11 March, 2010 — Pambazuka News
1. Pambazuka News 473: Land reform is common sense (Pambazuka Editor)
The authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa
Pambazuka News (English edition): ISSN 1753-6839
CONTENTS:
1. Action alerts,
2. Features,
3. Announcements,
4. Comment & analysis,
5. Pan-African Postcard,
6. Advocacy & campaigns,
7. Books & arts,
8. Letters & Opinions,
9. African Writers’ Corner
10. Blogging Africa,
11. Emerging powers in Africa Watch,
12. Highlights French edition
Help Pambazuka News become independent. Become a supporting subscriber by taking out a paid subscription. Donate $30 a year (www.pambazuka.org/en/donate.php ) .
Highlights from this issue
ACTION ALERTS
– Stop the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences
FEATURES
– Zimbabwe’s land reform is common sense, says Grasian Mkodzongi
– Mphutlane wa Bofelo on the ANC’s left-wing words and right-wing actions
– Azad Essa on the World Cup and poor South Africans
– Alemayehu G. Mariam considers Meles Zenawi’s misappropriation of
famine aid funds in the 1980s
– Saree Makdisi on Israel’s racism and denial
– Rosemary Okello-Orlale on International Women”s Day
+ more
ANNOUNCEMENTS
– Tell us what you’d like to see in the Pan-African Diary 2011!
COMMENT & ANALYSIS
– Hope of Sokwanele on Zimbabwean girls’ ambitions for equal rights
PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD
– Horace Campbell on the Jos tragedy and women’s rights
ADVOCACY & CAMPAIGNS
– African civil society organisations campaign against Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill
+ more
BOOKS & ARTS
– Firoze Manji reviews ‘The ten commandments of Nigerian politics’
– Raj Patel’s ‘The Value of Nothing’ reviewed by Jamie Pitman
AFRICAN WRITERS” CORNER
– J.K.S. Makokha’s poem ‘Ode on a beat generation’
BLOGGING AFRICA
– Sokari Ekine on the rumours surrounding Yar’Adua, the violence in Jos, aid money around Ethiopia’s 1980s famine and International Women’s Day
EMERGING POWERS IN AFRICA WATCH
– Adams Bodomo highlights dubious US-China ‘cooperation’ with Africa
1 Action alerts
STOP THE UNESCO-OBIANG INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR THE LIFE SCIENCES EG Justice Needs Your Help.
Sign the petition ( www.gopetition.com/online/34452.html/ ) now to STOP the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences.
In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences, named for and financed by the autocratic and abusive president of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
The prize is said to recognize ‘scientific achievements that improve the quality of human life.’ Meanwhile, the quality of life in Equatorial Guinea today remains abysmal. In spite of having attained the highest GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa, 60 per cent of Equatoguineans live on less than US$1 a day in conditions comparable to Haiti or Chad. President Obiang has neglected to invest available resources in basic social services, resulting in declining primary school attendance, poor health indicators, and needless poverty.
The UNESCO Obiang Prize is a cynical ploy to co-opt the worthy name and reputation of UNESCO to enhance the image of a notorious dictatorship. The prize amounts to international approval for this kleptocratic and abusive regime and it undermines UNESCO”s mission to promote education, science, culture, and human rights.
You can help, by signing this petition to UNESCO! (www.gopetition.com/online/34452.html/ )
Let’s send a message to UNESCO that corruption and abuse should not be rewarded and that funds used to create this prize should be reinvested in the people of Equatorial Guinea.
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2 Features
ZIMBABWE’S LAND REFORM IS COMMON SENSE
Grasian Mkodzongi
Zimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debate nationally and internationally, largely polarised between supporters of radical land reform and supporters of market-oriented reforms, writes Grasian Mkodzongi. While it is “undeniable” that Mugabe used land reform “to boost his political legitimacy”, how can one “justify the continued existence of a dualistic land ownership structure decades after independence, in a country whose struggle for liberation crystallised around the land issue?”, Mkodzongi asks.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62917
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A LONG WALK FROM SOWETO TO SANDOWN
Mphutlane wa Bofelo
Nelson Mandela’s 1990 statement on nationalisation sparked uproar from big business, but there’s little sign of private sector anxiety following ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s recent call for the formation of state-owned mines. There’s only one explanation for the “relatively muted response”, says Mphutlane wa Bofelo – that “after 15 years of ANC government, the owners of capital now know that the radical leftist terminology that the ANC uses is just a rhetorical spin to sell rightwing programmes”.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62919
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ETHIOPIA: LICENSED TO STEAL
Alemayehu G. Mariam
Two former leaders of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front have alleged in a BBC radio programme that the TPLF leadership – which included Meles Zenawi – used millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the 1980s to buy weapons and enrich themselves. “The facts are plain to see,” writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, “We know now that these thieves did not stand for the people of Tigrai at the critical hour in 1984. They sure as hell do not stand for the people of Ethiopia today.”
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62918
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SOUTH AFRICA WORLD CUP 2010: 100 DAYS TO WHAT?
Azad Essa
The press conference celebrating 100 days before the World Cup
kick-off left the big question unanswered, argues Azad Essa: How will South Africans benefit from the World Cup” For Essa “only the dim-witted, government or FIFA communication officers walked away feeling that the World Cup was really about anything more than ending Afro-pessimism and stroking a couple of shiny suits’.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62906
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A RACISM OUTSIDE OF LANGUAGE: ISRAEL’S APARTHEID
Saree Makdisi
While South Africa’s apartheid may represent the closest historical precedent to Israel-Palestine, writes Saree Makdisi, the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinian people in many respects eclipses the suffering imposed by the South African apartheid government on ‘non-white’ people. Though its supporters worldwide refuse to countenance that any form of systematic racism is perpetrated by Israel, Makdisi stresses, the country’s racism is one ‘practised in practice rather than in language’ and is rooted in treating Palestinians as not merely inferior, but subhuman.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62928
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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY: A LONG JOURNEY
Rosemary Okello-Orlale
This 8 March marked 100 years since Clara Zetkin first proposed the annual International Women”s Day (IWD) at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, a motion unanimously approved by over 100 women from 17 countries, writes Rosemary Okello-Orlale. When IWD was honoured for the first time the following year, more than one million women and men attended rallies campaigning for women’s rights
to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62939
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PEACE ON EARTH, WAR IN THE HOME
Loveness Jambaya
Around the world on 8 March, thousands of women (and men!) worldwide celebrated International Women’s Day by gathering on bridges from San Francisco to Congo to call for an end to war and demonstrate that women can build the bridges of peace and hope, writes Loveness Jambaya. This action, organised by Women to Women International, is just one of the actions by communities and organisations in the global campaign “Say NO UNiTE to End Violence Against Women”, initiated by the United Nations secretary general.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62940
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HAITI NEEDS SOLIDARITY, NOT CHARITY
Marilyn Langlois interviewed by Amanda Zivcic
In a revealing interview, Amanda Zivcic asks Marilyn Langlois of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) about the country’s efforts at recovery following its devastating earthquake in January, the dubious practices of foreign organisations ostensibly operating in support of the Haitian people, and the debilitating historical and contemporary role played by US policy.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62924
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ZUMA SAYS ‘DROP ZIMBABWE SANCTIONS’; KENYAN PARLIAMENT MAKES OBAMA OFFER
Gado
Gado’s cartoons this week feature a trouser-dropping Jacob Zuma appealing for sanctions on Zimbabwe to be dropped, and the Kenyan parliament’s offer to pass President Obama’s healthcare bill “ at a cost.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62905
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3 Announcements
PAN-AFRICAN DIARY 2011: CALL FOR ENTRIES
Pambazuka Press is planning to publish a Pan-African activists’ diary for 2011. The diary will be a handbook of key information about Pan-African history, quotations from thinkers and activists (women and men) in Africa and the diaspora, pictures of critical events in our past, information about key events during 2011, and lots more.
EVENTS
If you would like us to include events “ meetings, conferences, festivals, actions, courses, publications etc – that your organisation is planning to hold in 2011, please send details to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot] org.
QUOTATIONS
If you would like to suggest quotations for publication in the diary, please send them to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot]org. Make sure you include the source of each quote so that those who want to read more will know where to find it.
SUGGESTIONS
If you have suggestions about information you would like to see in the diary, please send them to panafdiary[at] pambazuka [dot] org.
Help make this diary the essential handbook for all activists in Africa and the diaspora. Make sure you get your recommendations in to us by 14 April 2010. Don”t be left out “ let us know what events you are planning for 2011.
We can”t guarantee that we will include everything you suggest, but
we”ll do our best!
The 2011 Pan-African Diary: the essential tool for freedom and justice!
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4 Comment & analysis
“HALLELUJAH” MOMENTS: A SMALL VICTORY FOR WOMEN”S RIGHTS
Hope Sokwanele
“Please tell me how we address this patriarchal society and how we can reach a point where women are superior” is what one young girl from an impoverished school in Zimbabwe replied when asked what she thought was standing in the way of her dreams of a trail-blazing career. “She”s going to need that kind of bull-headed feistiness to move herself forward in her life”, writes Sokwanele”s Hope, “especially if she stays in our country”. It is voices like those of this young girl, says Hope, that will help silence the few who seek to “preserve the status quo by denying rights to others’.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/62926
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5 Pan-African Postcard
DEMANDS FROM JOS, NIGERIA AND THE WORLD: INVEST IN CARING, NOT KILLING
Horace Campbell
Following the tragic killings of predominantly women and children in Jos, Nigeria, on 8 March’s International Women’s Day, Horace Campbell honours the memory of the victims along with ‘the millions of poor women whose lives are devalued everyday’.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/62931
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6 Advocacy & campaigns
AFRICAN CSO CAMPAIGN AGAINST UGANDA’S ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY BILL
Lesbian and Gay Equality Project
Following the tabling of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill before the Ugandan Parliament that provides for imprisonment and the death penalty for infringements of the bill, civil society organisations in Africa are mobilising to persuade Ugandan parliamentarians to block this pernicious bill. The bill could become law during the course of this year. Organisations and prominent individuals are invited to endorse a statement as part of the campaign to block the bill.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/62944
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PETITION FOR RELEASE OF GCAP MALAWIAN ACTIVISTS
Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP)
We the members of civil society organisations across Africa are shell-shocked at the news of the arrest and detention without bail of Edward Chileka, Howard Jimu and Awonenji Chimera (associated with Eye For Development, a youth-based NGO) in Malawi. This is an event that we cannot take lightly.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/62933
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US PERSONALITIES DEMAND VISAS FOR WIVES OF CUBAN FIVE
Coinciding with International Women’s Day, a group of personalities from the United States have sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, asking them to immediately grant humanitarian visas to two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands in US prisons.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/62936
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7 Books & arts
DON’T LET ASPIRING RULERS GET HOLD OF THIS!
A review of “The ten commandments of Nigerian politics (or how to hook the Naija Mugu)”
Firoze Manji
“It”s one thing to have a secret manual for Nigerian rulers,” writes Firoze Manji, “but quite another to have one that provides the recipe for class rule by the rogues and rascals that roam the rest of the continent. This short pamphlet should have been banned long ago.”
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/62929
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PROBING THE FREE-MARKET ‘HOUSE OF CARDS’
Review of ‘The Value of Nothing’
Jamie Pitman
Jamie Pitman reviews Raj Patel’s new book ‘The Value of Nothing,’ which he finds to be ‘excellently written, passionate and engaging’.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/62923
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8 Letters & Opinions
HIDING BEHIND HOMOPHOBIC RHETORIC
A response to “Homophobia is the problem, not homosexuality”
When times are tough it”s easier to pick on people than to fix the economy, says solomonsydelle.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/62921
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THE FIRST CRIME COMMITTED IS COLONISATION
A response to “Staggering from pillar to post: Zimbabwe”s “unity” government’
Lloyd Whitefield Butler, Jr Mary Ndlovu’s article is well-written, says Lloyd Whitefield Butler, but it doesn’t address the root causes of the present Zimbabwe crisis.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/62922
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9 African Writers” Corner
ODE ON A BEAT GENERATION
To Kenyans born post-1969
J.K.S. Makokha
we belong to a beat generation
not the american one between
the earthy 50s & heady 60s,
but our identity inspiration
in their own is seen,
we kenyans born
after the 60s,
after a-levels
after apollo
arty 8-4-4s,
but before
beat
it
we came of age via a rite of passage
familiar from town to town to village
when you will be caught out at night
in intoxication singing sedition
by cops of an earlier age
cops with a Kanu accent
beasting their beat
on lawless lanes
past midnight
pass without:
“minus pass””
plus
pa!
pe!
pi!
po!
pu!
howling to the moon never helped
as one crouched in growing groups
at times naked under a starless sky
waiting for the black santa maria
to come and haul you to cells
filled with bed and jail bugs
because you were not fit
to join the parrot patrols
in their parody beats
each saturday night
across evil streets
full of an age-set
breaking the law
or remaking it
or beating it.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/62920
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10 Blogging Africa
THE SAGA OF THE INVISIBLE PRESIDENT
Sokari Ekine
Rumours about Nigerian president Yar”Adua, violence in Jos, controversy over what happened to aid money during Ethiopia”s famine in the 1980s and International Women”s Day all feature in Sokari Ekine”s round-up of the African blogosphere. There”s also good news for Zimbabwe, as a documentary about the remarkable singer Prudence Mabhena and her band Liyana scoops an Oscar, with its inspiring story about overcoming the stereotypes around disability.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/62930
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11 Emerging powers in Africa Watch
TRILATERAL COOPERATION OR BILATERAL COLLUSION”
Africa-China-US tripartite meetings
Adams Bodomo
Following the convening of a tripartite meeting between Africa, China and the US in Monrovia, Liberia, Adams Bodomo writes of his scepticism around the value of meetings premised on the notion that others should speak for Africa. It is grossly misplaced, Bodomo maintains, to expect ‘investment technocrats’ from two competing global powers to operate altruistically with Africa’s social and economic development foremost in their minds.
www.pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/62925
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12 Highlights French edition
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 137: LE GHANA FACE “ LA ‘MALéDICTION’”DU P”TROLE Boom p”trolier au Ghana et garantie des int”r”ts publics (
pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/62895 )
Mawuli Dake
La d”mocratie s”n”galaise est-elle bien servie par sa justice “ (
pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/62897 )
Sidy Diop
AFRICOM: Léchec des Etats-Unis (
pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/62893 )
Momar Dieng
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End of Pambazuka-news Digest, Vol 120, Issue 1
The New Dark Age 
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