Edited by: Hope Chigudu
Published by Weaver Press Ltd, 2002
Distributed by African Books Collective Ltd.

‘Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa’ sets out to tell the stories of five African non-governmental organizations (NGO) and the processes by which they have been able to successfully empower those communities which they serve. The focus of each organization differs, but all have in common the fact that they work within communities often neglected by mainstream development. These five organizations are using tactics or methods which differ from the conventional – they are taking African principles and values and making them work for those people who need help. They are also very self-aware organizations – each taking into account not only the issues around which their work surrounds, but also the processes by which they endeavour to meet their goals. These organizations have been incredibly reflective, and offer here a view into the realm of NGOs and their management which one does not often get.

The word ‘empowerment’ represents an excellent idea and goal for development - to give power back to the people so that they may control their own development and gain access to their rights. But in many ways it is a term that has been co-opted by large donor agencies and has been tossed around as a guarantee of funding and method of right practice. Taken back into the hands of small, local organizations, some that even shun funding for fear that it may corrupt their work, empowerment can succeed, and as ‘Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa’ demonstrates, the principle does indeed exist in Africa.

Dr Olaseinde Arigbede of Nigeria, founder of the Coalition for Popular Development Initiatives in Nigeria (CODOPIN), writes eloquently of his personal and professional search for an organization unrestrained by the limitations imposed by donors. He also provides an interesting insight into how empowerment can really work with the methodology employed by CODOPIN, premised around the idea that people working for development must not simply be `infallible bringers of uncommon wisdom,’ but both teachers and learners.

Tomson Dube works for Zimbabwe’s Organization of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP), and is Academic Director of Zenzele College (an institution within ORAP). His essay is an in-depth examination of the processes by which ORAP works. The organization is different from others in that it takes the concept of empowerment extremely seriously, placing in the hands of all members the responsibility to analyse their own particular situations and challenges in order to jointly make plans to meet their needs. This is then undertaken via the philosophy of ORAP, which relies on African principles found in the Ndebele language. Primarily, this is the idea of ‘zenzele,’ which means “do it yourself,” and translates into people standing on their own.

Patrick Kiirya, Director of Uganda’s Literacy and Adult Basic Education Organization (LABE), is the only Ugandan NGO to work on issues surrounding literacy. As an organization meant to support other NGOs and community based organizations (CBO), LABE works within all of the realms necessary for them to further their goals - they collaborate with government on issues surrounding policy, offer consultancy and support services for smaller organizations in the same field, and offer participatory courses to those who wish to learn how to read. They take their objectives further in linking literacy to development. They do this practically in the courses they offer, making sure that the course material is not only relevant to the lives of those studying, but also connects the process of teaching people to read to the very issues surrounding development in their community.

Emily Sikazwe is Executive Director of Zambia’s Women for Change (WFC), an organization dedicated to meeting the needs of rural women. Through their belief that one cannot know the needs of a community without living in it, WFC has animators living in the communities in which they work for 2-3 weeks out of every month. The organization has provided a number of income generating opportunities for their communities, and in addition, utilizes the knowledge of those women whom it has trained to subsequently teach other community members. Putting this power back into the hands of the women has instigated them to make further demands, not only on WFC, but on local and national government, demonstrating that with a little assistance, empowering a community to gain the skills and confidence necessary to make positive changes is indeed possible.

Leila Sheikh, Executive Director of the Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA), represents an organization that has seen incredible shifts in its concentration. Beginning as an organization meant to use the media to sensitize communities on gender issues, and also lobby government for women’s rights, TAMWA, without losing their focus on awareness raising, has also created a Crisis Centre, in order to provide legal aid and counseling services to women and children who have survived violence. Evolving from a small collective that focused on media, the organization transformed into a larger association that works for women’s rights on all levels.

“Composing a New Song: Stories of Empowerment from Africa” is an important book for several reasons. Not only does it document the evolution of these five successful African organizations, it provides potential frameworks for other organizations looking to solidify their roles as organizations that truly wish to empower the communities in which they work. This collection of essays can thus be regarded as a tool for others in the field of African development, sharing many first hand experiences and lessons.

* Reviewed by: Karoline Kemp, Commonwealth of Learning Young Professionals Intern, Fahamu

Africa has been through a particularly ambivalent experience of modernity. Previous research has tended to emphasize its alien nature in Africa and how it has been resisted. This book seeks to show how this tension and the impulse to modernity have contributed to changing African society over the past one hundred years. The contributors look at how Africans negotiated the terms of modernity during the colonial period and are dealing with it in the post-colonial period. They argue that the African experience of modernity is unique and relevant for wider social theory, offering valuable analytical insights. The cases presented cover labour, land rights, religious conversion, internal migration, emigration and the African diaspora.

The late Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) was a political and environmental activist, a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, television and film producer, entrepreneur, public servant and publisher. He is best known as the founding member and leading figure of Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and for his role in the historic Ogoni struggles against the Nigerian federal government and what he termed the oil companies 'ecological war'. To coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and in association with the Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa coalition, African Books Collective is reissuing some of his best known works. Visit the ABC website to browse the titles.

A senior United Nations official has given a damning assessment of the Sudanese government's efforts to bring peace to Darfur. Special UN advisor on preventing genocide Juan Mendez said Khartoum had done little to disarm militias or end the "culture of impunity" there. He said Sudan's authorities remained in denial about the extent of the problem. Mr Mendez was speaking after his second trip to Darfur, where the conflict has displaced more than two million people.

Skinning the Skunk refers to a saying in Shona, kuvhiya kadembo. The Zimbabwean writer Stanley Nyamfukudza uses it here to illustrate how important problems, like the legacy of violence, are avoided in Zimbabwean public discussion. Terence Ranger writes on the new policy of rewriting the history of Zimbabwe, in the name of "patriotic history", through which the Zanu-PF government tries to assert hegemony and achieve "a total change of the mindset". To talk about Zimbabwe today also means to talk of the large diaspora. Beacon Mbiba presents a study on what is colloquially called "Harare North", that is London (and the rest of the UK).

The 9th Poetry Africa International Poetry Festival hosted by the University of Kwa- Zulu Natal's Centre for Creative Arts takes place in Durban from 10 - 15 October 2005. Thirty poets from fifteen different countries will descend on Durban for a groundbreaking experience of words and rhythms. The participants represent a diversity of poetic styles ranging from the lyrical genius of Lemn Sissay (UK) to the 2005 Daimler-Chrysler Award-winner for South African Poetry, Gabeba Baderoon. Fellow Daimler-Chrysler Award nominee and editor of Timbila, Vonani Bila is included in the South African line-up of poets, together with Sunday Independent Arts Editor, Robert Greigand former editor of New Coin, Joan Meterlekamp.

This ground-breaking book with a foreword by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and UN human rights commissioner, uniquely distils the complex issues surrounding Africa as it enters the 21st century. A substantial introductory essay by the editors measures the distance Africa has travelled and the lessons it has learned since Africa in Crisis, the classic Earthscan book, was published in 1985.

The Night of Truth, a film set in an unnamed African country, dramatises the process of truth and reconciliation, echoing the recent histories of South Africa, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, and highlights not only the female perspective but also the subtleties and complexities of learning to live together again in trust and respect. The Night of Truth received its UK premiere at the Cambridge Film Festival in July, with director Fanta Régina Nacro attending, and screens in the Black World Mama Africa season at the UK National Film Theatre, from 1 - 26 September.

This issue includes:
* Mauritius: An Exemplar of Democracy, Development and Peace for the Southern African Development Community?
* Internet Adoption among Ghana's SME Non-Traditional Exporters
* Of Visions, Development Plans and Resource Mobilisation in Africa: The Case of Ghana Vision 2020

African Compass – New writing from southern Africa 2005 is the first book in a three–year series of the US $10 000 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award. The award is targeted at young writers who are citizens of any country in the SADC (Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). The chosen genre for the series is a short story and this volume contains a selection of the best from 373 entries.

Access to oil and natural gas, and their prices, are hugely important axes of geo-political strategy and global economic prospects and have been for a century. This book, written by a Financial Times journalist who has long covered the energy sector, provides readers with the essential information they need for understanding the shifting structure of the global oil and gas economy - where the reserves lie, who produces what, trade patterns, consumption trends, prices.

This book received a commendation in the Best First Book Prize, Africa Region, of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. This story of migration, identities and lives undermined by cynical and xenophobic politics pushed to its logical and terrible conclusion pertains to the Ghanaian orders of 'alien compliance' issued in 1970-1971, which was designed to force all non-ethnic Ghanaians, so called illegal immigrants, to return to their - so stipulated - 'home'.

With rhetoric in the twenty-first century focused on the African Renaissance, the central role of language in the development and emancipation of the continent seems to have taken a backseat. The fact that many countries on the continent are operating with pre-independent and colonial language policies is catastrophic to large numbers of people who are not in a position to participate in the political democracies of their countries. This collection of case studies from seven African countries poses questions such as: What alternatives are there for educational language policies towards African emancipation?

At the World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) conference in Gaborone, capital city of Botswana, the "Gaborone Declaration" proposal was adopted, which will be presented to the UNESCO general assembly. The proposal focuses on how technology can be used to enhance development and eradicate poverty in developing countries.

How long can a traditional religion survive the impact of world religions, state hegemony, and globalization? The ‘Karamoja problem’ is one that has perplexed colonial and independent governments alike. Now Karamojong notoriety for armed cattle raiding has attracted the attention of the UN and USAID since the proliferation of small arms in the pastoralist belt across Africa from Sudan to stateless Somalia is deemed a threat to world security. The consequences are ethnocidal, but what makes African peoples stand out against state and global governance?

Many years ago in my country, Zimbabwe, a writer was arrested for making some drunken remarks about the President.

'Can I have two presidents, please?' the writer had asked. The writer was simply wanting to buy two bananas from a vendor at the market, of course, with a little accompanying humour. But it so happened that the name of our president at that time was Mr Banana, and the ears of those employed to get angry on behalf of the president were within earshot. As the police officer was locking him away in a police cell, the writer asked the officer: 'Excuse me, why are you locking yourself out?'

The officer was stunned and went to report to his boss, who immediately declared the prisoner 'a bit mad' and released him without charge after a few slaps on the face.

'Words cause itches in the private parts of the republic', I once wrote in one of my long poems. After a public reading, a secret service agent came to find out what I might be meaning by that? I professed total ignorance and wondered what he understood by the two lines. He thought they meant 'the private parts of the president.' I argued that it was his own interpretation, not mine.

Writers and prison. A writer's language describes and names visible and invisible prisons. Sometimes those who think they are free, are in the most painful prisons. The idea of a president being locked up in an eternal motorcade for twenty-five years can only remind me of someone who has been in prison for life. Wordsmiths, that is, writers and journalists, are, in oppressive systems, an extremely endangered species. African governments have the illusion that writers and journalists are the government's unpaid public relations officers. And the politicians are not about to give up that illusion. We are supposed to paint the glorious and happily-ever-after banner for our country, never the sad tears and pain our governments sometimes cause us.

All we know and cling to is the knowledge that we are the public relations officers of true human hearts and consciences. As creators, we are not about to give up that principle, that eternal dream. But we know that part of our task is to paint in words the sad tears trickling down our patriotic cheeks, to write and record that we were present when such injustice and violence descended on our village, our land, our street. Politicians are in charge of making laws which put writers in prison. I have always wondered why they fear writers.

'Who elected you to speak on behalf of the public?' I have always been challenged by the politicians in my country. And they add: 'I was elected by a constituency of voters, 40 000 of them. Who elected you?' I always answered: 'My conscience elected me. You are elected for five years, I am elected for life.' Thus the relationship between a writer and a politician is established: a battle for constituencies. The politician dances to the constituency of numbers. He/she wants a full stadium to address. In the process, the politician hopes to capture the hearts and minds of the people. But the writer is not interested in numbers. He/she is of the constituency of mind. When the politician searches for the constituency of mind, he is shocked to discover that the writer/artist has already occupied that space. Hence, the anger begins.

The politician is in control of handcuffs, guns, prisons, the police, the army, parliament, institutions of violence. The writer is only in control of feeble words, words which float in the wind like butterflies, language. Words which can appear to be crushed with the hammer of political oppression, with prison. Unfortunately, words, like the free wind, and the smell of flowers, refuse to die, even after the politician's five-year development plan has run out. Political and artistic language is different. The writer fights to name things freely. The politician seeks to name things for political gain through concealing truths or distorting them.

When once I wrote the draft speech of the Minister of Information for the opening of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, she was respectful enough not to change a word. Then she phoned me later and asked me to apply for the civil servant job of director of information in her ministry. 'What would I be doing every day?' I wanted to know. 'You will write my speeches and the speeches of other ministers,' she said.

Imagine, a writer being a speech writer, writing long speeches about the current 'operation demolish poor people's dreams,' 'operation filth and dirt', 'operation follow the leader', 'operation imprisonment,' 'operation eternal life for the leader,' etc. Many senseless 'operations' aimed at destroying language and people. But the hidden purpose was more complex than that: control of my words, my vision, my dreams and aspirations. Politicians are not about to respect the freedom of language, of expression.

The current deputy minister of information in Zimbabwe says he is the 'de facto' editor of the government daily, The Herald. He cannot countenance leaving words in someone else's hands. Literature, art, by nature is subversive, not in the sense of a desire to capture state house, but in the sense of searching for that which is hidden, the echoes of the hidden, human heart and mind. It is in the language of art that identity is discovered. Our identity is the compendium of our sorrows and joys, our smiles and our wounds, the very scars on which our history is recorded. Our historical and geographical beauty and ugliness, our wisdom and its accompanying foolishness. Our conquests and defeats. The way we search for meaning in life, the illusions we cling to, our cruelty, everything. That is what art searches for, because no human being is ever a one-word answer. We are complex, and art celebrates that complexity.

In literature, words are like bullets which shoot the heart and the mind, creating all sorts of images and metaphors which explode the human imagination and the will to live a tense life full of human doubt and joy, human freedom as it flowers amongst the social and political worms that seek to kill it from inside and outside.

As writers, we have the duty to restore the proper names of things in a complex, multifaceted dialogue. Oppressive political systems believe in a social and political monologue. The head of state should not be criticised. He should be allowed to run the country through a political and social monologue until he dies. For the politician, the world is made up of numbers...how many schools he built, bridges, clinics, stadiums, computers distributed, rallies addressed, years spent in meaningless monologues in state house. No, the writer, the artist, searches for something deeper: the solitude of power, the solitude of huge crowds where everyone is, politically, just 'the masses', 'my voters', 'my constituents.'

The writer searches for the hidden meaning of things, of human experience, of possibilities and choices. As writers, we do not ask for too much: we just demand the right to name the colours of our flowers, the intimate and intricate music of our birds as they sing our sadness and joy, the turbulent and rebellious hearts of our fellows, the funereal voices of social and political oppression, the cries of the lovers in each others' deadly and joyous embraces, the celebrations of the free human soul searching for the gods and the ancestors. The imprisonment of writers is a vain attempt to put ideas in a cage so that the artist can be humiliated in the zoo of ideas without possibilities and choices. Physical imprisonment is supposed to exile us from the public. It is a form of physical and artistic torture. For, we poison the minds of the public, the youths, the women and men reduced to manipulated machines by systems which specialise in torturing ideas and the imagination. 'Your books are beautifully written,' one education officer said to me. 'But we cannot put them in schools. They are too political. If you remove the political bits, we will prescribe them for children in schools,' he said. I cannot imagine an adulterated version of any of my novels. It would be an insult to the imagination and to creativity.

Oppressive political systems thrive on feeding the people on a diet of illusions, of power, freedom, smiles, happiness, wealth to the dispossessed, victory even at the height of oppression. A writer's task is to reject all that, to continue to name things in their proper shapes and sizes, to search for real meaning and complexity of the human condition. Exile, imprisonment, silence, harassment, oppressive laws, the secret service, all those are instruments created by our governments in order to torture human bodies and free ideas.

'You can disappear anytime we want,' is the slogan that I have had to confront for many years, from the men in dark glasses and suits. But even as writers are in prison, they still search, with the intimacy of their souls and the freedom of their words and imagination, for the freedom for words, images. We have, indeed, freedom of expression. But we demand more: freedom after expression. ' In saying ''this is who I am'', in revealing oneself, the writer can help others to become aware of who they are. As a means of revealing collective identity, art should be considered an article of prime necessity, not a luxury,' shouted Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, while in exile from his cruel, beloved homeland.

*Chenjerai Hove is a leading Zimbabwean author and has several published books and poems including the aclaimed novel BONES. This article appeared on the www.newzimbabwe.com website and reproduced here with permission of the author.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

This volume provides an overview of socio-economic rights in the South African Constitution, as seen in the international context. An introduction to socio-economic rights is given, and the following rights are covered in separate chapters: the right to education; the right to housing; rights concerning health; the right to food; the right to water; the right to social security and assistance; and environmental rights.

The end of apartheid in South Africa has been widely viewed as the end of an era of African history. The Next Liberation Struggle is an indispensable guide to understanding how the resources of that era can be used to contribute to real liberation for the region and for the continent of Africa as a whole. The Next Liberation Struggle integrates the concrete observations of a seasoned observer and participant in southern African liberation struggles with analysis of and reflection on the large question of the place of southern Africa within the global capitalist order and its capacities to contribute toward remaking that global order.

In the south east of Zimbabwe lies the massive Gonarezhou National Park, a previously unspoiled wilderness. The Park is flanked on its eastern boundary by the border with Mozambique and just to the south lies the mighty Kruger National Park. Before the Mugabe regime initiated the chaotic land grab in Zimbabwe to bolster its rapidly declining popularity, conservationists and wild life experts had been planning, and the governments concerned had committed themselves to, a Transfrontier Park which would straddle the borders between Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

This political drama reflects on the long period of military rule in Nigeria, which officially began with the end of Shagari's regime in 1983 and ended with the ascent of Obansanjo in 1999. It gives a satirical account of the clandestine machinations employed behind the scenes by a very powerful group of individuals - the barons, who are mostly from the north of Nigeria, to capture political power, and exert influence over the traditional socio-economic and political institutions. The play aims to inform and to entertain - to record the events as accurately as possible in a comic manner; and is lent a strong flavour of contemporary politics as real historical events and figures are represented.