Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has stressed need to increase international investment in Africa with the primary aim of ensuring peace and security in the impoverished continent. He also promised to increase Japan's cooperation with Africa. Fukuda said this when officially opening a three-day high level Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama where African and Japanese leaders are conferring on how to reach internationally agreed anti-poverty target goals - the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - by 2015.

Respect for due process is a critical element to safeguard the independence and accountability of institutions. The ongoing discussions in the Nigerian Senate on the appointment of Farida Waziri as new head of the country’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, are needed to ensure the EFCC’s ability to fulfil its anti-corruption mandate, said Transparency International (TI), the global anti-corruption organization.

The African Union and Microsoft have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that seeks to catalyse the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the region. The major components of the MoU include ICT capacity building and enhancing technology access — particularly among the young and rural populations.

Ugandan peacekeepers have come under attack in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, with at least 10 people killed in the ensuing gun fight, according to residents and officials. The fighting on Tuesday came a day after anti-government forces attacked an African Union (AU) base manned by Ugandan troops in the capital.

Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party should be reformed, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday in a speech that may open the door to a national unity government. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won the March 29 parliamentary election with a slim majority, handing ZANU-PF its worst defeat since President Robert Mugabe led it to power after independence from Britain in 1980.

The U.N. Security Council is to debate a new resolution next month that aims to enshrine sexual violence as a security issue for the first time, senior diplomats said. Backers of the resolution, to be discussed in a session chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on June 19, argue it is needed because sexual violence in conflict zones -- a war crime -- has not often been made a priority.

The World Bank has announced that it has set up a financing facility in the order of $1.2 billion to assist with the global food crisis. A week before the United Nations summit on the global food crisis, to be held in Rome, the World Bank has announced that it has set up a "rapid financing facility" to address the immediate needs of the global food crisis.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has appealed to Members of Parliament to give due consideration to the matter of a wage subsidy for young people, who comprise the bulk of the country's unemployed. Delivering his Budget Vote on Thursday, the minister suggested that, in the light of recent sharp increases of food prices, the oil price hitting record highs, and high unemployment levels domestically, the time had perhaps come to give serious consideration to a proposal he described as "critical".

The second edition of the African programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) is about to start in Stellenbosch. This fully-funded training programme (26 participants have been selected via a competitive application process) is a joint project of the dti and the French Institute and Development Agency.

In the essay, , the authors write "...Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia – countries partially deindustrialised by Johannesburg capital's expansion up-continent." Can any further information be given on this crucial matter?

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/376/48446boy.jpgA man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind, writes Yash Tandon. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world. Our collective efforts, he continues, will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

The National Project began before countries in the South achieved their independence from colonial rule, continued for several years after political independence and then, in the era of globalisation, died a sudden death. It needs to be revived.

However, let me first address the issue of what I call the ‘South intellectual’. Is it artificial to describe certain scholars and intellectuals by their geographical domain? We talk about ‘an Indian scholar’, ‘an African intellectual’, or a ‘Caribbean scholar’. Does it make sense to go beyond the nation and the region? Is there something distinctive about a ‘South scholar’ or a ‘South intellectual?’[1]

My answer is yes. There was something in the writing and engagement of Caribbean scholars and writers – such as Norman Girvan, Arthur Lewis, M.G. Smith, C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, Walter Rodney and Clive Thomas – with which those of us at universities in East Africa in the 1970s easily identified. Something in common pulsated in our hearts. How else could we in East Africa have resonated so ardently with intellectuals thousands of miles away in the Caribbean? Of course, the writing of many others from Asia, Africa and Latin America contributed to our lively debates. All these scholars were trying to define the specificity of peoples who had gone through the colonial experience.

Intellectuals were only a small part of the National Project. Political leaders such as Nehru, Nkrumah, Nasser, Sukarno, Manley, and Nyerere were the real inspiration. Politicians and intellectuals alike sought answers to some critical questions of self-identity and collective destiny: Who are we as a ‘nation? What do we do with our hard-won independence? How do we build our nation in ways that answer to the needs of our own peoples rather than those of colonising powers? In challenging the claims of neo-classical economics and neo-liberal policies to universal validity, Professor Girvan writes, significantly, that the objective of ‘policy autonomy’ in the South is self-determination [2]. This, in my view, is the crux of the National Project: self-determination.

What does the National Project mean for the engagement of Southern intellectuals today? In my view, three passions should steer or motivate their intellectual creativity: to critique the dominant imperialist ideology, to critique the dominant structures of power (speaking truth to power), and to provide ideas for a future vision of global society. I will first address the larger question of the relationship between ideas and political practice, and then outline an alternative vision or strategy to the dominant neo-liberal paradigm. Finally, I will take one aspect of this strategy, which is close to my heart, and that is integration in the regions of the South as a counterweight to globalisation. CRITIQUE OF THE DOMINANT IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY

The language of discourse of the dominant imperialist ideology is economics. Economics has an aura of the scientific, although we know that its scientific pretensions are based on make-believe (much of it self-motivated) rather than rigour. Furthermore, when economics is bolstered with mathematics and graphics, it acquires an added aura of ‘authority’, which is often quite spurious. Does it then follow that the language of counter-ideology must also be economics? Our own economists have answered the orthodox economic theory of mainstream economists and trade theorists with what is called ‘heterodox’ economic theory. Like its adversary, this is largely an abstraction from the reality of power and politics; substantial political analysis is lacking. None of the heterodox economists that I know deal with the issue of imperialism; it is not in their vocabulary. Furthermore, I am not sure what real impact heterodox economics has made on the ground. Even in the realm of ideas it has not made as much impact as it might have.

I do not want to be misunderstood. I think that heterodox economics has provided a valuable and necessary critique of orthodox economics. In my own writings I find that, among some audiences, quoting Joseph Stiglitz or Dani Rodrick gives me a better punch than all my efforts to rally data and evidence on behalf of my arguments. My point is that heterodox economics is good up to a point but that it is not good enough. It must move beyond the realm of economics to the realm of political economy. In other words, I endorse the theme of this conference – ‘Reinventing the Political Economy Tradition of the Caribbean’.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER AND A REALITY CHECK FOR THEORY

I shall start this discussion with a quote from none other than the late Michael Manley:

‘Those who have to face the challenge of action may make mistakes. Meantime, those who reside permanently in the world of ideas, alone and untested, do not help anyone when they refuse that reality is more complex than theory’ [3].

I must say that I sympathise, even empathise, with Manley. Academics can speak truth to politicians, but when do politicians get an opportunity to challenge the academics with a reality check? We who research, write and critique have an obligation to speak truth to power – to say how things are and how they should be, from the vantage point of some distance from political power and authority. That vantage point is extremely important: it gives a larger perspective to the drama of daily politics. At the same time, however, we cannot escape the question of what we would have done were we in power at the time that difficult decisions had to be made. Theoreticians speak truth to power. Politicians, in return, provide theory with a reality check. The coin has two sides.

The challenge is how political leaders and theoreticians meet and work together when it matters rather than after the event. When there is a separation between, as it were, the philosopher and the king, how do we create a synthetic ‘philosopher-king’? The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, gave a partial answer to this question in his concept of the ‘organic intellectual’. For Gramsci, an organic intellectual arises as part of society and in the midst of struggle for liberation from oppression and exploitation. An organic intellectual is always in the midst of struggle, always on the move, drawing strength from history and from the society in which they are embedded and that nurtures them.

Let me go a step beyond Gramsci. There is also an ‘organic institution’, held together by a shared vision of society and long-term strategy among a group of organic intellectuals. Both organic intellectuals and organic institutions are involved in daily struggles, not from the privilege of distance, as academics do, but in the heat of battle. There are many research and academic institutions in the South, but they mostly remain on dry ground. Organic institutions, on the other hand, have to swim in the middle of the ocean.

SPEAKING ‘EXISTENTIAL TRUTH’ TO ‘DIPLOMATIC TRUTH’ AND THE ROLE OF THE SOUTH CENTRE

Truth, of course, has many dimensions. The kind of truth that we at the South Centre deal with on a daily basis is what I call ‘diplomatic truth’, or truth as negotiated between asymmetrical power relationships, in our case between the North and the South.

Let me give an example of diplomatic truth. Globalisation is defined in the course of negotiations between contending political forces in a particular context. Africans might argue, for example, that they have seen few benefits from globalisation; that they have only seen its negative consequences. They would present it as a “challenge”. On the other hand the North might argue that many of the benefits of globalisation have not permeated Africa because of problems with internal governance and corruption, and the failure to create the conditions for investments to flow; that globalisation is an “opportunity” that Africans have missed. The “negotiated” or “diplomatic” truth about globalisation is thus a compromise between these views and presented as both an opportunity and a challenge. This compromise camouflages huge differences in ideology and policy that obscure the reality on the ground.

As organic intellectuals and organic institutions we have a moral obligation to speak truth as we know and experience it to the diplomatic truth that is negotiated by our governments in the forced circumstances in which they find themselves. In the South Centre we have often taken positions against those that some of our governments have been compelled to take because of the pressures put on them by powerful forces in the North.

The trade negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are a case in point. Ever since the WTO was formed, the countries of the South, especially the smaller and vulnerable ones, have been subjected to enormous pressures to conform to agreements entered into by the bigger trading powers such as the USA and the European Union. These powerful trading blocs divide and rule the South. To the poorer countries of the South they offer ‘technical assistance’ and incentives such as ‘quota-free’ and ‘duty-free’ access to their markets. Once these smaller countries are taken out of the loop of negotiations with promises of technical and financial assistance and privileged access to their markets, the Northern power blocs then face the bigger countries of the South in hard bargaining over the technical details. Once the big powers, including the larger trading nations of the South, have agreed to a compromise deal in which they have taken care of one another’s interests, this jointly agreed formula is then imposed on the smaller countries. They are forced to surrender the illusory and temporary ‘concessions’ that they were earlier given and accept full reciprocity as, so to speak, ‘equal’ partners in the negotiations. This is the existential truth of the global trade negotiations.

In the case of the negotiations between the EU and ACP countries over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) the diplomatic truth put out by the European Commission and some governments in Africa and the Caribbean confounds all logic and evidence. The European Commission (EC) argues that EPAs are good for ACP countries. Our analysis in the South Centre shows that the agreements in their present form will further de-industrialise African countries. They may even threaten their food security and policy options for endogenous development. The EC has systematically practiced a policy of divide and rule in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, where older, indigenous efforts at regional integration within the context of SADC, COMESA and the East African Community are now in shreds.

Fortunately, there is growing resistance from some African governments to this old-style, colonial policy. Civil society social movements in Africa are also very active in this area. On 23 March 2008 50 of them called for a stop to the EPAs, saying that they will destroy the economies of African countries, lead to a substantial loss in government revenue accrued through tariffs, and a loss of jobs and policy space. They demanded that the interim agreements must be nullified. In the Caribbean context, Norman Girvan has argued that the Cariforum-EC EPA negotiations have been subject to lesser disclosure, debate and parliamentary oversight than legal and constitutional changes of lesser importance, and that the agreements must be subject to full public disclosure and debate, and possible review.

This, in my view, is the most challenging issue of our time that those engaged in the National Project must address, one in which all social and political forces from Jamaica to Cape Town and Vanuatu must join. They must invite bigger countries in the South, such as China, India and Brazil, to fight in solidarity against this European aggressive effort to recolonise a significant and vulnerable part of the South.

Other examples of the struggles of Southern countries in today’s globalising world, in which the South Centre is involved, include: - The struggle for access to knowledge and innovation, protection of indigenous knowledge, and flexibilities in intellectual property and copyright laws that would permit the diffusion of knowledge as a public good.

- The importance of resurrecting the original mandate and vitality of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

- The ‘aid effectiveness’ project of the OECD, called the “Paris Declaration” which will be the subject of negotiations in September 2008 in Accra, and which we must oppose. Many of our countries have become so dependent on aid that it is impossible to talk about self-reliance or the National Project unless effective exit strategies from aid are offered to them.

- The debate on finance for development and the so-called Monterrey Consensus, which will be the subject of further negotiations in Doha towards the end of this year, and which has acquired an entirely new dimension in the wake of the financial crisis in the North.

AN ALTERNATIVE VISION

Let me now come to the third task of the South intellectual, that of offering alternative visions of a future society. It is not enough to critique the present system without offering an alternative vision of where one would want to go.

I give below the elements of an alternative vision taken from an initiative of activist trades union leaders in Southern Africa called the ANSA project - Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Southern Africa [4]. 1. A people-led political and social strategy, as opposed to one led by the IMF/World Bank/WTO/donors.

2. Grassroots-led regional integration, as opposed to the current fragmentation of the region by the Empire.

3. An alternative economic production system, based on domestic demand, human need and the use of local resources and domestic savings, as opposed to the present export-oriented strategy based on foreign investments.

4. A phased withdrawal from globalisation, rather than further deepening of integration within the existing iniquitous global system.

5. A science and technology policy that harnesses people’s collective knowledge and wisdom, instead of blind emulation of techno-science rooted in the commodification for profit of nature, human labour and social structures.

6. Alliance-building and networking with progressive forces at national, regional and global levels, rather than their co-option by capital-led globalisation.

7. Politically governed redistribution of wealth and opportunities from the so-called formal sector to the informal sectors, instead of the misallocation of resources and the integration of informal sectors through their provision of cheap inputs and semi-employed labour.

8. Women’s rights as the basis for a healthy and productive society, replacing the present system based on the exploitation of women`s labour.

9. Education linked with production and improvements in the technical, managerial, research and development skills of workers and those directly in control of matters of production and governance, as opposed to education for a bureaucratic and technocratic elite.

10. Peoples’ demonstrations in support of the evolving ethical and developmental state regarded as embodying the democratic strength of society and creating a dynamic, participatory and radical democracy, rather than the present system in which mobilisation is seen as a threat and in which the representative democracy can sign away people’s future rights.

The ANSA project aims to evolve into a mass movement, a renewed liberation struggle, through sustained education, consultation, debate and action. It is fully compatible with and an extension of the National Project.

THE CASE FOR INTEGRATIVE REGIONALISM IN THE SOUTH

One of the major challenges that the National Project and the ANSA project face is the question of how we in the South integrate our own countries in the face of continuous fragmentation and balkanisation by the forces of globalisation. I identify four main types of regional integration. The first type is what I call distributive regionalism between countries that are roughly equal in economic and political strength. The gains and losses are closely tabulated and calculated. No state surrenders anything unless it gets something of equal value in return. When this kind of distributive regionalism takes place between roughly equal partners that share borders, and when these relations stabilise over a long period of time, it can lead to the second type: integrative regionalism. States are perceived to have compatible interests. Conflicts are sublimated by consideration of the common good that comes from integrating into a single economic or political unit. The best example of this type is the European Union.

A third type is what I call enforced regionalism, where one country is subject to the diktat of another largely because of an asymmetrical power relationship. In theory the weaker partner could walk out of the arrangement, but in practice walking out may be even more costly than a bad bargain. The African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) is an example of this. The fourth and final type is structured regionalism where the outcome is determined not by negotiation but by historically created conditions or institutions in which asymmetry is embedded. One example of structured regionalism is the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, signed in Cotonou in June 2000.

It is hardly necessary to make the case for integrative regionalism. The economic case based on market size and the benefits of large-scale production is obvious enough. However, the argument that must be reiterated here is the political one, i.e. that only through integrative regionalism can the populations of the region acquire a negotiating clout in the global fora of trade and investment negotiations.

The biggest hurdle to integrative regionalism in the South is forced or structured regionalism imposed on them from above by the dominant economic and power blocs, namely the United States and the European Union. Their interventions result in the disruption and disintegration of efforts that Southern countries have been making to move towards genuine integrative regionalism.

CONCLUSION

A man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world to which many of our governments have surrendered their people’s mandate and trust. Let us hope that our collective efforts will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

*Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, an Intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries.

* This essay was edited and summarised by Izzy Birch of Fahamu from the keynote speech given by Professor Yash Tandon in honour of Professor Norman Girvan at the 9th annual conference of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), Kingston, Jamaica, March 2008. The fuller version may be requested from Professor Yash Tandon at [email][email protected]

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

For further notes, please follow this link:

Savo Heleta looks at the ways death tolls are manipulated for political ends and argues the same could be happening in Darfur.

The conflict in Darfur, now in its sixth year, is for a long time one of the prime news around the world. Other conflicts come and go, but Darfur is receiving extensive coverage ever since the American government officials called the conflict genocide in the late 2004.

The fighting in Darfur broke out in 2003, when two rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese government forces. The rebels, who came from predominantly "African" sedentary tribes, blamed political, economic, and social marginalization and neglect of the region by the "Arab" dominated government of Sudan as the main causes of rebellion in Darfur, the vast western Sudanese province the size of France.

Soon after the rebellion began, the Sudanese government mobilized and armed local militias from Darfur's Arab ethnic groups, called Janjaweed, particularly those without traditional land rights, to fight against the "African" rebels. The Janjaweed are believed to be behind the worst atrocities against civilians in Darfur.

Referring to a 2006 estimate by the World Health Organization, the Western media, politicians, and international humanitarian organizations claim that more than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003. Out of these 200,000 victims, the World Health Organization estimates that about 20% people died from fighting and violence, while 80% died from starvation and diseases. It is estimated that over 2 million people are living in refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring countries after fleeing their homes.

Some organizations, such as the American advocacy group Save Darfur Coalition and the Washington-based and the United States State Department-funded Center for International Justice claimed, without any evidence, that over 400,000 people have died in Darfur.

Recently, John Holmes, a senior United Nations official in charge of humanitarian relief, announced that as many as 300,000 people could have died in the Darfur conflict. Holmes said that the 300,000 total "is not a very scientifically based figure," but a "reasonable hypothesis and extrapolation" from the earlier estimate of 200,000.

Why are these Darfur death toll estimates taken for granted by so many people, media, and organizations in the West? How reliable are these numbers, considering that humanitarian workers, the main source of data used to come up with the estimates, have had only limited access to many areas in Darfur since the conflict began in 2003? Could the death toll be inflated? Would someone purposely exaggerate the numbers?

The Western media, aid agencies, and advocacy groups have exaggerated numbers of war victims around the world on many occasions before.

During the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, the international aid agencies, the United Nations officials, and the Western diplomats and media had claimed that between 200,000 and 300,000 people had lost their lives in fighting that ravaged the country for four years. The widely accepted figure that almost no one questioned was at least 200,000 dead. The international community and Bosnian politicians had used these numbers for their own purposes all the way until early 2007, when an independent Research and Documentation Center from Bosnia and Herzegovina, after three years of extensive and nonpartisan work, revealed that 100,000 people, civilians and soldiers on all sides, had died in the war. They collected over twenty different facts about each victim, such as people's names, nationality, time and place of birth and death, and circumstances of death.

The Bosnian death toll of 100,000 people is an enormous tragedy, but still it is not the same as 200,000 or 300,000 dead. The aid agencies that came up with the inflated death toll in Bosnia never publicly commented on their exaggeration. The Western media kept quiet or only briefly reported about the new findings. No one has ever apologized for the overstated numbers used for about 15 years. People in Darfur need help. Their suffering and misery should not be used for political campaigning around the world.

Darfur urgently needs peace through a negotiated settlement that can effectively tackle political, social, and economic marginalization of the region, first by the British colonial government and later by the successive post-independence governments of Sudan.

Numbers currently used to portray the death toll in Darfur may be correct. Yet, knowing the record of the international aid agencies, the Western governments and media, and various advocacy groups, it should not come as a surprise if the current estimate of 300,000 dead was exaggerated to serve some hidden purposes outside Darfur.

* Savo Heleta is the author of Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia (AMACOM, March 2008) and a postgraduate student in Conflict Transformation and Management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

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

This week’s blog review will focus on those blogs that deal exclusively or primarily with African literature.

Book SA – News

Book SA – News is the official blog of Book Southern Africa which host dozens of blogs by Southern African writers:

“BOOK Southern Africa is a literary news and social network for publishers, authors and the general book-buying and -reading public. BOOK SA reports on local fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, book happenings, reviews and more.

BOOK SA is also a free author and publisher website service for those involved in the world of Southern African literature. Our sites' special features help drive information about books throughout the web, attracting new audiences and creating more space for literary endeavours. Our goal is to help build the Southern African literary marketplace to new heights.”

Literary Tourism Blog
http://blog.literarytourism.co.za/

Literary Tourism Blog is another South African blog which is part of the KZN Literary Tourism website maintained by Lindy Stiebel, Professor in English Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Literary tourism is defined here as a literary genre which “deals with places and events from fictional texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include following the route a fictional character charts in a novel, visiting particular settings from a story or tracking down the haunts of a novelist. Literary tourists are specifically interested in how places have influenced writing and at the same time how writing has created place.”

Anglocamlit
http://anglocamlit.blogspot.com/

Anglocamlit, is a blog on Cameroon Literature in English which showcases works of fiction from Anglophone Cameroon and seeks to eradicate the widely-held view that there is a paucity of literary talent in the English speaking part of Cameroon:

“Is Cameroon Anglophone Literature non-existent? Or is there a thriving literary community in the former British Southern Cameroons which is simply not known on the national and international scene?

This blog will try to answer this question by profiling novelists, poets and playwrights from that former British trust territory, most of whose works are not available out of Cameroon, and have only limited distribution within Cameroon.

The blog will also focus on the emerging third generation Anglophone writers in the Diaspora who are part of what is increasingly being referred to as the Anglophone Cameroon Literary Renaissance.”

Discovery of Gambian Literature & Writing
http://www.gambianliterature.blogspot.com/

Discovery of Gambian Literature & Writing also seeks to introduce the world to the little-known Gambian literature:

“The following information on Gambian Writers (of literary texts) is meant to be shared with those interested in Gambian authors and their works. It is a humble contribution and far from exhaustive. Many thanks to Dr Jean-Dominique Penel, the coordinator and director of the research and to whom this is dedicated, Dr Momodou Tangara and Dr Pierre Gomez (lecturers University of The Gambia), Mr Saihou Bah (Principal Sheick Mass Kah), Ms Isatou Niang and Ms Aissa Dabo (Journalist)”.

Kenyan Poet
http://www.kenyanpoet.blogspot.com/

Kenyan Poet is ”A Kenyan Artistic Space that showcases the best in Kenyan Arts, Music, Creative writing, Spoken Word Poetry, art and book reviews as well as emerging art trends.”

Wordsbody
http://wordsbody.blogspot.com/

Wordsbody is a literary blog maintained by Molara Wood, a Nigerian writer and arts journalist based in London. The blog focuses on the Nigerian, African and international literature.

Poefrika
http://poefrika.blogspot.com/

Described as a “weblog of creative, Africa-inspired writing”, it carries both original poems by its creators (Rethabile Masilo and Phomolo both from Lesotho) and poems published elsewhere.

African Poetry Review (USA)
http://african-poetry.blogspot.com/

African Poetry Review (USA) is a blog run by Mark Lilleleht in Madison, Wisconsin:

“Thoughts on reading, reviewing, critiquing, considering African poetry; playing with poetry from across the Continent; engaging poets working in Africa and abroad; and generally just getting thoughts and knee-jerk reactions into a format that might encourage dialogue. Hopefully fruitful dialogue...”

Scribbles from the Den
[email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

Commentator Armelle Choplin did a real service in pointing out that while Mauritania was the locale of several acts of terrorism, there is no evidence that Mauritanians, including home grown Islamists, support terrorism. That is an important distinction in light of claims by others that Mauritania has become a country of terrorism. Similarly she did well to wonder if the combination of festering social unrest and well funded promotion of Islamic fundamentalist teachings by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf donors may yet produce genuine Islamist domestic terrorism.

There is a serious shortcoming, however, in the her summary of the country's socio-religious evolution since independence. Attributing the early decision to become an Islamic Republic as a move to unite the country's social communities under the banner of Islam was true in its use as a public justification but largely false as to its actual purpose.

First, the major political factions of the dominant white Moors were animated by purely local clan competitions and the then widespread, emphatically secular Arabization movements. Syrian-Iraqi Baathism (which made a point of including Arab Christians) and Egyptian Nassirism (enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood) were the most attractive to the ruling white Moors. Second, being an Islamic Republic was useful in fending off actual "intégristes" (religious fundamentalists) by gaining tight control over the mosques. Third, Mauritanians were already Muslims, so Islam as such required no promotion. Yet unlike Arabized black Moors (Haratins), black Mauritanians remain oriented by language and culture to sub-Saharan Africa and in religious practice to the unique Muslim brotherhoods of Senegal and Mali. So black Mauritanians understood the dominant white Moors were launching an Arabization, not Isalmization, campaign to marginalize their own status and end the use of French in public education, the bureaucracy and military. This struggle became a key feature of Mauritanian political life as the Arabization campaign moved ahead and periodic acts of civil war and suppression occurred, with black Mauritanians steadily losing ground until this came to major crisis with the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of black Mauritanians in 1989. Any lingering pretense of unity under the banner of Islam was discarded in favor of a naked political power play and land grab. So yes, religious practice in Mauritania has always been tolerant of diversity within Islam but not so its use as a political facade to mask other purposes by the dominant white Moor elite.

The government of Zimbabwe has a democratic commitment to ensure the freedom of movement and association of domestic and international election observers during the upcoming second round of the country's presidential election. It is also obligated to ensure the overall transparency and integrity of the entire electoral process through commitments outlined in the Southern Africa Development Community Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2004) and the African Union Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa (2002).

Usiku wa dhuluma (The night of oppression)
Usiku wenye giza (The night of darkness)
Usiku mrefu mno (The long long night)
Usiku bila mwisho (The night without end)
Usiku huo (Even such a night)
Mwishowe utaisha (Will finally end)
Jogoo litawika (The cock will crow)
Jua litatoka (The sun will rise)
Mshale wa nuru (The arrow of light)
Utachoma utusitusi (Will pierce the darkness)
Kutakucha (The dawn will break)
Mapambazuko ya siku mpya (The dawn of a new day)
Matumaini ya maisha mpya (The hope of a new life)
Mapinduzi kuleta jamii mpya (The revolution to herald a new society)
Yataondoa usiku wa dhuluma (To drive away the night of oppression)

Courtesy of Vita Books
With thanks to Shiraz Durrani for permission to reproduce the poem by an anonymous author from a collection of poems from Kenya in early 1980s.

This, , is a very balanced article bringing out the utter despair that the people now face because of their politicians. Isn't it true that almost all forms of political leadership all over the world have failed their people? I wish the people of Kenya all the best. And hope they do not have to see death and destruction due to another civil war

I think the article, , might have been somewhat mis-translated - "awash with extremists" is not what I understood from the French original, but rather something along the lines of how the West had suddenly become suspicious after the attacks; nor "suspicious of the West" but rather "which worries the West". I'd suggest readers turn to the original French if possible

It is unfortunate that innocent people are being caught up in this cycle of violence & nobody wants to objectively address the problem/s; see .

Historically, South Africa has a record of ethnic violence; we had the Zulu, Xhosa, Anglo-Boer & other wars; being painted as war mongers. The 1949 riots by Zulus against Indians in Durban is a case in point. The Group Areas contained further outbursts to an extent, but Indians and Coloureds have remained outside the domain of bona fide SA inhabitants. SA African blacks remain subconsciously prejudiced against other groups whilst (by stark contradiction) 'gel' with their former oppressors, the whites.

There are numerous forces at play that have to be identified, eg., Lenasia & Chatsworth for Indians; District Six & Springfield for Coloureds; Soweto, Kwa-Mashu, etc for Blacks (for want of a better term). The ANC has not bothered to address these iniquities which promote tensions & are exarcebrated by cock-eyed BEE and AA- Indians and coloureds are not perceived as 'blacks' & the murdered by-line surfaces like a monotonous refrain; 'During 'apartheid' we were not white enough; now, we are not black enough!' This divide has culminated in an era of entitlement which sees anyone outside this 'black' kraal as threats & dispensable, resulting in the mass, spontaneous 'xenophobic' actions we see. Next? Indians, Chinese, Pakistanis,... but, not whites (Israelis, Russians, Greeks, etc, many of whom are just as much 'foreigners'!)

Yet, on the other side of the coin, many of these foreigners are seen to have contributed towards this xenophobia; arrogance, illegal entries, involvement in scams, hijackings, drug peddling, rape, etc (another topic altogether!) It would serve them if they got together as a representative body to engage the SAPS, Home Affairs, NGO's, CBO's, etc with their problems, and also intervened to expose the bad eggs amongst them. Right now, for many S Africans, Hillbrow is a no-go area- that says a lot! We must consider that during the term of our cadres in exile, they were in camps and conducted themselves with respect; don't we deserve the same?

Regarding . The people of liberation fell narcissistically in love with the works of their hand and became the post-colonial oppressors of the populist, egalitarianism that IS the end of liberation. They have hoarded power and wealth, leaving the people to starve in a spiritual famine that expresses itself in the fratricidal savagery shown with such repulsive inhumanity. A revolution of hope to overthrow these latest "massas" and bring the power in equality and justice to ALL, not the few, the privileged, or the self-appointed entitled.