African governments on Friday signalled their intention to push for a bigger say in the appointment a new International Monetary Fund managing director, following the resignation of Horst Köhler earlier this month. This was part of a broader demand for a greater say in the affairs of the IMF and its sister organisation, the World Bank. African central bank governors, finance ministers and other officials met on Friday to develop a common position on how to raise the "voice and participation" of developing and transitional countries in the Bretton Woods institutions.

On 21 March 1960, a non-violent protest took place in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the “pass laws” -– one of the most hated institutions of apartheid; it ended with the death of 69 demonstrators. The Sharpeville massacre was a landmark in the history of the anti-apartheid movement. It also led the United Nations General Assembly to establish this annual observance, which is meant to draw attention to the fight against racism wherever and whenever it occurs.This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, reminding us of the horrors that ethnic and racial hatred can cause. This year is also the bicentenary of the revolution in Haiti, which led to the liberation from slavery of the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America. And the General Assembly has proclaimed 2004 the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. What must link these observances is not only our honouring the memory of the victims of past tragedies, but also our determination to save others from becoming the victims of similar tragedies in the future. I expect soon to appoint a United Nations special adviser on the prevention of genocide, and to make other proposals for strengthening our action in this area.

Some youths in Okakarara are beating their unemployment woes by caring for bed-ridden AIDS patients. Under the name Home Based Care Givers, the 22, mainly youth, started giving care after realising that people living with HIV/AIDS are discriminated against and stigmatised. On a daily basis, they walk some 30 km to get to their bed-ridden clients spread around Okondjatu, Otjituuo and sometimes Okamatapati.

Bessie, 11, and her sister, Dorcas, 8, (not real names) are orphans. Until a few months ago, they lived with relatives in the heart of Lusaka. But instead of care and guardianship, the two sisters were repeatedly defiled. Unable to bear the acts of sexual violation, Dorcas spoke about their ordeal to a neighbour who, in turn, reported the matter to the police. Today, Dorcas and Bessie are in the care of a local orphanage, but sadly, the effects of their defilement still live with them.

The children living on the streets ran away from their homes into the streets because the house was no longer safe for them. Some survived abuse and others lived with neglect following the deaths of their parents from AIDS. Going to the streets was a way of escaping. When the children arrived on the streets, life was not rosy but rough.

Child soldiers who have served in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group, many of whom were forced to kill or watch other people being killed, may remain traumatised for years after they have been released, according to a new study. A study published by the UK-based scientific journal, the Lancet, on 13 March, has found that over half of the children surveyed - over 300, all of whom were abducted at an average age of 12 - had been seriously beaten, 77 percent had witnessed another person being killed, 39 percent had killed another person and 39 percent had abducted other children. Over one-third of the girls had been raped while 18 percent had given birth while in captivity.

On March 18th 2004, 256 citizens step forward and assume their new role as pan African parliamentarians. The inauguration of the pan African parliament in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this week is a major significant step for continental unity.

We in Africa must celebrate the inauguration but immediately place on its agenda the challenge of negotiating better global terms for Africa around debt, trade and aid. Yet, this is only half the agenda. The pan African Parliament must be empowered with research and communications facilities to legislate laws, monitor compliance of African states to agreed standards of governance and human rights and lastly, popularise the major protocols and instruments of the African Union. It must be enabled to receive representation by individuals and associations representing interests affected by international or continental public policies or practises. Simply, it must be able to intervene decisively to protect human rights in member states.

The treaty establishing the pan African Parliament states its vision as “a common platform for African peoples and their grassroots organisations to be more involved in discussions and decision-making on the problems and challenges facing the continent”. The Parliament shall provide oversight for the budget of the AU, harmonisation of policies towards regional integration and make recommendations that promote human rights, democratic institutions and good governance among other functions. During the first five-year term of its existence, the Parliament shall “exercise advisory and consultative powers only [article 11]”. Most African countries have nominated five legislators of which one must be a woman from national parliaments and deliberative organs.

The three-day event will be presided over by AU Chairperson H.E. President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique in the presence of several heads of state and citizens past and present. The spirits of Yaa Asantewa, Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Bibi Titi, Nyerere, Mbuya Nehanda, Sobukwe and Kenyatta will, no doubt, be there to see this long unfulfilled dream come to fruition. Yet, the revitalisation of state Pan-Africanism occurs in a rapidly changing international policy context.

The hope of new approaches to old problems of inequitable trade relations and inadequate aid flows over 2001-2 were severely punctured by a return to aid scepticism, a pervasive anti-terrorist lens and the subsequent undermining of multi-lateralism in 2003. In 2004, these developments unfortunately seem set to continue crowding out national sovereignty and dominating the policy discourse on and in Africa for the next three years. It is in this context that the pan African parliament and other organs of the AU must act and do so urgently.

On the surface, it would seem that the experience of parliamentary representation at national levels could strangle the potential of the new Parliament. At a rough estimate, across Africa there are over 9,210 national parliamentarians elected from Africa’s population of over 700 million people. That is, one legislator for every 76,000 people. However, most poor people in Africa, parliaments and legislative bodies seem disconnected from the day-to-day realities and challenges they face.

If the crisis of relevance seems stark in some national contexts, then at regional levels the challenge for parliamentarians is multiplied. 265 nominated legislators in a continent of over 700 million people (one pan African MP for every 2.6 million people) does not embody a high capacity for representative democracy, much less “a platform for African peoples and their grassroots organisations”. For example, this compares unfavourably with India where 795 MPs represent one billion people (one MP per 126,000 people).

For the first five years and until members are elected by universal adult suffrage, the credibility of the pan African Parliament cannot rest on their representational quality but on the issues they espouse, the causes they champion and the changes they bring to the lives of ordinary people across Africa. By doing this, the pan African Parliament can deepen its credibility and relevance to African peoples struggling with poverty and injustice across the continent.

* Irungu Houghton is pan African Policy Advisor, Oxfam GB

* What do you think of the African Parliament? Send your comments to for inclusion in our letters page.

Dear Pambazuka,

I was challenged by the poignant letter by my sister Everjoice Win to Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma et al and in the same breath buoyed up with the Issa Shivji's article. While it is true that the nationalist movement was not that overtly gender sensitive and that the seeds of sectarianism and exclusion were surreptitiously sown even then by vested interests, I also believe that the African women's movement was more focused in the earlier years. It is a great shame to me as a Panafricanist to witness the pain African women have to endure, having had to engage the sticky floor!

My question to Ndugu Shivji is: in your silent class struggle, where do you locate the women’s movement within the nationalist struggle as an integral part of the national question? Is it in the early resistance to colonialism that must include Nehanda Mbuya, the Lancaster generation, because Priscilla Abwao was there or the first Independence governments with Ella Koblo Gulama in Sierra Leone and Bibi Titi in Tanganyika?

My reading of the situation is that male dominated movements cannot be easily weaned from their original tokenism, hence the top women in South Africa can only view the plight of Zimbabwe through the glass ceiling! As Amilcar Cabral put it: "Claim no easy victories, tell no lies". Were he to come back to life he'd see a post colonial landscape dotted all over with leaning towers of failure!

A luta continua.

A company associated with former Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority boss Harun Mwau has been implicated in a multi-million-shilling tax evasion scandal. The scandal was unearthed when a container whose contents had been falsely declared was intercepted at the Mombasa port by officials from the Kenya Revenue Authority and the Weights and Measures Department.

The Nigerian Senate is seeking to improve the country's rating by the corruption watchdog Transparency International, said a senior Senate official in Lagos last Wednesday. Chairman of the Senate's Anti-Corruption Committee Bemisola Saraki told local media in the Nigerian commercial centre Lagos that the legislative chamber is worried by Transparency International's classification of the country as the second most corrupt nation in the world.

A Customs Union deal signed in Arusha recently by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya comes a full four years after the countries embarked on their latest attempt at regional integration. The original East African Community collapsed in 1977 due to Nyerere's war against Idi Amin of Uganda, as well as economic and political divergences. In 1999, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania signed a Treaty re-establishing the Community. But attempts to forge agreements since then on economic and political union have taken some time to materialise.

A special investigation into the financial affairs of the Aids Consortium has found gross mismanagement of donor funds to the tune of about R1,1-million. As a result, the top management of the non-governmental organisation has been suspended and its executive committee is preparing to step down following the findings of the investigation. The Aids Consortium is a non-profit organisation made up of about 1 000 bodies (mainly community-based organisations) working in the field of HIV and Aids.

Angola's ruling MPLA party has laid out 14 tasks it must complete before the country can hold its first national elections since 1992 - a move observers say makes a ballot before 2006 unlikely. Approving a new constitution, passing a new electoral register law and creating an electoral council would be possible by the second half of 2005, the MPLA's information secretary, Kwata Kanawa, told a press conference last Thursday.

* Comment and Analysis: The Rise, Fall and Insurrection of Nationalism in Africa
* Conflict and Emergencies: Questions over Kgame’s role in genocide
* Human Rights: UN rights commission told to adapt or die
* Refugees and Forced Migration: African refugee working group set up
* Women and Gender: News on International Women’s Day
* Elections and Governance: Campaign for Democratic Angola launched
South Africa: (Un) civil society and the vote
* Development: Rescuing Nepad
* Health: Robbing the poor to pay the rich
* HIV/AIDS: Merck breaks promises on Aids drugs
* Environment: Sharing the Nile’s waters
* Land and Land Rights: Namibian land grab all fair and square
* News from the Diaspora: The Diaspora and Development
* Books and Arts: Against Global Apartheid (2nd edition)

When the World Social Forum took place in India during January, Kenyan activists who attended the event pledged to highlight their country's housing crisis. This issue has hit the headlines again now, with the planned demolition of buildings in one of Nairobi's poorest areas. Since last December, authorities have been pulling down structures built along railway and power lines, on the grounds that this property was illegally allocated for development. Some of the first structures to go were mansions worth millions of Kenyan shillings - many of them owned by key members of the government under former President Daniel arap Moi.

Africa is a less corrupt place and there has been a global recognition of how harmful corruption is and how detrimental and damaging it is to development, according to Dr. Peter Eigen, founder of the global corruption watchdog group Transparency International. "On the international front, far more effective measures to protect countries from corruption are now in place. Five years ago, it was not a crime in domestic law for a firm from Germany or Japan or the US to offer bribes abroad. In fact, in many instances bribes were tax deductible! But there has been a sea change in the international legal system now. Some 35 countries have acceded to the OECD Convention Against Corruption, which means that those firms now cannot bribe abroad with impunity in places like Africa." This is an extract from an interview with Eigen in e-africa, the electronic journal of governance and innovation.

African states are among the least successful on the continent. They have been among the least successful in overcoming the early post-colonial legacy of single-party or military regimes and in moving toward democracy. Forty-plus years after independence, most are still struggling to find a political system capable of holding together their diverse populations. Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Angola together account for about 40 percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa. Their chronic internal problems have repercussions that go well beyond their boundaries. In addition, Africa’s big states, with the exception of South Africa, do not serve the interests of their citizens, their neighbours or the broader international community. Despite the advantage for growth that large states with resource bases and domestic markets should theoretically enjoy, Africa’s three most populous countries - Nigeria, Ethiopia and the DRC - have an average per capita income under $300 a year, virtually unchanged in the last 20 years and representing a substantial decline in real income and living conditions for most citizens. New paradigms of governance and engagement must be sought to address the special challenges posed by large populations and national territories, argues this article in e-africa, the electronic journal of governance and innovation.

Radical civil society is returning to a vision that aims to diffuse power rather than to seize it. It is a vision that aims to steadily limit the power of parliament and managers by building people's power from the bottom up. It is a spark in the ashes, write academics and activists Ashwin Desai and Richard Pithouse in South Africa's The Mercury newspaper.

The United Nations will need US $5.8 million to help over 600,000 Namibian orphans, vulnerable children and women suffering the combined effects of erratic weather, severe poverty and a worsening HIV/AIDS epidemic. On Wednesday the World Food Programme (WFP) and UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched an emergency appeal, noting that "tens of thousands of children and their families will face severe difficulties in the coming months, unless international assistance is forthcoming".

The Central African Republic became the 100th Member State to sign the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The new international treaty - worked out through a two-year negotiating process supported by the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) - was adopted by the General Assembly in October 2003. At a special signing conference held in Mérida, Mexico, last December, 95 countries signed the new Convention.