Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran and an internationally-respected scholar, social scientist, and urban planner, was arrested and imprisoned in Iran on May 11, 2007. Along with several other Iranian-American scholars, Dr. Tajbakhsh has been charged with acting against national security and espionage.

The Group of Eight industrialised countries (G8) agreed to allocate 60 billion dollars in new aid to Africa in "the coming years", to beef up the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and to improve primary education across the continent. But the summit of the heads of government of the G8 failed to satisfy its own commitment, made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, of doubling aid to Africa by 2010.

PLATFORM is looking for a Project Co-ordinator for the Remember Saro-Wiwa project, working to drive forward this unique initiative that combines the arts, human rights and the environment. Deadline for applications is 6pm Thursday 21st June 2007.

Rich countries' pledges of more aid to Africa are undermined by the lack of a delivery timetable which prevents the world's poorest nations from planning development, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, director of the IMF's Africa department, welcomed the $60 billion pledged last week in Germany by leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/308/katemost-blackedup_41974.j…, 'the continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as "nothing" and corpulent darkness'. Annwen Bates on the visual representations of the spectacle of aid in Africa.

You are a celebrity humanitarian and guest-editor of a well-circulated glossy. The territory is Africa. The topic is staving its demise. In the 1980s this would have been a famine. Today it is poverty and HIV/Aids. Readers will judge your cause by the cover, so select the visuals with care. What will you choose: an outline of an uninhibited continent, an abandoned toddler or a panic-eyed, skeletal mother clutching her dying baby? Do not feel limited by this empty outline of the place and its people, the abandoned children and wilting women. They are quite interchangeable, even mix'n matchable. Just this morning, I read about Bob Geldof’s recent guest-editorial of the German magazine Bild. Online, I found an image of the cover: a skeletal creature that looks more alien than human, crying out, in a silent Munch-like scream, for help. A white outline of the continent frames the child - just in case the reader is at a loss of the child’s origin. Here is the innocent victim, says the ‘chalk’ outline. This is the latest tragic embodiment of Africa’s lack. As I listened to this tale of human woe, I heard the name recur with frightening frequency.

Africa! Africa! Africa! (Thabo Mbeki). Lack has been Africa’s crime for centuries. The continent of terra incognito was, and continues to be, constructed as ‘nothing’ and corpulent darkness. What is of particular interest is the visual representations of this mythology of lack. During the colonial project, Africa's nothingness was the absence of Christianity, science, education, medicine and civility. Today, indeed for the last 30 or 40 years, nothingness is the darkness of disease, civil war, disorganisation, corruption and an inevitable decline into apocalyptic demise. (Africa has been in this state of demise for the last 400 years or thereabouts.)

Visual historian Deborah Kaspin suggests, like many who have studied representations of the continent, that the pervading standardised images of Africa are not fundamentally of Africa at all. Rather they 'arise from a Western bourgeois mythology of any and all wilderness, inhabited by creatures who are, alternatively, innocent and savage, naked and hairy, dark-skinned and ghostlike. The mythology is ubiquitous'.

Consider the child of Geldof's cover. Innocent in its form of child, yet savage as the embodiment of a ravaging disease mixed with poverty. Vulnerable in nakedness, but strangely inhuman. The child is dark-skinned, but also vanishes ghostlike into its own skeleton. Captured for posterity in a photograph, it is saved from its own terra incognito African wilderness to become the poster child of Geldof's cause. 'Postcolonial imagery presents the Third World as spectacle', writes image scholar Jan Nederveen Pieterse.

The Bild magazine cover is an example of a genealogy of the spectacle of Africa, which extends as far back as ethnographic and anthropological photography, as well as the trade and progress exhibitions of the 19th century, such as the Grand Exhibition of 1851 in London. Professor Annie Coombes writes in Reinventing Africa, the live subjects were set up in tableaux with 'authentic' huts, clothes (or lack thereof) and, at set times, performed 'authentic' activities, such as hunting. The German word Bild, means picture, and has an added meaning from theatre, scene. Uncanny that the image is also a scene. The spectacle of Africa is photograph and production still from the tableau of 'authentic' Africa and Africans readying themselves to be played out.

Granted, in this continent of 53 countries there are problems which cannot just be waved away as false naming. Even thinking of the image staves my typing. How dare I write in the sight and deafening appeal of another human being? Problems are the dilemma of our world, not just of Africa. Yet, it is curious that Western myths about their potency and power over Africa's primitive incompetence persist in 2007. Is Africa, the place and the people, concealed by the suggested false delineation?

Perhaps it is helpful to think of false in connection with the word's origin falsus, as related to 'fail'. Africa (I still want to question this blanket geographic label 'Africa' and its use for everything from place to people) is left with a deceitful or unfaithful cartography, portraiture and name. Why? Most of the colonial empires made fat on these myths collapsed, we believe, more than 30 years ago. Much post-colonial theory suggests the condition of Other-ing. Historians, psychologists, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists suggest that to assert self, one must stand in opposition to an Other.

For white, bourgeois, educated European males of late 18th through to the 20th century, this was the black, uneducated African woman who, by virtue of her primitivism, existed in some ahistorical moment, most definitely not that contemporary moment in time. 'The image formation of outsiders is determined primarily by the dynamics of one’s own circle' (Pieterse). Of colonial project representations of Africa and Africans, he observes, '[w]hat was really at stake in all these perspectives on "the savage" was European positions and programmes'.

In 2007, an age filtered by the lenses of post-colonialism, feminism, post-structuralism and the general questioning of white, bourgeois, educated European male supremacy, it is interesting that those who embody their Otherness are once again on all sorts of pages. From women selling chocolate in fair trade advertisements to Aids orphans abandoned in fields, what do these images potentially reveal about European positions and programmes?

Lack, ahistoricity, references in setting an arcadia rendered anarchic hint at a world so different to the wealthy, 21st century, urban world of those on the other side of this paper-thin reality. At the end of his study Pieterse concludes, 'The images of aid to the Third World are variations on this formula; fundamentally patronising, they are ahistorical, preoccupied with symptoms and oblivious to causes, and, not for all their global scope, parochial'. Why is post-independence Africa still newsworthy and cause-worthy to European humanitarian crusaders?

Paula Treichler offers Aids in the Africa (the Third World) as the 'latest incarnation of the "darkly unknowable"'. This is neo-colonialism with intrepid explorers. However instead of searching for the source of the Nile, they seek to bring the universals of health and material justice. For 'Europe is the light of the world, and the ark of knowledge: upon the welfare of Europe hangs the destiny of the most remote and savage (sic) people'. Let us replace 'savage' with words that have more currency in 2007; words like uneducated, oppressed or suffering. The words from the Edinburgh Review seem to belong not in the early 1800s, but could be on Bild page today. Geldof's partner in making poverty history is U2's Bono. He is to guest-edit the July edition of the magazine Vanity Fair (the US edition). It will be interesting to see the 'Africa in 2007' that he covers. It may include articles about cellphone entrepeneurs, print media franchises, tertiary research, but I suspect it is more likely to be yet another programme for the ever continuing show: Africa: the lacking continent.

References
Kaspin, Deborah, 2002, Conclusion: Signifying Power in Africa. In Landau, P.S. And Kaspin, D.D.
Images and Empire: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Mbeki, Thabo., 2002, Africa: Define Yourself. Cape Town, Tafelberg.
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 1992, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. London, Yale University Press.
Treichler, P.A., 1999, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicle of AIDS and HIV Infection in the Third World. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press.

Links:
http://www.africacentre.org.uk/+ve-ve.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2d9qkc

* Annwen Bates is a research student at the University of Western Cape.

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

This is the second of a two-volume work taking stock of the study of Africa in the 21st century: its status, research agenda and approaches, and place. The volume is divided into two parts, the first entitled Globalisation Studies and African Studies, and the second, African Studies in Regional Contexts.

Topics considered include: African and area studies in France, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden; anti-colonialism and Russian/soviet African studies; African studies in the Caribbean in historical perspective; the teaching of African history and the history of Africa in Brazil; African studies in India; African studies and historiography in China in the 21st century; and African studies and contemporary scholarship in Japan.

'This two-volume collection…establishes entirely new parameters for Africanist scholarship…[it is] interested in answering the question: What is Africa's place in the world today'– Ato Quayson, professor of English and director, Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.

ISBN: 978-2-86978-198-6, 416pp., publ. 2007
Africa: 35.00 USD; CFA 17,000; elsewhere: US$49.95/GBP39.95

Orders:
Africa -
North America - www.africanbookscollective.com

When the world's wealthiest nations meet at the G-8 summit in Germany this week, aid workers plan to remind them that education pledges they made to children--the majority of them girls--are not being met in the world's worst conflict zones.

Amnesty International has warned that the internet "could change beyond all recognition" unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights. The "virus of internet repression" has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group. Amnesty accused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of being complicit in the problem.

Long seen as funding the continent's wars and doing little other than seeking out petroleum and mineral resources, Russia is now looking to kick-start better trade relations with Africa, and has made its first move by writing off the majority of the continent's debt.

In an inter-dependent world, global challenges, whether of poverty or security, of migration or marginalization, demand responses based on global values of human rights that bring people together and promote our collective well-being. Human rights provide the basis for a sustainable future. But protecting the security of states rather than the sustainability of people’s lives and livelihoods appears to be the order of the day, says the Amnesty International 2007 report.

I have read Mandisi Majavu's essay with interest . I found it different and less engaging than the articles he wrote before. What I missed from his article this time being - his own voice. In this essay he has drowned it in a cacophony of quotes from secondary sources.

I expected the title to give a panoramic view of the essay and to be followed by an introductory paragraph which leads us into the hinterland of the essay. The title is not doing its job. I do not see it demarcating the purview of the topic he means to treat. Though, it is not clear where psychology stops and other sciences begin. Especially, its critical version. This has made the essay unwieldy.

Then comes the two blocks of paragraphs entirely made of quotes. I do not know. I fear academy is cramping his style. There is a whole lot of talk on quoting, on acknowledging the originator of the idea…the sentence. Maybe that is the culprit.

His rebuttal that decolonisation should not be violent, as Fanon takes it to be, is cogent. This is the best part of the essay. Still, I see something lacking - real world examples. Why not motivate it by bringing the experience of South Africa, India and also Zimbabwe among others? Why not introduce his own voice, when there is a big room for that? We miss Mandisi there.

He went past overruling violence as a solution and tried to prove that being subjected to colonialism does not result in inferiority complex and self hatred. Then, what is the effect of colonialism on the subject people? I am not questioning whether it is a disease that can be treated by violence or not. Violence can utmost be surface therapeutic. But, what comes to explain away the evil effects of colonialism though we may not find them a common name- is typical gooblydygook. The worst part of the essay.

Here is also another point I would like to comment on in this essay: 'To write in African language, or quote only African writers, does not necessarily translate into originality.' What is at stake here is not ‘originality’, it is ‘allegiance’. Proponents of national culture do not hold that one's capacity to produce something ‘original’ will betray you the moment you strayed into a foreign culture. But mourn the loss of your brainpower spent on producing an original work that enriches foreign culture rather than yours. Why not pull Ngugi’s Decolonizing the Mind into the picture? I think it is relevant and would have helped him to ground and flesh out his argument.

Mandisi's absence is conspicuous in the conclusion than in any other part of the essay. We never get a chance to hear him even in the conclusion. Besides, why present a premise in a conclusion? Another minor contention: why a yawn-inducing borrowed from economics jargon - growth-oriented attitude about one’s ideas. This is an obvious fact that can be put in a simple language. Everybody outgrows his ideas. It is a one way street. It begins at romanticism and goes to the direction of realism. We are all in that continuum. Let me finish by giving free rein to my quibbling. Somewhere in the essay he has written the ‘arrogance of colonial power’. It is so harsh a reality to be called by a light word such as ‘arrogance’. Arrogance is the attribute some ascribe to President Thabo Mbeki. I think ‘intransigence’ may be better, though not a perfect fit.

Ochieng M. Khairallah argues that the trend in Kenya and elsewhere to criminalise the poor will lead to the systematic eradication of the poor, if the causes of poverty are not addressed.

Debates have been taking place about the probable causes of world problems. From diseases, violence, wars and corruption, the current world is mired in problems of varying dimensions and intensity. Ardent analyses of recent debates show that they are biased against poverty as the single most important cause of the world's problems. The criminalisation of poverty is increasingly becoming apparent, both in discourse and practice. We see world leaders on a daily basis give speeches, laced with all manner of condemnations against poverty, but with little or no action at all in terms of tangible actions for grappling with the issue.

Kenya is no exception to the debate. Recent experience confirms similar political focus on poverty, especially as a campaign issue in the wake of the forth-coming general elections. It is baffling to see leaders attribute the current spate of insecurity and associated ills in the country with poverty and the attendant widening of the divide line between the haves and the have-nots. While this might be true to an extent, it is not in my humble view the real problem behind current challenges facing the country. More worrying is the gullibility with which the general public has fallen prey to such hollow and simplistic arguments. In essence, it is a veiled way of saying that the poor are the problem. Instructively, attributing global problems to poverty without grappling with the causes of the same, is in my view, tantamount to condemning the poor. We might in the fullness of time witness systematic eradication of the poor in the name of poverty eradication.

The fact that poverty is a problem cannot be denied. But to condemn it without interrogating related problems and issues is, by all measures, escapist and self-defeatist. A comparative appraisal of poverty and unbridled capitalism the world over attest to the foregoing assertion. Hindsight reveals that the insatiable quest and rush for riches and raw money or the primitive pursuit of and accumulation of riches ordinarily associated with unbridled capitalism lies at the root of the myriad problems facing the world today. It must not be lost on us that capitalism per se is not so bad, if capital is geared to the development of the human person, i.e. to the creation and enhancement of human capital.

When capital is solely based on primitive accumulation, especially within an exclusive club at the exclusion of the majority, then it begins to attract prejudices and nuances of varying perspectives. In particular, it begets impunity. The feeling that everything is possible with money begins to assume centrality in public discourse. Money becomes an end in itself. This is particularly so in the so-called Third World countries, where education is anchored in money, and selfish and personal pursuit of happiness, to the detriment or total disregard of the collective good of society. This gives rise to intra-class competition, which entails cutting deals between business and politics. Different classes begin to emerge at various levels with attendant considerations as to what a person owns and comes from, and which party they support.

As a result, both intra-class and inter-class tensions begin to emerge depending on the prevailing prejudices, belief and nuances; usually with tragic consequences. This is where the curse of primitive capital lies. Instead of capital for human development, it becomes capital for human destruction. In the process, fear creeps in and usually it is fear of the unknown. People begin to seek refuge in primitive cocoons and related factors and prejudices emerge, usually tribal, ethnic, class, religion, culture and privileges. Conspiracies begin to emerge ranging from sabotage, elimination of the un-wanted, corruption, discrimination and marginalizsation. The list is endless. Consequently capital begins to oil the wheels of injustice.

Because people must protect themselves, private armies begin to emerge. Capital must therefore be used to procure weapons and related assortment; eventually people must be paid to do dirty work even if it means eliminating others. At times others must either be marginalised or frustrated because of the fear of their abilities or the so-called fear of the unknown. As a result poverty is created where it should not have been, and ironically, it is poverty created by capital. How many understand how capital is creating poverty in Africa? If you doubt this, then justify the concept of bribery especially the buying of votes during elections. Do we not we see democracy become dictatorship by capital? Whoever pays gets the vote, even if nothing other than making money through corruption and related vices is understood.

With time, this trend traverses all sectors with worrying trappings as the rush and stampedes for raw capital dictate the direction of progress. Scientists begin to venture into sophistications of tragic consequences - say advanced weaponry or warfare - do they stop to think for whom the weapons are made and the wars fought? Doctors begin not to research the means of advancing humanity, but rather how to create diseases so as to make money from such diseases. How much money are we making from sale of condoms and retro-virals? Moreover why do we fail to give our people clean water but are quick to build dispensaries to sell drugs to those suffering and dying from water-borne diseases. What kind of research are our public health officers engaged in? Do we need to re-educate the educated sons and daughter of Africa?

Quest for capital or raw money becomes the rule rather than the exception. Lawyers begin to conspire with judges in creating bids for justice as well as to advise clients on how to evade the law. Education begins to be determined by ones ability to pay, as opposed to merit, even if it means paying others to sit examinations for you. As a result we produce professors and graduates who are no more than salesmen of western products, including raw capital. Do you see the danger of such kind of education? Or must we wait to see professionals who are not knowledgeable in their fields? Imagine having doctors who cannot decipher malaria from headache, or stomach ache from heart-burn! Engineers and quantity surveyors who are concerned about how much money they can make from a given contract as opposed to quality of structures being erected. The list is endless. This is what others will soon refer to as the educated fools of Africa.

An effective education must aim at production, not consumerism or brokerage. Education must be anchored on the common good of all, lest the circle continues and eventually we produce a cabbage or an animal farm as a society. These are the reasons why I hold that the woes be-devilling the world currently, and Kenya in particular, are deeply rooted in poor or improper education and primitive quest, pursuit and accumulation of capital, and not poverty. No one would be poor if capital were geared to human development. This is what is referred to as the socialisation of capital. Social imperatives come before capital and not the other way round. Provide clean and drinkable water to all, as opposed to placing it at the behest of private commerce.

The trend continues. First it was privatisation of land, apparently not for maximisation of production but increasingly as collateral for destructive capital. Remember vast land is hoarded land and is not under productive utilisation. Now it is water. What will be next? Imagine a situation where air is poisoned by vagaries of capital, and therefore human beings are forced to buy so-called treated air. I suppose a special commercial devise would have been invented to clean poisoned air and package the same for sale and oxygen for individual consumption and survival. Must we condemn future generations in this manner? Need I say more about un-bridled capitalism?

* Ochieng M. Khairallah is a lawyer and human rights activist.

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

The Rainforrest Foundation is a small but expanding organisation and are looking for a Volunteer Administration Assistant to play a vital role in the increasingly busy team, to ideally work for a minimum of two months (part-time or full-time hours are possible). This role provides a fantastic opportunity to gain valuable experience and proficiency working for a small NGO.

Cycle 350km across one of the most diverse and beautiful landscapes in the world, whilst helping Computer Aid International deliver vital IT education to communities in need.

International Foundation for Science occasionally issues calls for applications together with other partner or donor organizations. Currently IFS has open special calls for research project proposals on: Use of Water as a Scarce Commodity in Biological Production; Sustainable Sanitation in developing countries; and Water Research in OIC Countries. The deadline for all calls are June 30, 2007.

The Content Editor will be responsible and accountable for the editorial development of, and driving performance to, the BBC Worldwide channel on YouTube (and any future similar partnerships), which results in the meeting of the channel’s commercial and editorial targets. The role sits within the Digital Media division of BBC Worldwide and reports to the Head of Content. Closing date: 14 June 2007.

We are looking for a Junior Economist to conduct economic analysis of and draft documents about policy issues arising in fields covered by the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate (GOV). The selected candidate will carry out analysis and studies within the framework of a project regarding regional innovation systems and clusters in Mexico. S/he will be recruited to work out of the OECD Mexico Office. Deadline: June 24, 2007.

On the opening day of the G-8 summit, leading international debt cancellation advocacy groups declared that the debt deal G-8 leaders negotiated 2 years ago has not solved the debt crisis and issued a strong call to the G-8 to stop the activities of so-called "vulture funds".

The United Nations foundation seeks to recruit a PRODUCT (RED) Marketing Liaison. As a staff member of the UN Foundation, the (RED) Marketing Liaison will report to one of the Foundation’s Senior Vice Presidents in Washington D.C. As a seconded staff member of the Global Fund, the (RED) Marketing Liaison will work on a day-to-day basis with the Fund’s Manager of Private Sector Partnerships and other Fund staff members. In addition, the (RED) Marketing Liaison will work closely with (RED) staff in London and Los Angeles

Intel, the software giant has launched the World Ahead Programme, which aims at expanding accessibility, connectivity, education and content for the world's developing communities. The programme aims at developing low-cost full-featured PCs for first-time computer users, extending Worlwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology and deployment, training 10 million more teachers on the effective use of technology in education and donating 100,000 PCs to classrooms in developing communities to promote the effective use of technology for improved learning.