August 12, 2002 - August 22, 2002
Region backs away from US plan
Posted: Thursday, August 22, 2002
JOHANNESBURG, (IRIN) - South Africa and Botswana have denied they have signed up to a US plan to isolate Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, and said their policy was rather to influence Harare through dialogue.
"There can never be a policy for South Africa to replace any government ... to discuss with anybody about how to replace another government," South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad was quoted as saying on Thursday. He said Pretoria and the region had an obligation to help Zimbabwe find a way out of its economic and political crisis.
Botswana's permanent secretary for foreign affairs, Ernest Mpofu, also rejected any suggestion of working with Washington to sideline Mugabe. "Why would we isolate him? Our policy is to work with Zimbabwe to try and sort out the problems there. If you isolate Zimbabwe what problem are you solving?" the South African news agency SAPA reported him as saying.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner said on Tuesday that Zimbabwe's presidential election in March was fraudulent, and Washington did not recognise Mugabe as the country's legitimate leader.
"What we're trying to do is influence those policymakers at the top. And so, in that sense, we're continuing to work with the South Africans and the Botswanans and Mozambicans on what are some of the strategies that we can use to isolate Mugabe in the sense that he has to realise that the political status quo is not acceptable," Kansteiner said.
A Zimbabwe presidential spokesman told IRIN that there was nothing new in Kansteiner's statement. "They stated shortly after the election that they didn't recognise the poll, and we are aware that for quite some time they have tried to influence the sub-region to take a hostile position," the official said.
Ross Herbert of the South African Institute of International Affairs said that regional leaders preferred a policy of quiet diplomacy. But "there is rising concern outside of Africa to want to do something", triggered by Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme and human rights record.
He said with half the Zimbabwean population facing starvation as a result of drought and land reform, Americans found it hard to understand the Zimbabwean government "saying please give us food while kicking out its white farmers".
The Namibian National Society for Human Rights said in a statement on Thursday that while western criticism of Mugabe seemed related to the government's "persecution of white farmers", they condemned Zimbabwe's human rights record in general.
The society called on African leaders to "subject President Mugabe to the peer review system as envisaged in the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development".
But director of the Pretoria-based Africa Institute, Eddie Maloka, told IRIN that Washington's global policy of pursuing regime change in countries it perceived as "rogue states" was not compatible with "African realities".
"It complicates the policy space available to countries in the region", and would fatally brand any neighbour that publicly lined up with Washington as "a stooge".
Maloka said the region's quiet diplomacy was not aimed at overthrowing the government, but focused on promoting internal dialogue. For the time being, with both the government and opposition remaining "intransigent", there was little sign of progress. But the situation would inevitably change as the economy further deteriorated and food shortages bit harder towards the end of the year.
"The fast-track land reform process is irreversible, but the reality of economic pain is going to be much more pronounced [and Zimbabwe] will need its neighbours," Maloka said.
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Return to African Religion
Posted: Thursday, August 22, 2002
by Pianke Nubiyang
First of all, the text in the Bible, which was written by the Hebrews when they were in Babylon, clearly led the way for the enslavement of Blacks.
The Hebrews were envious of the Black people of Egypt. It is believed that the Hebrews entered Egypt with the Hyksos and were among a number of Semitic peoples who ravaged the nation. Ahmose 1 led a rebellion and drove out he Hyksos three hundred years after they invaded (Hyksos invasion about 1694 - 1600 B.C. After the Hyksos were overthrown, their people were held in slavery in Egypt. The Jews were among them. Around 1100 B.C. (Merneptah or Rameses was Pharaoh), the Hebrews were released.
During the time in Egypt, the Hebrews or Hyksos occupiers ravaged the Egyptians, committed all types of atrocities. The Egyptians took revenge after they freed themselves from the Hyksos and enslaved the Hyksos and related groups associated with them.
After the Hebrews were freed, they began writing some of the texts of what became the Bible; however, many of the stories were ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and other cultures stories. The "creation" story and Genesis was actually first written by an Egyptian. However, due to the hatred that the Hebrews had for the Egyptians, the Hebrews included many stories that demonized the character of Blacks in general... many being outright lies and mythology. From these writings, the entire basis of Western Religious writings and beliefs were formed.
That is the main reason for racism today. It is rooted in Religion as Dr. F.K. Price plainly pointed out in "Race and Religion," (Chrenshaw Christian Center, Los Angeles, Ca).
So, as long as Africans follow foreign Semitic Religions, the Semites and Jepethites (Whites) as well as the Brown "Aryans" of India whose system of caste is rooted in ancient conquest, they will continue to oppress Black people.
HERE IS THE SOLUTION
Black folk will do better when we return to the religions that God gave us and when we keep the covenant of recognition of the Sun, Nature and the Divine word "N-G-R" (pronounced "en-ger"). As long as Egypt, Nubia, Ghana, Wagadu, Nok, Abbysinia (today's Ethiopia) and ancient India retained their original religions, they prospered and no invader conquered their lands. As soon as they began to kneel in front of the statues of other people as "God," they began to loose confidence in themselves...they began to see others as superior, letting them enter their lands, thinking their goods were better, trusting them...all hell broke loose after that.
THOSE WHO FORGET HISTORY ARE APT TO REPEAT IT.
At present, when I see tall, majestic Black brothers and sisters of the Dinka, Nuba and other Africans being wiped out, their villages burned, their woman ravaged, I would be a fool to think that being in the religions of the people doing it will make them stop. What about the thousands of Africans of the same religion who are being enslaved in Sudan and Mauritania? What about our ancestors, many who were of the same religions?
Those who are spreading their religions on gullible Africans are interested in building an empire at the expense of Africans and their lands and resources. They don't care one bit about the Black race, because Blacks in their lands are treated just as slaves are (find out for yourself)
So where does that leave the Black race, following religions that continue to believe we should be their slaves?
What we should do is return to our ancient religions, refine and reform them, remove bad practices, build temples, write the sacred lore, write the prayers, legends and so on, mark an recognize the sacred sites and days.
Look, no other group is more spiritual than the Dogon. These are people who perform a scientific religion. No one is more religious than the Vadu of Benin and the Dahomey area of West Africa or the Yorubas, the South African Shamans, the Pacomanias of Jamaica, the Shango of Trinidad, the Yorubas of Cuba, Mexico, Brazil...Instead of allowing trickster "missionaries" to fool us into rejecting our scientific Religions, we should work to consolidate all of them and start developing systems of "churches" temples and places of worship, a priesthood, lore, religious rituals and finding ways to save them and pass them down.
Religion is part of the SOUL of a people. If we decide to become or adopt the religions, names, clothing styles, language and habits of other people, then we become slaves and copies of THEM, and we loose OUR "SOUL."
When we worship and praise the way we had done before our culture was destroyed, that is when we will rediscover our potential and our power. Believe it.
SEE "BLACK HISTORY TIMELINE" http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
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US admits plan to bring down Mugabe
Posted: Thursday, August 22, 2002
Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
Thursday August 22, 2002
The Guardian UK
The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition to bring about a change of administration.
As scores of white farmers went into hiding to escape a round-up by Zimbabwean police, a senior Bush administration official called Mr Mugabe's rule "illegitimate and irrational" and said that his re-election as president in March was won through fraud.
Walter Kansteiner, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, went on to blame Mr Mugabe's policies for contributing to the threat of famine in Zimbabwe.
"We do not see President Mugabe as the democratically legitimate leader of the country," he said. "The political status quo is unacceptable because the elections were fraudulent. So we're working with others, other countries in the region as well as throughout the world, on how we can in fact, together, encourage the body politic of Zimbabwe to in fact go forward and correct that situation."
Mr Kansteiner said the US was working with trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organisations to bring about change. He did not say how he believed Mr Mugabe could be brought down, but dismissed the possibility of a trade embargo, calling it "a blunt instrument" that would hurt ordinary Zimbabweans.
Mr Mugabe is likely to seize on Mr Kansteiner's statement to reinforce his contention that his opponents are stooges for western neo-colonialism.
Shortly after the US official's remarks, a senior Zimbabwean foreign affairs official told Reuters: "The legitimacy of our political system or our president is not dependent on America, Britain or any other country, but on Zimbabweans.
"The bullying tactics that America and Britain are using against us are meant to frustrate our quest for social and economic justice, to stop our programme to redistribute some of the very large tracts of land held by whites here to the indigenous black people."
The US attack on Mr Mugabe came after police began arresting white farmers for defying an August 9 deadline to vacate their land and homes. Initially, more than half of the 2,900 farmers had refused to obey, but after police began making arrests, many packed up and went.
So far, 215 commercial farmers have been arrested on a charge that carries a two-year prison sentence. Many have been released on bail, sometimes on condition that they leave their farms within days.
One of those detained has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly driving his vehicle at four policemen.
Police spokesman Sergeant Lovemore Sibanda said that scores more had gone into hiding.
"The farmers we are looking for are those who vacated their farms, leaving behind their wives and children. Others left the doors of their farmhouses locked, with all the property inside, hoping to return later," he said.
The government has appealed to poor black people to move on to the expropriated land immediately in an attempt to help address the country's dire food shortages.
Harare blames drought for a massive shortfall in this year's harvest. But Andrew Natsios, the head of the US Agency for International Development, says Mr Mugabe's policies have contributed to the threat of famine. "It is madness to arrest commercial farmers in the middle of a drought when they could grow food to save people from starvation," he said.
Mr Natsios accused the Zimbabwean government of using the expropriated farms to reward politicians loyal to Mr Mugabe, and military officers, instead of giving them to the poor and landless.
About six million people, half of Zimbabwe's population, are likely to be in need of food aid within weeks, according to the UN. But only a fraction of the 1.5m tonnes of food needed to avert famine has arrived.
Reprinted from:
www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,778557,00.html
Ayinde
Nice to know where the Bush is coming from but sorry Bush we do not see you as the democratically elected leader of the US.
Theft of the US Presidency by Gregory Palast
The World Reacts to the US Election Crisis
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Mbeki faces new pressure over Zimbabwe
Posted: Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Fred Bridgland In Johannesburg
PRESSURE is growing on South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, to take a tough stand against his northern neighbour, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.
A robust statement last weekend by Pacific Commonwealth leaders was followed yesterday by a demand from the official opposition in Pretoria, the Democratic Alliance (DA), that Mr Mbeki "end his chronic silence on the issue".
At the Commonwealth meeting, Australia’s premier, John Howard, said that he wanted "to throw the book" at Mr Mugabe.
Tony Leon, the DA leader, insisted that an emergency parliamentary debate be convened on the situation in Zimbabwe, where 176 white farmers have been arrested for defying orders to vacate their farms.
Mr Leon said that the arrests of two South Africans demanded a firm response. "It is time that President Mbeki ended his chronic silence on the reign of terror and cruel discrimination being practised by Robert Mugabe," Mr Leon said. MORE
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Racial crimes committed during colonial era
Posted: Tuesday, August 20, 2002
By Zvenyika E. Mugari, herald.co.zw
Historical records show that Chief Huchu, a descendant of Chief Chirimu-hanzu, together with his people, were the first people to settle in and around the area between the little towns of Chivhu and Mvuma. The name of their first Chief was Chivasa.
Oral accounts from those who were old enough to recall how things were in the early 1900s say this area was virgin land when their fathers first settled there.
There was no European settlement anywhere near this area. It was our land.
Mr Fidelis Musemburi is reported (in the book Civil War In Rhodesia, A Report from the Rhodesian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace published in 1976) as saying: "Things changed when a certain Mr Frog came and said to my father, ‘I have come to tell you that this land on which you plough and keep your cattle has been bought by Willoughby’s company (Central Estates) and is now their land.’"
The obvious question the people asked was: From whom has the land been bought since it is our land?
But as white rule became entrenched, it became clear that Huchu and his people could only remain on the land provided they gave their labour to the European Company, the new owners of the land, in a quasi-slavery arrangement.
It was really a form of internal slavery (chibharo) where each head of a family together with wife and children earned food rations plus half a crown per month, out of which they could pay their taxes.
They remained on their original homeland for the next three to four decades working as the company’s vassals (varanda).
In the early 1950s, when the process of implementing the Land apportionment Act intensified, the Huchu people had to be moved just like other Africans who were unfortunate to find themselves in areas demarcated as European areas.
They had to be relocated in those areas, which had been marked as Native Reserves.
But because the company still needed their services they moved from kuMacha to Hunyani Reserve, about 20 km to the west of Mvuma town along the Mvuma- Gweru road.
Their status remained unclear as the company continued to demand their labour as before.
The people’s resistance to the continued slavery sparked conflict between the Huchu people and the Central Estates authorities.
This conflict, compounded with the enactment of the Land Tenure Act of 1969, resulted in more land being annexed by white settlers.
All land in natural regions 1 and 2 as well as most of the land falling in natural region 3 was declared European land.
Hunyani Reserve was thus "legally" lost to the Europeans.
Those who lived in this area — chiefs Huchu, Gobo and Ruya — were to be moved to new tribal trust lands.
The initial plan was to relocate all these three chiefs with their people in Silobela.
While his colleagues willingly complied, chief Stephen Jojo Huchu, with the support of his people, offered resistance to this forced eviction from their homeland.
He refused to be resettled in an area whose agricultural potential was inferior to the place they were leaving behind.
He only agreed to be relocated to Charama area in Gokwe after the white regime had threatened to use force.
Because Charama was a tsetse-infested zone, the Huchu people were not allowed to take any of their livestock with them.
"We were forced to sell all our goats, sheep and cattle to the white man.
"As for pigs, we had to slaughter as many as we could dry in that short space of time, leaving the rest to roam in the ruins," recalls Mbuya Mazvidzeni Makoni, of Makoni village, Chief Huchu.
"The white man had decided that he was not going to buy the pigs. We were allowed to carry chicken and dogs with us, only after serious bargaining with the white man.
"Unfortunately, the dogs did not last long in our new land. They all died of a very mysterious disease, which caused dog blindness.
"I suspect that was the same disease which killed my husband and many other men we came with in the early 1970s. People died in many numbers then," she said.
Surprisingly, in 1970, when the Huchu people were being forcibly evicted from Hunyani and when they were being forced to sell their cattle, all the civilised talk about "willing buyer willing seller" had not been invented.
Incidentally, it was in this year when the colonial regime changed its currency from the pound to the dollar .
"And it caused so much confusion among our people, the majority of whom were semi-numerate when our cattle were being auctioned in the new currency.
"We tended to think that the dollar was equivalent to the pound when in actual fact the value of the dollar was half that of the pound," said Tozivepi Matimbe, one of the few remaining old men who migrated from Hunyani in 1970.
"The whole auctioning process was not only unfair to us, it was downright fraudulent.
"There were no prices for calves. They were simply taken over free of charge by the buyer.
"I was not always as poor as you see me today. I owned a flock of 15 sheep, 11 goats and 7 head of cattle, but that is all history now.
"With the money I got after selling all these, I was only able to buy a bicycle and the balance did not last until the next rainy season."
Unfortunately again for the Huchu people, the language of journalism of that time had not yet evolved such damning epithets as "land grabbing, farm invasions, farm looting, forced evictions and so on".
The media of the time was mum over the forced mass evictions and expropriation of the black populations, who formerly lived in the Central Estates area, Rhodesdale area, Fort Rixon area, to name only a few.
The black populations involved then were much larger than the 3 000 odd white commercial farmers who must make way for the new farmers now.
Such racial injustices on a national scale as were perpetrated on the Huchu people surely should have merited international media attention and condemnation.
But it was not to be because it was not in the interest of their capitalist financiers.
The tragic story of the Huchu people was something which the mellow drums of the journalistic fraternity ought to have been drumming loudly about for all the world to know instead of the melodramatic fictions about mayhem on the farms, hapless women getting beheaded by party functionaries and general breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe.
The legacy of those racial crimes committed during the colonial chapter of Africa’s history is still with us today in the form of a social class of the black peasantry.
To put the record straight, it must be known that peasant agriculture itself was a creation of colonialism.
Both the Shona and the Ndebele people had established a vibrant agricultural economy by the advent of white colonial settlerism on the sub-continent.
They kept enough livestock and grew enough crops for self-sustenance as well as for trade.
Mandivamba Rukuni’s book Zimbabwe’s Agricultural Revolution (1994) gives a clear historical perspective to Zimbabwe’s land question and on how the dual system of commercial/peasant agriculture was a deliberate outcome of the racial settlement patterns of the colonial system.
The centrality of the land question explains why revolutionary songs such as "Tinodawo nyika zuva rayo rasvika" inspired many generations of black Zimbabweans to fight for the restoration of their land.
Ask any ordinary Zimbabwean what they think the liberation struggle was about and they will tell you that it was fought so that we could take back our land, not about democracy, rule of law or good governance.
"Hunyani remains a lost paradise to us, and the whites who forcibly evicted us should be held responsible for this poverty which we are in today," said Mbuya Madzungudza.
She was pounding the dried fruits of a thorn bush, which they recently discovered as a good substitute for washing soap powder, which has been priced beyond their reach.
"Given the choice, going back to Hunyani would be paradise restored for me, and I don’t doubt for most of my people," said the acting chief Mr Tadios Huchu.
His father, the then chief Regis Huchu, had succeeded the legendary chief Stephen Jojo Huchu who died soon after his release from prison for the crime of harbouring three armed insurgents in his area in the year 1975.
Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=13279&pubdate=2002-08-20
Zimbabwe Under Siege - by Gregory Elich
For a case study on the politics and economics behind 'sustainability,' one needs look no further than Zimbabwe. Gregory Elich presents an excellent and comprehensive review of the history of Zimbabwe and its ongoing land reform struggles in the face of drought, starvation and economic disaster perpetuated by Western intervention and demands.
Elich's work is particularly timely as Great Britain and the U.S. are considering making the sanctions against Zimbabwe more severe and will be working very hard at the Earth Summit to force African states to also impose sanctions. MORE...
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New rule on farm workers’ benefits
Posted: Tuesday, August 20, 2002
Herald
ALL commercial farmers whose pieces of land have been designated for resettlement are now forced to pay terminal benefits to their former workers following a new rule now in force.
In the amendment of the Labour Relations (Terminal Benefits and Entitlements of Agricultural Employees Affected by Compulsory Acquisition) Regulations gazetted last week, all farm workers will be entitled to receive benefits even if their employers were served with notices before the regulations came into effect.
Affected farm workers will also receive their terminal benefits whether or not their employment was terminated before or after the regulations were introduced.
According to a statutory instrument published in the Government Gazette, the amendment was necessary to avoid doubt over what category of workers qualified for compensation.
In April this year, an Agricultural Employees’ Compensation Committee to determine terminal benefits to farm workers whose employers’ farms are acquired for resettlement was set up.
The committee, chaired by the Secretary for Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare or his nominee, comprises representatives from the ministries of Agriculture, Local Government and the National Employment Council for the Agricultural Industry.
It determines what terminal benefits and entitlements, if any, are due to any employee of an employer in respect of whom the committee receives notification of payment of compensation for land compulsorily acquired for resettlement. MORE
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Media bias on the Zimbabwe Crisis
Posted: Sunday, August 18, 2002
by Ayinde
August 18, 2002
The BBC, Guardian UK, Independent UK, Daily Telegraph UK and most news feeds are misinforming the public about the Zimbabwe land affair. They choose to feature or highlight articles that sympathize with the White farmers that are crammed with lies.
They all claim that the shortage of food in Zimbabwe is due to the farm seizures, however this is not the entire story.
Many regions in Africa are presently experiencing a drought and that is responsible for low food production. Most of the White farmers in Zimbabwe grew tobacco while peasant farmers grow about 70% of the maize used in Zimbabwe. ( Famine in southern Africa Guardian UK )
The shortage of food is directly related to the drought and trade restrictions imposed by Britain and the U.S.
It should be noted that these farms are being seized and turned over in time to get the new farmers ready for the next crop season.
Another fact usually left out is that most of the farm workers were from Malawi or Mozambique and they received an average of about US$25 a month, furthermore living conditions on the farms were awfully poor.
These Malawian and Mozambican laborers were heavily dependent on their White employers, relying on them for 'free' or heavily subsidized housing and 'health care', as well as 'education' for their children. This is the modern day slavery that these White farmers wickedly benefited from.
Most of the food problems in Africa are directly related to the colonial policy of seizing the most fertile lands in Africa to produce food for Europe. Africans were to supply cheap labour. In many cases indigenous Africans who usually grew their own food were forced unto the worst lands and as such they became dependant of food imports.
Whether we like Mugabe or not has nothing to do with the fact that the frontline media reports fail to give the readers the true picture.
####
Articles that give a better picture of the situation:
Britain's Guardian: An apologia for imperialist intervention in Zimbabwe
By Barbara Slaughter; 3 April 2002
On March 14, in the immediate aftermath President Robert Mugabe’s election victory in Zimbabwe, the Guardian newspaper published an editorial pronouncing its verdict on the result.
The Guardian has, along with its predecessor the Manchester Guardian, been the voice of English liberalism for almost two centuries, priding itself on its encouragement of critical debate. As such it has a very definite constituency amongst the educated middle class. Undoubtedly therefore, some of its readers will have been concerned about the open colonial character of the recent British intervention in Zimbabwean affairs. The country’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) received financial and political support from Britain and even before the election had taken place, Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded an MDC victory and stated openly that no other result would be acceptable.
Full Article : wsws.org
Zimbabwe Under Siege
Aug 26, 2002 by Gregory Elich
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200209040535.html
Farm workers caught in the middle -BBC
(Not featured on BBC's front pages)
Zimbabwe: War on the Peasantry by George Monbiot
Wholly Derelict Journalism
Letter to the Editor
by Alex Jay Berman, Sept 09, 2002
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/berman02.html
My Journalistic Dereliction:
Response to Mr. Berman's Letter
by Gregory Elich, Sept 09, 2002
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich005.html
Zimbabwe: Life After The Election
by Baffour Ankomah, Sept 09, 2002
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/ankomah1.html
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Newly Resettled Farmers Face Litmus Test
Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2002
Herald
THIS year’s farming season is a litmus test for the newly resettled farmers to prove their competence and shame the country’s detractors, President Mugabe said yesterday.
Addressing the 63rd Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union congress in Harare, he reminded members of the union who include the newly resettled farmers that they faced a test to prove they could produce and feed the nation.
"This congress, therefore, could not have come at a better time for preparations to be properly discussed and agreed towards ensuring the success of the coming agricultural season," he said.
The Government would help farmers with inputs and seek the participation of the private sector and other institutions to come up with credit schemes to enable easy access to inputs.
On their part, the farmers should fully utilise the land allocated to them under resettlement. MORE
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13 more farmers arrested
Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2002
Herald
THIRTEEN more white commercial farmers have been arrested for defying a Govern-ment directive to vacate their premises.
They were expected to spend the night in police custody.
Yesterday’s arrests, made in the Nyamandlovu, Fort Rixon and Mhangura commercial farming areas, bring to 19 the total number of such arrests since Thursday.
The Government has said it is losing patience with defiant farmers, most of whose eviction notices expired last Saturday.
Chief police spokesman Assistant Commissioner Way-ne Bvudzijena last night confirmed the arrests of the 13.
Eight were arrested in Nyamandlovu, three in Fort Rixon and two in Mhangura.
Asst Comm Bvudzijena said that more arrests were to be expected as the force was receiving more information on defiant farmers from the acquiring authority, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. MORE
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Time to take the bull by the horns
Posted: Friday, August 16, 2002
By Elton Dzikiti Recently in Malaysia, herald.co.zw
SOME developing countries in Africa and Asia have embarked on a programme to counter inaccurate and biased news reports disseminated by Western news agencies and media houses.
Although this appears to be an onerous task considering the limited resources available in the developing countries, the participants are determined to put in a good fight.
Leaders from the concerned countries have pledged to back the project, dubbed the Smart News Network International (SNNi).
The Internet will be heavily relied upon to offer alternative voices to stories carried mostly by Western media institutions like Reuters, AFP, the British Broadcasting Corporation and Cable News Network.
SNNi was launched in August last year in Kampala, Uganda by host president Yoweri Museveni, Mozambican leader Joachim Chissano and Malaysian premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
It encompasses a number of media organisations from some African countries, Malaysia and other nations, which subscribe to the concept of smart partnership.
Current participating members include the Daily News of Botswana, Bernama, The New Strait Times, The Star and Utusan Malaysia — all of Malaysia, the Mozambique News Agency, Namibia Today, BuaNews (South Africa), New Vision (Uganda) and The Herald (Zimbabwe).
More players from Africa have already expressed interest in joining the network, which has started producing encouraging results since its inception.
The New Ziana (Zimbabwe) is also due to join the network, while other news agencies and media houses in the Republic of Guinea, Malawi, Ghana and Laos are expected to follow suit.
The thrust involves daily contribution of accurate, fair and balanced news items — including photographs and video images — by the members to the SNNi website (www.snni.org).
Newspapers or agencies from participating countries can then access that site and use stories filed by members on their respective countries.
That would, it is hoped, provide the developing countries with objective, fair, accurate and balanced news about their peer nations as opposed to reports from or supported by the West.
More than 20 senior journalists from Africa, Malaysia and Laos recently attended a workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on SNNi.
Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Seri Syed Hamid Albar, told the scribes that most Western media organisations were prone to projecting a distorted and slanted coverage of developing countries.
"They tend to highlight our failures instead of our successes. They choose to interpret events to suit their own agendas rather than to report facts objectively," Mr Albar said.
"They try to impose their so-called journalistic values and judgment on us in the name of Press freedom and freedom of expression without taking into consideration the local circumstances, conditions and sensitivity peculiar to our countries or region."
He said on the other hand, the Western countries were more often than not projected in positive light.
Countries of the South, he added, have over the last two decades started to marshal their own forces to create channels to distribute their own news and information.
"Various regional media groupings have grown up to disseminating news about their countries among one another, thereby providing alternative sources of news and information other than those from the Western media."
He said there was evidence that such exchanges of news helped to provide objective and accurate news and information to the outside world in efforts to counter the distortion and half truths or even fabrications that some Western-based media organisations churn.
Chairman of the SNNi project, Mr Tan Sri Kamarul Ariffin, said journalists were expected to uphold the principles of natural justice, one of which is audi alterem partem (listening to the other side).
"Unfortunately, some of them deliberately ignore the basic ethical standard of fair and accurate reporting by succumbing to political or ethnic bias, and worse by being downright dishonest," said Mr Ariffin.
He also criticised coverage of developing countries by global media players, which he said was from "their own blinkered perspective with scant regard for alternative views".
"It is not uncommon for the global television networks and news agencies to slant their stories to suit the vested interest of their political or corporate masters.
"News disseminated by certain wire agencies have not always been fair and balanced, and accordingly they must be regarded with care and circumspection."
A few days after the workshop, leaders attending the Langkawi International Dialogue challenged the media to report objectively and accurately about events in the so-called Third World.
They also encouraged journalists from the developing world to start trusting each other and rely on news items generated by them and not from "parachute journalists".
In opening the dialogue, Prime Minister Mohamad said when governments in developing democracies are stable and remain in power for long, even if democratically elected and above board, they are accused of being undemocratic.
"The international media and the governments of the liberal countries will all work hard to undermine these countries. They cannot bring themselves to believe that the people want it this way. They cannot believe that the natives they had ruled before understand democracy and the rule of law."
He said the international media fabricates stories that if developing democracies were stable, then the leaders must be dictators.
"Or they would report, despite evidence on the contrary, that these leaders were ignored by the people, that the people fear them.
"For the media and the Western governments there is nothing right that these governments of the natives can do. And because they have convinced themselves through their own lies that these governments are bad, they would do their best to destabilise these countries. They would support and encourage anyone, NGOs in particular, to overthrow the government."
Describing the practice as economic terrorism Mr Mohamad said to fend it off, developing countries must work together within their own borders and between countries.
He acknowledged that although the countries were weak and client states largely dependent on aid and loans, it was still possible to take a common stand in the fight.
"In this we are not alone. There are forces within the rich countries themselves which are with us and we can enlist their help."
During a session at the LID whereby leaders turned the tables and grilled journalists, the theme was mainly on why the developing countries were always portrayed negatively.
The leaders included President Mugabe, Mr Mohamad, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Mozambique Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi, Ghana’s President John Kufuor, President of Sudan Colonel Al-Bashir, Uganda Vice-President Specioza Kazibwe, King Mswati of Swaziland, Dr Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho and former Botswana premier Ketumile Masire.
In Zimbabwe, the Minister of State in Vice-President Msika’s office, Dr Olivia Muchena, this week called upon black consciousness movements across the world to create their own media houses.
She told a delegation of visiting Americans that there was need to educate the world, starting with the United States congress, about the actual situation in Zimbabwe.
"It is completely weird that the US Congress sits down and decides to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe when they get their information from CNN an the BBC who have no moral obligation to judge us.
"Zimbabwe is an independent jurisdiction and therefore must not be persecuted on account of false reports by the Western media," said Dr Muchena.
This growing realisation by the so-called developing countries to tell their own stories is set to change the way events have been reported, bringing relief to governments and leaders long demonised unjustly by biased media organisations.
Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=13172&pubdate=2002-08-16
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Honouring an African leader
Posted: Friday, August 16, 2002
By Deborah John, trinidadexpress.com
“No one remembers old Marcus Garvey, no one remembers old Marcus Garvey”, reggae artiste Burning Spear’s plaintive complaint becomes an affirmation ensuring that in essence we never forget his name.
Tomorrow is his birthday to be celebrated with bashments throughout the country.
Marcus Moziah Garvey was born in the quiet little town of St Ann’s Bay, on the northern coast of Jamaica, on August 17, 1887.
He was named Marcus, after his father, and legend has it that his mother, Sarah, sought to give him the middle name of Moses, explaining prophetically, “I hope he will be like Moses and lead his people,” Not a religious man, his father compromised with the less prominent biblical middle name of Moziah.
The Garveys had 11 children but only Marcus, the youngest, and his sister, Indiana, lived to maturity.
When he was 14, family financial difficulties forced Garvey to leave school and go to work. He was apprenticed to learn the printing trade with his godfather, a Mr Burrowes. After two years he left St Ann’s Bay to go to Kingston to work at his new trade.
By age 18 he had become foreman of PA Benjamin and Co and in 1908 he headed the printers’ strike and was blacklisted.
Subsequently, conscious of the need for organised action to improve the lot of the black worker, he began editing a periodical known as Garvey’s Watchman. He was involved in other efforts and in 1912 journeyed to London to learn what he could about the condition of blacks in other parts of the British empire.
He also became interested in the position of blacks in the United States, and it was in London he came across a copy of Booker T Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery.
This book had a profound effect upon him as he later testified: “I read Up From Slavery by Booker T Washington and then my doom—if I may so call it—of being a race leader dawned upon me... I asked... ‘Where is the black man’s Government? Where is his King and his Kingdom? Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?’ I could not find them and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them.’”
The seeds of Garveyism had unwittingly been sown.
In the summer of 1914 Garvey went back home to Jamaica, his head spinning with plans for a programme of race redemption. “My brain was afire,” he recalled as he considered the possibility of “uniting all the Negro peoples of the world into one great body to establish a country and government absolutely their own”.
Back in Jamaica, he contacted some of his old friends and on August 1, 1914, he established the organisation that would occupy his time and energy until his death, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League.
UNIA soon boasted of a membership of 4,000,000 members internationally. Garvey also created within the UNIA, the Black Cross Nurses to take care of the sick and disabled Africans.
A poster advertising the Black Star Line Steamship Corp. Sometime in early 1919, Garvey projected the idea of an all black steamship company that would link the coloured peoples of the world in commercial and industrial intercourse. “Now is the time,” he said, “for the Negro to invest in the Black Star Line so that in the near future he may exert the same influence upon the world as the white man does today.”
Soon, The Negro Factories Co-operation was formed. This co-operative included a chain of groceries, restaurants, steam laundries, small-scale industries and publishing houses and under Garvey’s dynamic leadership. The UNIA also founded the Black Star Shipping Line and later, the Black Cross Navigation Co. To further propagate the philosophy of Pan African nationalism, Garvey and the UNIA founded the weekly newspaper, Negro World, which was distributed in America, England, Canada, Africa, the entire Caribbean and almost every corner of the world where Africans lived at that period in time.
Tony Martin writes: “The UNIA was an international movement of massive proportions. At its height in the 1920s it contained over 1,200 branches in over 40 countries. Its membership spread to almost every nook and cranny of the world where African people lived in appreciable numbers.
“In many areas where there were no organised units of the association, individuals could still be found in spirit and who subscribed to Garvey’s principles.”
It wasn’t long before his enemies saw the UNIA as a threat and began to wage a campaign of terror against the UNIA and the progressive works of Marcus Garvey.
This campaign not only arose from the governments of England and the United States, but also from communists and certain African intellectuals, such as WEB Dubois, CLR James, A Phillip Randolph and George Padmore (who would later change his philosophy to Pan Africanism after being rejected by the Communist party).
The UNIA and Garvey’s philosophy has often been misinterpreted by many, as being the “Back to African Movement”, as being a racist organisation and under the leadership of a racist leader.
Garvey had never advocated total repatriation for all Africans in the Diaspora to Africa. Garvey and the UNIA advocated that Africans in the Diaspora with high technological skills should make their contributions to the development of the Motherland, Africa.
He sent doctors, lawyers, engineers, technicians and other professionals to Liberia as part of the UNIA’s contribution to the industrialisation, liberation and unification of Africa and African people.
Before his untimely death on June 10, 1940, in England, Garvey left statements with us that were to be beneficial to all African people, if put into practice at all times. He said:
“The greatest weapon used against African people is disorganisation” and “Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. We have a beautiful history and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.”
Garvey inspired generations of great Africans, past and present, including: Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammed, Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael), Yosef Ben Jochannan and Hoki Madhubuti.
This weekend, various Rastafarian groups and popular entertainment personalities will honour the memory of the Honourable Marcus Garvey on the anniversary of (what would have been) his 115 birthday.
—Additional reporting Nigel Telesford
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Mugabe Assures Whites That They Won't Be Left Landless
Posted: Friday, August 16, 2002
(The Herald) PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler, has assured whites that they will not be left landless or homeless under an ongoing land reform programme in the southern African nation.
Zimbabwe has embarked on a programme to redistribute land, which was hitherto in the hands of a white minority numbering less than 3 000, while the black majority - about 12 million -was condemned to infertile land measuring less than 30 percent of the country's total arable land.
Mugabe told a visiting American delegation on Thursday that some white farmers did not want to lose the privilige of owning many farms hence their reluctance to vacate properties designated for resettlement.
Several white farmers have been arrested in the past few days for defying Government directives to have vacated designated farms by Saturday.
Mugabe also reiterated that Zimbabwe did not fear the might of Britain and its Western allies when it came to the question of sovereignty.
The Zimbabwe government, he added, would remain resolute in its quest to equitably redistribute land even when some African countries seemed to waver in support.
"Britain is a great nation and so is the United States. But it does not mean we will fear that greatness when our sovereignty is at threat," he said.- The Herald-SNNi
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Zimbabwe to leave the DRC
Posted: Wednesday, August 14, 2002
ZIMBABWE is now preparing to withdraw all troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo following the brightening of peace prospects in the war-torn country, President Mugabe has said.
Cde Mugabe said developments in the DRC, including the signing of a peace agreement between that country and Rwanda, provided an opportunity for the withdrawal of Zimbabwean troops in accordance with the Lusaka peace deal.
"I would want to extend that notion by assuring the nation that we are now working on a programme to withdraw all our forces from the DRC," he said.
Cde Mugabe, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, was speaking at the commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the ZDF at Rufaro Stadium. MORE
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Institutional Racism and the SAT
Posted: Monday, August 12, 2002
By Tim Wise
Failing the Test of Fairness
Ever noticed how expensive restaurants go out of their way to fill the air of their bathrooms with the refreshing scents of a pine forest after a gentle rain? Hoping to cover up the smells that would otherwise predominate in such an environment, the keepers of luxury lavatories bombard their patrons with diversionary scents, presumably to make one's overall dining experience more pleasant.
Frankly, I've always perceived such efforts as more than a little inadequate to the task at hand. Shit, after all, even on a pinecone, is still shit. Likewise, there's a good reason why the makers of incense don't market a patchouli and crap stick. As we say in the south, you can "pretty up" a pig by slapping a dress on it, but in the end, it's still a pig.
Such is a lesson we would do well to remember in the wake of the recent announcement that the Educational Testing Service is going to "revamp" the SAT, ostensibly to make it more fair and relevant for a 21st century educational system.
Despite their insistence that the new SAT will better predict student ability while reducing unfairness by eliminating culture-bound items like analogies, the announced changes actually overlook the largest problems with standardized tests.
Although eliminating analogies is an admirable first step since studies have found these to be biased against those from non-white, non-middle-class backgrounds—what with questions involving words like "regatta"—the problems with the SAT were always deeper than that.
In fact, whatever cultural bias the ETS has eliminated with the ban on analogies will likely be re-triggered with the addition of a "writing" section, whose graders no doubt will emphasize stylistically and grammatically Standard English, marking students down whose writing style employs idioms, phrases, or merely word patterns more common to communities of color. Poetic license will have no place, one suspects, on the SAT writing test.
Though internal cultural bias is a real phenomenon, and one that has been observed in testing for many years, the bigger issue is that supporters of the SAT presuppose that administering a standardized test to profoundly unstandardized students, from unstandardized schools, and then using results on that test to determine college placement can ever be fair.
The fact is, even if such biased items are removed from the SAT, the unequal educational experience of the students taking the test—especially in terms of class and race—all but guarantees a persistent scoring gap between whites on the one hand, and blacks, American Indians or Latinos on the other.
Furthermore, the announcement that Algebra II will be added to the test can only cause alarm for those concerned about the racial score gaps; after all, tracking in schools is so pernicious that blacks, even when they score at the top of 8th grade achievement test distributions, are about 40% less likely than whites whose scores are merely average to be placed in upper-level math courses in high school. As such, they won't even get around to Algebra II by the time the SAT is taken.
But indeed, even tracking isn't the biggest issue here. Oh sure, it matters. On the one hand it means that certain students of color will be underexposed to the kind of material found on a test like the SAT; and on the other hand it means that certain students—especially whites and many Asians who are presumed to be "good at math" early on, and thus tracked accordingly—will have an edge going in to the test. But still, tracking is not the clincher that makes the SAT inherently problematic.
The two biggest issues are of a different nature altogether and incapable of being fixed with piecemeal reforms.
The first is what Claude Steele, Chair of the Psychology department at Stanford University has called "stereotype threat." As Steele and his colleagues have noted in a number of ingenious experiments, black students take standardized tests under a cloud of group suspicion that hinders performance—suspicion on the part of the larger society that they are less intelligent and capable than others.
Black students are well aware of the negative stereotypes held about them by members of the larger society. As such, when blacks who are highly motivated and value educational achievement take a standardized test and expect the results to be used to indicate cognitive ability, the fear of living down to the stereotype negatively impacts their performance. These students may rush through the test—so as to seem more confident than they truly are—or alternately take too much time, trying desperately not to make mistakes. The self-doubt engendered by the racist beliefs of the larger culture is added to the general anxiety that all test-takers feel, to produce, for black students, a unique disadvantage.
As proof that it is stereotype threat and not inherent ability differences that explain racial gaps on standardized admissions tests, Steele notes that when the same test questions are given to whites and blacks in experimental settings, and yet the students are told that the results are not indicative of ability, and will not be graded, the stereotype threat dissipates and they perform as well as their white counterparts.
In other words, so long as racist beliefs about black ability are common, those stigmatized by these beliefs will often underperform as a function of the anxiety generated by the stereotype itself. Certainly there is nothing that ETS can do to the structure of the test that can alleviate this problem.
And finally, racial gaps are ultimately a function of the way that tests like the SAT are developed. Indeed, the gaps are all but built-in.
As anyone who has taken the SAT or a similar test remembers, there is an experimental section on the exam—either an extra verbal or extra math section—which contains questions that are not counted toward a student's score. The section exists so as to "pre-test" questions for use on future versions of the test.
But as ETS concedes, questions chosen for future use must produce (in the pre-test phase) similar gaps between test-takers as existed in the overall test taken at that time. In other words, questions are rarely if ever selected for future use if students who received lower scores overall answer that particular question correctly as often or more often than those who scored higher overall.
The racial implications of such a policy should be clear. Because blacks, Latinos, and American Indian students tend to score lower on these exams than whites and Asians, any question in the pre-test phase that black students answer correctly as often as (or more often than) whites would be virtually guaranteed never to appear on an actual standardized exam!
In practice, questions answered correctly by blacks more than whites have been routinely excluded from future use on the SAT. Although questions that whites answer correctly 30% more often than blacks are allowed to remain on the test, questions answered correctly even 7% more often by blacks than whites have been thrown out.
Although the rationale for this practice is not overtly racist—the testing company, for example, does not intentionally seek to maintain lower scores for blacks—the thinking has a racist impact.
Essentially, the company's position is that for any question to have "predictive validity," it should be answered correctly or incorrectly in rough proportion to the overall number of correct or incorrect answers given by test-takers. But since the general scores have tended to exhibit a racial gap, such logic results in the virtual guarantee of maintaining that gap, as a function of test development itself.
If test questions were made less culturally biased, so that the racial gap shrunk or disappeared in the pre-test phase, those questions would likely be thrown out, simply because—being less culturally biased—they failed to replicate the racial gaps produced by the rest of the exam.
Interestingly, as testing expert Jay Rosner has demonstrated, the makers of the SAT could reduce the racial gap between whites and blacks while still maintaining the same level of overall test difficulty by choosing questions that, although equally tough, produce less differentiation between white and black test-takers. That instead they maximize these differences by way of the questions they choose, and that reforms of this nature are not being offered by ETS indicates how unconcerned they truly are about test fairness.
Instead of trying to pretty up this pig, persons concerned about educational equity, true opportunity and fairness should be calling for colleges and Universities to either eliminate the use of the SAT in admissions decisions, or at least to massively downplay its importance, given its irrelevance in predicting actual academic ability.
SAT gaps of as many as 300 points between two students (or groups of students) can be completely insignificant in terms of indicating actual ability differences, and gaps of 125 points between students are considered random by the test-makers themselves, and say nothing about the different abilities of the students in question.
That SAT scores have little to do with one's ability is borne out by a number of studies and even data provided by the test-makers themselves, which indicate that only ten percent (at most) of the difference between students in terms of freshman grades can be explained by results on the SAT. Further, the correlation between SAT scores and overall four-year college grades or graduation rates, has been so low as to be essentially nonexistent, explaining no more than 3% of the difference between any two students.
If ETS wants to promote fairness—and indeed they insist that they are committed to changing the unequal educational system that helps produce scoring gaps—they must first stop promoting a test battery that replicates and reinforces that inequity. If they wish to provide tests purely for the purpose of gauging how much is being taught and learned in K-12 schools, so be it.
But so long as they release test scores prior to college admission, knowing that such scores will be used to dole out opportunities that themselves result in still more opportunities upon graduation, ETS can only be seen as complicit in the maintenance of racial and economic stratification. They are not reformers, but merely gatekeepers for the status quo. And that smells the same, no matter how one tries to cover it up.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and lecturer. He can be reached at (and footnotes procured from) timjwise@msn.com
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Mugabe 'will enforce farm evictions'
Posted: Monday, August 12, 2002
Staff and agencies, Guardian UK
The president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, today signalled the death of white farming in his country by insisting he would enforce last week's deadline for nearly 2,000 white farmers to abandon their land or face two years in jail.
About 2,900 of Zimbabwe's remaining 4,500 white commercial farmers were told in May to hand over their farms to government control without compensation by midnight last Thursday. About 60% of the farmers facing eviction chose to ignore the deadline and remain on their farms, according to Jenni Williams, a spokeswoman for the new Justice for Agriculture (JAG) pressure group.
The farmers had hoped that either Zimbabwe's courts or Mr Mugabe himself would rescind the land seizure order, but today the president announced: "We set ourselves an August deadline for the redistribution of land and that deadline stands."
Speaking at a Harare cemetery during the funeral of former finance minister, Bernard Chidzero, Mr Mugabe was greeted by about 15,000 supporters carrying posters proclaiming "This land is ours" and "Damn the western world for its racism in Zimbabwe". His speech marked Heroes' Day, a holiday honouring those who fought in the battle for independence.
Mr Mugabe hopes to install new landowners on the farms in time for planting the next crop in autumn.
The white farmers are worried that the president's words could unleash attacks by pro-government militias seeking to redistribute land by force.
The shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, said today in advance of Mr Mugabe's speech that the prime minister, Tony Blair, should use the upcoming Earth summit in Johannesburg to take a stand against the violence, famine and land seizures in Zimbabwe.
"Mugabe and his people, I think, will be out in Johannesburg. They have got to be faced out. They world has got to say to them that this type of behaviour - the murder, the mayhem, the obscenity of starvation on the one side against agricultural land which could be producing food laying idle on the other - this is simply not on," Mr Ancram said.
Britain has led international condemnation of Mr Mugabe's government and recently arrested a member of the ruling Zanu PF party who entered the UK in breach of EU sanctions.
Such actions led Mr Mugabe to refer to Mr Blair this morning as "the gangster of No 10 Downing Street".
Reproduced from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,773256,00.html
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