Activist Pregs Govender admitted this week that AIDS denialism within government had been one of two factors that pushed her to resign as an ANC Member of Parliament in 2002. The other factor was government's decision to spend billions of rands on arms. "I disagreed with the questioning of whether HIV causes AIDS," Govender told a full house at the University of KwaZulu-Natal this week, when she delivered the Harold Wolpe lecture.

In flight to Nigeria, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem encounters a howling young man being deported from the United Kingdom. How is it that the youth of African countries will do anything to leave their place of birth and slave away in poorly paid jobs in rich countries? What kind of societies are being constructed in African countries when remittances act as the only method of survival for whole commmunties?

Today is Africa Day and I wish to share a very painful story with you.

One has heard or read many horror stories about detentions, forceful removals, and deportation of Africans accused of being 'illegal immigrants' or failed asylum-seekers, almost always from one European country or the other. Most people are not likely to encounter this directly. In February this year I came face to face with the inhuman way it is done.

I was travelling to Nigeria with a former radical lecturer, mentor to several generations of Nigerian students and intellectuals, Dr Patrick Wilmot. In 1988 he was kidnapped by security officials of the IBB regime (government of Ibrahim Babangida) and forcibly removed from Nigeria, a country in which he had lived in for almost 2 decades and despite the fact that he was and still is married to a Nigerian.

Wilmot's 'crime' was allegedly, 'teaching what he was not paid to teach'! Wilmot is of Jamaican origin but has lived longer in Nigeria than in Jamaica and is better known to Nigerians and considered 'one of us' by many. Yet in one night the military government yanked him away from his family and academic community and landed him in the United Kingdom, a country in which he had never lived in before and had nothing but a painful historical link of slavery and colonialism. Britain finally gave him legal residence and later citizenship and London has remained his home since 1988.

In spite of fears and anxiety by friends and colleagues unsure about the selective efficiency of the African state when it comes to real and imagined 'enemies', Wilmot was happy to be returning to a country from which he was deported. I was never officially deported from Nigeria but have become expert at being 'prevented to leave or enter the country' throughout the military regime and even under the current 'democratic' order. My travelling with Wilmot was both a personal and political assurance that we could face any trouble together and tough it out.

From checking in and boarding you know you are Nigeria-bound and in many ways feel like you are already in the country. As loud as Nigerians are infamous for, that evening there was an unusual noise coming from the back of the plane, distinct from the racket of voices around. The voice grew more disquieting as we sat so I went to check in the next cabin.

At the back of the plane was a young Nigerian man, definitely not more than 25 years old, sandwiched between two bully-built white British police/immigration officers and handcuffed to both of them. I made enquiries from the airhostesses since my initial attempt to talk to the man's captives was rebuffed. The hostess casually informed me that it was nothing unusual, that these things happen fairly regularly, that the man was being 'removed' and assured me that his noise would reduce as soon as the flight settled.

Meanwhile, the removal police were trying their best to calm down the howling young man as they would 'calm' an aggressive dog or cat. On his part he was just crying, howling, swearing, and whining like a trapped animal. It was so dehumanising and I felt humiliated for him and for Africa. Even sadder still was the general indifference of most of the other largely Nigerian passengers. Many of them have become inured to this kind of routine humiliation of fellow citizens. One even advised the whaling young man to 'shut up and try again when you get home'.

Here was Dr Wilmot, happy to return to a country from which he was unceremoniously thrown out, on the same flight with a young man being unceremoniously returned home. One got the impression that if he was left unshackled he could attempt jumping out of the plane. He wanted to be anywhere but home.

How bad can it be that a young man who should have his whole life ahead of him should be so frightened of going back home? What kind of society have we created where our young people see no hope in remaining in Africa and would do anything to leave it? We are even beginning to valorize poor jobs, bad pay and immigrant insecurity by gleefully talking these days about how important 'remittances' are to the welfare of Africans trapped in poverty at home. This actually makes it imperative for many young people to devise even more desperate means to opt out of Africa in order to become Western-Union life-savers to their families. Some countries are now even trying to launder that exploitation as part of Overseas Development Assistant (ODA)! And some of our own organisations in the name of Diaspora initiatives are directly or indirectly offering justification for this by only looking at the 'contribution' that remittance is playing instead of the wider conditions and the long term negative impact of whole communities dependent on handouts.

We do not tell the truth about the degradation, racism and exploitation that most of our people suffer in those 'shitty jobs', 'early morning and late night' that makes our peoples the last to go to sleep and the first to wake up!

These horror stories about immigration are repeated everyday across Africa and the world. Some of our own governments, despite being responsible for the economic and political conditions that are making many Africans leave home, even connive in the routine humiliation in their forcible return from different countries in Europe. Some of them are willing to accept payments from European countries in exchange for taking fellow Africans (not necessarily their citizens) that are deported from Europe.

Who says slavery is dead? This is official people trafficking by any other name and it is done with impunity by countries who have signed all kinds of international conventions allegedly protecting human rights. The same countries that are forcing us to globalise, open up our economies and markets, but are unwilling to open up their markets for our goods and our labour.

In spite of the humiliations many more people from across this continent will do anything to get a visa to go to the West and if that fails, anywhere else but Africa. Many years ago I had written about this phenomenon and suggested then that were a slave ship, properly labeled, to appear in any port city in Africa, people would rush into it proclaiming that they were fit to be slaves! It is worse today; we are in many ways financing our way into slavery both at home and globally.

As if the bad treatment from others was not enough, intra African trade and free movement of peoples are denied through branding of fellow Africans as 'aliens', 'foreigners', 'non indigenes' and 'settlers' even inside the same country. Pan Africanist entrepreneurs delivering goods and services to African people as when and where needed are criminalised as 'smugglers'.

They say Rome was not built in a day.

Today being Africa Day, we need to ask ourselves: if Romans were not there who would have built Rome? You need to ask yourself whether by your action or inaction you are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Happy Africa Day!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Two weeks ago, I discovered that an article I wrote for Pambazuka News, “Hungry For Live Poetry” about Nairobi's First Poetry Slam, was apparently plagiarized in its entirety by a journalist for the Kenya Times. Neither the Kenya Times editors, nor the journalist, Otieno Amisi, have responded to my emails.

The original article is at:

The Kenya Times version is at:

http://www.timesnews.co.ke/03mar06/magazine/magazine3.html

Initially, I wasn't sure whether to be flattered, outraged, amused - or all three. I sent out an email to several African writers and journalists in my circle asking:

“Has anyone else had this experience? Is it worth challenging - either the guy himself, or the editors of the Kenya Times? Is it symptomatic of a larger culture of journalistic plagiarism that's going unchecked and unchallenged in Kenya?”

One response, from Kenyan arts organizer and writer, Dipesh Pabari:

“This sounds very typical. If I ever want to get things in the paper I literally write it myself and they publish it under their name […] that is just the way it works.”

A pragmatic view. If the goal is to disseminate information and get media coverage, then perhaps one should just play the game and accept “the way it works”. But what about those of us who write for a living? What about material that we consider creative output, product for livelihood - whether it takes the form of words, audio, film or image?

Plagiarism has always been a hot topic in the world of books and arts, where the currency is creative ideas and the artistic output they generate. As I write this, legal action is still ongoing over allegations that Dan Brown, author of the 40 million-copies-sold global bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code”, copied his plot from another writer.

This month in Africa, plagiarism has made literary, academic and media waves. South African journalist and author, William Mervin Gumede, is battling accusations that his highly acclaimed book, “Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC” uses other writers' work without proper attribution. Another South African, Afrikaner poet Antjie Krog, is said to be considering litigation against Stephen Watson, head of Cape Town University's English department. Watson claims she stole phrases and ideas from late British poet laureate Ted Hughes and his own work. He says Krog “lifted the entire concept” of her 2004 collection of Bushmen poems from his own1991 collection of Bushmen prose. Neither seems to see the innate irony; that both of them might justly be accused of plagiarizing, or appropriating, the voices of Bushmen.

Is this all just elitist squabbling, among privileged literati in their ivory towers? Does it have any relevance to social justice and the daily lived culture of the majority of Africans?

Consider the case of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Few people are unfamiliar with the song and soundtrack. Fewer still know that it was written by a South African musician, Solomon Linda. It became a chart topper in the West when legendary US folk singer, Pete Seeger (incongruously famous for his own songs of social protest) covered it in the 1950s. In subsequent decades, it has been recorded by over 150 European and American artists, racking up hundreds of thousands of album sales. Most recently, it became a global “brand” as the theme track for Disney's megahit, “The Lion King.”

The song's original writer, Solomon Linda, received 10 shillings for the copyright in 1952, from Gallo studios in South Africa. After the release of “The Lion King”, Linda's family sued Disney for royalties on the use of the song. An undisclosed out-of-court settlement was agreed just this February. Sadly, it came too late for Linda, who died 1962, aged 53, of kidney disease. And for his daughter Adelaide, who died in 2001, of AIDS. Both could have received life-saving medical treatment from less than one-tenth of one percent of the $15 million grossed by the song worldwide. (Source: Emma MacDonald,The Age, Australia, April 22, 2006)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/when-plagiarism-robs-the-poor-of-inspiration/2006/04/21/1145344270049.html

Next week: Plagiarism and the colonial mentality; how plagiarism impoverishes Africa politically and culturally.

* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan poet, writer and theater artist. Visit her at www.shailja.com

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Britain's National charity The Prostate Cancer Charity UK (TPCC) has welcomed the findings of a new study that has located the gene that increases the risk of cancer, but say in order to avoid deaths from the disease black men need to learn more about it. In the USA, African Americans are 1.6 times more likely to develop prostate cancer than white American men and 2.4 times more likely to die from it.

Twenty-five years into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Africa is "ground zero" of this devastating crisis - home to more than 25 million of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. US and international policies have fundamentally failed to address the roots and the impact of this pandemic, particularly in Africa. Across the continent, inadequate resources and other challenges continue to fuel HIV/AIDS and undermine African efforts to respond, reports One World.

Chairman of the National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS, Professor Babatunde Osotimehin has attributed the recent 1.4 per cent drop in the disease prevalence nationwide to increasing political and financial commitment by the government and donor agencies. He said Nigeria, with an estimated 2.9 million people living with the HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) had received $180 million (about N23 billion) from the Global Fund Against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, despite its suspension of a $50 million (about N6.4 billion) grant to the country.

The 2nd Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights will be held from June 19 - 21, 2006, in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference will be convened by the Africa Regional Office of Planned Parenthood Federation of America - International (PPFA-International) and the African Federation for Sexual Health and Rights (AFSHR). In addition, the conveners will provide technical support and assist in mobilizing resources and other support for the conference.

Tariro Muchina was barely in her teens late last year when her father "sold" her off into an arranged marriage in the small-scale farming district of Nyamajura, about 250km east of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. Twelve months down the line, the 14-year-old Muchina, who was literally dragged screaming all the way into "marriage", appears to have come to terms with her fate, reports the Mail and Guardian.

HIV/Aids activists in Kenya have been shocked by the first lady's comments that young people had "no business" using condoms. Lucy Kibaki called on students at a school prize-giving to abstain from sex in order to avoid infection with HIV. Her statement contradicts government policy that promotes condom use. According to a BBC correspondent in Nairobi, Mrs Kibaki is influential, as she chairs the Organisation of the 40 African First Ladies Against HIV/Aids. This stance puts her in line with Ugandan first lady who backs a campaign for young Ugandans to pledge abstinence until marriage.

Uganda, praised for its fight against HIV/AIDS, also makes homosexuality illegal. How, asks Victor Mukasa can any HIV/AIDS policy be successful if it excludes a sector of the population from its programmes.

HIV/AIDS is an epidemic and in order to control and eradicate it, all individuals no matter their sex, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, race, or any other status, must be included in all policies against the scourge. Uganda has been praised for her ‘excellent’ HIV/AIDS policy by the international community.

But the politics of pretence in Uganda is leading to the deaths of many Ugandans from HIV/AIDS. The main group that is suffering as a result of this pretence are homosexuals. The Ugandan government has previously asserted that homosexuals do not exist, yet it is clear that these people do exist. No wonder there are laws against homosexuality put in place. Even the few officials who openly admit that homosexuals exist in this country claim that they (homosexuals) do not deserve any kind of care when it comes to the AIDS scourge.

As a result, homosexuals in Uganda have been excluded from the National AIDS Policy. Simple logic is that once a particular group is not catered for in terms of HIV/AIDS then it cannot be claimed that the scourge is being effectively fought. If one chose to cater for only the male population, for example, that would be a waste of time and resources. Same with catering for, say, only southerners, and ignoring northerners, when there is the aspect of intermarriages. Likewise, once one caters for only heterosexuals, ignoring homosexuals, then one is wasting time. The uncatered (homosexuals) will still spread the disease to the catered (heterosexuals).

It is a fact that homosexuals exist in Uganda and that there are very harsh laws in place against their sexual activities. Among homosexuals are bisexuals. These will have sexual relationships with people of either sex. As if that is not enough, because of the harsh laws, homosexuals either engage in relationships with people of the opposite sex in order to disguise their criminalized nature or are forced into marriages with people of the opposite sex by family and/or friends.

The elimination of homosexuals from the Uganda AIDS Policy has therefore done more harm than good.

There is also the politics of intimidation. In conjunction with deliberately ignoring sexual minorities on matters of a deadly, worldwide health epidemic, the Ugandan government actively discourages agencies that may counsel and treat sexual minorities on HIV. In November of 2004, the government of Uganda warned UNAIDS not to assist sexual minorities in organizing a campaign that may reach out to members of its own group in an effort to stem HIV infections. The government defended its actions of exclusion by reminding UNAIDS that homosexuality is illegal.

Intimidating UNAIDS from assisting Ugandan sexual minorities had a domino effect on other NGOs: organizations who are otherwise willing to assist these minorities with HIV treatment and counseling do not dare to do so because they may lose their license as an NGO.

But why and how could an entire government comprised of individuals who claim to love their people come to this sort of decision? Even if they didn’t love their people, is it not the duty of the Ugandan government to protect Ugandans? Is not every Ugandan entitled to life?

In Uganda, public outreach and advertising campaigns address heterosexual HIV transmission only. This narrow-mindedness lethally deceives and disadvantages the entire sexual minority population. A qualified Ugandan physician who frequently treats patients for HIV complains that sexual minorities are an ignored key population: unprotected anal sex is – according to scientific research – the most risky behavior for spreading HIV. Yet, without government outreach, the key population of those who practice anal sex (often homosexual men, but heterosexuals too) is becoming infected unaware. Government advertising campaigns that depict HIV as a disease transmittable only through penal-vaginal contact put many couples – regardless of sexual orientation - unaware that HIV can be transmitted through anal sex.

It is important to note the size and importance of this anal sex “key population”: outside of intravenous drug users, anal sex (often associated with, but not exclusive to, male homosexual activity) is the most effective method of transmitting HIV. Yet, HIV/AIDS policies allow citizens to unknowingly contract HIV despite all of Uganda’s outreach efforts. This deletion, please note, is unlike any HIV/AIDS outreach program in America or Europe: other countries and regions protect their anal sex population specifically. The fact that the Ugandan government asserts that homosexuals do not exist within its territory and outlaws homosexual activity contributes to this deadly deletion in HIV/AIDS outreach.

Another government-influenced deletion concerning HIV/AIDS that affects Ugandan sexual minorities is a lack of available HIV prevention information suitable only for these minorities. That is, because sexual practices of homosexuals differ from those of heterosexuals, and Ugandan HIV/AIDS organizations are equipped by mandate to concern only penal-vaginal transmission, these minorities cannot receive HIV prevention counseling that may save their lives. Gay men will not receive needed advice about using lubricants that do not destroy condoms. Lesbians will not receive counseling on dental dams. In fact, if a lesbian seeks counseling at an HIV/AIDS outreach organization in Uganda, she will receive advice concerning her boyfriend. Any person can agree that mitigating the effects of a deadly, worldwide epidemic involves treating every patient and potential patient with relevant information, regardless of the circumstances under which he/she caught the disease. The Ugandan government clearly discriminates when it agrees with the preceding statement in regards to many criminals, yet not sexual minorities.

In this era the issue of whether homosexuality is immoral, un-African or a crime, etc, should be dropped when it comes to the control of HIV/AIDS. The fact is, homosexuals exist in Uganda and are a key population in the spread of the scourge. They should be catered for in the National AIDS Policy, be included in all prevention advertisements and in every activity designed to combat the epidemic. The Ugandan Government should give up on its politics of pretence and intimidation and embark on the protection of its population from the deadly epidemic.

* Victor Mukasa is the chairperson of a human rights organisation called Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Joel Wanyingi, 55, constantly suffered from severe headaches and dizziness, and was often plagued with a feeling of tiredness even in bed. He recuperates at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), Nairobi, after heart surgery last month. Inadequate ICU facilities has forced some Kenyans to seek treatment abroad. Although cardiac surgery is also performed in two private city hospitals -Nairobi and Mater - most patients opt for KNH where the costs are heavily subsidised. KNH's director, says there are over 200 heart patients on the hospital's waiting list. But the number of operations that can be performed are tied to the availability of space at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), he says.

All workers in Uganda will have to pay at least four percent of their salaries towards a mandatory Social Health Insurance starting next financial year, according to a scheme recently approved by Cabinet. If endorsed by parliament, the SHI scheme will compel employers to match each employee's deduction with an equal percentage. The ministry of health says about $30 million (about Shs54.9b) will be collected from employees and employers every year, a move which the outgoing health minister says will help improve service delivery.

This week, representatives of member-states of the United Nations in New York, began negotiations on the draft declaration by governments to be considered at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Review Meeting on HIV/AIDS at the end of this month. African peoples are at risk of losing and/or not achieving recognition of critical goals that have been already agreed to both in the Special Summit of the African Union on AIDS, TB and Malaria that held last week in Abuja, Nigeria.

HIV-positive inmates at Westville Prison in Durban, South Africa, will receive identification documents required to access antiretroviral drugs after holding a hunger strike earlier this year to advocate for access to the treatment, Tebogo Motseki, correctional services chief deputy commissioner, said on Wednesday. More than 240 HIV-positive inmates held a three-day hunger strike at the prison in March in an effort to obtain antiretroviral therapy.

African leaders meeting last week at a special summit on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, threw down a challenge to their governments by setting bold new targets to be achieved by 2010. At the end of the gathering to review progress in implementing the 2001 Abuja Declaration on AIDS, TB and Malaria, a major resolution was passed, declaring that at least 80 percent of those in need, especially women and children, should have access to HIV/AIDS treatment, including antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, care and support.

In a span of four years, 3,390 of Kenya's 30,000 registered nurses migrated to Europe and the United States. During this period between 2000 and 2004, about 1,200 nurses were leaving Kenya for greener pastures every year, the National Nurses Association of Kenya (NMAK) says. Nurses have long been overworked and underpaid and found themselves ripe for easy pickings with the attractive pay offered by clinics in countries that have so willingly absorbed them.

An outbreak of dysentery in northeastern Kenya's Mandera District has claimed the lives of 13 children over the past two weeks, health officials said on Tuesday, blaming the epidemic on contamination of water sources during the current rainy season, which follows a severe drought in the remote, arid area.

Most of the world's food is grown and processed by small-scale farmers, pastoralists and fisher-folk. Many people depend on these activities for incomes, including food producers, processors, retailers and consumers. However, development policies often ignore, neglect or actively undermine local food systems.

Health authorities have been unable to contain the cholera outbreak sweeping through Angola, a country considered to have some of the greatest potential for wealth and economic growth in Africa. The epidemic is currently claiming an average of 25 lives a day. A total of 1,034 deaths have been recorded since mid-February. Many of these are in Luanda, the capital of this former Portuguese colony in southwestern Africa.

In Ethiopia, some 12.6 million people require food aid, up from 11.3 million. Donors have pledged enough to meet about 82 percent of food needs, but only 54 percent has been delivered. Sound familiar? This alert was issued three years ago by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Guess what? Ethiopia appeared again this year on FEWS NET's list of "current emergencies," alongside Somalia,
Zimbabwe, and Chad.