said: “Forgiving to me in a sense does not exclude justice because justice has to go on. Forgiveness is a form of justice. Reconciliation is a form of justice. Forgiveness to me means to be free in my heart of bitterness completely.”

Immaculée and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in a cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s house during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 that targeted Immaculée’s Tutsi tribe and reportedly claimed close to a million lives. Since then, she has been sharing her universal message with world dignitaries, school children, multinational corporations, churches, and at many conferences, with Liberia being just one of the many countries that have heard her side of the story of Rwanda’s terrible genocide.

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Zimbabwean Women's Voices is a new group blog from the Zimbabwean Women's Resource Center. Here they discuss the importance of women in participating in the Constitutional process:

‘I have often listened with disbelief as some women in the movement have blithely dismissed civil and political rights, stating that the constitution disregards women’s concerns because it only deals with civil and political rights and yet a lot of women are located in the personal arena. Really? Are women not political animals? Isn’t there a slogan that says somewhere “the personal is political”? Isn’t the political also personal? If you get raped because your husband is the local organiser of political party X, isn’t that personal AND political? If you get abducted in the middle of the night leaving your children without a mother isn’t that personal and political? I have been left dumbfounded by some organisations which in the past sad year have claimed that they will only assist women who are victims of gender based violence and not women who are victims of political violence! That is how self-defeating we have become! We should be wary of propagating false dichotomies. What happened to the notion that human rights are indivisible?’

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Black Looks publishes a video showing the execution of a young man by members of the Nigerian Army’s Joint Task Force [JTF"> somewhere in the creeks of Delta State. The video was taken only last week and is shocking in it’s disregard for rule of law by a state army and brutality towards another human being. As we all come to terms with the US$15.5 million settlement in the Wiwa versus Shell case highlighted in last week’s Pambazuka editorial, we should be aware that it is in this environment in which Shell and others operate their dirty business.

Finally, the Nigerian government has just launched a ‘$5 million war’ against bloggers and online news media such as Sahara Reporters. The plan is to recruit a team of 700 bloggers and commenters who would then write lovely stories about the government and their actions. This is the action of a desperate and stupid government.

‘”The government has decided to mobilise a few individuals to set up online forums that promise to extend the frontiers of online journalism,” said a security source. He added that, in the initial stages, these websites would release a few detailed and seemingly credible stories calculated to garner credibility for them as well as a wide readership. “But the ultimate objective is to fully divert the websites to the task of acting as attack dogs for the government’s online critics,” said a source. She added that the government plans to fund and roll out about 50 of such new websites between now and the beginning of serious campaigns for the next round of elections scheduled for 2011.’

* Sokari Ekine blogs at Black Looks.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.