In addition to prosecuting third world leaders with blood on their hands, the ICC and other similar courts must also prosecute western political leaders, corporate leaders, and civil servants whose decisions and actions have directly and/or indirectly resulted in atrocities (Pambazuka News 144: Africa and the ICC: Is Africa ready and waiting?).
Alex Weir, Zimbabwe

Click on the link below to sign a petition demanding a cancellation of impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, an end to all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize and an end to all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.

The government returned to three coloured communities on Monday a parcel of land confiscated under apartheid in the 1970s, but the families dismissed the move as an election ploy. Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza was in the Lohatlha area in the northwest of the country to return 2000 hectares of land to the Gatlhose, Maremane and Khosis communities, whose land was turned into a military school in the 1970s. But a spokesperson for the communities, Marcia Manong, said the apartheid government had confiscated 62 000 hectares of land from more than 500 families in the community between 1975 and 1978.

About 20 percent of the children in the drought-affected northern Somali regions of Sool and Sanaag are believed to be malnourished, a study by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in February found. In its monthly review of the situation in Somalia for March, UNICEF said the results of screening some 7,457 children had shown that about 1,490 were moderately malnourished and 126 severely malnourished.

The government of Mauritania has refused to even consider legalising a new pro-Islamic opposition party set up by supporters of former president Mohammed Khouna Ould Haidalla. Last Wednesday they filed a request to legalise the new Party for Democratic Convergence with the Interior Ministry. However, on Sunday, Cheick Ould Horma, the party's president, said the government had refused to even accept the application for processing.

The United Nations has confirmed that the delayed disarmament programme in Liberia will restart on Thursday after a four-month delay. Jacques Klein, the head of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), made the announcement on Saturday at a joint press conference with Gyude Bryant, the Chairman of Liberia’s transitional government, in the capital Monrovia.

The bodies of at least 25 people hacked to death by unidentified assailants have so far been discovered in Lutwegi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the public information officer for the UN mission in the eastern town of Goma, Jacqueline Chernard, told IRIN on Sunday. "We anticipate that the figure of those dead during the attack could rise," she said. Quoting a local administrator of the affected area, in North Kivu Province, she said the dead were mostly women and children. She said 150 homes were completely burnt down by the unidentified attackers.

Police have launched a massive hunt to locate Zvakwana, a pro-democracy group that is calling for the removal from power of President Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwe Independent heard this week. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said they were worried about the activities of Zvakwana. "I can't speak about the hunt for them off hand. I will have to confirm," said Bvudzijena. "These people (Zvakwana), whoever they are, have been hiding and spreading material and literature aimed at inciting members of the public to lawlessness. We would be interested in talking to them."

* Comment and Analysis: Will he or won't he?: Nujoma and the fourth term bid
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* Human Rights: Action must be taken on human rights abuses, says Zimbabwe NGO Forum
* Elections and Governance: Campaign for democracy in Angola expands
* Development: Africa – Dogmatic development
* Corruption: Nigerian government urged to ratify AU convention
* HIV/AIDS: Aids drugs deal extended
* Education: Rich countries failing poor on education
* Environment: World Bank behind DRC logging interests
* Advocacy and Campaigns: Write a letter to the editor about debt

"On this International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda, I would like to start by paying tribute to the people of Rwanda for the remarkable resilience and great dignity they have shown in recovering from their national trauma. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Government of Rwanda for the inclusive spirit with which it has pursued the path of reconstruction and reconciliation. Rwanda has much to show the world about confronting the legacy of the past, and is demonstrating that it is possible to reach beyond tragedy and rekindle hope."

The UN Security Council has given Secretary-General Kofi Annan the go-ahead to plan a peacekeeping operation in Burundi. Mr Annan had called on the body last month to send some 5,500 troops to Burundi, which is emerging from a decade of civil war. The Security Council has not yet approved the mission. But it says the secretary-general can begin consulting countries that could provide troops for a UN force. It would replace 2,500 African Union peacekeepers currently in Burundi, whose mandate has been extended until the beginning of May.

A United Nations expert has called for a red alert to warn the world about racism and xenophobia as the alarming resurgence and vitality of the traditional forms of discrimination are joined by new forms of discrimination affecting the non-national, the refugee and the immigrant. "The new ideological landscape is structured both by the excessive emphasis placed on combating terrorism and the inclusion of cultural and religious elements, which create cultural conflicts and new discriminatory practices aimed at many different groups," said Doudou Diene, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

The president of the national coalition of non-governmental organisations on the rights of the child, Mr. Nelson Godfred Agyeman, has condemned the government's inability to protect, enforce and implement the laws and conventions made to advance the rights and development of children. According to him, since 1990 when Ghana took leadership in the ratification of the convention on the rights of the child, no serious effort has been made by the government towards full implementation.

The government of Burkina Faso has outlined a new strategy for working with NGO’s and local communities to cope with the rising number of orphans and abandoned children in this poor and semi-arid West African country. According to government statistics, there were 2.1 million orphans and abandoned children in Burkina Faso last year. They accounted for nearly 18 percent of the country’s 11.8 million population.

A British-born judge brought in specially to try corruption cases has imposed stiff bail on two electoral officials accused of embezzling public funds in a high profile case being heard during the run-up to Sierra Leone’s local government elections. At a court hearing on Monday, Justice Robert Schuster set bail of 128 million leones (US$43,000) for Joseph Aruna and Francis Hindowa, two former electoral commissioners in Sierra Leone’s Eastern Region, for misappropriating more than $1,000 of public funds each.

A group of prominent Mauritanians who backed former president Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla in his failed bid to regain power in last year’s presidential election, filed papers for the creation of a new political party on Wednesday. Opposition political sources said papers seeking to legalise Ould Haidalla’s new Party for Democratic Convergence were submitted to the Interior Ministry in the capital Nouakchott.

That the ruling ZANU PF party won the crucial by-election in Zengeza occasioned no surprise at all to those who had witnessed the violence, intimidation, vote-buying and other serious irregularities that occurred in the constituency, both in the run-up the election and while it was in progress. “The results of the Zengeza by-election do not surprise us in view of the gross intimidation, violence and the callous murder of our member”, commented the MDC spokesman, Paul Themba Nyathi. The murder he was referring to involved the shooting of a youth at the home of the opposition MDC candidate, James Makore. Against such a background of bloody violence the reference by many reporters to the need to “level the playing fields” between the ruling party and the opposition is surely a misnomer. Playing fields suggest a game in progress, and that between players who accept that the game is to proceed according to certain well defined rules. What we have in Zimbabwe today should rather be called be called the killing fields.

On 14th April, almost exactly ten years since the democratic transition, the citizens of South Africa will have for the third time a largely free and fair opportunity to cast their votes for another national parliament. The outcome is predictable: the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will remain in government with an absolute majority of votes. More of interest will be if the former liberation movement achieves a two-thirds majority, and if it also takes over the two provinces of KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, so far governed by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the New National Party (NNP) respectively.

Even more interesting will be the degree of voter participation in the elections. After a decade of post-Apartheid South Africa, the support base of the ANC still continues to exist. This is not because of enthusiasm for the government's policy since being in political power, but more because of a lack of any meaningful alternative.

The Tripartite Alliance - of the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the umbrella trade union body Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) – has managed despite internal differences of opinion to maintain the coalition, even though discourses on developmental strategies have signalled rough times.

The ANC is increasingly criticised for what is labelled a neo-liberal paradigm in its socio-economic orientation. The society has shifted from racial segregation towards a similar discriminating and marginalizing class structure, with members of a new black elite joining the “haves”. Meanwhile, the living conditions of the “have-nots” (who remain mainly black) have shown little if any improvement.

Such a harsh and sobering but realistic conclusion is far from denouncing the ANC policy as a complete sell-out strategy or betrayal of the people (as tempting as it is to do so). It simply acknowledges the price at which negotiated transfer of political power came a decade ago.

While liberated from the racism of Apartheid as a political system of institutionalised discrimination, the controlled change towards a formally democratic society did not mean emancipation from or victory over the capitalist system. Instead, it signalled the beginning of a new partnership with the same capitalism managing to survive the onslaught.

The South African government's role in the international arena is similarly problematic and contradictory, and at times ambivalent and controversial in different ways. In its attempt to gain from the existing global market, South African policy is criticised on the one hand for a too collaborative approach to the G8 and the international financial institutions.

South Africa on the other hand continues to back the despotic regime of Robert Mugabe in neighbouring Zimbabwe to an extent, which provokes doubts about a proclaimed commitment to human rights and democracy. The degree of passivity is tantamount to complicity and even resulted in cautiously warning voices articulated from within the trade union alliance and the SACP.

Such seemingly contradictory dimensions indicate the problems for an emerging middle power to walk the tight rope between “African solidarity” (meaning solidarity with regime security for despotic cleptocracies of the Mugabe/ZANU-PF style) and own global interests (meaning to be the “good boy” in terms of “good governance” the IMF/World Bank/G8 way).

The disappointment among South African voters - more so over internal failures than the contradictory foreign policy - however, can at best result in them abstaining from the voting. The current parties competing with the ANC offer either no political alternatives or no convincing concept or power base.

Notwithstanding this current lack of options from the point of view of the majority, the question beyond the outcome of the elections will be if and to what extent the government will manage to overcome the structural legacy of Apartheid and the class society consolidated. Scepticism concerning the political determination among the office bearers to initiate fundamental socio-economic changes towards a redistribution of wealth beyond the limited cooptation of a new black elite (including themselves) is finding uncomforting evidence, as presented in many recent critical analyses by autonomous scholars and activists.

Growing (de facto) unemployment (despite questionable number crunching during the pre-election campaign), continued increase in absolute poverty, decline in the annual per capita and black household income, extreme social discrepancies as reflected in one of the highest Gini-coefficients the world over (an econometric indicator concerning the degree of income disparities), a continued crisis over the ownership of land and a lack of pro-active policy with regard to combating the deadly consequences of HIV/Aids are some of the contested issues offering reasons for growing disappointment with regard to the policy failures of the ANC government.

The slogan of a “national interest” replaced demands of the working class (not to mention the peasants) for more equality and less exploitation. The times changed and with them the trade unions. President Thabo Mbeki, angered by strikes in August 2001 and October 2002, blamed the organisers in his electronically circulated weekly “Letter from the President” (“ANC Today”, 4-10 October 2002) to “seek to defeat the ANC and the revolutionary masses”. He raised the question of whose interests they serve. This is a question that could be asked the other way round too.

The orthodox (in the sense of neo-liberal) economic policy orientation of the South African government was explicitly confirmed by Thabo Mbeki in an article on “Global Poverty and Progressive Politics” in “New Agenda” (4/2003). He maintains the view that “profit maximisation is a necessary condition for the existence of capital”, without which “capital dies and humanity perishes”.

He therefore declares as “a universally accepted proposition that the necessary macro-conditions should exist to ensure that new capital formation takes place”. Hence “the possibility has to be created everywhere, for capital to make such profits as it would consider acceptable to itself”.

He concludes further, “'market economics' has acquired the character of a universal and self-evident truth”. Since “capital dictates the rules that human society sets itself, to ensure that capital is able to reproduce itself”, it follows that this “is the reason for the universal victory of the neo-liberal/conservative economic paradigm”. In other words: If you can't beat them, join them…

Bob Geldenhuys, parliamentary leader of the New National Party (NNP), comes to a similar conclusion from an opposite point of departure. He concedes that “the ANC adopted a market-oriented economy” and “no party to the right of the ANC will ever be able to unseat the ANC as government of the day”. His own party “therefore firmly believes that it is in the best interest of South Africa to strengthen the centre of the political spectrum” by cooperating with the government (quoted in “Africa Confidential”, 20 February 2004). Who needs enemies with such friends?

Indicative of the big consensus in current South Africa might also be the phenomenon that South African capital supports the major parties: According to “South Scan” (5 March 2004) the insurance giant Sanlam as the flagship of Afrikaans speaking finance capital donates one million Rand each to both the ANC and NNP, while Anglo American, the synonym for British-South African multinational mining capital, supports the big parties with six million Rand.

Meanwhile, President Mbeki assures business leaders at fundraising dinners (for example at the Grand West Casino in Cape Town) that the poor, hungry and unemployed masses will not rebel against the ANC. Instead, he philosophises: “the people who complain about the slow pace of change are those who drive Toyotas. They are complaining because they want to drive BMWs” (quoted from “City Press”, 23 February 2004).

As Ashwin Desai from the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal, under the impression of such and similar examples, concludes, “the ANC has made a quick conversion to crony capitalism. It has not unleashed communism on Houghton (the posh millionaires' residential area in Johannesburg, H.M.), it has gone to live there.” (http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs) For critical assessments of this kind he and others are brushed aside as “ultra-left” by those who execute the power of definition in the democratic South Africa of today. They are also labelled “demagogues” and accused - as by Michael Sachs (a researcher working at the national ANC office) in the “South African Labour Bulletin” (6/2003) - of not acknowledging that under the given circumstances “social movements must serve to augment, not undermine democratic power”, meaning with democratic power of course the power of the ANC.

The challenge for those who have managed to remain outside of the power centred, currently dominant alliances of the kind suggested above, must be to continue to not be bullied by such intimidation into compromise, silence, withdrawal or even compliance. By maintaining loyalty to the ideological and political values and norms for which they had supported the struggle against Apartheid in the first place, and by continuing to demand commitment to such goals, they document that there are indeed choices - even if not for the time being at the ballot boxes following this year's Easter weekend in South Africa.

* Henning Melber is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden. He had joined SWAPO of Namibia in 1974 and was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000.

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SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTION LINKS:

* A "greenies" guide to the General Election
http://www.emg.org.za/frame/frameset.htm
* Do the people have power yet?

* Electoral Institute of Southern Africa Election Update
http://www.eisa.org.za/PDF/eu_200404.pdf
* Double think in SA

* Housing battles in post-apartheid South Africa
http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com/feaSA.htm
* South Africa: Special report on a decade of democracy

* Battle for KZN hots up

Do you work or live in a country in which the World Bank is active? Do you have any dealings with the World Bank? If so, take 10 minutes to speak out and share your views by joining the global survey on World Bank-Civil Society Engagement. The questionnaire was prepared and is being circulated by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the Secretariat for the World Bank-Civil Society Joint Facilitation Committee (JFC).

This report from War on Want looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services. It focuses specifically on the sectors of water, electricity, and healthcare, in six countries: Colombia; El Salvador; Indonesia; Mozambique; South Africa; and Sri Lanka. It examines the impact of the requirements and policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and other agencies including regional development banks, the European Commission (EC) and donor countries. It includes a specific examination of the various ways in which the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) supports privatisation in these services.