* Human Rights: The situation of human rights defenders in Africa: A continuous nightmare
* Women and Gender: Violence against women and HIV
* Elections and Governance: In placid Malawi, shades of Mugabe
* Development: Protests at World Bank and IMF – the “unhappy birthday”
* Health: Little joy on Malaria Day
* Education: Education for All week
* Environment: NGO’s call for closure of WB climate change fund
* Media&FXI: Press freedom is ‘baggage’, says Moyo
* Books and Arts: Talk left walk right: South Africa’s frustrated global reforms

There are so many pessimists about Africa around the world that it seems there is nothing Africans can do that can change their mindsets. Otherwise how does one explain a very common question that any talk of Uganda in many circles outside Africa still prompts: Idi Amin. The fact that Idi Amin was booted out of power in 1979 seems to have passed many people by! On seeing my name tag, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan African Movement, Uganda at a huge international conference, only two years ago, a delegate came to me at Tea Break and asked: How is Idi Amin? He seems quiet these days!

I had grown accustomed to these daft questions so I gently broke it to him that the Field Marshall had been out of Uganda for sometime, lodging in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, since 1979. I thought the questioner would walk away quietly in diplomatic embarrassment but he shot another question at me: so what does he do these days? Since he could not get the message it was my turn to walk away from the embarrassing conversation.

But the Afro pessimism is not just from outsiders. So many Africans; many of the educated elite class who are allegedly supposed to know better, are guilty of the same pessimism about Africa and Africans. A religious fundamentalist acquaintance even tried to convince me that our woes were because of many sins that we have committed and unless we return to God in penitence there can not be any respite from our multi legged afflictions, from AIDS to bad governance. I asked him if our disobedience to his God is worse than that of any other peoples on this planet and he was adamant that it was. So if Africa is to continue to suffer all these problems what will God do to those who enslaved us, colonised us and continue to rig the international rules of trade and commerce against us with the active collaboration and grotesque submissiveness of our leaders who are really dealers.

Of course blaming the victim is not a new trick from those who benefit from any system of oppression and exploitation. That is why many of our leaders assume the mantle of ‘father of the nation’ (who does no wrong) as soon as they enter state house and with time they become theocratic asking us to return to God in order to be governed well. They become the chosen ones by God but somehow God’s message is not for them but for the poor hapless citizens. Didn’t colonialists and Slave dealers before them declare their murderous enterprise as ‘civilisation’?

However as the Late Walter Rodney once declared Africa has an incredible capacity to surprise both outsiders and the natives. Amidst all the gloom and doom we see flickers of hope and rays of sun shine here and there, keeping hope alive that our peoples have it within them the capacity to change their conditions for the better. Outsiders can and may help but the duty is that of Africans.

While not denying the challenges we must also put our victories in perspective and build on those good practices of things that work in Africa by African efforts.

South Africa has just concluded its third post apartheid general elections without the much-predicted mass violence especially in Kwazulu Natal. Even Chief Buthelezi is reaching his sell-by-date and is no longer capable of destabilising the democratic order.

Yet just ten years ago there were all prophets of doom about the inevitable catastrophe that a post apartheid South Africa will become. Enemies of Africa now say the ANC has won too much votes and that is supposed to be dangerous for democracy. Does that mean that Tony Blair whose party has a overwhelming majority in the British parliament without overwhelming votes across the country should have shared it with his Liberal and conservative opponents?

Another unsung development is the decision by President Sam Nujoma and SWAPO that finally this term is his final and final term. No more tinkering with the constitution to prolong the rule of one person.

The system should be able to cope with the exit of its founders, veterans and pioneers and move to another person and another generation.

Africa’s enemies will be further proven wrong if and when the same message echoes from Kampala, Harare, Addis Ababa and Asmara. President Thabo Mbeki has made the same declaration in Pretoria as indeed President Kagame (though he still has many years ahead) in Kigali. We have to help those who have seen the light beyond state house and also help those who are yet to that there is more to enjoy outside of it instead of remaining prisoners to power. Some leaders like Eyadema (who is beyond the pale of any democratic pressure) we have to pray to the ancestors to fastforward his recall to the higher house. The next phase in the very painful transitions in many African countries will require being liberated from our liberators.

Let us keep hope alive, Afrika Yetu!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.

No, Nicole, no and no again. The very people who have built that Holocaust Museum that they proudly show to visitors like yourself, are today killing, destroying and dispersing another people. So what is the meaning of that Museum? What is it there to say? Is it to say “It should never happen again to Jews” but I don't care if it happens to others?

Read Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's "When 'never again' becomes again and again" (Pambazuka News 152). Do you want me to believe that for Israel to exist and Israelis to live in peace and commemorate the Jewish holocaust, Palestine should disappear and Palestinians continue to be refugees in their own land?

In the name of what can you take away the dream of a Palestinian child for a home or for a country? When Jews were forced to become Christians or were burnt at the stake in the kingdom of the very Catholic Queen Isabel of Spain, they found asylum and refuge in Arab lands. Christian Europe chased them away and then to redeem itself, gave them a “homeland” at the expense of the Palestinians. Let's not forget history.

You talk about awareness, yes I agree. Like the American public should be told about Iraq and should see on their television screens the destruction of that country, Israelis should also see how their soldiers shoot and kill children and women. How their tanks uproot olive trees, how Palestinian water wells are blocked and how cement is poured into Palestinian homes so that they become inhabitable. In retaliation…

Try to find that young Israeli girl who convinced you to visit the museum and ask her if she knows what is happening on the other side of the Wall of Shame her country is building?

Awareness, Yes, Yes and Yes again. Let's build awareness and see with two eyes wide open, not just one. Let's listen with two ears, not just one!

(This letter is in response to Nicole Venter, Letters section, Pambazuka News 152.)

The Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, Mr. Alpha Oumar Konaré condemns the assassination of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, during an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Saturday, 17 April 2004.

The Chairperson stress once again that the killings of Palestinian leaders will incite more violence and undermine any prospects for dialogue and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. More importantly, such actions which are illegal and in violation of international law, only serves to compound the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity and despair, especially among the already brutalized Palestinian population.

The Chairperson, once again, calls on the international community, including in particular, the Middle East quartet of the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union, to intensify their efforts to relaunch the peace process in the Middle East and to encourage the Parties to revert to the implementation of the proposals for a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the Palestinian problem, in line with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, and in order to guarantee the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to statehood.

Addis Ababa, 19 April 2004

The spread of the deadly HIV virus is a threat to world peace, the chief the United Nations AIDS agency said Monday. "It's as big of a threat as terrorism," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot told Reuters on the sidelines of a speech in Oslo, referring to massive poverty as a result of AIDS, sparking political unrest which could even lead to cross-border conflicts, as well as a weakening of defense forces in heavily infected countries.

The African National Congress named its candidates for premiers in the nine provinces this week, after a national working committee meeting of the ruling party was held in Cape Town. It is the first time that candidates have only been named after the election, which the ANC won with a landslide victory. The ANC will take the premierships in all nine provinces for the first time since democracy in 1994.
Related Link:
* IFP claims rigged poll
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimes/basket3st/basket3st10826…
* Opposition left licking wounds
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/04/18/politics/politics02.asp
* Crippling blow for once mighty Nats
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/04/18/politics/politics03.asp

Local elections aren't a rarity, some would claim. But, they are if you live in Sierra Leone and have not had a say about local councillors in three decades. That the elections are happening is the good news. The bad news is that the contest is not going to be a pretty one. Osman Yansaneh, secretary general of the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC), has already alleged "gross interference of (tribal) 'chiefs' in the electoral process in favour of the ruling SLPP (Sierra Leone Peoples Party)." Of the 17 registered political parties in the country, only four are taking part in the elections - the others having run out of steam after the last general election in May 2002.

On 20 April, for the first time ever, governments meeting at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva confirmed the importance and priority that the Commission accord to companies' responsibilities in relation to human rights and requested the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to focus on elaborating those responsibilities. A decision, adopted by consensus, specifically asks the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to compile a report setting out the scope and legal status of all existing initiatives and standards on business responsibilities with regard to human rights, including the UN Norms for Business. "We are very pleased that the Commission has acknowledged the need to strengthen standards on business responsibilities in relation to human rights and will consider elements of the Norms," Amnesty International said.

The National Society for Human Rights says it is "alarmed" at the "Zimbabweanization" of not only the socio-economic and political, but also judicial, system in Namibia. "The Zimbabweanization of our judicial system, as seen in the ongoing erosion of judicial independence and circumvention of its effectiveness, becomes even more evident in what amounts to influencing intimidation of independence-minded Namibian judicial officers," said the NSHR in a press statement.

Economic growth in some African countries has improved the well-being of the poorest. However, in remote areas poverty remains entrenched. New research argues that Africa's economic growth will not be translated into poverty reduction until the poor are given better access to markets and to basic infrastructure, such as roads.

Africa Action has released a new set of talking points entitled, "Africa’s Debt & Iraq’s Debt - Washington’s Double Standard." This document notes the refusal of the World Bank and IMF to put Africa’s debt crisis at the top of their meeting agenda this week and strongly condemns the failure of the U.S. government to advocate for an urgent solution to Africa’s debt crisis, as it has been doing in the case of Iraq.

Promotion of e-readiness is all the rage. Internet-based business to business (B2B) applications are promoted as tools to enable producer firms in developing countries to reduce costs and enter global markets. However, evidence is emerging that policy makers and development agencies are too optimistic about the poverty-busting potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Research from the Institute of Development Studies and the London School of Economics critically examines the expectations and assumptions behind the drive to encourage investment in ICTs.

Despite the growing success of the Open Source movement, most of the general public continues to feel that Open Source software is inaccessible to them. This paper discusses five fundamental problems with the current Open Source software development trend, explores why these issues are holding the movement back, and offers solutions that might help overcome these problems.

Although corruption has always been a feature of Congolese life, the lack of political will by the country's leaders to fight the phenomenon is now causing a rise in levels of poverty, according to local NGOs. "It is obvious that the majority of Congolese are hostages of the corrupt minority," said Cephas Ewangui, president of the Congolese Federation of Human Rights and of the Thomas Sankara Pan-African Association.

Tensions are high as Malawi's third multiparty general elections draw closer - the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) faces accusations of bias, while police have shot dead two opposition supporters protesting the death in detention of a comrade. Police in the southern district of Nsanje shot and killed the two opposition supporters on Monday for hurling stones at a police station, after an opposition sympathiser died in detention.

The government of Swaziland has allocated R2 million (307,692 dollars) in its budget for an anti-corruption office that does not function, but is sorely needed. "Corruption is part of any national government, any business, any place from a school headmaster’s office to a religious organisation where money and influence are found. It is to government and society’s benefit that an anti-corruption authority exists to take action," said an Mbabane attorney with the Swaziland Law Society.

With a quarter of the year already gone the British government has still failed to organise a single event to mark the United Nations year to remember slavery. Many Africa countries, and the UN itself, have organised a series of exhibitions and events. But Britain stands alone as the only state with a major role in the slave trade that does not have any events planned.

There are two possibilities for the parliamentary elections that the government has indicated will be held in less than a year's time, observes the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a new report. One is that a negotiated inter-party settlement or greatly intensified international pressure - or both - will produce the conditions for a free and fair electoral process. The other is that the ruling party will continue to stall on talks, rig the electoral process, increase state violence, and win a non-credible vote. "If the latter happens, Zimbabwe will probably be at the point of no return," says the ICG.

Over fifty environmental and social justice NGOs and other groups this week sent a letter of protest to the World Bank calling for the closure of its new emissions trading fund, The Prototype Carbon Fund. In the year of the World Bank's 60th anniversary and in the run-up to intense protests in Washington D.C. at their annual meeting this month, the groups state that the Bank's new fund is destructive greenwash and has in fact created extra problems for communities and the environment. The fund was set up in 1999 to facilitate the new trade in greeenhouse gases created under the Kyoto Protocol. The NGOs state that so far the fund has exacerbated existing human rights violations and furthered environmental destruction.

Nigeria has struck a deal to bring 50 million dollars belonging to late dictator Sani Abacha that were frozen by the Swiss authorities in 1999 back to the country, the justice department said Monday. In total, more than 600 million dollars (498 million euros) of Abacha's money has been frozen in Switzerland. Nigerian authorities finished an investigation into an individual involved in the Abacha case and, in an out-of-court settlement, secured the return of 50 million dollars through the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Office of Justice said.