World Vision International (WVI), a Christian Humanitarian Relief and Development Organization is seeking a Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer for the Northern and Southern Sudan programs. The position will be based in Northern Sudan.

Life Choices is a nationwide family planning campaign that was launched in October 2001 in Ghana. The goal of the campaign is to increase the use of modern family planning methods in urban, peri-urban and rural areas, with particular attention to communities whose pharmacies and chemical shops sell Ghana Social Marketing Foundation (GSMF) brands and where other community-based service providers have a presence.

Where does the intersection between activism and politics take place? Kayode Fayemi explores this sometimes complex relationship in the context of Nigeria’s fractured political landscape. He concludes: “I believe we can revive the State in a qualitative manner and make democracy more meaningful to our people, provide jobs for the jobless, improve healthcare, modernise agriculture and reclaim our young people from a future of violence, decadence and despair by linking activism to politics and not drawing artificial divisions.”

The topic of my presentation this afternoon gives the impression that there is a difference between activism and politics, and that it requires moving from one to the other. If one follows this line of thought, one might be tempted to assume that the two – politics and activism – are mutually exclusive. There have always been attempts both in recent times and in our not so recent past to make a distinction between those who stand at the barricades seeking change in their quest for a better society and those who wield power in politics in defence of the State. Indeed, theories have been propounded about State-society relations deepening the difference between civil society and political society. Activists are often seen as occupying the moral high ground, irrepressible in their campaign for what they believe in, often living in utopia in the quest of the unattainable and generally cantankerous and obstinate in the pursuit of their beliefs. On the other hand, politicians are seen to be janus-faced – on the one hand, charismatic, visionary, fascinating and sophisticated, and on the other, repulsive, cynical, calculating, and opportunistic. My own interest this afternoon is really not to indulge in any deep philosophical or political arguments about these distinctions many of which you are familiar with but to simply explore – based on my limited experience, the possibilities of harmony in this pseudo-dichotomy – to explain that this pattern of categorizing people is at best a luxury, and at worst irrelevant in our own setting.

I am going to suggest that this pseudo-divide of activism and politics has impeded our abilities to connect with each other and work together towards a more positive future. I am convinced that the structuring of actors on the basis of either/or, and us/them with one of the other being valued more leads to domination and we need to really try as much as possible to avoid such separation and fragmentation and work towards community and cohesion. Consequently, I intend to argue that politics – properly conducted - is a form of social activism and another stage in the struggle to restore the dignity of humankind – an integrated continuum rather than discretely compartmentalised oppositional phenomena, often complicated and contradictory, but mostly in the quest to make a fundamental difference.

Activists have always occupied that realm between the household and the State, populated by voluntary groups and associations, sharing common interests and largely autonomous from the State, but often promoting core values that are consistent with what the State ought to stand for – participatory involvement, transparency, accountability, openness, ownership, legitimacy, equality of opportunities and respect for fundamental human rights.

Many people always ask activists and politicians the same question: Why, with all the callings in this world that could perhaps earn one considerable social, financial and personal security, would anyone want to go into something like activism or politics, particularly in a setting as dangerous as Nigeria, unless one has a death wish? The unvarnished truth is that many activists and, I believe, even politicians love life too much to want to celebrate death. Many activists who make a transition into partisan politics have probably done so for the same reasons they embraced activism. It was not aimless boldness that drew many into activism. It was often a selfish desire to live their lives in freedom, peace and in a democracy that transformed ordinary folks into bold activists against all forms of oppression and in the service of their communities.

This is why perhaps the issue should not be one of transition from activism to politics, but the extent to which we are able to achieve citizen participation in our democracy. Our discussion should really focus more on the making of leaders and citizens in a good society because without direct citizen participation, the legitimacy of our political institutions will continue to decline. It is for this reason that I strongly believe that political leaders – be they politicians or activists should worry because their ability to lead effectively is being seriously undermined by the desertion of average citizens from the public space, deepening the crisis of legitimacy in our State. Yet, this lack of legitimacy cuts both ways. When we the people withdraw our trust in leaders or discountenance politicians, we make our democratic institutions less effective and risk making ourselves ungovernable.

While politics may have lost its edge globally - suffering a decline, apathy or disinterest, it is also true to say activism is on the rise in the form of single issues pressure groups which have continued to thrive around the world – whether in the form of campaigns like ‘Make Poverty History’ or in the promotion of an international rights regime in the form of an International Criminal Court or a fair trade regime in the world.

Yet even these popular campaigns still suffer from certain limitations in a world that is essentially statist and in which citizens’ rights are better protected locally, even if we subscribe to universal ideals. In our case, it is the belief that another Nigeria is possible – one that embraces democracy, fairness, equity and justice and the possibility of saying what we like, write what we think, participate in the political process without fear of intimidation, make our votes count so that our views will matter. These are the beliefs that have continued to propel the activists that I know in the struggle for a better society.

But let me back up a little and locate this discourse within the context of our recent history in Nigeria as it concerns the relationship between activism and politics in Nigeria. Many will recall that with the sudden demise of the dictator, General Sani Abacha in June 1998, things had begun to look up for the country. We saw the end of military dictatorship in sight. Those of us who were involved in the campaign to restore the mandate of Chief MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled election of 1993 had expected that it was only a matter of time for Abiola to be installed as President and for him to convene a sovereign national conference. Our focus at the time was not elections, but the institutionalisation of a fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian state and the strategy in the democracy movement was to put pressure on the new military leadership to release Abiola and install him as President. The new military leader, General Abdul-Salami Abubakar was seen as a common sense choice amid a largely obdurate military clique determined to maintain the status quo.

Clearly under pressure locally and on the international scene, he made every effort to win the confidence of the civil society movement by releasing jailed leaders and requesting exiles to return home. And then, all of a sudden Chief Abiola died and this threw us into a deeper quandary in the democracy movement and the country tilted on the precipice. To arrest the religious and ethnic polarisation that had surfaced, General Abubakar went for elections, even at a time that many felt the national question had gone beyond simply organising elections and putting people in authority. Yet, because the military was so despised, the decision coupled with the sudden death of the most legitimate arrowhead of our struggle increased the urge for anything but the military, a mood which we shared but which equally caught us unawares in the democracy movement.

In the ensuing confusion, the central question for us in the democracy movement was: should the democracy community and the human rights movement participate in, or boycott the transition programme announced by General Abubakar? After extensive deliberations, we agreed that the new dispensation required new strategies, which should reflect a balance between principle and pragmatism. Some expressed strong views that the democracy movement’s capacity to influence change would be severely limited if it decided to boycott the transition programme. Equally, others felt that getting involved in the military-directed transition would amount to a betrayal of the last bastion of the people’s defence against oppression – especially as the professional politicians were eager to return to business as usual with the military, without addressing the root cause of the governance crisis in the first place. In the end, there was no consensus on the way the pro-democracy movement should proceed and we only agreed that individuals could participate while letting political groups stay out of the fray.

My own sentiment was with the latter group since I believed that the path, players, processes and patterns of the transition adopted by General Abubakar could only result in neo-militarism rather than a civilian, democratic dispensation. At the time, many of us were fond of saying that the path we were treading was one of transition without transformation. We argued severally that it was wrong to suggest that any opening after Nigeria’s prolonged authoritarian rule was inherently irreversible and would lead to the deepening of democracy without interrogating the nature of the opening itself. We felt at the time that we needed to think more carefully about the implications of what we considered to be a staged-managed democratic transition, especially in a setting where the ethos, language, and character of public discourse remain completely militarised.

Looking back, the civil society leadership may have been correct to be cautious about embracing the military transition of 1999, but I now believe we were tactically wrong for completely eschewing participation in politics. The fact that the military had not responded to a full-scale defeat by the democracy movement could hardly be discounted in understanding the nature of post-military governance. The eventual dominance of the party hierarchy by retired military generals and civilians closely connected to them certainly set the tone for party formation and also resulted in authoritarian presidential governance. Essentially, the nature of that transition ensured a mere reconfiguration of the political space, rather than a transformation of politics.

Given this context, the eventual election of an ex-military General with significant support from the military constituency was seen by many of us in civil society as an extension of continued military rule. The fact that most of the governors elected (save in the South West) were all what we referred to derisorily at the time as “Abacha politicians” was further confirmation to some of us that we had no business being involved. Yet, even with all of this, we could have started the process of organising along political lines, rather than agonising about the dominance of these elements. After all, we were the ones who risked our lives to fight for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria – only to vacate the space when power was literally lying on the streets. Indeed, as Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, recently noted,

“…one ceaseless complaint against the democratic movement is that its protagonists carried out this struggle at immense personal sacrifices of varying dimensions, only to hand over future responsibilities to proven reprobates and opportunists…whatever self retiring principles may have governed the impulses of a number of us in that struggle…we have indeed left the field to brigands, parasites and unworthy custodians of power and authority, including even collaborators, that is those who have not only made such struggles necessary in the first place, but contributed to our personal woes, and even stained their hands with the blood of our fallen comrades.” [1]

So, we ended up having a democracy without democrats and the result is clear before our very eyes. In spite of the current government’s best effort, the crisis of governance remains deep-seated. Yet, for many of our citizens – democracy was supposed to bring the end of military dictatorship in form and content; they hoped that it would bring greater involvement of ordinary people in politics, whether in state institutions or in civil society ones. They hoped for real and immediate dividends in employment, clean water, better shelter, accessible health care, improved education, reliable and consistent power supply, rehabilitated roads and food on the table. Beyond electoral democracy though, it was also obvious that the nation-state has become a source of unending conflict itself. Many Nigerians of unquestionable nationalist credentials had begun to question the very viability of Nigeria, especially if left in the hands of a centralised state. Constitutional reform was therefore seen as a major pivot for creating and sustaining democratic institutions that can address deepening conflict in Nigeria. To our people, the rising disquiet in the Niger Delta and other parts of Nigeria, for example, may not be a sign of a failing democracy but a sign of a maturing democracy that is conflictual and contradictory – which should find its own level through mediation, deliberation and negotiations.

Although the challenge of reforming the State is fundamentally structural, the issue of leadership – particularly how we conceptualise leadership is central to it. For too long, our political culture has perpetuated the myth that strong leaders can bring about change single-handedly – rather than convert the formal authority derived from their electoral mandate into a process of democratic renewal. In my own view, real leadership ought to involve motivating people to solve problems within their own communities, rather than reinforcing the over-lordship of the state over its citizens and to build and strengthen political institutions that can mediate between individual and group interests. The authoritarian residues of politics over the last seven years have achieved the purpose of turning many away from politics even if they are still active in their neighbourhood associations and their community projects. The main challenge of political leadership therefore is to reconnect democratic choices with people’s day-to-day experience and to extend democratic principles to everyday situations in citizens’ communities and constituencies.

Understandably, if you make political discourse more negative as some do – you deliberately turn ordinary people off politics; more people grow cynical and stop paying attention to politics. This experience is not unique to us in Nigeria; in fact it is the crisis that democracy is experiencing all over the world, with low turn out at the polls and scant regard for political leaders. Yet, if we as citizens choose not to play a part in this process of activism in our communities and our State, we will get the politicians we deserve, allow the hijack of the political realm by special interests and ethnic jingoists only keen in the promotion of their narrow agendas.

To avoid this problem, many of us in the Nigerian civil society sought the middle way after the election of the new government in Nigeria in 1999, even as we were lukewarm about the dawn of electoral democracy in the country. We put skills that were abundant in civil society to the service of the new government as a way of helping to bridge the gap between civil society and an elected government. At our own level in my institution - the Centre for Democracy & Development - we became associated with government at several policy and practical levels – assisting with the shaping and running of the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission (the Oputa Commission); promoting an agenda for constitutional reform, helping with the reform of the security sector and democratic control of the defence and security establishments, building civil society capacity and pursuing issues of transparency and accountability. Our point always was that democracy is not an abstract concept. It must be relevant to people’s lives. If democracy is not capable of curbing corruption, guaranteeing transparency and improving people’s well being and quality of life, it is at best an empty concept, at worst a sham. Poverty and despair, oppression and humiliation, economic and social insecurities are breeding grounds – even if not the only reasons – for violence and conflict and as much as Nigerians want democracy, they also want to see concrete evidence of democracy making a difference in their lives.

My own experience of working with government over the past seven years as an outsider looking in is captured by the African adage that it’s not possible to shave someone’s head in his absence. The wheel of government bureaucracy turns very slowly and frustratingly so if the central actors are not alive to issues of transformation. No matter how good the policies formulated by outsiders are, implementation is key to transformation. It is for this reason that those who want to re-draw the map of Nigeria’s future must return to more solid grounds rather than tie themselves to the apron strings of power-holders that neither have a track record nor demonstrate a vision that they are better than what we can offer our people. This solid ground must be within a larger movement though, one that accommodates the place of political institutions and not simply the celebration of astute individuals as the ultimate panacea to our crisis of governance. The most practical way to link individual choice to collective responsibility is to participate in the institutions that influence our lives. We must ensure that formal and informal institutions are democratised and given more responsibilities for exercising state power. To do it well, we have to see Nigeria as a permanent enterprise that has to be fought over and restructured in order to provide cover for all Nigerians.

This is why I see the debate about whether activists should become politicians superfluous. Important as they are, the institutions of direct state power and electoralism are just the tip of the iceberg in the democratisation complex. Indeed, genuine democracy ought to rest on a much richer ecology of associational and organisational life and should be nourished and reproduced through every-day struggles of the citizens. But when we broadly define these everyday struggles as simply the handiwork of ‘civil society’, we strip it bare of its spontaneity and deeper meaning and romanticise the civil society as the rationally ordered, codified and all-knowing alternative to government and overplay our abilities as activists to counter the inherent inequities of class and markets. Even worse, we are presented or we present ourselves as antidotes to globalisation, which is why causes like ‘Make Poverty History’ have been hugely successful in form but exaggerated in their expectations. The reason for this crisis of exaggerated expectation that activists suffer is not far fetched. The truth is that as long as we live in the post-Westphalian world of sovereign states, we exaggerate the ability of the civil society to stand up to the power of the nation-state or the mega corporations on its own steam.

This is why I am not sure that the solution to the current deficit that our democracy is experiencing can be solved with posing activism as a counterpunch to politics. For autonomous institutions to play a different role in mediating citizens’ democratic choices, their organic development must be combined in a more nuanced manner and a more systematic way with the use of public and state power. The choice is therefore simple: one can continue to snipe on the fringe and complain that government is not listening to the yearning of the people. Alternatively, one can stop agonising about missed policy opportunities and organise in a manner that places citizens as drivers of change in our quest to restore communitarian values and a future of hope and possibilities for our people.

I know the world sees us - Africans - as incurable optimists and hope mongers. The other day, the New York Times, attempting to unravel the roots of the consistent optimism of the average African asked for my thoughts and I argued that while it may be difficult to find a verifiable basis for our collective and individual optimism amid unremitting misery – hope is God’s last bastion for the African, the evidence of the unseen future of a life more abundant – since, for many, things can hardly get worse than they are. [2]

Yet, as I said earlier, this is not bleary-eyed optimism. It is not the optimism that believes that the crisis of governance in our land will simply go away; it is not the hope that we will all be winners of million dollar lottery tickets today. I am talking about the hope of our founding fathers in the struggle for independence and freedom and their unshaken belief in our inalienable right to rule ourselves. It is the hope of the freedom fighters resisting apartheid and racial discrimination in Southern Africa; the audacity of hope and the determination of optimism that led us to resist the military oppression in our land because of our belief that another Nigeria is possible – one that will be accountable to its citizens, legitimate in their eyes, transparent and respected around the world; the hope that allows us to hold our heads high, proud of our accomplishments and contributions to humankind - the hope that help is on the way.

I believe we can revive the State in a qualitative manner and make democracy more meaningful to our people, provide jobs for the jobless, improve healthcare, modernise agriculture and reclaim our young people from a future of violence, decadence and despair by linking activism to politics and not drawing artificial divisions. It seems to me a self-evident truth that where there is no civil society engaged actively in social activism and the promotion of core values in society, there can be no political society and the state runs the risk of decay and illegitimacy. Renewing our democracy through the strengthening of institutions and public participation increases our collective capacity to tackle the major problems facing our society – with a corresponding achievement of individual contentment even as we pursue the common good. This is where we ought to be headed and I am convinced we will get there in our lifetime.

* This is the text of a lecture presented at the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C., USA on Thursday, March 16, 2006.

* Until recently Director of the Centre for Democracy & Development, Dr Fayemi is an advisor to the Nigerian government on NEPAD and Security Sector Reform and to ECOWAS, African Union Secretariat, NEPAD Secretariat and Economic Commission for Africa. He now aspires to the Governorship of Ekiti State in Nigeria.

References

[1] Wole Soyinka, “A Nigerian Morality Tale”, Foreword in Kayode Fayemi, Out of the Shadows: The struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Nigeria, (Lagos: CDD & BookCraft, 2005), p.viii. Also see an interesting interview with Olisa Agbakoba, former President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation in The Guardian (Lagos) on July 20 & 21, 2004 – “I am tired of being an armchair critic”

[2] See New York Times, March 5, 2006 or International Herald Tribune, March 6, 2006

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, in collaboration with forty different organisations from around the country, have joined together to launch a national month-long bus campaign challenging violence against women and children. The campaign has three main aims:
- To promote communities' awareness of women's rights as set out in the Domestic Violence Act, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, the Maintenance Act and the Firearms Control Act;
- To collect petitions calling on both Parliament and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to consult with civil society around the finalisation and enactment of the Sexual Offences Bill; and
- To take women and children's voices to parliament by recording their concerns and experiences of violence.

The aim of the consultancy is to conduct a review of the operations of the Africa Union with the objective of identifying opportunities for World Vision's engagement with the Africa Union. The review will be the basis for developing a WV Africa advocacy strategy for engaging with the Africa Union (AU) institutions (including NEPAD) in order to transform their policies and practices towards enhancement of the lives of children and their families.

reflects in this article on what a technology activist is? "At the end of the day, it's a very broad and ill defined area which is a bit scarey, because perception might lead people to believe that technology activism is limited to a select group, when in fact I believe it isn't. I believe that it's a part of the natural course of technology," he writes.

Liberia, West Africa, which was founded by freed slaves from America in the 1820s, is suffering from serious poverty and unemployment. This is because a Liberian Civil War, that ended in 2003, destroyed the infrastructure and economy. In this country where people do not even have peace, a Japanese company and its American subsidiary are committing labor abuses including forced labor.

For more than 40 years Amnesty International (AI) members have been campaigning to protect and promote human rights. This manual aims to pass on the experience of these campaigners in an accessible format. We hope it will become a well-thumbed reference book for all those campaigning for human rights. Although the manual stresses that all parts of AI's work, such as fundraising, campaigning and organization, should be integrated, the book has been divided up into self-contained sections.

Take action to end torture of internally displaced persons in Northern Uganda. Send an email or fax to the Ugandan government, your U.S. Congressional or European Union representative, or urge the United Nations Security Council, through Secretary General Kofi Annan, to immediately be seized of the issue of civilian protection in Northern Uganda.

A collective demand by editors-in-chief of Egyptian newspapers, media professors, and representatives of human rights organizations, to initiate a national campaign to end the possibility of imprisonment for publication offenses is finally being realized. University professors, members of the Higher Education Teaching Association, representatives from civil society, unions and political parties will participate in the campaign which is calling for the adoption of the draft law provided by the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate (EJS), annulling imprisonment sentences in opinion and publication cases.

"On 15 March 2006, officers from the National Security Bureau (NSB) in Port Sudan, Eastern Sudan summoned Hassan Altaieb, lawyer and SOAT monitor in Port Sudan to their offices for questioning. Whilst at the security offices, Mr. Altieb was questioned about an event scheduled to be held in Port Sudan tomorrow 16 March 2005 as part of a nationwide campaign for the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The security officers demanded the list of participants expected to attend the event including the full names of all the speakers."

“The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is working with our colleagues in Liberia and in the US to stop Firestone's exploitation of Liberia and her people…We have launched lawsuits against Firestone in Liberia and in the United States, and we are waging a public pressure campaign in advance of the April 3rd court date to show Firestone that the world is watching, and it doesn't like what it sees. Please visit ww.stopfirestone.org to learn more about Firestone and the lawsuits, and to send a letter to Firestone president Dan Adomitis demanding an end to Firestone's modern-day slavery and other abuses.”

The role will be to support the Africa Program in all advocacy activities with the African Union and all the major organisations located in Addis Ababa. Working under the supervision of the Africa Program Director and in coordination with our West, Central, Southern and Horn of Africa Project Directors you will strengthen our advocacy efforts with the African Union.

“Though Bank President Wolfowitz has said 42 countries will benefit from the (Group of 8) G-8 nations debt deal, the fine print of the World Bank’s plan to implement debt cancellation means that beyond an initial 17 nations, any additional countries will have to wait at a minimum until mid-2007 – a full two years after the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles – for their debts to be cancelled to the World Bank…We need your help to hold World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to his word.”

The One in Nine Campaign was launched in February 2006. The purpose of the campaign is to ensure that the courage and action of the woman in the Jacob Zuma rape case is affirmed and supported through direct action, the mass media and through strengthening the level of debate and analysis in society of the gender dimensions of the case.

Challenging Hegemony: Social Movements, and the Quest for a New Humanism in Post-Apartheid South Africa is a collection of essays by leading social movement activists and scholars that analyzes the emergence of new political struggles in post apartheid South Africa. The volume reflects on the mushrooming of new movements that represent what Frantz Fanon called 'the untidy affirmation of an original idea propounded as an absolute' - a quest for a new humanism which is manifested in the movements' most simple and basic of demands for land, housing, and medicine.

The International Human Rights Internship Program (IHRIP) is pleased to announce the publication of "The Banyan Tree Paradox: Culture and human rights activism". Drawing on the experiences and insights of activists in a range of countries, "The Banyan Tree Paradox" seeks to untangle some of the complexities and controversies that surround culture and human rights issues, in the hope of making the work a bit simpler and the way forward a bit clearer.

This is a senior leadership role to support the Great Lakes countries in providing leadership at the strategic level to the sub-region, assuming responsibility for sub-regional policy as well as policy influencing and campaign work.

The following is an extract of the petition to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal to demand the unbanning of internationally acclaimed academic and activist, Ashwin Desai.
"We the undersigned write to express our concern over your decision to bar Ashwin Desai from seeking a position at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). This decision constitutes a violation of a basic form of academic freedom: the right for anyone to be fairly considered for a position in the academic community for which they are qualified. We urge you to reconsider this decision and allow Ashwin Desai to apply and be fairly considered for paid (as well as honorary) positions at UKZN."

Follow the link for the full letter and to sign the petition.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres Tuesday welcomed 401 Congolese refugees home as they disembarked in Baraka from a former German imperial warship that is said to the oldest working vessel in the world. "Karibu sana, karibu sana, karibu sana," Guterres called out to the returnees in Kiswahili – "you are very welcome" – as they arrived in this port in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after an eight-hour journey across Lake Tanganyika from refugee camps in Tanzania where they have lived for up to nine years.