Everything changed.

We are back home trying out new skins as the continent wastes on. We had believed we could save Africa. We were young dreamers. We embraced The African Manifesto, a tract which in our group became as popular as The Communist Manifesto in its time. The first oath we took steered us towards defending and liberating our national frontiers. There was trouble all around Africa. Enemies were approaching our land. We could hear their gunshots from whichever direction we faced. We did not want to run away. It was more worthy standing up to fight.

How could we have known the truth? By the time Biira and I finally agreed that it was what was left of us that needed saving, many of our comrades had died, along with our dreams. What pained Biira and I most, however, were not the deaths but the denial, the lack of a funeral. In Africa, when someone died, it was acknowledged and burial arrangements made. In fact, it seemed we respected the dead more than the living. Nowadays of course things have turned round. Alive or dead there’s no big deal. Though it’s tougher staying alive than dead, of course! And probably that’s why we have more haunted and tragic lives. For many of us life is cruel and disjointed like a chicken cut up and assembled according to the parts: the wings together, the drumsticks together and so on. When you cook them you think that you’re going to eat chicken but that’s not true. You’re only feeding on parts of a chicken. That is our life, not lived wholly.

One by one, our comrades were bundled in reed mats and blankets, and ‘disposed of.’ Our commanders called the disposal operation smooth. We learnt years later that the bodies were not flown home. That they were taken to a villa in Lubumbashi where they were slit open. That the hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs were plucked out and sold in South Africa. That’s what our government did to our fallen heroes. No consolation letters were sent to their families. No condolence messages to their friends. How can I admit that operation smooth as its name suggests was indeed fast and efficient? Years later when Biira and I sat down by the river Congo to remember our comrades, it seemed as if they had never lived, never walked here, they were never born. We had only imagined them. What had happened to our memory that we could not recall their names except one? We searched desperately for their faces, their names. How were they erased? Exhausted, shocked, we questioned our sanity, failure of the mind to recollect our absent colleagues. Had nothing happened? Had everything happened?

Biira and I are from Arcadia, a relatively small country compared to most African states. Sometimes, if you’re not careful your eyes might miss us on the map. Foreigners tease us that our country is only a strip, but we are there all the same. And those of you, who still follow news, don’t pay much attention to what you read, see, or hear about us currently. It wasn’t like that at all in the beginning. We were an enviable rich state, in control of our resources, proud of our land and the people. And we were on our way to liberating the whole of Africa. We never made it. Things changed.

Biira and I were in our final years at the Ivory Tower University, the place where our dreams became crystal clear in the liberator’s shape. We stood before the looking glass and spread our future like a carpet of luminous colours. We saw stripes of dazzling yellow, brilliant orange, deep purple, vibrant red and magnificent lime. We never even imagined a few shades of grey and other mourning colours.

Every Sunday afternoon, as the sun blazed and the sky was a clear blue without clouds, we gathered for our political study in the mess of Lumumba Hall. Officials from The Peoplist Motion Secretariat came and addressed us.

“Know your history. Do not dismiss it for it shapes the way we do things here,” Colonel Whiff said, smoking a pipe and tossing back his dreadlocks that were long enough to sweep the floor. His lazy, kind eyes searched our faces and each one of us secretly fell in love with him. He had the look of a sleepy blue ocean in a calm season. We respected him for his consistency. “Know your history, only then can you visualise what to do with the future that is yet to come,” Colonel Whiff repeated. Biira always clapped. She was a student of Political Science, incessantly drunk with words like the future, history, hegemony, ideology, manifesto, nationalism. At first, I deemed it was fit to avoid her. We were roommates. If I timed her schedule right, I knew the days when I could get to sleep before she came in and on other days I could get to the room late when she was already asleep. Still, she had a way of reaching me, rubbing me with her beliefs and dreams. If she woke up early and left me sleeping, I would find a yellow note under my pillow: “The future belongs to those who are awake.” I would respond likewise: “The future belongs to those who can see it with their eyes closed.” Sometimes she simply wrote: “The future is here. The future is now.” We carried on like that, interacting through the yellow notes without a face-to-face discussion. Then one day it happened. We were in the quadrangle waiting to watch a movie brought to us by the Life Ministry. Our hall which was shaped like a box had earned the name: ‘Box Hall’, and ourselves the ‘Boxers’. Biira seized the chance to start a fire.

“Box oyee!” She punched the air.

“Oyee!” we cheered.

“Oyee?”

“Oyee!”

“Gallant boxers, I am inviting you to a political study group on Sunday at 3 p.m. Come and hear the words of the future from the Peoplist Motion Regime…”

Watching her with fists in the air, quoting Nyerere, Nkrumah, Castro, Fanon and our dear president, amused me so much that I decided to join the group to find out the quickest way to being crazy — the source of Biira’s steam. A month later I was converted. The Peoplist Motion Regime was the way forward. Their manifesto was charmingly simple: Arcadia is one people, grouping to liberate Africa from the ravaging wars. Together we would sow the seed of oneness, the meaning of a Peoplist Nation. In Arcadia alone we had thirty two ethnic groups. It would be magical to forget our internal clashes and integrate as a Peoplist Nation. The revolutionary angle appealed to me. I was doing Comparative Literature which, in our national curriculum meant Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare, period. I wanted to be a teacher but deep down I knew I could never continue in the tradition of teaching what was being taught. Secretly, I nursed a dream of initiating a think-tank that would eventually redesign the curriculum, overhaul the syllabus and develop a new education system grounded in our own knowledge sources and civilisations. Through the Peoplist regime, I could bring my agenda to the table. The study group became my regular beat. Whenever we met, the first thing we did consciously was to put aside arguments and pretensions that might break us. We even overlooked our different academic disciplines. Together with the botanists, geologists, behavioural scientists, molecular biologists, social scientists, doctors, writers, civil engineers ... we embraced the first principle in The African Manifesto: Building an intellectual, professional army that was not only up-to-date in state of the art machinery, but also mentally trained to fight wars far and beyond. Our weapons therefore were not only to be physical—the typical and common approach to most wars and conflicts in the world—but also to provide creative and practical strategies outside the box in negotiating for peace. Other countries would learn from us.

“Timing is crucial,” Colonel Whiff said one day, rolling his eyes. “We are doing the right thing at the right time. Some of your colleagues think that what matters now is finding a good job, making money, starting a family ... they are wrong. The most important thing is being here, learning history, and standing up for Africa. We start with Arcadia.”

The state of chaos which had engulfed Africa made us believe that our political aliveness was indeed consuming us at the right time. A boil had just burst in Angola. A wound was festering in Mozambique, simmering with pus and blood. Rwanda was licking a genocide bomb and her relations with the neighbouring territories were terribly strained. Rwigyema was our man there. We rallied behind him and cried Freeeeeedom! We promised all the Rwandese desiring to return home that we would give them their country. We would help. The Peoplist Regime would resettle everyone where they wanted to be. Grand. We would teach Northern Sudan how to shake hands with Southern Sudan, and command the International Press to declare Darfur habitable. It would feature in the UN’s Special Watch of 100 places to be in the whole world. We marched there. Then Cote d’Ivoire lost her glory and started sniffing out those who were not pure Ivorians. Nonsense! The next tragedy was going to be an ethnic cleansing. We sent representatives to tell the Ivorian president and his cabinet to stop being stupid. The Peoplist Motion Regime recognised all African people as one. No authentic or contamination talk. Simply African is all we lobbied for. Then we heard that the Congo was falling apart. Our hearts went out to that vast and beautiful equatorial region. It was our duty to make peace, to re-make the Africa Nation One. We needed no messiah to inspire us on that one. We marched there.

With more energy and zeal, we flew to Angola to discipline that Savimbi dog. But then the guns he was using to terrorise his folks were not manufactured in Africa. So it wasn’t just Savimbi we would be fighting. The bad apples of Africa had strong reinforcements. Charles Taylor was backed too in his atrocities. We brought our heads together to find out exactly who powered these dictators. Our hearts burned for the continent. Our dream was that we would be one eventually, with our visionary president, our irreducible and indefatigable Peoplist Regime. I must mention here that by far Arcadia was the only independent, democratic state north of the Nile River, east of the Lake Victoria, south of the great Okavango River and west of the Sahara. We purposed to show others a clean future built from the colours of our dreams.

It took years for the scales to fall off from our eyes, for us to realise that our strategy was empty rhetoric, our government a lying game. Our actions were a contradiction of what Peoplist truly meant. The past repeated itself with all the mistakes and catastrophes. Let me tell you the truth: We did not liberate anyone. Here’s what happened:

As ambitious, ignorant dreamers, we shared the bush with snakes and spiders, while our bosses slept in the best hotels under treated mosquito nets, and very often took state funded holidays to Europe. They plundered and violated the right to life of everyday people in the areas where we were keeping peace. Our leaders got fat on the gold and disappeared with our pay. Believe me, the Peoplist paymaster, Mr. Kutaga, vanished with four billion dollars. The head of our regiment, Colonel Wafiire took all the timber that Congo could give but tried to convince us all the same with his rusty singsong: “It’s peace that we want for Africa.” He may as well have been saying, “We are for pillage.” Our time in the Congo had nothing to do with national security. Like most so-called superpowers, we were there for the resources and occupation. It took us long to awake and see through the smoke screen the image in the mirror. We engaged in senseless wars, we were told to fight without question, to kill or be killed. How different were we from a barbaric army marching to conquer, to defeat the weaker?

We saw things clearly when Dagu died. The only comrade whose name had not left us. The one who was to father Biira’s child. Dagu was an only child, a straight A student who consistently topped his Surveying class at the University. He was approved for the World Foundation Scholarship, but like us he had swallowed the pill. The dream to liberate Africa had spread its magic colours, beckoning him to forget the pursuit of further studies. We came across his head one evening. Bullets had left holes in his head, which wasn’t a whole head anymore, but a shattered cranium. It took us a great amount of time to recognise it was our Dagu. Only after we identified a green bandana bearing a few strands of hair did we remember having seen him at breakfast tying the bandana across his forehead. Near his shattered skull was a thicket of blood that had become one with the grass. What had alerted us to the scene were two vultures goring into Dagu’s brains with their hooked beaks. The rest of his body was nowhere to be seen. I knelt before a piece of his skull. Turned it round. Examined him. Dagu. I looked at Biira and sighed. She closed her eyes. That evening when we assembled, we noticed that Blanco, the surgeon was not with us.

“Where is Blanco?” Biira asked Captain Huambo.

“He’s gone on an emergency call.”

I glanced at Biira. The struggle had linked our minds together. A look shared between us often penetrated deeper to reveal that we were thinking the same thoughts. That night we became numb, not because of a brutal loss but the fact that there had been no shootings that day. Dagu was butchered by one of us.

Silently, we packed our bags. There wasn’t really much to pack, but we made an effort of it. We had to brace ourselves for what the government would call us if we survived, if they let us go our way to save what was left of us.

Word suddenly reached us that we were to have an audience with the General, who was the decision maker in our case. We rejoiced and then froze. To us, the meeting spelt freedom or doom.

Our leaving coincided with the coming of extra troops. More gold had been found in Mongbwalu, Ituri district, so it was a calculated move to mobilise an army from home to keep peace in that territory as the miners mined. At 7am after a strong cup of coffee, I strapped the army green backpack on my shoulders, saluted and shook hands with Captain Huambo.

“Good luck,” he said.

“Stay well,” I responded. I watched his face for a sign of betrayal. The face was neutral. I looked away and waved at the new deployment force from Arcadia. Did they really know what they were in for, here for? Fresh graduates with no war zone experience, headless chickens running where they ought not to run. Did they know the real reasons we were in Congo and anywhere else? I avoided looking deep in their faces to see hope alive, to see expectation, to remind me of what I had been before. It is one thing to have dreams and watch them unfold day by day, it is quite another to see them crashed and have to summon up courage to stoop and gather the broken pieces. We stumbled out of the bush towards the chopper that was waiting in the clearing. Every step of the return journey reverberated with heaviness.

Walden Bello wrestles with the question: Has the WSF become simply a forum of ideas with no agenda for action?

A new stage in the evolution of the global justice movement was reached with the inauguration of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001.

The WSF was the brainchild of social movements loosely associated with the Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil. Strong support for the idea was given at an early stage by the ATTAC movement in France, key figures of which were connected with the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique. In Asia, the Brazilian proposal, floated in June 2000, received the early enthusiastic endorsement of, among others, the research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South based in Bangkok.

Porto Alegre was meant to be a counterpoint to "Davos," the annual event in a resort town in the Swiss Alps where the world's most powerful business and political figures congregated annually to spot and assess the latest trends in global affairs. Indeed, the highlight of the first WSF was a televised transcontinental debate between George Soros and other figures in Davos with representatives of social movements gathered in Porto Alegre.

The world of Davos was contrasted to the world of Porto Alegre, the world of the global rich with the world of the rest of humanity. It was this contrast that gave rise to the very resonant theme "Another world is possible."

There was another important symbolic dimension: while Seattle was the site of the first major victory of the transnational anti-corporate globalization movement -- the collapse amidst massive street protests of the third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization -- Porto Alegre represented the transfer to the South of the center of gravity of that movement. Proclaimed as an "open space," the WSF became a magnet for global networks focused on different issues, from war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to alternatives. Regional versions of the WSF were spun off, the most important being the European Social Forum and the African Social Forum; and in scores of cities throughout the world, local social fora were held and institutionalized.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE WSF
Since its establishment, the WSF has performed three critical functions for global civil society:

First, it represents a space -- both physical and temporal -- for this diverse movement to meet, network, and, quite simply, to feel and affirm itself.

Second, it is a retreat during which the movement gathers its energies and charts the directions of its continuing drive to confront and roll back the processes, institutions, and structures of global capitalism. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, underlined this function when she told a Porto Alegre audience in January 2002 that the need of the moment was "less civil society and more civil disobedience."

Third, the WSF provides a site and space for the movement to elaborate, discuss, and debate the vision, values, and institutions of an alternative world order built on a real community of interests. The WSF is, indeed, a macrocosm of so many smaller but equally significant enterprises carried out throughout the world by millions who have told the reformists, the cynics, and the "realists" to move aside because, indeed, another world is possible…and necessary.

DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
The WSF and its many offspring are significant not only as sites of affirmation and debate but also as direct democracy in action. Agenda and meetings are planned with meticulous attention to democratic process. Through a combination of periodic face-to-face meetings and intense email and Internet contact in between, the WSF network was able to pull off events and arrive at consensus decisions. At times, this could be very time-consuming and also frustrating, and when you were part of an organizing effort involving hundreds of organizations, as we at Focus on the Global South were during the organizing of the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, it could be very frustrating indeed.

But this was direct democracy, and direct democracy was at its best at the WSF. One might say, parenthetically, that the direct democratic experiences of Seattle, Prague, Genoa, and the other big mobilizations of the decade were institutionalized in the WSF or Porto Alegre process.

The central principle of the organizing approach of the new movement is that getting to the desired objective is not worth it if the methods violate democratic process, if democratic goals are reached via authoritarian means. Perhaps Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas best expressed the organizing bias of the new movements: "The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN [Zapatistas] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it apart from that, would be for it to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army." The WSF shares this perspective.

What is interesting is that there has hardly been an attempt by any group or network to "take over" the WSF process. Quite a number of "old movement" groups participate in the WSF, including old-line "democratic centralist" parties as well as traditional social democratic parties affiliated with the Socialist International. Yet none of these has put much effort into steering the WSF towards more centralized or hierarchical modes of organizing. At the same time, despite their suspicion of political parties, the "new movements" never sought to exclude the parties and their affiliates from playing a significant role in the Forum. Indeed, the 2004 WSF in Mumbai was organized jointly by an unlikely coalition of social movements and Marxist Leninist parties, a set of actors that are not known for harmonious relations on the domestic front.

Perhaps a compelling reason for the modus vivendi of the old and new movements was the realization that they needed one another in the struggle against global capitalism and that the strength of the fledgling global movement lay in a strategy of decentralized networking that rested not on the doctrinal belief that one class was destined to lead the struggle but on the reality of the common marginalization of practically all subordinate classes, strata, and groups under the reign of global capital.

WHAT CONSTITUTES "OPEN SPACE"
The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the charge that the WSF as an institution is unanchored in actual global political struggles, and this is turning it into an annual festival with limited social impact.

There is, in my view, a not insignificant truth to this. Many of the founders of the WSF have interpreted the "open space" concept in a liberal fashion, that is, for the WSF not to explicit endorse any political position or particular struggle, though its constituent groups are free to do so.

Others have disagreed, saying the idea of an "open space" should be interpreted in a partisan fashion, as explicitly promoting some views over others and as openly taking sides in key global struggles. In this view, the WSF is under an illusion that it can stand above the fray, and this will lead to its becoming some sort of neutral forum, where discussion will increasingly be isolated from action. The energy of civil society networks derives from their being engaged in political struggles, say proponents of this perspective. The reason that the WSF was so exciting in its early years was because of its affective impact: it provided an opportunity to recreate and reaffirm solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was not subjected to the rule of empire and capital. The WSF's not taking a stand on the Iraq War, on the Palestine issue, and on the WTO is said to be making it less relevant and less inspiring to many of the networks it had brought together.

CARACAS VERSUS NAIROBI
This is why the 6th WSF held in Caracas in January 2006 was so bracing and reinvigorating: it inserted some 50,000 delegates into the storm center of an ongoing struggle against empire, where they mingled with militant Venezuelans, mostly the poor, engaged in a process of social transformation, while observing other Venezuelans, mostly the elite and middle class, engaged in bitter opposition. Caracas was an exhilarating reality check.

This is also the reason why the Seventh WSF held in Nairobi was so disappointing, since its politics was so diluted and big business interests linked to the Kenyan ruling elite were so brazen in commercializing it. Even Petrobras, the Brazilian state corporation that is a leading exploiter of the natural resource wealth of Latin America, was busy trumpeting itself as a friend of the Forum. There was a strong sense of going backward rather than forward in Nairobi.

The WSF is at a crossroads. Hugo Chavez captured the essence of the conjuncture when he warned delegates in January 2006 about the danger of the WSF becoming simply a forum of ideas with no agenda for action. He told participants that they had no choice but to address the question of power: "We must have a strategy of 'counter-power.' We, the social movements and political movements, must be able to move into spaces of power at the local, national, and regional level."

Developing a strategy of counter-power or counter-hegemony need not mean lapsing back into the old hierarchical and centralized modes of organizing characteristic of the old left. Such a strategy can, in fact, be best advanced through the multilevel and horizontal networking that the movements and organizations represented in the WSF have excelled in advancing their particular struggles. Articulating their struggles in action will mean forging a common strategy while drawing strength from and respecting diversity.

After the disappointment that was Nairobi, many long-standing participants in the Forum are asking themselves: Is the WSF still the most appropriate vehicle for the new stage in the struggle of the global justice and peace movement? Or, having fulfilled its historic function of aggregating and linking the diverse counter-movements spawned by global capitalism, is it time for the WSF to fold up its tent and give way to new modes of global organization of resistance and transformation?

* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This week's AU Monitor brings you news and updates from the 10th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union Heads of State and Government. As the Heads of State convene for the 10thAfrican Union Summit, Chrysantus Ayangafac provides an in-depth analysis of the structure, operation, and capabilities of the organization in relation to the continent's peace and security agenda. Further, the AU's Second Session of "Friday at the Commission" recently held a discussion with the theme: “Chinese presence in Africa: An opportunity or an obstacle to the development of Africa?" to discuss Sino-African cooperation.

Also, the second African Private Sector Forum under the theme "Africa's Industrial Drive: The Private Sector and Corporate Citizenship" recently took place at the AU headquarters. The objective of this Forum was to "sensitize the African population on the available investment opportunities as well as the promotion of good governance and mobilization of professional know-how in the business world as promoted by the United Nations Global Compact". Lastly, the AU is working to strengthen economic integration in Africa with the development of three premier financial institutions within the organization and the creation of a pan-African stock exchange. In peace and security news, United Nations and AU envoys for the Darfur peace process continue to encourage a comprehensive peace accord in the region and are "hopeful that peace talks regarding the Sudanese region can reconvene soon".

Further, the AU Commission recently gave US$600,000 to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) as a sign of solidarity and "recommitment to solving the problem of forced displacement in Africa". In development news, African negotiators at the Development Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations are concerned they might be completely marginalized from the negotiations this year; and that their development concerns and the issue of rural livelihoods will not be addressed.

Also, the African Development Bank (AfDB) pledges to be Africa's premier continental development bank and serve as an African voice on development internationally. Lastly, a 13-member Independent High Level Panel of the AfDB released a report entitled "Investing in Africa's Future: The AfDB in the 21st Century", which calls for a "greater focus on areas that contribute directly to increasing African productive capacity and economic integration: investing in infrastructure, building capable states, promoting the private sector and developing skills".

In regional news, thirteen African countries are planning to form a common land policy and develop a common framework on land use in their respective nations to "strengthen land rights, enhance productivity and secure livelihoods among the citizens".

AU Deepens Africa's Economic Integration (PANA) - Africa's premier investment banking institution is expected to be formally launched within 24 months to provide the much-needed capital to finance infrastructural development in Africa, especially the construction of cross-border highways and the creation of telecommunication links.

AU Supports UNHCR Activities(Daily Monitor) - The African Union Commission recently donated US$ 600,000 to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) programs in four African countries.

The Private Sector and Corporate Citizenship Press Release - The second African Private Sector Forum begins Tuesday 22 January 2008, at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the theme: " Africa's Industrial Drive: The Private Sector and Corporate Citizenship". The theme of the Forum ties with the theme of the 10th Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly : "Industrial Development of Africa".

AfDB: Africa's Premier Development Institution Press Release - Given the huge development challenges it faces, Africa, more than any other region, needs a premier continental development bank, an Independent High Level Panel on the Bank Group says in a report released on Tuesday in Tunis.

Update on Darfur Peace Process (BuaNews) - The United Nations and African Union envoys for the Darfur peace process said they are hopeful that peace talks regarding the Sudanese region can reconvene soon.

WTO Trade Negotiations Aileen Kwa (IPS) - African negotiators are concerned that their development concerns have been sidelined in the much vaunted Doha Development Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Whether the round, which has missed two previous deadlines, will be concluded this year or not depends on several issues.

AU Under Scrutiny Chrysantus Ayangafac (ISS Today) - The inception of the AU in 2002 was greeted with much fanfare and optimism. Though there was sceptism, even ardent Afro-pessimists conceded that the AU marked a significant paradigm shift with regards to conflict prevention and management, thus providing the continent with a plausible chance of solving its problems. As Heads of State and Government convene in Addis Ababa in 31st January - 2nd February 2008 for the 10th AU Summit, the organisation is at a critical juncture. Almost seven year down the road, the organisation has had mixed results. While the desirability of the organisation in not in dispute, its structure and operation have come under intense scrutiny over the years.

AfDB in 21st Century Press Release - "We believe the ADB can, and must become the premier development institution in Africa, providing a strong voice for- and within- Africa, so that Africans can take their rightful place at the forefront of continental economic stewardship".

Sino-African Cooperation Discussion Press Release - The theme: "Chinese presence in Africa: An opportunity or an obstacle to the development of Africa?", will be at the centre of discussions during the Second Session of the "Friday of the Commission" debates scheduled to take place on Friday 18 January 2008 from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Regional Countries Common Land Policy Innocent Gahigana (New Times) - Thirteen African countries intend to forge a common land policy, the Registrar of Land Tittles in the Ministry of Lands and Environment, Eugene Rurangwa has said.

Since the December elections in Kenya an estimated 600 people have died as a result of the unrest, and another 100,000 at least have been displaced. The violence erupted after incumbent Mwai Kibaki was sworn into office in the midst of acusations that the election was rigged, led by opposition candidate Raila Odinga. International observers have called the election "flawed." In this interview Firoze Manji speaks on post election violence in Kenya as a symptom of long term debates within Kenya surrounding the constitution, and a legacy of Kenya's history under colonialism.

On 23 January 2008, at 0400 hours, plain clothed police officers from Harare Central police station, Law and Order section raided the home of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) president Morgan Tsangirai and arrested him. He was interrogated for more than four hours before being released at around 0800 hours. According to their lawyers, the police wanted assurance from the MDC president that there will be no disturbances in Harare in light of the party’s proposed Freedom March

From South Africa , the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF) has today, 23.01.08 issued a press statement entitled 'The SADC Initiated Talks: A Let Down for Most Zimbabweans'. ZEF calls upon President Mbeki to give a frank indication of who is responsible for the failure of the talks when reporting back to the SADC Troika. It urges him to do everything in his power to deal with the stumbling block and salvage the negotiations and ensure Zimbabweans in the Diaspora get the
opportunity to vote in the forthcoming elections.

This is an invitation to NGOs to register for a short on-line survey (10 minutes) launched by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). The survey is being conducted by IEG to get the feedback from NGOs on the Bank's work on land reform, policy and administration in client countries. IEG is an independent unit of the World Bank Group (which reports directly to the Board of Directors) established to review systematically and comprehensively, after project completion, all Bank lending operations, and to evaluate their contribution to the development process in member countries.

The King Baudouin Foundation invites nominations of candidates for the 2008-2009 King Baudouin International Development Prize.The Prize, worth 150,000 euros, is awarded every other year by the Foundation's Board of Governors. Beyond its actual financial value, the Prize provides winners international visibility and publicity, with the main agents of development in particular, such as the United Nations and its specialised agencies, the World Bank, the European Union and a number of bilateral development agencies, the world of foundations or international NGOs. Application Deadline: 1 February 2008

Tapera Kapuya draws parallels between Kenya's post-elections crisis and the political struggles in Zimbabwe, and stresses the need for sound democratic structures

Since its December 27th General Election, Kenya has been experiencing a wave of political conflicts that should serve as a lesson to Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy movement, as these problems are rooted in the same democratic deficit. Much of the media coverage on Kenya seems to have been consumed by a focus on the ensuing violence with very marginal efforts to investigate issues at the centre of this conflict: absence of democratic institutions and the shortfalls of ‘executive’ fundamentalism. With Zimbabwe facing a potential election in March, a look into the Kenyan scenario would be helpful in avoiding a worse repeat. This is necessary in order to build agency, around a proper constitutional reform process, whose outcome will insulate Zimbabwe from the problems those in Kenya are going through and those experienced in past elections. Since the Kenyan election, over a thousand people have since lost their lives and 250 000 more have been displaced. As in most post-colonial conflicts, much of these tensions have taken an ugly ethno-tribal character.

According to observers, the elections themselves were held in a manner that can be deemed ‘free and fair’. In the run-up to the vote, all political parties had relative space to organize and campaign. Kenya has a growing free media, and unlike Zimbabwe does not have such notorious legislations as the Public Order and Security Act or the Access to Information and Protection of Publicity Act. The Election Day itself was rather peaceful.

The opposition, Orange Democratic Movement, won majority of the parliamentary seats. The ruling party would be announced as having won the Presidential vote. Problems were then reported in the tallying of the vote, throwing the Mwai Kibaki’s victory into dispute. The Chairperson of the Kenya Electoral Commission has since acknowledged that there was manipulation of the vote.

Independent observers have suggested that the Election was too close. The US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Rannesberger, is quoted saying whoever won the Election, did so by a margin between 23 000 to 100 000 votes. And that is where part of the problem and why building Constitutional frameworks that harness the spirit of nation building lie.

Kenya like Zimbabwe, has its Lancaster House Constitution, drawn in 1963 as a settlement document when the British colonists were withdrawing from the territory to allow for Kenya’s independence. Consequently, this Constitution, now with its fair share of amendments, has not abhorred well for a transformational state, therefore allowing for dictatorship tendencies to set in. The Daniel Moi regime, would master repression under the shoulder of Constitutional righteousness. As it relates to Elections, state administration and governance, Kenya has a winner-takes-all/loser-leaves-all system. This system is what we have in Zimbabwe. What this means is that, even if one wins an election by one vote, the opinions of the section of the voters who would have lost will not find political representation or expression. It is a system that excludes ‘losers’ and, as we are learning from Kenya, this provides a base for fuelling other deep seated tensions. It questions the legitimacy of the winner as a representative of all interest groups.

As with Zimbabwe, Kenya’s Presidential parliamentary system places more power in the executive, including power to legislate. The executive has a monopoly over national resource distribution, with the legislature being reduced to a powerless club of sessional critics or patronage driven loyalists. With a Constitution that bestows enormous powers on the executive, and because there are no constitutional provisions to ensure equitable distribution of the country’s resources, perceived loss of the vote carries a heavy meaning for those who lose. In regions and amongst groups perceived to be less prioritized by the victors, this arrangement fuels anger. It means another five years of being isolated, another five years of exclusion, another five years of poverty.

The disproportionate powers the executive have compromises the others arms of government. The legislature and judiciary become overly dependent on the executive, undermining their role to provide for checks and balances. Executive accountability erodes. Corruption and its attendant defense systems set in: with regionalism and identity cleavages taking centre stage in national determination. Regions or communities without a ‘representative’ in power suffer. Democratic transformation in Kenya, as in Zimbabwe, gained its momentum in the demands for Constitutional reform, with Kibaki defeating Moi on the banner of ‘a people driven Constitution’. Kenyans are yet to see it, two Presidential terms down the line. Most of those in civil society would be absorbed into the luxurious benefits of the State and soon forget the principled demands of institutionalizing democracy, and facilitating the writing down by the people of a framework under which they want to be governed – a Constitution. The disasters are what we are seeing today: those who feel excluded and watching their vote becoming meaningless are resorting to ‘all means necessary’ to reclaim the vote from the gutters. The death toll keeps rising as neighbor turns against neighbor, and identity replaces values in deciding who is a friend or foe.

The primacy of identity politics becomes breeding ground for the most deprived tendencies. It fosters an identity based nationalism which regresses democratic values necessary for nation building. As we have seen in Kenya, the electoral loss/victory soon takes the form of one identity grouping having defeated the other and the nation dividing along ethno-tribal lines. Ethnic identity is now equated with political identity.

Is Zimbabwe the next Kenya?
A similar threat confronts Zimbabwe, risking the negation of genuine national debate on democratic transformation. Given our history, and the need to foster a common identity in our diversity, a political system and Constitutional framework which allows for this is critical. The incumbent regime has set the country back into the socio-psychology of identity in determining who can participate or not in national discourse. Our white population has been effectively wiped out from being Zimbabwean. Even in the most liberal of opposition spaces, they are regarded with suspicion and are politely censored from making public representation. Zimbabweans of Indian descend or Mixed-race have been purged from public political participation. Amongst the black population, it has begun to matter whether one is Zezuru, Karanga or Ndebele. As if this is not enough, gender, even within these clusters of divisions, has been so entrenched to qualify exclusion, with our women compatriots having to endure structural abuse to assert the mere fact that they too are citizens. Human character is secondary in the estimation of man and women. These identities inform people’s perceptions of who is excluded or included in the economic, social or political benefit – be they in the patronage of the State, or in civil society and opposition or business.

The violence that is manifest in Kenya, though based on identity, is reflective of failures in the country’s Constitution and institutions to be responsive to the crises of nation building. Many Kenyans have doubts about the validity of country’s Constitution, especially the process under which it was written. This is of relevance to Zimbabwe, where sadly, the Kenyan case history could be vengefully repeating itself.

The MDC has consistently argued that a new Constitution must be put in place before the elections. Yet it seems to be doing everything to confirm its participation in the electoral process before this key demand has been met. Gabriel Chaibva, spokesperson of one faction of the MDC, in an interview with VOA is categorical about participating in the March elections. Nelson Chamisa, the spokesperson for the other faction, suggested the same in his widely condemned rally speech where he threatens Kenyan style protests should Mugabe do what he knows best: manipulate the vote.

Despite this grandstanding and pontification about a new Constitution, the MDC – in itself a product of the Constitutional movement – does not seem to place value in the importance of a democratic, public participatory process of Constitution making. The Constitution it is fighting for in the talks is a product of ‘four wise men’, determining the permanent fate of 13million of their fellow citizens! The Constitution they are proposing has not been seen or shared by Zimbabweans. Speaking during a visit to the US end last year, leader of one of the factions, Morgan Tsvangirai is quoted in an interview suggesting that ‘we have graduated from process’, in deviation from the principles. Welshman Ncube, the Secretary General of the other faction and himself a professor at law, in his speech to Parliament in support of the widely condemned 18th Constitutional Amendment to the Constitution of Zimbabwe went to depth to explain that the principles of an ‘open, transparent and participatory manner’ in Constitution making were not a ‘fundamentalist decree’. On the 3rd of January, Morgan Tsvangirai published an opinion piece suggesting that a Transitional Constitution had been finalized, with the sticking point being that of implementation. The nation or even members of the MDC are yet to see it. Our experience has been a bitter one: reforms made in the dark, excluding national dialogue are partly the reason why we are where we are today: a reason for us to be very afraid of the Kenyan ‘demons’ visitation or better still of being ‘Kibakised’. But what is even more frightening, if it is to be believed, is the revelation by Nathaniel Manheru a columnist for government controlled Herald who wrote in last Saturday’s edition that the so called ‘transition’ constitution agreed by Zanu PF and the MDC is nothing more than the 2000 government draft that lost the referenda.

The South African Model Model countries such as South Africa do offer learning curves on national reconstruction. Emerging from its brutal past, as the rest of post-colonial Africa, South Africa underwent a process of Constitutional building that pitched public participation at the centre of Constitutional development. Public opinion and debate would take place, with its Constitutional Assembly, civil society and political parties opening the nation to dialogue with itself. What resulted was amongst other things, an electoral and political system that is modestly inclusive, guaranteeing proportional representation, and allowing all views brought to an electoral contest and receiving electoral support, to find a measure of expression.

Greater devolution of power in provinces and local municipalities has created a system of greater accountability and service delivery. There is freedom of electoral contest and democratic expression. The result has been limited violent contestation of election results and a harmonious existence of political formations and civic groups despite their competing ideologies or perspectives. Those who lose an election will still salvage their proportional representation of the vote.

The National Constitutional Assembly has advocated for a similar system of Constitution making based primarily on the principles of ‘public participation, openness and transparency’. Its 2001 draft addresses some of the key issues of proportional representation and institutions that safe-guard democracy: Electoral Commission, Human Right Commission, Gender Commission etc. The draft also argues for a strong legislature and judiciary and the effective separation of powers between the varying arms of the State. Parliament, elected through a mixed system of constituency based and party-proportional representation would elect the leader of government who would account to it. This system was drawn out of the views gathered from ordinary Zimbabweans, by both the NCA and the government’s own Constitutional Commission. The government draft presented to the referendum in 2000 ignored all these views, and was wisely rejected. In arguing that elections should be deferred until such a time as there is a Constitutional and electoral framework, the NCA aims to pre-empt the possibility of national degeneration.

The Kenyan scenario points to the things we can avoid and toward the importance of working on developing and putting in place structural systems that ensure barbarism and exclusion are not part of our politics and national life. The democracy movement must learn that short-cuts to freedom lead to spurious regimes and the entrenchment of anti-democratic practices. The MDC, carrying with it the mantle of the nation’s hope for change, must rethink its options. The current opportunism and intellectual laziness that is becoming so pervasive should be stopped and give way to the principled call for a just and free nation.

* Tapera Kapuya is with the National Constitutional Assembly. He writes in his personal capacity. He can be reached on [email][email protected]

The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) concludes that the mission of Africa Command (Africom) infringes on the sovereignty of African states due to the particularity of Africa’s history and Africa’s current economic and political relationship to the United States.

Further, Africom is designed to violate international law standards that protect rights to selfdetermination and that prohibit unprovoked military aggression.

Africom is also likely to become a device for the foreign domination and exploitation of Africa’s natural resources to the detriment of people who are indigenous to the African continent.

NCBL opposes Africom in the strongest terms and calls upon people of African descent in the U.S. to avoid military service to ensure that they will not be ordered to carry out missions on behalf of Africom, or any military unit or program engaged in violating international law, committing crimes against humanity, or committing crimes of any kind that threaten the peace of any continent.

What Is Africom?

Africom is a project that will substantially change the nature of the U.S. military presence in Africa by establishing a single U.S. military command headquarters that will have Africa as its sole focus.

Africom has become a Rorschach Test because while the U.S. government sees it as a vehicle for bringing peace and prosperity to the continent, it is seen by others as Africa’s greatest new threat.

Because of vague, confusing official statements, it has been difficult to ascertain precisely what the U.S. government claims that Africom will actually do. Africom’s website describes the project as a vehicle for the Defense Department to collaborate with “partners to achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic growth can take place.” That description raises more questions than it answers. The following official statement sheds little additional light: “Africa is growing in military, strategic and economic importance in global affairs.

However, many nations on the African continent continue to rely on the international community for assistance with security concerns. From the U.S. perspective, it makes strategic sense to help build the capability for African partners, and organizations such as the Africa Standby Force, to take the lead in establishing a secure environment. This security will, in turn, set the groundwork for increased political stability and economic growth.” Some critics are highly suspicious of the reference to “economic growth.” Specifically, does that refer in real terms to the economic health of Africa’s poor, or instead to expansion of opportunities for multinational corporations to exploit Africa’s natural and human resources as they have for decades?

It has been suggested that the Bush Administration actually has three primary items on its agenda:
1) making Africa another front in the Administration’s war on “terrorism”;
2) protecting U.S. access to African oil, mineral wealth and other raw materials; and
3) putting the U.S. in a better position to compete with China for domination of Africa’s resources.

It is further suggested that the Bush Administration has no interest in accomplishing any of these objectives directly, and that Africom’s purpose is to identify and nurture the development of African governments that will function as U.S. surrogates. In this regard, Africom is off to a very bad start.

As of the date of this writing, the Africom concept has been received with everything from skepticism to hostility by significant African governments, and NCBL is aware of only Liberia as having expressed a clear willingness to provide a location for Africom headquarters.

TransAfrica Forum spokespersons have astutely suggested that Africa’s cool reaction to Africom may well reflect shared memories and opinions that: “[d]uring the cold war, African nations were used as pawns in post-colonial proxy wars, an experience that had a devastating impact on African democracy, peace and development.

In the past Washington has aided reactionary African factions that have carried out atrocities against civilians. An increased U.S. military presence in Africa will likely follow this pattern of extracting resources while aiding factions in some of their bloodiest conflicts, thus further destabilizing the region.” Why NCBL is concerned If there is any principle that runs like a thread through all of the work of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, it is that protecting the human right of self-determination for all people must be given the highest priority.

NCBL also recognizes that crimes against peace are among the most serious of all international criminal law violations. NCBL’s principles have motivated the organization to consistently oppose military intervention into the sovereign territories and internal affairs of other countries.

NCBL has opposed military operations against the Palestinians, instituted litigation against the Reagan administration in the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, and also provided a consistent voice in opposition to the efforts by several administrations to destabilize Cuba through covert and military means. NCBL has opposed threats of military intervention and the use of mercenary proxies in Nicaragua, Angola and elsewhere.

NCBL vigorously opposed the kidnapping of Jean Bertrand Aristide from Haiti, and has sounded an ongoing note of concern about the shrill threats made against the current government of Zimbabwe. Lastly, NCBL has opposed the war in Iraq, and regards it as a crime against peace. It is against this backdrop that NCBL has grave concerns about expansion of U.S. military operations in Africa.

The U.S. in Africa – The Historical Context To say that the U.S. enters Africa with unclean hands understates the reality. The full extent of U.S. crimes against African governments and leaders during the past 40 years is likely yet unknown.

However, in 1978, former CIA agent John Stockwell provided for many their first peek into a deadly, ruthless U.S. foreign policy that destroyed what could have been a far more promising political and economic future for the continent.

In his book, In Search of Enemies, Stockwell explained that U.S. policy in Africa was driven heavily by cold war concerns. Socialist forces in Angola and Mozambique were prime targets, and the favored method of suppression was use of mercenaries. Stockwell wrote:

“Mercenaries seemed to be the answer, preferably Europeans with the requisite military skills and perhaps experience in Africa. As long as they were not Americans...” He went on to describe a collaboration between the CIA and South Africa’s apartheid regime in a campaign to crush emerging progressive Black leadership in Southern Africa.

The use of proxies and mercenaries to carry out U.S. objectives in Africa became a standard practice as a new class of socialist leaders emerged during the early years of African independence.

In his book, Stockwell referenced the CIA’s complicity with dissidents in Ghana who overthrew Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first president. Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, received special attention from the highest levels of the U.S. government after he announced plans to nationalize major industries in his country and to pursue a path of nonalignment in the then raging cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Author Ludo De Witte wrote: “On 18 August 1960, during [a] National Security Council meeting, [President Dwight] Eisenhower had made it clear, without explicitly saying so, that he favored Lumumba’s elimination. An assassination operation was planned with the support of CIA chief [Allen] Dulles.” Thereafter, the CIA concocted elaborate schemes to kill Lumumba by, among other things, putting poison in his toothpaste.

Ultimately, the CIA saw its objectives accomplished by henchmen of the agency’s stooge, Joseph Mobutu. After Lumumba was killed, Mobutu went on to become head of state in Congo, and his more than three decades of tyrannical reign was one of the bloodiest Africa has ever seen.

John Perkins, a former operative of the National Security Agency, has explained that the U.S. has routinely resorted to everything from bribery to cleverly-disguised assassinations in cases where heads of state have in some way threatened the profit-making potential of U.S.-based corporations.

This raises special concerns because the threat to Africa’s political and economic integrity comes not only from the U.S. government, but also from the multi-national corporations that are the beneficiaries of government policies.

In recent years, this is seen most dramatically in Congo. In 2005, Human Rights Watch issued a report that from 1998 to 2003, a war to control gold fields in northeast Congo resulted in the deaths of more than 60,000 persons along with “ethnic slaughter, executions, torture, rape and arbitrary arrest...” The report goes on to attribute significant responsibility for this carnage to two foreign corporations that financed and fueled the conflict. They were Metalor Technologies, a Swiss refinery; and AngloGold Ashanti, a multinational corporation that, notwithstanding its name, is overwhelmingly directed and managed by non-Africans.

All of this raises critical questions of whether, with Africom, the U.S. is now positioning itself to become more directly involved – with or without proxies – in protecting corporate access to Africa’s resources. In many other parts of the world, the U.S. has engaged in “regime change” as a matter of course for more than a century as a method of protecting the interests of the corporate world.

What’s Really At Stake?

The list of Africa’s valuable mineral resources is endless: gold, diamonds, chromium, copper, etc. However, the continent’s vast oil reserves have attracted perhaps the most attention from the U.S. government. In 2002, Walter Kansteiner, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, declared: “African oil is of strategic national interest to us and it will increase and become more important to us as we go forward.” It is easy to understand why that perception exists. Currently, the amount of oil imported by the U.S. from the Persian Gulf is about 16 percent of its total imports. By the year 2015, it is projected that 25 percent of U.S. oil imports will be from West Africa.

It is clear that, on this issue, the U.S. puts its money where its mouth is. There is a stark correlation between U.S. aid to African countries and the oil producing potential of recipient African states. To be more concrete, as the two largest oil producers on the continent, Nigeria and Angola receive the most U.S. aid.

More disturbing however (particularly for purposes of this discussion) is the level of U.S. military involvement in the protection of access to Africa’s oil. The U.S. spends about $250 million a year on military assistance programs in Africa.

This assistance is not only in the form of “peacekeeping training” but it also involves direct arms sales. As a major oil and natural gas supplier Algeria has been allowed to acquire large quantities of counter-insurgency weapons.

Why the U.S. concern with “security” for Africa’s oil? U.S. access is threatened for various reasons, but one that has been of great concern is guerrilla activity in the Niger Delta.

An organization calling itself the Movement to Emancipate the Niger Delta (MEND) has, in recent times, been accused of destroying oil pipelines, kidnapping oil company personnel, stealing oil and assorted other acts. MEND has complained of oil industry economic exploitation and environmental destruction. It was reported that during the last year, many oil fields were shut down because of the attacks, and oil production fell short by more than 340 million barrels.

All of this prompts NCBL to view with great suspicion U.S. military statements that imply that the security objectives of Africom will be focused on Al Qaeda or other organizations that fit popular contemporary notions of terrorism. It will be all too easy for Africom to target groups like MEND, or even other political formations in Africa that pose no direct threat to oil operations, but which in a broader sense threaten corporate hegemony in Africa.

NCBL has been quite clear about its interest in eliminating the domination of Africa’s natural resources by foreign corporations, and the idea that organizations that may engage in political work to bring about that objective might somehow become the targets of U.S. military operations is unacceptable.

The Legal Concerns As an association of lawyers and legal activists, NCBL is particularly concerned about the potential Africom presents for routine and ongoing violations of international law.

With disturbing frequency, the U.S. has in recent decades launched unprovoked military attacks on other countries, or intervened in the internal affairs of other countries through the use of mercenaries or covert action designed to destabilize foreign governments or the economic, political or social order.

Notions of self-determination and sovereign integrity are closely intertwined, and international law has attempted to protect both by proscribing military aggression and other actions that constitute crimes against peace. In fact, the treaty that governs the International Criminal Court has designated aggression as one of “...the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.” Nevertheless, the International Criminal Court is currently unable to punish the international law crimes committed by the U.S. because the Bush Administration has steadfastly refused to submit to that court’s jurisdiction.

The absence of a method of prosecuting such crimes only heightens NCBL’s concerns about the likelihood that Africom will engage in criminal acts with impunity.

The United Nations Charter is one of the most authoritative sources of international law, and it explicitly acknowledges the sovereign equality of all countries and provides that aggression which threatens international peace and the territorial integrity and independence of sovereign states is prohibited.

So strong is this concern about respect for independence that the United Nations even prohibits itself from injecting the U.N. into the internal affairs of member states unless very specific circumstances are present.

However, even with those purported safeguards in the U.N. Charter, serious questions have been raised about the legality and usefulness of certain U.N. interventions over the years, providing additional reasons for the acute concerns about Africom, a far less restricted entity.

The U.S. claims that Africom is a response to African countries’ continuing requests for assistance with security. However, this is at best a distortion given the cold shoulder that Africom has been given by most African countries.

If assistance has been requested, there is apparently little interest in such assistance coming in the form of Africom. This means that if the U.S. goes forward with Africom, even without malicious intent, it will essentially become an unsolicited, unwelcome intrusion that threatens the ability of African states to exercise rights to self-determination.

It is more likely however that the ulterior motives of the U.S. that have been suggested by various commentators are the driving force behind Africom, and it will be difficult for that agenda to be carried out without military action, either by U.S. troops, or by surrogates.

This threat to the peace, independence and stability of Africa is inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of applicable provisions of the U.N. Charter, and NCBL is therefore compelled to oppose Africom on legal as well as policy grounds.

What is to be done?

While NCBL will continue to call upon all people of good will to voice their strongest opposition to Africom, there is also a practical realization that the Africom train has already traveled a good distance down the track and the chances of it being voluntarily recalled are somewhat remote.

It is with that fact in mind that NCBL assumes a posture comparable to that which it assumed with respect to the Iraq war. NCBL strongly encourages Black youth to decline any recruiters’ requests to enlist in the U.S. military. If Africom cannot be stopped at the outset, then certainly there is no reason for Africans born in America to participate in the destabilization and exploitation of a continent from whence their ancestors were kidnapped for purposes of enslavement.

The call for Black youth to boycott the military has been raised not only by NCBL, but also by countless unnamed ministers, educators, youth counselors and other leaders in the Black community. There is also evidence that these pleas have not fallen on deaf ears. Whereas, Blacks constituted approximately 25 percent of Army personnel until the year 2000, by 2004, less than 16 percent of the Army’s recruits were of African ancestry.

In a study conducted by the Army itself, the conclusion was reached that the continuing decline can be largely attributed to the unpopularity of the Iraq war among members of the Black community who are respected by the youths. This has had a significant impact on the military’s ability to maintain troop levels in Iraq.

Finally, for those persons of African descent who are potential recruits, or who are already members of the U.S. armed forces, NCBL pledges to make its best efforts to arrange for pro bono legal representation if they are threatened, disciplined or prosecuted for refusing Africom assignments, or for exercising their right to conscientiously object to military service.

* This position paper was prepared by NCBL members Mark P. Fancher (principal drafter), Jeffrey L. Edison and Ajamu Sankofa. It is Distributed by the Pan-African Research and Documentation Center, 50 SCB box47, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202. Information about NCBL can be found at

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

Pambazuka editors give you the war on the word "tribe"

What’s in a word? What does the word “tribe” carry? Here below Pambazuka Editors give you a few snippets of what is a long struggle to get US Mainstream media to stop using a racist and stereotypical lens in its coverage of Africa. You can find the fascinating discussion at www.h-net.org/~africa. We end with an excerpt from an Africa Action essay [www.africaaction.org/bp/ethall.htm"> on the word.

Africa Focus [http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/ethn0801.php"> narrates that in his December 31 New York Times dispatch from Nairobi, Jeffrey Gettleman argues that the Kenya electoral crisis, "seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem." Gettleman was not exceptional among those covering the post-election violence in his stress on "tribe." But his terminology was unusually explicit in revealing the assumption that such divisions are rooted in unchanging and presumably primitive identities.

However, Africa Focus gives an update indicating that since that particular bulletin on Gettleman’s use of language: “ Gettleman's coverage of Kenya in the New York Times has avoided the indiscriminate use of the word tribe in favor of "ethnic group," and has noted the historical origins and political character of the continued violence in the country, as well as its links to ethnic divisions”.

But Peter Alegi from Michigan State University in an H- Net Africa posting says and then asks: “While Gettleman (Times' EastAfrica bureau chief) seems to have toned down his use of "tribe" thanks to our protests, but isn't substituting "ethnic group" for it a minor victory?

Also, folks might be interested in this side story: the other day, I wrote a brief message to Bill Keller, Times' Executive Editor (ex NYT correspondent from Johannesburg [1992-1995]), alerting him to the H-Africa thread on his paper's handling of the Kenya crisis.

Mr. Keller's insulting response included the following statement:

"I get it. Anyone who uses the word "tribe" is a racist. [. . .] It's a tediously familiar mantra in the Western community of Africa scholars. In my experience, most Africans who live outside the comforts of academia (and who use the word "tribe" with shameless disregard for the political sensitivities of American academics) have more important concerns."

So Gettleman's ignorance about African languages, history, and cultural identities doesn't seem to trouble his boss one bit. And the utter disregard Keller seems to have for what scholars is reinforced in a closing line dripping with condescension:

"If you have a string that has something insightful to say about Kenya, I hope you'll pass it along."

Kudos to AfricaFocus then, but it seems that the struggle for accuracy and informed analysis of Africa in US mainstream media is going to be a long and tortuous one.

Carol Sicherman, a Professor Emerita at Lehman College underlines Alegi’s point with the following post to H-net Africa. She states that “On January 12, I wrote to the Public Editor of the New York Times as follows (I did not get an answer):

Reading recent dispatches from Kenya, I was pleased to notice that the Times has responded to years of complaints about the biased terms "tribe" and "tribal," replacing them with "ethnic group" and "ethnic." This editorial policy, however, seems to be confined to the news. Roberta Smith's article "Face Time: Masks, Animal to Video" in the Arts Section on Jan. 11 uses the egregiously offensive phrase "a tribal, almost animalistic ritual." It is exactly that equation that makes it necessary to remove "tribe" and its related words. In the case in question, removing "tribal" would have put the focus on "animalistic" without designating Africans as inherently animalistic. It is particularly odd to find such a cliché in a discussion of the work of Yinka Shonibare, a highly sophisticated, learned, and ironic artist.

I don't know how copy editors are instructed at the Times, but the policy adopted for the news section needs to be adopted for all sections.

And last but not least, in 1997, Africa Action said the following of the word tribe:

Tribe has no coherent meaning. What is a tribe? The Zulu in South Africa, whose name and common identity was forged by the creation of a powerful state less than two centuries ago, and who are a bigger group than French Canadians, are called a tribe. So are the !Kung hunter-gatherers of Botswana and Namibia, who number in the hundreds. The term is applied to Kenya's Maasai herders and Kikuyu farmers, and to members of these groups in cities and towns when they go there to live and work.

Tribe is used for millions of Yoruba in Nigeria and Benin, who share a language but have an eight-hundred year history of multiple and sometimes warring city-states, and of religious diversity even within the same extended families. Tribe is used for Hutu and Tutsi in the central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. Yet the two societies (and regions within them) have different histories. And in each one, Hutu and Tutsi lived interspersed in the same territory. They spoke the same language, married each other, and shared virtually all aspects of culture. At no point in history could the distinction be defined by distinct territories, one of the key assumptions built into "tribe."

Tribe is used for groups who trace their heritage to great kingdoms. It is applied to Nigeria's Igbo and other peoples who organized orderly societies composed of hundreds of local communities and highly developed trade networks without recourse to elaborate states. Tribe is also used for all sorts of smaller units of such larger nations, peoples or ethnic groups. The followers of a particular local leader may be called a tribe. Members of an extended kin-group may be called a tribe. People who live in a particular area may be called a tribe. We find tribes within tribes, and cutting across other tribes. Offering no useful distinctions, tribe obscures many. As a description of a group, tribe means almost anything, so it really means nothing.

If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory, a single language, a single political unit, a shared religious tradition, a similar economic system, and common cultural practices, such a group is rarely found in the real world. These characteristics almost never correspond precisely with each other today, nor did they at any time in the past.

Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring history and change.

The general sense of tribe as most people understand it is associated with primitiveness. To be in a tribal state is to live in a uncomplicated, traditional condition. It is assumed there is little change. Most African countries are economically poor and often described as less developed or underdeveloped. Westerners often conclude that they have not changed much over the centuries, and that African poverty mainly reflects cultural and social conservatism. Interpreting present day Africa through the lens of tribes reinforces the image of timelessness. Yet the truth is that Africa has as much history as anywhere else in the world. It has undergone momentous changes time and again, especially in the twentieth century. While African poverty is partly a product of internal dynamics of African societies, it has also been caused by the histories of external slave trades and colonial rule.

In the modern West, tribe often implies primitive savagery.

When the general image of tribal timelessness is applied to situations of social conflict between Africans, a particularly destructive myth is created. Stereotypes of primitiveness and conservative backwardness are also linked to images of irrationality and superstition. The combination leads to portrayal of violence and conflict in Africa as primordial, irrational and unchanging. This image resonates with traditional Western racialist ideas and can suggest that irrational violence is inherent and natural to Africans. Yet violence anywhere has both rational and irrational components. Just as particular conflicts have reasons and causes elsewhere, they also have them in Africa. The idea of timeless tribal violence is not an explanation. Instead it disguises ignorance of real causes by filling the vacuum of real knowledge with a popular stereotype.

Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of African ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.

The idea of tribe particularly shapes Western views of ethnicity and ethnic conflict in Africa, which has been highly visible in recent years. Over and over again, conflicts are interpreted as "ancient tribal rivalries," atavistic eruptions of irrational violence which have always characterized Africa. In fact they are nothing of the sort. The vast majority of such conflicts could not have happened a century ago in the ways that they do now. Pick almost any place where ethnic conflict occurs in modern Africa. Investigate carefully the issues over which it occurs, the forms it takes, and the means by which it is organized and carried out. Recent economic developments and political rivalries will loom much larger than allegedly ancient and traditional hostilities.

Ironically, some African ethnic identities and divisions now portrayed as ancient and unchanging actually were created in the colonial period. In other cases earlier distinctions took new, more rigid and conflictual forms over the last century. The changes came out of communities' interactions within a colonial or post-colonial context, as well as movement of people to cities to work and live. The identities thus created resemble modern ethnicities in other countries, which are also shaped by cities, markets and national states.

Tribe substitutes a generalized illusion for detailed analysis of particular situations.

The bottom-line problem with the idea of tribe is that it is intellectually lazy. It substitutes the illusion of understanding for analysis of particular circumstances. Africa is far away from North America. Accurate information about particular African states and societies takes more work to find than some other sorts of information. Yet both of those situations are changing rapidly. Africa is increasingly tied into the global economy and international politics. Using the idea of tribe instead of real, specific information and analysis of African events has never served the truth well. It also serves the public interest badly.

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

John Lonsdale argues that key to the post-election crisis in Kenya lies in the changing role of the post-colonial state in relation to the country's ethnic terms of political trade

The extensive commentary on Kenya's troubles has tended to blame ancient tribal rivalry, cynical political calculation, or a combination of the two; with the corrupted electoral process seen as providing the unintended catalyst - or worse, the deliberate instigator that awakens latent tribal hostility. British imperialism has also received its expected share of criticism, for inventing the now-indigenous Kenyan practice of divide and rule (see Caroline Elkins, "What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing", Washington Post, 6 January 2008).

While all such explanations have some merit they may also mislead the unwary, since they underplay the always slippery relations between ethnicity as a universal human attribute, politicised tribalism as a contingent process, and the state - any state, colonial or otherwise - as a cockpit of variously contested but always unequal power. How, then, can a focus on such factors illuminate Kenya's continuing turmoil?

A colonial formation

In the 19th century the area that became "Kenya" was stateless. Its peoples' civility, their ethnicity, was shaped by their subsistence: farming or herding, or some mixture of both. Such ethnic groups were not teams, not "tribes". Loyalties and rivalries were smaller than that - patriarchal lineages, marriage alliances, age-groups, trading partnerships, client-clusters, and the like. Ethnic groups were constituted more by internal debate over how to achieve honour in the unequal lives of patron or client, than by solidarity against strangers. Ethnic economies indeed were as often complementary as competitive, with different specialisms. But such inter-ethnicity - which was not without its frictions - was facilitated by the absence of any central power that might arrange groups in hierarchical relations. Sustained "tribal rivalry" could not exist under such decentralised, underpopulated, conditions.

It was European rivalry that imported that modern Leviathan, the state, in the late 19th century. It was, like all states, assembled by force and driven by self-interest. Its British officials allied with African leaders too weak to be rivals; and occasionally did a little to rein in the otherwise self-destructive excesses of those potentially overmighty subjects, the white settlers. The colonial state, responsible to Westminster and at the same time nervous of India's viceroy and then (at independence) the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru - since British Indians far outnumbered white Britons in Kenya - stood to some extent athwart both Africans and settlers, trying to mediate the contradictions between them. Both settlers and Africans colonised the state and the facilities it provided. What had previously been a multi-polar mosaic of scattered nodes of socially productive energy became, within Kenya's new borders, a layered pyramid of profit and power, unequally divided between two key centres - one "white", one black - and many marginalised peripheries.

White settlers got 20% of Kenya's high-potential farmland. As these settlers failed to provide enough state revenue and blocked African opportunity, the British increasingly encouraged African farming on the other 80%. So the second economic centre became Kikuyu-land: home of 20% of the population; close to the capital, Nairobi; cool and attractive to missionaries, with more schools than elsewhere. By geographical accident, then, Kikuyu had a head start in making money (essential to advance political ambitions) and in acquiring modern managerial skill.

Most nationalisms start among those subjects who do best out of, and are most useful to, an ancien regime; their frustrations are keenest, their opportunity greatest. Yet while that may explain Kikuyu leadership of Kenya's anti-colonial nationalism, it does not account for their involvement in Mau Mau, its secretive, violent, offshoot. To that point I will return, as it is a key to understanding the present.

A social transformation

In the new circumstances, other and not-so-well-placed ethnic groups made the most of what they had. They were often driven by a local patriotism inspired by vernacular, mission-translated, Bibles that told of an enslaved people who became a tribal nation. They embarked, in combinations of hope and desperation, on chain-migrations out of pauper peripheries (not unlike the Scots or Irish in comparable circumstances) to colonise particular niches of employment: on the railway; on white farms and plantations; in domestic service; or in the police and army. Yet others came to dominate the livestock trade.

Officials and employers exploited these various tendencies and stereotyped the supposed ethnic qualities of the group concerned. The British helped to harden ethnic divisions made greater by differing potentials for social mobility. Britain did not simply divide in order to rule.

The emergence of ethnic consciousness also arose from local debates about how the genders, generations, rich and poor should relate, as older inequalities were transformed into new differentiations less sensitive to existing moral audits of honour.

Nowhere was such differentiation so sharp as among Kikuyu. Its effects became politically acute after 1945 when settler employers in the Rift Valley's "white highlands" mechanised production, and the extensive Kikuyu diaspora of tenant-workers in the region refused the worsening conditions they were offered. These "ex-squatters", failing to recover a home in their increasingly populated, and property-protective, "reserves", had to make shift in Nairobi's slums. The insistent question, "how then can I live as an honourable Kikuyu?" was what separated the militants of Mau Mau from the politically conservative, propertied, patrons - led by Jomo Kenyatta - who first inspired them.

A political competition

The horrors of the Mau Mau "emergency" war of the 1950s that ensued proved the repressive potential of a colonial state too closely allied to the settlers, its strongest clients. But the relative calmness of decolonisation in 1963 similarly proved the advantages of an outgoing state power that was not solely dependent upon its local roots - a clear contrast with Rhodesia's fiery end. The post-colonial state - rooted in a competitive society, for good historical reasons - is once more different. For the state has been the sole agency by which Africans could aspire to climb the commanding heights of the economy against racially entrenched interests - in land, commerce and finance. In recent years it has continued this role by ever more devious means, to meet external demands for "liberalisation". Access to its power matters. It is concentrated in an executive presidency, now directly elected, capable of manipulating all public institutions, including a parliament elected from single-member constituencies that either singly or in contiguous groups coincide with what have become tribal territories.

In consequence, the competition for a share in this power became governed by internal ethnic accountability and tribal rivalry. President Kenyatta and his Kikuyu elite soothed the frustrated honour of their Kikuyu poor with settlement schemes in the former "white highlands" (of which the bulk, historically, had belonged to less favoured Maasai and Kalenjin groups). His successor Daniel arap Moi, finding less room for the poor of own Kalenjin, did more to create for them an ethnic elite.

Politicians generally justify their privilege by carving ethnic benefits from state largesse. But (in Kenya as elsewhere) this extractive approach faced increasing pressures. The ferocity of competition for a share of state power rose over time - as population has grown, as the fertilising rains of the post-colonial Africanisation of opportunity long ago dried up, as the terms of trade for primary commodities turned sour. It was fairly easy for Kenyatta to ensure that all, more or less, enjoyed a turn "to eat" in the ethnic coalitions on which a parliamentary majority relied. It was more difficult for Moi. As the political stakes rose, so it became more tempting to attract and reward one's ethnic followers with officially-deniable opportunities for thuggery at the expense of those who were now tribal rivals in land, urban property, or petty trade. With every "bought" election, popular anger grew among Kenyan citizens - to an extent that they created pressure for a constitutional change which would strengthen parliament at the expense of the presidency.

A national transition?

A new president, Mwai Kibaki, was elected in 2002 to clean the Aegean stables. But in that effort he has disappointed all but his Kikuyu cronies. Now, in the presidential election of 27 December 2007, he appears to many to have broken the tacit rules of national competition - the last straw. That the opposition was, it seems, merely less successful in rigging the ballot will not make reconciliation any easier. Some of the subsequent opposition violence is politically directed. But the worst, by Kalenjin "warriors" against Kikuyu "immigrants" into the Rift Valley, may have outrun such elite-engineered tribalism to become an eerie echo of Mau Mau - in being an internal, generational, ethnic revolt against the compromises by which its own recently-manufactured Kalenjin elite came to terms with the "old wealth" of Kenyatta's Kikuyu.

There are, then, two very different dynamics currently at work in Kenya: internal ethnic dissidence and external tribal rivalry. Neither can be disarmed without rewriting the rules of political competition for the power of a rather different ("post-post-colonial") state. It would have to be less closely allied to its strongest clients, and offer its services more disinterestedly to all Kenyans. These might in consequence come to think of themselves more as citizens, less as ethnically-defined clients. It is a very great deal to ask.

Kenya faces two possible futures. On the one hand, the normal inter-ethnicity of most daily lives may have been poisoned by the recent violence, forecasting a broken state. On the other, the shock may have persuaded Kenyan elites of the old, Burkean, truth that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in the opposition's success in getting its man elected as the speaker of the new parliament.

* John Lonsdale is emeritus professor of modern African history and fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. This article was first published in OpenDemocracy

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

Emma Mawdsley examines the coverage of China's growing influence in Africa by the British print media

The words and images we use do not describe ‘reality’, they create it. Language (terms, metaphors, and analogies) and images (such as films, news photos, maps and cartoons) are caught up in struggles over interpretation – which means that the language and images of the powerful are important tools in creating and maintaining particular points of view amongst politicians, policy-makers and the public. This paper explores the way in which six British broadsheet newspapers have covered China’s growing role in Africa over the past seven years. China’s impacts in Africa are complex and varied by country, sector and context, and most of the newspaper articles reflect that. Whether more critical or approving in tone, the articles invariably point to both benefits and problems associated with China’s rise. Even those which focus on specific issues or countries, tend to open or conclude with at least a sentence or two outlining a broader assessment of the prospects and problems associated with the growing relationship. Even so, a detailed analysis led us to identify five narrative tropes that recurred consistently and frequently, which tended to systematically endorse images of African weakness, Western trusteeship and Chinese ruthlessness:

1) a tendency to refer to ‘the Chinese’ or ‘China’, as if the various Chinese actors all shared the same interests;
2) a tendency to focus excessively on China’s interests in oil over other commodities;
3) a decided preference for focussing on China’s negative impacts on the continent, and within that, on issues and places of violence, disorder and corruption (e.g. Zimbabwe, Sudan, Angola) over other negative issues (e.g. trade imbalances, undermining domestic manufacturing sectors);
4) a tendency to portray Africans as victims or villains; and
5) a frequently complacent account of the role and interest of different western actors in Africa. Representations of Africa, China and the West First, most press reports tend to refer simply to “the Chinese”, often overlooking the fact that Chinese communities and actors in Africa are diverse in origins, roles and interests. The Chinese in Africa include longer standing and more recent diasporic communities, often engaged in small and medium business, but with a range of histories and relations with China and with their adopted African homes. Media accounts tend to focus much more strongly on Chinese state firms and agencies, as well as the more recent wave of large private enterprises (although the distinction can be blurred). But interests differ – longer term Chinese diasporic populations, the managers of Chinese companies, Chinese labourers employed by those companies, and different elements of the Chinese Government may have very different views on, for example, political stability, corporate transparency or democratic accountability. Different Chinese firms may have competing interests over what constitute desirable conditions for import/export trade or commodity extraction/manufactures. The following quote indicates competing interests that are otherwise rarely reflected in the media accounts that were analysed: “Venturing into Africa is a superficially attractive option for Chinese enterprises with limited global experience, as they can avoid the kind of competition and rules they face in markets such as the US or the European Union. But Chinese companies are also under great pressure to invest in Africa to fulfil political commitments made by China’s leaders, who provide financial incentives, including cheap loans, for them to go overseas. “First we must listen to what the country says, but we have our own company considerations” says Mr Wang of Chico, an enterprise controlled by the provincial government of Henan …[Mr Wang says] they “get criticism” from officials back home if they miss business targets, which often involve expanding overseas investment” (Financial Times, 20 June 2006: “China ventures on rocky roads to trade with Africa”).

Allied to this is a tendency to isolate Chinese firms as nationally discrete entities. In fact, joint enterprises with both African and western firms are becoming more common.

The second theme identified is the focus on oil and, to a lesser extent, natural gas and ores, over other commodities. This reflects a wider focus on the geopolitics of oil, a subject that the Iraq war and massive oil price rises have brought to the fore of western public attention. Although oil is undeniably an important issue, and a major component of Sino-Africa trade and economic growth, this is concentrated in Angola, Sudan, Nigeria, Gabon and Guinea. For many African countries, exports of fish, timber and grain, or imports of relatively cheap manufactured goods are just as important. The focus on oil lends itself to a discourse of resource competition rather than the recognition that China and the West have a range of interests and relations in Africa, including potentially complementary ones. Third is a very uneven focus on China's interests and impacts in different African nations. More positive elements tend to get less attention (debt cancellation, investment, lower commodity prices for consumers, support for a greater international voice etc), with a preferred focus on problem issues. Moreover, we find that there is a preferred focus on zones and subjects of violent conflict, corruption, genocide and authoritarian leadership, rather than, say, the less gripping images of China’s impacts on trade imbalances or under-cutting of African manufacturing sectors. The overwhelming balance of articles is on Sudan, Zimbabwe and Angola, with far less attention paid to, for example, Lesotho, which is experiencing immense hardship competing with China in textile production; or Kenya which is struggling to compete with China in the manufactured goods sector.

Fourth, within these accounts, Africans, tend to be reduced to villains (Mugabe, the Sudanese government) and victims (African populations, Darfur, the poor), an observation that fits with the findings of many other critical evaluations of the media. African agency, as leaders or ordinary citizens, workers and consumers, is rarely emphasised. Allusions to adolescence or childhood are common. Thus, discussing China’s effects on Chad:

“Chad was supposed to establish a model of good practice. But, as a western observer in the country puts it: “The risk is [following China’s oil deals] it will become an example for the worst [African] pupils” [emphasis added]. (Financial Times, 23 January 2006: “The ‘resource curse’ anew”.)

The paternalistic line that the West needs to save Africa from China’ depredations is something reflected elsewhere in the media. An extended Channel Four news report which was widely circulated and repeated, started: “To Tony Blair, Africa is somewhere which needs healing or saving and Sierra Leone gets a lot of British aid. But the Chinese are looking at the continent through different eyes. They see it as a source of raw materials, especially oil, which they need for their own development. And somewhere like Sierra Leone, fresh out of war – they think it’s ripe for trade and investment” (Lindsey Hillsum, Channel Four, 4 July 2005)

Finally, Western actors – businesses, governments, national and international development NGOs – are typically portrayed as benign within the majority of these articles and accounts. Many articles imply or state that while the West did in the past have supported authoritarian leaders, or were party to corrupt business practices, it has learnt its lesson and reformed. While colonialism was economically exploitative and morally wrong, according to many of the articles exploring China’s ‘new African safari’ or ‘new scramble for Africa’, western colonialism is claimed to at least have had a paternalistic/developmental dimension and well-intentioned elements - an attitude that has translated into an ethical concern for Africa in the postcolonial period.

Thus, in the contemporary setting, Western companies supposedly operate under a different ethical regime because of their own high convictions; labour laws; voluntary agreements as part of wider government and third sector pressure to improve business with Africa; consumer demands for more ethical production and trading; and/or shareholder pressure. None of these are said to apply to state-run or private Chinese companies. Above all, the dominant (although by no means universal, narrative) that runs through many of the articles is that the mistakes of the past have been addressed, and the West is now the architect and energiser of a new drive towards good governance and development, with aid now accompanied by ethical conditionalities, while reformed commercial practices promise investment, extraction and trade that will enhance development rather than line the pockets of kleptocratic elites. These faltering steps forward, which will be of mutual benefit to western companies and ordinary African people, are under threat from the unscrupulous Chinese. A few quotes give a flavour of these arguments: “But while the meeting [2006 FOCAC] is intended to fuel China’s global drive for resources, raw materials and markets, concerns are growing that the boosters of Beijing do not have Africa’s best interests at heart and that western countries will be cut out of future business”. (The Guardian, 1 November 2006: “Beijing’s Race for Africa”)

“There are concerns too about soft loans leading to unsustainable debt and generous aid programmes that undermine efforts to improve governance, transparency and accountability. If the World Bank and IMF say no or attach conditions, Beijing always says yes…. The [2006] Beijing Summit is a big deal for China, a deliberately showy monument to its value-free strategy. It would be absurd to claim that western greed and interest did not do enormous damage in an earlier scramble for Africa. But the age of colonialism is over. It should be accepted today that global power brings global responsibilities. Tyranny, inequality and corruption offend universal values. In the countries where it now has the ability to make a difference, China should think twice about offering its help with no strings attached”. (The Guardian, 4 November 2006: “Scrambling to Beijing: China and Africa”)

“That virtuous circle of increased assistance and better governance has been the hall mark of the approach taken, with varying degrees of success, by the West and Japan since the end of the Cold War. China now threatens to blow apart that consensus”. (The Telegraph, 26 April 2006: “The dragon in Africa”)

“Soft Chinese loans to vulnerable and corrupt African regimes, arranged outside the painstakingly agreed Equator Principles for responsible lending, risk reversing progress towards extricating such regimes from debt. … And misconceived or badly executed civil engineering projects risk irreversible environmental damage … Such a critique is valid. Coming from the West it also has a hint of the hypocritical. China’s current scramble for African energy and resources is modest compared with Europe’s scramble for African territory a century and a half ago. And China’s sometimes reckless spending only mirrors gambles by Western banks and governments in the postwar era. But now Beijing risks repeating the West’s mistakes … when it allowed massive increases in overseas aid and investment with no commensurate adjustments to its foreign policy”. (The Times, 2 November 2006: “China and Africa”)

There are undeniably elements of truth in some of this – some western companies are indeed bound by their charters, public pressure and voluntary agreements to abide by standards that can reduce their competitiveness with companies not thus circumscribed. Bilateral and multilateral initiatives on debt, trade and aid have made some advances towards greater equity and reparation of injustices. These efforts and advances should not be belittled. However, there are three main sets of problems with the imagery of a benign west being undermined by a ruthless and unscrupulous China. The first is that, despite advances, many western companies remain mired in corrupt and exploitative business practices. Without losing sight of the importance and achievements of incremental improvements in western accountability and transparency, they remain inadequate. The second problem is that of scope and scale – the West’s impact on Africa cannot be reduced to the efforts of NGOs, aid agencies or companies. We must look beyond these limited horizons to debt, unjust trade regulations, uneven power in the institutions of global governance, the ‘war on terror’, and increasingly, perhaps, climate change, to develop a better understanding of the West’s impacts on Africa. Third, ‘development’ is almost invariably coded as apolitical and positive in these articles – although interestingly such partiality and complacency tended to be situational, apparent when framed within the specific China-Africa story. Newspapers and even individual journalists who in other reports may be very critical of, for example, the halting, late and inadequate provision of medical supplies, or debt, or trade inequalities, appear to become less critical when the West is framed in the same article as China. Thus, while the Australian, French and South African companies may also be condemned for working in Zimbabwe, in none of the articles analysed were these framed in the same space as a critique of China’s business interests.

Running throughout, we can identify recurring words and phrases which are indicative of the images outlined above: China is ‘guzzling’, ‘aggressive’, an ‘economic juggernaut’, ‘insatiably’ ‘thirsty’ for oils and minerals, and ‘voraciously’ capitalist. “China is prowling the globe in search of energy sources” (Declan Walsh, 9 Nov. 2005, The Guardian, emphasis added)

“As a voracious China scours the world for minerals, no regime is off limits” (Financial Times, 12 Jan 2006: “Insatiable Beijing scours the world for profit and power”)

“[China] is ravenous for raw materials”. (The Telegraph, 26 April 2006: “The dragon in Africa”)

In an article headlined “China’s goldmine: Tony Blair and Bono see Africa as a moral cause; China sees it as a business opportunity. But is Beijing’s interest based on economic partnership – or ruthless exploitation?”, we find:

“The resurrection of Chambishi [a major Zambian copper mine] is just one small example of China’s explosion into Africa. From the barest foothold a decade ago an army of diplomats, technicians and entrepreneurs has kicked the continent’s door wide open, making Beijing a heavyweight investor and political player” (The Guardian, 28 March 2006: “China’s goldmine”, emphasis added)

This position and language stands in contrast to accounts of western FDI, which is only presented as an unambiguously positive flow. Unlike the West, the Chinese have ‘insinuated’ their way into the continent. For example:

“Quietly, while the attention of the world has been elsewhere, China has become a major player in Africa”. (The Independent, 7 September 2006: “The benefits and dangers of those gifts from the east”)

“China, which now foresees annual trade with the world’s poorest continent totalling $100 billion (£50 billion) by 2010, began stepping up its presence stealthily in Africa in the early 1990s” (The Times, 25 April 2007: “From favoured patron to target of dissenters”, emphasis added)

Dan Large, at SOAS, argues that these images are indicative of western defensiveness about ‘it’s backyard’, and can be seen as part of a wider reaction to an emerging power. The language of red dragons in the continent takes us back to the geopolitical discourses that characterised the Cold War.

Conclusions To retiterate, amongst the database of articles reviewed there were alternative perspectives and stories, critical accounts of western roles and histories, and a recognition of the complex but also positive possibilities of greater Sino-African relations. However, the themes identified above emerged as strong and pervasive scripts in British reporting on the contemporary relationships between Africa, China and the West. Africa is one place in which China and western nations, notably the US, are likely to find themselves in a position of competition, and these images and languages, both popular and policy, are significant. In a recent analysis, Andrew Still (2005) urges the importance of maintaining moderate, pragmatic and respectful language and diplomatic ‘signals’ on both sides, if we are to avoid hardening ideological dividing lines between China and the US in particular – Still talks in terms of a potential degeneration of relations that could usher in the next Cold War. He suggests that:

“ … some of the most difficult issues [between China and the US/West] lie in the realm of ideas and identity rather than the narrow economic and political interests, making them far less tractable. Not least of these will be the way in which the debate over ‘the rise of China’ is conducted in the public sphere. The limited repertoire of historical analogies on which it currently draws … creates a distorting prism through which the issue is viewed and provides a thin basis for more thoughtful analysis of how to ensure a peaceful power transition” (Still, 2005, p.3-4)

In the context of what is certain to be growing economic and political competition between China and the US (with the UK and other nations playing bit parts), including over Africa, media images and representations will play an important role in shaping public understandings, debates and political pressures. These in turn will have consequences – however negotiated or contested – for different countries, actors and interests in Africa.

* Dr. Emma Mawdsley is a lecturer in geography and Cambridge University. This article is a short version of a paper to be published in Political Geography in 2008. For a copy of the longer version, please refer to the journal, or contact the author on: [email][email protected]

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

Many people now say Kenya needs a few good men who want to serve without applause. Do we have them? Given the post-election violence in Kenya, it takes a sober, courageous person to look into the eye and the camera to say:

“I am sorry…we are sorry, we made a mistake…”

And yet, most times, these are the only words that those who have been wronged need to hear in order to return to the humane. The Kenyan situation during and after the elections warranted such words from the leaders. Instead, hollow-sounding words were spoken and we all know what followed: Loss. Death. Devastation. Shame. Greed for power, not service, did it. It destroyed the pride of the people and the humility within individuals. How can we gather the broken pieces to run a connecting thread through them? How can Kenya be whole, again? And perhaps the bigger question is, was there a ‘whole’ in the first place or it has always been splinters seemingly presented as one whole? A few African writers, in their own words, have something to say about Kenya’s elections and Africa’s political structures.

+++++

AYI KWEI ARMAH

The sort of thing happening in Kenya happened in Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, and will happen again in Cameroon, in fact, every time there's an election under the present system. The problem is structural, not circumstantial. This is not only about elections: as long as we wish to remain within colonial political structures, the source of government legitimacy will remain what it was at the Berlin conference: force plus fraud. We shed blood during elections because we serve deities made in Berlin, and they have always needed human sacrifice. Part of the Berlin political deal was that massacres of the population were routine whenever they demanded democratic rights. If we want to end the bloodshed surrounding elections, we'll have to shift to a different organizational system. It is possible, but structurally, it cannot be Ugandan or Ghanaian or Kenyan. These are Berlin constructs, even if we pretend they are African. They are not. An African system is possible and feasible. It will cost nothing in human blood, and be less expensive to maintain than the present "state" system that drinks so much blood.

BRIAN CHIKWAVA

Politicians ought to see themselves as the midwives of people's hopes and aspirations. Sadly by far their greatest crime must be their compulsive disorder to take the new baby, throw it down the pit latrine and then stand around poking each other's faces: I declare it a boy and not a girl! No it was a girl I saw it! No it was a boy! So why did you throw it away? No I didn't, you did. Ok let’s hear it from the mother? No, I will punch her face if she gets involved in matters that are beyond her grasp! And so on and so on. Hopefully, among Kenya's political elite there is someone who is brave enough to go wade through all the crap, recover the baby, reunite it with its mother and restore faith in our politics.

CHIKA UNIGWE

In 2004, I travelled to Kenya for a writing workshop and stopped off for a few days in Kisumu to visit with my sister-in-law and her family. I loved Kisumu at first glance. I remember describing it to a friend as serene. Like the sea. It reminded me of Enugu, the city where I grew up in Nigeria. Not too big. Not too small. Just the right size. The people I saw seemed to exude the same sort of calmness the city itself gave. I felt if I could live anywhere else in the world, Kisumu would be it.

I carrried that image of Kisumu in my mind until towards the end of December 2007 when the civil unrests which followed the "landslide victory" of Kibaki began. Kisumu became unearthed from its sweet calm to inhabit front-page news all over the world. Kenyans became split, not along party lines, but along cultural groups. Neighbours began to call up hatred for each other. Everyday I switch on the radio to listen to the news, there are more people, ordinary people being killed. Police dispersing protesters with machine guns. People hiding in their homes, too scared to get out.

Like Ngugi Wa Thiongo pointed out recently, this has gone beyond the rigging of elections. That is not fixed by burning churches with people in them. It is not fixed by killing children hardly old enough to vote. This has mutated into ethnic cleansing. And if we are not careful this could escalate into something more monstrous, more odious than the genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994 and from which the nation still trills.

NURUDDIN FARAH

Total abuse of the Kenyan people's confidence in themselves; distortion of the African people's faith in their future; blind daylight robbery of our trust, our self-worth. This is criminal.

CHUMA NWOKOLO

Kenya snatched the baton of electoral violence. Today, she flees with that old dog, Tribalism, snapping at her heels. Escalating deaths, fractured lives and a gloomy déjà vu: we have seen this race for life a dozen times before. It is a case of ‘two fighting’; except that the main pugilists will not draw their own blood, they draw the blood of pawns. Presently one combatant will blink and the other will cart away the prize. Then (relative) ‘peace and stability’ will return to allow the venal dogs (far preferable to these blood-thirsty hounds) to return to their haunts at the Kenyan trough.

Yet, ethnic nations (tribes if you prefer) are not the core problem any more than can be a problem to be Kenyan/Tanzanian/Ugandan. It takes a leader of Hitler’s persuasion to convert German/Aryan/Jewish identities into issues of life and death, of genocide. Across the board in Africa it is past time to criminalize recidivist leadership with the potential for genocide. Across the continent, a new fad, the ‘Blanding of Africa’ is gaining currency: the effacement of ethnic nations (Kikuyu, Nupe…) in favour of nation-states (Mali, Sudan…). It would be another signal mistake in a long sequence. Rather than erase the ancient personalities, languages and cultures of our ethnic nations, I’d far rather erase the Kenyan, Nigerian, South African borders and spill their nations and peoples into their geographic envelope…

So much for dreams!

Yet, we do have a problem when armed zombies take to the streets, seeking innocents from other tribes. Without for one moment exculpating those monsters, we need to ask who sustains, channels, manipulates, and benefits from tribalism? Those masterminds behind the machetes are the focal enemy. It is well and good to crisis-manage Kenya by seeking which of two should rule, or how the twain may share power. But the larger issue—beyond election rigging—is: which leaders are worthy of the seat of power.

In these days of geometric escalations from tribal tension to genocide, truth is, beating the tribal drum is much more inimical to the national fabric than the crime of stuffing more ballot boxes than the other chap. The first thing a national leader does, on the day after he ‘wins’ 51% of the vote, is to make a speech wooing the 49% who campaigned and voted against him. How on earth does a ‘leader’ bring on board the survivors of people he has vicariously run through with a spear?

Leaders who have blood on their hands should simply walk away. Leaders who have pounded the tribal drum should not mount the National stage. Kenya—Africa—deserves far better.

For their part, opposition leaders, like many an incumbent, often fail the Solomon Test. (When King Solomon ordered that a disputed baby be cut in two and a bloody half given to each of the contesting mothers, one of them relinquished her claim to the baby in order to save its life. The other insisted that the baby be divided. Instantly, Solomon knew the real mother.) Too many African leaders would rather burn their countries to the ground than walk away. They would rather blow up nations with the dynamite of tribal tension than articulate the policies, and invest the truly hard work of building national consensus. We should put them out of business. It is not an act of courage to fight incumbent dictators by appealing to a tribal caucus. It is an act of moral cowardice; it says: ‘I cannot win this nation, and I have no ideas, no clue, as to how to wrest power, so I’ll just knock over the barrow.’ The tribal rhetoric is now quite passé, the hallmark of leaders bereft of ideas.

Unfortunately, once a party plays the ethnic card it becomes quite hard for others to avoid getting sucked in. Tribalism is the ultimate slippery slope, greased with tragic history. Even today, it peppers European war and politics. We need leaders with a new language, a new vision and a new toolkit for power. Kenya should stop in its track right now, turn around, and stare down that dog, Tribalism, and its sundry demons. This circuit she is running is a loop that descends into hell.

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From the writer’s perspectives, it is clear no party is going to govern peacefully anywhere in Africa in old wineskins. Sagging wineskins. It would be like characters playing parts that do not suit them in a drama. Would they go on forcefully to play or they would have to stop, question the fitness, and write their own script? This is where we are. Why in this century would we be condemning our brothers and sisters to cheap deaths? We need to re-invent ourselves and redefine where we live but first, we must put aside fat egos and lust for power before we can design and embrace an all-inclusive newness.

* Mildred K Barya is Writer-in-Residence at TrustAfrica (www.trustafrica.org)

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

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