Forty-year-old Fabukuze Ulimubenchi suffered a miscarriage and lost contact with her two children after fleeing her home in troubled North Kivu province last week. "We fled in different directions when we heard gunshots. I am not even sure my [two] children are with their father," the tearful woman said as she queued up to receive aid at a Catholic church in Kiwanja, the main town in North Kivu's Rutshuru district. UNHCR is providing protection services.

The UN refugee agency's operations chief believes there is an end in sight to the problem of hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees in Tanzania. "After more than three decades, there is hope to end this protracted refugee situation," Assistant High Commissioner for Operations Judy Cheng-Hopkins said in Bujumbura on Monday at the end of a 10-day mission to Tanzania and Burundi.

A UNHCR emergency response team has been deployed to south-east Uganda where the number of Kenyan refugees fleeing poll-related violence across the border has risen to 12,000. The small refugee agency team will be based in the border town of Tororo. They will lead emergency response and coordination with the local and central authorities in the area.

Chadians who had fled to Cameroon to escape fighting between rebel and government forces started trickling back home Wednesday morning after an uneasy calm returned to the Chad capital N'Djamena. Some were returning just for the day and planning to return to Cameroon overnight. But, other residents of the capital were still making their way across the border bridge to the security of the neighbouring country.

A former Congo warlord was flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Thursday to face war crimes charges including murder, sexual slavery and using child soldiers, a court spokesman said. Mathieu Ngudjolo was the head of the Front of Nationalists and Integrationists (FPI) militia during conflict in northeast Ituri Province that grew out Congo's 1998-2003 war.

Chad's President Idriss Deby called on the European Union on Thursday to deploy a peacekeeping force urgently to the east, as his government sought to tighten security after a weekend rebel assault. Prime Minister Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew across the capital N'Djamena and swathes of east and central Chad after the remnants of the rebel column which attacked the city withdrew halfway to the Sudan border.

A militant Somali Islamist group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility on Thursday for bombings that killed at least 20 Ethiopian immigrants in a northern Somali port earlier this week. Regional officials confirmed that the al Shabaab militant group was responsible for the blasts on Tuesday night in the port of Bosasso in an area where Ethiopian immigrants congregate. Close to 100 people were wounded.

Maina Kiai makes an impassioned plea for seriousness and commitment from all actors in the pursuit for a resolution to Kenya's political crisis

Kenya is at a cross-road that will mean either the complete disintegration of Kenya or the beginning of a new, more democratic, sustainable nation suited to the needs and aspirations of the Kenyan people in the 21st Century. In a deeply painful and costly manner–in terms of lives lost and destruction wrought—the crisis in Kenya has given the country a unique opportunity to move forward in a way that we have been advocating for the last 20 years. In a sense, Kenya is at its "civil war" moment that the US was at in 1861. Just as that war was pivotal in establishing and solidifying the democratic credentials of the US, this moment could lead Kenya to much greater heights if properly handled both domestically and internationally.

In this context, the mediation currently going on under the leadership of Kofi Annan, Graca Machel and Ben Mkapa is the last best chance for Kenya to move forward. Whatever can be done to keep the players at the table, and keep them there in good faith, is critical. And efforts that delay, or subvert the talks—whether through insensitive statements and actions or by trying to prolong the talks through acts of filibustering—must be condemned. Consistent regional and international pressure is necessary especially on the hardliners who think that the crisis will blow over. The consequences of the failure of the mediation efforts are too dire to imagine not just for Kenya but for the region.

What is going on in Kenya is a political crisis with ethnic manifestation because politics in Kenya is organized ethnically. Clearly there are cleavages and differences in Kenyan society that have erupted brutally to the surface. But these have erupted due to the failure of peaceful means of resolving and addressing these differences, including the failure of elections and political reforms promised to Kenya in the 2002 elections.

The crisis in Kenya was foreseeable. In March 2007, the KNCHR submitted a memorandum to President Kibaki urging him to maintain the "gentleman's agreement" that had been in place since 1997 whereby all parliamentary parties made nominations for appointment to the Electoral Commission of Kenya. We argued that unilateral abandonment of the agreement would likely invite chaos and instability were the elections disputed. Moreover, since January 2006 we witnessed consistent attempts by the state to reduce democratic space and instil fear in society.

THE EXTENT OF THE CRISIS

Some 1000 people have been killed in the one month since violence erupted on December 30, 2007. Note that 3000 people were killed between 1992 and 1998 in the state instigated clashes in the country. During that same period, more than 300,000 people were internally displaced, most of whom have not returned to their farms and homes. In the month since the elections, an additional 300,000 people have been internally displaced.

Part of the reason why militia—on both sides—have been so potent and dangerous is that they arose from the earlier violence of the 1990s and were never de-mobilized. Nor was there a process to deal with the root causes of that violence, with the Kibaki government choosing to sweep the matter under the carpet, despite campaign promises to the contrary. With grievances bubbling and fermenting close to the surface, it was relatively easy to reactivate the militia using methods similar to those of the 1990s. Most important, the paymasters and planners of the 1990s clashes were never held accountable.

It is estimated that in the month since the crisis started the Kenyan economy has lost about US $3 billion and about 400,000 jobs. Moreover the crisis has severely affected the economies of Uganda, Rwanda, Eastern DR Congo, and Southern Sudan and could bring them to ruin if not checked. All these nations have a history of conflict and violence that could be reawakened by economic collapse.

We have observed 4 forms of violence:

i) Spontaneous uprisings of mobs protesting the flaws in the presidential elections. These mobs looted, raped and burnt down buildings in an anarchical manner.

ii) Violence organized by ODM-supporting militia in the Rift Valley that was aimed at perceived political opponents. The initial militia action attracted organized counter-violence from PNU supporters especially in Nakuru, Naivasha areas of the Rift Valley, and Nairobi.

iii) Excessive use of force by the police in ways suggesting "shoot to kill" orders against unarmed protesters mainly in ODM strongholds including Kisumu, Kakamega, Migori, and the Kibera slum of Nairobi. Policing has been uneven in its implementation. In some strong ODM areas, the police have been shooting to kill, while when confronted with pro-PNU militia, they have opted to negotiate with the groups. However, in the Eldoret area, the police largely stood by and watched as pro-PNU supporters were killed and their houses burnt.

iv) Local militia in pro-PNU areas, on receiving internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the Rift Valley, have mobilized in sympathy and turned on perceived ODM supporters, killing them, and burning their houses.

The violence is neither genocide nor ethnic cleansing: The root of the problem is not that different ethnic groups decided they could no longer live together. The root of the problem is the inability of peaceful means to address grievances. For this to be genocide there would have to be either state complicity or state collapse and the first obligation would be for the state to provide adequate security for those at risk. Instead we have uneven and selective policing with emphasis on preventing Raila Odinga from holding protests in Nairobi rather than protecting IDPs and others at risk across the country. We therefore believe that the quickest and most effective way to reduce the violence is progress in the current talks.

THE ELECTION TRIGGER

It is clear that the flagrant effort to steal the presidential election was the immediate trigger for the violence. All independent observers have said that the tallying process was so flawed that it is impossible to tell who won the presidential election. Since 1992, Kenya's elections have been progressively better and fairer, culminating in the 2002 elections which were the best ever, and the 2005 constitutional referendum. The effect of this progression is that Kenyans finally believed in the power of the vote as a way of peacefully resolving differences, a fact confirmed by voting trends in the recent parliamentary elections that saw almost 70 percent of incumbents lose their seats. When this sense of empowerment was subverted, and peaceful legal spaces for protests were disallowed, it is not surprising that frustrations boiled over and violence ensued.

We have documented some of the facts and analysis that make clear that the flaws in the tallying of presidential votes rendered untenable the conclusion that Mwai Kibaki was validly elected.

With the benefit of hindsight, there were steps taken that paint a picture of a well orchestrated plan to ensure a pre-determined result. These include:

i) President Kibaki's decision to abrogate the agreement of 1997 on the formula for appointments to the Electoral Commission ensuring that all the Commissioners were appointed by him alone; ii) An administrative decision within the ECK to give responsibility to Commissioners for their home regions, something that had never been done before, meaning that they appointed all the election officials in the constituencies in their home regions, in a manner that created conflicts of interest; iii) The rejection of an offer from IFES to install a computer program that would enable election officials in the constituencies to submit results electronically to Nairobi and then on to a giant screen available to the public making it virtually impossible to change results; iv) A decision to abandon the use of ECK staff in the Verification and Tallying Centre in favour of casual staff provided by the Commissioners directly; and v) A refusal to ensure that election officials in areas with large predictable majorities for any of the candidates came from different areas so as to reduce the likelihood of ballot stuffing.

WAY FORWARD AND ROLE OF US CONGRESS AND GOVERNMENT

At this "constitutional moment" that Kenya has reached, we believe the way forward must be centred on truth and justice as the only sustainable road to peace and development. This is the time for Kenya to end the impunity that has been a feature of our history since independence, and also to end the "winner take all" "first past the post" system. Specifically, we call for:

i) An international independent investigation into the 2007 presidential election process in order to come to closure on the elections, find out who did what and why; who ordered it; and promote accountability; ii) An international independent investigation into the post election violence—from citizens and police–so that there is accountability on all sides.

iii) An interim transitional government to be formed with limited powers of governance and for a limited time–between 1 and 2 years—with Kibaki and Odinga exercising equal powers.

iv) The primary duties of this interim government should be to undertake constitutional reform, and especially explore ways of reforming the current Imperial Presidency; motivate electoral reforms, police reforms, judicial reforms, land reforms, civil service reforms, devolution of power; and conduct new elections at the end of its term.

v) The interim government should also be charged with cooling passions and starting the process of reconciliation through a Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission that starts operations immediately after the new elections. It is important that presidential elections be held at the end of the interim government to inspire confidence in Kenya's electoral processes, and as a sign of the new Kenya.

vi) It is also important to note that significant work in all of these areas of reform has already been done in various constitutional drafts and also by Government Commissions and Task Forces so Kenya would not be starting from scratch.

To ensure that there is good faith in the mediation it is imperative that the U.S. Government work with the rest of the international community to maintain pressure on Kenya's leaders to treat the mediation with utmost seriousness. To this end, we welcome U.S .leadership in raising the crisis in Kenya at the UN Security Council, and call for pressure at this level to be maintained and increased.

We also urge Congress to request the release of the exit poll conducted by International Republican Institute (IRI) without delay so as to maintain pressure on all sides to negotiate in good faith. In addition, we urge Congress to work with the EU to have the EU Observation Mission Report released immediately.

In case of continued intransigence from any of the parties we call on Congress to impose travel bans on the hardliners on both sides and especially those implicated in instigating violence whether through militia or through the police. These travel bans should extend to hardliners in the civil service and to their immediate families.

Moreover, assets of the hardliners and those involved in violence should be traced and the assets frozen.

Finally, it is important that U.S. military and security assistance be frozen immediately. All US assistance to Kenya should be channelled through non-governmental sources.

* Maina Kiai is the Chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), an independent state body charged with protecting and promoting human rights in Kenya. He writes on behalf of the KNCHR, as well as for Kenyans for Peace through Truth and Justice (KPTJ), a coalition bringing together more than 50 human rights, legal and governance groups in Kenya

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

Owen Sichone responds to Pius Adesanmi on the issue of black South Africa's xenophobia towards other Africans

I was quite amazed by Pius Adesanmi's description of South African xenophobia mainly because it was such a non-African perspective. At the end I was left thinking "They've got you my brother, they've got you."

Everyone knows that xenophobia is a problem in South Africa so there is no need to differ with him on that point. However, the Biafran war alone should prove that xenophobia in Nigeria has a presence, even without mentioning the mass expulsion of the Ghanaian teachers and other guest workers once upon a time.
In a paper celebrating the cosmopolitan nationalism of the FRELIMO fighters he had visited in the liberated zones of pre-independence Mozambique, Yoweri Museveni (then a student at the University of Dar es salaam contrasted this revolutionary nationalism with the tribalism of the Ugandan peasants and Makerere intelligentsia:

"The peasants in western region of Uganda, for instance will refer to people from the Northern region of the country as Banyamahanga (foreigners) or as Abadokori (somebody whose language is not intelligible). (Y.T. Museveni 1972. 'Fanon's Theory of Violence: Its Verification in Liberated Mozambique' Department of Political Science, University of Dar es Salaam) so there. It is not only the South Africans who call foreigners babblers or barbaroi. And it is not always an insult either, but that is a topic for another discussion. It does not seem that anyone, either on the street, the taxis or KFC outlet called him Ikwerekwere but he nevertheless describes it quite well:

"… we took a bus and headed back to Georges Hérault's residence. I still don't know what it was about us that gave us away as foreigners but the other passengers, all Blacks, lapsed into an uneasy silence as soon as we entered. I looked at the faces around us and thought I saw hostility." I do not doubt that he saw something that looked like hostility but why didn't he say Sani bonani nonke" and see if anybody would bother to return his greeting? Is that not what we do in Africa?

"The tension was so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife. Harry confirmed my worst fears when we left the bus. I had just experienced, firsthand, South African xenophobia and I was to experience it again and again throughout my three-month sojourn in that country. Harry explained to me – with the coolness of someone used to it - that the Black South African passengers on the bus had identified us as makwerekwere, hence the naked hostility." Yes they have got you. They have got you so bad that you are paranoid. In contrast when Adewale Maja-Pearce came to Johannesburg he was not jumpy and do you know why? Because he was not wearing American blinkers. If he had not been intimidated by Lagos, he reasoned, nothing that Jozi could throw at him would shake him. Oyinbo man needs to look at Africa with the Open Minds that Fela once sang about and not fear his own shadow.

In many accounts of the Rwandan and Burundian genocides, killers have discovered that they killed one of their own would lament: "We thought he was Hutu" or "He looked like a Tutsi" and judging identity by the appearance method is unreliable – to the say the least but so is judging hostility by level of fear felt.
Yes Makwerekwere is the derogatory term used by Black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks but amaXhosa may also call Basotho the same, and vice versa. Yes Black immigrants from the rest of Africa, are called makwerekwere but NOT especially Nigerians who are put both by police and citizens into a special category, one that evokes fear. But judging Nigerians by their appearance (tall and dark) or their favourite activity (419 activities of one sort or another) will invariably yield Cameroonians, Ivorians and Liberians etc.

So why is Pius "confounded by the fact that Black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own kaffirs so soon after apartheid" ? Like the Biafrans, they have been let done by their leaders. Just look at post-elections Kenya and see the petty bourgeois selfishness that Museveni criticised in his own country and you will understand that South African leaders have not just keep silent about the support they received from the Frontline States (including Nigeria) but that they have not shared the national cake equitably. The inherited Brazilian style gap between rich and poor always creates violence in society. There is still apartheid in post apartheid South Africa and it is not just the foreign Africans who suffer. Indeed the Nigerian doctors and other professionals are more likely to be beneficiaries of the end of the apartheid system than the poor workers whose factories closed down because of the flood of cheaper Chinese goods onto a previously protected market and now have no hope of ever earning wages again.
So let us not portray South Africans as ignorant, ungrateful or just bloodthirsty. The only way to reverse xenophobia, whether in Nigeria, Russia or South Africa is by exposing its roots in social inequalities and joining the struggle against social injustice.

* Dr. Owen Sichone is a professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, at the University of Cape Town

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

Four prominent members of the Chadian opposition have been arrested by security forces in N’Djamena. The whereabouts of Lol Mahamat Choua, Ngarlejy Yorongar, Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, and Wadel Adbelkader Kamougué remain unknown since their arrest on Sunday. Amnesty International has received information suggesting they may be detained at the city's presidential palace. No legal justification has been given by the authorities for their arrest. A spokesperson at the Presidency told Amnesty International on Tuesday that "they can not confirm whether these four people have been arrested."

People in drought-affected regions of central and southern Somalia need urgent help after losing most of their livestock, the deputy prime minister and minister of information, Ahmed Abdisalam, told IRIN on 30 January. "The reports we are getting are that the drought-affected areas are in a grave situation, with shortages of water, inadequate pasture for remaining livestock and the consequent destitution of many families," Abdisalam said.

The government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have resumed talks aimed at ending the 22-year conflict in northern Uganda and agreed to extend by a month the cessation of hostilities deal signed in August 2007. The talks, in the Southern Sudanese town of Juba, are being attended by observers from the US, the UN, European Union and several African states.

Tiophelis spends his days running. He won't say exactly where, but, like hundreds of other boys and men in the creeks of Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region, he is constantly on the move for fear of attacks by the Nigerian military. The soft-spoken boy’s voice cracks over the phone - Tiophelis refuses to meet in person. He is a militant, a member of one of countless groups that claim to be fighting for freedom from poverty, underdevelopment, and political oppression for the people in the Niger Delta region.

France's foreign minister has said that his country was at fault politically in Rwanda, but bore no "military responsibility" for the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed. Bernard Kouchner arrived in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, on Saturday on brief trip aimed at improving relations between the two countries.

There are no international standards and treaties governing the import, export and transfer of arms. Some states and regional bodies, such as the European Union (EU), have policies and legislation regulating the trade in arms. This paper, employing a comparative case study approach, seeks to analyse the monitoring and enforcement of UN arms embargoes in Africa. Case Studies include Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and Somalia.

The number of Congolese refugees repatriated from Tanzania with UNHCR help has passed the 50,000 mark. The milestone was reached on Tuesday when the chartered ferry, MV Mwongozo, left the port of Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika with 184 returnees on board. Kengeta Kiza was officially designated the 50,000th Congolese refugee repatriated by the UN refugee agency since October 2005, when UNHCR launched the voluntary programme.

A young Somali refugee has been honoured with a prestigious United States government award for her courageous work in fighting for the rights of women and girls in a Kenyan refugee camp. Farhiyo Ibrahim Farah is one of 10 recipients of this year's International Women of Courage Award. The 25-year-old is recognized for her work in Dadaab refugee camp, where she promotes an end to forced marriages and female genital mutilation, better treatment for rape victims and more education for Somali girls in her highly conservative and patriarchal society.

The letters came within two days of each other. The first was an invitation from Professor Georges Hérault, Director of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS). Three years after my last visit to South Africa to assess the perception of Francophone African literatures in that country’s Universities, IFAS was again inviting me as visiting scholar. The second was from Chris Dunton, the well-known British Professor of African literatures who is now Chair of the English Department of the National University of Lesotho at Roma.

Chad's army fought to hold off advancing rebels 100 km (60 miles) from the capital N'Djamena on Friday and the renewed combat delayed the deployment of European peacekeepers to the central African country. Up to 3,700 European Union troops were due to arrive in coming weeks on an urgent peacekeeping mission to eastern Chad, but anti-government rebels pre-empted the deployment with a lightning offensive this week towards the capital in the west.

South African police on Wednesday raided the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg that has been sheltering Zimbabwean refugees, asylum seekers and homeless people. Some of the police were heavily armed as they stormed the church compound around midnight, claiming they were searching for drugs and guns. Although they found nothing they arrested 1500 homeless people. Many have been released without charge but an estimated 300-500 are still in police cells. They are due to appear in court on Friday.