In 1963, a woman named Th. Centner published a wonderful monograph called _L'Enfant africain et ses jeux_ through the CEPSI research center, in what was then the city of Elisabethville in secessionist Katanga. Would anyone know her full first name, whether she produced other writings about what is now southern DRC, if she is still living, and if so, how I might contact her? I would like such information for a paper I am writing. ([email protected])

The re-crafting of critical discursive spaces for debate and transformation on the African continent requires both personal courage and intellectual fearlessness. It's good to be in such fine company....

According to this article, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to connect rural agricultural producers to markets through global information networks is key to helping advance rural development in developing countries. The author believes that improved access to global information networks and adequate capacity building are essential for African agricultural producers.

Despite prevailing insecurity in the east and northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the postponement of presidential elections, the Independent Electoral Commission launched its registration campaign of 3.5 million voters in Kinshasa on Monday. The three-week voter-registration process in the capital city is the first step of the nationwide registration programme, which will extend to other provinces in the next 45 days, starting with the Bas-Congo and Orientale provinces, said Apolinnaire Muholongu Malumalu, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission.

Presidential elections to complete Guinea-Bissau's return to democracy took place peacefully and in good order on Sunday. Early returns showed Malam Bacai Sanha, the candidate of the ruling PAIGC party, and former president Joao Bernardo Vieira leading the field in the country's main towns. Voters flocked to the polling stations in record numbers in this small West African country and voting started on time everywhere.

News that President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether sections of a new election law are unconstitutional has raised concern that Angola's first general election since 1992 could be delayed. According to the official Angop news agency, Dos Santos promulgated most of the laws in the so-called 'electoral package', but the crucial "Electoral Law has not been promulgated" because there were doubts over whether certain sections complied with the country's constitution.

Zambia has been hosting refugees for more than 30 years now. In the country’s Western Province there are approximately 150,000 refugees with an estimated 35,000 refugees living in the two camps of Nangweshi and Mayukwayukwa, while the remaining 115,000 are not registered by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and are spontaneously settled. The Zambian Government with the support of UNHCR and other partners has since embarked on a poverty reduction strategy called the Zambian Initiative Programme (ZIP). The programme aims at developing refugee host areas and ensuring harmony between refugees and their hosts.

The African Union Heads of State Summit will hold in Libya from 28th of June to 5th of July 2005. Unlike with previous summits, there will be no AU facilitated civil society meeting preceding the Summit in Libya. As there has been no official and public explanation by the AU, it is best not to speculate on why the expected meeting will not be holding.

The fact that it will not be holding however raises important questions the most obvious of which is - Should African civil society be reliant on the AU to fund its pre summit meetings? A No answer - has its implications, the major question being how then will it be funded. A Yes answer - also has implications in respect of independence and ethical questions, especially given that the state, its agents and agencies in many African countries are the main violators of human, political, economic and social rights on the continent. This is not withstanding the fact that the AU as an institution has surpassed the expectations of many cynics in terms of its engagement with civil society and its vision for Africa. To go further, the leadership and many officials of the AU have been exemplary in their relations with African civil society.

Nevertheless, the fact that the regular AU supported civil society meeting will not be holding will raise a question mark over the relationship of civil society with the AU with regards to summit arrangements. Will this be a one off situation? Will the next one be guaranteed to hold?

The most important question though on the minds of many across Africa will be: how is it that African civil society's major annual meeting will not be holding in the very year when Africa and Africa's problems are the focus of the world? Is it that African civil society is so insignificant in the equation that the governments of Africa, Europe, America and the G8 can decide Africa's future without the input of civil society - even at a time when rock musicians and pop stars across the West can claim to have influence on the future of Africa.

The issues of debt; gender equality; human rights and democracy; conflict, peace and security; HIV/AIDS; agriculture and food security and many more are too crucial to be left to drift for another year without African civil society input.

Of course African civil society is not insignificant. However to actually demonstrate that they are significant, civil society will have to go the extra mile and jump the extra foot to show that to a reasonable extent it has an independent voice and that its voice can be and must be heard at a time when it is most crucial to Africa.

In political and logistical terms this means that gravity must be defied and an African civil society meeting must hold before, parallel to, or immediately after and in response to the AU Heads of State summit. Can such a meeting be organised within two to three weeks? Despite obvious difficulties (the major one being finance) the answer is yes. Can it be organised in Libya without the moral if not financial support of the AU given the strength of Libyan civil society, and the logistics of getting there? It is possible but not guaranteed. If not in Libya, where then? Obvious alternatives could be Lagos, Johannesburg or Nairobi. These are logistically easier to reach, and have strong civil society with the organisational capacity to host African colleagues. Holding such a meeting outside of the venue of the AU summit will be breaking with tradition. However the point should be for the meeting to take place, not where it takes place. This means the meeting may also loose its traditional opportunity to feed into the AU summit process, especially if it holds parallel to or after the Executive Council meeting, or even parallel to or after the Heads of State summit itself. Again, the point is for the meting to take place at a time in history when it is imperative for it to do so. In any case the official AU supported meeting is not going to take place so the opportunity to feed in is already non-existent. However effective use of the media can overcome this shortcoming.

Not holding an African civil society meeting this year will set a precedent that may be too costly for Africa to recover from. The impact on democracy and rights issues in Africa may not be felt immediately but it will be definitely be felt sooner rather than later. Key African civil society actors and organisations must step forward to prevent this. There is no time to waste. Will it be Johannesburg, Lagos or Nairobi? The responses from us all will decide. Act Now!

Rotimi Sankore is Director of Credo, and Chidi Odinkalu is a Nigerian barrister and human rights adviser.

Please send responses to [email protected]

Today several thousand children, parents, teachers, civil society organizations and government officials gathered in Shinyanga to celebrate the Day of the African Child through the voices of children. The day started with a march from Jomo primary school in the center of town. Led by a brass band, over a thousand children wearing white headbands with messages asking for more books, teachers, desks and the full $10 per child capitation grant to be paid to schools on time made their way to Kambarage Stadium. Here they were welcomed by the District Commissioner Mrs. Mansweta Sanka and entertained by classmates performing traditional dances, songs, poems, and a drama production. Especially moving was the testimony of two orphans struggling to get an education. The participants sent messages to the Government of Tanzania and members of the G8 joining with others throughout Africa in the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. In doing so, a specific call went out to the Government to meet targets set by the Millennium Development Goals and MKUKUTA. Also on the occasion a press release was issued by a group of national and international organizations calling on the government and donors to improve education.

EDITORIALS: In the wake of the killings of demonstrators in Ethiopia, Makeda Tsegaye paints a picture of a brutal regime - whose Prime Minister served on UK Prime Minister's Commission on Africa - that will stop at nothing to retain its grip on power
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Africa Day of the Child - 16 June: In Soweto, South Africa, thousands of black school children took to the streets in 1976 to protest the inferior quality of their education. Hundreds of young boys and girls were shot down by apartheid police. To honour the memory of those killed and the courage of those who marched, the Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16 June every year since 1991.
- Hellen Tombo highlights the negative impact of onerous debt, unfair trade, inefficient aid and poor governance on the lives of African children and youth.
- G8 Finance Ministers allegedly write off $40 billion in debts of the poorest nations. But is the deal all that it's cracked up to be? Pambazuka News summarises reactions to the debt deal.
- For most of Africa's young people, the Day of the African child doesn't mean much - the day is primarily a day for adults, argues Christina Clark
- Despite the hype around the the Global Call to Action against Poverty, insufficient pressure is being put on the G8 by many mainstream international NGOs and demands of social movements are being ignored, argue Patrick Bond, Dennis Brutus and Virginia Setshedi
LETTERS: Cooperation not exploitation; more on the 'second great Boer trek'
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Rotimi Sankore and Chidi Odinkalu consider whether it would be possible to organise a meeting of civil society organisations as a follow up on the AU meeting in Libya
GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION AGAINST POVERTY: Actions in Africa launched on the Day of the African Child, Africa Snaps launched, SMS function goes live; reports from Zimbabwe Girl Child Network; African civil society organisations have called on the African Union to be prepared to repudiate Africa's multilateral debts
CONFLICTS & EMERGENCIES: Thousands flee CAR into Chad
HUMAN RIGHTS: Rwanda: Trial of top Rwanda genocide suspect starts
REFUGEES & FORCED MIGRATION: Zimbabwe: Refugees caught in Zim blitz; 11 million refugees worldwide
WOMEN & GENDER: Tensions between the role of trade, development and gender equality
ELECTIONS&GOVERNANCE: Egypt: Focus on pro-democracy movement in referendum aftermath; Uganda: I'll lobby for multiparty politics, says Museveni
DEVELOPMENT: Africa: Business As Usual Means 28 Million Dead Children;
AND MORE…links to news on corruption, health, education, media, environment, jobs and books.

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Notwithstanding the global hype associated with reversing aid, debt and trade injustices during the past few days, it hasn't been an easy time for the huge Non-Governmental Organisations at the centre of the action.

A front-page New Statesman article on May 30 revealed that Oxfam's revolving-door relationship with chancellor Gordon Brown has neutered the demands, strategies and tactics of the 450-member NGO campaign, 'Make Poverty History'. The website of the British magazine Red Pepper followed up with a devastating political critique of the campaign, including a refusal to countenance any anti-war message that will embarrass Brown and Tony Blair.

Embarrassment of this sort seems endemic amongst the charity-minded. The Bob Geldof superstar concert series 'Live 8' correctly stood accused of being 'hideously white' (as Black Information Link put it), since only one band from Africa was scheduled amongst dozens at the five major performances. (A hastily arranged additional concert in Johannesburg may lead to a kind of outsourcing for black bands.) In any case, Sir Bob's mid-1980s Live Aid famine relief strategy is widely understood to have flopped because it ignored the countervailing roles of imperial power relations, capital accumulation, unreformable global institutions and venal local elites - problems repeated and indeed amplified in Live 8.

There was another PR disaster in early June, just a month before the Group of 8 (G8) leaders meet in Gleneagles, Scotland: white wristbands favoured by Blair as a mark of his commitment to Africa were revealed as products of Chinese forced labour at a Shenzhen firm, Tat Shing. According to the Telegraph newspaper, 'Christian Aid, which bought more than 500,000 wristbands from Tat Shing, claims that Oxfam failed to tell other charities that it had decided to stop ordering from the Shenzhen company. Oxfam said it told its coalition partners of its decision, but "perhaps could have put it in writing".'

Do these gaffes signify something deeper? Merely careless paternalism? Or perhaps a sense that the main outcomes of this campaign are to be celebrated in media buzz, fashion statements, celebrity chasing and the NGOs' proximity to power?

NGOs or organic social movements

The heart of the problem is that the large mainstream NGOs - and here we do not mean War on Want, the World Development Movement and Christian Aid - are not putting serious pressure on the G8. For example, when anti-poverty campaigners call for 'cancellation of poor countries' unpayable debts', this leaves undefined what, exactly, is 'unpayable' (quite a weasel word) and concedes that the vast populations of lower-middle income countries will suffer under indefinite debt peonage. NGO and rock star endorsements of the partial debt relief gimmick announced by Gordon Brown and the G8 finance ministers on June 11 illustrate the confusion.

Semantic wiggling is just one of the problems associated with the best of these initiatives, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), whose International Facilitation Group was established in Johannesburg late last year. Many excellent African organisations have joined the campaign, but have they fully applied their minds, and social-change instincts?

For GCAP, 'A single global title for the mobilisation is needed to provide focus, cohesion and to maximise impact of activity... The aim of "White Band Day" will be to get everyone around the world that wants to end poverty to wear a white band on those days.'

There is a genuine need for focus and cohesion. But if it is addressed in the manner conceived by GCAP's strategists, it could have the reverse effect: organisational demobilisation accompanied by lowest-common-denominator analyses and demands.

To illustrate, GCAP's first newsletter, issued on June 14, is a 3600-word report-back on campaigning across the world. Yet it contains no reference to organic anti-poverty activism in the Global South, such as - in no particular order - labour strikes, popular mobilisations for AIDS-treatment and other health services, reconnections of water/electricity, land and housing occupations, anti-GMO and pro-food security campaigns, women's organising, municipal budget campaigns, student and youth movements, community resistance to displacements caused by dam construction and the like, anti-debt and reparations movements, environmental justice struggles, immigrants' rights campaigns, political movements to take state power, etc etc. No mention of Bolivia, Venezuela, Palestine, Iraq.

GCAP has superb member organisations across the Third World, to be sure, but as a network it just seems to float in the air, disconnected from the reality of anti-poverty protest. It's as if the formidable recent upsurge of unrest - 1980s-90s IMF Riots, high-profile indigenous people's protests since Zapatismo in 1994, global justice activism since Seattle in 1999, the Social Forum movement since 2001, anti-war demos since 2001, autonomist protests and the Latin American left's revival - never happened, don't exist, aren't worthy of acknowledgment much less integration and amplification.

Worse, GCAP's promotion of the already watered-down UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could draw away activist energy and resources in many Third World countries, from organic struggles and organisational imperatives. If GCAP is successful, we foresee a tsunami of distraction, flooding out the diverse local struggles that could instead - if nurtured carefully - support a genuinely bottom-up, internationally-linked, networked fight against injustice.

In contrast to the GCAP rhetoric, albeit sometimes off the beaten path, serious activists are crossing borders, races, classes and political traditions in sector after sector: land (Via Campesino), healthcare (International Peoples Health Council), free schooling (Global Campaign for Education), water (the People's World Water Forum), energy/climate change (the Durban Declaration), debt (Jubilee South), democratic development finance (IFIs-Out! and World Bank Bonds Boycott), trade (Our World is Not for Sale) and so on.

Of course, it is not at all easy to interlock the already overlapping grassroots and shopfloor justice campaigns. South Africans now campaigning for an overall programme of 'decommodification' and socio-economic rights know this, thanks to the various movements' political splits (mainly over the merits of alignment to the corruption-ridden, neoliberal ruling party of Thabo Mbeki).

To be sure, there is broad unity in the South Africans' objectives - free anti-retroviral medicines to fight AIDS; at least 50 litres of free water and 1 kiloWatt hour of free electricity for each individual every day; extensive land reform; prohibitions on service disconnections and evictions; free education; the right to employment; and even a monthly 'Basic Income Grant' - but very hard work lies ahead to connect the concrete struggles.

Globophiles, globophobes

Still, without coherence emerging from organic struggles fought by mass democratic movements across the Global South (including in Northern ghettoes), the construction of a top-down campaign against poverty is both unrealistic and subject to early cooption. According to Catherine Quarmby in the New Statesman last month, 'Some of the most intriguing criticism of the softly-softly approach has come from within the government itself. One senior government source suggests that Oxfam has failed to learn one of the essential techniques of negotiation - if you agree on the basics too early you forfeit real influence.'

Unfortunately this is no aberration, but part of a pattern dating at least to 1995, when Oxfam International broke from the 50 Years is Enough protests against the World Bank, endorsing a large inflow of taxpayer funding at the very peak of the Washington Consensus mentality.

By 2002, Oxfam's leading policy analsyst, quoted in the Washington Post, happily revealed an agenda of divide-and-conquer, between 'globophobes' (the global justice movement protesting the WTO/IMF/World Bank) and 'globophiles' (Oxfam): 'Breaking with some of its anti-globalisation allies, the aid agency Oxfam International issued a report yesterday that praised international trade as a potentially enormous boon to the world's poor... "The extreme element of the anti-globalisation movement is wrong," said Kevin Watkins, a senior policy adviser for Oxfam who wrote most of the report. "Trade can deliver much more [for poor countries] than aid or debt relief."'

As then-director of Food First, Anuradha Mittal, complained, 'We are disappointed that Oxfam, one of the NGO leaders on food security, has chosen to undermine the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South such as Via Campesina, Movement of Landless Workers (Brazil), Third World Network, Focus on the Global South, and Africa Trade Network which have demanded that governments must uphold the rights of all people to food sovereignty and the right to food rather than industry-led export-oriented production... Oxfam undermines the demands of social movements and think tanks in the South.'

Proximity to Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue has unfortunately become a good proxy for political common sense, or lack thereof. For instance, Mohammad Akhter, chief executive officer of Interaction, the 160-member NGO coalition many of whose members are considered de facto subsidiaries of US AID, met Wolfowitz late last month and publicly pronounced: 'The World Bank is in good hands.'

A few days earlier, Interaction and Oxfam had thrown a grateful going-away bash for James Wolfensohn, even though on three high-profile occasions - the World Commission on Dams, Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative and Extractive Industries Review - he seduced NGOs into multi-stakeholder reviews, and then broke their hearts by allying instead with corporate and state suiters.

As a result of these sorts of influences, there appears little benefit - and great risk - for African NGOs to adopt as a high priority top-down Make Poverty History and even GCAP campaigns which endorse MDG end-goals dreamt up in the backrooms of the UN, where Bush administration ideologues breathe down bureaucrats' necks to reduce funding obligations, impose patriarchal and Christian-fundamentalist values, remove the word 'rights' from (already fatuous) official rhetoric, and denude the few progressive UN agencies of any clout. Even Johannesburg-based Civicus International staff have informally relabeled their objective the 'Minimalist Development Goals'.

Why, then, do those white bands grace some African NGO wrists and heads, from Civicus' chief executive officer at the last World Economic Forum in Davos, to a few brave pro-MDG NGOers at the Africa Social Forum? When Civicus staff brought two huge bags of the headbands to Lusaka and made a pitch for the campaign, it was so controversial - alongside a futile appeal to endorse a 'Joint Facilitation Committee' with the hated World Bank - that the bags were left closed.

South Africa's whiteband ('witdoeke') problem

If we flash back 19 years, to mid-1986, we get a better perspective on why wearing white headbands is so distasteful for the South African left. At the time, Cape Town's African township Crossroads had a population of 100 000+ and a high profile in anti-apartheid protest in part because of its location near the airport. Over a fortnight's time, violence erupted, leaving 60 people dead and approximately 60,000 people homeless as a reactionary paramilitary gang swept through, known as the 'witdoeke', whose leader was specifically mandated by the apartheid regime to terrorise anti-apartheid activists.

According to a reliable history of the area, 'The person selected for this in Crossroads was Johnson Ngxobongwana. Ngxobongwana had evolved from being a local warlord to a strong political voice in Crossroads. As chairman of the ward committee he had built up a popular following, and acquired a retinue of local thugs, known as witdoeke (white-cloths) for the white headbands they wore for identification. Unbeknownst to most people he also had "unofficial" sponsorship from South Africa's apartheid government and its security forces. Ngxobongwana was able to use these resources to eliminate rivals in the area, as well as marginalise women's groups and youth groups.'

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found Crossroads' fate to be comparable with techniques used in Johannesburg, Durban and other sites where violence emanating from the witdoeke-style Inkatha movement killed tens of thousands of people: 'In the South African context, contra-mobilisation was used to organise and support "moderate blacks" to oppose the revolutionary movements. Of necessity, it was a covert strategy - concealing the hand of the state as provider of logistical, political and financial support - and making use of "surrogate" forces. Hence, the state would not be seen to be involved in the conflict and violence between groupings and the resistance organisations.'

No one is suggesting that putting on a white headband or wristband makes you a collaborator with neoliberalism, dividing-and-conquering the oppressed forces, and supporting 'moderate' NGOs so that they gain bantustan-style rewards from the global apartheid establishment.

Nevertheless, from the standpoint of the resistance organisations, it is overdue that we collectively consider our fundamental visions, and in particular whether the much welcomed globalisation of people - and of culture, ideas, hospitality, travel and political solidarity - can be accompanied by what we'd argue is just as desperately needed: the deglobalisation of capital.

For or against market tyranny?

After all, the danger of NGO-lubricated ideological alignment with the neoliberal project is serious. At a time men like Jeffrey Sachs are celebrated as saviours of the world's poor - for example, in a Bono song dedication at last month's big New York City concert - a deeper critique of markets and the NGOs which legitimate them is desperately needed.

Bono in particular has been obsequious. At the last New Labour party convention, Bono labeled Blair/Brown the 'Lennon and McCartney of poverty reduction'. According to Quarmby, 'some groups involved in Make Poverty History were horrified. John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, was in the audience. "When Bono said that, many NGO leaders who were there put their heads in their hands and groaned... It's a killer blow for us. To see the smiles on the faces of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair! This is exactly what they want - they want people to believe that this is their crusade, without actually changing their policy."'

Are the Make Poverty History campaign objectives for Gleneagles - greater Third World exposure to market mechanisms, a few crumbs of debt relief and a doubling of (neoliberally-conditioned) aid - actually worth endorsing as a reformist step forward - or should they be condemned as more of the same? In his book Deglobalisation, Bello has convincingly set out the justice movement's case for disempowering and defunding the global-scale institutions that push capitalism down Third World throats.

So when Sachs, Oxfam, Mbeki and others continue to insist that the way to cure poverty is to expand the world market and reverse Africa's alleged 'marginalisation', they elide the reality that Africa's trade/GDP ratio has for many years topped the world charts, and the reality that ever-greater reliance upon exporting cash-crops and minerals - most of which have suffered huge declines in price due to gluts - is a recipe for underdevelopment.

When debt relief comes with more Western neoliberal conditionality, as HIPC shows, the reality is that people often end up in worse shape after relief than before.

And when G8 'phantom aid' continues to foster Northern interests above those of the Third World's people, it should be rethought entirely. In late May, Christian Aid's brilliant Ghanaian researcher/campaigner Charles Abugre declared - personally not organisationally - to a Globalise Resistance conference in London: 'Stop the aid! It's done too much damage!'

What to wear, for fun in the sun?

What, then, should be done in coming weeks, especially on July 2 in Edinburgh? As Naomi Klein suggested at a University of KwaZulu-Natal anti-corporate conference on June 10, 'A million people are going to Edinburgh and joining hands, wearing white, in a circle around the entire city, and it's going to be one big, giant bracelet. Everyone will wear bracelets, and then they'll be a bracelet. Are you excited about this? I always had concerns that some of these big corporate NGOs were less interested in contesting power than acting as accessories to power. But being a giant bracelet for the G8 takes this a little too far.'

Instead, suggested Klein, 'Encircle the G8! But instead of declaring themselves a piece of jewelry, they should say, we are a noose, we are putting pressure and we are squeezing these neoliberal policies that are taking lives around the world. Just like the noose that killed Ken Saro-Wiwa ten years ago this November.'

That is indeed the choice: to be a bauble for - or a noose against - neoliberalism. By joining those active across the Third World in concrete struggles (who in our experience are not wasting time with GCAPs and MDGs), Northern readers can offer real, lasting solidarity.

In making the choice, especially in Britain, consider whether the symbolism of the colour white is appropriate. Are NGOs and their friends painting themselves as virgins at an alter, on the verge of marrying G8 leaders like Bush, Berlusconi, Chirac, Blair? Alternatively, will the NGO-led masses be waving white flags of surrender on July 2 in Edinburgh, with these headbands and wristbands?

It's rather hard to tell. According to Make Poverty History's Bruce Whitehead, 'It's not a march in the sense of a demonstration, but more of a walk. It is going to be very much a family affair. The emphasis is on fun in the sun. The intention is to welcome the G8 leaders to Scotland and to ask them to deliver trade justice, debt cancellation and increased aid to developing countries.'

Perhaps Whitehead and Make Poverty History need a change of both attitude and attire. After all, 'white' armies have traditionally fought 'red' armies. Fortunately, unlike Russia in the late 1910s or Crossroads in the mid-1980s, today's armies of NGOs and social movements are not carrying weapons of physical destruction, only ideas, energy and a few material resources.

Still, we can't help but conclude that, in contrast to the red social movement struggles for dignity and justice, those wearing white and adopting the NGOs' weak programme may appear as... well, if not explicit agents of the G8, then at minimum their decorations.

Hence when protesting against Wolfowitz on his mid-June Africa trip, against the Gleneagles meeting of the world's rulers in early July, and against the World Bank and IMF annual meetings during the late September days of anti-war action in Washington, DC, we'll encourage our comrades to wear something more colourful, with politics to match.

***

Bond is based at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban; Brutus is a poet and professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh, and works with Jubilee South Africa and the Centre for Economic Justice; and Setshedi is a Soweto-based anti-privatisation activist employed at the Freedom of Expression Institute.

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G8 finance ministers last Saturday agreed to write off more than $40-billion in debts of 18 of the world's poorest nations in order to free up money for spending on social services like health and education. The 18 nations to benefit immediately are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. But is the deal all it is cracked up to be?

Immediate reaction from government and international NGOs was positive, but doubts quickly began to emerge about whether the announcement was all it was made out to be. Apart from the amount being written off only making up a small amount of total debt owed, a major area of concern was in paragraph 2 of the statement made by finance ministers when they announced the deal. The paragraph makes clear that conditions will be attached to the deal. To qualify countries must eliminate "impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign". These kinds of conditions attached to previous debt relief packages have been extensively criticized for causing more harm than good.

Below are some of the reactions to the debt deal from various civil society organisations and groupings:

* US lobby group Africa Action emphasized that dozens of other African countries continued to be trapped under a burden of illegitimate debt, which the G-8 plan still failed to address. Africa Action also rejected the G-8's embrace of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative as the framework for debt cancellation, noting the harmful economic conditions tied to this program. Ann-Louise Colgan, Director of Policy Analysis and Communications at Africa Action, noted: "We reject the G-8's affirmation of the harmful HIPC framework as the basis for future debt cancellation, when it is clear that the devastating conditions required by this program have deepened the debt crisis and exacerbated poverty across the African continent. The continued exclusion of countries like Nigeria and South Africa, who also carry massive burdens of illegitimate debt, is unacceptable as a matter of law and justice."

* Mozambique civil society issued a statement saying they were concerned about the price of debt cancellation in terms of the conditions that countries would have to adopt in order to qualify. The statement said the amount freed up by debt cancellation would not be enough in itself - more and better aid would also be needed and issues of trade and access to markets resolved.

* Debt campaigning group Jubilee South reiterated long-standing demands for unconditional cancellation of all debt. The organisation demanded the abolition of all IMF and World Bank policies and reparations for the costs of structural adjustment programs. Furthermore, Jubilee South said stolen wealth should be repatriated, while African leaders and policy makers should move away from destructive neoliberal policies and explore genuine people-centred development policies.

Jubilee South said the deal actually strengthened control over the economies of the countries targeted because in order to qualify for debt cancellation eligible countries would have had to have gone through the HIPC completion point, which involves the implementation of stringent free market reforms. Many commentators, academics, theologians and activists within the economic justice movement point out that the costs of Structural Adjustment Programmes and creditor imposed conditionality far outweigh the amount of debt to be cancelled, Jubilee South said.

* The Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt noted that the financial burden of the operation on rich countries would amount to some 2 billion dollars a year, compared to 350 billion the G8 devoted to farming subsidies or 700 billion they spend in military expenditure. Rich countries would thus be willing to spend every year for the announced cancellation half of the amount the US spends every month on their continued occupation of Iraq. "The G8 decision represents a continuation of the HIPC initiative, which means the imposition of heavily neoliberal policies: privatisation of natural resources and of strategic economic sectors to the benefit of transnational corporations; higher cost of health care and education; a rise in VAT; free flow of capital, which leads to capital leaving the country as shown by several UNCTAD reports; lower tariff protection, which leads to thousands of small and middle producers losing their livelihoods because they cannot compete with imported goods."

* A joint political statement by NGOs worldwide describes as "extremely misleading" statements that the proposals represent 100% multilateral debt cancellation. "It covers only a limited number of countries, and only ones implementing harsh World Bank and IMF policy conditions." Demba Moussa Dembele, of the Forum for African Alternatives, Senegal, recalled that the hype surrounding previous G-7 announcements had not been borne out by the results on the ground. "We've heard this so many times. Africa has already paid enough. We do not owe anything". Neil Watkins, of Jubilee USA said: "The G-8 proposal for 100% debt cancellation for some poor nations to the IMF and other international lenders is an important first step, but the deal must be expanded to include all impoverished countries. Debt cancellation must come without subjecting these countries to devastating economic conditions".

* Please send comments to [email protected]

So, June 16th is the Day of the African Child ... What does it mean? For most African young people, the Day of the African Child does not mean a whole lot. Many will continue their daily lives -- working in fields and factories, caring for younger siblings or older relatives, begging on the streets of sprawling urban centres, fighting in armed groups and militias, tending sheep and cattle, selling their wares and services in markets and on the streets - without even knowing that June 16th is different from any other.

Those who are aware of the Day of the African Child are likely to be enrolled in some kind of formal education, or 'mobilised' for activities by NGOs, UN agencies and governments. For these young people, the Day of the African Child may be simply that - one day in which they are told something about children's rights that contrasts with the other 364 days of the year during which they are ignored or silenced. Other African young people would not consider themselves to be children. In many traditional African societies, puberty is a biological change that has social implications: after puberty, one is no longer treated as a child, although one may not have full status within social hierarchies based on age and sex.

For many civil society organisations, the Day of the African Child has become a celebration of the entry into force of the African Charter of the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). The ACRWC, together with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), provide a comprehensive framework for protecting and promoting children's social, economic and political rights. Many civil society organisations thus use June 16th as a day to reflect on the progress made towards the institutionalisation of child rights in law and to call for greater implementation of these legal standards.

For many African governments, June 16th provides a platform for self-aggrandizement. Government leaders often highlight the progress they have made towards upholding and implementing their international and domestic commitments towards children and make more promises about what they will do in the future. This means that the Day of the African Child ensures that children's issues are on the political agenda - for at least one day a year.

In other words, the Day of the African Child is primarily a day for adults, in various capacities and with a variety of motivations. Apart from a few tokenistic children's voices (often under the guise of 'participation'), the overwhelming chorus of speeches, television and radio appearances, and written words (including this commentary) will come from adults. The marginalisation of children's voices is particularly ironic and unfortunate since the day was initially introduced to commemorate a 1976 march by black students in Soweto, South Africa to protest the inferior quality of their education and to demand the right to be taught in their own language. The Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) in 1991 declared June 16th a day to remember the hundreds of students, who were gunned down, killed and wounded, during the march and subsequent protests. The fact that a day ostensibly for commemorating children's political action is dominated by adults reflects a broader marginalisation of children in the struggle for social justice.

Who cares?

Since the Day of the African Child is largely dominated by adults, why should we care about it at all? Responses to this question often refer to the importance of children as the future generations and/or pull on heartstrings by listing a litany of the ways in which children are victimised. These common refrains again reflect an adult-centric approach to children as semi-human beings: only important in terms of their future contribution to societies, or as victims in the present.

This is why the question about who cares becomes so important. The focus here is not on the 'who cares?' throw-away question in response to issues that are deemed unimportant, but rather who cares in terms of who is best placed to understand and articulate children's issues. Viewed in this way, the answer clearly appears to be: "Children, of course!" Once children are recognised as active economic and social members of families, communities and societies, it is much more difficult to justify their current political marginalisation not only from children's issues, but also from broader social justice issues. In other words, we need to refocus our attention on the reason why the Day of the African Child was initiated in the first place - to commemorate political action by African young people in their struggle against oppression.

Young people's roles in the struggle for social justice

Since the entry into force of the ACRWC and CRC, children's rights advocates across Africa and globally have worked tirelessly to introduce the language of rights around children's issues. However, while claims around children's rights are a necessary component in the struggle for social justice, they are not sufficient in and of themselves. Since social justice is broader than human rights, we need to complement the work done on promoting and protecting children's rights by recognising children as citizens and actors in building just societies. While young people have important roles to play in the struggle for social justice - as economic and social actors who directly confront such issues, and as political actors with views on their own situation - civil society organisations rarely address children's issues, concerns and opinions.

* In order to increase the priority of children's issues, Fahamu intends to develop training materials for a distance-learning course highlighting the roles of children in social justice for partner organisations in Africa. This initiative is intended to complement existing child rights courses by approaching children's issues from a different perspective. It will start from the philosophy that children are first and foremost human beings, and thus must be recognised as active members of their communities and societies. Taking social justice as the end goal, it will show how children's roles must be integral in working towards this goal because of children's often unequal positions within hierarchical power relations that tend to marginalise their views and make them more vulnerable to particular abuses. We hope that this initiative will help us to move from generating more adult-centric rhetoric on a 'Day of the African Child' to recognising and promoting young people's daily roles in the struggle for social justice in Africa.

* Christina Clark is Commonwealth Scholar, Oxford University and a volunteer with Fahamu. She is currently coordinating a consultation process on Fahamu's proposed initiative on young people in the struggle for social justice. For more information on the initiative and/or a detailed concept paper, please contact her on: [email protected].

* Please send further comments to [email protected]

In Soweto, South Africa, thousands of black school children took to the streets in 1976 to protest the inferior quality of their education. Hundreds of young boys and girls were shot down by apartheid police. To honour the memory of those killed and the courage of those who marched, the Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16 June every year since 1991. The Day also draws attention to the lives of African children today. In this article Hellen Tombo highlights the negative impact of onerous debt, unfair trade, inefficient aid and poor governance on the lives of African children and youth.

It is estimated that at least 30% of the world's population is aged between 10-24 years while nearly 12% is made up of children between 0-10 years. Out of this population, more than 75% are trapped in abject poverty and have insufficient income levels, if any, and no access to basic education opportunities. Youth and children die as a result of inadequacies in health care and other services, lack basic shelter and are orphaned at an early age. This is in violation of human rights norms as contained in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

It is now an open secret that trade injustice; insufficient aid and poor governance compounds this situation. These aspects are co-related and are all closely interlinked to debt. Studies have shown that states are subjected to unfair trade practices in return for aid, culminating in huge debts and unwise decisions from leaders. As Shridath Ramphal puts it, "debt is an oppressive tyranny that strips a country's population their rights." The discussion in the rest of this article places emphasis on how debt, unfair trade, insufficient aid and poor governance has had an impact on the youth and children of Africa.

Unemployment

With increased heavy dependence on aid, developing countries have been unable to create employment opportunities due to heavy budgetary allocations and expenditure. The GDP of these countries is far too low even to maintain the already existing workers. The culmination of this is borrowing.

Such monies have come with strings attached in the name of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). One condition contained in SAPs is that nations expecting aid should cut down on their labour force. This has negatively impacted on the youth given that opportunities for public employment are nearly impossible.

Privatisation and liberalization of state owned corporations have serious impacts on the youth. Most foreign investors offer casual jobs, resulting in poor pay and exposure to health risks. Further, workers unions are often not allowed.

Child labour is common. Parents cannot afford to provide for their families, either because of retrenchment or simply because of poor pay. Such families have developed "survival strategies" of engaging their children in labour to substitute a meagre income.

Other serious consequences of the unemployment crisis are child prostitution, street children and children becoming breadwinners for their families, as they take care of their ailing parents who have lost jobs or are too poor to afford health care.

Education

African governments have greatly reduced their expenditure on education, thus failing to commit themselves to "universal basic primary education for all".

Although donor countries have set aside money to support the education sector in many countries, to a large extent the initiative has been harmful to youth and children. Such initiatives have in most cases proved unsustainable. (For example, NARC's ''free primary education for all" in Kenya.) The government was promised funding by donor countries, only for most of them to pull out after the programme was initiated. This led to the evolvement of the cost sharing principle between the government and parents.

In Kenya, liberalization of our education system has seen foreign countries opening up their very expensive universities in our country. They have branded Kenya's public university education a sham. The expensive private universities don't open up job opportunities for our youth, despite pocketing so much money from them.

Trade and environment

Donor countries have made leaders their puppets by forcing them to sign trade agreements that only represent corporate interests. Africa depends on the export of primary commodities. Imports of finished goods expose the public to price violations and huge trade deficits, resulting in an increased debt obligation and meaning a country is unable to utilize its resources to develop the youth.

Trade liberalization and the elimination of barriers to US trade and investment has left hundreds of youth working as casuals in foreign companies. Trade agreements from the West and Europe prevent development of intra-African trade, which could easily create additional markets for talented youths. Unfair trade has also not spared youths striving to be in business. Local products have lost out as consumers prefer imported products.

Aids and health

WHO estimates that at least 30,000 children die daily from malaria and that at least 5,000 youth die daily from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses in Africa alone.

The Bush administration committed $15 billion over five years to fight HIV/AIDS. But the commitment is tied to conditions that have impeded the primary goal. The promotion of abstinence by the Bush administration is a noble cause, but we cannot ignore the fact that youth are exposed to high-risk behaviour. This calls for the distribution of condoms as a control mechanism.

With no funds, the cost of antiretroviral drugs will remain high and very few youth can afford and have access to them. Similarly, governments have had to borrow money to boost their health sectors and fight diseases like malaria.

Insufficient Aid

Donor agents have over the last 10 years been non-committal in giving aid that can sustain government's effort to meet its obligations. Varied reasons for such positions have been given. For example, donors have maintained they will not continue funding corrupt governments or governments that fail to meet their conditions. Some conditions like SAPs have been totally harmful to the people.

Insufficient aid means that a government is not able to offer services like education. Cost sharing (which is unaffordable to most parents) and cutting down on health expenditure are the solutions. Insufficient aid means that the government is unable to support youth initiatives that would help them reshape their lives.

Poor governance

There is perhaps no other better evidence of poor governance than corruption. The costs of corruption on the youth is enormous. First, bribery means that young people have to "buy" their way out through payment for services. For a youth to get a job, a bribe would come in handy. Similarly, in accessing public services like medicine from a hospital, one would be forced to bribe the pharmacist.

Embezzlement culminates in schools, health clinics, roads, sewer systems and other public amenities being in a worse state. Corruption reduces the overall wealth of a country. Thus it discourages business as well as investors from operating.

Conclusion

Any achievement of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets, especially with regards the youth, requires due attention to strategies aimed at focusing on how debt, unfair trade, insufficient aid and poor governance has impacted on this population sector.

The MDG targets relating to both youth and children (education attainment, gender balance in education, improved maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and decent employment opportunities, sexual and reproductive health etc) have largely been made unachievable because of issues to do with debt.

The 2015 target of the MDGs is long-term, and if the youth are to benefit, then time for global justice aimed at influencing the world global agenda on how debts have negatively impacted on them is now.

2005 offers opportunities for youth mobilization. The key dates for action that lie ahead (the G8 Summit, the UN Millennium Summit, the WTO Ministerial and other local events as well as regional events such as the Day of the African child, coupled with white band days) are some opportunities for the youth to get on board en masse and add their voice.

The youth should wake up to the call and add their voice to the demand for the cancellation of debts. It is unrealistic to expect that poor countries can meet the MDGs without extra international support, thus the youth are called to mobilise and pressure G8 countries to cancel debt. In support of GCAP, the youth should develop a platform and challenge the World Bank and IMF to allow all people to make decisions on how to run their countries.

* Hellen Tombo is executive director of the Kenya Youth Education and Community Development Programme (KYCEP).

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The under-signed civil society groups welcome the belated official acknowledgement that existing debt relief efforts have manifestly failed to secure the promised “robust” exit from the burden of unsustainable debt. Only US$ 54 billion has been cancelled so far while the 61 low-income countries still owe around US$ 600 billion. Total developing country debt stands at around US$ 2.4 trillion.

June 16: Day of the African Child: The following events will be held between the 14th and the 16th of June, 2005. There will be two radio programmes, one on radio phoenix and another on radio two, there will be an evening launch at Pamodzi Hotel. The climax of the launch will be marked by an open concert that will be held at Matero grounds on June 16 from 12:00hours to 15:00hours. The National Civil Society MDG campaign would like to invite you to the launch of the Africa White Band Campaign that will take place on 16th June, 2005 at Matero Shoprite. Three activities have been lined up for the launch, the first will be two radio programmes that will be on ZNBC radio two and radio Phoenix. The second activity will be an evening discussion that will held at Pamodzi Hotel on the eve of June 16. The 16th of June marks the day of the African Child. It is commonly known to many as the Soweto uprising or the Sarafina story (movie). The evening launch will include a discussion that will provide interventions to following question, ‘When do leaders fail voters, from political independence to Economic independence, where is the missing link between the young and the old in the fight against poverty?

On June 16, the day of the African Child, civil society and the public around Africa will join hands with the rest of the continent and the world to give a “Thumbs Down to Poverty” as part of a global anti-poverty campaign. The various African events are being held two weeks prior to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, and will signal the launch of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) campaign in Africa. This will be Africa’s first ‘White Band Day’, in which everyone is asked to where a simple white band to show their solidarity with the campaign. The aim is to send a clear message to G8 leadership that Africa will no longer silently wait for others to fight for it.

There has been much written in the British press about Live 8 and the fact that Little or NO African artists are represented at the concerts at Hyde Park, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. There is obviously a strong African cast at the concert in South Africa as you would expect. The Eden concert in Cornwall, UK, - “AFRICA CALLING” - will give an authentic undiluted African contribution to “Make Poverty History”, Live 8 and the Global call to Action against Poverty by the Africans, about Africa for the world. Visit www.edenproject.com

Across Africa today, the Day of the African Child, anti-poverty campaigners, representing over 100 organisations and coalitions working in over 26 countries in Africa, launched a major publicity campaign to mobilise support for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP): the biggest anti-poverty campaign in history. At press conferences in Nairobi, Johannesburg and Accra, the GCAP coalition launched Africa Snaps - a series of TV adverts featuring Africa's top celebrities and civil society leaders - and the Say No 2 Poverty SMS mobile campaign in 15 African countries. In Nairobi, Kenyan celebrities gathered at Moi Avenue Primary School, Moi Ave to launch the advert and to celebrate Kenyan children's access to affordable and quality education under the Universal Primary Education programme. "This is an exciting opportunity for African artistes to show solidarity with our people and join this critical campaign against poverty in Africa", said Youssour N'dour, one of Africa's leading musicians appearing in the Africa Snaps advertisements. "I support the call to action against poverty a hundred percent", said John Shabala, leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Grammy Award winners from South Africa.