cc Economic sanctions against Zimbabwe are worsening the plight of ordinary citizens in an already harsh climate and should be lifted immediately, urges an ‘Appeal for Zimbabwe’ launched in Mali in February. Signatories to the petition declared that drinkable water, food and medicine must ‘cease to be deployed as weapons of war’, and reminded the UK, the US and the EU ‘of the exorbitant social and human cost of the punitive measures’ they have used in a bid to drive regime change in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is grappling with 94 per cent unemployment, the highest inflation rates in the world and food shortages affecting an estimated seven million people.

cc Comments made by South Africa’s Department of Housing after a Durban High Court Judge dismissed an application by the Abahlali baseMjondolo (shack dwellers) Movement SA to declare the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act 2007 unconstitutional have met with opposition from the church, academia and civil society organisations. In an article criticising Abahlali’s legal representatives for portraying the legislation as ‘inhumane and unconstitutional’ and ‘designed to allow the government to embark on irresponsible evictions of homeless people’, the department said that its policy was informed by consultation with slum dwellers and stakeholders including Slum Dwellers International (SDI). SDI countered that it does not support the Slums Act, which would make it legal to evict people living in informal settlements should the government choose to do so. Bishop Rubin added that independent experts have confirmed that there are serious reasons to be concerned by the legislation and that it was wrong and counterproductive to treat shackdwellers and the poor as stupid and criminal. ‘No one should fear that their fragile home will be bulldozed and that they will be banished to a transit camp far outside of the city where they work and their children attend school’, he said. A number of organisations have signed a statement in support of Abahlali baseMjondolo.

cc In the face of the global economic downturn, ArcelorMittal and its Liberian employees and subcontractors are unlikely to reap the benefits of the steel company investment in iron ore production in Liberia any time soon, writes Rebecca Murray of IPS (Inter Press Service). ArcelorMittal met with the approval of watchdog Global Witness for negotiating ‘a deal that remains profitable and safeguards the interests of the host country and its people’. In the current climate, however, Liberia is reluctant to impose conditions on investors, while contractors are willing to compromise on working conditions, fearful that unionising would put their jobs in jeopardy. The company posted losses of over US$2.6 billion globally in their last quarter.

The chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Jean Ping strongly condemned the assassination of the President of Guinea Bissau, João Bernardo Vieira hours after that of his army chief of staff, General Batista Tagme Na Wai and called on political leaders in the country to rally behind the legitimate authorities. Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States announced that it would send a ministerial delegation to Bissau to ‘engage all stakeholders in an effort to restore confidence among the political actors, civil society and security services and return the country to constitutional normalcy’. Elsewhere, the chairperson of the AU Commission, following a deadly suicide bomb attack that killed 11 Burundian soldiers from the African Union Mission in Somalia, reiterated the AU’s determination to support peace and stability in Somalia and promised to speed up the formation of the security sector in the country. Also in peace and security news, a new report launched by the United Nations Environment Programme analysing the links between the environment, conflict and peacebuilding through fourteen case studies argues that intrastate conflicts are likely to drag on and escalate without a greater focus on environment and natural resources in the peacebuilding process. Marking the start of the military exercise of the stand by brigade of the Southern African Development Community, the deputy staff chief of the Angolan Armed Force praised progress made since its creation up to the present in terms of the participation of member states in peace keeping operations in various parts of the world.

The African Monitor, while praising the formation of the unity government in Zimbabwe and the role played by regional leaders and former President Thabo Mbeki in facilitating the process, said that priority has to be given to addressing urgent humanitarian needs in terms of food, medical supplies and other basic necessities to restore the dignity of Zimbabweans. After the 12th ordinary summit of AU heads of State and Government called for an immediate lifting of the sanctions on Zimbabwe to ease the economic and humanitarian situation in the country and the formation of a unity government. According to some analysts, 2009 looks promising for Zimbabweans as a credible and inclusive power sharing could mobilise further international financial help.

In economic news, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, while acknowledging that the current financial crisis could have serious impact on African economies, said that recent decline in fuel and food prices came as a relief for most of the continent and that Africa could seize the moment and press on with reforms aimed at ensuring greater competitiveness. United Nations experts told participants at an ‘Electronic/Mobile Government in Africa’ workshop that African Governments failed to take advantage of technological advances that can improve the delivery of services to their citizens and urged African countries to invest heavily in infrastructure to make the most of emerging technologies.

In other news, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade hailed the transformation of the existing AU Commission into an Authority of the Union saying that it was a landmark decision in achieving the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the African peoples’ desire to achieve continental unity. African economists and top academicians met in Nairobi at a congress to deliberate on the possibilities for the adoption of a single African currency as a process of economic and political integration of the continent. Their recommendations will be presented to the June summit of the heads of state and government. The African Network of Professionals is organising the biggest gathering of professionals to share ideas and accomplishments, deliberate on political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological barriers that hamper the development of effective, efficient and sustainable professionalism on the continent.

In environmental news, African ministers who met in Namibia expressed their support for the work of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa in leading efforts to achieve a sustainable green revolution and noted that it should be complemented by investment in rural areas. Meanwhile, the AU Commission launched a new campaign aimed at reducing the risk of preventable diseases becoming major public health issues and encouraged African countries to launch national health programmes to fight the unhealthy lifestyles that are rapidly catching up with Africa’s growing middle-class.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, on his arrival in Mali on the first leg of a four-nation African tour, expressed his desire to extend China’s trade and investment links in Africa despite the economic downturn. Heads of multilateral development banks invited to a meeting by the African Development Bank to discuss responses to the global financial and economic crisis, underlined their commitment to play a counter-cyclical role to mitigate the impact of the crisis. Finally, decisions and declarations of both the executive council and the assembly of heads of state and governments are now available for download.

President Barack Obama has extended for another year U.S. sanctions that target Zimbabwe's president and others linked to him, saying some people are continuing to undermine the country's democratic processes. The White House issued the notice on Wednesday, the same day that Zimbabwe's former opposition leader called for an end to political oppression and police violence in his first parliamentary address as prime minister.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Japan's Sumitomo Electric Industries joined a crowd of automotive suppliers setting up low-cost plants on Europe's eastern rim. It opened factories from Poland to Bulgaria and today has a dozen facilities in the region. But now, Sumitomo is shifting production south of Europe-to the ancient Moroccan port of Tangier and to Bou Salem, a market town set among wheat fields in northern Tunisia. As costs rise in Eastern Europe, the company says, it's getting harder to make a profit. North Africa, by contrast, offers far lower wages and plenty of eager workers.

The widespread condemnation of the report condemning the police execution of suspects exposes our hypocrisy. How can we, who are demanding a new democratic constitution, be unwilling to defend such fundamentals of democracy like the right of all to a fair trial, the separation of powers, and even the right to life?

Re: Misinformation on IEC TV ads for voter registration including the ad ‘if you don't vote, you can't complain’

Dear Chairperson Dr Brigalia Bam,

A recent television ad for the campaign for voter registration by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has a line which implies that non-voting South African citizens have no power to bring about change in this country. ‘If you don't vote, you can't complain’ shows the short-sightedness and arrogance of the current political system, which attempts to convince South Africans that voting is the most effective and only way to bring about change in this country.

In his inaugural address as the new chairman of the African Union (AU), Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has vowed to pursue his vision of a United States of Africa. Gaddafi has been lobbying other African leaders since 2004 to create a United States of Africa and make him the first president. But even on a continent where hunger for power is a status quo, other African leaders appear not to be mesmerised by the political fantasies of the self-declared ‘king of kings’ and ‘leader of the Islamic leadership’, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Among the civil wars, poverty, diseases, and overall African underdevelopment, the new leader of the AU is only interested in his messianic need for a larger political domain where he can implement his despotic rule.

Lamenting the thin supply of organic African critical and theoretical thinking about the continent, Ronald Elly Wanda argues for the place of African writers in addressing an ‘imposed history’. In light of the understandable tendency of much of the continent’s people to identify more with their own local groups than distant, largely exploitative nation-states, Wanda argues for the need for greater regionalisation as a route towards true independence from colonialism. Underlining the importance of African writers addressing African themes, the author contends that uncovering a genuine spirit of renaissance will only occur when the promotion of African intellectualism is truly normalised.

Originally written back in March 2008 in the wake of Kenya’s post-election crisis, Bhekinkosi Moyo offers some points of reflection on the apparent ease with which citizens’ rights can be manipulated and abused for political ends. Weighing up the emotional difficulty of being a non-resident parent, Moyo reconsiders some of the negative ideas around the supposed callousness of men willing to leave their families for business trips, and decides that there is perhaps ultimately little difference between absent fathers and those chained to their desks at the office.

cc I am shaken. I am shocked. And that is, apparently, the intent. For all of us to be shaken, for all of us to be shocked and for all of us to hear the threat and heed the warning implicit in last week’s assassinations of Oscar Kamau King’ara and John Paul Oulu of the Oscar Foundation.

Let me be clear about this. I had questions about the Oscar Foundation. Last year, it appeared to me to be one of human rights organisations partisan to the Party of National Unity (PNU). I did not understand when or why it had made the shift from children’s rights work to human rights work more generally. I had questions about the methodology through which it arrived at its figures of disappearances and extrajudicial executions of those supposedly associated with the Mungiki. I remember us all laughing when Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, questioned them as to the sources of their funding, concerns apparently raised with him by the security services. For, unlike many of us within the human rights movement, the Oscar Foundation does not receive grants from the bilateral and multilateral donors or foundations.

But I found some of the ways they did their work innovative, such as running free mobile legal aid clinics in low-income areas; not just in urban areas, but also in rural areas. I knew too of the solid backgrounds of some of its staff and trusted that they – just as the rest of us – had information worth sharing with the UN special rapporteur as to the extent of disappearances and extrajudicial executions in Kenya. And I certainly never imagined – not in my wildest dreams – that their staff would pay the ultimate price for bringing that information forward: death.

I see now that I should have read the signs, the writing on the wall. We all must do so, for the build up was clear. Let me sketch the outline.

There are reports – many reports – from both national and international human rights organisations into the joint police–military operations against the Sabaot Land Defence Force in Mt Elgon. There are denials after denials after denials, and increasingly angrily ones. Finally, there are questions and pressure from governments with whom our government has security agreements and arrangements, and suddenly, a flurry of activity. There is a public propaganda campaign, with a state-sponsored documentary focused on the atrocities and crimes committed by the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), being aired repeatedly on almost all television channels over several weeks. There is also a parliamentary probe and a joint police–military investigation. What is the verdict? That nothing is wrong, that all the human rights organisations pointing accusing fingers are wrong, that their motivations are baseless and that they don’t care about the atrocities and crimes committed by the SLDF. The verdict is that they don’t care about the people; they simply did it to raise money.

Somehow, the issue dies down.

But then comes the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Post Election-Violence (CIPEV). It is brutal in its treatment of the failures of the state security agencies. It notes that the Administration Police and the Kenya Police Force used such extraordinary force that no less than a third of all deaths are attributed to them. It notes that they also committed crimes ranging from looting to rape. It issues a set of recommendations for security sector reform, including the fast-tracking of investigations into and prosecutions of individual members of the security services who have committed rape.

The response? Pre-emptively, a supposed police oversight body that is not worthy of the name is instituted, along with the creation of a task force to investigate claims of sexual violence, from which all women’s organisations co-opted in quickly resign. There’s silence, then the announcement by the minister of Internal Security of Kenya’s supposed security architecture, a plethora of new laws and policies supposedly addressing the CIPEV report’s recommendations. But not a word about either individual legal or collective political accountability, which the CIPEV report had stressed.

Again, somehow, the issue dies down, helped in no small measure by the clamour for individual accountability of politicians for the violence through the Special Tribunal and the International Criminal Court.

But then comes the report of the UN special rapporteur, which finds the Kenya Police Force and the military in Mt Elgon guilty of torture, forced disappearances and systematic extrajudicial executions. The response is predictable: Denial, denial, denial.

And there’s more. The dis/misinformation and propaganda begins. The vice chair and a staff member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) are accused of being on the Mungikis’ payroll. Then there’s the build up. Matatu operators accuse human rights organisations of not caring about citizens and businesses affected by the Mungikis’ extortion and protection rackets. We are informed that the Mungiki have decided to demonstrate in favour of the implementation of the special rapporteur’s recommendations. The media does not question this, despite the fact that the Mungiki’s spokesperson denies that they are involved and despite the fact that, strategically speaking, it would be ludicrous for the Mungiki to do so at this time. The demonstrations supposedly happen. The supposed government spokesperson parrots the claims, informing Kenya that the Oscar Foundation is raising money for Mungiki through the human rights organisations that support Mungiki. He blithely ignores the facts that: a) the Mungiki make so much money through their extortion and protection rackets that they hardly need external assistance and; b) the Oscar Foundation does not receive external funding. Hours after his statement, the two staff members of the Oscar Foundation are dead.

For the record, the human rights movement has consistently and repeatedly called for the disarming and demobilisation of all armed groups, criminal gangs and militia in this country as per Agenda Item One of the mediation process. It has also said, however, that disarmament and demobilisation will entail far more than a heavy-handed security response. And it has said that even that heavy-handed security response must be within the boundaries of the constitution and the law, not to mention the regional and international human rights instruments we are party to.

If armed groups, criminal gangs and militia still exist in this country, they do so because of their relationships, complex and ever-changing with the political powers that be and the security services that those political powers control. This is obvious. This is why disarmament and demobilisation is so difficult to achieve. And this is why it is simply ludicrous to claim that groups exist because of the ‘support’ they get from the human rights movement.

We are clearly in dangerous times. The Kenyatta and Moi regimes reserved assassinations for those among the political powers that be. Human rights defenders and other intellectuals contended instead with illegal detentions, torture and forced exile. In the Kibaki/Odinga regime, the goalposts have shifted, and shifted backwards. This does not portend well, for any of us.

To his credit, Odinga came out loud and clear following the assassinations, calling for independent, external investigations. We wait to see what Kibaki will do. And that will tell us whether we’re all headed to the grave.

* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Algeria will write off 41 billion dinars in money owed banks by farmers and livestock breeders, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced Saturday (February 28th) at an agricultural conference in Biskra. The announcement is a real lifeline for an Algerian farming community on the verge of collapse. Starting this week, banks will cease any proceedings to recover their debts.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has demobilized 880 children associated with armed groups in the volatile eastern province of North Kivu between 30 January and 2 March. Madnodje Mounoubai, spokesperson for the mission, known by its French acronym MONUC, told a news conference in Kinshasa that the great majority of the 839 boys and 41 girls are Congolese, but there are also 31 Rwandans, two Burundians and two Ugandans.

A former state governor in Nigeria, Olusegun Agagu, has been arrested by anti-corruption investigators. Mr Agagu is a leading member of the governing People's Democratic Party. He is suspected of embezzling millions of dollars of public funds, say officials at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Police in Zimbabwe have arrested a magistrate who allowed MDC ministerial nominee Roy Bennett to post bail. Other magistrates in the town of Mutare have gone on strike in solidarity with Livingstone Chipadze, officials say. "It is frightening if a magistrate is arrested because he has passed a judgment that is not popular with the state," Mr Bennett's lawyer said. Mr Bennett remains in custody. He was seized on the day MDC ministers joined a power-sharing government.

The Botswana government has denied reports that it has a bailout plan for crisis-torn Zimbabwe. Botswana Finance Minister, Mr Baledzi Gaolathe told the weekly Echo newspaper that reports that his country, South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia have agreed to give emergency funding to bankroll Zimbabwe’s coalition government are false.

As the death toll from Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak continues to climb, the International Rescue Committee is ramping up its emergency programs to combat the epidemic. “As devastating as a cholera outbreak can be, it’s actually fairly easily avoided and treated,” said Eric James, coordinator of the IRC’s emergency response team in Zimbabwe. “But only about half of the country’s cholera treatment facilities have electricity, so it's very difficult if not impossible to treat people at night requiring things like intravenous lines.”

Guinea Bissau's Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior said on Thursday that his government would pursue dialogue with the military and “display a conciliatory overture” to restore peace and stability in the country in the wake of the assassinations of the armed forces chief of staff General Batista Tagm Na Wai and President Bernardo Joao Vieira.

Human rights activist Jestina Mukoko was released on bail following three months of incarceration in Zimbabwe prisons. Africa Action welcomes this development and wishes to extend appreciation to hundreds of activists who responded to our calls over the last 3 months to take action demanding Jestina’s release. Jestina is ‘free’ today due to the collective efforts of people of good conscience all over the world who stood in solidarity with her during months of unlawful incarceration.