Club Afrika Blog

Apartheid had a role in making of history

2006-06-25T05:51:00.000-04:00

Writes James Kariuki

African-American Pan-Africanist, Molefe Ashante, often laments that Europe has robbed Africa of its history. The charge is an inverted vindication of the old adage that, as long as the lion remains the writer of history, he will always emerge the victor.

In complacency, Africans may uphold the position that apartheid deprived South Africa of the opportunity to make history. Yet, victimized South Africa was a vibrant actor in the global political stage. Indeed, it is arguable that apartheid pushed the country into the global screen radar harder than would have been otherwise possible.

For decades, apartheid’s oppression provided the cement to hold the rest of Africa together. Its collective humiliation was the one issue that Africa shared; a perverted contribution, but a contribution nevertheless.

The Organisation of African Union actually established the Liberation Committee whose mandate was specifically to provide full support to the liberation movements of Southern Africa. In context of the OAU, "unfreed" South Africa was indeed already shaping the collective foreign policy of the African states three decades before the demise of apartheid.

It is true that some African states were more anti-apartheid than others. Tanzania was clearly a leader of the pack. In endorsing the establishment of the Liberation Committee, President Julius Nyerere declared that his countrymen were "prepared to die a little" for the final removal of colonialism in Africa.

... continued

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African VPs are no longer the stepping mats of presidents

2006-06-10T05:41:00.000-04:00

Writes Dan Okoth

The recent acquittal of former South African President Jacob Zuma shows an emerging pattern of vice-presidents engulfed in the mire of political backstabbing and raw ambition.

African presidential deputies are not an enviable lot. In Kenya, former Vice-Presidents Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Josephat Karanja, George Saitoti and Musalia Mudavadi drank from the cup of sorrows, and it still overflows.

But the colourful mosaic of anguished vice-presidents and presidential challengers is evident in Africa’s other big names, including South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Sudan and Nigeria.

There is a link between VPs’ woes, extensions of presidential terms and the battle for survival by incumbent presidents. Sometimes, it also involves former presidents extending their hands from political oblivion.

In other cases, a conspiracy of silence, "higher authorities" and "fate" has helped to keep the Number Twos in their place better than any wily president could imagine.

In Kenya, President Kibaki has not said a word about the accusations of corruption against Vice-President Moody Awori. The allegations relate to the infamous Anglo Leasing scandal, in which Kenya is said to have lost billions of shillings in dubious security procurement tenders.

Botswana’s Festus Gontebanye Mogae is also silent about cries by MPs about vice-president Ian Khama’s authoritarianism. He recently threatened to dissolve Parliament if MPs did not endorse Khama’s presidential bid. Khama is also the minister for presidential affairs in charge of communications, the Botswana Defence Forces, police, the media and the civil service, leaving other ministers with little to handle.

In Sudan, religion and politics have blended into a potent mix that has sucked in the vice-presidency. President Omar Hassan el-Bashir has differed with his first vice-president Salva Kiir over proposals for United Nations forces to take over from African troops monitoring a truce in the Darfur region. While Bashir insists that such a proposal can only be considered after a peace deal is reached with the Darfur rebels, Kiir feels UN troops could go to Darfur even before such an agreement is signed.

... continued

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Why Obasanjo failed in bid to extend his rule

2006-06-10T05:12:00.000-04:00

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s backers had placed much hope on the international community’s support for his third term bid because of his economic reforms and his central role in resolving conflicts in Africa. But what he got was opposition every step of the way, writes Tony Eluemunor

Surprise! That is the word to describe the killing of Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo’s bid to prolong his tenure on May 16. Weeks after the bid died, Nigerians are still asking the question: “How was it killed?”

Granted that the President and his pointmen in the third term project that had heightened tension in the country had appreciated the fact that they lacked the two-thirds majority votes in the National Assembly to advance their bid, yet, such little matters made them even more determined to employ state powers to win legislators to their side.

It was for the lack of the required number of votes that the President’s supporters suspended, as it were, the administration’s much-touted anti-corruption stance and reportedly began to shell out bribes of over US$357,000 to each member of the House of Representatives and US$500,000 to each Senator. The true picture of the magnitude of the alleged bribery would only be appreciated if one considers that Nigeria’s House of Representatives has 360 members while the Senators are 109.

Where would the President’s men have got such a large war chest with which to prosecute this bribery war? No, the President did not need to raid the Central Bank of Nigeria, or to divert the proceeds from the excess crude oil revenue (whatever accrues to the nation that is above the budgeted figure. For the 2006 budget, the benchmark expected revenue is $33 per barrel, but oil has hovered around the $70 mark).

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2006-03-19T00:33:00.000-05:00

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2006-01-15T22:02:00.000-05:00

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2006-01-14T04:13:00.000-05:00

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Peer review is testimony that Africa has resolved to tackle its governance issues

2005-10-23T02:31:00.000-05:00

This article was written by Jerry Okungu on July 15, 2005

As Kenya prepares itself to be evaluated under NEPAD’s African Peer Review Mechanism, Jerry Okungu explains the purpose of review mechanism and points out that “the biggest challenge that NEPAD and the APRM should deal with in Africa is how to accelerate and give momentum to the continent’s reform and development agenda.”

As the G8 meeting held last week takes a back seat in the world’s news networks, here at home, Kenyans are bracing for their first Peer Review Process, an activity under the New Partnership for African development. This mechanism will make it possible for African countries that have subscribed to it to be assessed on their projected development goals as per their national policy programmes. The main purpose of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is to foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that will lead to political stability, high economic grown, sustainable development and accelerated sub-regional and continental economic integration through sharing of experiences and reinforcing successful best practices, identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building for each participating country.

Like in all countries participating in the APRM, if carried out properly, the process should see improved governance for sustainable development in Kenya through review and adoption of policies and practices that will conform to the agreed values, codes and standards contained in the Declaration on Democracy, Corporate, Political and Economic Governance of the African Union.

Here in Kenya, a countrywide APRM activity has been activated that will see various drivers and stake-holders exchange views and opinions on the NEPAD-APRM process in eight provincial centers. The workshops have been designed to be all-inclusive in terms of provincial districts and various interest groups like the civil society, religious organisations, trade unions, the business community, NGOs, the political class, civic leaders and the public service.

The APRM itself has many phases of involvement. First there are the lead technical experts whose job will be to deal with the four areas that require technical expertise. Their primary role has been to develop various research instruments and supervise the fieldwork, gather data, analyze and produce a report on Kenya’s performance in the areas stated above. It is the report emanating from this field research that will guide the external panel of experts, led by H E Graca Machel into gauging Kenya’s reform agenda against the standards, values and codes set out by the African Union under its Declaration on Democracy, Corporate, Political and Economic Governance. Most Kenyans must be wondering what NEPAD is all about.

Traditionally, Africa’s development partners have been the wealthy nations of the West, most of whom colonised the continent in the past, and a few more advanced nations from the East whose interest in Africa has been more ideological than commercial. From the West, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal readily come to mind. Others are United States, Canada and Australia, themselves former colonies of Great Britain. From East Europe we have had USSR, former super power during the cold war, China, Japan and a handful of East European states that used to revolve around the red bare.

Apart from bilateral trade and donor funding from the rich nations direct to their African clients, the same wealthy nations have over time set up funding and lending institutions that have grown over time into empires of their own. Such institutions that readily come to mind in the area of development are DFID of Britain, USAID of the USA, SIDA of Sweden, CIDA of Canada, GTZ of Germany, The World Bank and the IMF among others.

What NEPAD is championing is the philosophy of home grown partnerships as the primary concern as opposed to total dependence on foreign partners whose interests and priorities may not necessarily rank Africa’s issues on the top of their agenda. More so, the politics of foreign aid has become so lethal in recent years that some poor nations of the world have had their lifelines cut off due to political differences with the donor nations.

In creating NEPAD, African nations are being encouraged to cultivate domestic partnerships before venturing out. The more reason governments in Africa are being asked to rope in the private sector, the civil society, religious organisations, NGOs and the political class to join hands together and formulate policies that work well for their conditions. Involving all aspects of the society in policy formulation empowers every citizen and in the process every one owns the development process. The biggest challenge that NEPAD and the APRM should deal with in Africa is how to accelerate and give momentum to the continent’s reform and development agenda.

Jerry Okungu is the executive director of Infotrack and consulting

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US can't talk of terrorism when its killing civilians in Middle East

2005-10-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

Writes: Ken Ramani

At a recent regional conference of chiefs of intelligence and security held in Khartoum, Sudan President Omar el Bashir called for the proper definition of the term terrorism.

He argued that the current definition was relative and blurred to a point of causing friction among nations in the fight against terrorism.

Sudan’s Second Vice-President Osman Taha called for the removal of the country’s name from the United States’ list of sponsors of international terrorism.

Sudan has previously been accused of hosting Osama bin Laden, a suspected mastermind of the 1998 terror attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.

Khartoum has also suffered America’s wrath, which saw its pharmaceutical plant hit by smart missiles on suspicion that it was being used to manufacture biological weapons, a claim Washington is yet to prove to date.

Osama, the defacto leader of the al-Qaeda Network, has become a walking nightmare to the terror-paranoid West. Despite the existence of 12 international Conventions Against Terrorism, there is no globally–accepted definition as countries continue to disagree over the politically-correct meaning of terrorism.

The United Nations says international terrorism and transnational organised crime are closely interrelated and connected, for example, through trafficking of drugs and arms, and money laundering. To the UN, a comprehensive programme to counter international terrorism would be more effective if it was coordinated with the struggle against transnational organised crime.

The African Union Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, however, defines a terrorist act as any act which is in violation of the criminal laws of a State and which may endanger the life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to, any person...or may cause damage to public or private property, natural resources, environmental or cultural heritage...."

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the self-appointed global policeman — the United States of America and its sidekick, Britain — amounted to an act of terrorism, in the strictest sense of the term, but the two countries won’t accept such definition! The two powers invaded Iraq on the pretext of destroying its suspected weapons of mass destruction.

If truth be told, Washington and London’s main intention was to oust Saddam Hussein, whom they regarded as a threat to their economic interests in the Gulf.

But when patriotic Iraqis took up weapons to liberate their country from American and British occupation, Washington and London justified their presence by claiming they were there to fight terrorism.

The two countries have since abandoned the line of argument of weapons of mass destruction and stuck with the purported "war on terrorism" against Iraqi freedom fighters.

This takes me back to President Bashir’s dilemma as to what, actually, is terrorism?

The destruction of Afghanistan by Americans five years ago is still fresh in our memories. Currently, Washington and London marines are committing serious human rights and war crimes in Iraq with abandon.

How the war on terror has been, and is being fought, has left many observers wondering what became of the West’s claim to respect of human rights.

Analysts argue that the resentment in the Arab world over the way Iraq and other Muslim countries have been treated has complicated the war on terror.

It has made Osama’s al Qaeda Network look like the only formidable body that, after the former Soviet Union and Saddam’s Iraq, can stand up to the US and smoke out its marines the region.

This would perhaps explain why few, if any, Arabs are willing to volunteer information on terrorist agents to the US, an arrogant and powerful country seen as only interested in installing regimes that will guarantee its continued exploitation of oil in the Gulf.

Closer home, it is not far-fetched to argue that terrorism still remains one of the main threats to the security, stability and well-being of regional countries. Countries perceived to be satelites of US and British interests are at a greater risk.

The terrorists have the determination and capacity to strike high profile targets anywhere, anytime, using newer and lethal means.

As the September 11, 2001, and recent attacks in Britain confirmed, no country is immune to acts of terror.

Experts point out that terrorism and transnational organised crime thrive in Africa, more so in the anarchic Horn and Great Lakes region.

A recent report titled "Why Fighting Crime Can Assist Development in Africa" by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) blames this on the vast geographical region and proximity to the Middle East and South-Asia.

The Middle East is perceived to be the epicentre of planning, training and funding terrorism as well as source of hard drugs.

The preponderance of Western interests in Africa has been both a blessing and curse to the continent.

The many European facilities and installations in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa have become attractive and soft targets of belligerent groups.

It would make a lot of sense if the US and its partners in the war against terrorism changed strategy.

Bombing innocent civilians in the Middle East is drawing poor African countries into fighting the West’s own wars on our soil.

Like WWI, WWII and the Cold War, Africa is again being used to fight other people’s wars.

This is so because terror groups have little capacity to stage massive terror attacks in Western countries, compared to Africa — with its porous borders and poor mechanism to detect terror activities.

If our Parliament passes the controversial Anti-Terrorism Bill, Kenya will be one of the few countries to effect anti-terrosim laws in Africa.

The country will also benefit from the logistical support of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), a UN initiative to curb terrorism.

A pledge to fight terrorism is one of the 12 protocols that the Heads of State of ICGLR are expected to sign in Nairobi in December.

However, the regional countries making up ICGLR will have to overcome certain challenges for the initiative to succed. This is in recognition of the fact that although the countries subscribe to various sub-regional organisations, there is need to formulate mechanisms for cooperation to counter terrorism.

The Khartoum Declaration, in which chiefs of security and intelligence from 16 East African countries pledged to share information on terrorism activities, could be the best way to fight the threat, at least for now.

As Kenya’s chief spy Wilson Boinnet said, it is time to leave the seminar benches and be ready to engage true terrorists in street combat.

To me, the US and British soldiers in Iraq are worse than the faceless terrorists they are fighting.

The writer is a public relations officer in Nairobi, Kenya.

Article was originally published in The East African Standard
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Will the real Nelson Mandela step forward?

2005-10-01T19:21:00.000-05:00

By John Kamau

When he stepped down as South Africa’s first black president in 1999, Nelson Mandela baffled many world leaders who, had they been in his position, would have preferred to cling on — perhaps for life.

By quitting after just one term of five years, Mandela surprised even his former jailors, who coalesced around the now faded National Party (NP), and many wondered what a "New South Africa", as it was touted, would be without Mandela.

There was a good reason for that worry for Mandela had given a new lease of life to the Rainbow Nation and a chance to forgive and forget.

No man, he would tell his critics, had suffered more than he did during his 27 years in jail. Mandela has critics who do not think that he is the one who holds South Africa together. Allister Sparks, South Africa’s veteran commentator and the author of Beyond the Miracle, a book on post-apartheid South Africa puts it candidly: "To portray Mandela as the last pillar protecting us from catastrophe is absurd.

People have been making doomsday scenarios about South Africa all my life and I’m sick of them."

But Mandela has had no equal and still towers over the politics of South Africa like a colossus, long after he quit office. Still humble despite the accolades he has received (see separate story), Mandela is usually surprised by the kind of reception he gets.

"When I see the support that I get in cities I visit, I do not know what I have done to deserve this merit… All I can say is that this is not a tribute to an individual, it is a tribute to a country," he once said in Toronto.

As President, Mandela was much more concerned with the weakening Rand and some of his critics accused the Western press of failing to report on the real situation in South Africa.

But there are those who do not blame Mandela for failing the revolution.

In his book Against Global Apartheid, South Africa scholar Patrick Bond claims that enormous pressure was put on the ANC leadership to prove that it could govern with "sound macroeconomic policies".

"It became clear that if Mr Mandela tried genuine redistribution of wealth, the international markets would punish South Africa.

"Many within the party understandably feared that an economic meltdown would be used as an indictment not just of the ANC but of black rule itself," he wrote.

Caught in this dilemma, the ANC abandoned its policy of growth through redistribution and later on, under President Thabo Mbeki, adopted an IMF programme that included mass privatisations that saw the creation of a new black elite but led to mass layoffs and wage cuts in the public sector.

Indeed as late as July this year, as the G8 Summit prepared to open at Gleneagles, Scotland, we all listened to South African activist and former municipal councillor Trevor Ngwane — a key critic of Mandela’s — allege that Mandela had sold the South African revolution to Western capitalistic interests.

The discussion, hosted by the "War on Want - Make G8 History" campaigners, centred on privatisation and the big lie that was Tony Blair’s Commission on Africa report.

Ngwane, the chairman of the Soweto Anti-Privatisation Forum, took on Nelson Mandela — who was absent — and the African National Congress.

Given the aura that surrounds Mandela, only a few people have the courage to say that apartheid is not dead in South Africa and to blame it on political leadership starting with Mandela.

"Apartheid based on race has been replaced with apartheid based on class," Ngwane bellowed into the microphone. He has been taking on the new Rainbow nation via his Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.

"When they disconnect electricity and water because of non-payments we reconnect them", he says.

Activists claim that they do it in the name of Nelson Mandela, who promised them access to basic services such as electricity and water.

"The ANC taught us these tactics," Ngwane once said after he was arrested and jailed for two weeks for leading a demonstration in 2002 against Johannesburg’s mayor, Amos Masondo.

Has the Mandela magic failed in post-apartheid South Africa? Internationally he remains an enigma and is still respected and controversial. Mandela has not even spared US President George Bush from criticism.

"Bush is now undermining the United Nations," Mandela told the International Women’s Forum after Bush started the Iraqi War. At that time Mandela said he would support action against Iraq’s former President Saddam Hussein only if the UN orders it.

"What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

Years later Mandela has been proved right and America is knee deep in a quagmire in Iraq as it fights an old enemy — the Al Qaeda — in a foreign country.

Unlike South Africans who can take on Mandela, world leaders shy from engaging him in any controversy.

On this occasion, spin-doctors in Washington were forced to respond with humility. White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "Nelson Mandela was a great leader.

He remains a great man. [Bush] expresses his gratitude to the many leaders… who obviously feel differently than Mandela. He understands there are going to be people who are more comfortable doing nothing about a growing menace that could turn into a holocaust."

Even when Mandela twisted the knife by saying that all that Bush was after was Iraqi oil, Washington remained silent.

On Tony Blair he said: "He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain."

Article was originally published in The East African Standard
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Should Africa Turn To China?

2005-08-15T06:50:00.000-05:00

Should Africa Turn To China?
Article by Dominic Odipo

"We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world."

The epicentre of our world is shifting. It is shifting from the great cities of Europe and North America to the new cities now rising in the People’s Republic of China.

It is shifting from London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Chicago and Washington DC to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing. Events are occurring in China of such great magnitude that they boggle the mind. Like never before in history, the future of the whole world is being wrought by this giant of a country today home to more than one fifth of the entire human race.

From this point of view it makes little sense for Chris Murungaru, the Transport and Communications minister, to weep about being banned from British soil. In the emerging realpolitik and interessenpolitik — the politics of power and material interest — Britain will soon be history. In another 50 years, even the United States may have become history compared to the Middle Kingdom, this continent of a country in which modern civilization first emerged more than 5,000 years ago.

In his pace-setting and mind-boggling book, "China Inc.", American commodities trader and commentator, Ted. C. Fishman, has captured the emerging power of China as vividly and powerfully as no one else has yet been able to. Published only this year, "China Inc." is a fascinating and a must read for anyone trying to understand the world we shall be living in in the rest of the 21st Century. Mr. Ali Mwakwere, our foreign minister, should decree that every Kenyan Foreign Service officer reads this book for it does not matter where in the world you live today, China is at your door-step and your window-sill.

But first, a word about Wal-Mart, the American retail giant which is now the world’s largest company. To the Kenyan mind, Wal-Mart’s size and pace of growth over the last few years is hard to grasp. Like China, Wal-Mart shocks with its mere size. It is bigger than ExxonMobile, General Electric and General Motors and its annual sales now exceed those of its major rivals Target, Sears, Kmart, JCPenney, Safeway and Kroger combined.

Its 2003 sales, at US$260 billion matched the gross domestic product (GDP) of Switzerland, which will soon fall behind. About 14 million people shop in Wal-Mart stores everyday and its workforce of 1.4 million is the world’s largest for a private company.

What is the secret of Wal-Mart’s dizzy success? It the answer were to be reduced to one word, that word would be China. According to Fishman, perhaps up to 85 per cent of all the merchandise sold by Wal-Mart today is made in China. And China produces these goods at such rock-bottom prices and in such volumes that no other country in the world can be able to complete with it. It Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China’s fifth largest export market, ahead of both Germany and Britain. Here-in lies the power, or the menace, of China. It is producing virtually everything at such low prices, with such quality and is such volumes that virtually no country in the world can compete with it. And it has so many people qualified and willing to work at such low rates that its competitive edge could last forever.

The country is home to about 1.5 billion people, about 1/5 of the entire human race. It has more people than the whole of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexic and the whole of Central America combined. This makes it not only the world’s largest single market but also the world’s largest source of cheap labour. China has already become the world’s largest maker of consumer electronics and today pumps out most TVs, DVD players and mobile phones than any other country.

As Fishman puts it in "China Inc.": "China is ascending even higher still, moving quickly and expertly into biotech and computer manufacturing. No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once. No country plays the world economic game better than China. No other country shocks the global economic hierarchy like China."

Fishman continues: "Even a casual glimpse at the news tells us that something large is looming in China. The nation is making parts of Boeing 757s and exploring space with its own domestically built rockets. China has between 100 and 160 cities with populations of 1 million or more (America, by contrast, has 9, while Eastern and Western Europe combined have 36).

"China is buying oil fields internationally and also signing exclusive oil and gas supply deals with Saudi and Russian companies. China is buying the world’s scrap metal, as well as enormous amounts of steel, to fashion into products sold globally."

There are many other startling facts about China. Shanghai, its largest city and now also the biggest in the world, is building highways in the sky which are now the most advanced in the world. The Chinese economy has been growing at roughly 8 per cent per year for the last ten years, about three times the average growth rate of the American economy over the same period. This means that, given its vast potential, it is only a matter of time before China becomes the world’s biggest economy.

China currently consumes about 40 per cent of the world’s cement and 25 per cent of its steel. China’s economy has become so dangerously competitive that within only 20 years it could be able to manufacture everything at rock- bottom prices and thus make or break the economies of every nation on earth.

For Kenya, the implications of all this must be very clear. We need to shift our strategic focus from London, Paris and Washington to Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world.

The writer is a freelance journalist and consultant based in Nairobi
Source: http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=26955

References

1. Will China Overtake the U.S.? Posner Comment
2. China and the world economy - From T-shirts to T-bonds
3. Why Is China Growing So Fast?: Click Here

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UK crippling Africa's healthcare

2005-05-27T18:37:00.000-05:00

UK crippling Africa's healthcare

The UK is crippling sub-Saharan Africa's healthcare system by poaching its staff, UK doctors have warned.

With the UK taking over the chair of the G8 in July, there is an ideal opportunity to stop the brain drain from poor to rich countries, they said.

The UK should encourage more home-grown doctors and limit the time period that overseas recruits can train and work in the country, they told the Lancet.

Financially compensating nations for lost staff will not work, they warned.

Brain drain

Nor will strategies that split the training of healthcare staff between developed and developing countries, according to Dr John Eastwood and his colleagues from St George's Medical School in London.

Industrialised countries like America and Britain must recognise that they have some responsibility for this crisis Dr Edwin Borman of the British Medical Association

He said: "One basic measure would be an agreement in consultation, with the World Health Organization, to establish a basis in developed countries for minimum annual numbers of health professionals in training.

"This would help to reduce developed country reliance on the investment in training made by developing countries."

Ethics

The UK does have an ethical code which means it will not actively recruit from certain developing countries, which includes sub-Saharan Africa.

However, healthcare professionals from these countries are free to apply for jobs in the UK.

In 2003, 5,880 UK work permits were approved for health and medical personnel from South Africa, 2,825 from Zimbabwe, 1,510 from Nigeria and 850 from Ghana.

Nearly a third of the doctors practising in the UK were trained overseas.

In comparison, only 5% of doctors in Germany and France are not home grown.

Dr Edwin Borman, chairman of the BMA's International Committee, said: "Shortages of doctors and nurses are having a devastating effect in the developing world.

"Sub-Saharan Africa alone needs around a million more healthcare workers, and unless the situation improves drastically rates of HIV will spiral, disability from childhood disease will rise, and thousands more lives will be lost.

"Industrialised countries like America and Britain must recognise that they have some responsibility for this crisis.

"At least the UK now has an ethical recruitment code, and we hope other countries will follow suit - but we also need to remove the financial barriers we have imposed on developing countries which are preventing them from investing in basic healthcare and training."

Progress

A spokeswoman from the Department of Health said: "The NHS leads the way in the ethical recruitment of healthcare professionals.

"The Department of Health has brokered a groundbreaking voluntary ethical recruitment agreement with the major players in independent sector healthcare.

"However, if healthcare professionals are determined to come here to work we cannot legally deny them that opportunity."

She said the government had provided £560 million over the last five years to support health and health systems development in Africa, including the training of nurses and doctors.

She said they were also putting huge investment into the expansion of UK medical schools.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4582283.stm

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AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows' 'Cleansing'

2005-05-12T01:20:00.000-05:00

AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows' 'Cleansing'

May 11, 2005

MCHINJI, Malawi - In the hours after James Mbewe was laid to rest three years ago, in an unmarked grave not far from here, his 23-year-old wife, Fanny, neither mourned him nor accepted visits from sympathizers. Instead, she hid in his sister's hut, hoping that the rest of her in-laws would not find her.

But they hunted her down, she said, and insisted that if she refused to exorcise her dead husband's spirit, she would be blamed every time a villager died. So she put her two small children to bed and then forced herself to have sex with James's cousin.

"I cried, remembering my husband," she said. "When he was finished, I went outside and washed myself because I was very afraid. I was so worried I would contract AIDS and die and leave my children to suffer."

Here and in a number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a husband's funeral has long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives, to break the bond with his spirit and, it is said, save her and the rest of the village from insanity or disease. Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life.

Now AIDS is changing that. Political and tribal leaders are starting to speak out publicly against so-called sexual cleansing, condemning it as one reason H.I.V. has spread to 25 million sub-Saharan Africans, killing 2.3 million last year alone. They are being prodded by leaders of the region's fledging women's rights movement, who contend that lack of control over their sex lives is a major reason 6 in 10 of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa are women.

But change is coming slowly, village by village, hut by hut. In a region where belief in witchcraft is widespread and many women are taught from childhood not to challenge tribal leaders or the prerogatives of men, the fear of flouting tradition often outweighs even the fear of AIDS.

"It is very difficult to end something that was done for so long," said Monica Nsofu, a nurse and AIDS organizer in the Monze district in southern Zambia, about 200 miles south of the capital, Lusaka. "We learned this when we were born. People ask, Why should we change?"

In Zambia, where one out of five adults is now infected with the virus, the National AIDS Council reported in 2000 that this practice was very common. Since then, President Levy Mwanawasa has declared that forcing new widows into sex or marriage with their husband's relatives should be discouraged, and the nation's tribal chiefs have decided not to enforce either tradition, their spokesman said.

Still, a recent survey by Women and Law in Southern Africa found that in at least one-third of the country's provinces, sexual "cleansing" of widows persists, said Joyce MacMillan, who heads the organization's Zambian chapter. In some areas, the practice extends to men.

Some Defy the Risk

Even some Zambian volunteers who work to curb the spread of AIDS are reluctant to disavow the tradition. Paulina Bubala, a leader of a group of H.I.V.-positive residents near Monze, counsels schoolchildren on the dangers of AIDS. But in an interview, she said she was ambivalent about whether new widows should purify themselves by having sex with male relatives.

Her husband died of what appeared to be AIDS-related symptoms in 1996. Soon after the funeral, both Ms. Bubala and her husband's second wife covered themselves in mud for three days. Then they each bathed, stripped naked with their dead husband's nephew and rubbed their bodies against his.

Weeks later, she said, the village headman told them this cleansing ritual would not suffice. Even the stools they sat on would be considered unclean, he warned, unless they had sex with the nephew.

"We felt humiliated," Ms. Bubala said, "but there was nothing we could do to resist, because we wanted to be clean in the land of the headman."

The nephew died last year. Ms. Bubala said the cause was hunger, not AIDS. Her husband's second wife now suffers symptoms of AIDS and rarely leaves her hut. Ms. Bubala herself discovered she was infected in 2000.

But even the risk of disease does not dent Ms. Bubala's belief in the need for the ritual's protective powers. "There is no way we are going to stop this practice," she said, "because we have seen a lot of men and women who have gone mad" after spouses died.

Ms. Nsofu, the nurse and AIDS organizer, argues that it is less important to convince women like Ms. Bubala than the headmen and tribal leaders who are the custodians of tradition and gatekeepers to change.

"We are telling them, 'If you continue this practice, you won't have any people left in your village,' " she said. She cites people, like herself, who have refused to be cleansed and yet seem perfectly sane. Sixteen years after her husband died, she argues, "I am still me." Ms. Nsofu said she suggested to tribal leaders that sexual cleansing most likely sprang not from fears about the vengeance of spirits, but from the lust of men who coveted their relatives' wives. She proposes substituting other rituals to protect against dead spirits, like chanting and jumping back and forth over the grave or over a cow.

Headman Is a Firm Believer

Like their counterparts in Zambia, Malawi's health authorities have spoken out against forcing widows into sex or marriage. But in the village of Ndanga, about 90 minutes from the nation's largest city, Blantyre, many remain unconvinced.

Evance Joseph Fundi, Ndanga's 40-year-old headman, is courteous, quiet-spoken and a firm believer in upholding the tradition. While some widows sleep with male relatives, he said, others ask him to summon one of the several appointed village cleansers. In the native language of Chewa, those men are known as fisis or hyenas because they are supposed to operate in stealth and at night.

Mr. Fundi said one of them died recently, probably of AIDS. Still, he said with a charming smile, "We can not abandon this because it has been for generations."

Since 1953, Amos Machika Schisoni has served as the principal village cleanser. He is uncertain of his age and it is not easily guessed at. His hair is grizzled but his arms are sinewy and his legs muscled. His hut of mud bricks, set about 50 yards from a graveyard, is even more isolated than most in a village of far-flung huts separated by towering weeds and linked by dirt paths.

What Tradition Dictates

He and the headman like to joke about the sexual demands placed upon a cleanser like Mr. Schisoni, who already has three wives. He said tradition dictates that he sleep with the widow, then with each of his own wives, and then again with the widow, all in one night. Mr. Schisoni said that the previous headman chose him for his sexual prowess after he had impregnated three wives in quick succession.

Now, Mr. Schisoni, said he continues his role out of duty more than pleasure. Uncleansed widows suffer swollen limbs and are not free to remarry, he said. "If we don't do it, the widow will develop the swelling syndrome, get diarrhea and die and her children will get sick and die," he said, sitting under an awning of drying tobacco leaves. "The women who do this do not die."

His wives support his work, he said, because they like the income: a chicken for each cleansing session. He insisted that he cannot wear a condom because "this will provoke some other unknown spirit." He is equally adamant in refusing an H.I.V. test. "I have never done it and I don't intend to do it," he said.

To protect himself, he said, he avoids widows who are clearly quite sick . Told that even widows who look perfectly healthy can transmit the virus, Mr. Schisoni shook his head. "I don't believe this," he said. At the traditional family council after James Mbewe was killed in a truck accident in August 2002, Fanny Mbewe's mother and brothers objected to a cleanser, saying the risk of AIDS was too great. But Ms. Mbewe's in-laws insisted, she said. If a villager so much as dreamed of her husband, they told her, the family would be blamed for allowing his spirit to haunt their community on the Malawi-Zambia border.

Her husband's cousin, to whom she refers only as Loimbani, showed up at her hut at 9 o'clock at night after the burial.

"I was hiding my private parts," she said in an interview in the office of Women's Voice, a Malawian human rights group. "You want to have a liking for a man to have sex, not to have someone force you. But I had no choice, knowing the whole village was against me."

Loimbani, she said, was blasé. "He said: 'Why are you running away? You know this is our culture. If I want, I could even make you my second wife."

He did not. He left her only with the fear that she will die of the virus and that her children, now 8 and 10, will become orphans. She said she is too fearful to take an H.I.V. test.

"I wish such things would change," she said.

Author: SHARON LaFRANIERE
New York Times

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Jerry Okungu - On Dr. Robert Mugabe, President of The Republic of Zimbabwe

2005-05-08T13:46:00.000-05:00

OPINION - ROBERT MUGABE, PRESIDENT OF ZIMBABWE
By Jerry Okungu in Nairobi, Kenya

As an African who grew up during the struggle for liberation of many modern states in Africa, it may not be easy for me to discuss Robert Mugabe in the context of his current political inclination and his relationship with powerful western nations like the United States of America and Britain.

If Idid that I would be missing the point and missing out on the big picture all together.

For starters, which Mugabe are we talking about here? Mugabe the freedom fighter, the statesman of his earlier years as a renowned articulate African spokesman or an ageing and ailing Mugabe who rediscovered his revolutionary streak to revolt against neocolonialism in his twilight years?

Let us look at the old and much maligned Mugabe in the context of Tony Blair and George Bush, his most outspoken critics. What do the duo criticize him for? That he has disenfranchised white farmers in Zimbabwe by repossessing tracks and tracks of their land for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. The other charge is that Mugade is an undemocratic tyrant who has repeatedly rigged the elections against the more 'credible' opponents in the eyes of the Western powers.

Let us take the first accusation that he has grabbed white men's farms and given them to his fellow freedom fighters. If my memory does not fail me, the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe, like Kenya and other British colonies in Africa before it was a struggle to liberate the native and get back land forcibly acquired by the colonial master.

Africans in Zimbabwe, like in Kenya hated the fact that they had to squat in their own ancestral lands just because some white foreigners with guns came and displaced them and turned into farm slaves for a daily loaf of bread.

This colonial strong man mentality did not manifest itself in Africa alone. Indigenous Americans, commonly referred to as the Red Indians, the Asian Sub Continent and the Aborigines of Australia suffered the same fate.

The John Wayne Macho Man syndrome that drove the colonialist to massacre and burn rebellious villagers in the name of new order and new wealth exploitation.

If Mugabe finally forced Ian Smith out of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence(UDI) of Southern Rhdesia and finally forced the then toothless British government to come to the negotiating table, the mere fact that he did not get everything he wanted was no excuse to stop pursuing the ultimate goal for which millions of Zimbbweans lost their lives in the firsat place

In Kenya, the land issue was so lethal that it forced the British government to lend Jomo Kenyatta cash so that Kenyatta could buy White farms for distribution to the landless peasants. For Zimbawe not even this token arrangement was made.

On the issue of Mugabe being branded a tyrant, who is not a tyrant in this day and age? Haven't the Israelis been killing Palestinians in their own homeland for nearly sixty years? Didn't George Bush and Tony Blair lie to the world that Saddam had weapons of Mass Destruction and used terror and firepower to massacre thousands of Iraqis?

Who rigged the elections in Florida in 2000? Was it not George Bush and his Governor brother? A day after the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon was a blaze with remnants of the previous event, who was dining out a Saudi Diplomat and Osama Bin Laden's cousin on the veranda's of the White House?

Mugabe may be a tyrant and a despot, but where white tyranny has passed by, nothing is left standing! Better the devil you know, than the angel you are not sure of.

Jerry Okungu - Executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants - Nairobi, Kenya.

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Kenya's First Lady, Lucy Kibaki Runs Amok!

2005-05-04T05:20:00.000-05:00

Kenya's First Lady Runs Amok!

First Lady disrupts Diop's party
Story by JOHN MUCHIRI and PHILIP MWANIKI
Publication Date: 05/01/2005
Source: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=48098

First Lady Lucy Kibaki

First Lady Lucy Kibaki dramatically disrupted a farewell party at the Nairobi home of outgoing World Bank country director Makhtar Diop on Friday night.

An angry Mrs Kibaki invaded the house demanding that the loud music be switched off.

At that time musicians Mercy Myra, Eric Wainaina and Suzanne Kibukosya were on stage entertaining the guests.

A confrontation ensued as Mrs Kibaki engaged Mr Diop and his wife in an angry exchange.

At one time she told Mr Diop that no man in Kenya has dared talk back to her.

Mr Diop, who leaves the country today, is a tenant of the Kibakis in the exclusive Muthaiga neighbourhood.

He rented the house lived in by the First Family for many years until President Kibaki was elected and moved to State House.

The family built another house in an adjacent plot where the First Lady sometimes stays.

Mrs Kibaki was protesting that the music was too loud. First signs that there might be trouble were seen in the afternoon when technicians and musicians were setting up and testing the sound system. Mrs Kibaki came over and ordered them to dismantle everything.

They only resumed after Mr Diop consulted State House and told them to proceed. Then at night when the party was getting into full swing, Mrs Kibaki stormed in accompanied by bodyguards, demanding that the music be switched off.

Singer Eric Wainaina recalls: "I was still on stage preparing to do my second song when she turned up. She had like five bodyguards and ordered the music to be stopped from playing. It was so embarrassing since she is the First Lady and even diplomats had been invited.

"She could not listen to anyone, not even to Mr Diop himself. In fact she started asking irrelevant questions such as ‘who is your mother?’ It was so bad. What she was wearing was not very clear to me, but it looked more like some blue track suit or pyjamas."

Mercy Myra concurred, telling her version of the same incident, and recalling how Mrs Kibaki came in at around midnight yelling at the guests to leave.

"She shouted at Mr Diop that he would not be allowed to disrupt her peace just because he is leaving the country," Mercy said.

Some of those present witnessed Mrs Kibaki trying to unplug the music system and shouting that "This is Muthaiga, not Korogocho".

She told the guests that they could go and continue their party in Korogocho, one of Nairobi's biggest slums.

She paid no heed to Mr Diop's explanations, even as the World Bank executive tried to tell her that he had informed President Kibaki about the party, and the president had no problem with it.

Mrs Kibaki came to the residence three times, ignoring angry party goers who started singing in defiance. On her last call at around 1.00am, she was denied entry by the security guards and went away.

Two of her children, Judy and David, were present at the party and tried to calm down their mother without success.

Mr Diop is an amateur musician and jazz enthusiast and often joins jam sessions, with his bass guitar, at various city clubs.

His farewell party had been billed a "wild" affair and guests included various local musicians and other celebrities, as well as World Bank staff, diplomats and NGO staff. A few government officials were also present, including Investment Secretary Esther Koimet.

Many of the guests are regular patrons of Club Sikiliza at Gigiri area where Mr Diop plays the guitar.

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Listening for the Sounds of Africa

2005-05-01T01:06:00.000-05:00

Listening for the Sounds of Africa

In my youth I used to listen to shortwave news in the evening when reception was best. I would get updates via the BBC, Swiss and Austrian Stations, Radio Moscow and, of course, various German stations; all of them putting me in touch with the world both near and far. Oh-- I almost forgot, there was the AFN Network, the US Armed Forces Radio in Germany, and even though I did not speak English at the time, I enjoyed listening to the music they played!

In those days, I would be resting in my bed, listening to hours of news via shortwave radio, especially when I came down with scarlet fever and was confined to my room for months. It was then that I learned something of the art of listening to the news and just letting it soak in, making mental notes; taking in history as it was being made. I became a news buff and today I am an avowed newsaholic, especially regarding news from Africa.

Before the Internet, my favorite news source was the shortwave radio stations from around the world. I was always on the lookout for a better Grundig Shortwave Radio that would put me in touch with news that one could not hear or read locally.

When I went to Africa, my Grundig radios came along (three left my suitcase in a mysterious manner at Jomo Kenyatta Airport). I would spend many a night in Nairobi, Kampala, and Kigali, or at the UN camp in Lokichoggio underneath a clear African night listening to BBC or Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, or some other far off place that brought news from afar and often about the very place where I was at that moment in time.

Nowhere else in the world did I find a deeper interest for the latest news as amongst the Southern Sudanese. Everyone, who was someone, had a shortwave receiver. Morning coffee, showers, breakfast, all accompanied by BBC World Service bringing the latest updates from around the world, Africa and including what was happening in the Sudan.

I am still listening to radio from far away, but now I do it via high speed Internet access allowing me to listen to radio programs about Africa or from Africa. The sounds are great! On BBC I can listen to musical presentations from Kampala, or a play written by a retired man in Nigeria. It is a far cry from my scratchy Grundig reception but times are changing. Today I can listen to the sounds of Africa while sitting at my computer or in my bed with my laptop, reminding me of those early days of my news addiction. It is a delight to hear the ideas and input of Kenyan, Ugandans, Ethiopians, all while sitting near my computer or simply doing my chores and hearing some new song with a haunting melody that reminds me of driving through the majestic Rift Valley of Kenya, or coming down toward Lake Victoria from the Highlands.

It is good to listen to African sounds, African voices, and African ideas. Maybe, just maybe, all those who want to "fix" Africa and its problems, maybe all those with their so-called "solutions," have not been listening to Africa and its people.
Just recently, Sir Bob Geldof, of Live Aid Africa fame, made some comments about why President Museveni should not run for a third term. Geldof said that his admiration for Mr. Museveni's fight against poverty and Aids had now been lost.

"Get a grip Museveni. Your time is up, go away," Geldof said at the launch of the Commission for Africa Report, which is supposed to map out how best to raise living standards in Africa.

Ugandans took offense and thousands protested Sir Geldof in the streets of Kampala and rightfully so. It seems that most of the time the West comes with "Father knows best" advice, but does not take the time and effort to listen. After all, the Western mindset assumes that Africa had no history until the colonial powers came to enlighten the uncivilized savages of the continent by bringing "civilization." It would be quite a shock for many of those so-called discoverers to discover that the oldest human beings have been found in East Africa and that history started in Africa.

As European nations colonized Africa, anything African was considered inferior to European ways. Some used religion to subjugate the African people causing Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya to say, "The missionaries came with the Bible in their hand and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed, and then when we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand and they had the land." (One will not encounter many atheists in sub-Sahara Africa. Africans have embraced Islam and Christianity. In fact, African Christian Churches are now evangelizing the West by starting churches in the USA and Europe.)

If one looked more closely, when those early explorers, missionaries and merchants set foot on Africa, there was not just a loss of land. A greater loss had begun much earlier to the Mid-East and East, but the Europeans used Africa as their manpower resource to staff their plantations in the new world of North and South America with African slaves. The nations of the Caribbean and the Americas imported millions of slaves from all over Africa, causing a people drain the world had never seen before or since. Africa not only lost millions of its people to the slave trade, people from many different tribes and kingdoms, that had existed for centuries before, but Africa lost with its people, its heart and soul, its self-respect. Africa was subjugated by other powers at home and abroad from Charleston South Carolina to Rio de Janeiro. No one listened to the cries of Africa for years to come, Africa cried from its soul, but its cries were ignored.

If you look at how the present states of Africa came into being, many of the present problems have to do with the way the map was drawn at a table in Berlin far from Africa. Far from the tribes and kingdoms such lines would separate, far from the families that were now part of different nations. Certainly no one was listening to Africa back then.

As I write this newsletter, Tony Blair's Commission on Africa is publishing another European report on Africa. A lot of good things have been said and written by Africans and non-Africans alike, yet if you would ask people on the streets of Africa, you would find a bit of skepticism. They have seen many important people come to Africa to write reports, take pictures, give interviews and fly back home without listening to the average person on the streets of Africa's cities.

Africa will not change, unless one listens to Africa, listens to what is really needed instead of our Western solutions based on a world model that does not take Africa's needs, resources, and of course its people into consideration.

When one listens to Africa, one hears that the world needs to buy the products of Africa at a fair price, eliminate Western subsidies to American, European, Canadian farmers in order that the African farmers who receive no subsidies can compete in the world market on a level playing field.

I pray for the day that the riches of Africa's earth will no longer be extracted by foreign companies and processed in the West or East. I hope for the day that African leaders will no longer take out the billions of dollars and put them into Western banks, but instead take that money and invest it in Africa s schools, industries, factories, and its people and their well-being.

Africa does not need Western pity, but Western respect. Change in Africa will take time. It has taken the West many years and a few wars to live in peace; it will take a few more years in Africa. Changes are taking place on a daily basis in Africa. Democratic elections are taking place everywhere, we only read about those things that go sour. The cell phone is revolutionizing Africa. Farmers are using it to check on the present prices of their crops, people are staying in touch. Email at the Internet cafes of Africa is keeping Africans in touch with relatives; the wealth of the Internet comes to Africa through those screens throughout the larger cities in Africa.

Countries like Uganda are prospering with an annual growth rate of over 6 percent. New shopping centers are popping up yearly and the Ugandan middle class has choices. Africa is changing from within.

Africa is reclaiming its soul, decolonizing its heart and mind, and the day will come when Mother Africa will be made of nations that are listened to and have the respect as an equal at the global table. I hope I live to see that day.

Today I listen to the sounds and happenings in Africa from a distance, I listen to the heart of Africa via the letters I receive, the news I read, the literature of African writers, and I like what I hear, I enjoy listening to Africa. Try listening to Africa; it might give you a whole new perspective as to what Mother Africa is really like.

Author: Jon Blanc - Jon owns and runs Kabiza.com. Jon's site presents Africa in a balanced, un-biased and optimistic style. His website is not so much about the scenic wonders and wildlife, but about the heart of Africa & its people. Click here to enjoy Kabiza.com

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