May 7, 2006 - March 6, 2007
Zimbabwe: America's Version of Democracy a Sham
Posted: Tuesday, March 6, 2007
By Reason Wafawarova
The Herald (Harare)
March 6, 2007
IT is very interesting to follow the trend of U.S. hegemony as it rose from 1945, the time its cousin authority, the British Empire was collapsing.
U.S. hegemony has grown to what it is at the expense of weaker nations and driven by the strategy of exploiting stand-for-nothing governments and non-state actors.
As Antonio Gramsci says, a crisis arises when something starts being born in a place occupied by something that has not finished dying.
As the British colonial empires began to collapse in the 1950s and the U.S. capitalist global hegemony was being born there was a crisis emerging as the former British, French and Portuguese colonies embraced the socialist and communist ideology ahead of the U.S-led capitalist agenda.
The crisis of the dying British Empire and the emerging U.S. Empire became what we now commonly know as the Cold War.
This was a crisis characterised by the Mutually Agreed Destruction; absolute dirty games in the intelligence world, the rising of U.S./British sponsored dictators in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa as well as the notorious proxy wars. The club of sponsored dictators included Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Uganda's Idi Amin, Chile's Augustino Pinochet, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Juan Vicente Gomez of Venezuela.
The club of proxy warlords would include Angola's Jonasi Savimbi, Mozambique's Alphonso Dhlakama and Osama bin Laden in the Afghan-based war against the Soviet Union.
From the onset of its launching, the U.S. empire has sought to support and prop up ideological blank pages by packaging sets of highly attractive but often irrelevant ideas into the minds of any identifiable ideological tabula rasas.
Zimbabwe's own main opposition political party, the MDC, is a classical example of a political party whose leader is a top class ideological blank page. The U.S. often addresses such people as moderates or simply as democratic.
The founding president of the now-fractured MDC has been described as such by the western media on many occasions and this is why it is important that we uncover the U.S. project with unprincipled people or what we would call ideological tabula rasas.
As already mentioned one of the first strategies to thwart the spread of communism and socialism was the use of force.
This was the era of military coups and U.S.-sponsored civil wars in Latin America, Africa and Asia. U.S.-backed rebels became a common phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century.
The justification for these wars was a recklessly packaged propaganda parcel that said communism was so evil that one was meant to share his wife with all other man, to leave your ignition keys on when you park "your" car so that anyone who needed the car could have access to it and where a poor man could just walk into your mansion with a legion of mucus-covered kids and occupy part of your mansion.
It was a war of ideologies which had gone so bad that the Americans had resorted to using force and media power to counter their rivals, the Soviet Union who were basically enjoying admiration from the new states which were breaking the yoke of colonialism.
Needless to say, there is no success story with any of the sponsored rebels including those who managed to take over power.
There is always no success story with associating with the Americans as Saddam, Mobutu, General Noriega, Idi Amin, Abel Muzorewa, Jonas Savimbi and Alfonso Dhlakama would easily testify.
As a follow-up to the proxy wars and military coups of the Cold War the U.S. came up with a post-Cold War neo-liberal package which it successfully imposed on many indebted countries, Zimbabwe included.
This was the 1989 Washington Consensus codified by John Williamson.
This was a neo-liberal programme to spread the ruthlessness of crude capitalism on former socialist and communist countries through a ten-point plan which latter became widely known as ESAP or Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes.
This is the programme one can easily get killed for praising in Singapore, Malaysia, Venezuela, Peru and many other countries which were ravaged to rock bottom poverty by the IMF-driven Washington Consensus.
Zimbabwe embraced the poison in exchange for promised loans and debt relief from the IMF and that is how the country bade farewell to its expanding mass education programme.
That is how Zimbabwe first met the reality of inflation, this was when people on social welfare were told to tighten their belts.
That was when the country privatised accommodation and catering services at state universities, that was when the young workforce was retrenched amid promises of endless job opportunities after a bit of belt-tightening.
Yes, that was when the Government of the people first had problems with its own urban population as the belt-tightening game ceased to be fun.
Indeed, that was the perfect opportunity for the U.S. and its Western allies to quickly identify "moderate democrats", the euphemism for puppets and that is how Zimbabwe ended up with this clownish outfit trading as Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC.
The MDC united or split is basically a group that knows no principles, ideology or policies. The factions are united on a protest resolve to allow western forces to operate freely in Zimbabwe's economic space while the puppets occupy the political space.
Their feeble attempt at talking policy would always hide the phrase "western forces" under the rhetoric of "market forces".
It can not be denied that we have a Government that was once partly fooled and coerced into enforcing policies that created the very disaster which gives the MDC the platform to hijack urban protests to mobilise an ideologically confused protest movement.
The error of the 1990s does not make another U.S. project admirable.
ESAP was a Washington economic project in as much as the MDC is a Washington political project and supporting the MDC is therefore akin to having a defensive soccer player allowing a repeat of a humiliating dribbling stunt from the same striker.
That is a terrible experience for all that have played or followed soccer and it is normally a sign of coming defeat.
The U.S. has closed the era of the SAPs as they call ESAPs and has embarked on a new campaign to perpetuate its hegemony.
This is the campaign of neo-liberal democracy, that other shiny package of "limitless freedoms" and liberties which the MDC preaches so much about but has no clue on its implementation even within its own organisational structures.
This is a campaign on absolute freedoms based on speech, expression, association, property rights and the right to make the country ungovernable.
Neo-liberal democracy is the pretext upon which the Americans invaded Iraq and now they have a crisis on how they should be handling their defeat there.
It is the pretext they used to be in Afghanistan and the same pretext they used to come up with the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.
It is the pretext they use to call their perceived enemies "axes of evil, dictators, despots, tyrants, extremists and rogue or failed states."
Democracy as a model of governance will always be excellent but America's version of democracy is a sham.
It is not designed for governance but for fomenting conflict between the middle class and the lower class of the developing countries.
The major problem Zimbabwe faces today are the converts of neo-liberalism, the western-trained or western convinced economists, lawyers, politicians and even hangers on.
These are the people who do not see beyond the riches neo-liberal capitalism has bestowed on them through ESAP while sidelining the rest of the people to untold suffering.
They squeak and cry foul when the poor are given land, they shout in bitterness when multinational companies are made to pay the right amount of tax, they urge the Government to do everything possible to keep their masters happy in the economy because that way they continue to benefit.
Part of Zimbabwe's middle class, together with the MDC; have agreed to be part of the hand that continues to oppress citizens.
All well-meaning Zimbabweans should swear before each other and by God that they will not rest before breaking this yoke of oppression that changes form and format at the nation's expense.
Reprinted from:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200703060076.html
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Neocons Attack 'al-Qaeda' in Somalia
Posted: Tuesday, January 9, 2007
By Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
January 09, 2007
It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus "al-Qaeda" has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.
Earlier today, we learned a "U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia," CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. "The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa," apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. "The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia... where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States."
In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily "al-Qaeda" but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Sharia, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.
Here in America, they are called the Somali Islamists--granted, a simplistic term, but then we here in America like our simplistic terms--and thus the Somali version of a Muslim is lumped in with all the other Islamists, including those we are told are fascist, never mind European fascist movements of the early 20th century have nothing to do with Islam, and the word "Islamofascists" is little more than a meaningless and rather crude political epithet.
Of course, the word and nonsensical idea is strictly for domestic consumption, as evil Nazis are part of the firmly entrenched cultural landscape and it is apparently easy to associate Hitler and Nazism with people--indeed, entire cultures and religions--one does not like or understand (remember, "al-Qaeda" is a magnet for Hitler types like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or so the corporate media, with their neocon reading scripts in hand, tell us).
Last December, the popular ICU lost control after Ethiopia, with U.S. backing and encouragement, invaded and sent them packing to the southern-most tip of the country. According to CBS, the fleeing ICU are "al-Qaeda" to the man and, as such, fair game for an AC-130 gunship, sent from a U.S. airbase (at Camp Lemonier) in Dijibouti.
Of course, this is little more than a facile and threadbare excuse to kill Muslims, as Bush's "minds" from the American Enterprise Institute are big on slaughtering large numbers of them on ice-thin pretext.
For instance, take the neocon Vance Serchuk, a scribbler at the Weekly Standard, who specializes in making excuses for the Ethiopia invasion, an affair wholly rigged by the United States. According to Serchuk and the neocons, the "Somalia problem came to metastasize over the past six months," and Somalia is not simply "a failed state that could be occasionally exploited by terrorists," but "an active and steadfast ally of the global jihadist movement," thus the "Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa... at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.... constitutes the U.S. military's first post-9/11 outpost in sub-Saharan Africa."
As Serchuk readily admits, this task force fits "squarely with what last year's Quadrennial Defense Review" proposed, that is a "shifting emphasis" toward the use of "surrogates" in the war on terror, that is to say proxies will do the bidding of the neocons in the hundred or more year "war" planned for us and our children, and our children's children.
Thus the attack against "al-Qaeda" may be considered yet another in a series of attacks against "Islamofascists" in Africa, as effete and bilious chicken hawks, hiding out in their comfy academic and think-tank lairs, are keen to chase Muslims hither and thither--or have National Guard kids from Nebraska chase them--as the neocon "clash of civilizations" plan dictates.
Oh, coincidentally, the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, "corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified," that is to say after a suitable number of Muslims are killed and a requisite dictatorship takes hold, as the rule of Mohammed Siad Barre didn't exactly work out as planned back in the 90s.
"Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001," writes Larry Chin. "This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia's resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire."
"A new US cleansing of Somalian 'tyranny' would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia," notes F. William Engdahl. "Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea."
No doubt, as kissing cousins to the neolibs, who are primarily interested in "free trade" fire sales, the neocons have taken note of the potential for a Somalian oil and gas bonanza, especially with China eager to get in on the game with its insatiable thirst for petroleum. However, neocons are known primarily for their sociopathic hatred and fear of Muslims, be they Arab or African, and that is the immediate impetus behind their current fascination with the impoverish "failed state" (failed because it was ruled by Muslims) of Somalia.
"And even when the media are looking the other way, our enemies are not," rants Vance Serchuk, AEI research fellow. "Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's number two, has already issued a recording calling Somalia 'one of the crusader battlefields that are being launched by America ... against Islam,' a message that will no doubt resonate in the Muslim world."
But of course, as the neocons believe, or rather expect us to believe, such messages, issued by documented intelligence assets, "resonate" in Islamic "failed states," that is to say states inching up the neocon target list, as should be expected so long as these career criminals remain on the loose and are not forced to do the perp walk in orange jumpsuits.
Reprinted from: http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=713
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Ethiopia joins Bush's imperialist crusade
Posted: Thursday, January 4, 2007
by Charlie Kimber, socialistworker.co.uk
January 04, 2007
The recent Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a direct product of the US-British "war on terror". It threatens to further destabilise a region which has repeatedly been torn apart by war and famine.
Ethiopia's rulers ordered the war on behalf of George Bush in order to prosecute their own regional interests, to deflect Western criticism of their own repressive regime, and to collect the pay off from being a top US ally in a strategically crucial area. Somalia is just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
But the rejoicing in Ethiopia and the US at the defeat of the Islamic militias in Somalia may prove short-lived.
Certainly Bush does not feel secure. He has already prepared for the next phase of fighting by phoning Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, urging him to send his troops to Somalia. Kenya's forces are also on stand-by.
The background to the invasion is the takeover of almost all of Somalia by the militias of the United Islamic Courts (UIC) last year. The militias drove out the warlords who had dominated Somali politics for the last 15 years.
The militias' victory was based on genuine popular support. Many people were weary of the violence and brutality of the warlords' rule. In addition several key leaders of Somalia's clans were prepared to back the UIC in order to stabilise the country.
The UIC's success was a blow to US plans for the region. The Bush regime had been growing ever closer to those warlords who were prepared to act as agents in the "war on terror".
The bloody record of these warlords, and the fact they had bitterly divided Somalia, were forgotten – so long as they would boost the US presence in the region.
Takeover
The UIC's takeover was also a defeat for Somalia's "transitional government", formed in 2004 in Kenya after long peace negotiations. This was a government in name rather than fact.
As even the BBC says, "President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration, made up of former warlords, often struggled to control its own members, let alone the country. Its first 18 months in office were spent squabbling about where to set up its base, eventually settling on the town of Baidoa as the capital, Mogadishu, was considered too dangerous."
The US and the transitional government vowed to destroy the UIC, and the Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi was the chosen instrument.
Meles has long been a favourite of the West. He was part of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa in 2005 and supports the march of neoliberalism across the continent.
Ethiopia was one of only two African countries named as part of the US's "coalition of the willing" supporting the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
For all the West's denunciations of repressive African governments, Meles's crimes have been strangely overlooked. Attacks on students' and workers' demonstrations during the 2005 elections, removal of basic democratic rights and much else received only the mildest rebukes from Britain and the US.
In July, when the US and Britain backed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Meles felt able to send his troops across the border into Somalia. And since then Ethiopian troops have been testing the ground for a complete offensive.
Last week Meles ordered a full scale invasion backed by thousands of troops, heavy artillery, tanks and aerial bombing. On 26 December US officials proclaimed the Bush regime's support for the invasion, claiming that Ethiopia had "genuine security concerns".
Ethiopian forces did meet some resistance, taking heavy casualties in clashes with young Somalis at Mood Moode, Daynuuna, Idale, and Bandiiradley.
But the vast superiority of Ethiopian arms – supplied over the decades by the US, Russia and Israel – meant that they easily won in set piece battles. Now they have taken the capital Mogadishu and the UIC's stronghold in Kismayo.
However, the war may be far from over. The UIC fighters cannot openly confront tanks and planes but, as the US discovered in Iraq, irregular resistance can be very effective against unpopular occupiers.
The new government will rely heavily on Ethiopian support. The warlords who will now return to power have little popular base and can survive only with external backing.
And the US's green light to Ethiopian expansion could tempt Meles to renew pressure on Eritrea – the two countries came close to war last year.
Regime
If the Somali people turn strongly against the new regime it will be left battling its own people – a battle it may well lose.
One of the first areas of Mogadishu seized by the invading Ethiopians was the site of the former US embassy compound. The US was driven out of Somalia in 1993. US troops, backed by the United Nations (UN), had carried out a "humanitarian intervention" which was claimed to be about ending famine and violence.
Many of Somalia's people initially welcomed the US, but they were soon disillusioned. The US and its UN allies shot down demonstrators in the streets and were repeatedly shown to have carried out torture and murder. The population rose against the US and drove them out.
Ordinary people's interests have been submerged beneath the US's desire to ramp up its control of the Horn of Africa. US military planners have underlined how its base in Djibouti, presently home to 1,800 US troops, is hoped to be the centre of one of the "lily pads" from which mobile US forces can intervene in "hot spots".
Instead of dealing with Somalia's terrible poverty and the present flood emergency, resources have been poured into arms and war.
The Stop the War demonstration on 24 February will not just be about Trident and Iraq – but also against the way imperialism devastates areas such as East Africa.
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
Reprinted from:
www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10416
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Death and Destruction for Somalis
Posted: Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Return of the Warlords
By Amina Mire, counterpunch.org
January 03, 2007
Somaliyaay toosoo
Toosoo isku tiirsada ee
Hadba kiina taag daranee
Taageera waligiinee.
(Somalia wake up,
wake up and join hands together
and we must help the weakest of our people
all of the time.)
--Somali national anthem.
For the average western person, the current Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is just another military operation taking place in a distance land in the war against Islam terror. For Somalis, this invasion is nothing short of humiliating catastrophe. Somalis are deeply nationalistic; yet their nationalistic passion to towards their country did not prevent them from committing self-inflected genocidal civil wars which weakened their cultural fabric, political institutions and central authority so that after 16 years without functioning state, Somalia is today under the occupation of their most hated historical enemy, Ethiopia.
The latest Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a conflict between the Islamic Courts Uni0n (ICU) and US-sponsored Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), a group of Somali warlords backed by Ethiopia and the US. After the 1991 collapse of central authority in Somalia and ensuing civil war, the ICU emerged as a grassroots organization in response to the lawlessness, violence in the country. In the absence of central political authority and using ,primarily, Sharia law and other traditional Somali values (xeer and dhaqan), the ICU were able to bring law and order throughout the country. They were also able to provide essential services such as healthcare and education. In this way, ICU courts were the only source of stability for civil society while warlords continue to terrorize ordinary Somalis. Whilst the ICU were able clean drugs and guns from the streets in their communities, many attempts to forge transitional government failed because squabbles over power sharing. The current Transitional Federal Government is the latest of many such fruitless efforts.
In June 2006, the Islamic Uni0n Courts assumed centralized control over many parts in the South, including the capital city capital, Mogadishu. This move came about partly after it was revealed that the CIA was secretly working with Somali warlords and Ethiopia to occupy Somalia. In the context, of post September 11, 2001 political stigmatization the Bush Administration had identified the IUC as a terrorist group. Many Somalis saw such rhetoric as a thinly disguised pretext for the US's desire to avenge the 1993 defeat of US Forces in Somalia. Despite U.S. cash payments to various warlords none was able to assert their authority over the population and bring law and order and security to the Somali people.
On the other hand, the ICU was able to clear big urban centers such as Mogadishu, of guns and drugs off the street and also clean up the city. Seaports and airports opened for commercial business again after 1995. The Bush administration continued to treat the ICU as a terrorist organization and started courting its overthrow by using Ethiopia as a proxy state to do its dirty work in exchange for cash incentives for the warlords and for Ethiopia's leader, Meles Zenawi.
Somalis have suffered so much already. Their country has been without central authority since 1991. There is not a shred of evidence that Somalia pose a security threat to the US nor there is any evidence that Islamists are providing safe heaven for Al Qaida or other terrorist groups. In the context of utter humiliation in the hands of their historical enemy, Ethiopia, the current US support of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia will, most certainly, fan hatred toward the US.
Meles Zenawi faces fierce opposition from various opposition groups inside Ethiopia who accuse him of illegal usurpation of political power, rigging election results, arresting his critics, in some cases, killing hundred of people taking part in peaceful protests against his political misrule. Thus, the sudden invasion of Somalia is a perfect strategy, for him to buttress his legitimacy as a national leader who can defend Ethiopia against Islamic terrorism. Internationally, he is able to position himself and his nation as a friend of the U.S .and Bush's strong man in the Horn of Africa in the US global war against Islamic terror. It is in this context, that Bush administration was able to quickly push through the Security Council the rather dubious resolution which gave Zenawi the green card to invade Somalia.
Resolution 1725 on Somalia authorizes a regional force from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Uni0n (AU) to protect the weak Transitional National Government in Baidoa and provide training for its forces. It also authorizes partial lifting of the Somalia Arms Embargo of 1992.
Many Somalis, who are not religious, saw their own safety and security improved under the rule of IUC. In addition, many Somalis in the worldwide Somali Diaspora support IUC for the same pragmatic reasons. Most Somalis were willing to give the IUC sufficient time to clean the streets of guns and violence. After restoring law and order back into the streets, it would have been possible, albeit slowly, to modernize some of their interpretations and the applications of Islamic Sharia. Besides, Sharia laws are already part of the Somali cultural value system.
A large number of Diaspora Somalis were willing to return to Somalia, and rebuild the country, once peace and security were ensured. But now, we are back into the old, ugly days where teenage boys toting AK47s in the back of pick up trucks, used to terrorize the local population. It is hard to predict what future hold for Somalia; I can easily predict the following scenario. Meles Zenawi is a Christian, who draws most of his political power and military support from his Tigre tribe. As a result, his invading soldiers in Somalia are largely from his Tigre Christian tribe. These soldiers do not speak the Somali language; once deep inside Somalia, they will be exposed to attacks by the locals.
Ironically, Zenawi's invasion of Somalia has killed any chance the weak transitional federal government might have had to rule Somalia. The warlords were hated before by all Somalis for their corruption. Now they will be despised as traitors and stooges for the number one enemy of the Somali people, Ethiopia. The history of the animosity between Somalia and Ethiopia is long. In this humiliating condition, Somalis will turn on each other; there will be endless recrimination, revenges and counter-revenges. The clan-based cloak and dagger power struggles will continue.
Amina Mire's last article here was "A Somali Woman Discusses the Sharia Court and Her Cousin Who Leads It". She lives in Ottawa, Canada and can be reached at filsanidilhooyo@yahoo.ca
Reprinted by consent of the author from:
www.counterpunch.org/mire01022007.html
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US Fomenting War in Somalia
Posted: Friday, December 29, 2006
CIA with Ethiopia vs Somalia
...The New York Times in it's daily stream of propaganda confirms the support of the US junta's CIA for this new war against Somalia, another inhuman atrocity by the US managers using the usual and stupid and worn out pretext of their own* al Qaeda: "American intelligence officials theorize that the Islamists, who wrested control of Mogadishu in June from a coalition of warlords supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, have ties to a Qaeda cell based in East Africa that is responsible for the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998."
Full Article : melbourne.indymedia.org
Blundering Into Somalia Yet Again
Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.
Full Article : lewrockwell.com
US Fomenting War in Somalia
The US-backed, UN-recognized government of Somalia is now limited to the inland town of Baidoa. Mogadishu, the capital, fell to Islamic militias, which now make up the de facto government, in June.
Full Article : africaspeaks.com
The Other War in Ethiopia
The world is watching Ethiopia's war with the totalitarian Islamist regime in Somalia. The world should also start paying attention to the campaign of genocide which the Ethiopian government has been waging against its own people, in southwestern Ethiopia, in the state of Gambella.
Full Article : tcsdaily.com
Ethiopia's War with Somali Islamists a gimmick
Ethiopia's War with Somali Islamists: a gimmick to divert attention from Ethiopia's internal political tension and human rights abuses.
Full Article : nazret.com
Reflections on the Anuak Genocide
Dec 13, 2006 -- Early in this century, at a university in the U.S, a professor asked all students to introduce themselves to the class. Among students, there were an Anuak seated in one of the first few rows and a Highlander Ethiopian seated in the last row. When introduction reached the Anuak, he introduced himself as an Ethiopian and Ethiopian Highlander introduced herself as an Ethiopian. Instead of letting other students behind her introduce themselves, she added that the Anuak was from Gambella and she was from Ethiopia despite the fact Gambella is a part of Ethiopia in international map.
In disputing the Anuak citizenship status as not Ethiopian, she repeated the usually claims Anuak people and other Gambellans face when travel in other parts of Ethiopia. When Gambella people traveled in other parts of Ethiopia, many ruling Highlander Ethiopian elite label Gambellans as others, foreigners and potentially obstacle to the economic development and this perception played a largest role in the December 13, 2003 massacre against Anuak people.
Full Article : sudantribune.com
Ethiopia's Genocide of the Anuak Tribe Broadens After December 13 Massacre
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- A genocide in western Ethiopia that began last December with a massacre of some 400 Anuak tribe members has broadened into widespread attacks by Ethiopian military troops against more than a dozen Anuak villages in the western Ethiopian province of Gambella, according to Anuak refugees and humanitarian aid groups.
Full Article : genocidewatch.org
State Terror Against Indigenous Peoples in Ethiopia
Another Secret War for Oil?
Published first April 6, 2004
By Keith Harmon Snow
The East African nation of Ethiopia is the latest U.S. terror war ally to turn its guns on indigenous peoples in a zone coveted by corporate interests for its natural resources. Four months after armed forces of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Defense Front (EPRDF) and settlers from the Ethiopian highlands initiated a campaign of massacres, repression, and mass rape deliberately targeting the Anuak minority of Ethiopia's southwest, atrocities and killings continue—and the situation remains in whiteout by the Western media.
Based on field investigations conducted in January 2004, two U.S.-based organizations— Genocide Watch and Survivor's Rights International—jointly released a report on February 22, providing substantial evidence that EPRDF soldiers and "Highlander" militias in southwestern Ethiopia targeted Anuak civilians. The Highlanders are not of either the agriculturalist Anuak or cattle-herding Nuer, the two indigenous peoples of the region, but are predominantly Tigray and Amhara people resettled into Anuak territory since 1974.
The current conflict was sparked by the killing of eight UN and Ethiopian government officials whose van was ambushed on December 13, 2003, in the Gambella district of southwestern Ethiopia. While there is no evidence attesting to the ethnicity of the unidentified assailants, the incident provided the pretext for the ongoing pogrom against the Anuak.
Full Article : zmagsite.zmag.org
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Dealing with Colourism
Posted: Friday, October 6, 2006
A Step Towards the African Revolution
by Leslie
October 05, 2006
The session at the last Moonlight Gathering in September was highly profound and without a doubt, edifying and interesting. Usually, after a period of song, poetry, drumming and other chosen activities, the group at the Moonlight Gathering would engage an issue; any issue that we feel worth discussing and for whatever reasons. However, the last gathering was the first time that the discussion was so heated; so much so, that some chose to 'stay out of the kitchen'.
The issue discussed was the controversial topic, colourism. This subject had never been talked about so openly at the gathering before and some were stunned that it would have ever been brought up. Members of the gathering were knocked out of their positions of comfort and were forced to come to terms with this issue; at least those who were courageous enough to stay within the circle to discuss it. Seeing that many were largely unfamiliar with the term and issues surrounding colourism, I attempted to briefly explain it as I would do now. The word colourism is a recent term that has entered into our vocabulary which has arisen in an attempt to address the deeper complex of race discrimination which is a critical and largely unaddressed aspect of racism.
Full Article : africaspeaks.com
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Matthew Harrison Speaks on Colorism
Posted: Thursday, August 24, 2006
Mr. Matthew Harrison, a PhD student at the University of Georgia in the field of Industrial Organizational Psychology, along with his faculty supervisor, Kecia Thomas, a professor of Applied Psychology and acting director of UGA's Institute for African American Studies, has zeroed in on the issue of colourism in the workplace. Mr. Harrison has determined in his research that colour discrimination caused people with lighter skin tones to get preferential treatment over those with darker skin tones in the areas of hiring and promotion in the work system. Such research, in this regard, is very useful in understanding the prospects of job applicants in the United States and indeed all over the world in getting employment and promotion based on the colour of their skins.
More detail of the information provided in the interview was presented at the 66th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Atlanta and can also be seen in the release from the University of Georgia, "Skin tone more important than educational background for African Americans seeking jobs".
In the interview, Mr. Harrison provides critical views showing that the issue of colourism is a serious one and should be considered before the selection of workers in a work environment. He notes the fact that employers tend to select those of lighter tones before those of darker tones, even with equivalent or higher qualifications, which affects the darkest skin people the most and questions the principle of meritocracy in the workplace.
Mr. Harrison describes this and more in detail below.
Full Article : africaspeaks.com
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Sins of Omission
Posted: Saturday, August 12, 2006
By Tim Wise, zmag.org
July 07, 2006
It seems as though whenever black folks do something wrong, everyone hears about it. If gang violence heats up in America's inner cities, for example, you can bet it'll be front-page news. Unacceptably high dropout rates? Yep, you can read all about it, and even hear Bill Cosby weigh in on how the African American community presumably doesn't value education anymore. Drugs, crime, out-of-wedlock childbirth? Yes, yes, and more yes, as the press never seems to tire of bringing us a steady drumbeat of negativity when it comes to people of color. Local television news is notoriously bad about this: blanketing the first 5-10 minutes of each newscast with crime stories, which, according to several national studies over-represent blacks as perpetrators, relative to the share of crime actually committed by African Americans.
Yet, in the wake of a recent report that flatly contradicts many of the most pernicious stereotypes about black irresponsibility--especially among youth--what do we see from the national media? Almost nothing. A report that, if anything, suggests it is white youth who are more likely to engage in a whole host of irresponsible behaviors, and whose character we might wish to call into question? To such a revelation, there are no TV specials, no editorials, and no prominent white person doing the equivalent of a Bill Cosby--asking, in effect, what the hell is wrong with white people, and when are we going to start taking personal responsibility for our deviant ways?
But like the line from The X-Files, the truth is out there, for those interested and willing to see it--a pathetic few, to be sure. It comes in the form of a report released in early June from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and which examines the rates at which students between grades 9-12 drink, take drugs, carry weapons, and engage in all forms of potentially destructive behavior. First, it should be noted--as sociologist Mike Males has long pointed out--that youth in general are far less engaged in destructive activity than commonly believed. Rates of drug and alcohol use and abuse, for example, as well as violence and other forms of pathology tend to be much higher among adults, even as the young are disproportionately tagged as the problem. But beyond that, the CDC notes that contrary to popular belief, it is not black youth, but rather whites who tend to lead the pack in these categories of deviance, and that among all youth who are either black, white or Latino, blacks almost invariably are the least likely to do drugs, drink, or carry weapons either on school grounds, or generally.
If all this sounds incredible, consider that the findings have been more or less consistent for over a decade, in each and every report of its kind. Yet in virtually no year has the media seen fit to make an issue of disproportionate white pathology, or the relative good behavior of black youth. If black youth kill someone, it's a headline; if they do something right, you'll be lucky to hear about it at all.
So here are some of the facts, compiled by CDC in 2005, and which would make news, in a media culture concerned about truth, and committed to challenging public misperceptions--which is to say, in a media very much unlike the one we have now:
-- White youth are 2.3 times more likely than black youth to drive drunk*
-- White males are a third more likely than black males to have carried a weapon in the past month (31.4 percent vs. 23.7) and fifty percent more likely to have taken a weapon to school (10.1 vs. 6.8);
-- Although black and white youth are equally likely to have tried cigarettes, whites are twice as likely to smoke currently (26 vs. 13 percent), and 3.3 times more likely to smoke at least a half-pack a day (11.7 vs. 3.5 percent);
-- Although white and black youth are roughly equally likely to have tried alcohol, white youth are fifty percent more likely to drink currently (46 percent vs. 31 percent), and nearly three times as likely to engage in episodic binge drinking (defined as having five or more drinks at a time, more than once a month). Indeed thirty percent of white youth have engaged in such heavy drinking, while only eleven percent of black youth have, meaning that white youth are nearly as likely to have binged more than once in the past month, as black youth are to have taken a drink at all;
-- Although there is no statistically significant difference between white and black youth when it comes to marijuana use, whites between grades 9-12 are almost 3.5 times more likely to have tried cocaine, twice as likely to be current coke users, twice as likely to have used inhalants, twice as likely to have used illegal steroids, 3.3 times as likely to have used hallucinogenic drugs, nearly four times as likely to have used methamphetamine, and slightly more likely to have used heroin or ecstasy. While it should be noted that only very small percentages of youth of any color have tried these harder drugs--obviously good news, and important to recognize, given the tendency to stereotype young people generally as irresponsible--the fact remains that blacks are typically the least likely to have done so.**
Of course, not all the news is good. Black youth are more likely to have gotten in a fight at school, they get less exercise on average, and are more likely to be at a weight considered unhealthy for their age. On the flipside, however, white females are more likely to have engaged in unhealthy behavior to lose weight, such as fasting for twenty-four hours at a time, taking weight loss pills, laxatives or supplements, or making themselves vomit so as to keep off unwanted pounds.
With so much bad news constantly being circulated about black kids today, is it asking too much for the media to take note of the reassuring and positive news coming out of most African American families and communities? Is it too much to ask that in a society where surveys suggest whites in particular (and even some black folks) are quick to believe the worst about young African Americans, perhaps the media might see it as worthwhile to debunk inaccurate and prejudicial thinking?
Given the way in which negative stereotypes can contribute to discriminatory treatment, the value of countering them with facts should be apparent. If we allow any group of persons to be tagged with the label of deviants--the way we have done with youth generally, and black youth in particular--we can't then be surprised when those same persons face discrimination in the job market, in schools, housing and on the part of law enforcement. So long as false and racist thinking is allowed to go unchallenged--and it will remain unchallenged the longer it takes for media to present a more balanced and accurate picture--the scourge of racial discrimination will continue unabated, rationalized all the way by folks who swear they aren't racist, but rather, simply playing the odds when it comes to who will make a better student, employee, or neighbor.
So long as police officers routinely admit--and they have done this to me many times before--that the first thing they think when they see a young black man driving a nice car is, "drug dealer," while the first thought they have at the sight of a similar young white man is, "spoiled little rich kid," racism will continue to poison the nation, and affect the lives of its people. Surely, with so much on the line, we ought to demand that good news about communities of color be as readily covered as the bad. ________
Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull, 2005). He can be reached at timjwise@msn.com.
Source:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance--United States, 2005. Surveillance Summaries, June 9. (Tables 4, 6, 12, 20, 22, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 66, pages 38, 40, 46, 54, 56, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70, 90).
* Note that when I say whites are "x times more likely" than blacks to do something, this does not mean merely that there are x times more whites doing that thing than there are blacks. After all, since there are more whites in the country than blacks, we should expect there to be more whites in any given population cohort (drug users, poor people, criminals, etc). Rather, this is a much more significant claim: namely, that the rate at which whites do x,y or z thing is higher than the rate at which blacks do. So, for example, in the case of drunk driving, for every 100 white youth in grades 9-12, there are slightly more than eleven who have driven while drinking in the past month, while for every 100 black youth in those grades, there were fewer than five who did so.
** While other data suggests that drug use is slightly higher among black adults who are 26 and older than white adults that age--the flipside of the picture for teens and young adults, 18-25--there is an important fact that is often overlooked when discussing adult drug use and/or abuse. Namely, data indicates that black adults, 26 and over, are considerably more likely (2.75 times more likely in fact) than white adults that age to be approached by someone who was offering them drugs, or to have drugs made available to them. Yet, despite the greater availability, and thus, peer pressure for black adults, they were only about twenty percent more likely than white adults to use drugs. What this suggests is that, relative to availability, whites are still using more frequently than blacks, and that blacks are exercising a disproportionate amount of will power to resist narcotics. It means that per capita, whites would be more likely to choose to use drugs, per incident where drugs were available to be used, and blacks would be more likely to resist using them, per incident where they were made available. The only reason for a slightly higher black usage rate overall, would be the much higher rate of incidents where drugs were made available in the first place. (see, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, [SAMHSA], 2000. 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Office of Applied Studies, Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD.)
Reprinted from:
www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-07/07wise.cfm
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Zimbabwe: White Lies, Black Victims
Posted: Thursday, August 3, 2006
By Rosemary Ekosso, ekosso.com
I remember in my boarding school Fatima House sang a song during the school feast celebrations. It was called Zimbabwe is Free. It was a rousing tune with a resonating bass element. I loved it. My father had told me all about Rhodesia changing hands when I was not yet ten years old, and we were happy that one more "racist bastion" as Radio Cameroon used to call them at the time, had crumbled into dust.
And all was well. Then in 2002, the Zimbabwean Land Issue became news.
But what really happened in Zimbabwe? It is a story like that of the rape of Lebanon we see today, told by the Western media for their willingly brainwashed audiences. Mugabe is a fairly corrupt leader who is clinging to power. That cannot be denied. But when did his tyranny come to light? In 2002? And what choices did he actually have in the land business?
Let us go back in time. Under British colonial rule, the black owners of the land were restricted to tribal reserves. You can find a very good paper on on this and violence in Zimbabwe here.
In 1930, the Land Apportionment Act restricted access of black people to land. In the years that followed, there was increased pressure on the land, and of course the Africans were blamed for what was inaccurately and condescendingly referred to as "slash and burn" cultivation. That this method of farming was entirely appropriate in situations where there was enough land for shifting cultivation must have escaped the notice of colonial observers.
The settlers kept coming in, rising to 140.000 in 1945. But there were 4 million Africans. The Europeans decided that Africans kept livestock for the wrong reasons: "status and prestige". So they decided to de-stock the land and herd the "natives" into more reserves to create more space for themselves. From 1946 to 1979, more than a million head of cattle were disposed of. By disposed of, I mean killed or stolen by white farmers.
Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980. Part of the talks/negotiations leading up to independence included the Lancaster House Agreement, which provided that from 1980 to 1990, a fund provided by Britain would be used to buy land from those white settlers who could not, in effect, stand being ruled by black Zimbabweans. Before that, less than 1% of the population, being the whites, owned 70% of the land. What the agreement actually did was protect white farm owners from redistribution of their land and put off possible nationalization for ten years. It was one of the conditions of Zimbabwe being granted (that's the right term) independence.
In 1981, the Brits pledged more that 630 million pounds in aid for the land reforms. London now claims to have contributed £44m, but Timothy Stamp, Zimbabwe's finance minister, says it was only £17m.
In 1985, the Land Acquisition Act was enacted, against staunch white opposition. The act was gave the Zimbabwean government first refusal, as it were, over land to be ceded by whites, which it would then purchase for the landless. But the white farmers did not want to sell their land and the Zimbabwean government did not have the money to buy. So what happened to the promised British aid, eh?
According to Human Rights Watch and others, 4.500 large-scale commercial farmers still held 28 percent of the total land at the time the fast track program was instituted after 2000; meanwhile, more than one million black families eked out an existence in overcrowded, arid "communal areas". Native reserves, they mean.
Then the veterans of the war of liberation said they wanted land. Then Messrs. IMF and World Bank came in with a Structural Adjustment package. Then there was a drought from 1990 to 1993. Mugabe was in trouble. The grassroots needed land, and the white people were not willing to share. He took the land from the white people and gave it to the black ones.
But which black ones? That is the purported source of all the noise you hear today.
Despite their pious claims, Britain and the others are not angry because Mugabe is a corrupt dictator. They sponsor corrupt dictators when it suits them. They are not angry because ordinary Zimbabweans are suffering under Mugabe. They don't care about ordinary Zimbabweans. They were quite happy to herd them into reserves when it suited them.
No, what they care about is the expropriation of white farmers. They express indignation at Mugabe's cronies acquiring the land. That is a bad thing, of course. I myself come from an area where government or government-affiliated bigwigs are buying up all the prime sea-front locations because they can afford them. But in the case of Zimbabwe only 0.3% of people settled on land have acquired it through undue influence or corruption. So 99.7% of Zimbabweans got their land fair and square. With Enron and cash-for-peerages scandals, who are these people to talk about corruption? Besides, the government has investigated and found that some four hundred people got their hands on land by dishonest means. It has investigated.
So we agree that Mugabe is doing a BAD THING. The bad thing is not, however, the fact that he has taken land that should go to poor landless Zimbabweans and given it to his friends. The bad thing is that he has taken the land from white people.
Now, don't get me wrong. For some of those white farmers, Zimbabwe is their country. It is their motherland. There have been great personal tragedies as a result of the land expropriation. People have lost what they worked for over decades.
But.
Let them taste the pain of loss too. What did they think they were doing when they took the land of Africans in the first place? When the land was seized from the Africans and given to their parents and grandparents, why did they not say: "Oh no, don't do that, it's not cricket"? What did they think? That Africans do not have strong feelings of attachment to land, being only a kind of speaking ape? What did they think when they had armies of black servants to cater to their every whim in addition to farming the land that had been stolen from them, and being forced to sow fields they would never reap? Did they ever feel pain for the Africans? Did they acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the system? When Mugabe began to centralize power and silence political enemies, did they stand up and tell him to stop?
No. They had their beasts of burden. That is all they needed. Now they tell you that they inherited the land, and they were not the ones who stole it. But they knew it was stolen. And when you see the child of a man from whom your father stole wallowing in mud, what should be the nice human reaction?
Hm?
Why is it that the white man's pain is always greater than that of the black man?
They have trotted out the spectre of Africans who do not know how to run the huge farms: "You know, er, just leave the farms with us, because we're better at running them and you guys are hopeless, everyone knows". The farms have lost some revenue. But is it because the Africans have no talent for farming? No. Here's a quote I like:
"Temporary economic dislocation is an unavoidable byproduct of land reform, but the only path to genuine and lasting progress is through land redistribution. There can be nothing efficient about a gross concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, while millions are condemned to lives of hopeless despair and poverty. No mainstream journalist has ever described the grotesque inequality of the situation inherited from colonialism and what this meant for those on the bottom."
You can read the whole article here. I have also just found out that after the reforms, cereal planted actually rose by at least 9%, according to the World Food Programme. So what are those racist lies about how Africans cannot work the farms?
But why were the white people living in a dream world where they thought they'd always own the farms and Africans would only work for them? The Africans will learn one day, as they have often learnt. The hard way.
Another aspect of this disinformation concerns what has actually happened to bring the Zimbabwean economy to its knees. It is true that a there is degree of corruption in Zimbabwe. It is true that the farms do not contribute as much as they did in terms of employment and revenue. Actually, that's not even true. Smaller, less mechanised farms mean more labour-intensive methods and increased employment.
But it is no less true that there has been a severe drought in Zimbabwe and all of Southern Africa. That is what has brought down grain production. Plus the IMF, plus the World Bank. Plus the media telling lies about Zimbabwe.
The veterans of the war of liberation were pressing for compensation. Mugabe paid up. He had no choice. It precipitated a financial crisis in 1997, but Mugabe at least had neutralized a looming threat to his power. Do George Bush and Tony Blair not neutralize looming threats to their power?
Mugabe has in fact, settled quite a few people on land. I am not saying his cronies have not got their fat, be-ringed fingers on some prime land. But so have at least 134.000 other people, who were settled between 2000 and 2002. So let's not exaggerate here. And no, they were not all from ZANU-PF, Mugabe's party. People from MDC, the opposition party, also got land.
Nor is it less true that the white world has decided to punish Mugabe for daring to take land from white farmers. But this is a long and different story. I will deal with it one day in an article on puppet masters.
This article is too long already, so I'll stop here. But I have said this before, and I'll say it again: we should not believe all the lies we read.
Reprinted with permission from:
www.ekosso.com/2006/08/i_remember_in_m.html
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Painting the Black Ivory White
Posted: Sunday, July 30, 2006
Re : "Revealing the true characters of African"
By Dominic Woja Maku
Saturday 15 April 2006
I would beg to contribute by expressing my personal views on the topic "Colonialism and the Africans".
First of all, I would like to highlight the fact that colonialism is a "Eurocentric Political Thought" or for the case of the Sudanese Africans, you can term it "an Arabcentric Political Thought".
Colonialism involves "cognitive imperialism (the colonization of the minds of a group or groups of people)", cultural imperialism (diminishing or demeaning other people’s cultural values or traits so that their voices and visions are devalued and not respected), exploitation of natural or human resources of a given group or groups of people, marginalization of a group or groups of people, violence against a group or groups of people, poor bashing (you are labeled poor so that you remain in poverty permanently for the rest of your life, your children’s lives and generations of children to come, and so forth.
There are numerous definitions of colonialism and its attributes and there is no right definition of colonialism or imperialism only these two words can be defined in accordance with and only applicable to particular situations such as the African Sudanese situation, Afro-American situation, First Nations Peoples of Canada, the Maori of New Zealand, the Aborigines of Australia, the Eastern European, the Arabs of the Middle East/South East Asia. Colonialism began long time ago (Europeans colonized themselves, Arabs colonized their own people, Africans too colonized and enslaved their own people). Thus, claiming that the characteristics of the African is being shaped by the exploration and the teachings of the European or the Arabs can be misleading if I am not mistaken.
I think that some Africans knew their cultures and traditions very well before the colonizers came to Africa. For example, the Baganda (of Uganda) called Lake Victoria "Nalubale", Africans had names for their children, lands mountains, animals, rivers and so forth. When the Europeans and other colonizers came to Africa they replaced those African names by their own, for instance, Lake Nalubale is now Lake Victoria and so on.
Now, the current African’s life is directly influenced and shaped by colonial forces and its features and principles such as racism. To say that the African relies on the European or Arab knowledge too is misleading. The traditional African or indigenous African had traditional natural knowledge about the spirit (nature, soul, art, culture, so you name them).
It could be an overgeneralization if we think that the African knowledge is just a distance from the mouth to the nose (which is a colonial school of thought). Many Africans and other indigenous peoples live disconnected and fragile lives because of colonialism and racism and they have to negotiate with the colonialists for their own survival.
To date, some Sudanese Africans in the Diaspora obtain their educational credentials in six weeks (online courses) because the colonialists want to see that the Sudanese African does not have an in depth knowledge to govern himself so that he can turn to the colonizers for the answers to his problems (unconsciously, the master cannot destroy his own house).
Colonialism therefore is a term used to illuminate the socio-political, economic, cultural, and traditional subjugation of the oppressed and the colonized. Colonialism is fresh today and it is very much alive and it does not only affect the Africans but every facet of human live including the Arabs and the Euro-Asians.
* Dominic Woja Maku is a Sudanese graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. He can be reached at dwm598@mail.usask.ca
Reprinted with permission from the author from:
www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=15016
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Zimbabwe: cutting through myths
Posted: Saturday, July 22, 2006
... getting to the nub
The Other Side Nathaniel Manheru
www.herald.co.zw
If Zimbabwe was under an expedient leadership, most probably the land question, like the proverbial sleeping dogs, would have been left to lie.
That it was the source of conflict from the very onset of colonialism need not necessarily have compelled the leadership to tackle it. For a very long time, the Rhodesians were able to buy off the land question through a variety of measures, including laws, relocations and of course the creation of a buffer African landed gentry. And when all this did not quite work, they went to war and were able to hold back the "black peril" for quite a while.
Often, conditions of deprivation can be naturalized by time and awe, which is why Marx's prognosis of class struggle seems too distant to a point of looking idle. If Zimbabwe was under a leadership worried more about its own preservation and the expediency which goes with such instincts, the land question would not have been an issue when and the way it became one.
Short's poverty
The infamous Clare Short's letter emphasizing "poverty alleviation" as opposed to radical land reforms could have been a veritable escape to a leadership founded on expediency.
There was money, big money to back up such a pre-empting land policy. There was also fame and glory fulsomely heaped on African leaders who promote and advance imperial interests. Today Mugabe would have been a world idol, a veritable foil to all "misgoverning" African leaders. Awards would have continued to come if President Mugabe had expediently lurched onto Clare Short's "poverty alleviation" model. And on the political horizon then, there was no immediate threat, no danger of a fluke party radical enough to mobilize around the land question in ways that would have threatened Zanu-PF. None. And going by the parties later to emerge, arguably there was not going to be any.
Yet principle still took precedence over expediency, with the three men at the helm: Mugabe, Nkomo and Muzenda pushing the matter to the fore, creating a train of events which took matters to where we are now. It is key to understanding the Zimbabwean question to remember the land matter was driven by conscience and conviction, never by expediency.
Angry messengers, no message
Since Gambia, there has been much debate regarding Zimbabwe's future. And especially these past two weeks, the Zimbabwean scene has been busier than a kicked-over anthill. So many myths have been created and demolished, and it takes a bit of ardour to cut through the fictional, to get to the factual. Let me quickly dismiss non-issues, non-actors. The so-called private press has played up angry or frustrated comments from envoys accredited to this country, most notably the British and the American ambassadors, and lately the terribly misread French ambassador.
The conclusion culled from such commentary is to say the Mkapa initiative got crippled in its infancy, a point often made with unhidden delight.
Clearly, there is no grasp of protocols governing intergovernmental communication; rather, there is a wish and hunger for more bad news to help uphold a preferred psychosis. Ambassadors are just that: messengers of their governments and much we have got or listened to, amounts to anger and frustration of the messenger, rather than the considered position of those who sent him. Governments know where and how to place messages, know where and what to read from them.
If Zimbabwe was to open talks with Britain or America, Dell and Pocock could very well be puny players — real, whispering ornaments in corridors — not partners on the table. I fail to understand why this is an elusive point to the Independent and its editorial sibling, the Financial Gazette.
So much about them and their statements which at best might – and "might" is the word – at best offer small clues. Dell may tell you Angola had to keep him away, to recover its peace. Here in Zimbabwe, Dell spends much of his Zimbabwean time cutting toe nails, shunned by his hosts. He is an angry ambassador who must, from time to time, be allowed to vent his anger.
Re-centering land.
Secondly, the myth about external/internal dynamic should be exploded and dismissed. Government says it is all about land and the angry British. MDCs and their surrogates say its nothing to do with Blair.
Rather, it is about "failed" governance and thus a local political question. Ironically, the MDC is repeatedly off guard, often forgetting they must live up to that argument. They have never told us why an internal political matter needs external parentage and canvassing. But it is also a thesis hard to sustain even for their media constituency.
The Independent, long in denial over the land issue, now admits through Craig Richardson and their various editorials that the issue is the "fast track land reform programme" through which Mugabe "seized thousands of white-owned commercial farms".
Richardson says the land reform programme was analogous to destroying "the concrete foundation of a building", in the process re-centering the land question in the whole so-called "Zimbabwe crisis". He makes no novel point, but only makes plain what Dell and Pocock equivocally call "wrong policies" they say must be reversed.
And of course Richardson is not pitying blacks impoverished by these "wrong policies". He is angry at the expropriation of "white-owned commercial farms" he says were of "world standard". Needless to say the issue of "white land rights" cannot be an internal question, anymore than the issue of the rights of Zimbabwe's landless could have ever hoped to be international.
When inside is outside
The larger point to make is that with land as the foundational question, the evidently aggrieved West has used an age-old tactic of smoke-screening the real issue by creating local dynamics.
I do not need to refer to the British parentage of MDC. Or how that parentage is panning out to embrace fringe players whose fabulous means are clearly over-tower their support. Lately, we have seen the resumption of direct financial sponsorship of the MDC (Tsvangirai) — especially its meetings and networking efforts — by a whole host of players including the Germans, as indeed of its other surrogates which include a well known media union which has just received a million dollars United States from two local western embassies including the British, ostensibly to start community newspapers. There is also an attempt to reorganize MDC-affiliated civic society in the wake of deft moves by the President though the bishops.
The so-called civil society is in turmoil, which is why big monies are pouring for another "unity accord" which is hoped to emerge from a big indaba set for end of this month. In all cases, the conduit has been phoney private structures owned and ran by individuals associated with the MDC.
Worst of all is the intra-party violence in the MDC which Europe and America is using to re-issue travel warnings against Zimbabwe, and to bash Zanu-PF. And Dell's brazenly mislaid emphasis on the matter in order to blame Zanu-PF shows how determined the British and Americans are, to convict Zanu-PF and its government.
The NCA-led demonstrations are being bankrolled by known embassies here, with monies saved from the Trevor Ncube-controlled Institute of War and Peace Studies (I don't know what wrong the boy has committed) being re-directed there and elsewhere. With such brazen and mounting meddling by hostile foreigners, what amounts to an "internal question"; what amounts to an "external question"?
Creating smokescreen
But we also have lessons from history. An age-old strategy of imperialism is fomenting and sponsoring local conflict. We saw this at the very onset of colonialism when the bogey of Ndebele tribal raids and atrocities was created to justify the demolition of the Ndebele dynasty.
We had lots of that during the liberation struggle and in post-independence when apartheid South Africa sought to deepen the rift between Zapu and Zanu. Presently, there is the Mthwakazi dimension, itself a feeble attempt at those old divisive strategies. Angola's post-independence conflict generously offers the same experience; Mozambique the same and, above all, South Africa itself. I will come to that point later, but a conclusion must be drawn here. Local players or local conflicts do not necessarily mean local cause or causes.
Opposition planted in Botswana
The latest myth has formed around Tsvangirai's meeting with President Mogae of Botswana. It is touted as a diplomatic breakthrough for MDC, touted as enough proof that Zimbabwe's "crisis" is "internal". There is also an assumption that President Mogae was representing Sadc. A bit of background.
The intervening weeks saw two major developments initiated from outside Botswana but playing out on Ba-tswana territory. There has been the launch in Botswana of a makeshift coalition opposed to Zanu-PF, wholly sponsored by known western countries, and affiliated to the MDC and some freelancing Tswana opposition figures wishing notice.
There has been the launch of a newspaper with phantom editors. The paper has been coming erratically. My readers will recall a close parallel to a similar initiative mounted in both South Africa and Nigeria in the run-up to the Abuja CHOGM a few years back. Add to this the gratuitous profiling of Zimbabweans living in Botswana. This provides context to Tsvangirai's mission: careful preparations under-laid by the same foreign interests.
Neither Zimbabwe nor Sadc
Which takes me to the real point. It is a visit which counts for nothing from the viewpoint of Sadc, the very forum it was originally meant to influence. True, Tsvangirai went to see a President who happens to hold the chair of Sadc. More accurately, he was invited to a meeting with him after the Botswana government "assessed" and came to the conclusion that the MDC (Tsvangirai) faction was the "stronger" of the two factions, whatever that means.
Plainly, there is nothing Sadc about this. What we see is a position and attitude of the Botswana government, regarding the splintered opposition in a neighbouring country. Nothing more.
It is not the Sadc position. It can't be, and a clear distinction must be made between a national stance of a Sadc member state on the one hand, and a regional stance of Sadc. As chairman of Sadc, President Mogae is enjoined to consult widely on Zimbabwe, for a comprehensive briefing to Summit, assuming Summit has tasked him to.
There is also a way of constituting such a mission. It cannot be a one President affair, a one government affair, a one country affair. And the chair cannot proceed with consultations on the basis of what it perceives to be a "stronger" political player.
That would undermine the chair, apart from dictating that his mission begins and ends with Zanu-PF, the strongest political party on the land. Sadc has no reason to understand Zimbabwe from the narrow angle of a member country, let alone from the narrower angle of a single opposition political player, however mighty or pretty he may be perceived to be by any one of its governments.
What compounds the matter is that the visit came against a bloody backdrop of a violent attack on opposition members by MDC-Tsvangirai. Was the matter raised, and why was the accused privileged while the victim was shunned? Then there is the whole question of timing. Why after Banjul? Why during the dying hours of Botswana's chairmanship? The imputation is odious, much more odious to Sadc whose founding premises was anti-imperialism. So it would appear this really was a national initiative with no status or place in Maseru. Not even in the bilateral amity between the two countries which is predicated on respectful non-interference.
Leader, not leaper
Which means what? It should not be forgotten that the British strategy is to use Africans and African voices, as well as multilateral platforms such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, to condemn Zimbabwe. Britain ran to the AU and UN too soon, with the present thrust being to get back to the beginnings, African beginnings, so as to generate a hard-to-fault build-up. This is why Maseru is so important, and why the Botswana initiative is so desperate. And since the matter is narrowing to its correct proportions of Zimbabwe-Britain bilateral, the stance of Sadc becomes straightforward.
Where the matter is between a foreign power and a member state, Sadc cannot afford to be an arbiter. Still less can it be neutral. Where hostile sanctions are imposed on a member economy, Sadc's posture cannot be that of pretending these sanctions do not exist. Britain's meddlesome foreign policy in the region is well known. Its direct link to the exodus of Zimbabwean professionals is known.
This is part of the assault on a Sadc member state. The numbers of Zimbabweans found in neighbouring countries (and let us face it, Zimbabweans are not the biggest numerically, although they may be the most visible, thanks to their skills) have not emerged from a conflict situation. Zimbabwe enjoys more peace than all Sadc states. This is a fact.
The numbers have been created by the assault on the Zimbabwean economy, an assault mounted by Europe and America, and aided by local whites and their African acolytes. In the main, Zimbabweans in the region and abroad are skilled migrant labourers who return home now and then, indeed who are busy investing home, with a vision of a great future.
Good education, good skills have made Zimbabweans footloose professionals, the same way that a craving for both has motivated many Tswanas and South Africans to accept a migrant studentship, much of it in Zimbabwe.
Matters must be put in perspective and may be we Zimbabweans have taken too much abuse and vilification without challenging mortifying myths which abound in the media. We are a skills hub for Sadc, and that is a far cry from the myth of Zimbabwe as a destabilizing factor. And of course every Sadc government knows two matters likely to create real instability in Zimbabwe and in the region: reversal of land reforms and an undemocratic ouster of Zanu-PF. The way opposition politics have panned out in Zimbabwe has tended to make the two intertwined, in fact causally connected.
Rekindling Frontline spirit
I made reference to inventing local dynamics to create a smokescreen for empire builders. I gave examples in the region where this strategy was used. In all our discussions on the Mozambican peace process, as Sadc, we resisted attempts to see Renamo outside its apartheid creators.
We rallied behind Frelimo. In Angola, we resisted attempts to view Savimbi outside his creators, whites in South Africa and of course America and its republican extremists. Revealingly, once America decided it needed oil more that nursing its miasmic fear of communism, Savimbi gave way. Nearer home and time, we were stubborn in rejecting the myth of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as a political stand-alone. Once that essential dynamic between the people of South Africa and their apartheid mis-rulers was settled, IFP fizzled out to what it is today: a mere bad political memory. Sadc was not neutral. Sadc did not see itself as an arbiter. It was in the trenches, in the spirit truly befitting front-liners. This must be the spirit of Maseru. In the very unlikely event Sadc acquiesces to the imperial whims of Britain and America, the consequences will be incalculable for the region. Zanu-PF, either as its Government or as a liberation movement, will take the necessary steps to defend the gains of national liberation, itself hardly a new assignment to it. It is clear what that means to the region and of course to the British and American interests which Pocock and Dell have been sent to safeguard here. Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=6473&cat=10
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Zimbabwe: Holding On to Ill-Gotten Gains
Posted: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
By Bugalo A. Chilume, Mmegi/The Reporter
The intention of the West to effect regime change in Zimbabwe was given further impetus by its desire to hold on to ill-gotten gains from the colonial era. During this period, not only did the evil forces inflict the most barbaric form of cruelty and brutality against us, they also stole from us, most notably our land. And not just any land, but the most fertile, from which Afrikans were forcibly removed to be crowded in lands with marginal soils. Depriving people who depend solely on subsistence farming of their land demonstrated the level of depravity of these evil forces, a depravity that still exists today.
Apart from using the land for agricultural production, land grabs were a strategy to break the Afrikan man's spirit in order to force him to slave for the evil forces for his very survival. It was in fear of this that Dikgosi Bathoen, Khama and Sebele travelled tens of thousands of miles to Britain in 1895 to seek the Crown's protection against the enchroachment of the British South African Company into their land. They had this to say: "You can really see now that what they really want is...to take our land and sell it (so) that they might see gain...the Company have conquered the Matebele, and taken the land of the people they conquered. We know the custom: but we have not heard that it is the custom of any people to take the best lands of their friends...where will our cattle stay if the waters are taken from us? They will die. The Company wants to impoverish us so that hunger may drive us to become the white man's servants who dig in his mines and gather his wealth." (Jeff Ramsay, 2006)
In all Afrikan colonies, the best land was grabbed. Zimbabwe was no exception. Up until the recent land reforms, the descendants of white colonists constituting only 1 percent of Zimbabwe's population owned a whopping 70 percent of the country's farmland. So when Afrikan nationalists (Mugabe & co.) took to the bush to wage a war of liberation against the white minority regime of Rhodesia, the restoration of land to its original Afrikan owners was the primary objective. The war paved the way for the Lancaster House Agreement which ushered in the first African majority government in 1980 led by Robert Mugabe.
During the Lancaster House talks in 1979, the Afrikan nationalists made it clear that the war was all about land and that if it wasn't restored to the landless Afrikans, they were prepared to go back to the bush to continue the armed struggle. However, under pressure from the Frontline states, which were eager for cessation of hostilities in the sub-region, the nationalists accepted a settlement that was not entirely to their liking.
In terms of the agreement, the British government made an undertaking to provide funding to compensate white farmers whose land would be expropriated for redistribution. But this was on condition that the expropriation would be done on a 'willing seller/willing buyer' basis. In other words, white farmers had to want to sell and if they didn't, landless Afrikans would continue to be landless. However, Britain never had any intention to let go of the farmland that was in the hands of its citizens and former citizens who naturally still owed allegiance to motherland. The reason for Britain's reluctance to part with the land was not hard to find. The farms' contribution to Britain's economy and development was not something to be scoffed at: the commercial farms were a reliable source of raw material for British factories; profits from commercial farming were repatriated to motherland; and so were the profits from white-owned industries set up by proceeds from commercial farming.
Not surprisingly, in the years following Independence, Britain released the money to the Zimbabwean government in dribs and drabs. As a result, not much land redistribution was done; and the situation was not helped by white farmers who were setting ridiculously high prices for their farms, and invariably offered barren, infertile and disused farms.
When the land redistribution programme benefited some ruling party and government big-wigs, the British government was presented with an excuse to withhold funding for the programme. The British latched on to this and alleged that the programme did not benefit its intended landless Afrikans - as if they cared about them! However, they soon got tired of the pretence and decided to remove the mask of false compassion...
Copyright © 2006 Mmegi/The Reporter
Reprinted from:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607191010.html
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Namibia must take land as Mugabe did
Posted: Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Harare - The speed with which Zimbabweans took back their land from white farmers is "commendable" and Namibia wants to do the same, Namibia's deputy land minister was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"We feel that the speed they took the land is commendable and we would like to see how they did it," said Isak Katali, who is on a visit to Zimbabwe, according to the state-owned Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe launched its controversial land-reform programme in 2000, and now most of the country's 4 000 formerly white-owned farms are in the hands of black farmers.
The programme has sparked Western criticism but won Zimbabwe the praise and admiration of other countries in southern Africa.
Full Article : iol.co.za
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Caribbean Indian actors in cinematic movies
Posted: Thursday, May 18, 2006
Indian Arrival Day will be observed as a national holiday in Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday May 30, 2006.
By Dr. Kumar Mahabir
Trinidad and Tobago
Twenty-eight years after the screening of the first Hindi movie, Bala Joban [Sweet Youth] in Trinidad in the Caribbean, an immigrant law student in London made his debut in a British-made cinematic movie. Basdeo Panday became the first Caribbean Indian to be an actor on the big screen in Nine Hours to Rama (1963). Panday's part as the laundryman in Nine Hours to Rama was brief, but it was a speaking role that earned him notable credit among stars like Horst Buchholz, José Ferrer and Valerie Gearon. The movie about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the BAFTA Film Award in the Best British Cinematography Category in 1964.
Panday also acted in two other British cinematic movies: Man in the Middle (1964) and The Brigand of Kandahar (1965). The first two films were distributed worldwide by 20th Century Fox, and the third by Warner Brothers. All three films were set, in whole or in part, in India, with Panday being one of the few non-white actors to play a speaking role in these movies.
About five years after Panday appeared on film, another Trinidad Indian stage actor-turned-politician, made his debut on the cinema screen. Ralph Maraj appeared as the leading actor with Angela Seukaran in two movies released in the same year: The Right and the Wrong (1970) and The Caribbean Fox (1970). Both movies were the first-feature films to be produced in Trinidad and scored commercial successes at box offices at home and in other Caribbean islands. The Right and the Wrong won a Gold Medal at the Atlanta Film Festival for its excellent cinematography.
But it was really in Bim (1974) that Maraj excelled as a film actor in the title role of Bim/Bheem Singh. The story was based on the composite life of the notorious assassin, Boysie Singh, and aggressive trade unionist and Hindu leader, Bhadase Sagan Maraj. Film producer and critic, Dr. Bruce Paddington, states, " ... it was certainly one of the most important films to be produced in Trinidad and Tobago, and has become one of the classics of Caribbean cinema." At the United States Virgin Islands Film Festival in St Thomas in 1975, Bim won a gold medal special jury award as "a film of unusual merit."
The Caribbean Indian actor who has earned the honour of starring in the most Hollywood films is Errol Sitahal. He portrayed a business executive in the comedy Tommy Boy (1995) starring Chris Farley. Sitahal was also the mysterious Indian servant with a pet monkey in the movie A Little Princess (1995). The engaging family drama is ranked as one of the finest children's films in the 1990s. Sitahal appeared in another Hollywood blockbuster, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004). In this adult comedy, distributed by New Line Cinema, Sitahal was Kumar's stern father who is an Indian medical doctor.
Also making her extraordinary appearance as an actress on stage and cinema was Grace Maharaj. She starred in scores of stage performances, numerous television commercials, four television serials, and four full length movies: Bim (1974), Man from Africa/Girl from India (1982), Men of Gray 11: Flight of the Ibis (1996) and The Mystic Masseur (2001). In 1994, Maharaj received the prestigious Cacique Award in Trinidad for her long service in drama.
Other notable Trinidad Indian actors who have been featured in speaking roles in cinematic movies include Kenneth Boodhu in The Caribbean Fox, and Simon Bedasie in Bim, Operation Makonaima (1972), and Men of Gray 11 (1996). Hansley Ajodha and Devindra Dookie also acted in Men of Gray 11. Other performers like David Sammy, Patti-Anne Ali, Dinesh Maharaj, Keith Hazare Imambaksh and Anthony Harrypaulsingh have all appeared in minor roles in The Mystic Masseur (2001). Directed by Ismail Merchant and filmed on location in Trinidad, the movie is an adaptation of a novel by Caribbean Indian Nobel Prize laureate, V.S. Naipaul. The Guyanese comedian Habeeb Khan played a leading role in If Wishes Were Horses (1976), the only English-speaking musical film in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean has a fledging film industry and, consequently, prospects for acting in cinema are extremely limited. But opportunities abound in stage dramas, television movies, short documentaries and advertising commercials. It is important that Indians appear in the spotlight in numbers commensurate with their size in the population. It is also important to celebrate their achievements because they have struggled as ethnic minorities to achieve visibility and stardom on the silver screen. They exhibit certain collective cultural codes and social behaviour which their audiences can often recognize and identify (with). And it is heartening for a people to see themselves as stars on screen – even if is in fantasy.
Dr Kumar Mahabir, Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Florida
Chairman, Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council (ICC)
10 Swami Avenue, Don Miguel Road
San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies
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Congo's tragedy: the war the world forgot
Posted: Sunday, May 7, 2006
In a country the size of Western Europe, a war rages that has lasted eight years and cost four million lives. Rival militias inflict appalling suffering on the civilian population, and what passes for political leadership is powerless to stop it. This is Congo, and the reason for the conflict - control of minerals essential to the electronic gadgetry on which the developed world depends - is what makes our blindness to the horror doubly shaming. Johann Hari reports from the killing fields of central Africa
Published: 05 May 2006
This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler's armies marched across Europe - a war that has not ended. But is also the story of a trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace. In the TV series Lost, a group of plane crash survivors believe they are stranded alone on a desert island, until one day they discover a dense metal cable leading out into the ocean and the world beyond. The Democratic Republic of Congo is full of those cables, mysterious connections that show how a seemingly isolated tribal war is in reality something very different.
This war has been dismissed as an internal African implosion. In reality it is a battle for coltan, diamonds, cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London, New York and Paris. It is a battle for the metals that make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling, and it has already claimed four million lives in five years and broken a population the size of Britain's. No, this is not only a story about them. This - the tale of a short journey into the long Congolese war we in the West have fostered, fuelled and funded - is a story about you.
Full Article : independent.co.uk
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