The intricately detailed report, commissioned by President Kibaki after his 2002 election victory but later suppressed, forensically investigates corrupt transactions and holdings by several powerful members of the Kenyan elite. The figures in the report sum to billions of US Dollars - comparable in magnitude to the looting of infamous kleptocrats such as Mobutu (Zaire), Marcos (Philippines), Abacha (Nigeria), Suharto (Indonesia) and Fujimori (Peru). The leaked material is extremely politically sensitive. Ex-President Moi has become a key player in political life in Kenya, and is now an essential pillar in President Kibaki's campaign for re-election in December 2007.

South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says science and technology should not be viewed as "elitist" but rather as sectors whose growth can spearhead Africa's development. The Deputy President was addressing the first African Union (AU) Conference of African Women in Science and Technology.

Despite the worst harvest in the country's recorded history and the aftermath of fires that destroyed crops and plantations, Swaziland's appeals for international assistance are falling on deaf donor ears. In July UN agencies appealed for US$18 million to feed about 40 percent of Swaziland's one million people, who are facing acute food shortages. So far, only $3.1 million has been forthcoming, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

A report released by Partnership Africa Canada in Ottawa, and Green Advocates in Liberia outlines out the huge post-war challenges facing the new government of Liberia. Liberia had gone through a 14-year brutal civil war, which was fuelled mainly by looted natural resources. The West African country is blessed with natural resources, but the country remains one of the poorest and least developed places on earth, with an average per capita income of US $152 per annum and 40% adult illiteracy. Most Liberians die before they attain 40 years.

A constitutional council in Senegal yesterday confirmed a landslide by the ruling Senegalese Democratic Party of President Abdoulaye Wade in the 19 August senatorial polls. The council confirmed that ruling polled 34 of the 35 senatorial seats in what it called an open contest. A single seat was won by an opposition And-Jef/African Party for Democracy and Socialism (AJ/PADS).

Trends in bribe paying and rent seeking in Kenya have changed over the last six years despite the still significantly low willingness of Kenyans to report corruption cases. This is the resounding conclusion of the Kenya Bribery Index 2007, launched recently by Transparency International. Although some sectors have seen reform and a decline in bribe-paying, the Kenyan public still bears a huge cost. “This survey shows that while bribery is reducing in some sectors, the mwananchi still bears the largest brunt of corruption. In the legal arena, bribery is being channelled through the bar.

The United Nations is short of aviation, transport and logistic personnel necessary for the functioning of a new force of up to 26,000 troops and police in Sudan's Darfur region, according to a report issued on Thursday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who issued the report, said the Aug. 31 deadline for troop contributors would have to be extended because "offers are still lacking for some critical military capabilities."

Thirty-three political parties have fielded candidates for Morocco's September 7th legislative elections, according to a Magharebia report. Two additional parties, Annahj Addimocrati (The Democratic Path) and the Moroccan Amazigh Democratic Party, plan to boycott the poll. Founded in 1995, Annahj Addimocrati has never taken part in an election. Its main ally, the Parti de l'Avant-garde Democratique et Socialiste (Avant-garde Democratic and Socialist Party, or PADS) has ended its own boycott of the elections and will run for the first time since its creation in 1984.

Kenya’s president Mwai Kibaki got a boost when influential former leader Daniel Moi publicly endorsed him as the best choice for president in the upcoming election slated for December. In a move seen as sidelining fireband politician Raila Odinga, the leader of the popular Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the former president insisted Kibaki should be handed a second term.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/authors/Grada_Kilomba.jpgGrada Kilomba analyses hierachies of race and gender with respect to the privileging of authority, scholarship and knowledge production. 'Academia is not a neutral location', she says. 'This is a white space where Black people have been denied the privilege to speak... It is not that we have not been speaking; but rather that our voices - through a system of racism - have been systematically disqualified as valid knowledge; or else represented by whites, who ironically become the 'experts' of ourselves. Either way, we are locked in a violent colonial hierarchy.' Derived from her experiences of working in Germany, her comments are widely applicable to debates about academia, identity, power, the centre and the periphery.

Every semester, on the very first day of my seminar, I play a quiz with my students. We first count how many people are in the room in order to see how many of us will be able to answer the questions. I start by asking very simple questions such as: What was the Berlin Conference of 1884-5? Which African countries were colonised by Germany? How many years did German colonisation over the continent of Africa last? I conclude with more specific questions, such as: Who was Queen Nzinga and which role did she play on the struggle against European colonisation? Who wrote Black Skin, White Masks? Who was May Ayim?

Not surprisingly, most of the white students are unable to answer the questions, while the Black students answer most of them successfully. Suddenly, those whose knowledge has been hidden, become visible, while those who have been over-represented become unnoticed and invisible. Those who are usually silent start speaking, while those who always speak become silent. Silent, not because they cannot articulate their voices or tongues, but rather because they do not possess the knowledge.

This exercise makes us understand how the concepts of knowledge and the idea of what scholarship or science is, are intrinsically linked with power and racial authority. What knowledge is being acknowledged as such? And what knowledge is not? Who is acknowledged to have the knowledge? And who is not? And who can teach knowledge? And who cannot? Who is at the centre? And who remains outside, at the margins? So, who can indeed speak in the academy? And who cannot?

Academia is not a neutral location. This is a white space where Black people have been denied the privilege to speak. Historically, this is a space where we have been voiceless, a space we could not enter. Here, white scholars have developed theoretical discourses which formally constructed us as the inferior Other - placing Africans in absolute subordination to the white subject. We were made the objects, but we have rarely been the subjects.

This position of object, which we commonly occupy, does not indicate a lack of resistance or of interest, as it is commonly believed, but rather a lack of access to representation by Blacks themselves. It is not that we have not been speaking; but rather that our voices - through a system of racism - have been systematically disqualified as valid knowledge; or else represented by whites, who ironically become the 'experts' of ourselves. Either way, we are locked in a violent colonial hierarchy.

As a scholar, for instance, I am commonly told that my work is very interesting, but not really scientific; a remark which illustrates the colonial hierarchy in which Black scholars reside: 'you have a very subjective perspective'; 'very personal'; 'very emotional'; 'very specific'; 'are these objective facts?'.

Within such masterful descriptions, the discourses and perspectives of Black scholars remain always at the margins - as deviating, while white discourses occupy the centre. When they speak it is scientific, when we speak it is unscientific.

Universal/specific; objective/subjective; neutral/personal; rational/emotional; impartial/partial; they have facts, we have opinions; they have knowledge, we have experiences.

These are not simple semantic categorisations. They own a dimension of power which maintains hierarchical positions and upheld white supremacy. We are not dealing here with a 'peaceful coexistence' of words, but rather with a violent hierarchy, which defines who can speak.

We have been speaking and producing independent knowledge for a long time. But when groups are unequal in power, they are also unequal in their access to the resources which are necessary to implement their own voices (Collins 2000). And because we lack control over such structures, the articulation of our own perspective outside the group becomes extremely difficult, if not unrealisable.

Moreover, the structures of knowledge validation, which define what true and valid scholarship is, are controlled by white scholars. So, as long as Black people and 'people of colour' are denied positions of authority and command within the academy, the idea of what science and scholarship are, prevails, of course, intact - it remains an exclusive and unquestionable 'property' of whiteness.

So, it is not an objective scientific truth that we encounter in the academy, but rather the result of unequal power race relations, which define what counts as true and in whom to believe. The themes, the paradigms and the methodologies of traditional scholarship - the so called epistemology - reflect nothing but the specific political interests of a white colonial patriarchal society.

Epistemology derives from the Greek words: episteme=knowledge and logos=science, the science of the acquisition of knowledge. It determines, therefore, which questions merit being questioned (themes), how to analyse and explain a phenomenon (paradigms), and how to conduct research to produce knowledge (methods). And in this sense, it defines not only what true scholarship is; but also in whom to believe and trust, because who is defining which questions merit being asked? And who is asking them? Furthermore to whom are the answers directed?

Interesting, but unscientific, but subjective, but personal, but emotional and partial, 'you do over-interpret', said a colleague, 'you must think you are the queen of interpretation'. Such comments, reveal that the endless need to control the Black subject's voice and the longing to govern and to command how we approach and interpret reality. By using these remarks, the white subject is assured of her sense of power, and of her own authority over a group which she is labelling as 'less knowledgeable.'

The last comment, in particular, gives two powerful insights. The first is a form of warning which describes the standpoint of the Black woman as a distortion of the truth, expressed here through the word 'over-interpretation'. The female colleague was warning me that I am over-reading, beyond the norms of traditional epistemology, and therefore, that I am producing invalid knowledge. It seems to me that this idea of over-interpretation addresses the thought that the oppressed is seeing 'something' which should not be seen, and is about to say 'something' which should not be said. 'Something' which should be kept quiet, as a secret - like the secrets of colonialism that most of my students could not answer.

Curiously, in feminist discourses as well, men try to irrationalise the thinking of women, as if such feminist interpretations were nothing but a fabrication of the reality, an illusion, maybe even a female hallucination.

Within this constellation it is the white woman who irrationalises my thinking, and by doing so, she defines to the Black woman what 'real' scholarship is, and how it should be expressed. This reveals how complex the intersection between gender, 'race' and colonial power is, and how the idea of a unitary category of women based on the assumption of an absolute patriarchy which divides the world into powerful men and subordinate women is problematic: for it neglects white women's role as oppressors and the reality of oppression experienced by both Black women and Black men.

In the second instance, she speaks then of hierarchical places, of a queen she fantasises I want to be, but who I cannot become. The queen is an interesting metaphor. It is a metaphor for power. A metaphor, also of the idea that certain bodies belong to certain places: a queen or a king naturally belong to the palace of knowledge, but not the plebeians; they can never achieve the position of royalty. They are sealed in their own subordinate bodies. Such a demarcation of spaces introduces a dynamic in which Blackness signifies 'being outside place'. I am told to be outside my place, for I cannot be the queen, only the plebeian. My body is improper. Within racism, Black bodies are constructed as improper bodies 'outside place', while white bodies are always proper, they are bodies at home, 'in place', bodies which belong. The same way in academia, in which Black scholars are persistently invited to return to 'their place', at the margins, where our bodies are at home and where they are proper.

Such dynamic reveals how dominant scholarship performs a fruitful combination of power, intimidation and control, which succeeds in silencing oppressed voices. Fruitful indeed, for after this last episode I remember I stopped writing for more than a month. I became temporarily voiceless. I had a 'white-out', was waiting for a Black-in.

Speaking about these positions of marginality evokes, of course, pain. They are reminders of the places we can hardly enter. The places we never 'arrive' at or 'can't stay' in (Hooks 1990). Such pain must be spoken and theorised. It must have a place within discourse, because we are not dealing here with 'private information'. Such apparent 'private information' is not private at all. These are not personal stories or intimate complains; but rather, accounts of racism. They mirror the historical, political and social realities of 'race relations' within the academic spaces, and should be articulated in both theory and methodology.

Such experiences confirm that academia is not a neutral space. It is not only a space of knowledge and wisdom, of science and scholarship, but also a space of violence. This violence remains as long as we remain outside at the margins, while white others are inside the centre, speaking in our own name. That is the essence of the violence - the violence of always being placed as the white subject's 'Other', who defines how to speak.

Therefore, I call for an epistemology which includes the personal, the subjective and the emotional. For as I mentioned earlier, there is no neutral, no objective no rational. Only the results of specific political interests of a white colonial patriarchy. Besides, once we find our voices, as Black writers, it is impossible to speak or to write disembodied of such emotions, of such passion or pain, because we are transgressing sorrowful boundaries. We are moving from the margins to the centre.

This is in remembrance of our ancestors.

Grada Kilomba is writer, researcher and psychologist from the West African Islands of Sao Tomé e Príncipe. Having studied clinical psychology and psychoanalysis in Lisbon, she is living and working in Berlin, Germany where she researches and writes within the area of cultural studies.

She is a guest lecturer at the Berlin Humboldt and Freie universities in the gender studies and psychology departments respectively. In her research and teaching, she focuses predominantly on psychoanalysis, slavery, colonialism, trauma and memory.

This article is based on a presentation she gave at an AfricAvenir dialogue-forum in May 2007 at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin.

References:

Collins, Patricia Hill (2000), Black Feminist Thought. Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Hooks, Bell (1990), Yearning. Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press.

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

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concern about the rising tensions and violence over the past week in Sierra Leone, which earlier this month held its first presidential and parliamentary polls since United Nations peacekeepers departed in 2005. “He calls on all parties and their leaders to do everything necessary to prevent the situation from escalating,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

Deploring clashes among opposing factions of the armed forces in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the vast country has said that it is fully committed to helping find a peaceful solution to protect civilians from further violence.

This programme considers net outflows of financial assets from Africa, the region with the fastest growth of millionaires in the world; and how the tax burden is being pushed back on to those who can least afford to pay.

Most Africans are poor. Everyone knows that. But they needn't be. On current estimates, for every dollar of aid that flows into Africa, five dollars of financial assets flow out into private bank accounts in the rich world. Money that's never taxed. Africa has the fastest growth of millionaires in the world, but the burden for building much needed infrastructure keeps on getting pushed back to those who can least afford to pay. In what is emerging as a major social justice issue for this decade, the programme's guests challenge the accountants and politicians of the world to 'go figure!'

Leslie Mullin reports from Haiti, a 'deeply African country', where, after Aristide, there is 'a deliberate and violent attempt to reverse a truly democratic effort that stood firmly for the poor majority...a violent, brutal counter-insurgency, a counter-revolution', blame for which she lays at the door of the US and the UN.

The experience of travelling to Haiti is amazing, because Haiti is so deeply an African country and people. The first time I was there, three years ago, I was astounded by the sights and sounds of Haiti which are so resonant of West Africa: the market women; the young girls riding donkeys in the countryside, huge baskets on their heads; the vigour of massive demonstrations - the pounding rhythmic feet, visions of Soweto. Everywhere in the darkened poor city neighbourhoods at night, without electricity, in their cinderblock houses stacked on top of each other rising up hillsides, people sing, blast radio music, play instruments.

It is my privilege to have travelled on two trips to Haiti with fiercely political Black activists who have embraced Haiti as a cherished symbol of liberation to African people everywhere. They evoke deep bonds of shared experience among African people of Haiti and America, who came on the same slave ships. They point out that the same people who are killing and oppressing Haiti's people left Black people to die by the thousands in New Orleans after Katrina, and now attempt to steal their land. Haiti's grassroots movement recognises this powerful bond among the two peoples. Everywhere we spoke about the San Francisco 8 or about New Orleans. Lavalas activists sent a message of solidarity.

It is taking things out of context to try to talk about what exists in Haiti now without acknowledging what was achieved by Haiti's grassroots movement under Aristide. Because it is not just that things are bad right now, but that what is happening is a deliberate and violent attempt to reverse a truly democratic effort that stood firmly for the poor majority. It is a violent, brutal counter-insurgency, a counter-revolution.

For a brief moment, after decades of dictatorship and a long history of resistance, Haitians achieved the dream of social justice and freedom. The poor had power. During that brief period of time, there were no boat people leaving Haiti. During that brief period of time, massive projects were undertaken to support the poor. The goal was to move Haiti's people from misery to poverty with dignity. Beautiful public parks were built in poor neighbourhoods; schools, health clinics, a medical school; micro-loans to market women and literacy projects flourished. During that brief period, poor street kids swam in the presidential pool; Haitian legal teams held Truth Commissions, took on the tonton macoutes. Death squads who had terrorised, tortured and killed thousands, were prosecuted and imprisoned.

This is why Aristide is so revered in Haiti. As one Lavalas activist put it, Aristide never gave up; he stood up to the Western powers, and fought for those who cannot speak. He is a symbol of hope and democracy for Haitians.

What we found in Haiti now are activists struggling everywhere to resist the renewed assaults on Haiti's poor, to move in a period once again dominated by foreign guns, foreign economic clout and terrorism. 24,000 march on Aristide's birthday; a transport workers' strike blocks roads and shuts down traffic throughout the country. 50 grassroots activists, the elderly women in dresses and straw hats, mark the 92nd anniversary of the 1915 US invasion in a spirited protest at UN headquarters. We are there to see the dozens of heavily armed UN troops aligned against them, ensignia marking their countries of origin - Sri Lanka, Jordan, Philippines, France, Bolivia, and among the unmarked Westerners, surely Americans. The Haitians are undeterred - chanting, yelling, dancing, singing, photo displays of UN and other coup victims prominent.

Why must the poor be shot down by UN troops in Cite Soleil? Why are the market women beaten, even killed, by petty bureaucrats and police thugs to drive them off the streets, why burn the markets and deprive them of their meagre income? Why must armed thugs storm into a school of 700 poor children, headed by Lavalas activists, breaking the blackboards, desks, drinking fountain - the few artifacts needed to teach those who could not afford $100 a month to go to school? Why must their teacher be beaten? Why must prisons be filled with those who fight for democracy, starving on diets of foreign white rice, deprived of clean water to drink, sleeping in shifts in stifling cells built for 20, housing 80? Why must life be nearly impossible - transport workers up against heavy license fees and fuel costs, telephone workers laid off? Why?

Because Haitians are a deeply political people; they have tasted democracy; they insist on their human rights. Western powers cannot enforce their elite, global agenda on Haiti unless they can contain this massive popular movement and destroy its righteous vision.

Here is what Randall Robinson says in his new book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of President:

'What was it, though, about Haiti that made the place so different from other Caribbean places, so especially combustible? What property, what special character did it have that would incite the rich white West to engage a poor, largely black nation with such glowering, unrelenting hostility...The Haitians knew their history. The Haitian peasants may have had few material possessions to speak of, but they knew what their slave ancestors had done to the French, to the English and to the Spanish. They also knew what they had done to liberate all of Latin America, as well as themselves. No matter how poor they were, the Haitians knew these things about themselves, things that made them special to themselves, that made them resilient and independent, that gave them great art, that unsettled, even now, those nations the peasants' slave ancestors had once soundly thrashed.'

US 'low-intensity' warfare is so termed, not because it is mild, but because it comes under the radar of the American people, as does mostly anything having to do with Haiti. What did the UN come to do in Haiti? As one Lavalas activist put it, they came to make the country go backwards. They spend $500 million a year to maintain UN troops - money that could provide water, schools, healthcare for Haiti but instead the UN does nothing for Haiti.

What do the Haitian people want from us? They want our solidarity. They want us to expose and mobilise people against what is happening. They want us to demand the UN mandate in Haiti not be renewed; to support the return of Aristide to Haiti; oppose privatisation; to insist on freedom for Haiti's political prisoners.

* Leslie Mullin is a long-time San Francisco-Bay Area human rights activist who returned in late July 2007 from a week-long Haiti Action Committee delegation to visit Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. The delegation met with organisers across the breadth of Haiti's grassroots movement.

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

In August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans leaving unparalleled devastation in its wake. The Black communities bore its full weight. More than 1,000,000 people, mainly poor Blacks, were forcibly dispersed across the US. The US government had neither prepared nor mobilised to evacuate thousands of people displaced from their homes. Two years on, if the US government had its way, it would bury the issue. But a coalition of grassroots Gulf Coast organisations and their supporters throughout the world have organised an international tribunal to try the US government for human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

Why a tribunal is necessary

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast leaving death and unparalleled devastation in its wake. The poor Black communities of New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama bore the full weight of the storms and floods. Local, state and federal governments had at least four days advance notice that the levees did not have the capacity to contain mass flooding expected from a category three hurricane. Yet, despite these warnings, the US government had neither prepared for evacuation, nor mobilised to evacuate thousands of people displaced from their homes and left to die on their roofs and in the rubble of the devastation.

In the face of this abandonment, the population of New Orleans took their survival into their own hands and neighbour-to-neighbour attempted to save lives and reach secure ground. In the chaos of their own incompetence and racist rumors, local, state and federal governments sent military and mercenary personnel to New Orleans. They launched a military invasion aimed at removing the Black population and containing a potential rebellion, rather than sending a relief effort. New Orleans became a battle zone between government and mercenary forces seeking to 'protect' the white neighbourhoods of the city and the surrounding suburbs from the Black mass fleeing the floods and seeking refuge from the disaster and race induced neglect. Dozens were murdered and arrested by various government forces and mercenaries as the media fuelled and justified human rights abuses by their unfounded, later to be found completely untrue, reports of mass looting and rape.

To this day, the government has produced no accurate count of the number of people killed. What is known is that some 1,000,000, mainly poor Black people, were forcibly dispersed to over 44 states across the US. They herded people onto buses and trains at gunpoint, separating mothers, children, grandmothers and cousins. They uprooted and separated families, friends, neighbours and support networks, and violently ripped apart the social fabric of peoples lives in order to transform the ethnic and racial make up of New Orleans and the region forever.

Over the past two years, the US government has fundamentally ignored the plight of the more than 1,000,000 people directly impacted and displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. When the government has been pressed to answer for its actions, it has ducked and dodged and basically washed its hands of any responsibility or liability. While the Army Corp of Engineers acknowledged its responsibility for the faulty and racially discriminatory design and maintenance of the New Orleans levee system, the government has not corrected its errors, nor provided restitution or recourse for its fatal policies. The net result of the systematic policies of intentional neglect and depraved indifference being executed in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is ethnic cleansing of the historic and politically strategic Black communities in the region.

This ethnic cleansing is being conducted through a deliberate and strategic collusion of government and multinational corporations, particularly real estate developers. In complete violation of the human right to return and the statutes on internal displacement adopted by the US government as outlined in its USAID policies, the government has made no policy, or financial provisions, to return displaced people to their homes and communities. Delays in rehabilitating and refortifying the region's infrastructure, including the levees and the provision of utilities like water and power, and services like health care and education have, by design, prevented people from exercising their right to return.

Then there is the diversion, mismanagement, profiteering by disaster capitalists and delay of relief and restorative aid by agencies like FEMA and the Red Cross. These are compounded by a ruthless application of neoliberal free-market logic and policy and systemic racism in the insurance, mortgage, and other money lending industries that deny financial resources to Black and working class families to repair their homes, purchase new ones, or make down-payments on rentals. Add to this skyrocketing and super-exploitative rents, the hyper-promotion of gentrification, the demonisation and criminalisation of Black youth and the homelessness, and an oppressive military occupation in New Orleans. The results are the massive depopulation of the Black community in New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulf Port and other devastated cities and regions in the Gulf Coast with concentrated Black populations. In New Orleans a mere 35 per cent of its pre-Katrina Black population has returned and resettled over the course of two years.

This ethnic cleansing cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. If they get away with it in New Orleans - after the tragic consequences of deeply entrenched racism horrified both national and international audiences - the gentrification and ethnic cleansing of other communities will accelerate. Where the US government refuses to hold itself accountable or allow itself to be tried for its repressive policies and human rights violations within its own courts, its victims have a responsibility to seek justice themselves. As an expression of the will of the peoples of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for justice, the People's Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) and the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition (MDRC) have organised the International Tribunal and called on the international community for solidarity and an impartial hearing. It is only by thoroughly exposing the human rights abuses and inhumane policies of the US government before the world, and isolating it on this basis, that the displaced and dispossessed peoples of the Gulf Coast will attain the recognition, restitution, and justice they so deserve.

What human rights abuses and crimes are the US government being demanded to account for at the tribunal?

To expose the US government and bring it to account, there are several critical questions that must and will be posed at the tribunal to reveal the true depth of the crimes committed and the utter disdain exhibited for Black life. A sampling of these questions include:

1. Why did it take five days for the US government to implement an evacuation in New Orleans? Who where the individuals and institutions responsible for this delay in humanitarian relief?

2. Why were no ready response evacuation and medical teams in place to deal with the calculated damage of Hurricane Katrina? Who was responsible for the organisation and deployment of these teams and resources? Why weren't they prepared and deployed?

3. Why was no independent investigation of the Industrial Canal and its levee system permitted?

4. Why were survivors forcibly removed and dispersed from New Orleans to over 44 states in the US? Who determined who went where and why?

5. Why were 'shoot to kill orders' given in New Orleans? What authority did Governor Blanco have to issue these orders?

6. Why were Black survivors forcibly denied safe escape entry into the city of Gretna and the suburbs surrounding New Orleans?

7. Why were white survivors often separated and removed from Black survivors during the evacuation and relief operations? Who mandated this policy and treatment? What purpose did this policy serve?

8. Why were mercenary and foreign soldiers operating in New Orleans during and after the flood? Who authorised their use? By what authority and under what jurisdiction were they employed?

9. Why were curfews and quarantines implemented at evacuation centres throughout the US? Who were the authorities and institutions responsible for these orders?

10. Why was the Davis-Bacon Act suspended? Why were no bid contracts awarded during the first phase of the reconstruction process?

Similar questions can and must be raised regarding the treatment of women, youth, the elderly, the infirm, migrants and other vulnerable groups, and as regards the rights of oppressed nationalities, indigenous peoples, the right to vote and to freely assemble, the right to food, housing, health care, and education - all of which have been systematically violated by the US government.

What is the tribunal seeking to accomplish?

Appeals to the international community of peoples and nations for justice against the racism, national oppression, and tyranny of the US government have a long and rich history within the Black Liberation Movement going back more than 200 years. Black freedom fighters in the 19th century appealed to Haiti and many European nations against enslavement and for repatriation or national independence. In the 20th century, efforts were made by the likes of Callie House, W.E.B. DuBois, William Patterson, Paul Robeson, Queen Mother Moore, Malcolm X and organisations like the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the National Black Human Rights Coalition, and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA).

The International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita stands squarely within this tradition, and builds on the precedent and foundations laid by these initiatives. It also draws inspiration and lessons from the 1993 International Tribunal on Hawaiian sovereignty, the 1984 Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Nicaragua, and recent tribunals and human rights commissions on the impact of the Tsunami in various parts of Southeast Asia.

There are five fundamental objectives of the tribunal:

1. To fully expose to the world the human rights abuses committed by the US government and its agencies and operatives in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

2. To attain national and international recognition as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) for the all the survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

3. To attain comprehensive financial restitution and reparations for all Gulf Coast IDPs (including migrant workers and communities).

4. To strengthen the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Movement and build a broad national and international movement in support of its aims and demands.

5. To hold the rogue US government accountable for its human rights abuses and crimes against Gulf Coast IDPs.

But yet, the tribunal is in itself only a tactic to further the development of a mass Gulf Coast Reconstruction Movement, the ultimate aim of which should be self-determination for the oppressed Black Nation in the US South. The findings, verdict, and corrective remedies mandated by the Tribunal will be used to help frame the agenda and programme of the Second Survivors or Reconstruction Assembly and the initiative to create a Reconstruction Party.

The Second Survivors Assembly will be held December 8 and 9, 2007, in New Orleans. The Survivors Assembly is a constituent body of the peoples most affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The main purpose of the Survivors Assembly is to create a collective vision, platform, programme and coalition to guide the Gulf Coast Self-Determination and Reconstruction Movement.

The Reconstruction Party is a proposal for the creation of a strategic instrument that will enable the Gulf Coast Self-Determination and Reconstruction Movement to implement the restorative measures called for by the tribunal through the institution of the state.

It is through these initiatives that PHRF and MDRC aim to build relationships of solidarity with justice loving peoples and nations throughout the world and campaign within the international arena through organisations and institutions to expose the US government and attain justice and restitution for the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

For more information on the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita visit or www.peopleshurricane.org

* The opinions expressed do not represent the views of the International Tribunal planning committee, PHRF, or MXGM. The views are solely the opinion of the author. Assistance for this article was provided by Hakima Abbas and Arlene Eisen.

* Executive Director, People's Hurricane Relief Fund, National Organiser, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

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

In this week’s AU Monitor, the African Development Bank’s Vice-President, Dr. Mandla Gantsho, discusses the Union Government and the potential role of the Bank in providing knowledge and technical assistance, while Dr. Issa Shivji reflects on the roots of Pan Africanism in the struggle against imperialism and how the current resurgence of the unity debate must also be situated in the global anti-imperialist framework. Dr. Shivji highlights the potential lessons learnt from experiences in the East African and Great Lakes region for broader continental unity. As regional summits conclude in East and Southern Africa, the AU Monitor brings you the final communiqué’s from both meetings and an article by Evans Sinjela highlighting the prohibitive NGO bills which plague Southern Africa, paying particular attention to the currently tabled NGO Bill in Zambia, the location of the recent Southern African Development Community summit. Also in official African Union news, a summit of women in science and technology will be held in South Africa from 29 to 31 August aimed at enhancing women’s participation and access to the benefits of science and technology.

The AU Monitor also bring you news of Presidents Kadhafi of Libya and Sarkozy of France consultations in which preparations for December’s Africa-Europe summit were discussed and during which the French president expressed support for the United States of Africa. Further, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will address the African Union on September 3rd to discuss continued South-South cooperation and the forthcoming Africa-South America summit to be held in Venezuela in November 2008. While in Afro-Asian news, an African-Chinese ministerial consultative meeting will take place in New York on September 26th presided by Egypt, with, top of the agenda, discussion of the progress towards implementation of the Beijing Plan of Action and preparation for the 2009 Afro-Chinese meeting. Lastly, Tim Murithi of the Institute for Security Studies writes of the Panel of the Wise, an organ of the African Union made up of eminent Africans to support and advise the Peace and Security Council. The author provides several recommendations to increase the potential effectiveness of the Panel, not least the immediate discussion of the operational modalities of the Panel by the AU Peace and Security Council.

Dibussi Tande, who produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, brings this week's selection which covers: Zambians living abroad; the vulnerabilities of South Africa; identity and belonging in Africa; political invovlement and the younger generation in Malawi; persecution of members of the African LGBTI community in a number of African countries; and the elections held in Cameroon in July 2007.

comments about the exclusion of Zambians living abroad from the planned National Constitution Conference (NCC):

"The Government has responsibility to ensure Zambians abroad were brought into the fold to take part in such crucial issues. Equal responsibility also lie with Zambians abroad who should not wait for Government and other people to 'remember' them! Zambians abroad must seize the initiative to define their destiny - unless they gave up being Zambian long time ago! It is for this reason that I fully support what ZASN is trying to do in creating a framework where Zambians abroad can leverage their skills and expertise back home. Our hope surely must be that may be one day an organisation like ZASN can push for such representation in other areas of decision making e.g. voting (which I currently oppose but maybe future technology will overcome my worries)."

Eliesmith argues that the South Africa has the potential to become another Zimbabwe:

"But the truth is that, if care is not taken, South Africa may become second Zimbabwe in less than two decades. The current economic, political and social ruin in Zimbabwe, engineered by a clique headed by Robert Gabriel Mugabe, has made that country (Zimbabwe), not just to become a metaphor for countries on the highway to economic, political and social oblivion, but, she has also shown the vulnerability of a country like South Africa, which, apparently have stronger institutions than countries on the rest of the continent. Well, that is, in a situation where, people with similar ideologies now leading Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe's ruling ZANUPF, takes over the ANC in South Africa and thus wins political power in 2009.

But South Africa is not yet Zimbabwe and we are all still impressed and bewildered at the same time, how that country, has succeeded to sail through apartheid to a multiracial democracy, without the expected bloodbath baptism. Some say, the South African miracle or political feat happened because, the creation of what is/was labelled the rainbow nation, which bore and wore, the consensus and the no-need-for-revenge-attitude of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. And this question: What will happen after the fatherly figure of Nelson Mandela is gone? Perhaps Frederick Willem De Klerk will take over. However, It is true that, since 1994 and until now, the Mandela effect is there, casting his strong shadow over the country."

Senegal-based blogger Francis Nyamnjoh

What these brief notes on the Tikar tell us is that pre- and post-colonial identities in Cameroon and throughout Africa are complex, negotiated and relational experiences that call for a nuanced rather than an essentialist articulation of identity and belonging (Nyamnjoh 2002; Pelican 2006). With the Tikar, as well as with any other group in Cameroon, Africa, America or elsewhere, being 'authentic' is a function of the way race, place, culture, class and gender define and prescribe, include and exclude.

Being or not being Tikar should thus be understood within this framework of the politics of recognition and representation. It should also be understood in terms of how cosmopolitan communities have been and are being forged in Africa despite colonial and post-colonial politics of strategic essentialism and divide-and-rule. The Tikar experience, both imagined and real, in a way is an invitation to contemplate a deterritorialized mode of belonging where relationships matter more than birthmarks and birthplaces in whether or not one feels at home."

'The project is multi-pronged with emphases on tackling environmental issues that directly affects the villagers, building sustainable infrastructures, empowering the villagers to seek manageable solutions, especially the women and providing an efficient health care program.

The underlying philosophy behind the project is that all programs initiated in the village will be able to self-sustain in the long run because emphasis will be put on an effective cost-revenue strategy.'"

According to Malawi Politics the young Malawians do not seem interested in playing leading roles in the country's political life:

"When you look at what is happening in Malawi now, one would think there are no fresh faces in our politics. All we hear from are the same recycled tired old politicians all of them groomed by Malawi congress Party.

Why does the young generation refuse to get involved? To serve requires sacrifice. A lot of our brothers are in the Diaspora building a future for themselves and their kids...

It is the intention of Malawi Politics to encourage our readers and contributors to bring up fresh names to this dialogue. Our generation should not so easily concede to the old Gladiators. Their time came and went. Africa and Malawi is looking for economic freedom and fresh ideas.

It is our time to fight for Malawi."

Blacklooks writes about the persecution of members of the African LGBTI community in a number of African countries in recent weeks:

"The African LGBTI community has been under attack this week in Cameroon, Nigeria and in Uganda...In Nigeria there were riots in Bauchi state after some of the men arrested were released on bail and faced a barrage of stone throwers from the crowds... The case for the 4 young men [arrested] in the Cameroon is worrying as only last year 9 men were released after spending a year in prison for charges of homosexuality which were eventually dropped."

'On the whole, however, these elections represent a missed opportunity for Cameroon - a missed opportunity to continue building public confidence in the democratic process as Cameroon looks ahead to its next election.'

... there is every indication that the more things change, the more they stay the same as Cameroon's tumultuous democratization continues its relentless march backwards."

*Dibussi Tande produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, http://www.dibussi.com

Why were we colonized? And were we ever really decolonized? These are the central questions that should be at the core of liberation discourse in Zimbabwe and Africa at large, in order to start dealing with neo-colonial ‘ghosts’. These ghosts are real enough when they take the form of dictatorships, exploitative neo-liberal capitalism and repression of our growing resistance to these.

The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), found that 41% of the IFC projects studied had low development ratings. IFC performed particularly poorly in Africa and Asia, where only half of its projects had positive development outcomes. In Africa, the quality of IFC work was particularly poor, rated as “high” in only 45% of projects, as compared to 68% in other regions.

The Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), are convening an international workshop within the framework of the Africa/Asia/Latin America Scholarly Collaborative Program. The theme of the workshop is Rethinking Development Alternatives in the South: Prospects for Africa, Asia and Latin America. The workshop will be convened in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from 5-6 October, 2007.