Manu Herbstein’s first novel, ‘Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, recently published in South Africa by Picador Africa, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize. Set in the late eighteenth century, it tells the story of a young woman who is captured and enslaved in the West African savannah and transported to Brazil. Here, Herbstein reflects on the historical background to his novel and some of its contemporary implications.

Some forty years ago the distinguished British Professor of History, Hugh Trevor-Roper, told a BBC audience: "Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But, at present there is none: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…"

In 1772 or thereabouts, Ama is quietly going about her business at her home in the West African savannah. She is about to be overwhelmed by waves, tsunamis, of history, African and European history, of which she is almost entirely ignorant. Living, as she is, in a quiet, rural, pre-industrial society, we may excuse her ignorance. Given Trevor-Roper’s profession and status, his ignorance was inexcusable. Regrettably, except amongst specialists, that ignorance of African history remains widespread today.

I am not an historian. Indeed I am not any sort of academic. So I ask you to approach the potted historical background which I am going to offer you with some reserve. For one-stop access to the texts I have used you might like to look at the book’s companion web-site, One further caveat: you should bear in mind that much of our knowledge of West African history is derived from European sources, which may be distorted by their unwitting ideological baggage.

Returning to my metaphor of tsunamis, what I am going to do is to describe briefly the dry land on which Ama (or Nandzi, to give her her birth-name) stands as the novel opens and then, again briefly, to describe each of the several waves of history which threaten to engulf her: the histories, if they can be separated, of Dagbon, Asante and Europe; and of gold, kola and sugar.

Human settlement in the West African Sudan

Until very recently conventional history has had it that the peopling of West Africa is, in terms of palaeontology, quite recent, beginning, perhaps, during the last ice age, a period when the Sahara was green. The recent discovery of hominid fossils in Chad may demand a major reassessment of this part of the story.

Be that as it may, the early immigration would in all likelihood have been gradual and slow and the numbers small.

Let me now slip into the historical present tense.

Over the course of many centuries the Western Sudan, the savannah country to the south of the Sahara, becomes populated. Many people live in acephalous societies, some of which, beloved of anthropologists, still exist. Ama’s people, who call themselves Bekpokpam, but are known to others as Konkomba, are one such. They develop, as one might expect, a culture which is intimately connected with their physical environment. So, to give just one example, their religious practices are concerned with protection from a sometimes hostile climate and with encouragement of fertility, both of the soil and of their womenfolk.

History is recorded, by and large, to reflect the glory of strong rulers. Since the Konkomba have no strong rulers, they preserve little of their history. What they remember, principally, is their “tsunami,” when they were overwhelmed by mounted invaders from the north.
Dagbon

The invaders call themselves Dagomba; their state is known as Dagbon.

In the 16th century or earlier, perhaps, the ancestors of the Dagomba live in the vicinity of Lake Chad. They are troubled by the depredations of the “white men from the desert,” that is, Bedouin raiders; and decide to migrate. For a generation or more they wander within the bend of the Niger River, surviving from the proceeds of occasional brigandry. In due course they settle in the vicinity of what is now the city of Tamale, in northern Ghana and towards the Togo border to the east, where they establish their capital, Yendi. This is the country of the Konkomba, some of whom submit and are absorbed by the invaders while others stubbornly retain their own separate identity.

In the early eighteenth century, through the influence of Hausa traders, Dagbon adopts Islam. The Hausa traders arrive each year, after the rains, in search of kola.
Kola
In early times, the tropical forest bars migration from the savannah down to the Atlantic coast; however the Volta River offers one way through. So we have a populated coastal strip separated from the savannah by a 200km wide belt of forest.

The natural environment of the tropical forest is a major factor in determining how, and how quickly, it is penetrated by man. The canopy of the forest is so dense that little light penetrates to the ground. The vegetation at ground level is consequently light. Adventurous hunters in search of game are the first humans to enter the forest. In due course some of them establish small settlements. The trees are enormous and closely spaced. It requires a great input of labour to clear areas for agriculture. The problems are exacerbated by the poor quality of tropical soils. After only three or four crops the nutrients are exhausted and decreasing yields force the farmer to clear new areas.

Powerful economic incentives are needed to make settlement viable. Of these there are two: kola and gold.

The kola tree is indigenous to these forests. Its seeds fall to the ground, where they may be collected. The kola “nut” is a pink and white seed about the size of a thumb. It has a mildly narcotic effect and is reputed to stave off hunger and thirst. Its economic value stems from the fact that Islam does not prohibit its use. In order to realize this value, labour is required to clear the ground beneath the kola trees, to gather the seeds and to transport them in head-loaded baskets to entrepôts beyond the northern extent of the forest. The market for kola encompasses the entire Muslim world.
Gold

From around the eighth century of our era, the kingdoms of the western Sudan, first, ancient Ghana, and then Mali and Songhai, are the most important suppliers of gold to the Mediterranean, exporting, on average, a ton of gold across the Sahara each year. West African gold makes a vital contribution to the monetization of the medieval Mediterranean economy.

School children in West Africa learn of Mansa Musa, the king of Mali who died in 1337. In making the hajj, Mansa Musa takes with him 100 camel-loads of gold and distributes so much of the precious metal in Cairo and Mecca that the bottom drops out of the market.

The trans-Saharan trade in gold reaches its peak around the end of the 17th century. In due course, the local surface deposits of gold become depleted and the Malians send exploratory missions throughout West Africa in search of new supplies. They discover a rich source in the forest of what is now the modern state of Ghana. By that time there is competition from European buyers at the coast.

The kola trade requires labour; so does the mining of gold. And so, too, does the establishment of agriculture, to support the miners and porters and the new aristocrats who are the descendants of the first settlers. Guns and powder purchased from the Europeans at the coast offer the means of obtaining that labour.

By the second half of the seventeenth century, gradual development of the forest economy has reached a level at which the establishment of a large centralized state is a viable project.
The Europeans: Portuguese, Dutch and British

During the period 1400-1600, Europe, emerging from the lethargy of the Middle Ages, witnesses the renewal of nationalism as well as the political transformation from feudalism to nation states. The exploration of the Atlantic leads to the establishment of Europe's commercial empires; and, in due course, to the industrial revolution. The Atlantic slave trade plays an important role in the growth of the European economy.

The Portuguese know that there is gold in West Africa: they aim to bypass the Saharan trade and get access to the gold through the back door. In 1482, five years before Bartholomew Diaz rounds the Cape, the Portuguese aristocrat Dom Diego d’Azambuja arrives, with several ships, at a village on the coast of what is now Ghana. His ships are laden with building materials and after negotiating with the local chief, he starts to build a brick and stone castle, which the Portuguese name Elmina. By 1486 d’Azambuja’s castle of St. George is substantially complete.

St. Georges Castle at Elmina is the oldest surviving European building in the tropics. It is a useful symbolic marker of the beginning of the process of the worldwide expansion of European power which we now call globalization.

In 1637, fifteen years before Van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape, the Dutch expel the Portuguese from Elmina Castle. They are to stay there for 235 years, until 1872, when, seeing neither economic nor political advantage in remaining, they sell the building, by then much extended, to the British.

I first visited Elmina Castle in 1961 or ’62. At the time it was being used as a training college for the Ghana Police Force and was not open to the public. I was living and working at Cape Coast, some 15km to the east of Elmina. One of the small colony of South African schoolteachers there, Manilal Moodley (who was later to become Zimbabwe’s first Ombudsman), was friendly with the Commander of the Police College. Mani took me with him on my first visit to the Castle. I was totally ignorant of its significance and that of the many other slave castles which line the Ghanaian coast. I have to admit that I remained in that state of ignorance for many years. I am comforted by the thought that I was not alone in this respect. My sister, the distinguished Ghanaian novelist, Ama Ata Aidoo, told me many, many years later: “I grew up in the shadow of those castles, but no one ever told me what they were or what they meant.”

The first chapter of Ama which I wrote is set in Elmina Castle and is based upon a story which the tourist guides still tell. It is now chapter 13. It had the advantage that, unlike the rest of the book, it required little research.

Asante

We return to the forest.

In the year 1700 Nana Osei Tutu establishes the Asante Confederacy, Asanteman, with Kumase as its capital. Its economy is based upon the export of kola and gold. It sells gold to the Dutch in exchange for guns. It uses the guns to expand its empire by conquest. Conquest of the surrounding states provides it with the labour it needs to mine the gold and gather and export the kola. It sells the captives in excess of its labour requirements to the Dutch and the English at the coast.

Asante imposes strict limitations upon the activities of foreign traders within its territory. The Europeans are confined to small areas around their castles and forts on the coast. The kola markets are on the north bank of the Volta River, which the Hausa traders are not permitted to cross. In order to consolidate its control of the kola trade routes, Asante invades Dagbon, first in 1744 and again in 1772. It stations a consul in Yendi, the Dagomba capital, to ensure delivery of an annual tribute. The tribute comprises so many sheep and goats, so many pieces of cotton cloth and so many of silk cloth; and 500 slaves. Asante concedes that none of the slaves will be Dagomba. So every year the Ya Na, the Dagomba ruler, sends out raiding parties to capture slaves for delivery to Kumase. Many of the captives are Konkomba. Nandzi, later to be known as Ama, is one.

The labour of slaves makes a substantial contribution to the Asante economy. However the slavery practised by the Asante differs so fundamentally from the chattel slavery of the Europeans, that it hardly makes sense to use the same word for the two practices. In Asante, slaves are absorbed into the population within a generation and became all but full citizens. Indeed Asante law encourages integration by prohibiting the public disclosure of the origins of any citizen.

By the end of the eighteenth century Asante has established political supremacy over the territories that comprise most of modern Ghana and east-central and south-eastern Cote d'Ivoire. It is a sophisticated, complex and wealthy state. It maintains large monetary reserves including its treasury's Great Chest, which when full contains some 200,000 oz., say 5 or 6 tons, of gold.
Europe and Africa

It is instructive to consider some aspects of the state of Europe at this time, the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Britain, emerging as the pre-eminent power, serves as an example.

In 1775 George III signs an order releasing from bondage the women and children, many of them younger than eight years old, who work in British coal and salt mines in conditions not much removed from slavery. The following year the British Parliament debates (and rejects) the first motion to outlaw slavery in Britain and her colonies. Another 32 years are to pass before the slave trade is outlawed and yet another 27 before the practice of slavery itself becomes illegal.

In Britain at this time, Roy Porter tells us, criminals are publicly whipped, pilloried, and hanged; until 1777 Jacobites' heads are spiked on Temple Bar. In 1800 there are some two hundred capital offences in England. Many specify death for small-scale theft such as pick-pocketing goods worth more than a shilling. The penalty for poaching is often transportation.

The British seldom bathe. Before cottons become cheap, clothes are difficult to wash; children in particular are often sewn into theirs for the duration of the winter. The use of underclothes is recent and not widespread. Chamber pots are provided in the dining-room side-boards of the wealthy, to save interrupting the conversation of the gentlemen. Food hygiene is no better than personal hygiene. The streets are full of the excrement of humans and horses. This is a world lit by candles and rush-lights.

There is not a single bathing establishment in London in 1800. By way of contrast, Thomas Astley, writing in 1745 of the ‘Gold Coast Negroes, their Persons, Character and Dress’, says: “They are very careful in washing their bodies morning and evening, and anointing them with palm-oil.”

In 1771 one hundred and seven slave ships sail from Liverpool, transporting 50,000 slaves from Africa. Colonial trade at the time amounts to one third of British commerce. In the 1780’s British slave traders top the international league, carrying more slaves from Africa than those of any other country. By 1790 British capitalists have invested some £70 million in the West Indian sugar economy, an economy which is based almost entirely on slave labour. During the 18th century British slave-traders transport a million and a half Africans. The slave trade is a vital pillar in the eighteenth century economy of the port city of Liverpool, underpinning the growth in its trade and shipping. It is not surprising that Liverpool merchants are amongst the most vocal opponents of legislation outlawing the slave trade in 1807.
Sugar and the slave trade

What was the slave trade all about? Here is one banal, if partial, explanation. In their voyages of discovery the Europeans found and took home three beverages: cocoa, coffee and tea, all of them bitter to the taste. This is what accounts for the dramatic rise in European consumption of sugar (In Britain, for example, 200,000lbs. in 1690; 5,000,000lbs. in 1760.) Add tobacco, rice and cotton, and the labour needed to cultivate these crops in the tropics, and there you have it.
Ama and the Legacy of the Slave Trade

The historian John Hunwick has written that he would “like to see slavery viewed from the perspective of the Africans who were victims of it.” But those Africans are long dead and have left hardly any documentary records of their experience. Who will speak for them?

The French historian Claude Meillassoux writes: “While the slave trade devastated the peasantry who saw their children, and especially their daughters, taken away by brigands or armed bands to be sold to dealers, it enriched the agents and traders in the towns as well as the nobility, the battle-hardened soldiers and the sycophants attached to the royal courts. By a perversion of memory, the sumptuousness of the plundering kings has left its mark on the area in its remembrance of the flourishing slave trade and the glories of the past, while the memory of their peasant victims has been effaced by their poverty.”

In Ama, I set out to recreate such a memory.

Lord Hugh Thomas, writes: “Any historian of the slave trade is conscious of a large gap in (the) picture. For the slave remains an unknown warrior, invoked by moralists on both sides of the Atlantic, recalled now in museums in one-time slave ports from Liverpool to Elmina, but all the same unspeaking, and therefore remote and elusive.”

I have attempted, in Ama, to give that unknown warrior a voice.

It is not for me to judge whether I have succeeded. The late Paul Hair, also a historian of the slave trade, believed that: “The feelings and sufferings of the slaves are partly unimaginable…Standard descriptions which concentrate on those aspects easily comprehensible to modern middle class sentiment cannot tell the whole story.” Perhaps he was right.

Four hundred years is a long time in human history as we perceive it. It is less than four hundred years since the disembarkation of Jan van Riebeck changed the course of South African history.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted for four hundred years.

African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. It was 1850 before the slave trade became illegal in Brazil and 1888 before slavery itself was finally made unlawful in that country. During those four hundred years European and American ships forcibly transported some twelve million African men, women and children to the far shores of the Atlantic. Millions more died on the journey to the coast, in the dungeons and barracoons in which they were assembled and in the course of the notorious Middle Passage.

By accident or good fortune, the Atlantic slavers by-passed South Africa: they took many slaves from Angola and some from Mozambique but none, to my knowledge from this country. We have, of course, our own story of the slave trade; but it is a different story.

I believe that Ama is an important book. In saying that, I make no claims for its literary merit: that is for others to judge. However, with the exception of perhaps two other somewhat obscure texts, both out of print, it is to the best of my knowledge the only attempt to tell this story from the point of view of an enslaved African, using the results of historical research now available to us. It is a story which should perhaps have been written by a Ghanaian. But West Africa is only now slowly beginning to emerge from a long period of collective amnesia regarding the slave trade. The damage to the psyche caused by the slave trade is buried deep in the individual and collective subconscious. One historian traces the institutionalized corruption endemic in West Africa back to practices developed during the period of the slave trade.

The situation on the other side of the Atlantic is quite different. When black pilgrims from the Americas visit the slave dungeons at Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, they are often overwhelmed by the experience and emerge tear-stained and emotionally drained. Many of them carry the pain of their families’ histories within them. It is transmitted from generation to generation. And the reason is not far to seek. From Argentina to Canada, in Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, even Venezuela and, some say, even in Cuba, the descendants of African slaves are socially and economically disadvantaged; many suffer from chronic poverty and experience discrimination in every field. In the United States, the issue of slavery is one which few whites are at ease discussing with their black compatriots and vice versa. This is just one symptom of a deep and hardly recognized malaise in that country. Until the US, and in particular its educational system, comes to terms with the fact that it was constructed on a foundation of the gross abuse of generations of unwilling African immigrants, not to speak of the genocide inflicted upon its native inhabitants, that country will not sleep easy.

And what of Europe? Every person who lives in the countries of the Atlantic rim carries within him or her, the marks of the slave trade, like some unrecognized gene. We are all the descendants of those who suffered and those who, in one way or another, benefited. The Atlantic slave trade is the bedrock upon which the mighty edifice of globalization has been constructed.

We are diminished by our failure to confront this history. So long as a single person of African descent suffers discrimination on account of his descent, all Africans are diminished, Nelson Mandela is diminished, Thabo Mbeki is diminished, John Kuffuor, President of Ghana, is diminished. And it is not only blacks, not only Africans who are diminished: all human beings are diminished, we are all diminished.

Some Englishman has had the chutzpah to establish an African Commission. Has the time not come for Africa to set up its own Commission, a Commission on the State of the African Diaspora, a Commission tasked with the identification and exposure of all discrimination against people of African descent, whatever their nationality, in all countries; and the elimination of all forms of such discrimination? Perhaps we need an international Truth and Reconciliation Commission, charged with bringing into the open the great harm the people of Europe and their descendants worldwide have inflicted on other peoples in the course of their conquest of the planet. That might achieve some sort of catharsis which might lead us to a new world based on human solidarity rather than greed, patronage and charity.

In March 2007, I predict an epidemic of dislocated shoulders amongst members of the British establishment. This will be the consequence of their attempts to pat themselves on the back in celebrating the bicentenary of legislation making the slave trade unlawful. Would it be too ambitious to aim to celebrate in 2034, two hundred years after slavery was made illegal in the British Empire, the total elimination of its psychological and material effects? My hope is that the publication of this novel, might make a small contribution to that end.

© Manu Herbstein

* Please send comments to [email protected]

I've had you on my "favourites" side-bar for the longest time, and I had (bad Wambui!) not visited for some time. Thus I am doubly grateful, doubly astonished, and doubly honoured that a) you even read the thing I wrote in Kwani - I think that was the one article everyone else skipped over and b) that you were so gracious and complimentary about it.

I am as vulnerable to flattery as anyone else, but this comes at a particularly opportune time, as I was just deciding that the quality of my writing could be matched by my cat, and that the last decent idea I had was to grow dreadlocks, which didn't help my intellectual output. So thank you from my heart, really, for the shot in the arm that you have just given me, and my very best wishes.

Sudan recently hosted the Sixth Ordinary Session of the General Assembly of the African Union. While the AU is seeking to claim its place in the international arena, a lot still needs to be done. But as the Chinese have always said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The European Union was initially a coal-and-steel trading bloc; but today, it is a strong common market with 370 million consumers now footing the bills of the African Union in the peacekeeping operations in Darfur and elsewhere on our continent. What Africa needs is a sense of focus and belonging. The African Union Act, if well used, could provide for intervention in the affairs of member states on critical issues such as democratic elections.

'Growth isn't working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth', shows that globalisation is failing the world's poorest as their share of the benefits of growth plummet, and accelerating climate change hurts the poorest most. The report, the first in the New Economic Foundation's series of 'Re-thinking poverty' reports, reveals that the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching the world's poorest people is actually shrinking, while they continue to bear an unfair share of the costs.

The Global Policy Forum reports that the Security Council adopted Resolution 1653 in a ministerial-level debate on regional dimensions of peace and security in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The resolution calls on the Governments of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to disarm and demobilize militias and armed groups, especially northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. The resolution also acknowledges the link between the illegal exploitation of natural resources, the illicit trade of those resources and the proliferation and trafficking of arms as key factors fuelling and exacerbating the conflicts in the Great Lakes. Resolution 1653 thus urges the countries of the region to promote lawful and transparent use of natural resources among themselves and in the region.

Kenyan Finance Minister David Mwiraria resigned on Wednesday, saying he had been wrongly linked to a multi-million dollar corruption scandal that has rocked President Mwai Kibaki's government. "In order that my name be cleared and to protect the integrity of the president, the government and our country Kenya, I hereby voluntarily step aside," Mwiraria said in a letter to Kibaki that he read to media, as reported by Reuters.

As the chances of finding more survivors in the building that collapsed earlier this week in Nairobi moved from slim to remote, poor oversight and corruption were being blamed for the disaster. "It is not just a problem of a collapsed building. It is a much wider problem of a lack of capacity to handle the huge construction industry," said Abonyo Erastus, vice chairman of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), adding that the Nairobi City Council (NCC) had too few architects on staff to maintain building standards in the Kenyan capital.

The main conversation in the Egyptian blogosphere this past week has been the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections.

responds to Hamas’ request for the international community not to cut aid. He writes scathingly that Hamas should “not get a penny from the international community” since without “mammon” they will not be able to maintain their social service network.

“If the international community is to respect the choice of the Palestinians, the choice of the international community should be respected as well
It's so funny that those who told countless Palestinian youth that blowing themselves up in an Israeli shopping center will earn them a place in heaven are now concerned lest the donors turn off the tap. I mean, I am so upset with Hamas, they should have more faith than this!! (sarcasm)”

Rantings of a Sandmonkey is equally disgusted with the Hamas win. In his post, ‘Hamas wins, Palestinians loose’ he writes:

"The Palestinians have truly shot themselves in the foot this time. Given how the US and the majority of the European countries view Hamas as a terrorist organization - as they should - it's not hard to imagine them cutting off all aid to the Palestinian government completely."

He calls those who believe Hamas will become moderate now that it is in power, “delusional and not listening to what Hamas are saying” which is “death to Israel” etcetera etcetera etcetera

One Arab World has a more considered response in his post ‘Hamas won, where from here?’ He compares the Hamas win to that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

“Both evoking the emotions of a people in dire straights, benefiting from the gravitation of people in those circumstance to ideologies, and representatives of the only viable alternative to a corrupt government. Hamas builds schools, clinics, and shelters. Hamas is intertwined in the people and amongst them. More importantly though, Hamas will not bend to others will; and that image is an opportunity. As only Sharon could have pulled off Gaza only Hamas can accept it
Whatever Hamas the bad ass, accepts in terms of negotiations, the majority of the Palestinians on the ground will accept.”

He goes on to say that the old methods (presumably suicide bombs in Tel Aviv) will no longer work. Hamas is now the government so the next attack on Israel will be a declaration of war and with the settlers out of Gaza Palestinian causalities will be much higher than in previous Israeli attacks. He also factors in the forthcoming Israeli elections and the possibility of victory for Netanyahu which could mean a reoccupation of Gaza and a third intafada. All very grim.

Elsewhere in the African blogosphere:

New South African blog, African Voices and Visions has a story on Togolese market women known as “Nana Benz”. The women began importing Dutch wax prints from Indonesia in the 1930s and then exporting them throughout Africa. They became so rich in the 1950s and were the only ones able to buy Mercedes Benz cars, thus the name “Nana Benz”.

I don’t know the history of the importation of Dutch wax prints but as long as I remember they have always been readily available in the markets of West Africa. And yes West African market women are probably amongst the wealthiest, most empowered and independent in the region.

Burkina Faso blog, Under the Acacias is concerned over the recent expansion of gold mining in the country. Until recently gold in Burkina Faso was mined by hand and was a source of income for local communities.

“When gold was found there, a small gold town grew up, with all the accompanying problems of sickness, crime, prostitution (and therefore AIDS of course) etc. Men would hand-dig tunnels many meters deep and long, working ridiculous hours, sustained often by amphetamines and kola nuts more than food. Sometimes the tunnels would collapse, killing the men inside.”

Now mining has been taken over by Orezone (a Canadian mining company – “the company’s mission is to create wealth by discovering and mining the earth’s resources in an efficient, responsible manner” – haven’t I heard that one before?). The local hand diggers have now been replaced by company workers. Although not sad to see the hand diggers leave and the associated problems the system caused, at least they had options.

“And yet, it was one option among very few for people in this region. I would be sorry if hope was once again snatched from them with nothing to replace it. Orezone of course has its business to run, but I hope that their investment into the development of the region is more than a nominal gift of a well or food aid now and again. People's lives have been affected by the company's arrival, and it should not be that the result is that a few benefit while the vast majority of the poorest and most vulnerable are left once more with no options”.

France Watcher writes that French “gunboat diplomacy is back”. S/he uses France’s involvement in the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo as evidence that French foreign policy in Africa is dictated by the President and the Ministry of Defence. For example despite the presence of UN troops in Ivory Coast, the French have “their own operation”.

“The Chief of Staff of the French armed forces impudently publicly makes thinly veiled threats against the elected President of an independent sovereign state, and this is considered normal. Africans keep quite. What a shame.”

S/he concludes that French diplomacy in Africa has shown us that:

“French actions in Africa are basic, crude, and effective. You take directions from them, they support you, get you legitimized through some kind of electoral process, and demonize your enemies. You disobey them, they bomb you, demonize you, impoverish you, draw sanctions against you, and ultimately arraign you before the International Criminal Court on charges they decide on. Africans beware!”

Afrikan Eye begins an excellent series on “Afrikan contributions to civilisation”. In this first part s/he looks at the continents contribution to astronomy and science and technology. S/he mentions, among others, the Namoratunga of Kenya:

“These Cushites have a calendar which uses the rising of seven stars or constellations to calculate a 12-month, 354-day year. The stone orientation in Namoratunga is such that it allows for accurate observation of these stars/constellations. It is assumed that these ancient Africans astronomers made their observations with the NAKED eye since no telescopes had yet been invented.”

And the Dogon of Mali:

“These West Africans people have not only plotted the orbits of stars circling Sirius but have revealed the extraordinary nature of one of its companions- Sirius B- which they claim to be one of the densest of stars in our galaxy. What is most astonishing about their revelations is that Sirius B is invisible to the unaided eye.

The Sirius B star is of deeply significant spiritual importance to the Dogon and they have thus gathered intricate and detailed knowledge of this star which is invisible to the naked eye. The Dogon say that the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius (the visible one) lasts 100 years.”

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, [email protected]

Je suis ravie que les publications de Pambazuka soit désormais en Français. Félicitations et courage.

We have read your interesting article from the Pambazuka News (From Rwanda to Darfur: Lessons learned?). We are 3 high school students appalled by the genocide that is currently taking place in Darfur and the seeming indifference of our government and many people. We have resolved to act to increase awareness of this atrocity. We have created a non-profit organization called Help Darfur Now (www.helpdarfurnow.org) and are raising money and awareness for this crisis.

Amnesty International has recently issued a public declaration inviting African heads of states to do something regarding the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

All things considered, I do think that it is high time African political leaders pulled their fingers out to help the victimized populations in that country. I find it objectionable and criminal that citizens should be evicted from their lands for mere political interests. The victims are left to starve with no potable water, suitable shelters and medical care. Even churches, and other humanitarian organizations are prevented from launching their humanitarian actions for those suffering people.

The African heads of state and the African Union are called upon to bring Mr Robert Mugabe to reason. Human rights defenders would really appreciate it if the situation in Zimbabwe was one of the main preoccupations of the African presidents and the AU. 

Donors must undertake far-reaching reforms to ensure that aid is improved so as to make a fully effective contribution to the fight against poverty. About 60 percent of the money donated as aid by G8 countries is phantom aid. In 2003 more than a quarter of total aid was allocated to technical assistance and paid to donor country companies and consultants for often overpriced, inappropriate goods and services that had few sustainable benefits, according to Africa Files.

In Africa and the developing world, the 1960s were marked by intense ideological struggles and heated debates on whether Capitalism or Socialism was the best path to prosperity. No single individual was at the heart of those contestations more than Dr Walter Rodney. Born in the Caribbean, schooled in Europe and fated to work in Africa, where, while at Dar es Salaam University, he produced his influential work, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa". A Senior Writer with the Nation Media Group attended a conference recently held to celebrate Rodney's life and legacy and writes, "many see him as the formidable bridge that linked continental Africa with its diaspora, re-connecting people to the culture from which they had been so brutally severed centuries earlier by slavery."

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 pleased to announce the Africa/Asia/Latin America scholarly collaborative initiative encompassing joint research, training, publishing and dissemination activities by researchers drawn from across the global South, and to call for applications for participation in the South-South comparative research seminars they are organising within the framework of the initiative.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the human rights arm of the African Union (AU), has cited Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo for rights violations in a unusually-critical report leaked to the press but not yet formally made public. The commission criticized the Zimbabwe government of Robert Mugabe for threatening the independence of the country's judiciary, called on Ethiopia to release political prisoners, and urged Sudan to stop attacks on civilians and aid workers in Darfur and co-operate with a probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC), reports The Jurist.

Nigeria’s presidential, legislative and gubernatorial elections scheduled for 2007 have the potential to be a huge milestone in the history and development of democracy in the country, as they will be the first time one administration reaches its constitutionally mandated term limit and must hand over to a successor. The elections of March/April 2003 saw Nigeria clear the hurdle of two successive elected governments for the first time in its history: However current President Olusegun Obasanjo must step down in 2007, making the establishment of a successor elected administration in that year even more of a potential landmark.

The search for the new Secretary General of the East African Community has began as plans to admit Rwanda and Burundi into the regional body are said to have reached an advanced stage with the crucial verification process already concluded. Current Secretary General, Ugandan Nuwe Amanya Mushega, ends his term in July 2006 and, a Tanzanian national will take over the expanded Community, which by May this year is expected to have the two central African states.

This week the issue of a potential US- Egyptian free trade agreement (FTA) emerged back in the spotlight. Reports coming from Washington suggest that the Bush administration has once again put on hold Egypt’s long aspired to dreams of a bilateral FTA. The reasons offered by the US administration this time, as relayed through trade diplomats and other officials, were not typical complaints over lax governmental efforts to pursue substantial economic reforms, as required by the US administration. Egypt’s slow pace of political reform — as assessed by Washington — is the sticking point now.

Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, should take prompt action to ensure that former Liberian President Charles Taylor is surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Campaign Against Impunity said today (January 27) in an open letter to President Johnson-Sirleaf, who was inaugurated on January 16. The Campaign Against Impunity is a coalition of some three hundred African and international civil society groups that was formed to press for Charles Taylor’s surrender to the Special Court.

The UN Millennium Village Project is giving 11 Malawian hamlets the chance to break free from the cycle of poverty. About 55,000 people in the settlements, spread across the country, are participating in the five-year project aimed at finding practical solutions to the problems preventing countries from achieving the UN's poverty-slashing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Rather than the 2015 timeframe, the villages "intend to prove that they can achieve at least some of the MDGs in a period of five years", said Peter Kulemeka, assistant resident representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Malawi.