Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his campaign team have been detained in Kwekwe and are currently at Kwekwe police station. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said that Tsvangirai and his team were on a victory tour early Thursday.

The number of grave human rights violations against children in Somalia, from acts of murder and rape to the recruitment of child soldiers to the denial of humanitarian access to those in need, have all increased in the past year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report to the Security Council.

United Nations relief agencies and the Ethiopian Government have drastically increased their appeal for funding to help people caught up in the country’s drought and the resulting widespread crop failures as the number of Ethiopians affected by the crisis continues to soar.

Colin Bruce, the World Bank country director at the centre of a storm of controversy during Kenya’s post-election crisis, has been named as director of operations and strategy for Africa. Officials said the appointment was not technically a promotion but it allowed Mr Bruce to influence funding decisions for the continent as a whole.

Citizen participation in local government matters encourages transparency and accountability by local government, and their participation in the local decision-making process is a precondition for good governance. REPOA’s Special Paper 08.26 by Amon Chaligha analyses local autonomy and citizen participation in six councils in Tanzania. This study covers: good governance; accountability and transparency of the local leaders to the community; local government autonomy and citizen participation; bottom-up planning, participation in local elections, and recommendations to improve citizens’ participation.

During the World Economic Forum on Africa that took place in South Africa, the host president expressed his confidence that Africa can overcome its challenges. His sentiments were echoed by Mr Borge Brende, WEF managing director, who noted the tremendous progress and many opportunities that Africa can capitalise on to triumph over the seemingly complex challenges it faces. Prior to the WEF, other African presidents attended the 8th Leon H.Sullivan Summit in Arusha, Tanzania. In his remarks, the Tanzanian president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, underlined the need for Africa to invest adequately in infrastructure development. However, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, in its reports, warned that many African countries are running out of natural resources in the marathon of industrialisation and with the rapid growth of its population. The report says that the global average footprint of 2.2 hectares per person will need two planets by 2050.

President Kagame of Rwanda, this week, blamed corruption and unnecessary cross-border checks as frustrating development efforts. President Kagame further emphasised the need for African countries to put in place effective and speedy integration measures so as to increase trade volume within Africa and with the international community. While the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has endorsed a proposal on joint border posts expected to facilitate border crossing and enable conditions for a borderless region, an important step towards regional integration.

Further, the African Union (AU) president, President Kikwete reiterated the need for Africa and its partner to address challenges of climate change, water, sanitation and the oil and food crisis. Meanwhile, The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group and the World Bank jointly organised, in Dakar, a fourth regional consultation on their respective strategies on climate change. The main objective of the consultation was to brainstorm and seek solutions to strengthen collaboration between African institutions and development partners to address climate change. The World Bank Director of Operations in Senegal, Madani Tall, said that the AfDB-World Bank consultation proved that climate change had a real impact on the continent.

Still in development related news, the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) launched a 50 million U.S. dollar private sector fund to assist the continent’s rural poor, enabling the private sector to invest in new business projects in the agricultural and financial sectors that provide development opportunities for the communities in which they operate. Despite huge pledges for short-term solutions to the food crisis made during the World Food summit, world leaders did little to enhance the capacity of growers in Africa. According to a study by the US Congress research agency, today’s food crisis might have been avoided had rich countries done more to promote agricultural development in Africa and other impoverished regions. The African Development Bank (AfDB) claims that “a smallholder agricultural revolution” in Africa is required to address the food crisis and turn farming into a business, rather than a means of subsistence, for African farmers.

In peace and security news, the AU has welcomed the agreement reached by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia. It calls on other parties to join the negotiation table and commit themselves to the peaceful and negotiated settlement of the conflict in Somalia.

Civil society representatives expressed their disappointment at the lack of funding commitments and political will to tackle HIV/AIDS during the launch of a United Nations report. Since 2000, 14 million Africans have died of AIDS and an additional 17 million have been infected with HIV, says the report, which civil society says “did not pay enough attention to gender equality and violence against women as key aspects of the pandemic”.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/380/48713obama.jpgKali Akuno looks at the limits and contradictions of Obama and argues that the progressives have to use a "combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left."
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Since the stunning Iowa victory of Senator Barack Obama in January, a great deal has been said and written about the declining or ongoing significance of “race” and “racial prejudice” in US society and the prospect of a person of Afrikan descent being its President as proof of its substantive social transformation. While this discussion must be regarded as an advance over the conservative moralistic and race-coded discussions that have dominated political debate in the US since the 1980’s, we must acknowledge its critical limitations.

In the main, these discussions individualize the issues and only engage the behavioral and subjective aspects of inequality and oppression. What is fundamentally missing is a critical discussion of the structural and systemic nature of oppression and exploitation within the US and how the Obama campaign “phenomenon” relates to these structures and dynamics.

This essay seeks to investigate the strategic relationship of the Obama campaign to the structural dynamics of oppression and exploitation within the US. In particular, it will focus on the question of New Afrikan [1] or Black national oppression within the US and how the Obama campaign addresses this oppression. It also seeks to address certain strategic questions that progressive forces within the national liberation and multi-national working class movements must struggle with over the course of the next six months in order to ensure that our demands and interests are advanced – regardless of whether Obama wins or loses the Presidential election in November.

Some of the strategic questions this paper seeks to address are:

- What is Obama’s organic relationship to the New Afrikan or Black nation?

- What class position, alignment and program does Obama represent?

- How does Obama’s campaign strategy and program relate to the historic interests and demands of the Black nation?

WHAT IS THE “NATIONAL QUESTION”?

In summary, from a dialectical materialist framework, the “national question” refers to a) the unequal structural relationship of colonized and oppressed peoples to international capital, oppressor nations, imperialism, and white supremacy and b) to the historic struggles of colonized and oppressed peoples to liberate themselves from these oppressive systems and forces, either in whole or in part (as not all of these “peoples” or “national liberation” struggles have sought to remove themselves from capitalist relations of production).

The inequalities between peoples produced by capitalism are historic. They are rooted in the development of the capitalist world system through the colonization and/or subjugation of the globe and its non-European peoples by the ruling classes of the western European states (i.e. Portugal, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Italy) beginning in the 15th century.

In order to facilitate the process of capital accumulation they initiated on a world scale, the ruling classes of Europe developed a social system and ideology that divided world production along several lines, some of which predated capitalism, some of which developed specifically to suite capitals historic needs. The pre-capitalist social divisions that were exploited were religion, ethnicity, nationality and patriarchy. The new and fundamentally principal divisions developed by and with capitalism are race and state-bound nationality.

The purpose of exploiting and/or developing these inequalities is a) to facilitate the control of the land, labor, and (material and immaterial) resources of the subject and oppressed peoples and b) to foster competition between and amongst these peoples for the material and social rewards conferred by this exploitative and alienating system.

In the United States the “national question” specifically addresses the structural relationship of colonized, oppressed, and subject peoples to the European settler-colonial project and the imperial national-state apparatus that reinforces it. This project is premised on the genocide and dispossession of indigenous peoples (the First Nations); the enslavement and colonial subjugation of Afrikan peoples and their descendents; and the dispossession and colonial subjugation of Xicanas/os.

THE NEW AFRIKAN NATIONAL QUESTION

Throughout the history of the US settler-colonial project New Afrikans have fundamentally been concentrated in the southeastern portion of the projects possessions. The foundation of this concentration was historically premised on the utilization of enslaved Afrikan labor to produce cash-crops like tobacco, cotton, rice, dyes, and sugar, for international consumption. During the early mercantile stages of capitalist development the climatic conditions, soil quality, and strategic location of these possessions facilitated them being incorporated into the world-capitalist system as a zone of mono-crop commodity production. This population concentration and the relations of production exercised in this zone facilitated the formation of the New Afrikan people as a colonized diasporic Afrikan nation subject to will of the European settler-colonial project and its capitalist-imperialist regime between 1619 and 1865.

The mechanization of agriculture in the Southeastern portion of the settler-colonial state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, combined with an intense program of labor control and repression during this period, displaced millions of New Afrikans. In the search for refuge and jobs, displaced New Afrikans re-concentrated in the urban industrial centers of the East Coast, Mid-West, and West Coast between the 1910’s – 1960’s. In the process of this resettlement, millions of New Afrikans joined the ranks of the industrial working class. However, they did so fundamentally on an unequal structural basis. Exploiting the subject status of New Afrikan people, capital, the labor bureaucracy, and the various European settler communities relegated New Afrikans to the lowest strata’s of the working class, where they were concentrated in the lowest paid and most hazardous occupations that restricted their ability to earn and accumulate. This process of development established the social and economic terms of New Afrikan national oppression throughout the entire expanse of the US settler-colonial project.

Simultaneously, the vast majority of New Afrikans who remained in the New Afrikan national territory (i.e. the Southeastern portion of the settler-colonial project) became subject to a new regime of accumulation and distorted national development. Reacting to the gains made in the industrial “north” by the multi-national working class movement between the 1930’s – 50’s, industrial capital “outsourced” production to New Afrika to exploit the subjugated status of the New Afrikan working class. Although the New Afrikan working class was kept from effectively organizing itself into labor unions, this development did expand the overall circuit of capital within the New Afrikan nation, which helped stimulate the rise of the civil rights movement and its petit bourgeois program of civil inclusion within the legalistic confines of the settler-colonial project.

The limited social and economic gains of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements set the present terms of national development for the New Afrikan nation. New Afrika, like all nations and nationalities, is a class stratified social formation. Like all the peoples and nations subjugated and colonized by the European colonial powers, capital and capitalist social relations have articulated New Afrika’s social development. Throughout it’s nearly 400 years of development, the overwhelming majority of New Afrikans have been and are members of the working classes (either as chattel slaves, peasants, or proletarians). However, a very limited New Afrikan bourgeoisie has existed since at least the mid-19th century. Throughout much of New Afrikan history, this extremely small, typically service based petit-bourgeoisie has tended politically to be more progressive than reactionary in its political outlook and program. In the main this bourgeois class has provided leadership to and support for the primary historical demands of the New Afrikan national liberation movement. In summary these demands have been and are:

- Land for self-determining or autonomous development and accumulation

- Equal treatment before the law of the settler-colonial state

- Equitable distribution of the social surplus distributed throughout the settler-colonial state

- Self-determining political power

- Self-reliant and self-sustaining economic development

- Reparations

However, the accumulation gains (meager as they were) of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements combined with major shifts in the relations of production on a worldwide scale, transformed the relationship of the New Afrikan bourgeoisie to the whole of the New Afrikan nation from the 1970’s to the present. The two dominant features of this process of transformation are a) the phenomenal rise of the comprador bourgeoisie in the 1970’s and 80’s, and b) the rapid transformation of this comprador bourgeoisie into a trans-national bourgeoisie from the 1980’s to the present. As will be argued throughout this paper, this transformation not only changed the overall structural composition of the New Afrikan bourgeoisie, it has forever altered its political worldview and program

INTERROGATING THE “NATIONAL” QUESTION

Barack Obama has asserted on several occasions a) that race doesn’t matter and b) that there is only “one” America.

The implication of these statements, even if only stated for strategic affect, is that the national contradictions within the US settler-colonial project have been negated and resolved. Even a cursory glance at the socio-economic inequalities between the various nationalities in the US reveals that these assertions are blatantly false. However, the unprecedented success of Obama’s campaign and the ground it has broke as it relates to a “Black” candidate appealing to white voters on a national level revels that something qualitative has changed in this country. The question is what is it?

I argue that the source of the qualitative change lies in the changing composition of class throughout the US settler-colonial project. The advance of global capital and its transformation of production and accumulation throughout the capitalist world-system generated this compositional shift. I posit that the process of transformation popularly called “globalization” has created a trans-national bourgeoisie and growing multi-national or “cosmopolitan” trans-national service and working classes. It is my position that Barack Obama is a member of and represents the political and economic interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and the social interests of the growing trans-national classes. More specifically, Barack Obama is a product of the New Afrikan trans-national bourgeoisie, which emerged in the main from the comprador or neo-colonial sector of the New Afrikan bourgeois class between the 1970’s to the present.

The fundamental question regarding this new class composition for progressive and revolutionary forces within the New Afrikan national liberation movement is how to strategically relate to Barack Obama and this trans-national bourgeois class? Is this class (or class fraction) a friend or a foe of the New Afrikan national liberation movement? I argue three things:

- That the material basis for the traditional class collaboration theory of the united and/or national liberation front strategy of oppressed peoples and nations in general, and of its historic application to the New Afrikan national liberation movement in particular, no longer applies.

- That the left has not developed a general or particular theory of how to strategically relate to these new class forces.

- As a result, we are presently ill equipped theoretically and programmatically to address the Obama phenomenon and seize the historic opportunities it presents to advance the interests of the national liberation and multi-national working class movements.

How does the trans-national bourgeoisie differ from other bourgeoisie classes, particularly amongst oppressed nations like the New Afrikan nation? The general theory of national liberation maintains that there are two primary fractions of the capitalist or bourgeois class (that is the class that owns and controls the means of production). These are 1) the national, progressive, or “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie and 2) the comprador or “sell-out”, “Uncle Tom”, or neo-colonial bourgeoisie.

The national or anti-imperialist bourgeoisie is theoretically a progressive force drawn from the organic, inner driven life of the oppressed nation that is materially compelled to promote the development of the productive forces of the nation for its own self-interests and to resist the incursion of imperialism and its suppression of this autonomous national development for these self-same interests.

The comprador or sell-out bourgeoisie is theoretically a reactionary force also drawn from the organic, inner driven life of the oppressed nation, which is conversely compelled to collaborate with imperialism to retard the autonomous or self-determining development of the oppressed nation.

The fundamental difference between these two bourgeois fractions and the transnational fraction is their organic relationship to the oppressed nation. The national and comprador bourgeoisies are dependent upon relations of production within the social and political life of the oppressed nation. Meaning they are both dependent on the working masses of the oppressed nation for their very existence, and hence can be held accountable to the working classes within it in various ways. The trans-national bourgeoisie on the other hand, even though it emerged primarily from the comprador fraction in New Afrika and elsewhere, is not dependent for its existence upon the oppressed nation and its relations of production. The trans-national bourgeoisie, as its name implies, is not a national or national-state bound entity. Its basis for existence lies in exploiting the peoples and working classes of the globe, and it is generally only accountable to or held in check by its fractional partners and rivals (largely through their financial control of various capital markets as exhibited by their deflation of various national-state markets like Mexico in the early-1990’s; Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea in the late 1990’s; and Brazil and Argentina at the turn of this century).

Now, while I posit that this understanding of Obama’s positioning helps us to understand his relationship with the New Afrikan nation and its historic demands, I argue that we still do not completely understand at this point, how it relates to his mass appeal to white voters in many instances who are not part of this trans-national formation. This I argue, we as progressives and revolutionaries, have to interrogate further to gain a deeper understanding of its strategic potential.

INTERROGATING THE CAMPAIGN

Despite what one may personally think of Obama and the principle merits of his campaign, what we have to acknowledge is that his actions and his campaign are deeply rooted in a particular analysis of how to address national oppression in the US. This analysis is rooted in the “integrationist” and “beloved community” narratives of the New Afrikan petit bourgeois leadership of the Civil Rights Movement and its white liberal bourgeois patrons. The strategy behind this narrative appeal is to highlight the commonalities between the oppressor and oppressed peoples, rather than address their contradictions and differences.

This strategy is rooted in the reality that the road to victory goes through the white electorate and its sheer numerical strength. Based on this reality, I argue there are two historical dynamics that have fundamentally shaped the Obama campaign and its strategy:

1) No Democratic candidate has won a majority of white voters since 1964. For a Democratic candidate to win, they are going to have to win a sizeable portion of, if not the majority of, the white settler vote.

2) The Jesse Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988. These two campaigns serve as the primary negative examples for the Obama campaign. They illustrate what NOT to do as an Afrikan candidate running for President, which has determined key aspects of his strategy, particularly his methods of appeal to white and Jewish voters in particular.

Based on these realities, the Obama campaign made a deliberate and strategic choice NOT to base his candidacy in the institutions (like the Black church, civic organizations, unions, and the media) or historic demands (see demands) of the New Afrikan nation. In order to give himself the opportunity to win, Obama must avoid being viewed as a “Black” candidate buy any and all means. This explains in part, why he has distanced himself from the likes of Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Jeremiah Wright – the “traditional” representatives of the “progressive” New Afrikan bourgeoisie.

However, his campaign has also relied upon the staunch support of the Democratic Party by New Afrikan people. New Afrikans have been the most consistent base of support for the Democratic Party since the 1964 election of Lydon B. Johnson. In fact, New Afrikans have voted consistently for Democratic Presidential candidates in the range of 80 – 90% since 1956. This fact however, should not be surprising. Democratic candidates can and do take the New Afrikan vote for granted because in the main, New Afrikans have no other genuine political option to represent their interests. Knowing this, Obama and his campaign know that they have to make few special appeals to New Afrikans and most of the other oppressed peoples within the “traditional” Democratic Party coalition to garner their votes (certain “Latino” populations it can be argued might constitute exceptions).

INTERROGATING THE POPULAR FORCES

Regardless of how marginalized New Afrikan demands and institutions are to the Obama campaign, the fact is that since Obama’s Iowa victory in January, New Afrikans have turned out in near record numbers to support his campaign for the Democratic nomination. How do we explain this outpouring of support despite his lack of engagement with New Afrikan demands and institutions?

Further, how do we explain his victories in states like Iowa, Kansas, Oregon, Colorado, Connecticut, Nebraska, Vermont, and Wyoming where the vast majority of the electorate are white settlers who are not substantively incorporated into the trans-national nexus of production?

Part of the answer I believe lies in the trans-national class developments spoken of earlier. The other part of the answer I believe lies in the popular response to the last 7 years of the Bush regime. As a direct result of the failed occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the accumulation of unprecedented debt, the partisan management of the economy, the exposed lies and deceit, and the hostile, belligerent, and dictatorial “style” of management, this election is in many ways serving as a popular anti-Bush referendum.

The popular, multi-national, multi-class forces engaging the Obama campaign are clearly clamoring for a change of management. This was first evidenced in the elections of 2006 and has been further illustrated in several off-term Congressional elections in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi where Democrats took elections in long-held Republican districts. Barack Obama, for reasons of personal history (including his newness to Capital Hill), style (particularly his cultivated charisma and flair for the optimal, however programmatically empty it may be), and strategy (including a tacit exploitation of cultural stereotypes about New Afrikan people being good listeners and empathizers) has thus far demonstrated that he would be a profoundly different manager than either of his remaining Democrat or Republican rivals.

What I think progressives and revolutionaries have to be clear on in relating to these popular forces is that a clamoring for a change of management does not equate to a clamoring for a fundamental change of program. It is on the question of program that I would argue that the national question strongly reenters the fry and could perhaps fracture the broad multi-national, multi-class alliance thus far mobilized by the Obama campaign.

For instance, the historic demands of New Afrikan people are not going to go away without a revolutionary transformation of the US settler-colonial state. In fact, as the mortgage crisis deepens over the course of the next 2 to 4 years, some of the demands, like economic development and reparations perhaps, are only going to become stronger.

Likewise, the trans-national capital interests supporting Obama’s campaign have no intentions of stopping their accumulation mission. Rather, they are trying to expand it through the application of a friendlier management approach of their primary regulating instruments – namely the US military, treasury, and Federal Reserve Bank. And further, many of the white service and working class voters who are supporting Obama are not demanding an end to imperialism and globalization, but a return to the high standards of living they are accustomed and feel entitled to as settlers, i.e. “Americans”.

INTERROGATING THE MOMENT

This is an extremely unique moment in human history, one that should not be slept on by progressives and revolutionaries anywhere, let alone in the US.

There are three general things that make this moment particularly unique:

- The rapid collapse of the ecological systems that support human civilization as a direct consequence of the capitalist world-systems need for constant growth and expansion and its dependence on a petro-chemical driven system of mass industrial production to stimulate and sustain this growth.

- The declining hegemony (in both its geo-political and Gramscian connotations) of the US imperial state and the shift to a multi-polar geo-political world order.

- The comparative weakening of the US national economy and the deepening of trans-national production and accumulation.

In order to be properly contextualized, the Obama campaign and corresponding “phenomenon” must be situated as a direct response to this unique moment in history. As has been argued earlier, his campaign is clearly a factional response, one fundamentally serving the interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and its means and instruments of accumulation and rule. The two fundamental questions stemming from this assessment are: is this class and the alliance of forces it has amassed strong enough to contain the contradictions it has unleashed AND can it continue its accumulation program and political project without a major transformation away from petro-chemical dependent production?

I argue that the answer to both questions is emphatically, NO. Returning to our focus of analyzing the Obama campaign in relation to the New Afrikan national question, there are several examples that clearly illustrate why.

The trans-national program of accumulation is fundamentally driven by a finance driven post-Fordist, intelligence dominated system of production. The intense mechanization of this production regime is rapidly dislocating millions, if not billions, of workers, worldwide. The New Afrikan working class was one of the first and most devastated sectors of the international proletariat hit by this accumulation regime. Since the 1970’s, millions of New Afrikans have been economically dislocated and physically displaced by this transformation, which is only set to worsen with the crisis of finance (witnessed with the mortgage crisis that robbed millions of New Afrikans of their merge capital equity) and the deepening of global production. What is also clear is that the options of absorbing this surplus labor into the low-wage service economy or warehousing (i.e. incarcerating) it, is reaching its political and financial limits. The likely outcomes of the escalating crisis are:

- More intense economic dislocation

- More intense physical displacement and forced relocation (New Orleans being a clear precedent)

- More intense and concentrated New Afrikan resistance

An escalation of the demands made on the state and capital by New Afrikans

As a representative of the trans-national bourgeoisie, its production regime, and the US imperial state, how would Obama be compelled to address these contradictions? I argue that he would fundamentally have to exercise the Nixon option as it related to the New Afrikan nation (and other oppressed nations within and beyond US national-state boarders). Plainly stated the Nixon option is the calculated employment of “carrot and the stick” stratagems. Obama’s carrot would be to ameliorate or buy off a sectors of the New Afrikan bourgeoisie and working class by offering a set of concessions, primarily in the realm of loan forgiveness (for the mortgage crisis) and job training programs (more than likely for “Green Jobs” and the like). The stick would be the strategic application of state repression against resistant and non-compliant forces within the New Afrikan working class. The purpose of the Nixon option now, as during his Presidency in the late 60’s and early 70’s, would be to fracture the political unity of the New Afrikan nation against the trans-national bourgeoisie and its program.

Staying with our analysis, it is also clear that the Green transformation option is a dead end for the trans-national bourgeoisie and its program. Although elements of the trans-national bourgeoisie are clearly leading the charge for the development of “green” capitalism, it is not, and in fact cannot, advocate for the transformation of scale needed to curb the production of greenhouse gases to stall or reverse climate change without bankrupting itself. As a result, it cannot and will not generate enough “Green Jobs” to reincorporate the millions of New Afrikans that have been economically dislocated by trans-national production.

Yet in still, what we can posit with confidence at this moment is that capital is going to go to extreme lengths to extend its life and barbaric domination over human civilization. Conversely, as the events of the last 7 years have illustrated, we should also expect to see an escalation and diversification of resistance.

OUTLINING A FRAMEWORK TO SEIZE THE MOMENT

So, how should the New Afrikan and multi-national liberation and working class movements strategically engage this historic campaign and critical moment?

One of the first priorities of engagement is theoretical development. One of the principle things the New Afrikan and multi-national left movements must figure out is how to engage to the trans-national bourgeoisie. As stated earlier, as of now, our movements do not have a general, let alone united, perspective on this question. In fact, I would argue that most of our forces are still utilizing the traditional united or national liberation front theory to determine their positions and courses of action.

I argue that because the trans-national bourgeoisie cannot be easily pressured by the national liberation and working class movements within the US setter-colonial project, these movements should not invest the majority of their time and energy engaging an “inside” strategy of critical engagement with the Obama campaign. I argue that thinking strategically, these forces should concentrate their energy on building autonomous political movements and institutions (like the Reconstruction Party) within the US national-state that seek to build a broad multi-national united front of oppressed peoples and workers that makes a principle of building strategic links and alliances with the autonomous national liberation, international working class, global justice, and environmental movements throughout the world. As the trans-national bourgeoisie thinks and acts globally, we must also think and act globally to advance our own interests.

However, as the vast majority of our peoples and forces are going to support the Obama campaign and potential Presidency, in the short-term we tactically have to invest a critical degree of time and energy engaging them, if only to try an win a considerable portion of these forces to a left perspective and program. And it is here that we need theoretical clarity. How do we offer a radical critic of Obama, his class position, interests, and program without alienating ourselves from the popular masses? How do we move these forces to engage in autonomous self-determining action outside of the Democratic Party? How do we educate and move the white settler forces mobilized by Obama to actively engage an anti-racist, anti-imperialist perspective and program?

To these ends, a hard-pressed counter campaign against Obama I would argue is not the most effective or productive way to engage these popular forces from this point forward. Rather, I think the multi-national left must seek to highlight the contradictions of Obama’s campaign and program through a combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left. Again, I think the formation of an autonomous “outside” political force should be primary. However, what is perhaps most tactically critical is that both the “outside” and “inside” forces aggressively promote and propagate these common demands; vigorously dialogue and debate in a principled, non-sectarian manner; and openly communicate and collaborate whenever and wherever possible.

Some of the primary strategic demands that must be raised are drawn from the historic demands of oppressed peoples, particularly New Afrikans, combined with the demands of the multi-national working class, women’s, and environmental justice movements. The combination of these demands will expose not only the limits of the trans-national bourgeoisie and its production regime, but of US imperialism itself and its inability to make good on its democratic promises, either at “home” or abroad. Some of the most critical of these demands include [2]:

1. The full and immediately ending of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. The full and unqualified support for Palestinian self-determination and the Right to Return.

3. The full and immediate Right of Return for the more than 250,000 New Afrikans displaced from their homelands in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

4. The repeal of the “war on drugs” and mandatory minimum sentencing that has resulted in the imprisonment of more than 2.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are New Afrikans.

5. The full support for the rights of women and the LGBTQ communities, including full support for initiatives like the Equal Rights Amendment and “gay” marriage.

6. The full and immediate repeal of the various Patriot Acts and other undemocratic anti-terror laws and Executive Orders.

7. The full, complete, and unconditional amnesty for the millions of migrant and displaced workers in the US.

8. The full and unqualified commitment to reduce the carbon imprint of the US by 80% or more by 2016 to stem the production of climate changing greenhouse gases.

9. The commitment to the public financing of alternative solar, wind, aquatic, and organic energy to sustain the economy, and the elimination of all nuclear energy and hard metal extraction.

10. Reparations for Indigenous, New Afrikan, Xicano, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian and other peoples and nations colonized by the US (including Guam, Alaskan natives, etc.).

BY WAY OF CONCLUSION

Although the road ahead may not be clear, and the outcome of our actions far from certain, the New Afrikan national liberation movement, and the movements of all oppressed and exploited peoples, must seize this critical moment. The survival of humanity demands that we must act, and act in our own interests. Barack Obama nor any other bourgeois messiah is not going to liberate us. We must liberate ourselves.

*Kali Akuno is an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). He wrote this essay to honor the 83rd Birthday of Malcolm X and the clarity he brought to the New Afrikan revolutionary movement.

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

*For further notes please follow this link:

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/380/48712fearpolitics.jpgXenop… must be understood as a political discourse, the result of political ideologies and consciounesses, writes Michael Neocosmos, which have arisen, and have been allowed to arise in post-apartheid South Africa, as a result of a politics of fear prevalent in both state and society. To counter these politics, an active politics of peace is necessary, but for this to develop we need first to understand the politics of fear and the fear of politics which prevails in South Africa today.
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Reflecting on the causes of the recent xenophobic pogroms in the country, it is striking how most commentators have stressed poverty and deprivation as the underlying causes of the events. Yet it requires little effort to see that economic factors, however real, cannot possibly account for why it was those deemed to be non-South Africans who bore the brunt of the vicious attacks. Poverty can be and has historically been the foundation for the whole range of political ideologies, from communism to fascism and anything in between. In actual fact, poverty can only account for the powerlessness, frustration and desperation of the perpetrators, but not for their target. After all why were not Whites or the rich or for that matter White foreigners in South Africa targeted instead? Of course it is a common occurrence that the powerless regularly take out their frustrations on the weakest: women, children, the elderly... and outsiders. Yet this will not suffice as an explanation. The systematic and concerted attacks on those deemed to be foreign according to popular stereotypes requires more of an explanation than powerlessness can provide, however important a factor that may have been.

In order to provide a more inclusive explanation one should first recall the observations of Frantz Fanon in the immediate post-independence period in Africa: “the working class of the towns, the masses of the unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen ... line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans...From nationalism we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called on to leave; their shops are burned, their street stalls are wrecked...” The collapse of nationalism into chauvinism, Fanon observed, was fundamentally occasioned by the new post-independence elites to grab the jobs and capital of the departing Europeans, while the popular classes only followed in their footsteps in attacking foreign Africans. This suggests that a politics of nationalism founded on stressing indigeneity lay at the root of post-colonial xenophobia. To what extent is Fanon’s account applicable to post-apartheid South Africa?

There is little doubt that the politics of grabbing and enrichment among the post-apartheid elite have been both brazen and extensive. So-called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) has enabled the development of a new class of so-called ‘black diamonds’ whose newly found wealth is not particularly geared towards national accumulation and development but primarily towards short term quick profits in a country where estimates put the poor at half the total population. Reports of corruption among state personnel from the national to the local levels abound and are obvious for all to see. Few get prosecuted let alone convicted in a hegemonic culture which extols the virtues of free-market capitalism, which equates private enrichment with the public good and quick profit with development. Corruption in the civil service we are told by one senior civil servant, cannot be eliminated; it can only be managed. Yet how do we logically move from this to scapegoating the ‘foreign other’? In order to provide an answer, we must shift our focus from economic to political hegemonic ideologies.

I have argued at length that xenophobia must be understood as a political discourse, the result of political ideologies and consciounesses - in brief political subjectivities - which have arisen, and have been allowed to arise in post-apartheid South Africa, as a result of a politics of fear prevalent in both state and society. This politics of fear has at least three major components: a state discourse of xenophobia, a discourse of South African exceptionalism and a conception of citizenship founded exclusively on indigeneity. This politics of fear which finds its origins fundamentally within the apparatuses of power, has been complemented since the 1990s by a fear of politics, ie. the unwillingness or the inability of popular politics, with a few exceptions, to break away systematically from a state politics of fear.

There is a name for the kind of political activity which we have witnessed over the past few weeks: the politics of (ethnic) cleansing, made infamous in the ex-Yugoslavia of the 1990s and then repeated in several parts of the continent, Rwanda and more recently Kenya being the most infamous. The notion of ‘cleansing’ with all its dehumanising connotations of dirt and purification is a common leitmotif of all these politics irrespective of their historical specificities. The notion of ‘cleansing’ was also used in the recent South African pogroms by perpetrators. It should be clear that the term ‘cleansing’ is the name of a politics of fear, of violence, a politics of war against those who are seen to be different for whatever reason. To counter these politics, an active politics of peace is necessary, but for this to develop we need first to understand the politics of fear and the fear of politics which prevails in South Africa today.

A STATE DISCOURSE OF XENOPHOBIA

Government departments, parliamentarians, the police, the Lindela detention centre, the law itself have all been reinforcing a one way message since the 1990s: We are being invaded by illegal immigrants who are a threat to national stability, the RDP, development, our social services, the very fabric of our society. Moreover African migrants are fair game for making a fast buck by those with power, (police, state bureaucrats, employees at Lindela). Examples abound, but what is interesting from interviewing migrants from West Africa in 2003 is that while xenophobia from state agencies was consistent, that from the South African people was very contradictory. We can see that today in that many South Africans helped distressed foreigners in many ways. As a reminder for people, ex-home affairs minister Mangosotho Buthelezi who today cries tears for the victims of xenophobic violence, stated in 1998 that “if we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa, then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Programme”. In fact Buthelezi developed quite a notoriety for his infamous xenophobic statements which included inter alia the suggestion that all Nigerian immigrants are criminals and drug traffickers. Not only Buthelezi but politicians of all shades of opinion asserted their politics of fear; by 1998 Human Rights Watch had concluded that: “in general, South Africa’s public culture has become increasingly xenophobic, and politicians often make unsubstantiated and inflammatory statements that the ‘deluge’ of migrants is responsible for the current crime wave, rising unemployment and even the spread of diseases.”

This political discourse has been supplemented by regular police crackdowns on ‘illegal immigrants’ and the setting up of regular extortion rackets by the police in places like Esselen Street in Pretoria. At one point in 2000, when the Human Rights Commission meekly ‘raised its concerns’ regarding “the ill-treatment of ‘illegal immigrants’ in recent police blitzes in Gauteng”, a government spokesperson was quoted as saying that the HRC “was creating the impression of being sympathetic towards illegal immigrants” continuing to state that the government wanted to hold regular meetings with the HRC to ensure that they do not work at “cross purposes”.

The police are particularly notorious, using their powers to avoid intervening to help foreign migrants when attacked by tsotsis, by raiding and beating up migrants in their sanctuaries, by tearing up official documents. All this is documented at length. Moreover, and this is less documented, there is evidence that on several occasions police and employees of various government departments have in the past encouraged members of communities to ‘uproot’ or round up ‘illegal immigrants’, leading to systematic xenophobic violence. It would be important to find out the extent to which there may have been evidence of this also this time. In other words, state institutions have, in the past, provided legitimacy for the kind of behaviour we have been seeing today. Although state institutions have never condoned violence against migrants and have regularly condemned it, they have provided an environment wherein such xenophobic violence has appeared as legitimised by the state. Incidentally it was reported to me that last week , ie one week after the worst of the violence, police i Johannesburg were arresting suspected ‘illegals’ and harassing seemingly ‘foreign’ people to produce documents.

I refrain from detailing migrants’ experiences at Lindela detention centre in detail, suffice it to note that this is not a prison and that the people held there have not been found guilty of any crime. Here are some of the statements from research on Lindela. The Human Rights Commission found in 1999 that “employees of the private Dyambu Trust (which runs Lindela) extort money from detainees under a wide variety of circumstances. These circumstances include requiring money for fingerprinting, for the use of public telephones, and in order to allow access of family and friends to the Facility...” Moreover, staff at Lindela also extorted amounts apparently for the final processing of those who are due to be deported: “at Lindela we were asked to pay an amount of R50.00 before being deported to Zimbabwe...yesterday we were supposed to go home but they asked for money to take us home. I didn’t have any money so I didn’t go.”

In other words people are kept in what amounts to detention - in conditions worse than prison according to the same reports - and not repatriated on time unless they pay bribes to officials. In fact at this centre, people’s rights are systematically denied and they seem to be regularly coerced, including through the use of physical violence for the simple reasons of maintaining control. People are denied a free phone call as required by law, they are not informed of their rights and they are detained regularly for longer than the stipulated maximum of 30 days. Another victim stated: “the security staff here at Lindela randomly abuse us. They assault us. They leave us alone in the Wall and we are not allowed to go to the loo unless given permission. But since they do not enquire as regularly as they should, people often go to the loo without asking. If such a person is caught he is usually assaulted by security officials”.

As has been observed on many occasions, the legislation which deals with issues of migration in South Afruica is founded on notions of exclusion and control and is founded on the assumption that people wish to abuse the system and come to South Africa to take and not provide anything. The idea behind the legislation, according to one author is to defend ‘Fortress South Africa” against “hordes of immigrants”. To do this, police officers and officials from the Department of Home Affairs are given such excessive powers over extremely vulnerable people that bribery, extortion and corruption become not only possible but regular practices.

The press has by and large also contributed to creating a climate of fear of migrants. A number of surveys of the press have been undertaken one remarking that “the general tenor running through English-language newspaper reportage on foreign migration issues is more negative, more unanalytical than critical”. Insofar as the content of the press coverage is concerned regular refrains concern the comment that “migrants ‘steal jobs’”, that migrants are mostly “illegal”, that they are “flooding into the country to find work” while a typical statement was that “foreigners are unacceptably encroaching on the informal sector and therefore on the livelihoods of our huge number of unemployed people”. Other xenophobic repetitions concern the supposed drain which migrants represent on the South African fiscus, the links between illegality and migration (occurring in 38 percent of the sample analysed) and the purported links between crime and immigrants such as in the statement in the Financial Mail of the 9th September 1994 that: “ the high rate of crime and violence - mainly gun-running, drug trafficking and armed robbery - is directly related to the rising number of illegals in SA”. One researcher put the facts straight, when she noted that “out of all the arrests made in 1998, South African citizens comprise an average of 98%”.

Under such conditions, it is not at all surprising that a public discourse of fear and xenophobia has become hegemonic in the public sphere. The politics associated with this discourse are invariably founded on the notion that migrants from Africa are here to take and not to give. After all they are so much more backward than we are! It should be noted that such xenophobic conceptions are also prevalent among professionals. One respondent who had a high position in the Gauteng Department of Health told me that every time a new appointment was made, his South African colleagues sent him a copy of the immigration legislation as if to say that they only wanted Black South Africans appointed.

THE DISCOURSE OF EXCEPTIONALISM

There is a hegemonic notion of exceptionalism in South African public culture (maintained by all and not only by Whites). The prevalent idea here is that our country is not really located in Africa and that our intellectual and cultural frame of reference is in the United States and Europe. Africa is the place of the other. Given that South Africa is industrialised, democratic, advanced in relation to other countries of the continent and also a paragon of reconciliation and political liberalism. It was thought until recently that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 or more recently Kenya could not possibly happen here. According to this perception, South Africa is somehow more akin to a Southern European or Latin American country given its relatively high levels of industrialization, and now increasingly of liberal democracy. To this must be added the view that South Africa must be celebrated as it is the envy of the world as it has managed a reconciliation process successfully. A corollary of this view is one that sees Africa as some kind of strange backward continent characterized by primitivism, corruption, authoritarianism, poverty and >failed states= so that its inhabitants wish only to partake of South African resources and wealth at the expense of its citizens. Africa is thus a continent to be guided, advised, developed and visited by tourists in search of authentic primitivism and wild animals. It is not a continent where we belong, only a place to be acted upon. This view is regularly upheld by the press which simply takes its cue from its European largely neo-colonial sources which are reproduced totally uncritically.

While such views are not universal, they are indeed dominant. This dominance has not been unconnected to a schizophrenia characteristic of the new Black ruling elite which, on the one hand, wishes to assert its Africanness vis-a-vis the old ruling elite of Whites, but which concurrently asserts stridently its adherence to a Western culture of neo-liberal economics and politics. Presumably its ability to become super-rich is predicated precisely on its acceptance in the global world of the new capitalist world order. Africa seems to be an embarrassment to the new elite as it seems to remind them of who they wish to forget, their poorer relatives; although simultaneously it is seen as a place where fortunes can be made, in extractive industries for example. The dominant South African discourse on Africa is thus undoubtedly neo-colonial in its essence.

THE DISCOURSE OF INDIGENEITY

The idea that we are not Africans is complimented by the dominant perception that indigeneity is the only way to acquire resources, jobs, and all the other goodies which should be reserved for ‘us’ only. This necessarily leads to a debate on who is more indigenous, and hence to nativism, the view that there is an essence of South Africanness which is to be found in ‘natives’. Hence the stress on the native (eg in Native Club) which itself leads to privileging the twin ideas of birth and phenotype (‘race’) as the essence of the indigenous. This is extremely dangerous. A recent letter to the Mail & Guardian newspaper argued that BEE deals should be restricted to the indigenous, by which the author meant that “Indians” and “Coloureds” being somehow less indigenous should be excluded. This is a common way of arguing in the public sphere. In fact historically, the only true indigenous in Southern Africa would be the San, all other groups having migrated from somewhere else at one time or other in history. Indigeneity then is never a historical fact nor indeed a natural one, it is always politically defined by those with power. The previous apartheid regime spent much intellectual time and effort trying to prove that there were no people living in South Africa before the White colonisers arrived, precisely to stress their indigeneity and hence to exclude. Most elites on the continent and elsewhere have done the same as they have organised citizenship rights around political indigeneity. Currently I am told, (DR) Congolese living in Angola are being brutally expelled by the Angolan state simply for being foreign; this is not being reported simply because of the current close ties between the two governments. Therefore the issue is not one that affects South Africa alone, but is arguably endemic in the whole continent where the post-colonial state has defined citizenship rights in terms of indigeneity.

In South Africa the post-apartheid state has continued to classify people according to apartheid groupings. This is a fundamental problem, as it stresses the thinking of politics through the lenses of racial and national stereotypes which are ‘naturalised’. Blackness is only stressed vis-a-vis Whites, not in relation to other Africans. In fact there has been a complete failure by the post-apartheid state to construct a nationalism which is firmly rooted in Africa. Nepad is simply the neo-liberal Western entry into the continent. Neither the ideas of the African Renaissance nor those of Ubuntu have been taken beyond the stage of being simply state slogans with little in terms of roots in the population at large.

BEYOND THE FEAR OF POLITICS

It can be seen then that xenophobia is a political discourse, a set of ideological parameters within which solutions to our pressing problems are being conceived. The terrible thing is that other than in a few instances, such a discourse has been unsuccessfully contested and has been allowed to become hegemonic. There is no doubt that many in the ANC in particular have spoken up against xenophobic utterances in the past, but these have been largely isolated voices and in any case they have not constituted an alternative political discourse founded on equality. They have themselves been largely equivocal. We do not like xenophobia but on the other hand how are our social services to cope under massive pressure from immigrants? It should be clear therefore that the recent wave of xenophobic pogroms, was entirely predictable given the political discourse briefly outlined above. The fact that quasi-fascist (a strong word perhaps but I can think of no other) politics has acquired a certain grip over large sections of the poor should come as no surprise. To use Malcolm X’s famous expression, “the chickens have come home to roost”.

The final point then must be one of confronting the fear and passivity, of putting across alternative discourses. Passive citizenship, the expectation of delivery from the state, the fear of criticism, self-censorship, the culture of uncritical celebration have all been noted at one time or another as obstacles to political thought. A fear of contesting authority, kowtowing to those in power, the politics of cramming ‘our people’ into positions, all this has lead not only to a demarcation between ethnic and other identities capable of ‘delivering’, but also to a politics of the exclusion of others as a standard/ normal practice. The exclusion of alternatives (economic, political or intellectual) constitutes the dominant practice. The fear of responding to the politics of fear in a critical and organised manner, to say no to treating people differently, to say yes to maintaining a firm point that all must be treated equally by power; the absence of all this constitutes the fear of politics, the fear of political agency by all of us. This is why those South Africans who risked their lives to help those foreigners being attacked in a myriad of ways should be saluted. Politics is too important a business to be left to politicians alone. A consistent political practice of peace must be systematically developed and sustained in the face of attack. If this becomes an outcome of the current events, it would be a very positive development. The demonstrations in Johannesburg and elsewhere a few week-ends ago were important beginnings, we need to pursue this and not lose the momentum. The alternative is to allow the current collapse into evil to degenerate even further into inter ethnic violence, which it easily could.

We cannot wait for elections to engage in politics for what is right. We need to maintain what the French philosopher Badiou calls an axiom of equality, namely the idea that every single person who lives in this country must count the same and must be treated the same. To remind you of the Freedom Charter: South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The only way to challenge xenophobia is to courageously fight the fear of politics and stand up for those ideas which challenge the politics of fear and discrimination. Some have already began doing this. It is noteworthy for example that in Durban in those shack settlements in which the popular movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has a strong presence, there were no incidences of xenophobic attacks. Abahlali released what I think was the most important [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

Informative and timely . I have met Cubans in Cuba who fought in Angola who have a clearer understanding of the significance of these battles than most africa leaders. The African Revolution is still unfinished.

I love this . It snatches the reader from the symbolism of Obama. I say this as a supporter and even someone encouraged by his message. This article seems aimed at Africans in the diaspora, but it clearly represents a reality for African Americans too. Sen. Obama has had to detach himself for almost all things black to become the democratic candidate. Therefore, how can we expect him to address our issues directly once he's in office. In fact, for politically expediency he most likely will have to apply himself less than White presidents before him.

With this in mind, I think we are going to have to take it to the streets, boardrooms, etc. to get our issues addressed. I think he will appreciate this action, because then when he does respond to us, again it will be for "political expediency", he's addressing a demand of the public of its government. Man he's going to need our help!

On 29th March 2008, Zimbabwe went to the polls to elect its next government. Results of the Presidential elections were announced a month later and people in Zimbabwe maintained peace. Reports from Zimbabwean civil society organizations (CSO) [names are with held for security reasons] indicate that from 2 April 2008, the government organised a retribution campaign to target those who allegedly voted for the opposition and “since then there has been terror in mostly rural Zimbabwe with youth militia under the command of the army and police confirmed to have gone on to unleash terror in a campaign to teach the rural people how to correctly vote as the country gears up for a presidential run-off on the 27th June 2008.”

George Ngwane

George Ngwane comments on the failures of “State-centric” PanAfricanism which has so far been characterized by “dialectically opposing ideologies and procedural battles on the methodology and ownership of its dividends…”According to Ngwane,

“With the attainment of political Independence by most African countries in the 60s the pendulum oscillitated between an atavist pseudo-nationalist group that held tenaciously to national sovereignty and an economic-integrative bloc that favoured the clustering of sub regions resulting in the Lagos Plan of Action (1980) and the Abuja Economic Treaty (1991). Muammar Gaddafi’s convening of forty Heads of State to Sirte Libya on September 9th 1999 was an acknowledgement of the flawed Pan African promises since 1900 and a resolve to rekindle the Casablanca dream through the transformation of a moribund O.A.U to a fast track African Union. Unfortunately the launching of the African Union on 9th July 2002 in Durban, South Africa, stalled the Sirte revolution and in its place erected a Durban evolution…

Until the ownership of PanAfricanism is citizen-oriented through the concrete establishment of common economic values, shared social identities, a consensual political front and a more authoritative African Union Commission, pan Africanism shall continue to stay at the level of futile state-centric theses and reactionary anti-theses and the result shall be the ubiquitous power jockey among a rent seeking political elite, the scramble for depleted resources among the emasculated masses and the stereotype image of a continent that has erroneously earned the stigma of “a scar on the conscience of humanity”.

Clement Nyirenda’s blog world
http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/hartley/2008/06/12/tutu-is-right-to-call-for-a-sports-boycott-of-zimbabwe/

Ray Hartely commends Archbishop Desmond Tutu's for callling on cricketers to boycott Zimbabwe and condemns South Africa's continued tepid response to the situation in Zimbabwe:

“South Africa’s response to Zimbabwe has continue to be cautious and muted even as pre-election violence escalates ahead of the June 27 run-off election between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai...

This soft approach fails to acknowledge the role played by the sports boycott in dampening the global image of the apartheid state.

Such boycotts send a powerful signal that a government is a pariah and can hasten change by providing the oppressed with evidence that the outside world is in solidarity with them.
South Africa’s struggle leaders should know this better than most because many were at the forefront of the apartheid government’s international isolation.

By carrying on a normal sporting, diplomatic and commercial relationship, we are saying that we accept the Zimbabwean government’s legitimacy, even as it blatantly attacks democracy.”

Virtual Africa
http://virtualafrica.co.za/travel/robben-island-virtual-tour/

The Virtual Africa blog presents an life-like virtual tour of Robben island, particularly Nelson Mandela’s prison pell and the famous cave at the limestone quarry where Mandela and others held meetings. Virtual Africa reveals that the virtual tour project began about a year ago at the behest of South African Tourism:

“This virtual tour was included in the official SA Tourism Google Earth layer and we thought we’d share it with you here.

Robben Island has a unique and colourful history: Leper Colony, World War II fortress, Prison and now …. a museum, a place of remembrance.

You can read the history books and look at the pictures as much as you like, but it simply won’t prepare you for the experience of actually being there.

When you step off that ferry for the first time, you know you’ve arrived at a place of significance.

Walking the halls of the prison, peering into the cells, visiting the quarries where the prisoners had to work and listening to the stories of ex political prisoners is hugely educational, deeply depressing and wonderfully uplifting - all at the same time.”

Sociolingo’s Africa
http://sociolingo.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/coca-cola-speaks-out-about-democracy-in-africa/

Sociolingo’s Africa reprints excerpts of a recent interview by Neville Isdell, the world-wide head of The Coca-Cola Company who argues that economic growth is posssible in non-democratic systems:

“Oppressive societies – that is always a problem. You don't get good growth out of those. Where you have a deficit of democracy as defined today by Western elites, you can still have very good growth because they're putting in place sound policies. Not just economic policies – educating their people, having good rule of law, building infrastructure.

I think the real qualifier for democracy to be not just a vote once, but really to take root is a functioning middle class. That is the democratic stabilizer. There's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. You do not get a functioning middle class unless you have got a growing economy, unless you've got the right economic policies, and those can be put in by governments which don't meet the current Western democratic norm.”

Addis Journal
http://arefe.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/desperation-as-hunger-grow-bbc/

Addis Journal produces excepts of what it describes as an “appalling” BBC report about hunger in Ethiopia:

“It is a strange and unsettling ride west from the Ethiopian town of Shashamene. The fields are vibrant green. There is water in the creeks. The soil is a deep rich burgundy.However, the people here speak of a ‘green drought’.

It is the time when the land is full of new shoots but there is no food. It happens because the last rains failed and few crops were planted.”

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den

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

Kola Ibrahim's about the achievements of the Cuban revolution and the negative effects of neo-liberalism are accurate enough; but unfortunately much of the article is sheer drivel, reflecting either a paucity of historical knowledge and analysis on the part of the writer, or an attempt to conceal the truth. A few examples: "...the Soviet Union only supported Cuba as long as her expansionist interest were satisfied." The Soviet Union gave diplomatic and material support to revolutionary and anti-imperialist movements and states, but this was limited by its policy of 'peaceful co-existence' with the West and its position of relative weakness (eg in material wealth, level of technology and military power) vis a vis the USA & its allies. It is certainly an arguable view that the Soviet Communist Party's main international policy line was wrong, but to describe the USSR as expansionist flies in the face of the facts.

"Cuba.. would not... internationalise the revolution..." A truly bizarre assertion, particularly as it comes from an African writer. Cuban soldiers fought in the Congo in the 1960s, and thousands more later on in Southern Africa. The defeat of the SADF at Cuito Canavale would have been impossible without the Cuban fighters.

"[Cuba] would accept Soviet goods at any cost... a terrible effect on Cuba as many inferior goods were brought in without any alternative." In fact, Cuba got its petroleum, industrial equipment and consumer goods from the USSR and other CMEA members at very low cost. They were paid for by Cuba supplying sugar at significantly above the prevailing world market price, and through 'soft' loans on terms which were very advantageous for the Cubans. Through these arrangements, which are usually described as a 'Soviet subsidy' by Western commentators, living standards in Cuba rose very substantially, despite the US blockade. It was when they came to an end that the Cuban economy crashed, leading to the 'Special Period' of great material hardship.

Kola Ibrahim notes that "It is not for the capitalist apologists to teach Cuba democracy..."- but presumably it is OK for him or her as a non-capitalist apologist' to try to teach democracy to Cuba: "There is need for a socialist multi-party democracy from local to national level in Cuba and the ability of the people to determine and discuss every government policy." Well, Cuban democracy is far from perfect as even its Communist Party leaders would agree. But by making this remark without noting the relatively very high level of participation by the Cubans in choosing their representatives and deciding policy, Kola Ibrahim conceals the reality in terms of democracy in Cuba. It is unworthy that a supposed 'tribute' to Fidel should contain such falsehoods and distortions.

Kenya's prime minister openly dissented with the president on Tuesday in a row over amnesty for post-election crimes, showing the fragility of the coalition running East Africa's largest economy. In another sign of the lack of unity in the government, newspapers splashed pictures of the pair's security guards scuffling in an embarrassing dispute on a national holiday.

This paper argues that African politics needs to be viewed through a lens that recognises the formal constraints on executives and rejects the assumption that African leaders simply get what they want. Citing a series of recent cases in which African rulers are forced to accept something other than their preferred outcomes, the authors say that across sub-Saharan Africa, formal institutional rules are coming to matter much more than they used to and displace violence as the primary source of constraints on executive behaviour.

Nigeria's Senate has approved a former top police officer to head the country's anti-corruption agency, rejecting opposition and rights campaigners' concerns that President Umaru Yar'Adua disregarded the law in naming her. Senators voted unanimously on Thursday in support of the appointment of Farida Waziri, a retired high-ranking police officer chosen by Yar'Adua last month to head the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Zimbabwean police on Friday detained opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for the second time this week after blocking him from reaching a campaign rally for the June 27 presidential run-off vote. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change accuses President Robert Mugabe of trying to sabotage Tsvangirai's campaign in order to preserve his 28-year hold on power.

A top official of the MDC disclosed on Thursday that most of it’s members were living in fear of being abducted and murdered, as state sponsored violence wreaks havoc in rural areas. Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro said the situation in the rural areas resembled a war zone, with the movement of armed bands across the whole of the country.

Another diplomatic incident has been reported in Zimbabwe, this time in the town of Bindura. According to Mark Weinberg, an official at the American Embassy in Harare, a convoy of American and British diplomats on a fact finding trip to Bindura on Thursday were stopped by a gang of state agents that included police, intelligence agents and war veterans. They were told to go to the local police station, but they refused.

Things are moving from bad to worse in Zimbabwe as on Thursday its currency plunged to a new record low, trading at an average 1 billion to the US dollar on a recently introduced interbank market. And this has triggered massive price increases. For instance, a loaf of bread, which cost about Z$15 million before the polls, now costs about Z$600 million.