Global leaders like UK prime-minister Tony Blair have been vocal in stating that 2005 is a year where progress must be made on Africa's development. The G8 summit - an opportunity for rich world leaders to put their heads together and change the global development machinery - is now underway in Gleneagles, Scotland. Debt relief, aid flows, global trade and climate change are on the agenda of one of the highest profile G8 meetings ever. But well-known African commentator Issa Shivji is not optimistic that this summit will produce significant changes for the millions of people trapped in poverty.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: There has been a deluge of promises and debate around issues of aid and debt ahead of this G8 summit. What, if anything, can Africans expect from world leaders this time around?

ISSA SHIVJI: Little. Promises based on utterly wrong premises yield little beyond further humiliation of the African people as permanent beggars. Debt and aid belong to the same system, the system of exploitation of African resources. "Aid as imperialism" is as true today as it was thirty years ago when Teresa Hayter wrote a book with that title.

PN: Reading the various media reports around the G8 there is a very real sense that it is all about Tony Blair's plans for Africa, or Gordon Brown's promises, or what George Bush is or isn't prepared to do. Why is it that African voices seem to be so sidelined in events that are so crucial to their lives?

IS: Truly African voices have been and are being sidelined. This is the show of the very people who plan poverty in the first place! Poverty in Africa, both historically and in contemporary times, is due in no small measure to the exploitation and plundering of its resources by Western multinational capital. The crucial point for me is not that the Africans have little say in Blair's and Brown's plans but that Africans have lost all voice in controlling their own resources, their own destiny.

PN: What is the relevance of Blair's Commission for Africa report, the G8 event and the various other initiatives taking place during 2005? How should African people engage with these initiatives?

IS: Isn't it a cruel irony that a leader of a country that followed Bush into destroying a developing country (Iraq) and that has increased its arms sales to Africa fourfold in the last four years should be spearheading the fight against African poverty? If this is not cyncism, what is it? Commissions on Africa have been many but this was the first time in recent history that it was established and led by the very people whom we used to call 'neo-colonialists'! It is African leaders who like poodles dance to the tune; the African people in their villages have little time to engage in such dances!

PN: Tony Blair's plans for Africa are presented as being anti-poverty, but critics argue that they mask age-old policies that will continue the exploitation of Africa. What's so wrong with Blair's - and by extension - the G8 approach to ending poverty?

IS: As I said, the very premises are wrong. The underdevelopment of Africa and the resultant poverty are the outcome of a long historical process of exploitation of the continent by Western imperialism. That relationship continues today in an even more blatant form as the resources of Africa - from mineral to bio-resources - are siphoned off through various mechanisms that we associate with globalization: the so-called free trade, and various other associated policies such as privitisation and marketisation of the African economy. So while Africa's economies get integrated in global circuits, African people get marginalised. One hates to be cynical but it is literally true that while Blair gives aid with one hand to reduce poverty, he sells arms with another to kill the poor.

PN: Once again, African leaders will attend the summit and be granted an audience with G8 leaders. Are African leaders getting anything substantive in return and are they correct to engage in this way? What should they be doing which they are not doing?

IS: We shouldn't forget that Africa and generally the people of the South are on the defensive. The confidence and arrogance of the nationalist period has been defeated. Imperialism has assumed a more offensive and aggressive posture. African leaders today are more compradors than nationalists. So long as African leaders seek legitimacy from their imperial masters rather than their own people they will continue to appear with bowls in hands at the doorsteps of the G8.

PN: The G8 development approach is largely based on building Africa through a free market economy that attracts foreign investment and trade. What would an alternative development agenda for Africa look like?

IS: There is no doubt in my mind that we, in Africa, have to develop a nationalist, a Pan-Africanist vision, both political and developmental. And this vision has to be in opposition to the domination of imperialism, read globalisation, just as the nationalist vision in the last century was in opposition to colonialism. More than ever before we need Nkrumahs and Fanons who saw in African unity and in the unity of the oppressed people and exploited classes a counter-force, which would be the harbinger of an alternative vision and an alternative path of development.

PN: Plans are afoot to create a human white band around Edinburgh as a symbol of demands for trade justice, debt cancellation and more and better aid. What is your assessment of these mobilisations?

IS: I do not wish to be cynical of the well-intentioned who would want to bring the "plight" of Africa to the world stage. But I would like to see much more and in a more sustained fashion the well-intentioned people with red bands surrounding Edinburgh and highlighting without ambiguity and prevarication the pillage of Africa; pillage through trade, investment, debt and dubious policies.

PN: What is the most effective action that organisations in Africa should take today that will make a significant impact on the relationship between our countries and the G8?

IS : Ultimately, the liberators of Africa will be Africans themselves. Organisations in Africa have to sink their roots among their own people and free themselves of this dependency syndrome. We have to organise and mobilise for a second independence in every sense of the world. Fundamentally, the relationship between Africa and G8 is an unequal exploitative relationship. That is the fundamental premise which should be our point of departure.

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

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Operation Murambatsvina - sweep out the trash – has torn through Zimbabwe like a Tsunami, describes Mary Ndlovu. Hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced, but the true cost of the government operation on the livelihoods of people is almost impossible to predict. As the G8 meets in Scotland and African leaders conclude an African Union Summit in Libya, Zimbabweans feel that the rest of Africa has turned its back on them.

Towards the end of May a tsunami struck Harare, flattering everything in its path - informal businesses, solidly built homes, shacks, orphanages, churches, even a mosque; it took with it people’s lives, livelihoods, family life, their spirit to survive. Like the Asian tsunami in December, the number of its victims and the total cost of the destruction are hard to quantify; unlike the Asian tsunami, it is man-made and continues in wave after wave of senseless brutality, reaching every corner of this increasingly miserable country.

The government calls it Murambatsvina – sweep out the trash – or Operation Restore Order. But Zimbabweans have rejected the government’s term, for they are not trash, and order has not been restored. Only the term “tsunami” adequately portrays the suddenness, the scale and the nature of the catastrophic destruction which has been visited on us - not by erratic nature, but by our own government.

Suddenly, with virtually no warning, police in central Harare descended on informal traders, breaking and burning their stalls, confiscating or destroying their wares, and arresting thousands. By the following week, the attacks had spread throughout Harare and to other urban centres in the country, and the assault on informal housing had begun. Six weeks later, the operation continues. Police of various descriptions move from township to township, ordering residents to destroy their illegal dwellings or have them smashed. Sometimes sufficient warning has been given for people to remove their furniture and salvage some of their building materials, other times the bulldozers are hot on the heels of the police, disrupting funerals, chasing people from their cooking and their bathing. At least six people have been killed directly by the police actions. Many others, especially babies, the aged and those suffering from AIDS have succumbed to exposure, shock and hunger as they huddle through the cold nights in the rubble of their homes.

Now, in the depth of the winter season, tens of thousands remain camped in the open, dazed and unbelieving. Others, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have moved into the houses of friends or neighbours or relatives, who were already overcrowded, or sleep on verandahs. Thousands are crammed into churches where they have been offered shelter and are being fed; some have managed to sell their furniture to raise the bus fare to go to their rural homes, where they face an uncertain future with no food or housing.

How do we expect them to react when our President tells UN experts that the action is for the good of the people, and they appreciate what has been done for them? Can it ever be for someone’s good to destroy their home when you have nothing to replace it with? When you tell them they are rubbish, maggots, who are not wanted? When you cause them the utmost trauma of preventing them from feeding their families? When you destroy the huts of orphans and smash the centres that were caring for them; when you bulldoze a clinic that was providing anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients and tell them to go to rural areas where there are no medicines.

Surely a government which turns so viciously on its own people must be acting in response to a serious threat to its power, an armed rebellion or organised sabotage at least. No. Not at all. That has not happened and government has not mentioned it. The government says it is seeking to reduce crime and restore order to the cities of Zimbabwe. There has been too much illegal activity and this must be stopped; informal trading venues and illegal dwellings were havens for criminals, foreign exchange dealers, fraudsters; purveyors of stolen property, making once beautiful cities filthy and unsafe. This is a clean-up operation which will catch the criminals, drive the forex back into the banks, and black market goods into legitimate channels.

It is unspeakably depressing to watch government and party leaders trying to defend the indefensible. Raze whole suburbs to catch a few criminals? Deprive people of earning a living to stop thieves? How many more thieves will be created? With a national housing backlog of two million units, bulldoze more than 80,000? Where is the once very professional police force whose training teaches them how to identify and apprehend criminals? Where are the health officials who enforce hygiene standards and the town planners who design orderly housing developments? Why the sudden need to restore beauty to the cities?

Of course it is true that the cities of Zimbabwe have deteriorated during the past ten years. Visitors from other parts of Africa once gawked at Harare, wondering how such a beautiful, orderly municipality could really be African. It was well-planned, most people were in employment, there was little sign of the shanty towns and street traders common in other African metropolises.

But things have changed, for several reasons. First is the deterioration in standards of government, especially the growth of corruption, which sees by-laws flagrantly ignored for the price of a small bribe, and awarding of contracts to cronies incapable of delivering the services. Second was the effect of the economic decline resulting from the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), introduced in the early 1990’s. Many urban workers lost their jobs, and government encouraged them to turn to the informal sector to create their own incomes, in manufacturing, services and retail trading; councils which resisted were ordered by central government to relax by-laws to accommodate them. Third was the effect of the farm invasions of 2000 and thereafter. On the one hand these produced a flood of displaced farm workers, many of whom crowded into the slums of Harare, and on the other it opened former farmland to be allocated without any planning to loyal supporters of ZANU PF for informal settlement. Fourthly, when the opposition MDC won control of most urban councils between 2000 and 2002, government deliberately undermined their operations, using its powers under the Urban Councils Act to prevent rate increases in line with hyperinflation. Borrowing powers to develop housing and upgrade crumbling infrastructure, especially in water and sewage reticulation, were systematically denied. The decline of Zimbabwe’s cities is in large part, therefore, the direct result of government’s economic and political mismanagement.

Then suddenly, without consultation, public deliberation, or even the simplest level of information, government declared itself obsessed with illegality, and determined to eliminate it from Zimbabwe. This seemed strange in view of the fact that it is the government that has been content to ignore legality whenever it threatened to restrict its own operations, flouting court orders in regard to holding of elections, seizures of land, release of detainees from prison, and prosecution of known criminals. But Zimbabweans have come to know that government uses the law when it finds it convenient and abuses it to pursue its political goals.

In this case, the line between legality and illegality has become blurred. Many of the informal traders had licences issued by the local authorities, but many did not. Many of those who did broke the law in other ways, by receiving stolen goods or dealing in foreign currency or black market goods, but most did not. The settlements around Harare which have now been destroyed had the blessing of the highest government authorities, who had allocated stands, arranged in some cases for financing, and publicly encouraged the recipients to build homes. Does this make them legal if the necessary planning laws have been ignored? The people are now being punished for taking government instructions as legality.

The cry by government that traders and home-owners were illegal is thus partly correct, and partly not. However, the methods used in carrying out their operation of destruction are clearly not legal. The actions of the police have all been taken without due process, and violate statute law, our constitution, and international law.

The Urban Councils Act specifies that an illegal structure can only be destroyed when notice of 28 days has been given to the owner and occupier and opportunity has been given for a court application; no one was given such notice. The common law does not permit the deprivation of property in the possession of anyone without legal sanction; those who had their buildings and their trading goods destroyed or seized had their property illegally despoiled. The constitution guarantees the right to be protected from arbitrary deprivation of property, and from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Surely destroying one’s home and leaving them in the open is cruel and degrading by anyone’s estimate. The United Nations Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights provides that everyone has the right to shelter, while the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights has been interpreted, in a case brought against Nigeria, to mean that a government may not evict anyone from his home without providing alternative accommodation. How can our government claim that it is restoring legality, when all the means it is using are quite clearly infringements of the law at every level?

The effects and costs of the operation are certainly too huge to measure. Six weeks since its beginning, the tsunami continues to destroy people’s lives. The original estimates of 200,000 to 250,000 persons displaced have by now doubled. The 300,000 school children displaced from schools was given by the Ministry of Education for Harare only, after only two weeks of demolitions. In Mutare, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls, Beitbridge, Harare itself, and many other towns and cities, countless thousands more have since been affected. A million traders and their families losing their livelihoods will have an immeasurable effect. Of course many will begin again because they simply have to feed their families, legal or not legal. But in total, how much business is being lost for every sector of the economy? And how many of these were sending money and food home to the rural areas. We simply can’t know.

Perhaps falling back in horror at what they have done in the past weeks, the government has suddenly announced a programme of reconstruction. Thousands of stands will be serviced and houses built over the next three years. Although only four houses have been built in a week, 9,000 are to be ready in two months. This raises more questions than it answers: where will the money come from in a cash-strapped economy? Who will pay for the houses? And most important of all - if government can mobilise the money to build houses, why didn’t they do it before smashing down the ones that already existed? The cost of re-housing Indonesian communities affected by the natural tsunami last December is estimated at $US5 billion for 500,000 still homeless. We have at least that number of homeless people now. Where in our wildest dreams do we imagine we will get funding to rebuild what we have ourselves destroyed? Our economy was already in a state of complete collapse - what some have referred to as meltdown. Rebuilding on this scale is pure delusion.

But as government’s efforts at damage control pick up pace, more themes have emerged. Applicants for new trading licences and allocation of stands will be “vetted” - a term that has not been defined. It is only assumed that they will be checked for criminal records (few will be found) and asked to produce ZANU PF membership cards. Already we are told that the stands at Whitecliff Farm are being reserved for civil servants - police, army and CIO primarily; they are certainly not the people who were displaced. Women arrested for protesting were finger-printed and told they would never get vending licenses again. “Presumptive taxes” will be levied on informal traders, who will pay income tax on “presumed income”. While party lackeys wheel and deal and survive on kick-backs and bribes, the struggling poor will provide for the instruments of their own oppression.

Perhaps more sinister, all these processes of “reconstruction” have been removed from the local authorities who legally have responsibility for them. Licences have always been issued by the councils, not by the police. Housing stands have been allocated by the council housing departments. Now we have unknown authorities responsible for allocating these resources. We have new “task forces” controlled by the army assigned to supervise the reconstruction. Clearly, there is an all-out attempt to usurp the designated powers of elected councils completely and emasculate any democratic participation of the people. We are truly heading for a military state, where central government takes everything, leaving no democratic space for anyone else. We are even to have chiefs for cities, since they will better implement government policies! Government is no longer by elected officials, answerable to the people. It is by appointees of those clinging to power by the barrel of the gun.

As we struggle to give a rational explanation for these seemingly deranged acts of destruction several points emerge clearly:

1. This is very obviously a pre-emptive assault on urban populations, the stronghold of the opposition, and the potential source of any meaningful threat to ZANU PF’s power; its main aim seems to be to forcibly relocate poor people to rural areas by making it impossible for them to live in towns;

2. It is not only an attack on towns, but on informal activities in rural areas as well – wood carvers and sculptors, gold diggers, even fishermen; nor is it an attack only on opposition supporters, as many of ZANU PF’s members have also been affected;

3. It seeks to impose government and ZANU PF control on sections of the economy where their grip has slipped in recent years - in the control of foreign exchange rates, the collection of taxes and the determination of who benefits from resource allocation. As such it is a desperate attempt to ensure that the little wealth that remains is channelled through the hands of government, to be spent as they see fit;

4. It is not going to improve the national economy - in fact it will cripple it further, and it will have horrendous consequences on the lives of millions of Zimbabweans, reducing hundreds of thousands more to penury;

5. It has been undertaken in a typically ZANU PF way - suddenly, violently, illegally and recklessly, without regard to the disastrous consequences;

6. One more very large nail has been hammered into the coffin of Zimbabwean democracy, which is rapidly being replaced by an illegitimate oligarchy amassing wealth for themselves while the people starve, and maintaining their position by military rule.

And Africa turns its back. They do no want to know. We helped South Africans when they were fighting a force too powerful, why do they deny us the same? We do not want to be rescued by the developed world. We want to be rescued by our fellow Africans, understanding our plight and standing by the principles to which they committed themselves in the African Union, the Harare Declaration, numerous international human rights instruments, the SADC and NEPAD. Why do they not care? Why do our pleas fall on deaf ears?

* Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* Read the “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left” a Public Lecture delivered at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal by Brian Raftopoulos.
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,735

As part for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) Fahamu, the producers of Pambazuka News, set up an SMS number so that people around Africa and the world could send messages calling for debt cancellation and an end to poverty. So far we have received over 1000 messages – all calling for an end to debt and poverty. Below is a selection of some of these messages. You can send your message to +27 82 904 3425.

1. No to debt, yes to africa development. Mozambique

2. No to debt. Deeply unjust and maintains serious under development and inequality. Emma Harvey. South Africa

3. No to debt. The G8 countries must extend the cancellation of debt to all countries in the South to give them a chance to revamp their economies and improve the standard of living of their communities. The next important task will be to open up trade opportunities in terms of fair trade so that these countries can develop their capabilities and capacity. Aluta continua! South Africa

4. Every 3 seconds an African child dies due to poverty - cancel the debts. Ghana

5. SAY NO 2 POVERTY,10 YRS GHANA.

6. Poverty is bad. Ghana

7. No to Debt it binds a nation to poverty. Mugerwa Olga Nakato
Uganda

8. No to debt, Another world is possible. Adelson Rafael,
Mozambique

9. No to debt - I wish to remind the G8 leaders that delay is not denial and the focus is on them to act now. Ronald Ondari,
Kenya

10. Please help the children of Africa. Farida Choisy of the Seychelles. Thank you.

11. It has to stop. No to poverty. No to war!
Seychelles

12. TO ALL LEADERS MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER ONE SO WE CAN ALL LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY.
Seychelles

13. I JANE NABUNNYA IN SEETA MUKONO DISTRICT UGANDA SAY NO TO POVERTY

14. Peace&unity will stop poverty (maga)
South Africa

15. The G8 must cancel our debt. But we Africans are our own enemy. We must say NO to corrupt, self serving leaders and vote them out of power. God has provided for Africa in abundance but some of our 'leaders' connive with the West in robbing Africa. Enough is enough! We shall overcome. Namibia

16. No to debt! We r not responsible for being down, but we r responsible for getting up! South Africa

17. I really hope leaders get it to their heads that they are the way forward for AFRICANS. Ayodele olufawo from Nigeria.

18. Africa is in debt BECAUSE since slavery, colonization, apartheid & now globalization we've been ENRICHING the G8 countries. AFRICA OWES NOTHING. Magauta, Joburg, South Africa.

19. LET THE (G8) CHANGE THE HISTORY OF THE POOR NATIONS BY WRITING OFF THEIR DEB TS;THANK YOU.
Kenya.

* CAN'T PAY WON'T PAY

Join the call for debt cancellation! Text your comments with your name and surname to

+27 82 904 3425

Your message will be used to demonstrate overwhelming support for debt cancellation.

Angola is likely to produce diamonds worth nearly US $900 million this year, but little of that money will be spent on development in the diamond producing areas, according to a new report. The report by Partnership Africa Canada noted that "three years of peace is enough time for an oil-rich, diamond-rich government to have made wider social investments in the diamond areas and to have produced development policies that are more supportive of Angola's artisanal miners".

Unexpected and overwhelming support for sacked former deputy president Jacob Zuma has given President Thabo Mbeki and the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) some pause for thought. Mbeki's attempt to have the ANC's national general council endorse his "handling" of Zuma - which means approve Zuma's dismissal - backfired, leading to the president having to give concessions he would rather have done without.

We welcome the intentions to translate into practical action the vision of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty to make it history. Though the systems the G8 leaders are steering are way more complex and not so easily amenable to any good intention to make them deliver to the poor, we hope that any set of serious effort that you collectively undertake makes a difference.

Africa has suffered for too long. Until today the record of the political economy of international aid has been largely unproductive. Africa was trapped in a double bind: if the G8 and others refuse their assistance, Africa loses; if it accepts their assistance, Africa loses also. We hope now for the first time, the G8 are prepared to provide aid by engaging with the political economy of aid, investment and trade without forcing Africa to lose and blaming Africa for it. It is time to provide the kind of assistance that will make Africa a winner and would not put all the blame to it, if things go wrong.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is at a loss for words over the current Live 8 and G8 attention for Africa. “It is like being offered a handkerchief by the same person who is beating the hell out of you,” he writes, preferring to focus his attention on the just-concluded African Union summit of heads of state that took place in Shirte, Libya. It was at this summit, he argues, that decisions about he real future of Africa were being made.

How I wish I could write this article from beginning to end without mentioning the G8, Tony Blair, Geldof or any of the other busy bodies running around like headless chickens claiming they want to help Africa. I will try and try very hard.

One of the difficulties with becoming flavour of the moment is that you forget what you want for yourself as others divest you of the power to help yourself. Everybody loves Africa now and is going to desperate lengths to show why they are our new best friends!

It is like South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Suddenly we could not find any supporters for the loathed apartheid system anymore both inside and outside of South Africa. Even the Boer Nationalist Party that institutionalised apartheid became anti apartheid. Everywhere Mandela went powerful politicians in powerful countries in Europe and America who had shielded the apartheid regime from international sanctions and prevented censure of the racist regime in multi lateral forums including the UN Security Council, Commonwealth, EU, etc were all queuing up to have their pictures taken with the Great Madiba. They all reinvented their political CVs to show how all along they had been fighting for his release and an end to apartheid. One of the worst of this latter day friend of South African Liberation was Margaret Thatcher, who as British Prime Minister resisted any criticisms of apartheid South Africa, invited Botha on a state visit to London and described the ANC as a 'typical terrorist organisation like the IRA.'

Africa is in a similar situation now. It is difficult to know how to react to this sudden show of concern for a people that have been so marginalized and humiliated for such a long time. It is like being offered a handkerchief by the same person who is beating the hell out of you.

After last Saturday's multi-city parties the whole world is now programmed to look up to eight white men in dark suits meeting in far away Gleneagles, Scotland, to save Africa. None of them is an African.

Yet a much bigger assembly of another powerful group of people, all of them heads of state from across Africa, were meeting in the Libyan city of Shirte deciding on the future of Africa without a similar focus in the global media.

It is these people through their action and inaction who have the power to change things for the better or worse on this continent. Anybody who really cares about helping Africa needs to know what these group of unfortunately, all men, have been saying to themselves.

The fifth ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union has just ended in Shirte. The leaders amongst other pressing issues had to address themselves to the dances for poverty and pledges for action from outsiders about Africa. They welcomed the initial debt relief package for developing countries out of which 15 African countries will benefit. However they called for universal debt cancellation that benefits all African countries, not just a select few.

This is a logical consensus given previous experience of African countries scandalously competing among themselves about who is more connected in Washington, London or Paris. Individually they sold out but collectively we may regain some dignity and credibility. They have to avoid being played against each other. The separate deal for debt relief for Nigeria is potentially one of those divide and rule tactics. It may limit Nigeria's capacity to talk on behalf of Africa and also neutralise it in bloc negotiations, whether in the WTO or in the IMF/World Bank. My own suspicion is that they have agreed to throw this carrot at Nigeria as an advance compensation for her not to get the much-coveted UN Security Council permanent seat, which will more likely go to South Africa.

Significantly, the AU summit did not dwell so much on aid but rather called for the abolition of unfair trading rules that rig international trade against Africa and asked for a clear timetable for the abolition of these subsidies. One can see that the African leaders are not taken in by various pledges on aid and rather want us to trade our way to prosperity instead of being aided to remain dependent. This contrasts with Prophet Blair's breakthrough in getting a calendar on aid targets. The AU is saying we need some fair-trade not some aid.

These are the messages that the African leaders invited to the G8 as side salads will be taking to Gleneagles. I really wish that these leaders would stop ridiculing themselves by appearing like an NGO lobby group at the Summit of Rich White Men. From next year they should have a face-to-face summit to review any progress on mutually agreed targets. After all that is what the mutual accountability principle in the African Peer Review Mechanism is all about. It is about us judging ourselves and also mutually judging each other with our so-called international partners.

Apart from the response to the G8, the AU summit made numerous decisions on a variety of issues that have direct impact on Africa and Africans in more of a way than anything a group of ageing rockers and an exclusive club of white men will do for Africa.

One of those defining issues is the call by the Brother Leader, Muammar Gadaffi, which President Museveni immediately supported, for an all-African Union government and a dismantling of all barriers to freedom of movement for Africans across Africa. While many dismiss this as hasty and too ambitious I would like to remind them to rewind to the reaction to Gadaffi's call for an acceleration of the integration process through a review of the OAU charter at an Extra ordinary summit in the same city of Shirte in September 1999. Then as now the idea was initially dismissed as far-fetched but within three years we had the African Union. Its institutions are now taking shape and at this summit the Libyan leader was upping the stakes for the AU to rise up to the next phase of the struggle for unity without which we will remain beggars and vulnerable to extra African powers. There is no point in asking the rich countries to open up their markets to us when we close ours against each other. We cannot sustainably globalise without Africanising.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa. ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Wednesday 6th of July 2005
Friday 8th of July 2005
Eight of the most predominant organisations will go to G8 embassies to present their demands to the G8 ambassadors.
Contact Silvestre Baessa on +258 824921000. [email protected]

Rallying under the themes “no more broken promise” and “ Acha mizengwe timiza malengo ya Millennia”, TANGO and Action-Aid will on 5th July be holding a procession which will culminate into a mass rally at Karimjee Hall grounds. The procession and rally will be part of the Global Call to action Against Poverty, which aims at creating awareness on the content of the Millennium Declaration and the subsequent Development Goals.

Today (July 01) the Kenyan GCAP Coalition sent out powerful delegations of activists to petition some of the G8 Embassies with the message for debt cancellation, more and better quality aid and immediate removal of harmful conditionalities that come with any new loans. The Embassies visited were Japan, Germany, USA and Italy.

Today (July 01), the length and breadth of Kampala, Capital of Uganda is soaked with messages of solidarity and the Global Call to Action against Poverty on this second international White Arm-Band Day. As early as 4 a.m. banners were erected in strategic positions of the city calling upon Ugandans to speak out with one voice and send a clear and powerful message to Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George Bush, the rest of the G8 leaders as well as our President Museveni.

In the run-up to and during the July G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, buildings around the world are wrapped in white bands, the symbol of the Global Call to Action against Poverty campaign (www.whiteband.org). In Freetown, Sierra Leone, the famous cotton tree, planted by freed slaves when the nation was founded, is draped in a white band, as is the slavery archway in Senegal.

The international medical NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), is urging G8 nations and the UN to push for speedy delivery of the cheapest and latest anti-AIDS drugs to developing countries. MSF stressed that this was vital to head off a looming supply and cost crisis, because "access to newer drugs is increasingly critical, as the growing number of people with HIV/AIDS currently on treatment will inevitably develop resistance to first-line treatments".

Judges in Egypt say May's referendum on constitutional reform was marred by widespread fraud. The referendum on whether to allow rival candidates to contest the presidency in September was approved by more than 80% of voters. The judges said turnout in the booths they oversaw was very low but in government-supervised booths it was recorded at 100% in some cases.

Officials in Burundi are counting votes following Monday's key parliamentary election, with a former Hutu rebel group looking set to win comfortably. Early results put the FDD well ahead of its main Hutu rival, the Frodebu party of President Domitien Ndayizeye. The polling was largely peaceful and the turnout was 65%.

Delegates at the African Union summit in Libya are preparing a final declaration expected to appeal for the continent's debts to be wiped out. Members are also likely to call for fairer terms of trade with the West, while stressing their desire for better governance and transparency. The meeting ends a day before the G8 summit of the world's richest nations.

Addressing leaders of the African continent meeting in Libya, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the launch of a new initiative to financially support States undergoing the democratization process. Mr. Annan told the African Union (AU) Summit in Sirte that the new UN Democracy Fund will provide assistance to countries seeking to establish or strengthen their democracy. "A number of Member States have already indicated their intention to contribute," he said, voicing hope that others would follow their example.

Continued fighting in the mining areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) threatens the country's fragile peace and adds daily to the 3.3 million death toll in the world's most devastating conflict since World War 2, says Global Witness. It has also contributed towards the delay in the Congolese elections, which were originally scheduled for June 30. The international demand for tin has led to a US$50 million trade in the metal in eastern DRC with military factions vying to control the lucrative mining areas there, according to a report released by Global Witness.

The impact of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the world's poor has been overwhelmingly negative, states this paper. "Despite its anti-development agenda, the WTO as an institution continues to garner a certain (though grudging) amount of buy-in from the developing country governments. This seems to stem from the belief that some rules, no matter how skewed, are better than the law of the jungle.”

The Paris Club of creditor countries has agreed the outline of a debt relief package for Nigeria. About $18bn (£10bn) of debt will be written off and Nigeria plans to buy back a chunk of outstanding loans. The country owes the rest of the world $35bn, and the new talks are linked to an agreement between Nigeria and the IMF on debt repayments.