As rising ethnic tensions fuel the risk of renewed war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local government officials have reportedly delivered guns to civilians despite a United Nations embargo, Human Rights Watch has said. This week Human Rights Watch received reports that the U.N. embargo on firearms to eastern D.R.C is being violated. According to local sources, local government officials have delivered firearms to civilians in Masisi, North Kivu, long the site of conflict between different political and military groups.

Zambia's former president Frederick Chiluba was in the dock last Thursday as a new corruption trial began over the alleged theft of $488 000 (about R3-million) of state funds by him and two businessmen. An immaculately dressed Chiluba sat for more than four hours, hearing evidence by the first three witnesses called to provide testimony on corruption against the three accused.

Well done, Tajudeen! Keep up the good work. A lot of people are now coming round to your view of the false images of Africa and aid. Unfortunately, not the western powers. And don't let's start on Bush!

The UN General Assembly urged nations last Wednesday to consider temporary bans on high seas bottom trawling, disappointing scientists and some countries seeking an immediate halt to the destructive fishing practice. Environmental groups say bottom trawling is killing little-known coral ecosystems and the species that dwell in them, and must be suspended so the remote areas can be studied.

* Editorial: Namibian elections: Over before it began – but where are the fruits of liberation?
* Comment and Analysis: Bush attack on Global Fund condemned; US involvement in Sudan and the search for “supreme value”
* Pan-African Postcard: Africa needs more than a Band Aid
* Conflicts and Emergencies: UN Security Council fails conflict exam
* Human Rights: Sudan peace deal must tackle past abuses, says Human Rights Watch
* Women and Gender: What is the 16 days of activism against gender violence campaign?
* Development: EU trade proposals undermine Africa’s development
* Health: Shortage of midwives responsible for thousands of deaths
* Advocacy and Campaigns: Demand water for people; not profit for TNC’s
* Books and Arts: News about a new book on refugees, Rights in Exile

From the 10th -14th December 2004, Lusaka, Zambia will be host to a multitude of Africans as it holds the Africa Social forum with the theme, . The organisation of the forum is being handled by Women for Change and the organising committee of the African Social Forum of Southern Africa. The forum aims to be a space for discussion, reflection, mutual consolidation and democratic debate. It is important for Africa that this Forum continues to be the instrument of growth of African social movements and of vigilance in relation to the policies conceived and implemented on the continent.

On the same day that the documentary Farenheit 9/11 was released in the run-up to the recent US elections, a lesser-known film also made its debut. Entitled “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House” the documentary targeted a Christian evangelical audience.

A review of the film from the San Francisco chronicle states: “One thing the documentary makes unmistakably clear: Christianity is the guiding metaphor of the Bush administration. If, in Christianity, a sinner can find salvation through faith in Jesus, in America, the idea goes, a citizen can find salvation - from terrorism and a disordered, alarming world - only through faith in Bush. Within this construct, reliance on facts and expressions of doubt are forms of heresy. Blind faith is what's demanded by this president, as God’s instrument on earth.”

The film quotes a representative of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, regular white house visitor Ted Haggard, assuring viewers that in 100 years, President Bush will be remembered in the Islamic world as “a great liberator.”

The point is that many outside the US might not realise that white evangelicals accounted for a large percentage of Bush’s vote in the 2000 elections and that the mobilisation of this vote was seen as crucial to his re-election campaign.

Bush has been forthright in his courting of the evangelical vote. For example, in remarks via satellite to the National Association of Evangelicals Convention in March, Bush said: “America is a nation with a mission. We’re called to fight terrorism around the world, and we're waging that fight. As freedom’s home and freedom’s defender, we are called to expand the realm of human liberty. And by our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 50 million people have been liberated from tyranny, and they are reclaiming their dignity as free people. Our nation can take great pride in these achievements. Yet I know that liberty is not America’s gift to the world - liberty and freedom are God’s gift to every man and woman who lives in this world.”

The evangelical lobby has exerted an influence not only over domestic US policy in relation to abortion and gay marriages, but also on the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. The ‘global gag rule’, for example, blocks US funding for foreign family planning agencies if they provide abortion services or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country.

This lobby group is obviously not the only determinate of foreign policy, but its influence has grown and is expected to be stronger with the re-election of Bush. Initially motivated to exert influence on foreign policy through a desire to stop religious persecution abroad, its focus under the Bush administration has expanded, especially after 9/11 when the cause of religious freedom came to be more closely associated with national security.

Sudan provides a good example of how the evangelical lobby group have exerted influence over US foreign policy. Sometime soon after Bush was elected as president in 2000 a coalition of religious groups visited the White House and met with a political adviser of the president. According to a report in the New York Times, the issue of concern to the mainly evangelical groups was violence between Muslims and Christians in Sudan. The evangelicals wanted the combating of religious persecution abroad to be a major focus of American foreign policy and in Sudan they saw an opportunity to pursue this agenda. The White House was receptive to the lobbying and Sudan moved up the foreign policy agenda, resulting in US involvement in peace negotiations between the Khartoum government and the South. More recently, the evangelicals have also been involved in pressing for US involvement in Darfur.

In an August 2 2004 letter by the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 30 million Christian conservatives, after the US congress had declared the situation in Sudan genocide, the organisation commended Bush for “fostering democracy, religious freedom and human rights”, but warned that: “Your Administration’s goal - to redefine our national interest not as power but as values, and to identify one supreme value, what John Kennedy called ‘the success of liberty’ - could be jeopardized by not taking a strong enough position on Sudan’s genocidal behaviour.”

The increasing role of the evangelical lobby on American foreign policy and its involvement in Sudan goes some way to explaining why the crisis in the DRC, where estimates put the number of dead due to war at over three million, has received scant attention compared to Sudan. It raises questions about the extent to which Sudan has been used as a platform for the evangelical lobby to pursue the “supreme value” – religious freedom as it marries with the cause of national security. It also raises questions about future US foreign policy towards countries in Africa where there is an apparent easy dichotomy of Christian vs Muslim and a corresponding need to fight the “war on terror” on foreign ground. How much influence the evangelical lobby exerts in Africa over the next four years – and the consequences of that influence - remains to be seen.

* Patrick Burnett works for Fahamu. He has never been to the US and is not an expert in US foreign policy.

* Please send comments to

LINKS:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1026-08.htm
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/20040311-1.html
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/gag/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1026-08.htm

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N1515553.htm

It does not require any prophetic magic to predict the obvious results of Namibia’s Parliamentary and Presidential Elections held on Monday and Tuesday: SWAPO of Namibia, the national liberation movement in power since Independence 1990, will retain its two-third majority and will continue to govern in an absolutist and authoritarian fashion within a de facto one party state. The question is only, with which qualitative margin and on which quantitative support base in terms of voters’ participation SWAPO has the continued mandate to cultivate its equation that the party is the government and the government is the state.

The opposition parties, both internally and among each other more divided than ever before, will compete for the remaining bits and pieces. With a new ethnically based Herero party (NUDO), which separated from the ranks of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) a new stakeholder might appear in the political arena. The number of votes it achieves might change the composition of the National Assembly, which had parliamentarians from five different parties before the elections. The same is true for the newly competing Republican Party (RP), which seeks to gather votes also from the original DTA clientele. We will have to wait and see what at the end of the counting is still left for the “old” DTA opposition, which was the first opposition party at Independence and since then has been in steady decline, and to what extent in particular the Herero faction in NUDO will seek new power sharing arrangements with SWAPO. There might still be some surprises in the kitty.

The so far relatively successful new kid on the block, the Congress of Democrats (CoD), will have to see if it maintains the second rank within the party landscape. It had emerged partly from the ranks of dissenting SWAPO activists, who were joined by other relatively intellectual, critically minded non-conformists. They established a political counter force, not cursed by the Apartheid legacy (as the DTA), but only managed to catch half of the DTA’s support base within the anti-SWAPO camp during the elections in December 1999.

CoD and DTA were subsequently represented both with just below ten per cent of the votes in the current National Assembly, whose term ends in March 2005, when the new Parliament, President and Cabinet will be sworn in. But CoD has also been battling with internal rivalries and differences – just the opposite of what one would like to show to potential voters prior to elections and not a confidence building measure by any standard.

There are two other questions, which will remain until the counting of votes comes to an end. If the United Democratic Front (UDF) - another ethnically oriented interest group mainly rooted in the Damara communities - will maintain its position as fourth strongest party, and if the one-person-party MAG (Monitor Action Group), representing the most conservative white element in post-colonial Namibia, manages to keep its seat and continue to contribute with at times even refreshing interventions to the otherwise often pretty boring debates where decisions are a foregone conclusion on the basis of SWAPO’s two-third majority.

In any case and whatever the proportional distribution of seats will ultimately be: the different party programmes showed little to no substantive differences. SWAPO was as much “mainstream” as most of the pseudo-alternatives.

The overwhelming dominance by SWAPO, which is in firm control of most institutions and agencies (with the exception of the economy, still dominated to a large extent by those class interests and agencies which benefited from settler colonialism) will remain unchallenged. Notwithstanding the fact, that the former liberation movement has been internally divided more obviously than ever before, it has not to be afraid (yet) that any meaningful alternative might pose a threat. Such an alternative simply does not exist at present.

Hence the most exciting shifts in the current power structure already took place prior to the elections when SWAPO’s President Sam Nujoma was denied another (fourth) term despite his obvious appetite to stay in office. Instead, the “leader maximo” was made to understand that he will not get away with another constitutional change in his favour, but received a golden handshake, which leaves him without any need to worry about the material well-being for his retirement period, during which time close to thirty civil servants will satisfy his needs.

Reluctant to abandon power, Nujoma had finally made his choice for a successor by selecting his closest confidante from the struggle days, considered to be a loyal servant to his master’s voice. But his crown prince Hifikepunye Pohamba denied appointment as the sole candidate by the party. Instead the SWAPO Central Committee nominated three candidates as potential successors. Delegates to an Extraordinary SWAPO Congress end of May were then tasked to make a choice, and in the internal campaign period the factional fight turned ugly.

What was praised widely as a sign of practised democracy was ultimately an in-fight over power and control. To minimise the risks, Nujoma did not shy away from tough measures, disclosing his authoritarian mindset and character, to push through his candidate at any costs. Hidipo Hamutenya, the strongest contender and rival, already frustrated from the President’s third term in office (which was made possible at the end of the 1990s by changing Namibia’s Constitution for the first time with the two-third SWAPO-majority in Parliament), was ousted from his post as Foreign Minister. This was a clear sign that those in support of his candidacy would meet the old man’s disapproval and have to face the consequences. Nonetheless, almost a third of the Extraordinary Congress was prepared to vote for Hamutenya and thereby pointed to the deep rift within the party.

To add insult to injury, in the subsequent selection process over the ranking of candidates on the party list, Hamutenya ended at a rank that makes his political survival as a Member of Parliament critically dependent upon the actual amount of votes gained. If SWAPO does not maintain the same degree of dominance, Hamutenya will be out by a narrow margin. This is quite a humiliating experience for someone considered for years to be the most likely candidate to succeed the old man. The same fate which looms over Hamutenya will happen to many among those who were (rightly or wrongly so) considered active within his camp. They were punished by being ranked even lower on the party list and will almost certainly loose their status as Honourables.

To what extent that might trigger another split within and ultimately from the party (as was partly the case with the creation of the CoD), is too early to speculate. It will also depend upon the strategy followed by the new Head of State, when appointing his Cabinet in March 2005. Until then, Namibia’s political office bearers will be almost paralysed and anxiously wait to see if they survive in lucrative ministerial ranks.

The return of the former Prime Minister Hage Geingob into Namibian politics has also provoked curiosity. Ousted from office by means of a humiliating demotion offered to him by President Nujoma half way through the third legislature, Geingob resigned from offices and accepted a good salary with a World Bank affiliated lobby agency for Africa in Washington. Obviously with the blessing of Nujoma, he has now made a successful return into Namibian politics. He has resigned from the employment of the international financial institution and returns to anti-imperialist rhetoric (which also characterises his PhD thesis just accepted, in which he discloses the neo-colonial conspiracy in the decolonisation process of Namibia - a deal to which actually and strictly speaking SWAPO and Geingob as team leader of the election campaign for his movement were part and parcel of).

While the majority of Namibians seem to be rather satisfied with the new President to come, the question will remain as to how many votes he is able to draw in approval. Sam Nujoma, SWAPO’s so far only President since its establishment in 1960, has managed as “father of the nation” to receive so far always more votes than the party (a record three quarters in 1999). Pohamba will find this difficult to achieve, though he has asked for a similar degree of support.

Instead, it is likely that some voters within the SWAPO rank and file might wish to indicate their disagreement with the choice by not supporting the new President with their vote. He will then have to see if and to what extent he tries to mend the torn sheets with those factions, who were viciously fighting each other during 2004 over access to political power in the party. It will also remain an interesting question as to what extent Pohamba will in the process indeed turn out to be “Nujoma no. 2”.

Observers do not deny the possibility that once in office the new President might find increasingly less time to listen to the old man while taking care of the daily tasks of running the government. That Nujoma remains the party boss, however, ensures a certain degree of continued close collaboration between the two comrades of almost fifty years. It also suggests, in biological terms, that Pohamba might turn out to be a transitional, one-term President for the Republic of Namibia. The competition for his succession might start the day the new Cabinet has resumed office, on Namibia’s Independence Day on 21st March 2005.

Most, though not all of the questions raised above, will be answered on the basis of the empirical results. Results, which beyond any serious doubt - at least by standards of Florida and Ohio respectively - will meet the label of being by and large free and fair (as questionable as some of the smaller tricks might be).

The more important questions will however remain to be answered. They relate to the fragile fundament of the post-colonial project of a political elite, which has not achieved to deliver the fruits of independence promised to the majority of the previously colonised.

The populist radical rhetoric of those in power might increasingly follow the temptation to cover up for the lack of commitment towards meaningful fundamental transformation of society in terms of the re-distribution of material wealth. Under the slogan of “national reconciliation” and “black economic empowerment” and/or “affirmative action”, this transformation had been applied only selectively to the benefit of a privileged post-colonial political elite. The majority remained poor. It might be a matter of time that their patience runs out. And to cover up the failures of the last 15 years by means of a policy on land would only bring temporary relief for those in power, as Zimbabwe demonstrates, and be at the expense of even higher costs for the population in whose interest the previous liberation movement claims to act.

* Dr. Henning Melber is the Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden.

* Please send comments to

ABOUT NAMIBIA:

Namibia has one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Human Development Report (1998) shows that the richest 10 percent of the population receives 65 percent of the income, while about half of the population survives on about 10 percent of the average income. The 2000 Namibia Labour Force survey estimated the unemployment rate at 34 percent.
The economy of the country relies heavily on extraction and processing of minerals as well as on processed fish for export. Between 1990 and 1993 real GDP growth averaged 5 percent, but since then has slowed to an average of about 3.2 percent, according to the World Bank website.
Namibia became a German protectorate in 1884. The country was occupied by South Africa in World War One. It was declared a mandated territory by the League of Nations and administered by South Africa. South Africa later refused to withdraw under United Nations instructions. In the 1950s the Ovamboland People's Congress, which later became the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) emerged and led the struggle against South African occupation. The territory won independence in 1990. SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma became president following victory in UN-supervised polls.

NAMIBIA LINKS:

Norwegian Council for Africa Namibia Page
http://afrika.no/index/Countries/Namibia/index.html
Africa South of the Sahara: Namibia Page
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/namibia.html
Republic of Namibia official web site
http://www.grnnet.gov.na/
Namibia Economist
http://www.economist.com.na/
University of Namibia
http://www.unam.na/
The Namibian Daily Newspaper
http://www.namibian.com.na/
Namibian Parliament
http://www.parliament.gov.na/

Watching news on one of the local TV channels and hearing the peril of a young girl who underwent the ‘cut’ against her will in one of the local clinics in Nairobi, is heart rending. Reason? There is a general belief that FGM is only practiced in the rural areas by traditional circumcisers. Reality check: in the present society, the practice of FGM is shifting from the traditional setting to a hospital setting, a condition referred to as medicalisation. This has made an excuse for the persistence of the practice where its hazards have been a tool of fighting it. The people no longer see the wrong in doing it since they believe they are dealing with experts in hygiene.

In the past, when girls were considered to have reached the age for circumcision, they would be taken upcountry during the holidays to undergo the ‘rite’. But with the mushrooming of clinics and quacks posing as ‘medics’, the girls do not have to be taken upcountry, as the services are readily available. This is not only happening in Nairobi, Kisii has the highest rate of medicalisation and it is a booming business for doctors. As a society we have failed; as doctors we have encouraged the practice for our own selfish needs; as parents we have failed our children by forcing them into outdated practices and in general, as a society we have been spectators, watching the girls suffer in silence.

As the National Focal Point on FGM Eradication, we request the Ministry of Health, which actively participated in the development of the National Plan of Action for the Elimination of FGM in Kenya, 1999; a 20-year plan to eradicate FGM, to follow-up on the issue of medicalisation and flush out all the hospitals and medics involved in carrying out the practice.

And as a society we need to realize that the society into which we were socialized is changing and so is the culture. We are adapting foreign cultures, yet we refuse to let go of practices that served a purpose back in the days. Aren’t we then practicing double standards?

Zanu PF insiders have said it is now a fait accompli that Emmerson Mnangagwa will be appointed the successor to President Robert Mugabe as leader of the ruling party and government at the December congress. His two deputies will be John Nkomo and Didymus Mutasa. A number of things emerge from this scenario. The first is that Zanu PF wants the old guard to remain in power at all cost. It is clear that there is no room, as yet, for the younger generation of politicians.

Zimbabwe's economy is expected to experience another meltdown if the Non Governmental Organisations Bill becomes law, officials working with NGOs have said. Jacob Mafume, the co-ordinator of the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations'(NANGO) team working on a response to the Bill, said the full impact of the law was still being assessed. "We are still finalising the full economic and social impact that the bill will have on Zimbabweans but a conservative estimate is that if each of the 3 000 NGOs is employing five people, then 15 000 people will lose their jobs." Meanwhile, the bill made a midnight debut in Zimbabwe's parliament this week. Read a briefing on the process through the link below.

Western countries have continued to restrict and protect their markets to be accessed by the Third World and this has caused a reduction in trade among developing nations, Finance Minister Ng’andu Magande has said. Mr Magande said if the rich countries had opened up their markets to developing countries, there could be US$ 700 billion of South-North flow of products.

The Constitutional Court gave political parties some breathing space this week when it nullified restrictive sections of the Political Parties and Organisations Act (PPOA). Following the judgement, registered parties are now free to open branches at all levels countrywide. They are also at liberty to meet in any part of the country to hold public rallies and contest for power without any hindrance.

A senior member of an African observer group monitoring Namibia's elections had his own election in Zimbabwe's 2000 poll annulled because of violent intimidation in his constituency, according to court records, reports South Africa's The Star newspaper. Shadreck Chipanga, a former director of Zimbabwe's notorious secret police, was identified by witnesses as being at the wheel of a pick-up truck carrying ruling-party supporters who disembowelled a young man on the bonnet of the vehicle. The Namibian Society for Human Rights has issued a statement over the controversy.

The City of Johannesburg has been presented with an innovative programme to address child poverty and early childhood development - that would also regenerate local economies by enabling poor communities and thus parents to earn money in the process. It builds upon Education Minister Naledi Pandor's announcement that funds for the Child Nutrition Programme must from now be used to buy food grown locally and not simply imported from wholesalers. The City Council called for a comprehensive plan to meet the needs of the 300,000 plus children aged 0 to 5 living the city. The majority experience extreme poverty and neglect. The proposal comes from a developmental consortium of New Economics innovators, Wits academics, and early childhood development experts.

Hundreds of people from a diversity of backgrounds came together this week to protest the installation of pre-paid water meters in Soweto and other townships. The march was organized by the coalition Organizations Against Prepaid Water that included amongst others the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Community Independent Development Forum, Independent Baptists, Jubilee, SOPA, PAC, the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and taxi associations. Gathering at Mary Fitzgerald Square, itself an emblem of the Johannesburg Development Agency’s neoliberal city restructuring, the protestors made their way to the Civic Centre to deliver a memorandum to Mayor Amos Masondo. The memorandum listed a host of grievances about pre-paid meters, most importantly the fact that pre-paid meters allow Johannesburg Water (JW), and companies like it, to implement the harshest form of “cost recovery” – automatic self-disconnection.

An African Union (AU) delegation that is due to attend the UN Security Council meeting this week will hold consultations with members of the Council on how to strengthen cooperation between the two organisations, the pan-African body said in a statement. The Council will meet in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Thursday and Friday to discuss conflict resolution in Sudan and the peace process in Somalia.

The Zambian government has defended its decision to ban an NGO because its activities pose "a danger to state security". The Southern African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD) was informed of the government's decision via a short letter from Minister of Home Affairs Ronnie Shikapwasha. In the letter to SACCORD, a copy of which was faxed to IRIN, Shikapwasha says he has "noticed with displeasure that your organisation has engaged itself in activities which are [inimical] and a danger to the state security" and that, in accordance with the Societies Act, "I have decided to de-register your organisation with immediate effect".

Armed opposition groups have been urged by the Ethiopian government to lay down their weapons and democratically contest the forthcoming national elections. The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) said that political power only "comes only from the ballot box". In a statement issued by the information ministry on Saturday, the government said "creating a democratic government by the people and for the people" fosters development.

The World Bank’s book 'Voices of the Poor' is an attempt to represent the majority of humanity as The Poor. This othering, argues this paper from the website Red, produces The Poor as a category of people who are politically inert, largely responsible for their own circumstances and whose suffering justifies the position and work of The Bank and other social forces with similar agendas. The paper suggests that there are connections between this approach and colonial discourses that sought to other people via a process of racialisation. In contrast, a book like Aswin Desai's 'We Are the Poors', which details struggles against neoliberal policies in South Africa, does not objectify its subject.