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The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has launched a blog on international development issues, where one can find quick comments on all the international development issues of 2005. The blog doesn't replace ODI's usual products – the academic papers, Briefings, Opinion pieces and meetings - but it is an opportunity for ODI to respond to events as they unfold and for others to comment and engage.

Rafael Marques remembers three encounters during his journeying through Angola. The first sketch tells the story of Pedro, who uses his truck to take pregnant women on a four-hour, pot-holed journey to the nearest maternity hospital. In the second sketch, Almeida makes it big as a diamond digger but blows his fortune on the pleasures of life. Lastly, a train-track market in Viana, Luanda is described. “Angolans,” writes Marques, “continue to wait for something to happen. People are struggling for immediate survival, without the luxury of medium or long-term perspectives.”

Inspired perhaps, by having survived war and misery, Pedro cheerfully shared his story on how his truck had turned into a maternity hospital on wheels.

I met Pedro by the roadside, between the municipality of Cacula and Lubango, the capital of the southern Angolan province of Huíla. I was touring the south of the country by car. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the evening, with his car broken down, and so I gave him a ride.

The road seemed like a long net of small and huge potholes – so awful that it took more than four hours to drive the 60 km between the two towns.

Along the way, Pedro told me a lively story about the state of the road. As the only fellow with a car in his community, for years now he has been taking pregnant women to the Lubango Hospital to give birth. He said no woman has yet made it to the hospital. All have ended up giving birth in his car due to the tortuous journey, and without a single fatality.

“It eases the burden on the maternity hospital”, he said.

On another car journey, to the east of the country, I came across Almeida Gonçalves, a young man who worked as an informal diamond digger. A single lucky stone had earned him US$250,000. I asked him how he spent his money. He shrugged his shoulders and said: “I had to spend everything on clothes, food and drinks. I did not know how to spend it on other things.”

All he had left was a motorbike – until that was confiscated by the police in an act of extortion. Yet his eyes still light up when he imagines he might strike it lucky once again.

In other circumstance, Almeida Gonçalves might well be an Angolan government minister – provided he could upgrade his tastes from motorbikes to top luxury cars. As a minister, he would be entrusted with the mission of depositing, in his personal bank accounts, incalculable amounts of state funds, as it is a common government practice.

As for Pedro, he might fare well as a provincial governor. He has the virtue of finding advantages in total chaos, in the absence of management. The former governor of Kwanza-Norte province Manuel Pedro Pacavira managed to do the same; after more than a decade of misrule, he has been rewarded with la dolce vita as ambassador to Italy.

The train of indifference

The third and last example in my sketch of Angola as it is today has to do with the informal market set on the railway tracks in Viana, Luanda. The train passes through, whistling. People, unconcerned and in no rush, remove themselves and their goods from the tracks, just enough to make space for the locomotive to get past. As the train moves on, people reclaim their places on the tracks just inches behind it, and set their businesses once again. At times one can see the rusty train in the middle of the market. Once it has passed through, it is as though the train had never used those tracks.

Angolans continue to wait for something to happen. People are struggling for immediate survival, without the luxury of medium or long-term perspectives. There is no leadership to show a different way out, to share his or her vision of the future.

Notwithstanding three years of peace, society has simply given up the quest for common ground. Each person has become an island in search of individual peace and stability. To do so, one has to pledge allegiance to the families who control the chaos that we call the state.

The social and civic dynamics of 2001-2003, which seemed to have the potential to build common interests and ensure the fair participation of all sectors in bringing about changes, have crumbled.

Nowadays, war is no longer an argument to excuse people’s inertia. By the same token, the regime’s repression is also not a justification for inaction.

During the most violent and difficult years of our history, several names and values emerged out of the struggle for independence, for peace, for freedom of the press and of expression.

Repression has been replaced by corruption, by evil laughter at someone else's suffering, as the source of the real personal power in our society. Such a notion of power mirrors our own lack of purpose.

The regime, stretched in two directions between the ruling MPLA and its leader, José Eduardo dos Santos, has exhausted its ability to reinvent itself and to do better for the country. It has become a family feud that sustains itself on the apathy of the society at large. It survives by swallowing up the opposition. The regime also enjoys comfort in the belief it has secured itself through means of patronage rather than by its own merit or civic and political achievements.

For some time now, President dos Santos has been a little more than a chess player who entertains himself. He plays against himself. When it comes to addressing social problems, he has notoriously little authority over the executive that he supposedly leads.

Meanwhile, his prime minister, Nandó, may as well not exist, except when he becomes the laughing stock of the independent media for his gaffes, and for the regular public beatings that his sons inflict upon defenseless citizens.

I see peace and the opportunity for a serious and transparent democratization process in just the same way as I see the train making its way through the market. I note:

- The absence of social solidarity in the struggle for the common good and people’s indifference to the anomalies of the State;
- The collapse of forces such as opposition and organized civil society that ought to stand between the people and the regime;
- The stagnation and even backward movement in the development of the independent media outlets, which ought to be instrumental in the setting of a new culture of democracy, tolerance and transparency;
- The vast gulf between the ruling class (the plundering elite) and the proletariat and peasant classes (reclassified as simply "poor" or "the rest of society" and put at the mercy of the poverty reduction strategy programmes of the international community – World Bank, et al.)
- A political culture of postponing political and social problems to the extreme limit (e.g. civil disarmament, reducing unemployment, dealing with resource use, violence and social exclusion in the Lunda diamond fields, and the oil-rich Cabinda province, et al.)
- The potential for social upheaval, aggravated by the worsening of people’s living conditions, in times of peace. Even the alternative forms of survival such as street vending are being brutally crushed by the police.

As an Angolan, I feel defeated by my own weaknesses and limitations. I live in torment for not being able to do more for the society, for the country I love. In anguish, I seek refuge in my loneliness to digest the bitterness for a lost battle in the pursuit of human dignity in Angola.

I assume defeat. I face the reality and I prepare myself for the triumph of my own consciousness and that of the society, against the evil that inhabits in and destroys us.

Agostinho Neto once said, to Angolans, “we shall come back...”

So be it.

* Rafael Marques is an Angolan journalist.

* Please send comments to

Simply joining the throb to make poverty history will never be sufficient to banish injustice, writes Issa Shivji. Rather, in order to make poverty history, the history of poverty must be understood.

The GG8 (Geldof & Group of 8) fanfare in Gleneagles, Scotland is over. Its slogan was `Make Poverty History`. Originally this was the slogan of well-meaning NGOs and concerned young people who could not stomach the outrageous poverty of millions in the South existing side by side with the filthy wealth of a tiny minority on this planet.

The richest 225 people in the world own a combined wealth equal to the annual income of almost half the population of the earth. 1.2 billion of humanity exists in subhuman conditions at less than a dollar a day when 4 per cent of the wealth of these filthy rich 225 persons would be sufficient to pay the additional costs to achieve and maintain universal access to basic education, health care, maternity care, adequate food, safe water and sanitation for the whole human race.

The statistics are not new. They have been well known. Now even the perpetrators of the system which produces and reproduces this inhuman system quote them – of course for their own purpose.

But as these things go, the politicians of the system (euphemistically called globalisation) co-opted the slogan. The fun-idols of the well-meaning but naïve, privileged youth of the North were accommodated as the likes of Geldof were knighted by the queen and appointed to Blair’s Africa Commission to rub shoulders with the presidents of the African poor.

The point is that while it is necessary to campaign to Make Poverty History and shame the shameless classes of exploiters and oppressors and win over the uncommitted, it is not sufficient. To make poverty history, we must understand the history of poverty.

Poverty is neither our fate nor God-given. It did not and has not existed from time immemorial. It was not invented by the West either. It was created by them, who invaded our countries and imposed their system which continues to siphon off resources from the continent.

The history of the plunder and pillage of the African continent through the slave trade and colonialism; neo-colonialism and imperialism is known - although these days not taught in our schools since they have become “international” academies. If this was only history, we could have perhaps forgiven, although, not forgotten. But it is not just history. It is our present. New forms of slavery and colonialism and imperialism packaged and labelled in different forms continue unabated.

The mainstream media and politicians including our globalisation-friendly presidents and prime ministers continue to beg for forgiveness of debt and go round with a begging bowl to alleviate poverty. Yes, indeed, even preparation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) comes as a condition of aid. And as a further condition of aid we hire 1000-dollar a day consultants to help us draft those papers, all part of “aid”.

Meanwhile, we shower praises and send congratulatory messages to Mr Tony Blair for taking upon himself to chit-chat with his fellow G8’s on African poverty.

What is in there for the Blairs, Browns and Bushes of this world at this time to Brownwash (courtesy World Development Movement, WDM) African aid, debt and poverty? As I said, there are many a well-intentioned people in the North who have been campaigning to Make Poverty History. But also there are those – who are usually painted by the mainstream media with the brush of anti-this or anti-that minority “bent on violence” - who have and are going beyond it to understand the history and politics of poverty.

Martin Curtis, the head of WDM and a well-known British historian, says that the British Government has a political and an economic goal behind taking up the question of African poverty. The political goal is to maintain a big power status for Britain. “This boils down to invading a country from time to time, retaining nuclear weapons to make sure we can obliterate most of the world several times over, and professing our total support for US foreign policy.”

“The economic goal is to organise the global economy, and particular regions, so that the Middle East, southern Africa and South East Asia work in the interests of Western and British corporations.” Only ignoramuses would challenge this analysis.

The neo-liberal policies thrust upon African countries are clearly to integrate the continent further in the web of exploitative relationships and thus profit from the enormous resources of the continent. The US has now significantly moved its attention to Africa’s oil, as Middle East sources become more unstable due to the political resistance of the Arab masses which continue to simmer to a boiling point.

Britain’s interest is to develop African markets not only to dump its goods but also to sell services, the so-called invisibles. It thus firmly supports the privatisation and commoditization of water, energy, heath care, education, and land. We have had a taste of what this means for the “poor” in Tanzania.

A British secret Foreign Office file from 1968 says: “We should bend our energies to help produce a world economic climate in which our external trade, our income from invisibles and our balance of payments can prosper.”

In effect therefore it should not come as a surprise to anybody when Blair wields the carrot of aid and debt relief with one hand, while using the stick of World Bank-IMF-WTO rules and conditionality on liberalising and privatising the economy, with the other.

The Geldof-type Live Aid Bands and musical shows assuage the conscience of the wealthy inhabitants of the North while giving political legitimacy to the military interventions and political interferences of Western leaders in the lives and affairs of the African people – ninety per cent of whom have now been labelled “poor” and therefore disabled to resist and fight for their own salvation.

No need to cite another string of statistics. Just one may suffice. The 2002 Human Development Report of UNDP computes that developing countries lose more than twice in debt servicing what they get in net foreign investment, aid and grants to NGOs combined.

The Bob Geldofs of this world need to pay heed to their fellow campaigners like Martin Curtis when they say:

“We should not only be ratcheting up campaigning on individual issues. We also need to unite in a campaign to fundamentally change the system.”

Our own media and NGOs and the angry youth need to understand this message even more and not simply get subsumed in the globalisation mania in return for a few “trinkets” thrown on our NGO tables.

* © Issa Shivji. Issa Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

* Please send comments to

Charles Abugre sees Africa as a beautiful, welcoming and sharing person. But that person also has a wound that is still festering, has scars around its edges and is constantly poked by external factors and by the self. Abugre traces the history of this wound and the path to healing, in the process laying out a vision of what a healthy African state might look like.

Thanks to the recent incredibly successful mobilisation by the Make Poverty History (MPH) coalition, never before has Africa been so much in the public conscience in the United Kingdom. But as what? Tony Blair’s imagery of Africa is that of a scar on the conscience of the rich world. A scar is an ugly tissue left after a wound has healed or is healing. It acts as a reminder of a past painful experience. If the sight of it abhors you, look away or otherwise help to make- it-over in one form or the other to improve the aesthetic effect. There are some that feel strongly that the imagery of Africa presented through our airwaves and TV screens, and the justification that the pundits make for action under the MPH agenda is one of making-over an otherwise ugly, disturbing blemish that is also an unwelcome reminder of the past. My eight year old, who has not been back in Ghana in three years, asked me, “Dad, why are all Africans so poor and so miserable?” Her conscious has clearly been touched!

I do not suggest that the MPH’s agenda of debt cancellation, more and better aid, and trade justice is driven by make-over objectives. I believe that for the majority in the MPH coalition, it is about redressing injustice. If it is, then imagery and analysis matters.

My image of Africa is a beautiful, welcoming and sharing person bearing a gaping and bleeding wound that threatens her/his happiness and life. Africa’s wound is old (historically rooted) and still festering. There are scars around its edges suggesting partial but superficial healing. The wound is constantly poked both by external objects as well as self. As a result, it is still gashing. Stopping the bleeding is a first aid priority to protect life, before healing is possible. To heal, we must get the diagnosis right and recognise the age of the wound, how it was caused and what continues to exacerbate it.

We must help Africa to stop bleeding, first and foremost. Africa is presented as a continent with insufficient resources to feed itself, to treat itself, to exchange abroad and to pay its debt. This is true. But did you know that over the past 30 years Africa has been a net capital exporter (creditor) - transferring more capital abroad than received in aid loans and foreign direct investment? Some estimates suggest that Africa’s accumulated stock of capital transferred abroad between 1970 and 2000 amounted to over $280 billion through balance of payment financing, debt servicing, official reserves held abroad and trade mis-invoicing.

Debt, a phenomenon of the 1980s (brought about by Structural adjustment Programmes imposed by the IMF, the World Bank and rich countries) was particularly debilitating. Some estimates suggest that of every one dollar received in loans, 80 cents went right back out the same year in debt servicing. The remaining 20 cents will induce outflows equivalent to about a further 40 cents. Debt became a means of inducing capital flight and sucking out more resources than was originally provided. Further it was an instrument for making African countries implement policies prescribed my rich countries against the will of many African people.

Africa bled and continues to bleed from two further mechanisms: tax avoidance and tax competition and import penetration. A favourite policy of the aid providers over the past 20 years has been to encourage poor countries to reduce tax obligations on foreign investors. Consequently, across Africa, governments offered mining companies tax holidays ranging from 20-35 years. Ghana’s Ango-Ashanti will not pay tax for over 25 years. In addition, they are allowed to hold as much as 80% of the foreign exchange earning abroad in their own accounts, thereby denying Africans the foreign exchange earned by these companies. Sadly, much of this capital ends up in tax havens. The Tax Justice Network suggests that the stock of capital held by tax havens, a large part of which is from developing countries, exceeds 11 trillion dollars. If the returns to this capital were to be taxed at an average of 30%, they suggest that every year, this could generate well over $250 billion.

Losses from declining terms of trade have been regularly documented by UNCTAD, often amounting annually to tens of billions of dollars. What has not been estimated until recently are the losses that African countries have incurred simply by opening up their markets. Africa was made to cut down their rates of protection at a pace three times as fast as the countries of the OECD. This has left the continent too open and too dependent and with an ever declining share of international trade. Christian Aid recently calculated that over the past two decades, Africa lost in income terms and accumulated value well over $270bn from the negative growth effects of trade liberalization. This amount alone more than matches the accumulated value of grants, loans and net FDI into the continent.

To stop the bleeding, we should stop pushing African countries to reduce taxation on foreign companies, especially in the area of natural resources and financial services. We should address the issue of commodity pricing and commodity terms of trade and we should tighten the rules regulating the operation of companies to tackle trade mis-invoicing. Finally, we should stop encouraging or forcing African countries to open up their markets even further. We need to make it clear to the G8 that Africa is too open for the size and structure of its economy and probably needs to reverse the situation, especially in manufacturing and some agricultural products, to have any chance at all of recovering.

The media answer to the cause of Africa’s poverty is bad governance, by which is meant either corruption, or the lack of visionary leadership or caring leadership. All these are a part. The problem goes deeper than that. Africa has not lacked visionary leadership and Africa’s leaders have not always been corrupt. Visionary leaders became victims of cold war reprisals. Did you know that in the first 10 years of Africa’s independence 27 leaders were removed by military coups and other violent means? Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo were notable visionaries. Africa did not at the time know about coups. Most were orchestrated by Western intelligence. Removing leaders by coup d’etat became implanted early in Africa’s post-colonial experience.

But the current crisis of governance is rooted not simply in corruption but the increasing irrelevance of the state to citizens. In the first 20 years of independence the relevance of the African state was clears to its citizens – build unity around a nationalist project; deliver improvement in wellbeing through investing in health, education and production. Consequently Africa experienced its greatest economic and social progress in the 1960s and 1970s before the intervention of structural adjustment. Economic growth in SSA averaged 2.4% in the 60s and 4.0% in the 70s, compared to post structural adjustment growth of 1.4% in the 1980s and 2.1% in the 1990s. The same is true in basic social services. The attempt to transform the state into a facilitator (getting the environment and prices right) rather than an interventionist has led to massive inequality, exclusion and conflict. Rapid market opening has exacerbated these contradictions by displacing basic local production.

To address governance, governments have to first be relevant to the aspirations of its poorest - which means mobilising taxes from the rich and investing them in economic and social development. It means not just building roads and ports but providing teachers, extension services, price and storage support to producers and investment and R&D to help promote science in the interest of production. Budget tracking and transparency is useful only in the context of citizens seeking to defend resources for themselves. Such a state will look completely different from what the IMF, the World Bank and DFID have in mind and might look quite similar to what it was in the 60s and 70s. At least we have lessons of China and India to go by.

This new form of state and new form of accountability cannot happen when aid agencies and powerful governments use any excuse to direct and dominate decision-making in Africa. Aid-directed governance leads to reverse (de facto) accountability where governments account to donors rather than their own citizens. That is why we should oppose conditionality, including governance conditionality. They either don’t work (according to the World Bank's evaluation department) or they dominate and over-ride domestic politics which is the same as the neo-colonialism named by Kwame Nkrumah.

* Charles Abugre is currently the head of policy and advocacy at Christian Aid. He has been a development activist in Ghana and many parts of Africa and Asia. He writes in a personal capacity.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

When current Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki came to power in 2003 he promised Kenyans a new constitution within 100 days. The new constitution was seen as essential to prevent a recurrence of the abuses of President Daniel arap Moi's regime. But the process of developing the constitution quickly became mired in political wrangling and intrigue. The crisis came to a head last weekend, when a group of MPs made amendments to a draft constitution, sparking protests in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The amended draft constitution, which maintains the power of the president, was passed by parliament last Thursday. Kepta Ombati and Ndung’u Wainaina explain what’s behind the current crisis.

Kenya is a bundle of contradictions. It is amazing that the country has managed to maintain relative peace and managed two peaceful but autocratic political regime changes. The country has a dominant economy in the region. However, Kenya has one of the largest inequality gaps between the rich and the poor in the world and is perhaps only third to that of South Africa and Brazil.

Kenya has been an arena for flagrant human rights violations and massive corruption. Neither the human rights violations nor the corruption has been conclusively resolved or punished, creating an environment for impunity. This has often been camouflaged and hidden from the rest of the world by the complicity of western states.

Kenya waged an armed struggle against the colonizer for independence yet escaped the armed conflicts that resulted from either the post-independence leaders turning dictatorial or agents of neo-imperialism staging coups. The absence of such armed conflict has often led to the erroneous conclusion that Kenyans have been content with their government.

Some facts are needed at this stage. Firstly, active resistance against the autocratic regimes in the country since the dawn of independence are self-evident. Secondly, these long struggles that culminated in the reintroduction of multi-party democracy are too inadequate to fast track the country into a situation where the effective rule of law, democratic civic culture and the principle of accountability are dominant. Thirdly, the pre-occupation with pluralist multiparty politics and claims of increased democratic space are a scratch and not sufficient conditions for a true democracy. Fourthly, without radical and comprehensive constitutional, institutional, social and economic transformation the back of autocracy and inequality cannot be broken and no meaningful democratic change can occur.

The current governance and constitutional crisis in Kenya began immediately after independence via the introduction of executive-driven constitutional amendments to the independence constitution. The net effect was destruction of all the foundations of democratic government; the introduction of authoritarianism; the negation of the constitutionally-protected bill of rights; the subversion of the struggle for freedom; the alienation of government from the people; the consolidation of the home guard into the power structure and marginalization of the rest of the Kenyan population and the ethnicization of politics.

The state was consolidated within an autocratic mould while the evolution of the 42 nationalities within the borders of the new state into one nation was undermined; dissent was criminalized; basic freedoms were violated by the state; the people were committed to foreign debts without their consent or input and finally a client-patron system of governance was consolidated.

The National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) election meant different things to different people. For human rights activists and drivers for struggle for change, NARC was the victorious culmination of a long struggle against tyranny and neo-colonialism. To President Mwai Kibaki and his group, NARC was simply a vehicle to political power controlled and directed by neo-liberal conservatives. NARC is not a coalition but a composite party comprising disparate parties coalescing around individuals and pretending to be a single entity. Secondly, the assemblage presents a contradiction. Though elected on the reform platform, the balance of power on both sides of the imaginary divide is in favour of the conservatives and the turncoats. The champions of reforms today are the anti-reformers of yesteryear while the reformers of past years have disappeared within the conservative ranks and even become anti-reform.

Are the key political players – National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Kenya African National Union (KANU) – really interested in radical transformation and a democratic new constitution? Whereas NAK is comfortable with the current constitution because it provides the best leverages for consolidation of its power ahead of the next general elections, LDP sees the political value that failure to complete the constitution will bring to it against NAK at the next polls. Nothing may provide a more powerful campaign platform against NAK.

KANU on the other hand would be delighted if the constitution were not delivered giving it a form of retribution for its own sins of failure to deliver one. KANU’s interest is resumption of power, not constitutional reform for KANU has never believed in reforms. The sort of constitution and reforms Kenyans are seeking would send most if not all of the ranking members of NAK, LDP and KANU to Kamiti! The dominant forces in all three have no strong track record in constitutional reform. President Mwai Kibaki was a reluctant reformer since the early 90s.

The known reformers have been rapidly converted from idealists to pragmatists with an eye on power rather than an ideal democratic nation. Idealism has all of a sudden become idle dreaming while pragmatism is exalted. Principles and values are low denomination currency while wile and schemes for power are the definitive elements for excellence as former progressives come to term with the imperatives of “realpolitik”. The consequence has been the importing of narrow political interest into the constitutional review process which has resulted in the bastardization of the process.

There is no unanimity over the cause of the collapse of the constitutional review process. Some of the reasons include; President Kibaki’s failure to honour the memorandum of understanding; Raila Odinga’s rebellion against President Kibaki’s regime; and disagreement among politicians over what have been described as contentious issues. However, this is erroneous and deceptive since the original philosophy of constitution making in Kenya denied politicians the powers of determining the new constitutional order in the country. The people therefore and not politicians should decide what is or is not contentious. The real reasons include: A flawed process; capitulation of the reformers within the government; a gullible media; and weakened and paralyzed civil society. The problem is compounded by the loss of the moral authority by the religious community.

The constitutional reform crisis in Kenya is as a result of the balance of power being in favour of conservatives and anti-reformers rather than simply the war between NAK and LPD. Secondly, the popular opinion is that pushed by political parties and the media, NAK and LDP have disagreed on certain contentious issues. The popular view is not necessarily the correct view. Politicians and the media have a long history of misleading the nation over the reform process in Kenya since the advent of the campaign for constitutional reforms. This is largely due to the fact that politicians are always pursuing short term tactical objectives rather than the long term interests of the nation, while the media is controlled by a small group which is a continuum of the ruling elite rather than allies of the people.

And thirdly, the civil society (religious and secular), which has acted as a powerful catalyst and vanguard of the constitutional reform process, is not only deeply divided but also thoroughly coloured by judgments based on ethnicity and partisan positions in an unprecedented manner. This has compromised their capacity to bring NARC to order.

The failure of the NARC government will deny the African continent a new paradigm for political organization and change. Kenya became a toast of the continent, demonstrating that democratic change was possible through peaceful means. That will now be history, barring the balance of power shifting in favour of reformers in and outside government - or by divine intervention the anti-constitutionalists in and outside government becoming reformers.

Finally, it is increasingly becoming impossible to achieve any fundamental reforms – constitutional, political, economic or social – under the NARC government as it sinks deeper and deeper into the vices of the KANU regime. Even though Kenyans have not entirely written off the Kibaki regime, it is unlikely that it will be long before the nation slowly starts to adjust its sights beyond NARC. The problem is that from our experience, and that of most other African states, there does not appear any strong reason to believe that any government in power will faithfully facilitate the promulgation of a new constitution that has the interest of the people rather than the schemes of politicians for power at the center. So what is the alternative? It is now for sure that no serious democratic reforms are possible without first putting in place a democratic constitution with strong institutions; firm systems of checks and balances and sufficient guarantees against regression.

* Kepta is Chief Executive, Youth Agenda and Wainaina is Programme Manager, National Convention Executive Council (NCEC)

* Please email comments to

Introducing Blogs

Blogs, short for Weblogs, are the people's media. A blog is a website that enables anyone to write their story, express their opinions on other people's stories, articles and reports, provide commentary, alternative views and additional facts and create lists of just about anything.

Blogs are an important development both in internet technology and in the production of media. Each entry is date and time stamped and posts appear in chronological order and in categories. The posts are interactive as they allow for readers to leave comments and enter into discussions.

Blogs can cover any topic ranging from politics, culture, music, media, personal journals, technology, the list is endless. They can be written by one person or a group of people or even a small community. People who write blogs are called bloggers and the community of bloggers is known as the blogosphere. It is estimated that there are some 60 million blogs worldwide.

In the African Blog Roundup I will be presenting a weekly digest of some of the stories and commentary in the African blogosphere. Unfortunately this time of the year blogging is at its lowest due to people taking their vacations but things should return to normal by September. I will start with some of my favourite African blogs one of which is the Kenyan Democracy Project (http://demokrasia-kenya.blogspot.com/ ) who report from Nairobi on the ongoing demonstrations called by opposition groups opposing Mwai Kibaki’s handling of the Bomas draft constitution and the violent response by the police. The question being asked is

"Why are the police on the streets? Why are innocent people being arrested merely for wishing to stage their right of expression? I want the Minister to tell us what police are doing roaming our streets. When did he declare Kenya a police state? Couldn’t they be better used in other insecurity-prone areas like Marsabit?"

Indeed we should all ask the “why”?

African Bullets and Honey (another Kenyan blog) http://bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com/ poses the question “are the formerly colonised set to colonise their colonisers?”

Apparently due to a decline in the numbers of British men entering priesthood, churches in Britain are having to import African priests to take over rural parishes.

“We are entering an era when the welfare of the European soul shall be in the hands of the African. Europe has always had a peculiar need for Africa as a guiding light to its self awareness. The two, African and European, in the latter's mind at least, have occupied opposed sides of a binary divide for the last couple of hundred years: black vs. white; stupid as opposed to intelligent; savage vs. civilised; backward vs. forward; lazy vs. industrious.”

This is ironic considering the early days of colonialism when racism was being constructed by the Empire, and the story was us Africans had no souls. The tables have now been turned and it is Europe that needs re-envangelising!

The Zimbabwean Pundit (http://zimpundit.blogspot.com/2005/07/farmers-urged-not-return.html) has an interesting piece on the Zimbabwean government secretly asking for white commercial farmers to return to their land. However a right wing lobby group for the farmers has asked them not to heed the call until there is “rule of law, an independent judiciary and firm guarantees property rights will be respected” .

Ethiopundit (http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/2005/07/rule-britannia.html) declares that World War IV is still being fought today on British soil.

“Through experience, historical memory, and without a doubt a healthy dose of cultural programming on two continents, we have acquired a profound affection and respect for the people of the UK. It is certainly a well-deserved regard in every aspect from humanity's lessons in the Magna Carta onto the Royal Navy ending the Atlantic slave trade and the lonely years of fighting Nazi Germany alone onto the road to Basra just two years ago. Certainly from the Boston Massacre to the bloody suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion there are stains on that record... but at this point other, at times painful, truths emerge.”

Britain's existence has to an astonishing degree been a boon for mankind.

Ethiopundit then goes on to publish the complete “Rule Britannia”. I think they call this re-writing history!

* Compiled by Sokari Ekine, who runs her own blog that you can visit at http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is progressing beyond its role as peacekeeper in the region's violent conflicts, establishing the first zone in Africa, where people can move freely across borders, and making plans for ECO, a single regional currency. ECOWAS is setting an example for the rest of Africa. One New African article has called the organization "tempered like steel" because of its resolve to overcome its trials and tribulations.

At the United Nations Millennium Review Summit, September 14-16, 2005, world leaders will meet in New York to discuss the future of the United Nations, global collective security, and relations between rich and poor. This meeting will mark five years since the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State and Government adopted the Millennium Declaration. For the last four years, The North-South Institute (NSI) and the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA) have conducted annual global online surveys of civil society engagement with the implementation of the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs. The URL provided links through to the survey for 2005 where more than 400 groups provided a wealth of information about their work on the MDGs and their assessment of progress on Declaration objectives.

Ugandans are voting in a referendum to decide whether to adopt a multi-party political system. Parties have been virtually banned for nearly 20 years in an attempt to end years of sectarian violence. Five years ago, in a similar referendum, Ugandans chose to keep the restrictions on the parties.

Civil society groups in Kenya have set their sights on an upcoming referendum in a bid to prevent government from pushing through an altered version of the country's draft constitution. This comes after parliament gave its approval to the amended draft at midnight last Thursday, by a vote of 102 to 61. The altered version of the document was initially put forward earlier this month during a retreat in the coastal town of Kilifi, attended by certain legislators.

Registration of voters started on Monday in two provinces outside Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as preparations continued for general elections scheduled for 2006, officials said. The two provinces are Oriental in the northeast and Bas Congo in the west. "So far 10 out of 21 registration centres [in Bunia] are operational, and we are planning to open more," Apollinaire Malu Malu, president of the Independent Electoral Commission, told IRIN on Tuesday from Bunia.

In December 2002, George Bush established through an executive order after having failed to do so legislatively the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This initiative allows the US government to more easily fund faith-based organizations for their work in developing countries, including relief and humanitarian efforts. Today 25% of USAID partners are faith based organizations and 385 million dollars has been set aside in the 2005 US budget for faith-based and community initiatives.

Ethiopia is to repeat elections in at least 20 of the 524 constituencies contested in the disputed 15 May polls, the chairman of the National Election Board (NEB) said on Monday. Kemal Bedri said the fresh vote would take place in mid-August. Investigators, he added, had found evidence of abuses in more than 100 polling stations in these constituencies.

Angola's main opposition party, UNITA, said it was unfazed by a Supreme Court ruling on Monday allowing President Eduardo dos Santos to stand in the country's first post-war election. On Friday the Supreme Court ruled that parts of a new electoral law, reportedly preventing the veteran leader from seeking re-election, were unconstitutional. The legislation will have to return to parliament for amendment.

In your editorial on the Papacy in Africa, it ends with the following statement, again from the BBC web site: "One should not forget the millions of HIV victims, most of them Africans. Had the Pope blessed condoms and family planning programs instead of preaching a rigid and damaging dogma, he certainly could have saved many more souls. Wasn't that his job?"

Has anyone in your organization studied the incidents of Aids in Africa? If you had you would have discovered that the problem countries with high HIV rates are Non-Catholic Chrisitan or secular countries where rates are anywhere from 20%-40% of the population infected. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbawe lead the charge. All with very few Codomless Roman Catholics to influence rates of infection.

The only two countries that you could call Roman Catholic at about 50% of the population, DR Congo and Rwanda have among the lowest rates in Sub Saharan Africa.

Is it not possible that behaviour is the real issue? Why would any promiscuous Catholic selectively choose to not where a condom? By this deduction every Catholic country in the world would be leading the charge in HIV infection rates. Give me a break!

Pambazuka News responds: The article drew on the views of people in Africa as reflected on a BBC website. As such, people are entitled to their views. The particular quote that you refer to repeats a well documented criticism of the Catholic Church, not only in Africa. This holds that whether or not a country is predominantly Catholic, the Catholic Church as a key player in civil society in many countries does have an influence. Therefore its support for the use of condoms could have had an influence on the fight against the epidemic. In the countries that you mention, Rwanda and DRC, HIV infection rates are 5.1 percent and 4.2 percent respectively, according to UNAIDS. In Rwanda in 2003 there were 22 000 aids deaths and in DRC in 2003 there were 100 000 Aids deaths (again, according to UNAIDS). Had the Catholic Church promoted the use of condoms, would some of these lives have been saved?

Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980. But what does 25 years of independence mean to the ordinary Zimbabwean? Does it mean standing in a long queue waiting for a bag of sugar or questioning what has led a black man to oppress his fellow comrades? These are just a few of the thought provoking questions scrawled on the walls of a grimy public toilet in a public art installation at the just ended Khululeka Exhibition in Bulawayo. Artists and painters at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo were encouraged to present various interpretations of their understanding of Freedom in Zimbabwe. By visiting the Kubatana web site you can also listen to audio files associated with this story.
* View a video of "Operation Murambatsvina" online. Visit:
http://t2news.amnesty.r3h.net/mavp/mediaclip.nsf/0/1AD959CE6EAFEE738025… (You will need to copy and paste the URL into your browser for it to work)
* Read a recent UN report condemning forced removals in Zimbabwe. Visit:
http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/zimbabwe/zimbabwe_rpt.pdf

The eagles flew from the glen
Crying: pieces of eight, pieces of eight
no more scars, no more scars,
The Apyamwene called the Lubuga as she ripped the bark
of the omutuba tree,
Wanjiku looked up from her gikua tubers
Look, look, the sun is setting over her vines

The eagles now wore night vision glasses and winged
their way to
Wanjiku's garden,
Wings lopsided in assymetrical pattern
as the precision cameras locked on their target
Pieces of eight, pieces of eight...

The local policeman appeared with his baton:
get out of the way get out of the way, out out out,
As he moved over to the sacred land with his shoes
full of vomit
he cut down the Lubuga's tree
Don't step here she cried
Not with your shoes!

"Out, out, out, the eagles are coming the eagles are
coming
he roared
What eagles the Apyamwene asked
Your presence in this country is illegal, he barked
you are the barriers to development with your backward
ideas,
you are to return to Angoche at once!

First came a bullock cart,
Then a Bedford lorry
and finally
a stage, an outdoor stage
Isis rose from the depths of Lolwe and shook her
head: what eagles, what scars,
I will heal my own,
I will regenerate my own

A curtain fell over her face as a strange voice
shouted in the glen
Lights camera action!

Fingers snapping, children dying,
a flash of light in the distance,
Fingers snapping, children dying,
the wingèd squadron approaches,
fingers snapping children dying
the wingèd squadron approaches.

The policeman grinned sheepishly as eagles in the
night vision goggles banked over the rivers,
lakes, mountains, islands crates and forests of
Africa,
Fingers snapping , children dying,
Wanjiku refused to run,
Fingers snapping , children dying
The Lubuga refused to budge,
Fingers snapping, children dying
The Apyamwene hauled the Sultan to his feet,
Fingers snapping, children dying

(Drumbeat gets frenzied)

they came from the east
and the west,
and from the south and
the north,
from the matrix of the Congo
the breasts of Kilimanjaro
the sands of the Kalahari,
heaving and breathign again as Isis hovered above
unseen,
The Joliba, the Nile, the Zambezi and the Congo like a
mighty four headed python reared up
to protect its own,
Mosi oa Tunya churned into the pit of the earth's
stomach,
the phantom trees of Kariba rose,
deadwood no more,

what are you still doing here?
the policeman asked angrily,

Cant you see the eagles need to land
With their pieces of eight
I warned you, you are here illegally

Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight
The lopsided wingèd hosts,
No more scars, no more scars, no more scars, no more
scars
The lopsided wingèd hosts
Pieces of eight, pieces of eight,
No more pieces, pieces of scars, scars of pieces, no
more eights,
The eagles from the glen.

(the drums stop abruptly)