WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

In the old musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, there is the chorus that sings the question: Jesus Christ, Superstar, who do you think you are? A very pertinent question to someone claiming to be the son of God and wanting to redeem souls through his message but choosing to be born in the wrong place at a backward time instead of coming today to pass his message via the internet and the new mass media to the world at large. The question of identity is perennial. Who are you? Who do you think you are? Are you who you think you are?
Of all the people I claim to know there is none more preoccupied by identity like the French. This is best expressed by the French bureaucracy and its persistent and obsessive need to know and ascertain who you are. A naive person may infer some serious concerns for his or her welfare but the problem is elsewhere. Actually, France does not know itself really. There was a time it considered itself an Empire, an era that ended after Vietnam and Algeria, though someone has forgotten to tell France that, and thus it continues to strut as a big Empire with tin pot dictators of small countries in Africa fawning over or under it in a Franceafrique that is as laughable as the British Commonwealth.
The Empire syndrome gives an obsession with History and the need to mould others into one’s will or under one’s rule and diktat. Furthermore, France has suffered many humiliations (1870, 1940, etc) but it has refused to accept or acknowledge this heavy weight of history and pretends all is well in its pursuit of grandeur. For the confusion, poor souls of colour have to pay, of course. The identity crisis that has struck France has thrown it into a contradiction in which it considers islands inhabited by dark skinned fellows as its overseas territories and the people as French at the same time, as it yearns feverishly to keep its basically white identity. Hence, the present need to debate its national identity spearheaded by a minister of immigration (Eric Besson) who himself has changed his political colour so radically that many wonder who he really is. Who are you people? Are you proud of being French? Can Eyoum, Mamadou, Latifa, Kim or Ananda be really French? Who do you think you are? And the trap question: are you proud of who you are— that is to say are you proud of being French?

The Kenyans had an attorney general called Charles Njonjo who believed he was British and looked down upon his countrymen. For a while, Idi Amin imagined he was a Scot. Emperor Bokassa called De Gaulle Papa and took himself as French. Some Arabs think they are white and discriminate against Black Africans while in Ethiopia, the birthplace of human kind, the people think they are the one and only chosen people. Delusions and illusions over identity, a mess into which the argument seeking French want to wade in.

Alas, the non-white French are thus trapped. What with their non French religion, their penchant for scarification, genital mutilation, witchcraft, polygamy, barbarity, marabous, bizarre cultures and languages. What with their noise and smell as one old French politician said without shame. Who are they? Are they really French? Are they proud of being French? If so, why are they still clinging to their other identity? What is it being French? The whole concept of national identity was first spawned by the right wing National Front, headed by a paratrooper who excelled in torturing Algerians, to affirm that French means white and may the darkies and their turbans, the Arabs and their hijabs please go away. Sarkozy tweaked the fear of being flooded by immigrants to garner votes away from the Socialists who, in my view, have yet to prove themselves free of the malady of racism and have time and again shown that they also pander to the right wing prejudices. Is being French defined by “nepotism a la Sarkozy?” Is "Frenchness" singing the national anthem that has lines about "impure blood irrigating our farmlands"? Or does it refer only to, as Parisian kids used to sing, "our ancestors the Gaul (who) had blue eyes and blond hairs"? Does France symbolize the land of refuge when last year it expelled some 30,000 asylum seekers (some sent back to the dungeons and their deaths), the present immigration minister (the very man heading the debate) vows he will surpass this figure and more than 200,000 refugees are denied recognition and legal papers? The Senegalese born French Minister of Sports, Rama Yade, tried to define what France means to her, talked of de Gaulle and the "greatness of France joined with the liberty of the world" almost as if she believes in such inanity. Wild!



Clichés and platitudes aside, the deafening assertion of France being the land of liberty ((egalite, fraternite et liberte) aside, the present reality of France is poignantly captured by the suffering of the “sans papiers” (undocumented immigrants), the pain of the deportees, the poverty of the African street cleaners, the institutionalized racism, the rage of the marginalized youths, and the neo colonial interference in the affairs of African countries. France is also a Pascal Sevran blaming the "African penis for the African famine" and calling for mass sterilization, a Kouchner defending the Burmese junta and Total, a Giscard d’Estaing dealing with Bokassa over diamonds, a Sarkozy declaring Africa has yet to enter the doors of modernity, a Chirac complaining of our noise and odour, and of the common people giving millions of votes to the likes of Le Pen.
France, being a country of contradictions and with a multi ethnicity and multi-culturalism that it is refusing to accept as legit, is indeed fascinating to observe and dissect. The French obsession with splitting hairs and complicating all and sundry when it can be rendered simple once again makes the discussion on national identity a hurdle. As an obsession of the right wing, this search for a lily white national identity (our ancestor the Gaul), is doomed to a resounding failure. As a discussion to enhance integration and build a multi cultural and multi ethnic France its beginning does not augur well. The very man in charge of the ministry of immigration and promising to deport our black and brown bodies back to our own backyards is the one in charge of the discussion on this crucial issue. Up to now, the declarations have on the whole proved to be platitudes. Equality is a myth, integration an illusion no matter if, during naturalization, you accept the insistence to change your name from the original to a French one (the Turks also buy athletes from Africa and force them to change their names). Liberty? As James Baldwin who knew France said of another matter: go tell it on the mountain outside of France if you can, please. Fraternity? Between the ones organising the deportation and the deportees? Between the street cleaner and the Neuilly (upscale Parisian suburb) residents? In your dreams, Madame et Monsieur.
As elsewhere in the world, where double standards triumph, the question of identity rests on wealth and colour of skin. A Sarkozy or Pontiawoski is easily accepted as French more than a Mamadou and Kwaku or Abdella and Kapoor. A useful and rich African or Arab (tennis or football star) will be identified as French more than the impoverished and blighted resident of the Banlieues/Projects/Ghettos/Council flats. And yet again, even for those who may be accepted, naturalized, officially called French, there is always the question: where are you originally from? I was born and raised in Paris. Oh yeah, good for you. But your parents come from Bab el Oued, Dakar, Bangui, no? The name, the accent and above all the colour are important giveaways in determining national identity. And yet, the trend is against those who want to go back to the lore of their blond hair blue eyed ancestors and the mythic pure race. They came to us first as colonizers and, warm hearted as we are, we have believed their message of fraternity and came back to them as émigrés.
What’s in a name? The French national identity will have to include everyone, good or bad, just as it has embraced the Sarkozys (Hungary), the Moscovicis (Romania), Balladurs (Turkey) and even Eric Besson (the present Franco-Lebanese immigration minister) among other foreigners in the past. There is really no need for a discussion on this. Foreigners, as it were, are becoming presidents not only in France but also in the USA and well-bred Parisian kids will one day sing of "our kinky haired and brown eyed ancestors". For the time being in France, Jesus Christ, as it were, remains a French speaking, blond and blue-eyed man of Northern European stock.

WILL CASTRATING TYRANTS HELP?

Will Castrating Tyrants Help?



The rest of the world has not got it yet. Many still think that Africa's major problems concern famine, AIDS, conflicts and wars, poverty, rigged elections, nepotism and corruption, fevers of all types that are said to originate from the continent and more. How wrong. No one knows Africa like its cruel tyrants and they have time and again told the world that Africa's problems are elsewhere.

Tyrants in Africa are often considered as lazybones but this is also very wrong. Our tyrants are very busy souls, often burning the midnight oil to find ways and means of making our life more miserable. They are hardworking busy bees. Bringing famine to a country with fertile land and a hardworking peasantry requires not only talent but diligence. Organizing rigged elections is not child's play even if it has been done before and experience gained. Getting money out of the tight fisted World Bank requires finesse and persistence. Even if the West wants to go along, convincing it that a one party regime is basking in a multi party system requires not only shamelessness but also hard work. Siphoning off the revenues from oil and minerals to one's private bank accounts demands not only perfidy and greed but vigilance and diligent activity as it is a 24 hours undertaking, seven days a week and tolerates no slackening. Contrary to photos of overfed dictators dozing or napping at international meets, our tyrants are addicted workaholics as dictatorship and laziness do not go together. Oppression is no joke and exploitation demands indefatigable energy.

Robert Mugabe is a man of many problems, some made by himself and others by the good offices of London and Washington, ranging from the economic to the political and you name it. Naive observers would of course conclude that with all this on his old lap he would have no time to focus on gays or chemical castration of rapists. Wrong! He continues to rile against gays and his ministers want to imitate the Czech Republic and decree castration laws in Zimbabwe. Up north in Uganda where Museveni has sadly turned into the usual African corrupt power monger, the government wants to decree homosexuality a crime and to punish gays by severe imprisonment (not less than 7 years) as if Uganda does not have several insurgencies to contend with along with economic and political problems of all sorts. In Somalia, where carnage and chaos have built castles, the hardliners are busy destroying graves and cutting hands and feet of petty thieves while the country remains without a State and a trace of peace. In power or aspiring to take it, Africa has so many busybodies watching over its misery and continued suffering.

The call for castration ( taking away the gun of the rapist as one Zimbabwean minister put it) brings to mind the possibility that this measure could have relieved Africa by making its tyrants non (re) productive. Off hand, such a measure would have deprived us (and what a pleasure!) of an Ali Bongo, a Kabila or Eyadema junior, a Seif Al Islam and a Gamal Mubarek, sons that have taken or are in line to take over power. Castration is an ancient practice that should be revived for political ends while the so called chemical castration now being advocated in Harare, aimed at reducing the libido, is a waste of resources and expectations. Someone has said correctly that behind every phallic hero there lurks an "unsocialized" monster. The cock that spares no chicken otherwise known as Mobutu Sese Seko, the big dictator Idi Amin, and all the other polygamous tyrants were/are macho monsters par excellence that could have been or are perfect candidates for castration. But then again, a castrated and sexually frustrated Idi Amin may have brought more havoc on our Ugandan brothers and sisters. After all, according to some articles in the Pet Friendly sites, castration changes the personality of dogs. The same could be true in humans though eunuchs are revered in some countries and oppressed in many others. This means that there is the dangerous possibility that a castrated tyrant may be worshipped and allowed to wreak havoc. Eunuchs had also a purpose, some use ( Eunuch goes back to the Greek word eunoukhos, "a castrated person employed to take charge of the women of a harem and act as chamberlain") while we say castrate tyrants to make them useless. Men said to be "emasculated and castrated" by "dominating women" reportedly have serious psychological problems and we do need tyrants with more mental handicaps. The ancients ranging from Theophilus of Antioch to Augustine condemned the pagan gods demanding castration and called the action villainy and foul. Will castrating tyrants make them more vicious though such a state may be hard to envisage given the fact they have all reached the highest level of viciousness already. Hence, we must really make sure that castration leads to a change to the better in the temperament and personality of the tyrant.


The African tyrant minus his personal private gun may be impeded from producing off springs that replace him and perpetuate our misery. This by itself is a good thing and we can only hope that Mugabe for one will opt for the full Monty castration instead of imitating Western wimps and their chemical castration option. Why send gays to prison and deplete the money of the State (money that can be stolen by the tyrants) while they can be castrated and rendered unarmed for their "criminal" activity. A black friend of mine claiming to be an expert on the make up of the African tyrants ( a field of expertise monopolized by Whites) asserts that a castrated African tyrant will wilt and shrivel as what defines the tyrant is his macho phallic hero posturing. Will castration put an end to the "unsocialized monster"? It is not sure but it sure is worth trying as Africa would benefit from ending the rule of the tyrants and the sons that continue to rise. And it would be a costless procedure as volunteer castrators would line up in their millions. Count me in.

WORTH READING--FROM MAMDANI

Beware of human rights fundamentalism
Mahmood Mamdani (2009-03-26)


FOUR WRONG ASSUMPTIONS

The prosecutor's application makes four erroneous assumptions, all of them so he can pin the full blame of the violence on al-Bashir. This is how the prosecutor put it to journalists at The Hague: 'What happened in Darfur is a consequence of al-Bashir's will.'

The first error is to identify the duration of the conflict in Darfur with the presidency of al-Bashir. Yet, the conflict in Darfur began as a civil war in 1987, before al-Bashir and his group came to power, and long before the cycle of insurgency and counterinsurgency that began in 2003. The civil war has become entangled with the counterinsurgency, though they have separate causes. Whereas the insurgency was a rebel challenge to power in Khartoum, the civil war was triggered by the effects of drought and desertification, and intensified by two factors, one internal, the other external, one the failure to reform the system of tribal homelands and the other an effect of the ongoing civil war in Chad.

The second error is to assume that excess deaths in Darfur are the result of a single cause: violence. But the fact is that there have been two separate if interconnected causes, drought and desertification on the one hand, and direct violence on the other. World Health Organisation sources – considered the most reliable source of mortality statistics by the US Government Accountability Office in its 2006 evaluation – trace these deaths to two major causes: about 70 to 80 per cent to drought-related diarrhoea and 20 to 30 per cent to direct violence.

The third error is to assume a single author of violent deaths and rape. In his eagerness to make the prosecution's case, Moreno-Ocampo not only obscured the origins of the violence in Darfur, he also went on to portray life in the internally displaced persons camps in Darfur as a contemporary version of life in Nazi concentration camps in Europe, with al-Bashir cast in the role of the Führer. At the press conference announcing the case against the president of Sudan, the prosecutor said: 'Al-Bashir organised the destitution, insecurity and harassment of the survivors. He did not need bullets. He used other weapons: rape, hunger and fear. As efficient, but silent.'

To be sure, there were ongoing incidents of rape in Darfur, as there are indeed in most conflict situations where armed young men confront unarmed young women. This much was recognised by the US special envoy to Sudan, Andrew S. Natsios, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 11 April 2007: 'The government has lost control of large parts of the province now. And some of the rapes, by the way, that are going on are by rebels raping women in their own tribes. We know in one of the refugee camps, it's now controlled by the rebels, formally. There have been terrible atrocities committed by the rebels against the people in the camps.'

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The fourth erroneous assumption is that the situation has not changed in Darfur since the onset of the counterinsurgency in 2003. In Moreno-Ocampo's own words: 'In April 2008, the United Nations estimated the total number of deaths since 2003 at 300,000.' This estimate came from John Holmes, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs. This is how Holmes put it in the first place: 'A study in 2006 suggested that 200,000 had lost their lives from the combined effect of the conflict. That figure must be much higher now, perhaps half as much again.' There are two qualifications here, and Moreno-Ocampo glossed over both. The first was that these mortality figures were said to be the result of 'a combined effect', referring to direct violence and drought. The second qualification was explained by Reuters: 'United Nations cautioned reporters that the number was not a scientific estimate but a "reasonable extrapolation".' The assumption underlying the extrapolation – that the level of mortality has not changed in Darfur from 2003 on – was contradicted by the UN's own technical staff in Sudan. As Julie Flint explained in the New York Times of 6 July 2007 and the Independent (London) of 31 July 2007, UN sources spoke of a sharp drop in mortality rates in Darfur from early 2005, so much so that these sources report that mortality estimates had dipped to as low as below 200 per month, lower than the number that would constitute an emergency.

That the ICC has politicised the issue of justice is no reason to sidestep the question of accountability. The kernel of truth in the prosecutor's application concerns 2003–04, when Darfur was the site of mass deaths. This was mass murder, but not genocide. Its authors were several, not just the government of Sudan. There is no doubt that the perpetrators of violence should be held accountable, but when and how is a political decision that cannot belong to the ICC prosecutor. More than the innocence or guilt of the president of Sudan, it is the relationship between law and politics – including the politicisation of the ICC – that poses an issue of greater concern to Africa.


* This article was originally published by the Mail & Guardian.
* Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia University. Mamdani's latest book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, is published by Pantheon Books.
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BEGGING 101

BEGGING 101

I am sure there are a lot of people who think that begging needs no training, all you have to do is look miserly (which you will look if reduced to that state of starvation and stress or anxiety anyway), roll your eyes, and beg. How wrong they are! Begging is an art like all other such callings, it needs training and expertise and the recent report that in one Indian village such a beggars' school exists has highlighted the necessity of stopping the amateur beggars in Africa, a continent known for its ultra professional beggars.

In the good old days you could just beg (have pity on me oh passer by, I am starving!) and tug at he hearts of otherwise disinterested citizens. Modern times have hardened the ordinary human being; pity is a scarce commodity, giving help turned into a business unto itself. Consider the number of charity organizations and NGOs around the world (more than seventy in Addis Ababa dealing with the thriving business of child adoption) and the point becomes clear. Begging has become a competitive business, cut throat all the way, very capitalist. You can't have the millionaire without the beggar. One begs the other, the contrast is all. Beggars have to be professional, modern, savvy-- the times require this. In Egypt, India, Ethiopia and other places professionalism has reached the level where a beggar can rent a child for a day; organize an open bleeding wound to expose to appear pitiable and very wretched. The hard hearts need shocks, in the Indian school of begging children are taught how to sound and appear miserable while in places like Ethiopia there is really no need of training for this--we are very miserable.

Professional begging has now become as African as cassava, foufou. matoke, ugali and Injera. Any African tyrant worthy of this name is first of all a beggar par excellence, the only difference he has with the beggar on the street is that he lives in the palace or State House. Those who refused to beg from the Mau Mau, to the "NO" man Sekou Toure, the Amilcar Cabrals, Netos and Machels--where are they now? Those who opted beg had a better end---some ruled for long like Houphet or Bongo senior, Mobutu or Kamuzu. They had the art of begging down to a capital B. One of the main tenets of professional begging is for the beggar not to exhibit inferiority. The assertive beggar is the successful one. The begging tyrant hoards millions, drives posh cars, lives in palaces and yet treks to the West to beg. But, before such pilgrimages and hajjes are made there is a dangerous animal to kill and it is called humiliation. The beggar should never feel this thing called humiliation. The people may be starving, the capital city may be stinking to the seven plus heavens, the oil millions may have disappeared down into the tyrant's secret bank accounts abroad and hundreds of thousands of starving children may be sleeping on the streets but, as we say in Ethiopia, he must wash his eye with salt and beg. The beggar artist called Meles Zenawi for example begged the West for food aid for the famine stricken millions by boldly accusing the West of not delivering food aid in time. If the young African girl called Dambisa Mayo riles against foreign aid, the fruit of begging, it is because she knew not poverty and the need to beg as she came from a well to do family. The artist beggar must be adept at spinning captivating stories--extending the palm and wailing for help is of no use. Have a story line, drama and suspense, falling down the ladder, endurance and suffering and spin it with good presentation skills. Make the donor part of the operation--give and you shall receive. That is why donors give our tyrants money after money and take back quite a big part of it back while the tyrant gets a considerable sum to add to his coffers. Why should the World Bank give Meles Zenawi and other dictator millions? Surely, it is not because they tell the Bank grim tales of human rights violations, broad daylight massacres, concentration camps and war mongering. The World Bank and the IMF, or the donors in general, do like cruel dictators but they do not like to be told of this in public. They want lying beggars. I once saw in one American city a homeless person with a begging bowl in front of him and a written sign which stated "No need to lie: it's for the drinks". Many a kind elderly person passed him by, angry. Few donors want the truth. Likewise, the tyrant beggar cannot openly claim I am begging for money to steal or to buy arms with. He must spin a convincing story of worth, combining arrogance (make them feel guilty with neo colonial and imperialism references if need be) with a we are going to perish like flies if you do not fork some millions over and he must convince the donors who instinctively wonder "what is in it for us." The beggar must learn to share.

No country is FOB (Free of Beggars) and one of the countries teeming with beggars, India, is trying to use repressive measures to clean Delhi from its thousands of beggars before the October 2010 Commonwealth games. This country touted as a democracy and still practicing the caste system that has rendered millions untouchable and without rights is using courts in vans and trucks to send beggars to detention centers and prisons. Such a round up was also tried by Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Arap Moi in Kenya and their attempt to monopolize begging by eliminating the street beggars has failed miserably. If the top man begs the white man the ordinary folk can beg from the black man or woman. It is a desperate situation and in downtown Nairobi enterprising street kids cover themselves with human excrement and threaten office going women to throw some at them unless they give them a few shillings. This aggressive begging has proved effective. Meles Zenawi at the G20 meetings tried to look as one of the donors or the big countries giving us a good example of the professional beggar without any notion of humility. Profitable as it is, begging has branched out and become a nation wide profession. Some expose their wounds and deformities as in the past while others perform, sing or stand as stone statues to beg. The latter do get more money but begging 101 also comes along with teaching stealing expertise as our tyrants have taught us over the years. Beg and steal go together--show me an African tyrant who begs for help from the West but does not steal from it or the people. The tyrants are so in it that they steal elections and innocent lives too.

The beggar is a pauper who has no money and begs for it. And the beggar is also the one who takes the money that is not his and in this definition we can bring in the tyrants and the corrupt ministers like the British MPs who were actors of the recent scandal of appropriating public money fraudulently and illegally. They really do not need money but they cannot kick the begging monkey off their back. Mobutu, Bongo, Meles, Moi, the list is long of those who have become rich by begging and stealing but still continue to beg. They have so crowded the field that the paupers and poor people in need of help are edged out, rounded up, harassed and jailed. It is a tough world out there. The beggar's school in India teaches how to overcome this and survive in the face of big and voracious beggars called ministers and leaders. The millions of beggars in Africa do need such a school. Can India help instead of taking over our lands and riches just like China and the West?

TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL

(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma

"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)

"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994

"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)

"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).

The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.

An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.

That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.

The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.

The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!

The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.

The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.

The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.

LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE

Africans may be miserable and subjected to poverty but they are on the whole nice people forever thinking of the welfare of others even in crazy times when they may be forced to indulge in a genocide or cut arms and legs with machetes. It is a dour and grim world we live in and so the Africans' untiring attempt to make us laugh now and then should be appreciated.

From the land of the Sudan, where once idle chiefs ordered a man to marry a female goat and warmed the heart of may a racist, came the indecent trousers show. A Sudanese woman, Loubna Hussein, working as a journalist wit the UN was arrested because she was wearing a trouser in public and it was deemed indecent. The world which did not know that the stiff necked fundamentalist regime has been flogging women on the basis of their clothes was surprised at first and then amused. What makes a trouser indecent? Tightness? Colour? What? We all know the Sudan has grave problems in its hands. The regime has to make sure its killing spree continues in Darfur and that does require effort (not every lazy regime can handle a genocide!), that the impending secession of the South does not materialize, that the starving millions get enough food--huge tasks, big priorities. But, the generals took time out to give us the trousers show, dragging a brave woman to court and sentencing her to prison or fine (flogging left out this time--too much world attention). The dynasty or succession show presented to the world by Syria and North Korea was justifiably taken away by Africa for the enjoyment of all. Eyadema of Togo left power to his son, Kabila senior to Kabila junior in what was Zaire and now Ali Bongo of Gabon is succeeding his corrupt father. "Monarchy-- republics" are in vogue and up North Mubarek is coordinating his own similar show and Gadafi may very well leave his place to Seif Al Islam, his son. Funny shows.

Talk of Gadafi and the showman in Tripoli held a big bash to which African "kings and chiefs" in their colourful dresses were invited over to declare once again Brother Moamar Gadafi the King of Kings of Africa. He was given a throne as a gift (among other offerings) and he wore huge gold rings and a necklace. After a heavy meal quite a few of the tribal chiefs and so called kings napped as Gadafi spoke, but no the show still went on and tried to surpass Bokassa's coronation as a central African Napoleon some decades back. The funny show aside, Gadafi is no fool. He has used his oil to buy the old British Empire and to make it bend to his wills, to release the alleged Lockerbie bomber and then to ridicule itself by claiming it did that on humanitarian grounds only. From Somalia, we got the funny event of terrorists of Al Shabab buying arms from the alleged enemy, the Transitional government led by Sheikh Ahmed. The arms come from Uganda bought and paid for by America. Once again our wily neighbours are being supplied with arms by their own enemy, Washington, and the naivety of the often arrogant American officials makes us laugh. In Ethiopia, the often unfunny despotic regime of Meles Zenawi came up with its own Orwellian joke banning the word cholera and baptizing it instead (very many thousands even in the capital are afflicted and hundreds are dying even in the capital Addis Abeba) as "Atet" or dangerous or fast watery diarrhoea. No doctor can use the C word or would face jail and the routine beating. This has given ideas to other tyrants to re baptize killer diseases and make them appear benign or innocuous. Ugandans used to call AIDS "slim" but some are now considering calling it "severe diet syndrome (SDS), giving the idea that the loss of weight is linked to fanatical dieting "like the ones engaged in by some models. Malaria can be renamed Saturday Night Fever and so on.

Cameroon's Biya spent 400,000 US dollars per night for hotel rooms and services fee
(the average Cameroonian earns a dollar a day) but his spokesmen retaliated with a
"he has been allocated the money and he can spend it as he pleases" thereby making everyone--including Cameroonians--laugh. Don't be jealous! Who gave him all this money to spend? Bad question, just laugh and enjoy the noble gesture of our tyrants who spend so much money to maintain our prestige in foreign lands (where God knows why they still think we are poor and begging for help!) and give us the chance to enjoy by proxy. The latest joke on the streets of Addis Abeba is that the tyrant Meles will win the 2010 general election hands down ( he lost the last one but stayed in power killing and jailing those who cried foul) because of millions of hens and chicken will vote for him as he raised the price of a hen to 80 Birr (they used to cost less than ten Birr in the past) and millions were not able to afford them for the kill come the Ethiopian new year (September 11) and the chicken and hen folk are elated. A South African boy, who did not know of Idi Amin who had at least 33 children, answered the question "where do babies come from?" with: "they come from Jacob Zuma" (who has 18 children by the latest count). The problem with Africans, if you want to call it that, is that they are an open book, not hiding details of their personal lives. Many a European and American have concubines and very may children out of wedlock but silence is the edict on the fact. Not Africans who flaunt their peccadilloes. Idi Amin paraded his wives and very many children, the old Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya dragged his wife, Mama Ngina, to a public forum so that she can testify he may be old but was as active as cock It was all before the blue pill). In all cases, we supplied the fun; we let those who think we are savages and bizarre have the laugh at our expense. We told the world we married goats, believed in traditional witch doctors (who consulted bones instead of the computer), declared an arrogant Arab colonel king of kings, denied diseases their existence by giving them benign names, ignored the existence of famine, elected again and again pour own tormentors, like to slaughter one another for nothing, and that our riches are there for the taking. The world laughed at us. We were useful, we are useful.

An acquaintance of mine I shall call Professor Mendal (a combination of the names of there educated Ethiopian fools) suggests that Africans can get back at their tyrants by laughing at them. The run of the mill African dictator takes himself very seriously and has very many laws dealing severely with any lese majeste. You cannot laugh at he tyrants who can only laugh at the Nation at will. The practice of laughing at the tyrants, of not taking them seriously at all, of ignoring their edicts, of roaring with laughter at their endless antics will surely drive them crazy. Idi Amin stole the people's laughter and enjoyed his own fun and aggravated the misery of the people. Take our constipated looking tyrants ranging from Kagame and Meles to Ngueso and Dos Santos and imagine what being laughed at or being ridiculed will do them. We can also laugh at the opposition and give them a taste of reality. Back in the early and mid seventies Algeria's Boumedienne (he hardly ever smiled out of choice and not because he had crooked teeth) played at being revolutionary and invited dozens of self declared liberation fronts to Algiers. One of these was a self declared Ashanti prince who brought over a political program which had an introduction, his photo, other books written by the author and a long article on the personality of the "prince revolutionary" with a final call foe the then president of Ghana, Busia, to resign (because "you are a sophist") and concludes by stating if Busia does not resign the Ghanaian army should overthrow him via a coup d'etat. A curious political program in which the self declared prince states that he met Busia and the [president suspected he was a roving agent of Nkrumah ("which I was not") or a "big personality disguised as a common man"("which I was"). Such funny "rebels "and "Marxist- Leninist- Lumumbist " con men from the Congo are no longer around. Politics has become boring and the politicians humourless. That is why the African should laugh at those oppressing them and at those who declare themselves their liberators but are caricatures of those in power. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

TOO LATE, TOO SUPERIFICAL

(A Brief Comment on the ICG Report on Ethiopia)
Hama Tuma

"The ideological identikit of some of the rebel forces is alarming. The TPLF, for example, are considered as ferocious local replicas of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge". (Domenico Quirico, La Stampa, Italy, 26/4/1991)

"Ethiopia sadly is one of the most politically repressive countries in the world". Makau wa Mutua in Ignoring the Lessons of History, December 1994

"Tribalism is an atavism, retrogression back to the embryo. Tribal thinking is extremely primitive." (Mwalimu Julius Nyrere, September 1994)

"I am convinced that there are better ways to address Ethiopia's ethnic problems without giving ethnicity primacy above all issues in the political system. The danger of an ethnic based system is that it encourages disunity and hostility, especially in a country such as Ethiopia", (US Senator Harry Johnstone, September 1994).

The Ovambos of Southern Africa say the fool laughs at himself. Some present day Ethiopians seem to enjoy doing just that. A number of Ethiopian web sites of the Diaspora have recently posted a September 4 report by the International Crisis group on "Ethnic Federalism and its Discontents"". None of these sites have ventured a critic on the 45 pages report but it is safe to assert that they seem to be delighted. Not surprisingly though, the clique in power in Addis Abeba has cried foul because the ICG criticizes it though it gives it credit that it does not deserve at all (see Aiga Forum article on the subject). However, this report of the ICG is too late and very confused and superficial and therefore one more evidence of how and why such so called experts and the US administration have failed to understand the reality of Ethiopia.

An objective appraisal of the Ethiopian situation has been lacking for long from foreign quarters. Their premises have often been flawed and their conclusions quite mistaken. The International Crisis group had in the past an analyst/member called John Prendergast (now with Enough Project) who was a State Department official at the time when the Tigrean front took power (1991). He backed the repressive and ethnic chauvinist Tigrean front to the hilt and wrote, with the Meles Zenawi advisor Paul Henze (former CIA and Rand Corporation employee), articles attacking as "Amhara chauvinists" those who stood against the TPLF. Here is what Prendergast and Henze wrote back in September-December 1993 (Ethiopian Commentator--a TPLF funded magazine):
"Heated rhetoric is raising the political temperature in Addis Abeba. Through the deceptively named All Amhara People's Organization and the Coalition of Ethiopian Democratic Forces, this possessed elements who have vested interests in the maintenance of the Mengistu regime, are baiting the new government with racially and religiously divisive rhetoric. They are being funded and encouraged by exiles abroad, some of whom were collaborators with Mengistu. They hope to provoke violent reactions which will lead donor governments and agencies to cut off aid to the Transitional government and to isolate it diplomatically" (p.58).
Racial rhetoric? What does that mean? The apologists of the repressive regime ( it is being provoked) do fail to mention (as they lie shamelessly) that the All Amhara People's Organization was formed after the TPLF takeover and worked legally in the country while the Coalition (COEDF) was made up forces like the EPRP, the EDU, and others who had for years struggled against the Mengistu regime.

That bias and prejudice seem to have lingered on within the ICG. While the ICG report does criticize the Meles Zenawi regime, it should be said that the basic criticism is superficial and confused and continues to echo the TPLF's insidious assertions and fallacies. The ICG report is soaked with the TPLF's Amhara oriented prejudicial conclusions. The report states that Amhara elite opposed ethnic federalism because it goes against and impedes, in their view, a strong unitary state. The conclusion is that the opposition (designated as Amhara in the ICG report) wants a "strong unitary state "and is opposed to ethnic federalism on this ground. This is totally baseless and false. The Ethiopian opposition with the EPRP included called for years for decentralization. In fact, almost all the programs of the EPRP advocated for a federal system. The EPRP also proposed a federal solution for Eritrea, a stand for which both the TPLF and the EPLF (Eritrea) attacked it as chauvinist and more. The ICG writers could have made some research before making such a fallacious assertion. The ICG report shares so much of the TPLF prejudicial positions against Amharas that it concludes that "the 2005 elections were shaped by Amhara and nationalist discontent with the loss of Eritrea..." Shame on the writers of this report! At least one should research, try to get an objective appraisal. Let us briefly deal with the mistaken assertions and conclusions.

The 2005 elections were historic in that the majority of the Ethiopian people confronted all odds and cast their vote against the TPLF/EPRDF. It was not an Amhara nationalist affair at all. The assertion that all opposition is Amhara is a basic line of the Tigrean ruling front and it assumes that the Amharas, as a people and/or ethnic group, ruled over Ethiopia and benefited from it. This is just an echo of the anti Amhara propaganda of the ethnic fronts and secessionist forces who tried to rewrite history through their skewered ethnic prism (their fantasy of Ethiopian colonialism, Abyssinian settler colonialism, etc). Any decent research would show that the majority of Amharas (poor peasants like most other Ethiopians, suffered from the repressive regimes and if truth be told the Amhara peasant of rural Shoa and mountainous Semien/Dashen was worse off than the peasant in Tigrai or Eritrea. The ICG report goes on to refer to the Diaspora as dominated by Amharas and Amharanized urbanites. Take it this way, read it in any other way, the ICG reports strongly asserts, directly and otherwise, that the Ethiopian people's opposition struggle is Amhara or Amhara dominated and we all know that these 'devilish Amharas exploited and oppressed the vast majority and are now furious because they lost their privileges'!!! It smells of Henze and Prendergast doesn't it? No wonder the ICG report quotes the likes of John Young who were pathetic TPLF scribes.

The 2005 elections in which the opposition CUD and UEDF were able to mobilize the majority against the TPLF was a historic occasion whose dimension and impact has escaped the ICG report writers. Millions of Ethiopians of almost all ethnic groups took part in the election and the EPRDF was resoundingly defeated. Even thousands of Tigreans in cities like Addis Abeba voted for the CUD and unless the ICG calls them Amharanized urbanites they hailed from the birth province of Meles Zenawi. The loss of Eritrea was not the main and biggest issue of the 2005 election--the repressive and ethnic discriminatory rule of the TPLF was. By the way, the ICG takes the EPRDF fiction as fact and refers to the satellites of the TPLF gathered within the EPRDF as TPLF -friendly forces. The reality is that there is no EPRDF (in fact some even argue that the TPLF per se does not exist) as a bona fide front made up of independent organizations. During the 2005 elections, the Ethiopian people rose as one to defeat the TPLF at the ballot box and it is grossly unfair to designate this event as "shaped by Amharas and nationalists". Who are these nationalists if not the "damned" Amharas? Amharanized urbanites? The ICG shames itself!

The ICG report is also flawed in its analysis of the pre 1991 situation. Its reference to EPRP and Meisone as "student organizations" is surprising to say the least; though it is true that both organizations emerged from the student movement and intelligentsia they were by mid seventies mass based parties in opposite camps. The defeat of the Derg regime was not the work of the TPLF alone either as the report bluntly asserts. The ICG report states also that by mid 1990s the only party with an identifiable program was the EPRDF. Really? What happened to the OLF, the EPRP/COEDF, and the legal opposition groups? None of them had a program or was it all invisible? A certain kind of myopia, heavily influenced by the TPLF and the ethnic groups, seems to have afflicted the ICG personnel who wrote this report. Their appendix on rebel groups presents the history (and formal and superficial at that) of only the OLF and the ONLF. Are there no other rebel groups now? Were there not then during the time of the Derg? The ICG tendency to assume as true certain TPLF assertions goes as far as taking at face value the present TPLF/EPRDF claim that it now has 5 million or so members and the Meles resignation charade (he wanted to step down but has been pressurized to stay is how the ICG report presents it with no desire to be funny). But this is not the only problem.

The ICG reporters start out seemingly with a desire to criticize the ethnic federalism of the ruling Tigrean clique but they end by doing the opposite. They credit the TPLF/EPRDF with "radically transforming the political system" and assert that it was not the principle of ethnic federalism per se that has proved problematic. This is how they elaborate on it: ethnic federalism has dramatically enhanced service delivery as well a rural inhabitants access to the State allowing the EPRDF to extend its authority deep into the countryside: Are these experts writing about Ethiopia? What extension of services? All existing services are actually in the pits. The rural population having access to the State can be read as fiction. The ruling group has spread and extended its authority mainly based on and through its repressive power and apparatuses. For anyone who has any inkling of the Ethiopian reality the above assertion of the ICG report jars and offends. They go on to claim that "economic growth and expansion of public services are to the regime's credit". Such wild statements make their declared attempt to be critical of the regime and objective a sham.

The ICG report is, despite claims of on place interviews, a tattered piece which gives more credit to the repressive regime than criticizing it. Moreover, the focus and sympathy is again on other ethnic groups and not on the right or struggle of the Ethiopian people as a whole. That ethnic federalism is bankrupt and the base of the whole problem of bad governance has been denied by the ICG report which tries to blame the alleged Amhara yearning for a unitary state to be the core of the problem. This done and even the historic 2005 election reduced to an Amhara protest, there was no chance for the report to redeem itself. Diaspora web sites (Amhara and Amharanized in the ICG view) must be accused of masochism for giving publicity to this report that does injustice to the people of Ethiopia. Back in the seventies groupies of the ethnic and secessionist fronts (Peter Niggli, Dan Connell, Kristy Wright, Gayle Smith, Firebrace and Holland. Abdurahman Babu, etc) and later Prendergast and the Paul Henzes were attacking the Amhara people at every opportunity. In the process, the TPLF and company have slyly sold their unholy diatribe against the Amhara. Their falsification of history has been taken as the truth by so called experts who apparently are prejudiced and totally disinterested in facts and do not make any effort to research on the truth of the situation. Thus, the ICG report may please some of the usual quarters, but is flawed, impaired and an affront to the people of Ethiopia.