Emily Mugo has an axe to grind about her place of employment - in one of Kenya's Export Processing Zones (EPZs). "One has to collapse from sickness to be allowed to seek medical attention. However sick one may be, you cannot afford to miss work: you will be sacked," she noted of the textile factory located on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi.

Niger Prime Minister Hama Amadou and Togo Prime Minister Yawovi Agboyibo were in Berlin this week to present their demands on economic cooperation with the G8. They had support. University professors, musicians, philosophers, church representatives and political leaders from numerous countries also gathered in Berlin to discuss ways of supporting African people to deal with their social and economic challenges.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/41299.jpgAfrican people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

From the beginning of this century, the G8 started cultivating a special intimate relationship with representatives of a ‘new Africa’, in response to their courting.

It is not by accident that the German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that the further expansion of this link into ‘reform partnerships’ would officially rank among the priorities on the agenda at the forthcoming summit in Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea.

This however does not necessarily mean that it will actually happen. We have already seen the originally announced focus on Africa be overshadowed by other matters in Kananaskis, where the events in the Middle East replaced Africa as the priority, and in Gleneagles, after the bomb attacks in London; and the African representatives having once again to play second fiddle.

This time, it seems that climate change will once again push Africa out of the limelight- though its people might be among the biggest victims of the effects of unabated environmental pollution; relegating its leaders to the back benches.

But even so, the favoured African heads of state seem to feel somehow comfortable with enjoying the marginal trade-offs from sitting around the dining table with the powerful. After all, since Genoa, lunch was the minimum they got from each G8 summit. Even when that, together with a group photo, was at times the only recognition granted.

Merkel used her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos to declare that during the German presidencies of the G8 and the EU, emphasis would be on how Africa could be better integrated into the global economy.

Her personal representative at the G8, Bernd Pfaffenbach, confirmed, during a panel debate on Africa at the same Swiss Alpine ski resort, that the summer camp at the Baltic Sea in Heiligendamm would seek to enhance a partnership between the G8 and African leaders.

These declared intentions for the agenda by this year’s hosts should not appear comforting. Rather they should sound warning bells. The two priorities of further integration into the global economy and closer partnership with African leaders in the planned interaction merit the question being raised: where do the interests of the people of the continent lie?

After all, neither globalisation since the days of the slave trade, nor African leaders’ collaboration with the powerful elsewhere, whatever their political or ideological persuasion, have provided meaningful and lasting benefits for the majorities on the continent who struggle daily for survival.

Further integration of African societies and economies into the world market, a process which since colonialism was in any case much more advanced than in most other regions of the world, suggests, in contrast, even more systematic exploitation of the continent’s natural resources, and intensified expansion into local markets.

Under the current ‘liberalisation’ schemes promoted and regulated by the WTO, access for external capital to provide privatised public goods and services, as well as control over so-called intellectual property, add further to the reduction of state autonomy and local capacities to act in the interest of the people.

Privatisation does not bode well for some of the core tasks of a functioning state: namely to provide basic services in the public interest, including that of the poor; and to protect the weakest - not that the people in Africa have ever seen or experienced much of this.

Since 2001, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) became the African trademark for the kind of collaboration that the G8 and other OECD countries favour and support.

In the pipeline as a blueprint since the late 1990s, Nepad emerged as a result of a fundamentally new constellation on the continent. After South Africa – from the mid-1990s, and Nigeria -since the end of the 1990s, the two regional economic powerhouses, had left behind their pariah status. While apartheid, in the one case, and the military dictatorships, in the other case, limited the operational spheres of African regimes earlier on, the new governments represented politically acceptable - if not always praised - success stories that democratisation works.

Considered strategic regional ‘anchor countries’ for the West, these two economies make up some two thirds of the total GDP of all countries of so-called sub-Saharan Africa. Leaving aside the resource-based economies, which through oil, strategically relevant minerals and other natural assets, such as diamonds, stimulate desire for entering deals with local culprits and oligarchies, they are the most attractive potential partners to the outside world.

The South African and Nigerian heads of state Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo were the two main architects of Nepad, together with the Senegalese autocrat Abdoulaye Wade, and the support of Egypt and Algeria. As a matter of fact, all three African leaders in the triumvirate have missed only one of the six G8 summits since Genoa 2001.

But for many critical observers, including within Africa, Nepad mainly symbolises the emperor’s new clothes. It boils down to a recycling of the old conditionality-story, only now under African ownership.

Perceived as a policy of neo-liberal orientation imposed from above, it is questioned and challenged from below as a technocratic approach by elites. Or else as a local version of the Washington consensus.

According to this view, structural deficiencies and imbalances are legitimised, but not questioned. It reflects a coalition between those on the continent and abroad who benefit most from export-oriented market economies, under a trade regime, which is foremost outwardly oriented.

This might add to the relative advantages of a small local elite and the biggest among the junior players on the continent. In particular expanding South African capital, which is successfully penetrating many other African economies. But it offers little to nothing to ordinary people. They remain once again excluded from business. They are unemployed and continue to live in abject poverty.

While some of the rather more harsh critics mutter about dubious conspiracy theories, which may be unfair, or, at least, not the true intentions of some of the new African leaders, it is difficult to dismiss such analysis lock, stock and barrel.

The lack of meaningful material offers little comfort of G8 support for Nepad, which would need to match the almost euphoric welcoming statements ever since the African leaders knocked at their doors in Genoa.

In the midst of the Italian havoc, the G8 heads of state appointed individual ‘sherpas’ to team up and prepare an Africa Action Plan. Its adoption a year later, mid-2002, in the Canadian mountains at Kananaskis, was celebrated as a major break through. Although it was (dis-)qualified by moderate critics such as the then director for justice and peace at the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference as ‘hot air’ or ‘recycled peanuts’.

In contrast to such sobering conclusions, the South African president returned triumphantly with the message that Kananaskis marked a decisive moment in the birth of a fairer and more balanced system of international relations. In historical context, Kananaskis represented for him the end of the colonial and neo-colonial era. To classify this kind of daring interpretation as ‘wishful thinking’ would seem a mild understatement.

Based on such self-proclaimed ‘success stories’, African leaders used the transformation of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) directly after Kananaskis at their summit in Durban to integrate Nepad as the new economic programme of the continental body.

They thereby elevated it to an official status for all. Subsequently, in September 2002, the UN General Assembly awarded Nepad the label of being the general framework for international cooperation with Africa, thus allowing Thabo Mbeki to state, unchallenged, that Nepad had emerged as the de facto political-economic point of reference in Africa’s interaction with the outside world.

Even the sobering results of the summit in the French Evian in 2003 and the humble lunch offered at the US-summit in Georgia in 2004 served as further legitimacy for the African Nepad-troika. Although Wade was becoming increasingly less enthusiastic, and in the meantime openly critical.

Their patience was at least rewarded by the personal effort of Tony Blair, who used the UK presidency to initiate his Commission for Africa. Its report, tabled to the summit in Gleneagles in 2005, claimed to present, through increased financial support and debt cancellation, a decisive input into African development. Indeed, a substantive portion of the - already long since paid - debts have since then been cancelled for the poorest among the African countries.

The moral impetus, which is due, in part, not only Tony Blair’s personal flair, but also to the document of the Africa Commission, subtitled ‘Our Common Interest’, should however not be misleading.

As a matter of fact, the fundamental premises of the recommendations rest on the assumption that it is Africans themselves, who must be held responsible for being so poor, and who need - with external assistance - to get their act together.

The suggested reforms neither name and blame the structural inequalities ensuing as a result of historical processes, during which mainly European colonialism and imperialism expanded into Africa's backyard with devastating and long lasting consequences for the societies there. Nor do they challenge the fundamental basis of the currently existing global system and its damaging effects on African economies and people.

But even if the commission – with all due reservations – was considered a major advancement for at least temporarily promoting interest in African affairs in a wider public sphere, and also by means of the celebrity culture resulting in spectacular ‘do good’ performances (which generally excluded African artists from a fair share in the publicity); the subsequent summit of the G8 in St Petersburg in 2006 did not even pretend to follow this up in a serious way.

For the first time since Okinawa in 2000, only three African heads of state were granted the privilege to play a supporting role. Except for being some kind of exotic-cosmetic feature, the summit had absolutely nothing to offer.

According to the German government, things should be different in early June at Heiligendamm. As the stocktaking exercises on progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals suggest, much is left to be desired when it comes to the implementation of the defined targets.

African people continue to remain as the have-nots at the bottom of the world’s pyramid. Even if ‘their’ leaders – notably in cases such as the Angolan oil oligarchy or individual despots such as Mugabe – bath in abundant wealth and privileges. It is fair to conclude that so far neither Nepad, nor its support from the G8 and others who claim to be concerned, have managed to contribute substantive change.

It should however, at the same time, and despite such reservations, be acknowledged that a fair amount of collective responsibility and willingness to intervene in the matters of member states has fundamentally changed the political agenda of the African Union and its guiding principles.

Whilst, so far, this has had little impact in terms of necessary changes in the socio-economic structural impasses, and has failed to produce any decisive results in several cases – not least in Zimbabwe, also politically, it does affect socio-economic related factors such as security, political participation, transparency and accountability.

While a lot remains to be desired, one should not ignore the fundamental changes, which in terms of the abandonment of the hitherto holy principle of non-intervention was a direct result of the transformation of the OAU into the AU.

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as an integral, though voluntary, part of Nepad might be more tokenism than anything else. But being on the agenda marks a new chapter in African politics. In times where revolutions are not even on the distant horizon, this still seems to be too pragmatic a view, though probably realistic.

Ironically, with the new multi-polar tendencies, and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and in particular China) through their bilateral partners aggressively seeking to explore and exploit the African continent with little or no concerns about ‘good governance’ - whatever this means, the gains for African economies, as measured in terms of trade balances and GDP growth, are remarkable.

Of course, this does not mean that the African economies and the local people will benefit automatically. Whether and how they might get a modest share out of the new scramble for African resources remains at this stage an open question. But it is unlikely that the G8 summit in Heiligendamm will bring this challenge any closer to a solution.

* Henning Melber was director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek, Namibia from 1992-2000. He was research director at The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, 2000-2006. He is currently executive director of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

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

Climate change, industrialization, air pollution and the need to boost clean energy supplies for developing countries are urgent global challenges that must be addressed in concert, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he opened a gathering of dozens of environmental ministers at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

An initial voter enrollment period for Morocco’s September 2007 legislative elections ended May 4th. Magharebia News reports that despite widespread awareness campaigns educating citizens about the importance of participation, registration offices have not had the response they hoped for. A second registration period will be opened from May 8th-14th.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_01_tambour.gif by Guy Angrand interviews Raoul Peck the director of Lumumba: The death of a Prophet. Like Guy, Raoul is Haitan but grew up in the DRC.

(Raoul Peck) His family was displaced to Kinshasa by the Duvalier regime in the early 1960s where his family, among 600 others, sought asylum. He went to school in Kinshasa, Brooklyn, France, and then finally Germany where he got his degree in engineering. He then came to New York where he became a cab driver as he awaited acceptance into film school in Germany in 1984.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_02_mental.gifFollowi… the recent crash of Kenyan Airlines, Kenyan blogger MentalAcrobtics asks 'how safe are African skies and how safe are African airlines'. He presents some facts about both Kenyan airways and the plane that crashed.

The airline
IOSA is the global benchmark for airline safety management. It is designed to assess airline operational management and control systems based on internationally recognised standards. Any airline wishing to join IATA must be IOSA registered. By the end of 2007, all IATA members must successfully undergo the IOSA audit in order to retain IATA membership. Carriers must achieve registration by the end of 2008. IOSA is open to all airlines. Four African airlines already have IOSA registration; South African Airways, Kenya Airways, Comair, Royal Air Maroc and Egyptair. Kenya Airways is a safe airline.

The plane
The plane involved in the incident today was a brand new Boeing 737-800. The plane was collected from Boeing in October 2006 and went into service in November 2006. No ramshackle plane this.
On African skies in general – the continenet has the second worse accident record in the world – second only to the CIS.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_03_thinkers.gifThinkers Room also comments on the crash in particular the way it was reported in some sections of the international media.

'They were energetic enough to say five Brits, one Swiss and one Swede, but could not be bothered to break down the African casulaties, settling for “The remainder were Africans”. Why then did they not say some Europeans as well? Are we second class human beings? I guess I should not be surprised to expect a myopic news organization is unable to live up to its “International” tag.
Granted, there is no formula as to how to handle such tragic events, but I’m sure if we followed the simple parameters of treating them with the seriousness they deserve and utmost respect to the affected family and friends, we should be OK………But that’s just me.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_04_nigeria.gifFor Nigeria Politricks he is glad Obasanjo is leaving but for the people the 'struggle continues'.

'We are glad OBJ is going to retire in ignominy back to Otta farm come 29 May – good riddance! For the rest of the ordinary Nigerians, the struggle continues! We strongly believe there was no election and the so-called president-elect Yar’Adua was borne out of illegality and his regime will be a charade; the continued entrenchment of the wanton destruction of the Nigerian social, economic and political lives!'

He goes on to write about the silence around the rape of Nigerian women in the country which is according to Amnesty International, epidemic. Definitely a need to write more about this issue.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_05_pumlagqola.gifNew South African blogger, Loudrastress posts a comment one the anniversary of the Zuma rape trial decision.

'I do know that the rape case of the former national vice president turned the volume up on gender based violence, not just in relation to the case itself, but also generally why we live in the siege we do as women. I have been called melodramatic when I’ve used “siege” to describe the state in which women live within the borders of the South African nation state. I stand by my words. Anybody with a cursory appreciation of how likely each woman is to be subjected to different forms of gender based violence (sexual harassment, physical abuse, psychological battery, financial abuse, forced subjection to the witness of degradation and violence metted out to others, etc) knows that I am being far from melodramatic.

The case brought us face to face to the widespread nature of South African hypocrisy on the subject of gender anything. On the one hand, it is about as hard to find someone who supports violence against women in SA as it is to find a white person who voted for apartheid. Yet, we did not imagine apartheid and we are not imagining the rampant abuse of women today. Just as systems of institutionalised violence like apartheid need complicit Blacks to assist with the deepening of with white supremacist work, patriarchy needs violent women. And we saw many of them outside the court a year ago: burning pictures of the complainant and acting out similar intimidation of her supporters. Many more were apologists for a whole range of other linked forms of misogyny.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_06_sudanese.gifSudanese Thinker is furious with a report that the US State Dept report that stated the Sudanese Government was “strong partner in the War on Terror”. ST comments:

'Interesting, so now Darfur is both genocide and terrorism but that’s not the main point... Maybe it is a reason, maybe not, I don’t know, but I do know one thing for sure. Bush has been very patient. And no, unlike previously I don’t think it’s because he’s too busy with Iraq. After all we did witness the United States assisting the Ethiopian army in the bombing raids conducted against suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Somalia recently. It didn’t require much effort or resources and surely conducting one in Darfur won’t be different. So why didn’t it happen until now? The “he’s too busy with Iraq” idea doesn’t make much sense to me now. I guess the janjaweed and suspected al-Qaeda fighters are classified very differently from one another. At least he thinks so too.'

So what is going on here – clearly as ST states there are two forces at work. Those that believe Sudan is a partner against the war on terror and those that believe they are committing genocide in Darfur. Either way they need to make their minds up as you cannot have the President on one side and the State Dept on the other and expect anything meaningful to happen in the near future.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_07_harowo.gifSomali blog, Harowo.com explains some of what is happening in Mogadishu – the installation of two American backed new warlords of the city, Mohammed Dheere and Chief Awale. Quoting McClatchy Newspapers he writes:

'Mohamed Dheere is very much in the classic "strongman" mode so beloved by America's dispensers of liberation and democracy over the past century. He comes to his new post from his former gangland turf in the northern town of Jowhar, "where he presided over a famously ruthless extortion network.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_08_whiteafrican.gifhttp://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_09_freedom.gifFreedom for Egyptians is one of the few non Francophone bloggers to report on the French elections.

'Sarkozy’s victory will signal a new balance of powers in Europe and worldwide. Following the war on Iraq, most of the European governments that took over were leftists or center left as the case with Spain and Italy. Sarkozy who made it clear that he is against the war on Iraq, is a right wing pro-American French politician however. Sarkozy's victory in a world charged against right wing governments that supported the war in Iraq, says something about France’s domestic affairs and the French people’s new orientation.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_10_mzalendo.gifMzalendo: Eye on Kenyan Parliament have created yet another brilliant idea - they are in the process of building a searchable database of 'parliamentary aspirants'.

'Why? So you can know them:
• Who they are
• Where they are standing
• Their background and history
• What they stand for: their vision
We’re still iroing out rough edges but we think it is stable enough for you to use.'

This site is something other African blogging communities should build on and create for their own respective countries which along with Pambazuka’s African Union Monitor will keep an eye on what are leaders and parliamentarians are up to and hopefully make them more accountable and us as citizens more able to call them to account.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/blogs_11_sandmonkey.gifFin…, Egyptian blogger, Rantings of a Sandmonkey lays down his blogger tools and says goodbye to the blogosphere. Well he had already said goodbye and received over 500 farewell messages and then decided he needed to further clarify his reasons for leaving – which are still unclear to me. Apparently he feels insecure about blogging from Egypt but has since left Egypt for the US. He feels the Egyptian blogosphere has been largely uncritical and insufficiently active against the government and finally he wants to see a community of activists bloggers from around the Middle East come together to fight freedom of press in general and the blogosphere in particular. So why are you leaving?

'Pursuing such an organization this would be the logical next step, for me, for us, to take. This will be my focus in the few remaining days I have here in DC: How to make such an organization real. If you are interested, if you think this is a good idea and would like to help, or have suggestions or ideas or input to help improve or facilitate this, please contact me and let me know. I am all ears, and open to all suggestions……….To risk sounding cliché and trite, let's light and candle instead of cursing the darkness………We can do this!....The Sandmonkey.'

I never did like the name 'Sandmonkey'!

* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News and blogs at http://www.blacklooks.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/303/1in9_41281.jpgJohanna Kehler assesses the social impact of the Jacob Zuma rape trial for women in South Africa.

On 8 May 2006, a highly politicised, publicised and, in many ways, unjust trial came officially to an end, when judgement in the Zuma rape trial was handed down.

Many will remember this day, as the ’Zuma judgement’. It sparked a wide range of responses. Anger, shock and disappointment were as much part of these responses. Once again, the justice system failed to protect a victim/survivor of rape – ‘Khwezi’, a gender and HIV/Aids activist, who had the courage to speak out, claim her rights and demand justice.

The trial raised many questions about the adequacy of the criminal justice system in ensuring equal access to justice and facilitating a fair and just trial.

It especially highlighted the inadequacy of the sexual offences legislation, which is meant to protect and not victimise a rape victim or survivor.

Moreover, the trial, while causing theoretical debates about the admissibility of a complainant’s prior sexual history into evidence, clearly showed how the introduction of a complainant’s prior sexual history, and in this particular case sexual orientation, taints the proceedings.

A year later, as many of these debates continue, HIV/Aids and women’s rights activists are still dealing with the impact of the trial. In addition to the many legal and political implications of the trial proceedings and subsequent judgement, the social impact on communities and societal perceptions continues to influence and shape the work of activists.

One of the many issues raised was that of HIV prevention, including the argument about a shower as a means of preventing HIV infection.

While this may have raised reactions from laughter to disgust, especially considering that the statement came from ‘an expert’, the former chairperson of SANAC, the long-term impact of this statement on communities and societal perceptions raises serious concerns.

The statement, as ridiculous as it may seem, is nothing less than an insult; especially viewed against an estimated 1500 new HIV infection per day.

Already challenged by the seemingly inadequacy of many of the HIV prevention efforts, activists are now engaging with communities in shower debates.

Moreover, the concepts of risk behaviour and individual responsibility, as crucial aspects of prevention, have been seriously tainted by the trial. Zuma will be mentioned as proof that it is ‘okay’ and ‘not risky at all’ to engage in unprotected sex, even though the HIV positive status of the sex partner may be known.

Similarly, the trial re-emphasised notions that a woman’s clothing is an indication of her preparedness and willingness to engage in sex; and that a woman’s prior sexual history is of relevance in determining whether or not the alleged rape did occur.

While these outcomes not only fundamentally threatens a woman’s right to personal autonomy, freedom and dignity, they also perpetuate societal beliefs that victims/survivors of rape ‘asked for it’, by virtue of ‘inappropriate’ clothing and prior ‘promiscuous’ behaviour.

Fear that this would negatively impact on the gains made towards promoting women’s rights and challenging societal beliefs which justify the continuous violation of women was confirmed in the aftermath of the trial.

Years of raising awareness and promoting human rights are seemingly lost as women’s rights activists are engaging with communities, yet once again, in debates about ‘dress codes’ and ‘promiscuity’ as reasons for rape.

Not only did the trial seem to have divided communities, it has also reinforced existing prejudices about sexual violence and about the risks of HIV infection.

Subsequently, the Zuma trial and judgement, appears to have not only helped perpetuate the status quo and justification for high incidences of sexual violence, rape, and rising HIV infection rates.

While the judgement may have found Zuma ‘not guilty of rape’, the question seems to remain as to his ‘guilt’ of ‘promoting and justifying’ rape and ‘risky sexual behaviour’ in a societal context, in which sexual violence and HIV/Aids have reached pandemic proportions.

And while the experiences in the aftermath of the Zuma trial may have raised many new questions about women’s rights, women’s realities have remained unchanged.

High incidences of sexual violence and abuse; high HIV prevalence rates and the persistent feminisation of the HIV/Aids pandemics; as well as the prevailing disrespect for, and violation of, fundamental human rights and freedoms are but some of the indicators of women’s realities.

These are further exacerbated by the lack of adequate sexual offences legislation, creating a judicial and societal context, which fails to facilitate access to justice for victims/survivors of sexual violence, and deters many victims/survivors of sexual violence from speaking out and claiming their rights.

Subsequently, perceptions such as ‘there is no justice, so why bother reporting a rape’, are likely to be further entrenched. Statistics indicate that only one in nine cases of rape are reported (MRC, 2002). These are unlikely to improve in the current judicial and societal context.

For many activists, the trial is not over yet. For many years to come we will have to respond to the seemingly everlasting impact of a trial, which not only questioned access to justice for victims and survivors of sexual violence, but also re-emphasised detrimental societal perceptions and beliefs about sexual abuse and the risks of HIV infection.

After a year of mourning after the event, it seems to be high time to remember that these are the very same societal perceptions and beliefs that continuously not only limit the impact of HIV/Aids and sexual violence prevention efforts, but also fuel both pandemics.

* Johanna Kehler, AIDS Legal Network (ALN), on behalf of the One In Nine Campaign (www.oneinnine.org.za)

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

Mahmood Mamdani analyses the underlying causes of anti-Asian actions in Uganda from a historical perspective, and the interplay of socio-economic and political factors.

I have been trying to make sense of the events of 12 April from the distance of New York and with the help of the internet and the telephone.

Some say these events are an unfortunate breakdown in law and order, best forgotten and put behind us.

Common sense, however, tells me that larger issues are at stake and, if not addressed, have the potential of fuelling further popular outrage.

The surest public indication of this is growing reference to the 1972 Asian expulsion in discussions of 12 April.

I was a teaching assistant at Makerere university in Uganda at the time of the 1972 Asian expulsion, and was among the last to leave in early November.

I had finished my O’Levels in 1962 at the senior secondary school, Old Kampala. I was one of over 20 students who received scholarships to study in the US.

The scholarships were part of America’s independence gift to Uganda. In the language of that period, I was among those who could claim to have literally eaten the fruit of independence. Certainly, without a successful struggle for independence, I would not have got the higher education that I did.

Student activist
One of my first activities as a student was to participate in the civil rights movement in the US.

In less than a year, I was among bus loads of students going from northern universities to march in Birmingham, Alabama, in the south.

We marched through secondary schools, singing songs such as 'Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?' and 'We shall overcome', and asking students to leave classes and join us.

As we moved downtown, police on horseback and motorcycles, wielding metal-studded batons, jumped at us. Scores of other students and I were thrown in jail.

Allowed to make one phone call from jail, I called the Uganda ambassador in Washington DC. 'What are you doing interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country?', he asked.

'This is not an internal affair. This is a freedom struggle. How can you forget? We just got our freedom last year', was my response. I had learnt that freedom knew no boundary, certainly not that of colour or country.

I returned home in early 1972 as a convinced pan-African nationalist, but was thrown out later in the year as an Asian.

Early in November, I flew to London and was admitted to a refugee camp. The British press was full of stories about Amin and the Asian expulsion.

Every story talked of Amin not as a dictator, but as a black dictator. With few exceptions, the British press racialised Amin. His blackness was offered as the primary explanation for his brutality.

Fresh from civil rights struggles in the American south, and anti-Vietnam war struggles in the American north, I had seen brutality in the white and was unwilling to accept this explanation.

Partly for that reason, I left London within nine months and took up my first job at the University of Dares Salaam. Although my physical being was in Dar es Salaam where both my parents had been born, my mind was preoccupied with Uganda: Why Amin? Why the support for Amin?

The years that followed confirmed that Amin was a demagogue and brutal at that. But that still did not explain the support for Amin. It was painful for me to realise that if Amin was originally popular because he had removed the Obote dictatorship, the reason for his continued popularity had to do with the fact that he, more than any other leader, had put the 'Asian question' at the forefront of the political agenda.

Every Ugandan understood in his or her guts that the secret of Asian business success lay not just in hard work, but also in a racially unjust colonial system which made it difficult for black people to enter trade, thereby confirming Asian dominance.

Handicapped in the marketplace, those aspiring to business turned to political organisation. It is through repeated political action — in 1945, then 1949, and then again 1959 — that the Ugandans were able to gain entry into the marketplace. The demand for political independence went alongside another — that for social justice for those who had been the victims of colonial racial discrimination.

A decade of independence increased this demand for one reason: it seemed Asian businessmen had been able to turn national independence to private advantage. Not only had independence liberated them like everyone else from the limits placed by colonial rule. Asian business tycoons seemed to have developed a comfortable alliance with big bureaucrats and top politicians who gave them political protection (what is today called ‘no change’) in return for lucrative bribes.

With its paan and sari shops, and cinema houses showing Bollywood movies, Kampala’s population got browner as the sun set and its black workforce left for satellite communities on the edge of town.

Pointing to this informal apartheid in a complacent post-independence Uganda, Amin asked uncomfortable questions, even if in a coarse and racist language:

'If Uganda is independent, why does its capital city look like Bombay on a Sunday?'

I realised that Amin spoke the language of justice, however crudely, and that was the reason he was able to ride the crest of a historic wave of popular protest.

I returned to Uganda in 1979 when Amin was thrown out. It is difficult to forget the shock of returning to a city where I had grown up and knew just about every street, but could no longer recognise a soul.

There were also other shocks in store. Most people I met supported Amin’s decision to expel Asians, though they disagreed on the details: the time given to wind up family and business affairs, the limits on what each family could take out, and so on.

Listening to them, I realised that even though they saw Amin as a brutal dictator, many also saw him as a nationalist. Even if they disagreed with his methods, they applauded his goal as a Uganda for Ugandans, particularly black Ugandans.

Could this new Uganda be a home for me? Determined to make a second beginning, I rejoined Makerere university. I recall the decade that followed 1979 as one of coming to political age for a second time. Even if ravaged by civil war and dictators, the new Uganda seemed a healthier society, less marked by the racial distortions of a colonial experience and Ugandans were proud of it.

As a person of Asian background, I felt more comfortable, even safer, in the new Uganda than, for example, did Asians in neighbouring Kenya. I was not the only one. The few Asian business persons I knew also seemed to realise that they were more secure in a society, where business persons were no longer a racially identifiable minority.

The new Uganda began to change under the NRM. The new president was determined to reverse the legacy of Idi Amin and return Uganda to his notion of a normal society.

Two big government-initiated changes followed. The first was the decision to return previously confiscated properties to its former Asian owners.

Asked by the Law Society to speak on the issue, I argued against a return of properties and spoke in favour of compensation. I said a return of properties would result in either absentee ownership or concentration of property in few hands, or both; in either case, it will be socially unhealthy. But the return of properties was part of a larger IMF package and it was the president’s wish, so nobody listened.

Once it faced opposition, the NRM too discovered the advantages of dealing with a business class which had few links within the country and could easily be isolated and kept on a short leash. Once again, close links began to develop between individual Asian tycoons and prominent politicians in the government, as they had in the Obote period.

The second big change was born of this corruption and was more the result of unofficial than formal decisions. Though the network of corruption focused on government departments that handled immigration and was clandestine, its effects were publicly visible.

The number of Asian residents of Uganda began to multiply, from less than 5,000 when the NRM came to power to an estimated 20,000 today. Of these, only 2,000 came from the pre-1972 generation. The largest section was brought in to service big Asian businesses which preferred to hire their core employees from outside, so it would be easier to keep them on a short leash.

Not surprisingly, the new arrivals were mainly petty traders and semi-skilled employees. The new official terminology that identified just about every person of Asian origin as an ‘investor’ could not hide this fact.

Neither was the change confined to the capital city, Kampala. It was even more visible in smaller market towns, such as Lugazi, Kakira, Kamuli, or Iganga, or other places where the number of traders of Asian origin mushroomed in just a few years from just a handful to many more.

Ominous signs
Even before the scandal around Mabira came to light, signs of rising tension were evident on the social and political landscape of Uganda.

Mabira turned into a major scandal because it symbolised a collusion between an increasingly unaccountable president and an arrogant tycoon from a racialised minority. The president had taken to treating the country as his private preserve; the grant of Mabira was simply the latest in a series of grants (of a school in one case or an information ministry facility in another) by the president, always claiming that his personal will represented the interests of ‘development’.

The tycoon too claimed to be doing the country a favour — once again, ‘development’ — rather than lining his own pockets. Mabira outraged just about everyone, from the Kabaka to the mukopi, the mwami to the muyaye.

No doubt both the political opposition and the muyaye on the street took full advantage of this public outrage. And yet, it is a mistake to hold them responsible for creating the issue and the grievance of which they took advantage. Nor was the 12 April demonstration mainly a protest about Mabira. It wasn’t, which is why public protest about the Asian question will continue even when the Mabira issue is resolved.

The Asian Question
So what is this 'Asian question'? It is a different question for different groups of Ugandans. For those in urban and peri-urban areas looking to join commerce, it has to do with the crowding of the market place by immigrant traders, even hawkers — Indian and Chinese — often entitled as ‘investors’.

For the middle and the lower-middle classes who have put their energies and assets in secondary and even higher education in the hope of securing their children a white-collar job, it is about the ease with which immigrants seem to be able to get residence and work permits at the expense of jobless nationals.

For business persons of substance, it is about unfair competition and unequal access to officially sanctioned resources and connections. All of them complain of unfair treatment, and all expect preferential treatment for nationals in an independent country. For all of them, this is a question of nationalism, of meaningful independence.

In their conscience and sometimes in private conversations, most Asian residents of Uganda realise that these grievances are just. For these aspirations are not confined to Uganda and Ugandans, but are common throughout the formerly colonised countries in Africa and Asia.

For ordinary Asian residents, it makes sense to demand that tycoons in the community respect the aspirations of ordinary Ugandans, and to disassociate themselves publicly from those who fail to do so.

All the talk about ‘the Asian community’ should not hide the fact that not all Asians have the same interest. Of particular importance is the difference between those who see Uganda as home and those who don’t.

Many of this latter group are essentially carpetbaggers (in the Asian community, they are known as ‘rockets’ that land and take off at will). Whereas it makes sense for these temporary sojourners to rely on the police for protection, such a strategy would be foolish indeed for those who see Uganda as home. This group, the Ugandan Asians, need to think of how to build a future as part of the Ugandan majority.

If we can draw one lesson from the Amin period, it is this: how the Asian question is defined and resolved will affect not only the Asian minority, but all Ugandans.

The Asian question can be defined in a racist and exclusive way, as it was by Amin, so that the fact of colour blurs that of citizenship and commitment.

Or it can be defined in a non-racial and inclusive way so that we make a distinction between different types of Asian residents in today’s Uganda, legally between citizens and non-citizens; and socially between those for whom Uganda is no more than a transit facility (the ‘rockets’), and those for whom Uganda has been a home for generations.

Wake-up call
12 April represents a wake-up call that we are dealing with a social question of national dimensions, one that will critically shape Uganda’s politics over the coming period.

For one, it is rapidly undermining the unity of the government in power. The NRM, including its MPs and members in the cabinet, are already split on this issue. Should the presidency continue to disregard popular opinion on this question, it is sure to find itself further isolated.

The more popular agitation grows, the more it will teach the electorate that democracy is less about elections than about holding those elected accountable to the citizenry on a day-to-day basis.

Political accountability has to begin with the right to simple information. Whether it is the transfer of public resources (such as in the case of Mabira) to private persons or the issue of residence and work permits to non-nationals, all relevant information must be made public, and done so regularly. The first principle of democracy is that every policy be open to public debate and scrutiny.

The demonstrations have also brought to the fore a key weakness in the opposition. Even if it has the capacity to organise demonstrations, the opposition clearly lacks the foresight and the capacity to give it direction.

The real significance of 12 April is that it has ushered in a period of open competition on who will lead the opposition to an unaccountable presidency. The cutting edge of this competition is likely to be the Asian question. More than any other, it will set apart demagogues from democrats, and pose a challenge to Ugandans, black and brown, as to whether or not we have the foresight and the capacity to forge a tolerant and inclusive society.

* This essay was first published on 28 April 2007 in the Ugandan Sunday Vision.

* Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and professor of anthropology at Columbia University. His most recent book is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror (Random House, 2004).

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

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