TIME TO BRAND THEM ALL
Hama Tuma
There is a time to die and a time to live (in Africa there is always more time to die) but there is also a time to brand. Cattle owners and slave drivers did it. The Nazis did it on Jews. Meles Zenawi's guerrillas used the scythe to singe and brand their innocent victims. Branding was in for long and may be due for a comeback if we are to heed the advice of a Swazi member of parliament. He demanded that people with AIDS be branded so that their potential victims get a forewarning as they are being prepared for a dangerous foreplay. An interesting idea, to say the least.
But the Swazi MP could not withstand the hue and cry by Swazi men and had to withdraw the suggestion. Swazi Member of Parliament and gospel singer, Pastor Timothy Myeni, has now blamed the devil for suggesting at an MPs' workshop, that there should be a law making it "compulsory to test for HIV" and that people testing positive should be "branded on the buttocks". Here is a news report on his retraction:
"The devil has trapped me so that he celebrates that, from a Christian, such an uncalled for statement has come out. I am very sincere. I am very sorry. I understand very well that this was a blunder", said Pastor Myeni at a media conference, in Johannesburg.
"There are infants who get infected in the womb or during birth. Does he want HIV-positive infants to be branded also? What does he say about rape survivors?", asked one angry official without explaining if he was talking of women or men rape victims and why the branding should not involve babies with Aids. Myeni has retracted but his was an interesting suggestion if anything. Swaziland is a country where a young king marries young maidens and carelessly spends the country's meagre resources over cars and palaces for himself and his women. His 13 wives shop in Dubai most of the time and his birthday parties cost millions while the Aids afflicted people suffer for lack of drugs. He ordered the Swazi girls and women not to have sex for five years, not to wear miniskirts and long pants and then goes on to hold the so called Reed Dance ceremony during which more than 50,000 bare breasted and scantily clothed young girls vie to be the absolute monarch's next wife--for the money and prestige of course. The king, Mswati III, uses this ceremony to acquire young maidens as his wives. Shouldn't such a person be branded on both his buttocks as a profligate, polygamist and tyrant? MP Myeni's branding idea could very well have been an idea whose time has come but he was cowardly and threw it on and to the Devil.
To begin with, there is no reason why the branding should be for Aids carriers alone and why it should only be done on the behinds. If branding as a warning and as ID catches on, it can be used for tyrants, embezzlers, official thieves, decadent politicians, "genociders", mass killers and more. Imagine the corrupt tyrants with a big THIEF brand on their foreheads. They will never show their ugly faces in public. The brutal military regime in Ethiopia did try its own sort of branding when it unleashed the Red Terror against its opponents (mainly the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party) and nailed an "I am a counterrevolutionary" placard on the foreheads of the murdered EPRP followers. It did not catch on because the brander was the one that had to be branded and exposed while, on the other hand, popular branding by people on the tyrants can catch on. There is branding and there is branding and the Nazi numbers branding is out of date unless we insist on branding Sassou Ngueso and his likes No 1 Thief. African tyrants who like to be called No 1 Patriot and No 1 Genius could deserve to be called number one Despots and Robbers. Branding the forehead may not also be very effective given that fact that with fundamentalism spreading not only women but also bearded fanatical men cover their foreheads. The hands can also be covered with Michael Jackson gloves. Thus, where to brand becomes a problem.
Lest some ill intentioned people think that the Swazi pastor is one more African savage advocating a cruel act let me say that branding people is an old practice of the Western civilizations. Romans branded even thieves with the letter F and burning people with iron was also considered punishment. The Greeks did burn and brand. Res servus est, the slave was a thing, a biological entity somewhere there with any ordinary livestock who had to be dehumanized to make it know its place. Following the Romans and Greeks, Americans and Europeans branded their slaves/in most cases black/ just as they branded their cattle. The practice of branding did spread to affect deserters, adulterers, blasphemers and prisoners. Branding was legal in ancient laws of England. "The British Mutiny Act of 1858 provided that the court martial may, in addition to any other penalty, order deserters to be marked on the left side, 2 inch below the armpit, with the letter "D", such letter to be not less than an inch long. In 1879 this was abolished". The
Dutch, the Spaniards and the Peruvians were cruel slave holders often joining branding to neutering of the slaves. Yet, there are those who argued that branding gave the slave a sense of pride, it was proof he belonged to someone, had an identity and was not a "nobody" Nowadays, the border police take our photos and finger prints so that no rejected modern slave flees to another country and becomes an accepted immigrant (or slave). It must be said that not all branding, or facial marking, was done involuntarily. Many Africans cut their faces with knives to carve "railways lines" or designs to show their ethnic identity and/ or even social status. You brand yourself and you differ and, as one Nigerian put it, based on that difference you slaughter or get slaughtered.
The problematic of where to brand lingers. Below the armpits is a hidden place where many eyes do not get the chance or the will to go. The Swazi pastor suggested the buttocks but that is only visible if one takes of trousers and pants-- and even poorly clad Africans manage to cover that part somehow. In other parts, the Burka--type covers frustrate any branding on any part of the face. The shame is thus hidden, the ID not seen. The Swazi pastor also made the mistake of assuming the males in his place will be nude when they spread the virus with diligence and cruelty. Given the fact that people tattoo themselves anywhere and everywhere with meaningless designs and indecipherable characters the place for the ideal place for the revealing and exposing branding may not be found that easily. Can the Devil help? Maybe, hopefully. But branding is an idea whose time has come. Imagine our joy if we could see the despots that have made our life miserable carved up with a big DD on their foreheads: Decadent Despots. Time to carve them up, time to brand them all. R for racists, B for those disciples of Bush and his butcheries, T for tyrants, MM for mass murderers, G for those who commit genocide, E for embezzlers, S for stooges, C for the corrupts, and a big MO for monsters, scoundrels, Talibans, ruffians, marauding militias, sick fanatics, mad mullahs, the Joseph Konys and other such disasters who have made the world a terrible place to live in.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Obama and Africa:More of the Same
OBAMA AND AFRICA: MORE OF THE SAME
"An obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy" says a Russian proverb. In Amharic we say "kemogn dejaf mofer yikoretal" or "mogn indenegerut, beklo indasegerut". Those Ethiopians who hailed the Obama speech in Accra and rejoiced at the possibility of a new deal for Ethiopia and Africa thanks to Obama remind us of such obliging and dangerous fools.
Ours is a continent that had endured so many speeches of eloquence and style. African leaders have been mostly demagogic, we have heard it all. Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nyrere, Banda, Sekou Toure and more were moving speakers and yet we found out, much to our dismay, that words and realities are two different things. Well crafted words and flowery phrases do not a good policy make. Hence, it is inexcusable for Africans to be swayed by public speakers who shroud the real issues with self evident truths ("the future of Africa is up to Africans"--isn't it precisely to affirm this that Africans have been struggling?) and cover their dearth of knowledge with paternalist "you must do this" advice and veiled threats. At the end of the day, the Obama speech was a rehash of the old American policy towards Africa, all bones and no meat, and an expression of the continuing incapability of Washington to come to grips with the real problems of Africa. One wonders why some Africans beat the festive drums over the Obama Accra speech even though such drummers as Raila Odinga of Kenya do prove the point that "it is business as usual" for Africa's corrupt leaders. Obama did say once that his knowledge of African realities is equal to the knowledge of those who had occupied the White House seat before him--just imagine Reagan and Bush and even the Clinton fellow who hailed Meles, Kagame, Museveni,etc.. as democrats. Not very encouraging at all. Doing the ritual visit to the slave prisons is just a photo op that even Bush had done in Senegal and it is by now an empty symbolism from a country that has refused to pay due reparation for the slave trade.
Is Obama ending the misguided policies of Bush or extending them wrapped in demagogy? As Americans are wont to say: where is the beef? Is he showing us the money? That Obama's father was a Kenyan is neither here nor there as Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Johnnie Carson are African Americans/blacks/ and they did not hear the heartbeat of Africa at all. Colour and birth considerations aside, Obama is an American, elected to safeguard the interest of America in Africa and the whole world. Obama's vision of Africa is American and that of the ruling power holders of the big country. His refusal to acknowledge that Africa's woes are mostly the results of neo colonial plunder and machination is at the center of his failure to understand the woes of Africa. He said accusingly that the West did not cause the economic problems of Zimbabwe and the West has little to do with wars in which children become soldiers. What? Zimbabwe's economy was wrecked by embargoes, sanctions and sabotage by the West ever since Britain raged against Mugabe for taking action against white landowners. No one n the west cried foul when Mugabe was torching Matabele land to crush an insurgency. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone for one were involved in a diamond war in which Britain and even South Africa played a major part. Who were the allies of Charles Taylor? Who financed Renamo? UNITA? And the ongoing war in the Congo? Western mining companies like the AngloGold Ashanti corporation finance the militias wreaking havoc, recruiting children as soldiers and raping women in thousands. Obama harped on corruption and good governance in his attempt to attribute the blame on Africa itself but the reality shows us different. "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top," said Obama. Is this true? Absolutely not. The foreign companies actually want those scoundrels who can be bribed. From Lumumba to Nkrumah and more, nationalist African leaders have been victims of coups mostly engineered by the CIA and the West. Leaders that rig elections and repress voters enjoy American aid and backing. The butcher in Equatorial Guinea is sustained in power by American oil companies. President Nguema's stolen millions were stashed in Washington's Riggs Bank and Condoleezza Rice feted the tyrant. Western oil companies who ran after Africa's oil have been allies of the despots be it in the Congo, Gabon, Nigeria or Angola (for a good exposure of how these giant companies practically manipulate the tyrants and the governments do read Nicholas Shaxson's: Poisoned Wells--The Dirty Politics of African Oil ). And this affirmation by Obama that "we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments" or "no good governance no aid" is an old song crooned by Western leaders from Mitterrand to Blair to Clinton. Actually, American and Western aid had actually gone to despots, to apartheid South Africa, to Egypt's Mubarek, to Meles Zenawi, to corrupt Dos Santos in Angola, etc. Britain and France have also backed despots in their particular enclaves and as the competition from China (ruthlessly nationalist and arrogantly racist too) heats up the West is grovelling before the dictators in countries with oil and minerals. Foreign investment has thus been mainly in countries where scoundrel and thieves are in power. The issue of corruption is not also just an African internal affair as Obama wanted to imply but something that has been fanned and extended all over Africa by Western embassies and companies working intimately with African officials. Governments cannot skim 20% off the top if the Western companies were not in accord with them. Western investors hate honest and nationalist leaders (who overthrew and had Lumumba murdered? Allende? Mossadegh? Arbenz?) and are comfortable with corrupt rogues.
That is why Meles Zenawi is one of the usual guests of the G8 meetings and the very person picked by Tony Blair to head an African committee. Nigerian dictator's Abacha's stolen billions are still in British and other western banks. Meles Zenawi and his corrupt wife have hidden millions in Citibank. The eight African leaders recently invited to the G8 meeting are all corrupt and seven of the eight are leading countries considered not free by Freedom House itself. Ghana may fare better now than others but it is also rife with corruption. In the UN Development Index report, Ghana is not that glorious (among the 20 poorest--142nd while Kenya is 144th). Corruption flourishes in Africa with Western collaboration. Africa is wrecked by wars in most cases financed and fanned by the West as it chases its greed for oil and minerals to the detriment of Africans ( more than 4 million have died in the mineral war of the Congo). Obama talked of the need for a strong parliament, honest police force, independent judges, independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a civil society. Fine requirements. However, if development depends on good governance and if America will not help those who have not instituted good governance then one is at odds to explain the actual and real policies of America in support of despots all over the continent. This is why Obama's glossing over the damages of colonialism and neo colonialism grates and sprinkles salt on our wounds. Diseases and conflicts have ravaged the African continent but who is to really blame for that? Poverty is linked to the system; Ethiopia is suffering from famine not because its land is infertile. But who supports these regimes that impoverish the African people while opening up the country to the greedy western oil and mineral companies? Who is impoverishing African farmers by subsidizing its own farmers and making the African products cheap in the world market? Questions that Obama, like Bush, did not want to address at all.
There is the possibility that some hardened fools may still argue that all this was in the past and that things have changed now with Obama. Where and when? Besides repeating the usual (and mistaken) official diatribe against "genocide" in Darfur and terrorists in Somalia, has Obama really broken with the past? Let us take the Horn of Africa, a region we know much better than the American president. Somalia's intractable clan war was complicated by Washington when it decided to arm the hated warlords against those it called terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Like the WMD, it was said there were three or four top Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Somalia (they were never found) and the support to the venal warlords made the fanatics of the ICU appear better in the eyes of most Somalis. And then, Washington prompted Meles Zenawi to send in soldiers and actively supported the disastrous invasion which any Ethiopian would have told them was doomed to failure. The troops of Meles helped the Al Shabab gain more support, were forced to withdraw and Somalia is now in the pits with the fanatics in ascendance. And what is new American policy as concerns Somalia? Arming the so called moderates of the Transitional Government, paying Uganda and Djibouti (!!) for arms and training, fuming against terrorists, accusing Eritrea of arming the "terrorists". More of the same. The misguided notion of considering the Somali mess as part and parcel of the so called war against terror is very flawed. Let us take Ethiopia where a ruthless dictatorship is in place. Taking Obama's measures, it fails miserably to qualify as good governance: the parliament is rubber stamp and even the rubber is threadbare, the police force is brutal, corrupt and repressive, the judiciary is controlled by the State, civic society has been denied independent and vibrant existence, the free press is muzzled (Meles is named one of the worst predators of the free press), the private sector is stifled by the monopolistic economic firms of the ruling Tigrean front (TPLF). In 2005, the ruling front lost the general election but used violence to massacre more than 200 protestors, to jail thousands and to stay in power with the help of America and Britain. This repressive regime and its cold blooded head called Meles have remained to be the West's darlings and Mr Obama was sitting together with this murderer in the last G8 meeting. W cannot talk of change because the new Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, who recently visited Ethiopia, praised the anti people regime as an ally and as the one that has brought democracy to Ethiopia. There is no new policy, no new deal, no firm American stand against dictators and tyrants.
So, if we judge the Obama speech in Accra from the real and bitter realities of poverty, war, AIDS, corruption and sovereignty. that is if we ask did he say something new or has he heralded any change, the answer is no. The "future of Africa is up to Africans" is an refrain we have heard before so many times from Western leaders that do not waste time to forcefully take our sovereignty away. It is empty talk. To rile against poverty, corruption, the lack of good governance without mentioning the lion's share of the guilt and responsibility of the West is to bray at the moon and to hoodwink the victims. Talk of neo-colonial plunder, talk of oil companies robbing countries blind and backing tyrants and murderous militias, talk of subsidies that impoverish and debilitate African farmers, talk of taking real and concrete actions against tyrants and then we can listen. The West needs corrupt and repressive regimes in Africa for it to rob best the continent. President Obama should say no to this addiction, to this greed and craving of a junkie. Up to now, he has not done so. He is continuing the Bush policy incensing it with confusing speeches. Those Africans who imagine that "the end of tyranny is now" and that "with Obama in charge our sufferings will end" only prove the truth in the saying that a fool will laugh when he is drowning.
"An obliging fool is more dangerous than an enemy" says a Russian proverb. In Amharic we say "kemogn dejaf mofer yikoretal" or "mogn indenegerut, beklo indasegerut". Those Ethiopians who hailed the Obama speech in Accra and rejoiced at the possibility of a new deal for Ethiopia and Africa thanks to Obama remind us of such obliging and dangerous fools.
Ours is a continent that had endured so many speeches of eloquence and style. African leaders have been mostly demagogic, we have heard it all. Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nyrere, Banda, Sekou Toure and more were moving speakers and yet we found out, much to our dismay, that words and realities are two different things. Well crafted words and flowery phrases do not a good policy make. Hence, it is inexcusable for Africans to be swayed by public speakers who shroud the real issues with self evident truths ("the future of Africa is up to Africans"--isn't it precisely to affirm this that Africans have been struggling?) and cover their dearth of knowledge with paternalist "you must do this" advice and veiled threats. At the end of the day, the Obama speech was a rehash of the old American policy towards Africa, all bones and no meat, and an expression of the continuing incapability of Washington to come to grips with the real problems of Africa. One wonders why some Africans beat the festive drums over the Obama Accra speech even though such drummers as Raila Odinga of Kenya do prove the point that "it is business as usual" for Africa's corrupt leaders. Obama did say once that his knowledge of African realities is equal to the knowledge of those who had occupied the White House seat before him--just imagine Reagan and Bush and even the Clinton fellow who hailed Meles, Kagame, Museveni,etc.. as democrats. Not very encouraging at all. Doing the ritual visit to the slave prisons is just a photo op that even Bush had done in Senegal and it is by now an empty symbolism from a country that has refused to pay due reparation for the slave trade.
Is Obama ending the misguided policies of Bush or extending them wrapped in demagogy? As Americans are wont to say: where is the beef? Is he showing us the money? That Obama's father was a Kenyan is neither here nor there as Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Johnnie Carson are African Americans/blacks/ and they did not hear the heartbeat of Africa at all. Colour and birth considerations aside, Obama is an American, elected to safeguard the interest of America in Africa and the whole world. Obama's vision of Africa is American and that of the ruling power holders of the big country. His refusal to acknowledge that Africa's woes are mostly the results of neo colonial plunder and machination is at the center of his failure to understand the woes of Africa. He said accusingly that the West did not cause the economic problems of Zimbabwe and the West has little to do with wars in which children become soldiers. What? Zimbabwe's economy was wrecked by embargoes, sanctions and sabotage by the West ever since Britain raged against Mugabe for taking action against white landowners. No one n the west cried foul when Mugabe was torching Matabele land to crush an insurgency. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone for one were involved in a diamond war in which Britain and even South Africa played a major part. Who were the allies of Charles Taylor? Who financed Renamo? UNITA? And the ongoing war in the Congo? Western mining companies like the AngloGold Ashanti corporation finance the militias wreaking havoc, recruiting children as soldiers and raping women in thousands. Obama harped on corruption and good governance in his attempt to attribute the blame on Africa itself but the reality shows us different. "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top," said Obama. Is this true? Absolutely not. The foreign companies actually want those scoundrels who can be bribed. From Lumumba to Nkrumah and more, nationalist African leaders have been victims of coups mostly engineered by the CIA and the West. Leaders that rig elections and repress voters enjoy American aid and backing. The butcher in Equatorial Guinea is sustained in power by American oil companies. President Nguema's stolen millions were stashed in Washington's Riggs Bank and Condoleezza Rice feted the tyrant. Western oil companies who ran after Africa's oil have been allies of the despots be it in the Congo, Gabon, Nigeria or Angola (for a good exposure of how these giant companies practically manipulate the tyrants and the governments do read Nicholas Shaxson's: Poisoned Wells--The Dirty Politics of African Oil ). And this affirmation by Obama that "we must support strong and sustainable democratic governments" or "no good governance no aid" is an old song crooned by Western leaders from Mitterrand to Blair to Clinton. Actually, American and Western aid had actually gone to despots, to apartheid South Africa, to Egypt's Mubarek, to Meles Zenawi, to corrupt Dos Santos in Angola, etc. Britain and France have also backed despots in their particular enclaves and as the competition from China (ruthlessly nationalist and arrogantly racist too) heats up the West is grovelling before the dictators in countries with oil and minerals. Foreign investment has thus been mainly in countries where scoundrel and thieves are in power. The issue of corruption is not also just an African internal affair as Obama wanted to imply but something that has been fanned and extended all over Africa by Western embassies and companies working intimately with African officials. Governments cannot skim 20% off the top if the Western companies were not in accord with them. Western investors hate honest and nationalist leaders (who overthrew and had Lumumba murdered? Allende? Mossadegh? Arbenz?) and are comfortable with corrupt rogues.
That is why Meles Zenawi is one of the usual guests of the G8 meetings and the very person picked by Tony Blair to head an African committee. Nigerian dictator's Abacha's stolen billions are still in British and other western banks. Meles Zenawi and his corrupt wife have hidden millions in Citibank. The eight African leaders recently invited to the G8 meeting are all corrupt and seven of the eight are leading countries considered not free by Freedom House itself. Ghana may fare better now than others but it is also rife with corruption. In the UN Development Index report, Ghana is not that glorious (among the 20 poorest--142nd while Kenya is 144th). Corruption flourishes in Africa with Western collaboration. Africa is wrecked by wars in most cases financed and fanned by the West as it chases its greed for oil and minerals to the detriment of Africans ( more than 4 million have died in the mineral war of the Congo). Obama talked of the need for a strong parliament, honest police force, independent judges, independent press, a vibrant private sector, and a civil society. Fine requirements. However, if development depends on good governance and if America will not help those who have not instituted good governance then one is at odds to explain the actual and real policies of America in support of despots all over the continent. This is why Obama's glossing over the damages of colonialism and neo colonialism grates and sprinkles salt on our wounds. Diseases and conflicts have ravaged the African continent but who is to really blame for that? Poverty is linked to the system; Ethiopia is suffering from famine not because its land is infertile. But who supports these regimes that impoverish the African people while opening up the country to the greedy western oil and mineral companies? Who is impoverishing African farmers by subsidizing its own farmers and making the African products cheap in the world market? Questions that Obama, like Bush, did not want to address at all.
There is the possibility that some hardened fools may still argue that all this was in the past and that things have changed now with Obama. Where and when? Besides repeating the usual (and mistaken) official diatribe against "genocide" in Darfur and terrorists in Somalia, has Obama really broken with the past? Let us take the Horn of Africa, a region we know much better than the American president. Somalia's intractable clan war was complicated by Washington when it decided to arm the hated warlords against those it called terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. Like the WMD, it was said there were three or four top Al Qaeda operatives hiding in Somalia (they were never found) and the support to the venal warlords made the fanatics of the ICU appear better in the eyes of most Somalis. And then, Washington prompted Meles Zenawi to send in soldiers and actively supported the disastrous invasion which any Ethiopian would have told them was doomed to failure. The troops of Meles helped the Al Shabab gain more support, were forced to withdraw and Somalia is now in the pits with the fanatics in ascendance. And what is new American policy as concerns Somalia? Arming the so called moderates of the Transitional Government, paying Uganda and Djibouti (!!) for arms and training, fuming against terrorists, accusing Eritrea of arming the "terrorists". More of the same. The misguided notion of considering the Somali mess as part and parcel of the so called war against terror is very flawed. Let us take Ethiopia where a ruthless dictatorship is in place. Taking Obama's measures, it fails miserably to qualify as good governance: the parliament is rubber stamp and even the rubber is threadbare, the police force is brutal, corrupt and repressive, the judiciary is controlled by the State, civic society has been denied independent and vibrant existence, the free press is muzzled (Meles is named one of the worst predators of the free press), the private sector is stifled by the monopolistic economic firms of the ruling Tigrean front (TPLF). In 2005, the ruling front lost the general election but used violence to massacre more than 200 protestors, to jail thousands and to stay in power with the help of America and Britain. This repressive regime and its cold blooded head called Meles have remained to be the West's darlings and Mr Obama was sitting together with this murderer in the last G8 meeting. W cannot talk of change because the new Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, who recently visited Ethiopia, praised the anti people regime as an ally and as the one that has brought democracy to Ethiopia. There is no new policy, no new deal, no firm American stand against dictators and tyrants.
So, if we judge the Obama speech in Accra from the real and bitter realities of poverty, war, AIDS, corruption and sovereignty. that is if we ask did he say something new or has he heralded any change, the answer is no. The "future of Africa is up to Africans" is an refrain we have heard before so many times from Western leaders that do not waste time to forcefully take our sovereignty away. It is empty talk. To rile against poverty, corruption, the lack of good governance without mentioning the lion's share of the guilt and responsibility of the West is to bray at the moon and to hoodwink the victims. Talk of neo-colonial plunder, talk of oil companies robbing countries blind and backing tyrants and murderous militias, talk of subsidies that impoverish and debilitate African farmers, talk of taking real and concrete actions against tyrants and then we can listen. The West needs corrupt and repressive regimes in Africa for it to rob best the continent. President Obama should say no to this addiction, to this greed and craving of a junkie. Up to now, he has not done so. He is continuing the Bush policy incensing it with confusing speeches. Those Africans who imagine that "the end of tyranny is now" and that "with Obama in charge our sufferings will end" only prove the truth in the saying that a fool will laugh when he is drowning.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves
Of Modern Slavery and Same Old Slaves
We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.
Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.
We all hear countless accusations and denunciations being hurled at what has come to be known as modern slavery. Talk of slavery and it is only on June 18/2009 that the US Senate issue a formal apology. One news report put it as follows:
"The Senate adopted a resolution Thursday (June 18) offering a formal apology for slavery and the era of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws that followed. After the clerk finished reading the resolution (S Con Res 26) in full, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the measure's sponsor, noted that Congress has never before issued a formal apology for slavery".
Americans sort of enjoy being surprised, a "we did not know that at all (whatever did we do to "Eye-ran"?)" type of denial. Ignorance is no excuse of course. The ongoing shock at Americans torturing prisoners is another self serving Ostrich politics. The world knows that America was torturing prisoners all the time. Forget Native Americans and scalping and using dried human skin/breasts/ for tobacco pouch--check out the Los Angeles Times article of June 18/2009 on torture:
"Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were water boarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."
The slave trade was as American as apple pie and as British as fish and chips. Belated apology does not a reparation make but how do you calculate money wise the damages that the slave trade made to a whole continent? The slave trade laid waste to Africa and damaged its future for long. Africa's call for reparation has been ignored royally. That African chiefs and Arab merchants took part in this nefarious trade must also be mentioned--after all Africans have always been at the centre of their own misery. Slavery was evil and enough commentary has been made on it thereby relieving me from the need to belabor the point. But what is this animal called modern slavery? Is it an animal, a vegetable or a mineral? Let us just say damn the slave trade because one of its bad consequences is that our tyrants are using it even now to excuse the pitiful state of poverty in which they have put us in. Take away the slave trade and colonialism and the African despots would not have had any external excuse for their drastic failure in assuring good governance.
Officially, slavery is dead and gone but as many things deemed dead it still exists and is in fact flourishing in new forms. Debt bondage and forced labor are realities in many countries from the Congo to Peru. In Niger, Mail and Mauritania for example, ethnic difference has led to a master and slave situation with people being considered as slaves at birth. Dalits or bonded laborers are in their millions in India and Pakistan. Many child slaves wear leg irons. In Mauritania, slavery was formally proclaimed dead on August 8/2007 and a fifth of the country's population, dark skinned Mauritanians known as Haratines, were supposed to be free from bondage but not many of them had radios and TV to even hear the news and slavery still thrives there. As one news report puts it: "Dark-skinned men, women and children known as Haratine carry out orders under the threat of being beaten. They work as laborers and shepherds, as servants and cooks, as nursemaids and security guards. They are penniless and uneducated. Their masters are pale-skinned, Arab-speaking Moors". Thousands of people from Africa and Asia are trafficked (this is the new word, mind you. that could make you imagine a paved congested highway leading to Eldorado) to the West and the Middle East to work as modern slaves. Some 200,000 people, mostly young women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, etc, are modern slaves in Lebanon, working as domestic maids and servants, unpaid, raped and beaten, with no rights and subjected to the crude racism that is very Lebanese. Modern-day slaves can be found labouring as "servants or concubines in Sudan, as child 'carpet slaves' in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances". There are currently over 27 million people in bondage and slavery. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from West and Central Africa are sold as slaves every year.
This time around the slavery is modern not only because we live in modern times but also because the slaves go to their bondage sometimes willingly in search of work as it were. The slavery in Mauritania and other such places is as antique as 800 years ago but the modern slaves found in the West and the Middle East are different. No one abducted them, though they are indeed still trafficked. They themselves face up to danger (and many die in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) to make their way to the lands of modern slavery. "Domestic workers" really means or refers to modern slaves in private houses and brothels. It is a multi million dollar business and as we all know our unelected leaders go where the money is to be found and they are the ones facilitating this traffic. Few modern slaves pick cotton, very few are lynched. Instead, they slave for 16 hours in rich people's houses and sweat factories and they are thrown into shark infested waters, beaten to death, pushed to suicide, drowned and shot by callous border guards. There are no galleys though the slave ships are still there crammed with hopeless souls. Modern day traffickers, ruthless employers and old time slave drivers share the same cruel streak.
All this said, we African must be the first to admit that modern slavery has its benefits. To begin with, it is modern even if this remains a mystery to us as many other things of this modern unfair world. Due to progress, modern slaves come cheap, they do not cost much. Modern slavery is not so much about color or race--it is about poverty and economic deprivation. It is not even about religion either as Moslem Saudis, Lebanese, Libyans, and even Sudanese and Yemenis hold as slaves Moslems from their own and from many other "Third World" countries. For once, we Africans, or blacks as we are called, can sigh with relief as others not so black are also subjected to modern slavery. What is so good about others suffering just as our ancestors did and as our kin in many places are still suffering? 27 million modern slaves and the number on the increase--maybe one day Africa's demand for reparation may be heard or is that a desperate hope? The more Disposable People abound in this modern world--meaning modern slaves-- there is more probability that the whole evil may end as more people suffer and if this modern slavery thing which has started to involve Eastern European women continues to trap more Europeans and then there may be some concern and protest. It is not forbidden to have big expectations. Slave labor is at the core of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest which means all these environmental and Green and ecology people may rise up against slavery. Of course, it could just be another Waiting for Godot. The role of Arabs in the old and modern slavery, the involvement of Europe and America in the old and modern slavery is continuous. We have no surprises, the culprits are known and that is one better thing. Know the culprit-- no sweat, we know them already. Modern slavery does not have many secrets and surprises. It is modern. And those who may be nostalgic of old style slavery can still travel to Mauritania, Nepal, India, Sudan and Pakistan.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Where did our Decent Murders Go?
WHERE DID OUR DECENT MURDERS GO?
Ethiopians, who have had to endure brutal deaths over decades, have a common wish which asks God “to make my death decent” (amamuaten asamirew). I am one of those who wonder why Ethiopians pray since He hardly ever listens to them but then again Ethiopians are a hopeful lot who will die hoping and praying for better days that never seem to come.
We have to admit we have had decent murders over the years. I was a boy of six when I first saw a man being hanged by the State. It was outside a nearby church and there was a big crowd and the hanged man was accused of being a mugger. It left an indelible impression on me, the image of the hanged man with his tongue sticking out somewhat stayed in my mind for long. There was nothing decent in this hanging at all. The next hanging I saw when I was in my preteens involved a woman and a man who were hanged near the Weizero Kelemework School in Addis Ababa. The man was the woman’s lawyer (and as rumours had it maybe her lover too) and he was arguing her case against her husband involving a land and property dispute. The husband and the lawyer got in a tej bet (shebeen or local bar room) brawl and the lawyer stabbed the husband to death. The wife came to the scene and threw a rock at the corpse, it was alleged. A court sentenced the lawyer to death and the woman to ten years imprisonment. The case was appealed and reached the Emperor’s Chilot, an illegal feudal proceeding in which cases were brought before the Emperor and he dispensed pardon or not. Though Ethiopian law, which I tried to study in the University, stipulates that the sentence cannot be aggravated in the appellate court, the Emperor (who, perhaps, woke up angry that morning—if one had good connections and a case pending in the Chilot those who present the cases to the Emperor would not present one’s case if they see that the autocrat was in a bad mood) ordered the hanging of the woman too. And the woman was hanged next to her lawyer.
The decent thing about her hanging was that she was dressed in traditional white shamma netela and skirt but with cotton trousers underneath lest the wind blows her skirt high and makes her appear indecent. This concern about her being decent was touching. The system was murderous but still concerned about indecent exposure. Those were indeed the good old days. And then came the military regime of murderous thugs who massacred more than 250,000 people in a terror campaign they dubbed Red Terror courtesy of the Soviet experience. Even these thugs were at times concerned to do decent murders. Though they buried thousands in mass graves in the dead of the night they still gave respect to corpses by selling them back to their kin after the payment of the bullet price. Corpses were not just useless but valuable—if the person took four bullets to die then the kin paid the price of four bullets to the government that killed him or her. And when the dead were not buried in mass graves the corpses were either thrown outside their houses and the kin forbidden to weep but ordered to sing (an original therapy some argued) or thrown at garbage dumps with slogans nailed or pinned to their body ( thus passing educational messages to the living). Corpses had their uses. They just did not die but by dying also became useful and as deaths go in Ethiopia it was decent of the regime to think of making them useful.
Nowadays, we have no decent murders. The sadists just enjoy it and that is it. The killer regime in Addis Ababa kills and buries people in total darkness. Or it massacres people from the Ogaden to Gambella, to Sidamo and Gondar and denies it. It even travels abroad to Somalia to cut the throats of people or rain cannon shells on houses and then denies any crime. So indecent, the denial kills the victims again as it were. Compare with the previous military regime whose Chairman broke bottles filled with red ink or blood in public and vowed to kill thousands of his opponents. That was respect, it was decent. The murder was acknowledged and defended and, in reverse, it gave respect to the victims as enemies worthy of slaughter. The murderers now in power have no sense of respect or decency. They shoot to death an unarmed human rights activist and teacher coming out of his house to go to work and then claim he was resisting arrest and running away from the police. They stab to death another human rights activist and deny they had anything to do with it. They station sharp shooters on top of buildings and randomly shoot to death peaceful demonstrators and deny that they did such a thing. They have secret prisons and do disappearances routinely. No one even knows you are dead-- how indecent can a murder get!
I was in the Sudan when the over drunk president Jaffar Nimeri have had enough (the Sudanese joked that whiskey was pouring out of his ears) and decreed Sharia over our heads and just made all liquor expensive. According to this law, thieves were amputated (right arm and left leg or left arm and right leg) after the doctor gave them anaesthetic. How decent of the Sudanese authorities you would say, no? However, it was not a decent act in that the anaesthetic in the Sudan took days to take effect and the victims suffered their pain anyways. The rebels of Sierra Leone gave victims the choice on amputation but were not decent enough to ask their victims whether they preferred to die by the bullet or the machete. Times have indeed changed and have become brutal. No one asks Ethiopians if they want to die of famine but the regimes just bring the famine year in and year out. The concept of decent murder is sometimes known as Forrester's paradox. “It proves that if you murder someone, then you only did what you ought to do. For if you murder someone then you ought to murder them gently. If you ought to murder them gently, then you ought to murder them. So, if you murder someone, then you ought to murder them”. But it should be done decently. Is this too much to ask? The Emperor ordered the hanging of the unfortunate woman but she was dressed decently for the occasion. It was not costly at all. I have seen in 1960 my politically unconscious compatriots sticking sticks into the bullet shredded legs of a hanged coup leader to turn the corpse towards this or that direction as they joked and snickered and hurled insults. So indecent!
It could very well be that the tyrants have become exhausted by the murders and have forgotten to be decent about it. If you have to murder people just massacre them, period. Yet, it does not hurt to be nostalgic for some respect and decency in murder so long as we are doomed to do the dying.
Ethiopians, who have had to endure brutal deaths over decades, have a common wish which asks God “to make my death decent” (amamuaten asamirew). I am one of those who wonder why Ethiopians pray since He hardly ever listens to them but then again Ethiopians are a hopeful lot who will die hoping and praying for better days that never seem to come.
We have to admit we have had decent murders over the years. I was a boy of six when I first saw a man being hanged by the State. It was outside a nearby church and there was a big crowd and the hanged man was accused of being a mugger. It left an indelible impression on me, the image of the hanged man with his tongue sticking out somewhat stayed in my mind for long. There was nothing decent in this hanging at all. The next hanging I saw when I was in my preteens involved a woman and a man who were hanged near the Weizero Kelemework School in Addis Ababa. The man was the woman’s lawyer (and as rumours had it maybe her lover too) and he was arguing her case against her husband involving a land and property dispute. The husband and the lawyer got in a tej bet (shebeen or local bar room) brawl and the lawyer stabbed the husband to death. The wife came to the scene and threw a rock at the corpse, it was alleged. A court sentenced the lawyer to death and the woman to ten years imprisonment. The case was appealed and reached the Emperor’s Chilot, an illegal feudal proceeding in which cases were brought before the Emperor and he dispensed pardon or not. Though Ethiopian law, which I tried to study in the University, stipulates that the sentence cannot be aggravated in the appellate court, the Emperor (who, perhaps, woke up angry that morning—if one had good connections and a case pending in the Chilot those who present the cases to the Emperor would not present one’s case if they see that the autocrat was in a bad mood) ordered the hanging of the woman too. And the woman was hanged next to her lawyer.
The decent thing about her hanging was that she was dressed in traditional white shamma netela and skirt but with cotton trousers underneath lest the wind blows her skirt high and makes her appear indecent. This concern about her being decent was touching. The system was murderous but still concerned about indecent exposure. Those were indeed the good old days. And then came the military regime of murderous thugs who massacred more than 250,000 people in a terror campaign they dubbed Red Terror courtesy of the Soviet experience. Even these thugs were at times concerned to do decent murders. Though they buried thousands in mass graves in the dead of the night they still gave respect to corpses by selling them back to their kin after the payment of the bullet price. Corpses were not just useless but valuable—if the person took four bullets to die then the kin paid the price of four bullets to the government that killed him or her. And when the dead were not buried in mass graves the corpses were either thrown outside their houses and the kin forbidden to weep but ordered to sing (an original therapy some argued) or thrown at garbage dumps with slogans nailed or pinned to their body ( thus passing educational messages to the living). Corpses had their uses. They just did not die but by dying also became useful and as deaths go in Ethiopia it was decent of the regime to think of making them useful.
Nowadays, we have no decent murders. The sadists just enjoy it and that is it. The killer regime in Addis Ababa kills and buries people in total darkness. Or it massacres people from the Ogaden to Gambella, to Sidamo and Gondar and denies it. It even travels abroad to Somalia to cut the throats of people or rain cannon shells on houses and then denies any crime. So indecent, the denial kills the victims again as it were. Compare with the previous military regime whose Chairman broke bottles filled with red ink or blood in public and vowed to kill thousands of his opponents. That was respect, it was decent. The murder was acknowledged and defended and, in reverse, it gave respect to the victims as enemies worthy of slaughter. The murderers now in power have no sense of respect or decency. They shoot to death an unarmed human rights activist and teacher coming out of his house to go to work and then claim he was resisting arrest and running away from the police. They stab to death another human rights activist and deny they had anything to do with it. They station sharp shooters on top of buildings and randomly shoot to death peaceful demonstrators and deny that they did such a thing. They have secret prisons and do disappearances routinely. No one even knows you are dead-- how indecent can a murder get!
I was in the Sudan when the over drunk president Jaffar Nimeri have had enough (the Sudanese joked that whiskey was pouring out of his ears) and decreed Sharia over our heads and just made all liquor expensive. According to this law, thieves were amputated (right arm and left leg or left arm and right leg) after the doctor gave them anaesthetic. How decent of the Sudanese authorities you would say, no? However, it was not a decent act in that the anaesthetic in the Sudan took days to take effect and the victims suffered their pain anyways. The rebels of Sierra Leone gave victims the choice on amputation but were not decent enough to ask their victims whether they preferred to die by the bullet or the machete. Times have indeed changed and have become brutal. No one asks Ethiopians if they want to die of famine but the regimes just bring the famine year in and year out. The concept of decent murder is sometimes known as Forrester's paradox. “It proves that if you murder someone, then you only did what you ought to do. For if you murder someone then you ought to murder them gently. If you ought to murder them gently, then you ought to murder them. So, if you murder someone, then you ought to murder them”. But it should be done decently. Is this too much to ask? The Emperor ordered the hanging of the unfortunate woman but she was dressed decently for the occasion. It was not costly at all. I have seen in 1960 my politically unconscious compatriots sticking sticks into the bullet shredded legs of a hanged coup leader to turn the corpse towards this or that direction as they joked and snickered and hurled insults. So indecent!
It could very well be that the tyrants have become exhausted by the murders and have forgotten to be decent about it. If you have to murder people just massacre them, period. Yet, it does not hurt to be nostalgic for some respect and decency in murder so long as we are doomed to do the dying.
Of Swine Flu and Africa
OF SWINE FLU AND MOTHER AFRICA
Thank you swine flu and Mexico! For once Africa has not been blamed for being the source of a deadly virus. From Ebola to Lassa Fever, Rift Valley Fever, White Nile virus, the Marbrug Virus, the “Jealousy” malady and even AIDS and all so called haemorrhagic fevers have been attributed to poor old Africa.
The ongoing swine flu has been first detected in Mexico and the reports indicate that a small five year old Mexican boy was the first victim. Imagine it if his father or any other Sanchez or Mexican had been on safari in the Serengeti plains and the swine fever would have been called the African swine flu and Mother Africa would have been blamed for a mild yet deadly flu that you can avoid by wearing a face mask and washing your hands! This time around the Mexicans are to blame even though it could very well be gringo/American tourists who took the virus there and brought it back to their homes. Back in 1981, the first AIDS victim was an American but somehow the scientists argued that the deadly virus must have originated from the “dark” continent. By the way, the Israelis have reportedly protested against the present flu being called the swine flu. Not kosher at all. The virus is said to be a combination of swine, bird and human flu, a combination that poor Africa cannot really afford come to think of it. Now that this deadly flu is beginning to ravage the Western world a vaccine may be found for it fast as it is no malaria killing millions in over populated underdeveloped countries.
I still would like to argue that the swine flu may very well have originated in Africa itself. We have a swine fever attacking pigs in many parts of Africa. We have had flu of various types and a too many birds to count. And we claim we are the origin of human kind. Why can’t we be the origin of all its fevers, maladies and viruses? George Bush called the whole continent disease ridden and one similar racist blogger also referred to Africa as a collection of filthy disease ridden lands. Insults aside, if our continent, which has at least 53 distinct countries, is the origin of human beings then it should evidently be the centre and origin of all the viruses and diseases. Logical, no? On another level, we are often told we do not have proper attitudes towards hygiene though our detractors do not bother to query how come we have so many rivers and no clean drinking water, how come we are destitute while our lands have riches and how come we cannot afford modern medicines. Recently there was a big hue and cry by so called Western twitters (mostly actors and entertainment personalities) to buy and send us mosquito nets aplenty. I read a message from Dead Aid author Dambissa Mayo that in some places the ladies have turned the mosquito nets into wedding dresses. It reminds me of Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia, the victor of Adwa, who was fascinated by the electric chair and imported one and since there was no electricity used the chair as an ordinary chair for himself. Misplaced importing move on his part. When it comes to our self appointed aid givers they often give us Dead Aid or irrelevant material. Like refrigerators where there is no electricity, vaccines that require a fridge where there is no electricity, blankets to desert people, fish soup powder to people who detest fish, fishing nets to highlanders, dates to those who do not eat dates but would brew it into a potent arak and cause deadly brawls in refugee camps, etc. The charity business is often profit oriented or many times a balm for the guilty conscience of the West and decadently rich people.
The contention that all evil viruses originate in Africa is part of the old and persisting prejudiced and selective perception propagated by the Western media on and about Africa. The news agencies often quoted by African newspapers themselves (AP, UP, AFP, Reuters and AFP) are not African at all and even the Russian news agency and Xinhua are more or less in the same can. These agencies often circulate the negative image of Africa, focusing on “savagery and wars, tribal unrest and carnage, shocking corruption, flogging and rape, a South Sudanese marrying a goat or a Nigerian raping a child to cleanse himself from Aids,” and so and on . The war in Bosnia or Croatia is ethnic but “tribal “in Africa. Bestiality and cannibalism are features of decadent Western societies but highlighted when it allegedly occurs in Africa. It is part of the “dark continent” syndrome, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness rhetoric of Empire (to quote the title of David Spurr’s book). Primitive and savage, raw meat eaters, all of them “The White Man’s Burden” awaiting salvation and enlightenment from the West—the image sticks. The Africanization of the viruses falls in place. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the west but an obscurantist regime that hangs women and beheads people every Friday and oppresses women to no end but one hardly reads a continuing denunciation of this. The presentation of Africa in the western media, the harping on the viruses, on the “tribal” wars (by the way why are the Sans people called Hottentots and the Ewes Pygmies?), the famine, the viruses, Aids, the diseases—all are part of the rhetoric that the Empire has maintained throughout the long decades to demonize Mother Africa. Of course, we cannot deny that considerate Africans despots have chipped in to help!
So, if the Swine Flu had been attributed to Africa we could have welcomed it gladly. Bring it on kind of attitude. Africans are resilient and tough—didn’t they survive the slave trade and brutal colonialism? If one more virus is attributed to them what can it do to them? Nada as the Mexicans would say. If Africa is the origin of the creature called human, Africa deserves to be the mother of all its maladies and viruses. Mother Africa makes no apologies as it lets the Mexicans and others enjoy their pathetic swine flu.
Thank you swine flu and Mexico! For once Africa has not been blamed for being the source of a deadly virus. From Ebola to Lassa Fever, Rift Valley Fever, White Nile virus, the Marbrug Virus, the “Jealousy” malady and even AIDS and all so called haemorrhagic fevers have been attributed to poor old Africa.
The ongoing swine flu has been first detected in Mexico and the reports indicate that a small five year old Mexican boy was the first victim. Imagine it if his father or any other Sanchez or Mexican had been on safari in the Serengeti plains and the swine fever would have been called the African swine flu and Mother Africa would have been blamed for a mild yet deadly flu that you can avoid by wearing a face mask and washing your hands! This time around the Mexicans are to blame even though it could very well be gringo/American tourists who took the virus there and brought it back to their homes. Back in 1981, the first AIDS victim was an American but somehow the scientists argued that the deadly virus must have originated from the “dark” continent. By the way, the Israelis have reportedly protested against the present flu being called the swine flu. Not kosher at all. The virus is said to be a combination of swine, bird and human flu, a combination that poor Africa cannot really afford come to think of it. Now that this deadly flu is beginning to ravage the Western world a vaccine may be found for it fast as it is no malaria killing millions in over populated underdeveloped countries.
I still would like to argue that the swine flu may very well have originated in Africa itself. We have a swine fever attacking pigs in many parts of Africa. We have had flu of various types and a too many birds to count. And we claim we are the origin of human kind. Why can’t we be the origin of all its fevers, maladies and viruses? George Bush called the whole continent disease ridden and one similar racist blogger also referred to Africa as a collection of filthy disease ridden lands. Insults aside, if our continent, which has at least 53 distinct countries, is the origin of human beings then it should evidently be the centre and origin of all the viruses and diseases. Logical, no? On another level, we are often told we do not have proper attitudes towards hygiene though our detractors do not bother to query how come we have so many rivers and no clean drinking water, how come we are destitute while our lands have riches and how come we cannot afford modern medicines. Recently there was a big hue and cry by so called Western twitters (mostly actors and entertainment personalities) to buy and send us mosquito nets aplenty. I read a message from Dead Aid author Dambissa Mayo that in some places the ladies have turned the mosquito nets into wedding dresses. It reminds me of Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia, the victor of Adwa, who was fascinated by the electric chair and imported one and since there was no electricity used the chair as an ordinary chair for himself. Misplaced importing move on his part. When it comes to our self appointed aid givers they often give us Dead Aid or irrelevant material. Like refrigerators where there is no electricity, vaccines that require a fridge where there is no electricity, blankets to desert people, fish soup powder to people who detest fish, fishing nets to highlanders, dates to those who do not eat dates but would brew it into a potent arak and cause deadly brawls in refugee camps, etc. The charity business is often profit oriented or many times a balm for the guilty conscience of the West and decadently rich people.
The contention that all evil viruses originate in Africa is part of the old and persisting prejudiced and selective perception propagated by the Western media on and about Africa. The news agencies often quoted by African newspapers themselves (AP, UP, AFP, Reuters and AFP) are not African at all and even the Russian news agency and Xinhua are more or less in the same can. These agencies often circulate the negative image of Africa, focusing on “savagery and wars, tribal unrest and carnage, shocking corruption, flogging and rape, a South Sudanese marrying a goat or a Nigerian raping a child to cleanse himself from Aids,” and so and on . The war in Bosnia or Croatia is ethnic but “tribal “in Africa. Bestiality and cannibalism are features of decadent Western societies but highlighted when it allegedly occurs in Africa. It is part of the “dark continent” syndrome, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness rhetoric of Empire (to quote the title of David Spurr’s book). Primitive and savage, raw meat eaters, all of them “The White Man’s Burden” awaiting salvation and enlightenment from the West—the image sticks. The Africanization of the viruses falls in place. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the west but an obscurantist regime that hangs women and beheads people every Friday and oppresses women to no end but one hardly reads a continuing denunciation of this. The presentation of Africa in the western media, the harping on the viruses, on the “tribal” wars (by the way why are the Sans people called Hottentots and the Ewes Pygmies?), the famine, the viruses, Aids, the diseases—all are part of the rhetoric that the Empire has maintained throughout the long decades to demonize Mother Africa. Of course, we cannot deny that considerate Africans despots have chipped in to help!
So, if the Swine Flu had been attributed to Africa we could have welcomed it gladly. Bring it on kind of attitude. Africans are resilient and tough—didn’t they survive the slave trade and brutal colonialism? If one more virus is attributed to them what can it do to them? Nada as the Mexicans would say. If Africa is the origin of the creature called human, Africa deserves to be the mother of all its maladies and viruses. Mother Africa makes no apologies as it lets the Mexicans and others enjoy their pathetic swine flu.
Maggots and Urine and A Royal Pardon
OF MAGGOTS AND URINE
“ EATING A CONTINENT TO ITS BONES ”
A long long time ago a French agronomist wrote a book called False Start in Africa and it did not take long for African bashers to argue that Africa had not even started going anywhere and the continent was doomed as Lewis Carroll said in “Alice” : to “run just to stay in the same place”. Decades later, today, it would not be Afro pessimism on our part if we affirm that the decline of Africa is undeniable and accelerating. The continent is being eaten to its bones by local and foreign predators or thieving cannibals.
The usual culprits are of course there. Africa is plundered and hurled into the pit of war and carnage by those greedily going after its wealth. The war in the Congo that has cost more than 4 million lives is a war for the resources of that country. Murderous militia have been financed and armed by mining corporations and multi nationals from the West and even UN’s so called peace keeping forces have been involved in the rape and pillage. Sierra Leone was all about diamonds. The French President is forced to visit poor Niger to counter the Chinese influence there and to control the uranium resources of that country (the French nuclear energy body Areva has been accused of backing the Niger government’s anti Tuareg war and of polluting the region). At the end of the day, Darfur is oil, Angola is oil, Equatorial Guinea is oil, Chad is oil, and the Niger Delta is oil. Africa has been plundered and bled by its predators, by colonialists old and modern.
The modern scramble in Africa concerns above all oil. Western companies are enjoying the benefits while the Africans are getting nothing from their own wealth. The Chinese are in the game and they are voracious and without scruples. An attempt by people of the Niger Delta to oppose this led to brutal killings and the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa. Angola’s economy boasts a 15% increase every year but Angola is, according to a UN survey, one of the worst places on earth to be born as a child. Angola receives food aid, Gabon’s oil has been already sold off to a French company that has paid Bongo personally 45 million euros every year. Impoverished Chad got America’s attention when oil was discovered there in the late 80s. As in Equatorial Guinea, American oil men have their special compounds and privileges and have built a 700 mile pipeline that ends at a tanker a few miles off the coast of Cameron. Yet, Chad remains one of the poorest countries on earth (of the 9 million Chadians more than 7 million earn less than a dollar a day) while the GDP has reportedly grown and Idris Deby and family have become millionaires. Oil in South Sudan has meant no fortune for Sudanese—Sudan, Angola and Chad continuously need food aid. The misery of the poverty stricken populace of the two Congos exposes the plunder and pillage of Africa. The militias of the various forces that rape and plunder in the DR of the Congo earn more than $150 million each year by selling off the tantalum (coltan), tin, gold and tungsten that Western companies need among others for their cell phones and Blackberries, MP3 players, Digital computers, TV monitors, etc.. The miners in the Congo do not earn more than $1 to $ 4 at best per day. The needs of the companies of the West fuel the Congo war that has now claimed the lives of more than 4 million people.
Nevertheless, the responsibility of African politicians and tyrants is not to be under estimated in all this disastrous decline of the rich continent. And there comes the issue of maggots and urine, the stinking reality of many African dilapidated cities from Luanda to Lagos to Addis Ababa, of open sewers, horrible toilets if at all present, of maggots and the pervasive smell of excrement and urine. The reactionary Pope who recently visited Africa and riled against the use of condoms in the AIDS ravaged continent did say some sensible things in Luanda against the indecent riches of the few and the stifling poverty of millions. An oil rich country like Angola has had to face famine and most of its people are depressingly poor and the stink of Luanda a big shame on the corrupt leaders. Talk of corruption and the picture is as dirty as the millions of street children in almost every country of the continent.
Let us take the case of Gabon’s Omar Bongo who was married to Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso, daughter of Congolese president Denis Sassou-Nguesso. (Edith died in Morocco recently). Bongo and his family are said to own 39 properties including luxury villas, 70 bank accounts and nine luxury cars in France. According to the British Sunday Times one report, the late wife of Bongo, Edith, used a cheque, drawn in the name of “Paierie du Gabon en France” (part of the Gabon treasury), to buy the expensive Maybach car. Bongo’s daughter Pascaline, 52 , used a cheque from same account for a part-payment of s £29,497 for a £60,000 costing Mercedes. Bongo bought himself a Ferrari 612 Scalglietti F1 in October 2004 for £153,000 while his son Ali acquired a Ferrari 456 M GT in June 2001 for Sterling pound £156,000.
Sassou Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville and his family own 24 apartments in France and 112 bank accounts. Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and his family own one posh apartment and eight cars in France. Obiang Nguema’s son has faced the court in South Africa over two luxury villas he owns there. Obiang Nguema himself also had problems in 2006 over a $35 million California beach house he owns there and had close to 700 million dollars in Washington’s Riggs Bank. A former postal worker, Bongo has been ruling Gabon since 1967 while Sassou Nguesso, 63, ruled Congo from 1979 to 1992, and then returned to lead the country after a coup in 1997. According to reports Bongo’s family spends more than 65 million US dollars every year. Nigeria’s corrupt leaders are also world famous.
It is not only the tyrants of the rich African countries that are corrupt but also those ruling over poorer ones too. From Burkina Faso to Ethiopia to Kenya the ruling elite is robbing the people blind. As millions starve and the countries go to ruins the likes of Meles Zenawi, Mwai Kibaki, Compaore and others are amassing millions in Western banks. And the so called First Ladies are not far behind, corruption is a family affair and in some places like Ethiopia the wives of the tyrants are the more voracious thieves. Azeb Gola, the piranha wife of Meles, owns properties in the USA where she has stashed millions in a New York bank, has control of several businesses in Ethiopia itself including the sale of Khat and has recently become the deputy head of EFFORT, the ruling Tigrean party’s economic conglomeration. Kibaki’s wife Lucy not only slaps journalists but partakes in the plunder of Kenya. Anna Mkapa down in Tanzania has used her husband’s presidency to amass huge wealth. And so on and forth-- heartless men, cruel wives, robber families.
Corruption is not exclusively African say many African corruption giants. General Abacha denied till death that he had stolen at least five billion dollars from the people of Nigeria. Bongo and Sassou are not admitting that they are thieves even though they are now being formally accused and some of Bongo’s assets in France have been frozen. The wily Biya in Cameroon has little that is directly his or in his name but the fact remains that he has stolen millions from Cameroon. What about other tyrants? No questioning really necessary. Africa has declined not only because it is being plundered by the rapacious West and China ( with India trying to jump in along with Arab millionaires) but also because its own so called leaders have been mercilessly fleecing it too. The cities of oil rich countries are “maggot filled and urine soaked”, hundreds of thousands of people sleep under bridges, in hellish slums, and millions continue to starve. The World Bank and IMF plaster news of unbelievable economic growth while regimes claiming food surplus and economic miracle stretch out their fat hands asking for food aid and this not for the famine stricken millions but for their own benefit. Not enough drinking water, electricity rationed, the health systems down and out, price of basic goods beyond the reaches of the vast majority, misery aplenty.
Of course, there is the other way of seeing or considering the whole problem as a non problem. As Mobutu was reported to have said you do not expect an African president to live in a hut. Palaces are needed not only in Africa but especially abroad. Why do we expect an African president or his wife not worthy of luxurious cars? Even a half Kenyan in the White House with no history of inherited wealth or royal parentage is chauffeured around in a $300,000 “Beast” of a car And for those who came by the barrel of the gun (in most cases via the coup as Sassou Nguesso and others did) the argument can be made on “we did not fight to remain poor” basis. If the African presidents or prime ministers are the embodiment of the Nation then the personal wealth of the ruler is by proxy a source of pride for his people. In the Ethiopian case, Meles Zenawi and his Tigrean gang have made it clear that they hate Ethiopia and so why shouldn’t Meles and his family rob the hated country blind and substitute gold plated iron and brass for the gold in the National Bank? As Indira Gandhi once said, we can also say corruption is a world wide phenomenon and we ought to live with it. Or echo the late Peter Ustinov and declare corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy, Or as the Chinese officials said in one African country, corruption can be taken as part and parcel of business. And yet again, we can imitate Meles Zenawi who blamed the Ethiopian famine on the West and accuse the West of fanning corruption by sending its tempting foreign aid and corrupters. Didn’t Tony Blair appoint the corrupt Meles as head of his Africa Commission and didn’t Britain refuse to hand over the money General Abacha stashed in British banks? Isn’t the European Union sending money after money to dictators in Africa? Isn’t there one rich man called Mo Ibrahim who is trying to pay the tyrants money as a bribe/incentive/ to make them practice good governance? But, one wonders why they should consider his one million dollar prize when hundreds of millions are there for the taking in the national treasury.
As they say, the more corrupt the State, the more the laws and thus almost every African country has an anti corruption commission that has proved in most cases to be the nest of corrupt vipers itself. The AU has declared zero tolerance for corruption—it is like hardened thieves declaring robbery is no good and then going right back to their thievery. In the end, one goes to the palace to eat and for no other purpose and this can also be trumpeted as a noble African (if not world) tradition. You just do not hassle, torture, plunder and kill to reach the biggest “Eating House” and then renounce eating, do you?
OF A ROYAL PARDON AND FRENCH DENIALS
“…the African man has never really entered history”
Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, in a speech on Africa made in Dakar, Senegal on July 26th, 2007
To be fair, Nicolas Sarkozy did say Africa deserves to be happy just like other continents. But in the above quoted speech in Senegal he did say also: “The (Africans) have never really launched themselves into the future," and Mr. Sarkozy did add "the African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time ... In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavor, nor for the idea of progress. The problem of Africa ... is to be found here. Africa's challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history ... It is to realize that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because it has never existed."
The Sarkozy speech caused a lot of stir in Africa though many “France Afrique” members (or if you want to put it crudely many French neocolonial puppets) did not utter any strong protest. From far away South Africa, Mbeki, the faux pas man par excellence, wrote to Sarkozy and praised him as a citizen of Africa. "What you have said in Dakar, Mr. President, has indicated to me that we are fortunate to count on you as a citizen of Africa, as a partner in the protracted struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa within the context of a European renaissance and the rest of the world," Mr. Mbeki wrote. And Mr. Sarkozy was reported to have written back: "You have been kind enough to highlight the 'courage and truthfulness' of this speech. As you very well know, Africa needs truthful friends in order for her to meet the challenges she is facing." Sarkozy did also say colonialism did not exploit anybody echoing a revision of history that is becoming fashionable in France and some other European former colonial countries. The speech of Sarkozy is now headline news because his rival, the Socialist Segolene Royal, who happened to be born in Senegal, went back to her birthplace and offered an apology for Sarkozy’s slight on Africa. Apologies, apologies for those humiliating words that should have never been uttered in the first place said Madam Royal and the whole French right wing establishment has gone ballistics against her accompanied by that Bush loving nominal Socialist shameless Bernard Kouchner who is the current foreign minister of the right wing French government. The Royal apology has engendered a royal bashing while ordinary Senegalese and many Africans are delighted.
France has definitely a lot to apologize and atone for. As one of the notorious colonial powers, it is responsible for heinous massacres in the Malagasy Republic, Indochina and North Africa. French colonialism was a curse for Africa and did not have much to envy from Belgian or British colonialism when it came to barbarism or exploitation. The French war against Algerians and Indochinese has gone down in history for its atrocities. After the colonial Empire collapsed France maintained its neocolonial grip on its former colonies (stationing Foreign Legion troops in Djibouti, Chad and other places), staging coups, brazenly exploiting resources (the oil of Gabon, etc..) and acting as an arrogant overlord. Yes, France does have a lot to apologize for but then again asking the colonized victims pardon is not in vogue. Instead, blaming the victims themselves, calling them terrorist when they try to resist is what is fashionable. This is why the French establishment riled against Segolene Royal. This said, one can also go the politically incorrect path and join the Mbeki fellow who praised Sarkozy and perhaps wonder if the African has indeed entered history. Did the African only know the eternal renewal of time? Was the African even aware that time changed given that his agricultural activities have been dismal? Maybe he planted in summer and stayed in his hut during winter? Africa had no golden age said Sarkozy but did it have a bronze one even? No wonder the henchmen of Sarkozy felt humiliated and shamed by the apology of Royal in Senegal. How can “golden- aged” France apologize to an Africa that had no golden age at all?
Forgetful of the world by which they were forgotten the Ethiopians slept for three thousand years, wrote one European historian. This was worse than Senghor’s “the great sleep of the Negro”. Sarkozy has upped the ante—the African has never entered history in the first place. Where on earth was this black giant wandering? From Songhai to Axum to Zimbabwe to Kingdoms of Mali and Ghana, to Kilwa Kiswani and the Gambia and Timbuktu, etc, we are invited to forget Africa and her civilizations and asked to wonder where Africa was roaming in the wild unable to find the door to History. It is not only rabid racists who claim that colonialism did wonders for Africa and that Africa’s main problem is not anybody else but the African himself. Many raise the question that resource starved Japan is advanced while resource rich Africa is not and that the main difference is that Japan has the Japanese people. No one has explained in detail whether this refers to the shape of eyes or the color of skin but the general take is that Africans are lazy no good song and fun loving “darkies”. We Africans know otherwise of course. The ordinary African toils from dawn to dusk and more but the fruit of his labor has always been taken away from him by robbers from afar and near. After all, the African was brutally taken away from his land as a slave and has built Europe and the Americas and even Middle Eastern countries and therefore all talk of sloth is nonsense. Sarkozy’s paternalist and veiled racist comment denies this basic fact and casts negative light on the speaker himself.
Yet, one can still say the African has not entered history if by history one means the history of Monsieur Sarkozy. Otherwise, Africa had its history and as any Ethiopian would proudly assert Africa was the birthplace of humanity itself. How history--imbued can one be in the light of that? Sarkozy’s claim that the imaginary world the African lives in has no room for human endeavor is hard to grasp given the fact that the African people have been endeavoring and sweating to their bones to make progress and change their lives if only they had not been hindered by France and other colonial and neo colonial powers. Africa has also an ailment called her own leaders. But if we take Gabon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Djibouti, Cameroon where France crushed the nationalist struggle of Ruben um Nyobe of the UPC (1955), etc and ask the toiling peoples who is behind their unending misery we will find out that the black calloused fingers would be pointing to the direction of Paris whose dirty streets still get cleaned by African workers who are treatedless humanely that the littering dogs. And did Africa lack “an idea of progress”? Little Nicolas was not even born when Africa had bright ideas of progress. Actually, the struggle for independence waged by Africans, the resounding NO of Sekou Toure, the Pan African and “Africa should be free” vision of Nkrumah and Lumumba, of Felix Moumie killed by France, and more were all loud and clear visions and ideas of progress stifled by France and other neo colonial powers. So, how can the Sarkozy fellow sanctimoniously blame Africa of having no idea of progress and of living in an idealist naive babies land?
Still, if we want to be the devil’s advocate and feel sympathy for both Sarkozy and Mbeki we can ask where the African was all these years shut outside the doors of history. Imagine if there was no Sarkozy to tell him there was never ever an African golden age and the African should wake from his thousands years long “sleep of the Negro” and try to enter history! Disaster! But where is the key to the door of history? Who holds it? America or France? Will they give the African the key since they are already taking his resources for free? The Sarkozy fellow did not elaborate on this but we must ask and wonder about this. As we do this, the Royal plea of pardon does warm our heart. After all, as lazy Africans we want to blame others, we still fail to understand that colonialism was good for us, that no one rally did exploit us, that we are actually our own worst enemies and we just dream of a non existent golden age that will never really come in the future. And so, when Segolene Royal came back to her birth place and said sorry for the humiliating speech of Sarkozy we say thank you lady for the kind words even if we still have no idea of how to enter into the history the Frenchman talked about. Is it as Mbeki suggested through a European renaissance? Will they allow us to tag along or will they continue to chase us out of their continent and their so called renaissance? Mbeki is no longer in power and cannot answer us and Sarkozy has no ears for us Africans with no idea of progress. All this said, I would still be happy if Sarkozy or any other person would enlighten me on where the African was roaming all these centuries when he was said unable to enter the door of history
“ EATING A CONTINENT TO ITS BONES ”
A long long time ago a French agronomist wrote a book called False Start in Africa and it did not take long for African bashers to argue that Africa had not even started going anywhere and the continent was doomed as Lewis Carroll said in “Alice” : to “run just to stay in the same place”. Decades later, today, it would not be Afro pessimism on our part if we affirm that the decline of Africa is undeniable and accelerating. The continent is being eaten to its bones by local and foreign predators or thieving cannibals.
The usual culprits are of course there. Africa is plundered and hurled into the pit of war and carnage by those greedily going after its wealth. The war in the Congo that has cost more than 4 million lives is a war for the resources of that country. Murderous militia have been financed and armed by mining corporations and multi nationals from the West and even UN’s so called peace keeping forces have been involved in the rape and pillage. Sierra Leone was all about diamonds. The French President is forced to visit poor Niger to counter the Chinese influence there and to control the uranium resources of that country (the French nuclear energy body Areva has been accused of backing the Niger government’s anti Tuareg war and of polluting the region). At the end of the day, Darfur is oil, Angola is oil, Equatorial Guinea is oil, Chad is oil, and the Niger Delta is oil. Africa has been plundered and bled by its predators, by colonialists old and modern.
The modern scramble in Africa concerns above all oil. Western companies are enjoying the benefits while the Africans are getting nothing from their own wealth. The Chinese are in the game and they are voracious and without scruples. An attempt by people of the Niger Delta to oppose this led to brutal killings and the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa. Angola’s economy boasts a 15% increase every year but Angola is, according to a UN survey, one of the worst places on earth to be born as a child. Angola receives food aid, Gabon’s oil has been already sold off to a French company that has paid Bongo personally 45 million euros every year. Impoverished Chad got America’s attention when oil was discovered there in the late 80s. As in Equatorial Guinea, American oil men have their special compounds and privileges and have built a 700 mile pipeline that ends at a tanker a few miles off the coast of Cameron. Yet, Chad remains one of the poorest countries on earth (of the 9 million Chadians more than 7 million earn less than a dollar a day) while the GDP has reportedly grown and Idris Deby and family have become millionaires. Oil in South Sudan has meant no fortune for Sudanese—Sudan, Angola and Chad continuously need food aid. The misery of the poverty stricken populace of the two Congos exposes the plunder and pillage of Africa. The militias of the various forces that rape and plunder in the DR of the Congo earn more than $150 million each year by selling off the tantalum (coltan), tin, gold and tungsten that Western companies need among others for their cell phones and Blackberries, MP3 players, Digital computers, TV monitors, etc.. The miners in the Congo do not earn more than $1 to $ 4 at best per day. The needs of the companies of the West fuel the Congo war that has now claimed the lives of more than 4 million people.
Nevertheless, the responsibility of African politicians and tyrants is not to be under estimated in all this disastrous decline of the rich continent. And there comes the issue of maggots and urine, the stinking reality of many African dilapidated cities from Luanda to Lagos to Addis Ababa, of open sewers, horrible toilets if at all present, of maggots and the pervasive smell of excrement and urine. The reactionary Pope who recently visited Africa and riled against the use of condoms in the AIDS ravaged continent did say some sensible things in Luanda against the indecent riches of the few and the stifling poverty of millions. An oil rich country like Angola has had to face famine and most of its people are depressingly poor and the stink of Luanda a big shame on the corrupt leaders. Talk of corruption and the picture is as dirty as the millions of street children in almost every country of the continent.
Let us take the case of Gabon’s Omar Bongo who was married to Edith Lucie Sassou-Nguesso, daughter of Congolese president Denis Sassou-Nguesso. (Edith died in Morocco recently). Bongo and his family are said to own 39 properties including luxury villas, 70 bank accounts and nine luxury cars in France. According to the British Sunday Times one report, the late wife of Bongo, Edith, used a cheque, drawn in the name of “Paierie du Gabon en France” (part of the Gabon treasury), to buy the expensive Maybach car. Bongo’s daughter Pascaline, 52 , used a cheque from same account for a part-payment of s £29,497 for a £60,000 costing Mercedes. Bongo bought himself a Ferrari 612 Scalglietti F1 in October 2004 for £153,000 while his son Ali acquired a Ferrari 456 M GT in June 2001 for Sterling pound £156,000.
Sassou Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville and his family own 24 apartments in France and 112 bank accounts. Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and his family own one posh apartment and eight cars in France. Obiang Nguema’s son has faced the court in South Africa over two luxury villas he owns there. Obiang Nguema himself also had problems in 2006 over a $35 million California beach house he owns there and had close to 700 million dollars in Washington’s Riggs Bank. A former postal worker, Bongo has been ruling Gabon since 1967 while Sassou Nguesso, 63, ruled Congo from 1979 to 1992, and then returned to lead the country after a coup in 1997. According to reports Bongo’s family spends more than 65 million US dollars every year. Nigeria’s corrupt leaders are also world famous.
It is not only the tyrants of the rich African countries that are corrupt but also those ruling over poorer ones too. From Burkina Faso to Ethiopia to Kenya the ruling elite is robbing the people blind. As millions starve and the countries go to ruins the likes of Meles Zenawi, Mwai Kibaki, Compaore and others are amassing millions in Western banks. And the so called First Ladies are not far behind, corruption is a family affair and in some places like Ethiopia the wives of the tyrants are the more voracious thieves. Azeb Gola, the piranha wife of Meles, owns properties in the USA where she has stashed millions in a New York bank, has control of several businesses in Ethiopia itself including the sale of Khat and has recently become the deputy head of EFFORT, the ruling Tigrean party’s economic conglomeration. Kibaki’s wife Lucy not only slaps journalists but partakes in the plunder of Kenya. Anna Mkapa down in Tanzania has used her husband’s presidency to amass huge wealth. And so on and forth-- heartless men, cruel wives, robber families.
Corruption is not exclusively African say many African corruption giants. General Abacha denied till death that he had stolen at least five billion dollars from the people of Nigeria. Bongo and Sassou are not admitting that they are thieves even though they are now being formally accused and some of Bongo’s assets in France have been frozen. The wily Biya in Cameroon has little that is directly his or in his name but the fact remains that he has stolen millions from Cameroon. What about other tyrants? No questioning really necessary. Africa has declined not only because it is being plundered by the rapacious West and China ( with India trying to jump in along with Arab millionaires) but also because its own so called leaders have been mercilessly fleecing it too. The cities of oil rich countries are “maggot filled and urine soaked”, hundreds of thousands of people sleep under bridges, in hellish slums, and millions continue to starve. The World Bank and IMF plaster news of unbelievable economic growth while regimes claiming food surplus and economic miracle stretch out their fat hands asking for food aid and this not for the famine stricken millions but for their own benefit. Not enough drinking water, electricity rationed, the health systems down and out, price of basic goods beyond the reaches of the vast majority, misery aplenty.
Of course, there is the other way of seeing or considering the whole problem as a non problem. As Mobutu was reported to have said you do not expect an African president to live in a hut. Palaces are needed not only in Africa but especially abroad. Why do we expect an African president or his wife not worthy of luxurious cars? Even a half Kenyan in the White House with no history of inherited wealth or royal parentage is chauffeured around in a $300,000 “Beast” of a car And for those who came by the barrel of the gun (in most cases via the coup as Sassou Nguesso and others did) the argument can be made on “we did not fight to remain poor” basis. If the African presidents or prime ministers are the embodiment of the Nation then the personal wealth of the ruler is by proxy a source of pride for his people. In the Ethiopian case, Meles Zenawi and his Tigrean gang have made it clear that they hate Ethiopia and so why shouldn’t Meles and his family rob the hated country blind and substitute gold plated iron and brass for the gold in the National Bank? As Indira Gandhi once said, we can also say corruption is a world wide phenomenon and we ought to live with it. Or echo the late Peter Ustinov and declare corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy, Or as the Chinese officials said in one African country, corruption can be taken as part and parcel of business. And yet again, we can imitate Meles Zenawi who blamed the Ethiopian famine on the West and accuse the West of fanning corruption by sending its tempting foreign aid and corrupters. Didn’t Tony Blair appoint the corrupt Meles as head of his Africa Commission and didn’t Britain refuse to hand over the money General Abacha stashed in British banks? Isn’t the European Union sending money after money to dictators in Africa? Isn’t there one rich man called Mo Ibrahim who is trying to pay the tyrants money as a bribe/incentive/ to make them practice good governance? But, one wonders why they should consider his one million dollar prize when hundreds of millions are there for the taking in the national treasury.
As they say, the more corrupt the State, the more the laws and thus almost every African country has an anti corruption commission that has proved in most cases to be the nest of corrupt vipers itself. The AU has declared zero tolerance for corruption—it is like hardened thieves declaring robbery is no good and then going right back to their thievery. In the end, one goes to the palace to eat and for no other purpose and this can also be trumpeted as a noble African (if not world) tradition. You just do not hassle, torture, plunder and kill to reach the biggest “Eating House” and then renounce eating, do you?
OF A ROYAL PARDON AND FRENCH DENIALS
“…the African man has never really entered history”
Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, in a speech on Africa made in Dakar, Senegal on July 26th, 2007
To be fair, Nicolas Sarkozy did say Africa deserves to be happy just like other continents. But in the above quoted speech in Senegal he did say also: “The (Africans) have never really launched themselves into the future," and Mr. Sarkozy did add "the African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time ... In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavor, nor for the idea of progress. The problem of Africa ... is to be found here. Africa's challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history ... It is to realize that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because it has never existed."
The Sarkozy speech caused a lot of stir in Africa though many “France Afrique” members (or if you want to put it crudely many French neocolonial puppets) did not utter any strong protest. From far away South Africa, Mbeki, the faux pas man par excellence, wrote to Sarkozy and praised him as a citizen of Africa. "What you have said in Dakar, Mr. President, has indicated to me that we are fortunate to count on you as a citizen of Africa, as a partner in the protracted struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa within the context of a European renaissance and the rest of the world," Mr. Mbeki wrote. And Mr. Sarkozy was reported to have written back: "You have been kind enough to highlight the 'courage and truthfulness' of this speech. As you very well know, Africa needs truthful friends in order for her to meet the challenges she is facing." Sarkozy did also say colonialism did not exploit anybody echoing a revision of history that is becoming fashionable in France and some other European former colonial countries. The speech of Sarkozy is now headline news because his rival, the Socialist Segolene Royal, who happened to be born in Senegal, went back to her birthplace and offered an apology for Sarkozy’s slight on Africa. Apologies, apologies for those humiliating words that should have never been uttered in the first place said Madam Royal and the whole French right wing establishment has gone ballistics against her accompanied by that Bush loving nominal Socialist shameless Bernard Kouchner who is the current foreign minister of the right wing French government. The Royal apology has engendered a royal bashing while ordinary Senegalese and many Africans are delighted.
France has definitely a lot to apologize and atone for. As one of the notorious colonial powers, it is responsible for heinous massacres in the Malagasy Republic, Indochina and North Africa. French colonialism was a curse for Africa and did not have much to envy from Belgian or British colonialism when it came to barbarism or exploitation. The French war against Algerians and Indochinese has gone down in history for its atrocities. After the colonial Empire collapsed France maintained its neocolonial grip on its former colonies (stationing Foreign Legion troops in Djibouti, Chad and other places), staging coups, brazenly exploiting resources (the oil of Gabon, etc..) and acting as an arrogant overlord. Yes, France does have a lot to apologize for but then again asking the colonized victims pardon is not in vogue. Instead, blaming the victims themselves, calling them terrorist when they try to resist is what is fashionable. This is why the French establishment riled against Segolene Royal. This said, one can also go the politically incorrect path and join the Mbeki fellow who praised Sarkozy and perhaps wonder if the African has indeed entered history. Did the African only know the eternal renewal of time? Was the African even aware that time changed given that his agricultural activities have been dismal? Maybe he planted in summer and stayed in his hut during winter? Africa had no golden age said Sarkozy but did it have a bronze one even? No wonder the henchmen of Sarkozy felt humiliated and shamed by the apology of Royal in Senegal. How can “golden- aged” France apologize to an Africa that had no golden age at all?
Forgetful of the world by which they were forgotten the Ethiopians slept for three thousand years, wrote one European historian. This was worse than Senghor’s “the great sleep of the Negro”. Sarkozy has upped the ante—the African has never entered history in the first place. Where on earth was this black giant wandering? From Songhai to Axum to Zimbabwe to Kingdoms of Mali and Ghana, to Kilwa Kiswani and the Gambia and Timbuktu, etc, we are invited to forget Africa and her civilizations and asked to wonder where Africa was roaming in the wild unable to find the door to History. It is not only rabid racists who claim that colonialism did wonders for Africa and that Africa’s main problem is not anybody else but the African himself. Many raise the question that resource starved Japan is advanced while resource rich Africa is not and that the main difference is that Japan has the Japanese people. No one has explained in detail whether this refers to the shape of eyes or the color of skin but the general take is that Africans are lazy no good song and fun loving “darkies”. We Africans know otherwise of course. The ordinary African toils from dawn to dusk and more but the fruit of his labor has always been taken away from him by robbers from afar and near. After all, the African was brutally taken away from his land as a slave and has built Europe and the Americas and even Middle Eastern countries and therefore all talk of sloth is nonsense. Sarkozy’s paternalist and veiled racist comment denies this basic fact and casts negative light on the speaker himself.
Yet, one can still say the African has not entered history if by history one means the history of Monsieur Sarkozy. Otherwise, Africa had its history and as any Ethiopian would proudly assert Africa was the birthplace of humanity itself. How history--imbued can one be in the light of that? Sarkozy’s claim that the imaginary world the African lives in has no room for human endeavor is hard to grasp given the fact that the African people have been endeavoring and sweating to their bones to make progress and change their lives if only they had not been hindered by France and other colonial and neo colonial powers. Africa has also an ailment called her own leaders. But if we take Gabon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Djibouti, Cameroon where France crushed the nationalist struggle of Ruben um Nyobe of the UPC (1955), etc and ask the toiling peoples who is behind their unending misery we will find out that the black calloused fingers would be pointing to the direction of Paris whose dirty streets still get cleaned by African workers who are treatedless humanely that the littering dogs. And did Africa lack “an idea of progress”? Little Nicolas was not even born when Africa had bright ideas of progress. Actually, the struggle for independence waged by Africans, the resounding NO of Sekou Toure, the Pan African and “Africa should be free” vision of Nkrumah and Lumumba, of Felix Moumie killed by France, and more were all loud and clear visions and ideas of progress stifled by France and other neo colonial powers. So, how can the Sarkozy fellow sanctimoniously blame Africa of having no idea of progress and of living in an idealist naive babies land?
Still, if we want to be the devil’s advocate and feel sympathy for both Sarkozy and Mbeki we can ask where the African was all these years shut outside the doors of history. Imagine if there was no Sarkozy to tell him there was never ever an African golden age and the African should wake from his thousands years long “sleep of the Negro” and try to enter history! Disaster! But where is the key to the door of history? Who holds it? America or France? Will they give the African the key since they are already taking his resources for free? The Sarkozy fellow did not elaborate on this but we must ask and wonder about this. As we do this, the Royal plea of pardon does warm our heart. After all, as lazy Africans we want to blame others, we still fail to understand that colonialism was good for us, that no one rally did exploit us, that we are actually our own worst enemies and we just dream of a non existent golden age that will never really come in the future. And so, when Segolene Royal came back to her birth place and said sorry for the humiliating speech of Sarkozy we say thank you lady for the kind words even if we still have no idea of how to enter into the history the Frenchman talked about. Is it as Mbeki suggested through a European renaissance? Will they allow us to tag along or will they continue to chase us out of their continent and their so called renaissance? Mbeki is no longer in power and cannot answer us and Sarkozy has no ears for us Africans with no idea of progress. All this said, I would still be happy if Sarkozy or any other person would enlighten me on where the African was roaming all these centuries when he was said unable to enter the door of history
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
kudos for Malawi
KUDOS FOR MALAWI
Hama Tuma
Some of you may surely think that I am praising Malawi for observing its laws and rejecting the attempt by the Madonna woman to adopt yet another Malawian child. A judge who is now being praised less and condemned more in Malawi itself did suddenly realize that the law of Malawi are in the book to be applied and he declared that Madonna, who has not had an eighteen months residency in Malawi, cannot just fly in with her military trousers and chequebook and take off with another Malawian child. Adoption denied said this judge and the whole of Africa looked up in surprise especially in Ethiopia where the sale of children for adoption is a brisk business and if you have money and you are called Jolie you can fly in and buy any child you want no matter if the parents are still alive.
My kudos is not for the judge who is admittedly a rare specimen in Africa for being serious about the laws he had vowed to uphold. Seasoned Africans will pity him for his Thomas Sankara complex and wish him well as he may not last long in his post even if the devotedly Catholic president of Malawi, who is rebuilding the 200 mosques burnt in 1999 during election time riots, strongly vows he is here to uphold the law and stamp out corruption. My congratulations is in fact to this same Malawian president who backed my earlier call of “Adopt Us All!” launched to Madonna, Jolie and all other Westerners who are whisking off children from Africa. My previous call was based on the reality of the adoption racket since the sale of children did not adhere to any national law, children are being kidnapped for sale, the adopted children were not in most cases orphans and since the criteria is that their parents are poor the poverty index makes the parents themselves eligible for adoption. My sensible argument or call, as sensible as Jonathan Swift’s call for the famished Irish to eat their children, was scoffed at by many people and some even went out of their way to suggest I may be hankering after a modern day softer and disguised version of the infamous slave trade for which Africa has yet to receive a proper reparation. Now, the president of Malawi has boldly backed my call in his own way and brought the whole issue once again to the surface. He frankly told the Sunday Times of Aril 4, 2009:
. “I wish someone had come and taken 10,000 Malawian children because then I would know that 10,000 Malawians would have better education and opportunities,”
Now this is a crystal clear call for a broader concept of adoption. No one can accuse the President of Malawi of being the white man’s stooge. This is the person who changed his name from Brightson Webster Kyson Thom to the more African and nationalist Bingu wa Mutharika. Known affectionately among his supporters as “Chitsulo Cha Njanji” or railway track metal, Dr. Bingu is generally considered an honest man. He is openly and frankly saying the more Malawian children taken out the merrier. Why? As the President said, this is because they would have a better life, better education and opportunities in the West. In other words, if more whites take more poor people out of Africa to the West it would be great. In short, adopt us all please. I am sure the vast majority of people in Malawi survives with a dollar a day much like Ethiopia where the adoption racket is thriving and the ruling elite, with the thieving duo PM Meles Zenawi and his wife in the lead, is pocketing big money. The recent G20 meeting has shown once again that Africa is considered irrelevant and the so called mouthpiece of the continent at the summit, left after “cowering in the shadows” ignored by all. It is better to seek another solution.
A few years back one “Africanist” did write a book suggesting that Israelis and Japanese should replace Africans in Africa and the blighted continent would develop in no time. (Of course the book sold well in Europe—what did you expect?). Emptying the continent sounds a bit abrupt and crude, if not cruel, but doing the same through adoption would be gentler and kinder much like that promised to us gullible people by the New World Order. If having better education and opportunities is the criteria then adult Africans suffering the lack of education and opportunities can be prepared for adoption and the whole program can be organized by the IMF and the World Bank instead of indebting Africa again and again and intensifying its poverty. America resettled en masse the so called Somali Bantus and the Lost Children of the Sudan (yes, Washington has yet to learn that the majority of African children are lost). Moreover, if say the Congolese of Eastern Congo are adopted en masse and taken to Belgium, France the USA, then there will be no one to wage war and no more five million more deaths over Coltan and other minerals will occur. Instead of being called the Coltan Murderers the West would be praised as the Coltan Adopter and life saver. Imagine!
Dr Bingu, who is a president and will be listened to even if Malawi is a poor country, has pierced through the hypocrisy and called for the West to adopt thousands and not just a few hundreds. One does wonder how come Madonna adopted the child called David from Malawi in the first place if the residency requirement was still part of the law back then but this is an irrelevant question. We are poor because were sold out by our own corrupt “leaders” and fleeced by foreign predators since colonial times. We are being adopted, uprooted from our lands and cultures and parents because we are poor. The vicious circle of African reality affirms that tomorrow is dismal for the children and adults alike. Thus, those who claim to feel for us, those who shed many tears for Darfur and some drops for Eastern Congo and none for others, should go the adoption way. Most of these rich actors have big ranches that can accommodate many African farmers who can till the land (we picked their cotton as slaves, didn’t we?) and make them richer still. If Africans are adopted they cannot endanger the West as clandestine and illegal immigrants and they shall not pollute their shores by dying en masse. Evidently, this would be one more plus for protection of the environment. Dr. Bingu has come a long way in backing my call for wholesale adoption before it becomes too late. Kudos for Malawi.
Hama Tuma
Some of you may surely think that I am praising Malawi for observing its laws and rejecting the attempt by the Madonna woman to adopt yet another Malawian child. A judge who is now being praised less and condemned more in Malawi itself did suddenly realize that the law of Malawi are in the book to be applied and he declared that Madonna, who has not had an eighteen months residency in Malawi, cannot just fly in with her military trousers and chequebook and take off with another Malawian child. Adoption denied said this judge and the whole of Africa looked up in surprise especially in Ethiopia where the sale of children for adoption is a brisk business and if you have money and you are called Jolie you can fly in and buy any child you want no matter if the parents are still alive.
My kudos is not for the judge who is admittedly a rare specimen in Africa for being serious about the laws he had vowed to uphold. Seasoned Africans will pity him for his Thomas Sankara complex and wish him well as he may not last long in his post even if the devotedly Catholic president of Malawi, who is rebuilding the 200 mosques burnt in 1999 during election time riots, strongly vows he is here to uphold the law and stamp out corruption. My congratulations is in fact to this same Malawian president who backed my earlier call of “Adopt Us All!” launched to Madonna, Jolie and all other Westerners who are whisking off children from Africa. My previous call was based on the reality of the adoption racket since the sale of children did not adhere to any national law, children are being kidnapped for sale, the adopted children were not in most cases orphans and since the criteria is that their parents are poor the poverty index makes the parents themselves eligible for adoption. My sensible argument or call, as sensible as Jonathan Swift’s call for the famished Irish to eat their children, was scoffed at by many people and some even went out of their way to suggest I may be hankering after a modern day softer and disguised version of the infamous slave trade for which Africa has yet to receive a proper reparation. Now, the president of Malawi has boldly backed my call in his own way and brought the whole issue once again to the surface. He frankly told the Sunday Times of Aril 4, 2009:
. “I wish someone had come and taken 10,000 Malawian children because then I would know that 10,000 Malawians would have better education and opportunities,”
Now this is a crystal clear call for a broader concept of adoption. No one can accuse the President of Malawi of being the white man’s stooge. This is the person who changed his name from Brightson Webster Kyson Thom to the more African and nationalist Bingu wa Mutharika. Known affectionately among his supporters as “Chitsulo Cha Njanji” or railway track metal, Dr. Bingu is generally considered an honest man. He is openly and frankly saying the more Malawian children taken out the merrier. Why? As the President said, this is because they would have a better life, better education and opportunities in the West. In other words, if more whites take more poor people out of Africa to the West it would be great. In short, adopt us all please. I am sure the vast majority of people in Malawi survives with a dollar a day much like Ethiopia where the adoption racket is thriving and the ruling elite, with the thieving duo PM Meles Zenawi and his wife in the lead, is pocketing big money. The recent G20 meeting has shown once again that Africa is considered irrelevant and the so called mouthpiece of the continent at the summit, left after “cowering in the shadows” ignored by all. It is better to seek another solution.
A few years back one “Africanist” did write a book suggesting that Israelis and Japanese should replace Africans in Africa and the blighted continent would develop in no time. (Of course the book sold well in Europe—what did you expect?). Emptying the continent sounds a bit abrupt and crude, if not cruel, but doing the same through adoption would be gentler and kinder much like that promised to us gullible people by the New World Order. If having better education and opportunities is the criteria then adult Africans suffering the lack of education and opportunities can be prepared for adoption and the whole program can be organized by the IMF and the World Bank instead of indebting Africa again and again and intensifying its poverty. America resettled en masse the so called Somali Bantus and the Lost Children of the Sudan (yes, Washington has yet to learn that the majority of African children are lost). Moreover, if say the Congolese of Eastern Congo are adopted en masse and taken to Belgium, France the USA, then there will be no one to wage war and no more five million more deaths over Coltan and other minerals will occur. Instead of being called the Coltan Murderers the West would be praised as the Coltan Adopter and life saver. Imagine!
Dr Bingu, who is a president and will be listened to even if Malawi is a poor country, has pierced through the hypocrisy and called for the West to adopt thousands and not just a few hundreds. One does wonder how come Madonna adopted the child called David from Malawi in the first place if the residency requirement was still part of the law back then but this is an irrelevant question. We are poor because were sold out by our own corrupt “leaders” and fleeced by foreign predators since colonial times. We are being adopted, uprooted from our lands and cultures and parents because we are poor. The vicious circle of African reality affirms that tomorrow is dismal for the children and adults alike. Thus, those who claim to feel for us, those who shed many tears for Darfur and some drops for Eastern Congo and none for others, should go the adoption way. Most of these rich actors have big ranches that can accommodate many African farmers who can till the land (we picked their cotton as slaves, didn’t we?) and make them richer still. If Africans are adopted they cannot endanger the West as clandestine and illegal immigrants and they shall not pollute their shores by dying en masse. Evidently, this would be one more plus for protection of the environment. Dr. Bingu has come a long way in backing my call for wholesale adoption before it becomes too late. Kudos for Malawi.
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