Black Looks

• Marcus and the Amazons: Book Trailer

  Posted: June 30, 2011, 1:02 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  Marcus and the Amazons – a children’s story by Geoffrey Philp

   

  I believe Marcus and the Amazons is worthwhile, especially because…

  1. It’s a great little story that will stimulate all kinds of duscussions
  2. Marcus is respectful of others even when he disagrees with their actions
  3. The story dramatizes the values of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  and the Civil Rights movement by placing the events in a different context.
  4. Marcus resolves conflict without resorting to violence
  5. The story shows that actions/motives are not always as simple as they may seem.

  Did I mention its a great little story?

   

  After traveling through the forest, Marcus returns to his home and discovers that Amazons have enslaved his colony and imprisoned Princess Amy, his bride-to-be.

  With the help of his friends from the forest, Marcus must save Princess Amy and rally his colony to stand against the Amazons. But during his stay in the forest,

  Marcus has also renounced violence. Will Marcus succeed?

  
  

   

  You can buy a copy of Marcus and the Amazons from SmashWords

• Nigerian German writer, Olumide Popoola “This is not about sadness”

  Posted: June 27, 2011, 8:23 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Nigerian German writer and performance poet, Olumide Popoola, discusses “multiculturalism” and the differences between Germany and Britain. She also reads from her new novella, “This is not about sadness” which is at the top of my “to read” list for the August.

  Via Kalamu

• links for 2011-06-27

  Posted: June 27, 2011, 5:02 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • Nigeria: Boko Haram – a Small Group Becomes a Deadly Scourge Prior to the events of July 2009 when the sect's notoriety waxed strong, its members had been involved in dastardly incidents in Yobe in 2003 and in Kano in 2004. In April 2007, 10 policemen and a divisional commander's wife were killed in an attack on the police headquarters in Kano.
    On November 13, 2008, Muhammed Yusuf was arrested following an attack on a police station in Maiduguri, in which, 17 of his followers were killed. On January 20, 2009, he was granted bail by a High Court judge in Abuja. This was to be an error.
    On October 7, 2010, the members stormed a federal prison in Bauchi and set free hundreds of their members as well as other inmates and threatened reprisals against those they accused of persecuting their members. Obviously, the military did not defeat Boko Haram last year when a five-day long clash ended with the alleged extrajudicial execution, in police custody, of Ustaz Yusuf. (tags: nigeria BokoHaram)
  • Beyond Abolition: Ending Slavery in Mauritania « Reclaiming The Narrative: Making History (& Writing It Too!) The Mauritanian government, under President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, has recently announced measures to regulate the working conditions of domestic servants and workers within the country‘s borders. However, approximately 20 percent (well over half a million) of Mauritania‘s population remains enslaved particularly in the domestic and agricultural sectors. Mauritania has failed to fully abolish slavery within its borders, in spite of repeated passages of laws abolishing the slave trade in the years 1905, 1981 and 2007. The August 2007 law finally made owning slaves a criminal offense. (tags: mauritania slavery)
  • SONS OF MALCOLM: MORE FROM RESPECTED SISTER CYNTHIA MCKINNEY ON HER LIBYA MISSION Cynthia McKinney's "Eye Witness" Reports from Libya [Video] (tags: Libya)
  • Environmental Migrants in Africa: A Pan-African Solution A legal settlement for Africans by Africans would recognise that most environmentally induced migration is likely to take place within the territorial borders of the African continent. Herein lies a key difference between political and environmental migration. A refugee fleeing persecution by definition finds herself outside the country of her nationality. Unable to avail herself of the protection of her home country, she can only fall back upon international law. (tags: Environment refugees migration)
  • Food Insecurity Seizes East Africa | Think Africa Press Severe drought continues to plague East Africa, with Ethiopia, Kenya, Somaliland and eastern Uganda being areas of particular concern. The drought has intensified fears over food security in the region, as rising global food prices increase pressure on the poor. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet), a US agency,  says the drought is “the most severe food security emergency in the world today”, with more than 7 million people in the region in need of humanitarian assistance (tags: EastAfrica Food_Insecurity Drought)

• links for 2011-06-26

  Posted: June 26, 2011, 5:01 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • Pro-Zionist LGBT organizing PinkWashing (tags: GME Israel lgbtME)

• For insomniacs everywhere – freeing yourself from the tyranny of sleep.

  Posted: June 26, 2011, 10:04 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  I wonder whether there was ever a time when I slept. When my children were young I used to dream of when they were old enough to wake, go to the loo and get their own cereal and plonk themselves QUIETLY in front of the telly and I would sleep and sleep. It never happened and I still cannot sleep and even when I do its such a light sleep that the most slightest of noises or movement and I am awake. When desperate I take one tablet of Valerian but even though this is supposed to be half the dose, it completely knocks me out and I wake up feeling lethargic.

  A couple of nights ago I came across this essay by Aminatta Forno on insomnia. Two things really stood out. First her comment on our obsession with sleep which is probably a good part of the reason we cannot sleep. By 2am I am in a panic because now there are only 5 hours left for me to get the sleep I need to function the next day – this totalitarian sleep control and guaranteed to extend the insomnia into the early hours of the morning. Some nights I function perfectly OK with only 2, 3 hours. Others, I can do nothing not even sleep maybe for two three days. The other point she makes is – sleep time somehow feels like wasted time. There is so much to do, how irritating that we have to take 7/8 hours a day to sleep! The crazy thing about sleep, a point also made by Aminatta, is that I never feel rested afterwards. Just groggy and exhausted from dreams, nightmares and anxieties over all the little things that for those hours became monumental hills which could not possibly be climbed.

  After reading this I no longer feel so bad about my insomnia – its peaceful at night and yes if you do go out at 2 / 3am the roads are clear, and every once in a while you come across a cafe or bar where other late nighters and insomniacs are gathered – free of the tyranny of sleep!

  Ten years ago I lost the gift of sleep. I had left my full-time job and begun work on a difficult memoir, one that involved going to and from a war zone. I was under stress. I went to the doctor, who prescribed Zopiclone. But the sleeping pills didn’t work, so I stopped taking them. I assumed that sleep would return in its own time, but it never did.
  
  Last night I slept in a new place and, as usual with new places, woke at four in the morning. The night before I had slept even less. I had a flight to catch the next day. I went to bed at midnight and at 3.30 I was awake and staring at the thin strip of street light between the curtains. I was anxious about the flight. Then I remembered that I had left a sentence unfinished in a piece of writing. Small anxieties stretched into long worms, burrowing through the brain. As the hours passed I began to feel the sensation with which I’ve become familiar: a nervous tension, a rising nausea. The more I chase sleep, the more it hides from me. Sleep is a temperamental creature: quicksilver, quixotic, stubborn and seductive.

  Yes, those are bad nights.

  Then there are the good nights. I don’t mean the nights when sleep comes and stays with me, though those are good, too. I mean the nights when insomnia feels like something special. One night in December as I prepared for bed I opened the curtain and saw the first flakes of snow float down. At four o’clock I was awake. I left my bed, pulled on some jeans and a coat and stepped out into the street. Thick snow reflected the light of a bright Moon. I walked up to a park at the top of the hill. Ahead, a vixen ploughed the same path and turned to look at me every few seconds. She was watching me, working out my intentions, keeping a distance between us. But that night, the only two creatures in a whitened world, it looked like something else, as though she wanted me to follow her.

  In the decade during which I searched for my lost gift, I wandered out into the night on many occasions. There I met other insomniacs in parks and open spaces across London. Sometimes I drove through the streets, saw the single light burning in a row of darkened houses and recognised the lonely beacon of the insomniac. I practised something called “good sleep hygiene”, bathed in lavender baths and drank tisanes of valerian. I abandoned coffee after midday, bought earplugs. I became intensely aware how obsessed we are with sleep. We tell each other to sleep well and in the morning ask: “How did you sleep?” We all, not just insomniacs, count the number of hours we’ve had as obsessively as an anorexic counting calories. Parents suffer sleep deprivation, buy books and train their children to sleep alone, in the dark and on command.

  The truth is that I never did much care for sleep. It feels like time wasted. When I do sleep, I dream intensely. I have sometimes been able to stop and start dreams, to think “oh, hell, it’s just a dream” and skydive from a light aircraft. If that sounds fun, it is. But if the dreams are vivid, so are the nightmares. Sleep leaves me exhausted as often as it leaves me rested.

  Yet I envy sleepers. In Sam Kiley’s book about the war in Afghanistan, Desperate Glory, he writes about sleep the night before a battle, the “lucky ones” who manage it, and everyone else. In the middle of the book I came across a photograph of a soldier in full battledress, holding a rifle, head propped against a wall — asleep. What I felt in that moment — hugely and with a surge of hot shame — was envy. In the end, Kiley writes, sleep is learnt, you catch it when you can — because your life depends on it. ………Continue reading

• Kafayat Quadri Rawks!

  Posted: June 25, 2011, 6:48 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Kafayat Quadri – Nigeria

  
  

• links for 2011-06-25

  Posted: June 25, 2011, 5:03 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • TRANSPHOBIA « The Anti-Intellect Blog I’m sick of gay men harassing trans people. It’s not for us to tell trans person’s what their sexual orientation is.So many hateful and ignorant people hide behind “it’s just an opinion.” It’s not just an opinion. It’s someone’s life at stake! Transphobia is not cool. Not from gay men with trans friends. Not from trans people. Not from anyone!It’s funny how a person claims to not be transphobic BUT they “just” know that when trans women have sex with straight men it’s “gay.” Saying “I have a trans friend,” “My best friend is trans and they don’t care,” “I’m just giving my opinion” does not justify transphobia. (tags: Transphobia)
  • Is Apple Creating Technology That Will Block You From Creating and Sharing Cell Phone Video? | Movements.org I hope Apple has the guts and good sense never to deploy this technology, and instead uses the patent to prevent it being implemented by others. Yeah, right! If it were Google, that might be more than a vain hope…When we look back on the history of media in our era, we will see how, bit by bit, we gutted one of the engines of democracy in the interest of protecting and enlarging media industry profits. A very poor trade indeed. (tags: technology Apple mobilephones video)

• links for 2011-06-24

  Posted: June 24, 2011, 5:02 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • Has Technology Changed Organizing? A Conversation with Movement Scholar Marshall Ganz | Movements.org In 1848, every country in Europe had a revolution. And they happened very quickly one upon the other. People were riding on horses with broadsides to the next town. It’s not like social contagion is a brand new thing. And I’m not saying that to minimize the significance of the new things, but just to put them into context to appreciate what they enable us to do and what they do not. (tags: newmedia cyberactivism socialmovements)
  • Pambazuka – Senegal: Violent uprising in Dakar 'There is a violent uprising happening now here. In the city center of Dakar, in the suburbs and in the provincial areas. A lot of demonstrations and riots are happening,' writes Tidiane Kassé, as Senegalese people take to the streets to oppose a new law being discussed in parliament, which would allow a presidential candidate to take power with just 25% of the vote. Meanwhile, as a Yellitaare statement calls on the Senegalese government to ensure the safety of human rights activist Alioune Tine, reports from Dakar suggest that Tine is 'seriously wounded', after being hit on the head by attackers alleged to be the body guards of a minister close to President Abdoulaye Wade. (tags: senegal uprising protests)
  • …My heart’s in Accra » Four Questions about Civic Media My hope is that understanding who speaks, who amplifies and who listens will help us address the second question I’m obsessed with: “How do we help marginal and rarely-heard voices find an audience?” While the promise of digital media is that everyone can share their story, we’re a long way from realizing that potential. Projects like Charlie deTar’s Between the Bars, which invites the roughly 1% of Americans who are incarcerated to blog by sending paper letters which are scanned and posted online, or Sasha Costanza-Chock’s VozMob, which allows immigrant and low wage workers to blog from mobile phones, invite us to pay attention to communities we rarely encounter in new or old media. Bringing people into the conversation sometimes requires new tools, like Leo Burd’s VoIPDrupal, which brings the power of Voice over IP – critical to reaching populations who don’t have regular internet access – into the participatory media conversation. (tags: activism journalism civicmedia blogs socialmedia)

• links for 2011-06-23

  Posted: June 24, 2011, 2:49 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Women in Politics: Planning ahead of 2015 elections

  The role of money in political pariticpations especially for the female politicians was so glaring in the just concluded 2011 elections. The lack of strong financial based for many female politicians hindered the large coverage of campaign and their popularity. No one is advocating for blood money or fraudulent resources but hard earned money or support from credible sources to do the necessary public awareness, campaign and rallies.

  There is no denying the fact that there are many other obstacles alienating women from political participations and offices. Patriarchy is a key factor, violent and unsafe political landscape as well as parties’ discrimination and unfair selections have tremendous roles to play but with these many obstacles, if women do not have money for their campaign and to start early will these not be a double tragedy?

  Roy and Lahiri: India, home and diaspora

  ‘They are trying to keep me destabilised- so begins a recent interview with Arundhati Roy, published in the UK Guardian on the eve of the release of ‘Broken Republic’, the latest in an ever elongating list of non-fiction books by the author of the great Booker Prize winning novel, ‘The God of Small Things’

  With Arundhati Roy, we’ve waited for a second novel for over a decade, in vain. In 2007 the author announced she was writing it but has failed to deliver the goods. She keeps churning out polemics instead. The novelist has given way to an outspoken critic of the Indian government on Deforestation, globalisation, Kashmir and so on. Like Hill, Roy’s detractors paint her as shrill, a loony, even her interviewer in The Guardian could hardly keep such insinuations from his text of the interview. In this part of the world, we’ve never had problems with our writers being activists as long as they remain faithful to the calling that gave them a platform and a listening/reading public in the first place. After buying Roy’s ‘An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire’ years ago, I’m refraining from buying any more of her non-fiction work (and this, from a committed reader and writer of non-fiction!) in the hope she gets that damned second novel out already.

  South Africa: Bring back the truth and dignity from 1976

  On Youth Day this year the nation will be celebrating 35 years since the struggle of the youth that died for Freedom, Democracy, Justice and Equality in 1976. We as Abahlali youth agree that the courage of the youth of 1976 must be celebrated. But we also wish to bring back the truth and the dignity of those youth that sacrificed with their lives in 1976. We need to make that truth and dignity a living force now. The struggles of the past must not be misused to silence the struggle of the present. The struggles of the past must be used to support the struggles of the present. Every generation must be free to take their own struggle forward.

  Wikileaked Cable Describes How State Department Influenced Aljazeera’s Post-Quake Coverage of Relief Effort

  Department cables Wikileaked last year revealed a State offensive against unfavorable media coverage of the U.S. role in the aid effort, with Hillary Clinton instructing all embassies to “push back” against “inaccurate and unfavorable international media coverage of America’s role and intentions in Haiti.”

  A newly released cable, made available through Wikileaks’ partnership with Haiti Liberté and The Nation, reveals in detail how such “push back” worked, in one case at least.

  Frantz Fanon 50 years on

  Fanon would certainly not have wanted to be canonised as an authority outside of the context in which he wrote and struggled. On the contrary he constantly stressed, from his first book to his last, that a living thought must always be an engagement with a particular situation.

  But 50 years after his death our world is both strikingly similar and strikingly different to the world in which Fanon lived and struggled with such an incandescent passion. His remarks about the oil of Iraq having ‘removed all prohibitions and made concrete the true problems’ and the ‘marines who periodically are send to re-establish “order” in Haiti’ are hardly strange words from another time. His account of the degeneration of national liberation struggles into organised plunder is routinely described as prophetic by new readers in Southern Africa.

• Shady politics of GayMiddleEast

  Posted: June 24, 2011, 8:02 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  Last March, Pink Watching Israel published an article in which they exposed the website Gay Middle East as having “shady politics” with close Zionist connections and “who has never carried any of the anti-apartheid statements by LGBT groups in the region. ”

  That the largest Middle East LGBT (well, G mostly)”grassroots news” website is run by British Israeli Zionist Dan Littauer is already cause for concern. The fact that GME regularly collaborates with neo-colonialist Islamophobes such as Peter Tatchell [See Out of Place, Out of Print] (the guy with a penchant for threatening lawsuits against those who don’t think he is god’s gift to oppressed gay people) doesn’t help his credentials much. Bizarrely, he is also the human rights and press officer for the Association of British Muslims. Barring the logic of such a position, Littauer is also quite friendly with Islamophobic pornographer Michael Lucas, whose recent campaign against Siegebusters, a NY-based anti-apartheid group, successfully got them banned from meeting at the NY LGBT center. Lucas, by the way, is making a name for himself uttering such gems as “Muslims have not contributed to civilization in any way”. He is also famous for making gay porn film “Men of Israel”, which had its setting on the ruins of homes of Palestinians displaced in 1948.

  There is a degree of deceptiveness about Gay Middle East which Mideast Youth in a post “Que(e)rying the Israel-linked GayMiddleEast.com: a statement by Arab queers” compares to Tom MacMaster’s “Amina”.

  MacMaster’s deception brought many issues to the fore, and the least interesting are the stories GayMiddleEast.com has been plugging about how, contrary to what MacMaster has portrayed, gays are actually really oppressed. Perhaps more relevant in this context is an honest discussion about how to do solidarity work in a way that is respectful of people’s lived realities. That includes knowing what the limits of solidarity are, especially when you are outside the community you claim to care about, and when you occupy a position of privilege.

  Both MacMaster and Littauer have chosen the wrong path; they have both put themselves front and center, the former by actually deceptively adopting the persona of a queer Arab woman, and the latter by acting as a spokesperson and gatekeeper for queer Arab voices with a direct line to the Western media.

  The statement by Queer Arabs reminds me of the “Statement of Warning” made by African LGBTI activists to Peter Tatchell and Outrage in February 2007…

  In order to prevent Peter Tatchell and Outrage! from causing further damage through their unfounded campaigns and press releases, we issue this public statement of warning.

  As Human Rights Defenders from across Africa, we strongly discourage the public from taking part in any LGBTI campaigns or calls to action concerning Africa that are led by Peter Tatchell or Outrage!

  Collaboration across continents is both important and valuable. We are willing to work with those who respect our advice and expertise regarding our continent.

  However, Outrage! has been acting in contempt and disregard of the wishes and lives of African Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Human Rights Defenders. We have made every attempt to address this matter with Outrage!, personally, and they have refused to listen. We now take this matter to the public, requesting you not to take part in any of Peter Tatchell or Outrage!’s campaigns regarding Africa, as they are not factually-based and are harmful to African activists.

  In both cases Queer Arab and African voices are being co-opted by white men. With the help of a handfull of collaborators both on the continent and in the Diaspora they continually attempt to discredit our voices but worse grossly undermine grassroots struggles and take credit for any successes and acts of resistance. Queer African voices like our Queer Arab sisters and brothers..

  “are not victims in need of a white saviour working in London, nor do we need a conduit for our poor brown oppressed voices to be heard in the West, which seems to be GayMiddleEast.com’s intended audience.

  Links: Arab activists question Gay Middle East.com

  LGBT racism and transnational resistance: A short timeline
  Summer 2010:

  - In Toronto, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is banned from marching at Pride. After massive protests against the censorship, the group is allowed back into the march.

  - In Berlin, Judith Butler, a BDS supporter, refuses to accept the Pride award for
  civil courage in response to the racist enmeshments of the Pride organizers, and instead passes the award on to anti-racist organizations in Berlin

  - In Oslo, there are discussions if Pride should for the first time start in the “homophobic” neighbourhood Grønland, popularly imagined as Muslim.

  Spring 2011:
  - In London, gay activists linked to the neo-fascist English Defense League organize the East End Gay Pride march through Tower Hamlets, an inner-city areas constructed as Muslim. The official march is stopped after resistance from queer Muslims, other queers of colour, and their allies .

  - In Brussels, there are discussions if the Pride parade should this year start in the migrant neighbourhood, and if it should be headed by LGBT-asylum seekers carrying posters that thank the Belgian nation.

  - The NYC LGBT Community Center cancels Israeli Apartheid Week and denies the organizers access to the space.

  - In Paris, Inter-Pride uses a gallic cock in tricolore to advertise an event (in imitation of a Front National image). Following a spontanous anti-racist coalition, the image is withdrawn.

  - In Lyon, a queer kiss-in in front of a Mosque is narrowly prevented.

  Madrid 2010:
  In response to the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, where 9 people were killed by the Israeli Army, the state-sponsored Israeli delegation is excluded from taking part in the Pride.

• Emmanuel Iduma: Ikhide’s Complaint ["The Caine Prize and Unintended Consequences"]

  Posted: June 23, 2011, 5:52 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Guest blog post by Emmanuel Iduma, co-founder and co-editor of Saraba Magazine.

  Emmanuel responds to Nigerian writer and critic, Ikhide Ikheloa’s essay “Email from America: The Caine Prize and Unintended Consequences”. The essay which one website described as ” Wainainaesque” after Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical “How to Write About Africa” and together with Chimamanda Adichie’s   “The danger of a single story”, is fast becoming the third part of a trilogy of African intellectual criticism of Western literary imposition.

  The Caine Prize for African Writing has been great for African literature by showcasing some truly good works by African writers. The good news is that the Caine Prize is here to stay. The bad news is that someone is going to win the Caine Prize this year. This is a shame; having read the stories on the shortlist, I conclude that a successful African writer must be clinically depressed, chronicling in excruciating detail every open sore of Africa. Apologies to Wole Soyinka. The creation of a prize for “African writing” may have created the unintended effect of breeding writers willing to stereotype Africa for glory.
  The mostly lazy, predictable stories that made the 2011 shortlist celebrate orthodoxy and mediocrity. They are a riot of exhausted clichés even as ancient conflicts and anxieties fade into the past tense: huts, moons, rapes, wars, and poverty. The monotony of misery simply overwhelms the reader. Fiammetta Rocco, the Economist’s literary editor who chaired last year’s judges, crows that the stories are “uniquely powerful.” The stories are uniquely wretched. The chair of this year’s judges Hisham Matar declares presumptuously that the stories “represent a portrait of today’s African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations.” Really? Is this the sum total of our experience, this humourless, tasteless canvas of shiftless Stepin Fetchit suffering?

  Ikhide Ikheloa made it a point to diss the shortlisted stories for the 2011 Caine Prize, which, by the way, is not the first time we have been served with his opinionated criticism. In response, I intend to make the case that there are deeper concerns than the sweeping conclusions he makes in his short essays, “How not to Write about Africa” and The Caine Prize and Unintended Consequences.” He complains that, “The creation of a Prize for ‘African Writing’ may have created the unintended effect of breeding writers writing to stereotype Africa for glory.” And he goes further to assert that the stories “celebrate orthodoxy and mediocrity,” that “they are a riot of exhausted clichés even as ancient conflicts and anxieties fade into the past tense: huts, moons, rapes, wars and poverty.” Then he praises Medalie’s “The Mistress’s Dog” because it narrates an “Africa without kwashiorkor.” The imagery he presents is stimulating, pitching Medalie’s ‘Africa without kwashiorkor’ against NoViolet Bulawayo’s “sniffing around Africa’s sewers.” This “sniffing” is by “good writers showcasing good prose and great dialogue” stuck in the “fog of stereotypes.” I implore the reader to take a look at those essays. I am more concerned about the implications of Mr. Ikheloa’s complaint(s) than about his affronts to the “good writers” and the Caine Prize which “has come to stay.” I will, however, return a few more times to his considerations.

  The dilemma we face is the challenge of distinguishing between writing a “story” and writing “stereotypes.” It is clear that the divide, and the constructs, exist. It is also clear that both merge and are almost inseparable. For instance, I might decide to write a story about incest and child witch-hunt in Esit Eket, thereby writing an African “stereotype” or I might decide to tell a story of a deaf man who hears a single song, thereby writing a “story.” This is a fashionable divide, sometimes bedevilling, other times accommodating. But I consider this divide more intricate than superficial.

  Let me make assumptions for what it takes to write stereotypes, and write a story. To write a stereotype, one mixes fact with fiction – narrating, on the one hand, a considerable navigation of the known world and on the other creatively repeating that known world. This is perhaps an art in itself, and essentially accommodating, I think. Or perhaps stereotypes get their essentials from “political correctness” – which suggests that “stereotypes” can fall within the category that encompasses the media, Westernization, Neo-colonialism, and whatnot. The other realm, of stories, demands extended imagination – we find ourselves making our special known worlds, giving no quarter to political correctness, living in a (re)imagined state. This second realm, unlike the first, becomes celebrated only because those who read us find in it an escape from “reality.”
  
  But would I be wrong to ask which of these realms demands greater guts? How fearless must we be to write a stereotype into a story? Is the necessity for fearlessness greater in the first realm and lesser in the second? Put more succinctly, how much guts did it take Rushdie to write “The Satanic Verses”, and how did that differ from, say the stories of Graham Greene or Raymond Chandler? Unfortunately, I find it increasingly difficult to defer to this divide because I do not know if there are stories which purely narrate “issues” and those that purely function in the field of the imaginative. Perhaps, this is one difficulty with Ben Okri; how there is the impossibility of establishing a definite realm for his stories.

  I think it is a very complex problem, because I live on Earth and not on Mars and I cannot imagine something out of the known world. I create faces from faces that appear in my head after I have seen a face, and a leg and a table too. And perhaps it is not as easy as I have been made to believe, that it is possible to write a story that is a story and has no trace of the issues that bedevil humanity. But maybe our conception of “stereotypes” is stuck in a slot in a negative contraption. We have learnt Chimamanda Adichie that there are “dangers of a single story.” We know how important it is that Africa is not thought of as a country, but as a continent. And we know how important it is to tell stories that do not convey the “dark” side of Africa, stories that do well with a “Western audience”; or to avoid stories that portray Africa as an “issue-laden continent.” Then, these issues that we talk about are issues of negativity and not, well, rich ethnicity and functioning social life. These stories, that are only stories, are those that tell of “normal” lives, that are not clichés. It is safe to assume that stories that are issue-laden are those that explore the details of a much-talked about negative life, a portrayal that is both politically and socio-culturally incorrect, though demeaning.

  But whose story are we supposed to write? The stories in our head? The stories that we imagine are in the heads of our countrymen? The story of the town our parents were born in, or our country, or where we have lived? Three words, then, appear relevant – memory, fraternity and essence. Memory because I think I am a collage of what I was yesterday; of places, people and things I engaged with in the past (incidentally there is an essay by celebrated atheist Sam Harris, “Morality without Freewill” that navigates the proposition that our actions, intentions, beliefs and desires arise not from freewill but from prior-causes). Fraternity because I do not live alone, and I do not exist in a space void of community, language, ethnicity and social structure. And essence because I think I belong to a larger scheme of things, because I am fool to think I exist only within a sphere that is self-attributive. This, then, can mark the intersection between the private and the public, that arena where I think I am writing for myself and others tell me my work appeals to them. I tell myself that I must not set out with the objective to tell another’s story, but I find that when I tell the story that seems individual, others say I tell their stories too. I like to call this subconscious fraternity, and it is not impossible that there is a single thread of (un)conscious memory and essence that runs through all of us.

  I must digress. When we speak of telling stories that are not stereotypes, or when we address Ikhide’s complaint, we are faced with the question of whether NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest” is a story that is as much hers as it is Africa’s. We know that the Caine Prize is the “African Booker,” and so it must represent, essentially, what is “African” about Africa. Good, then. Did Bulawayo write a story that was in her head which found an intersection with what was ‘real’ about Africa? Or did she tell another story, one that is real to the West, one that the West believes as their “African” story? Mr. Ikheloa further complains that “the West is now busily forcing our stories into a particularly obnoxious trajectory.”

  I am simply asking: How real can we be about Africa? And how real can we be to Africa? Now, I am careful to use ‘Africa’ because we are a set of 54 countries with different histories and fractured perspectives. I am also careful because I suppose I am as strange to a Tunisian as that Tunisian is to a Canadian. So if we are speaking of Africa’s tale, we are in the danger of writing the tale of say Darfur or Uganda or Rwanda and not that of Bauchi, Afikpo or Ile-Ife. Africa seems to be a generalized word, a permissible one, and I am wary of the associations that have come off it. Thus, I fall back to the assumption that issues are only issues in a generalized sense used for defining Africa as ‘the sick baby of the world.’ But it is dangerous to conclusively assume that these cliché stories (issue-laden stories) are written because “needy African writers” are hungry. Perhaps they are written in the voice of a writer for whom the generalized Africa is a particularized one. Ikhide complains that there is a lot of lamentation in supposedly contemporary African narratives. Thus, I am wont to question the relevance and expedience of these cliché stories – is there a purpose to stereotype-stories, even in the long term? I hate, however, to be a judge of these things.

  We know from Granta that “How to Write about Africa” ranks amongst the most popular of all their online essays. It is understandable that Binyavanga Wainaina feeds into the essay sarcastic details of an Africa that resonates in Western-controlled media (and we know that he who controls the media controls perception). I am fine with the contents of the essay, and I have been a fan of it since 2007. Yet I think it must count for something that the essay is very popular on the Granta site. I want to think that a new stereotype is emerging – a stereotype that wants to address “Africa” in the way it should be addressed; because we are angry, perhaps ashamed, of the manner in which Africa has been written about. I assume this because this generation of writers did not invent this stereotype. We are affected by the Achebe-Conrad war. Agreed, our claims are justifiable, as we do not want to be defined, or as Mr. Ikheloa wrote once, we do not want to be italicized. We do not want our language explained at the back of a book that purportedly celebrates us. Yet, is this not going to become what we are avoiding? Is our definition of ourselves by ourselves not going to become a stereotype? Is the story we are going to tell that is pleasing, and acceptable, and real, not going to become a cliché story too? I believe this must be considered urgently, because “screwing” boundaries and prizes and “just writing” suggests that there is another story we are not telling. One pointer we get to this other story – this emerging stereotype – is the fact that (as Ikhide writes), “outside of the destructive force of organized religion, wars and diseases, the internet and cell phone technology are the most powerful forces in the ongoing restructuring of African communities.” Then if we move from this destructive telling, we are yet to find a template to build our efforts at telling stories upon, a template that screws boundaries and prizes. Even Mr. Ikheloa does not provide such template. Except, of course, he suggests that good writing about Africa is writing that addresses the forces of the internet and cell phone technology – and this would be suicidal because Ivor Hartman (in One Ghana One Voice’s Roundtable Discussion #6) states that “up to 89.1% of Africa do not have online access.”

  The problem is that, as my friend Adebiyi Olusolape muses, our collective view is influenced more by sensational media coverage than by anything else. Of Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”, in relation to her treatment of an Islamic subject, Olusolape notes that “It’s always the Muslims. But was this the case at the time the book was being written, pre-9/11, before it became “official” that Muslims be made the handy bogeymen?” In essence, assuming there was no 9/11, terrorism might be defined differently and “terrorists” accorded less bogeyness. So, put in perspective, assuming we had the pre-colonial opportunity to define ourselves, there might be little clamour, as there now is, for self-definition and narratives that sing the collective song of the people. This, however, was not the case. We were defined against our wish. My fear is that in an attempt to re-define and assert ourselves, despite our pitfalls and failures, we would lose fluidity and individualization.

  Chris Abani says the story is fluid and belongs to no one person. This is important in his contemplation of what I think of as the “human narrative” – an attempt to universalize the human condition into any narrative, but essentially within an ethnic context. So I write a story from an Igbo viewpoint, questioning my Igboness, because I know someone would question his Giyukuness. Abani writes, “This sometimes happens to us, that we write the song that sings our mother across to the other side. That the narrative is beyond even the ethical work we wanted it to be. That it is sometimes a good yarn, that it sometimes brings comfort to others, that it sometimes makes our people proud of us.” I will return to a consideration of this.

  Does the story of the real Africa belong to only one person? If we choose to write a story about Darfur, does it mean we have told a story that should not be told because it affirms a skewed Western thought or affords a validation of Western-stereotypic consciousness? I remember someone saying that “Jimmy Carter’s Eyes” was a better story than “Waiting.” And that Osondu wrote the latter to “win” the Caine. Good, agreed. He won the Caine. He wrote a story. Perhaps one is more important than the other (or perhaps the decision of the Judges is most important). I am thinking this could be equated with what Emeka Okereke, Nigerian photographer, blogs about in relation to a project organized by an organization named AECID affiliated with the Spanish Ministry of Culture: “You have what I want, you want what I have.” Thus, I give the Caine people what they “want” in exchange for the prestige and literary stardom that comes with the prize. Yet, it appears that it is increasingly difficult to draw a line between the stories that should be told and the stories that should not, because we are a set of generalized people that are finding their voice; of course I disagree with Mr. Ikheloa because he seems to think this line is easily discernable. Is this not a case for saying that we must explore all options, all alternatives to narration?

  I believe what is more important is the objective of the story. I assume it is unhelpful to draw a line on what a writer’s process/objective is by his story. Granted, critics do this continuously – yet in the final analysis if we can define a “grand” objective of “the story” we can go past these questions of stories that dance to a Western tune. And what is the West, anyway? And what is even human? So our grand objective must transcend western lines, become human, and take a more particularized stance. Can this grand objective be grasped? I propose that memory, fraternity and essence are merged, so that every writer, of whatever African descent, plugs his narrative into this fusion. Hopefully.

  Directly connected to this is whether the generation of writers I belong to could either conform to standards set by post-colonial writers or choose to be dissident. This is interesting for me because I grew up in post-postcolonial Nigeria, at the dusk of the military regime. So what I know is not a Nigeria just off colonialism, and therefore I cannot tell the politics that was evident in that time or become a social-critic as was the praiseworthy fashion of that time. I have grappled with the question of how socially active my writing must be, how protestant and dissident. Essentially, I find that if I confine myself to telling “activism” in my writing, I could be telling the story of another, confronting another’s reality, as I have never been imprisoned, brutalized or assaulted (perhaps an experience of any of this would change me?) What bothers me is not necessarily how failed the system is, but how this system has stripped us of some of our humanity or how we are human despite the system.

  Since I have raised the question of political relevance, it is appropriate to consider the extent to which such relevance is useful. Is this relevance a clamour for anti-Government (protest) writing? As we know, in Nigeria for instance, a civilian government has not shown a greater zeal for the Nigerian people than their military counterpart. And so, we have enough reason to display dissidence, ‘incorruptible dissidence’ like Soyinka. We have the option to write “politically,” fight the government of our time. Yet, there appears to be an over-documentation of protest. As such, there could (or should) be a different slant in my head aside “the prejudice of colonialism, racism, anxieties about postcolonial life and the painful alienation of exile.” However, I am making the case that what I feel in my head could be anything from the preoccupations of the older writers to the reality of an internet age, and my choice of either should not invalidate my writing.

  I return to Emeka Okereke because he makes a case for “the concept of freedom of manoeuvre within the volatile abundance of the creative magnetic field.” What does this imply? Does it suggest that our freedom as writers, or artists, extends to the need to deal with matters we find ‘fulfilling’ (in terms of Caine prestige and monetarily)? Or does it start and end at questioning personal and collective unrest in a manner that is not ‘politically’ correct? Indeed, where does that “manoeuvre” begin, and end? What are the parameters of our artistic freedom? How right can my story be? And how wrong? Which is wrong – my story or me? As we see, this is an open-ended conundrum.

  A simpler knot might be a question of style, and if I may be preposterous, “individual artistic libertarianism.” Raymond Carver’s “Principles of a Story” is a fine masterpiece on the art of short story writing. He notes: “It’s akin to style, what I’m talking about, but it isn’t style alone. It is the writer’s particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There’s plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.” Here we find that he makes a distinction between ‘style’ and ‘signature.’ He goes further to consider that a writer, with a unique lasting signature, has a way of looking at his world. Just as it is that a myopic sprinter cannot see the finish line the way non-myopic sprinters can. And it is amazing that, using this analogy, we might have difficulties judging the view of that myopic sprinter by that of his fellows. Put more contextually, how do we judge a writer if we cannot place a thumb on his ‘signature’ and how he looks at the world? A friend told me that being a Christian would blur the range of my fiction. I laughed because I could not imagine how being a believer in a “non-Christian God,” as he claimed he was, would broaden the range of my fiction.

  My contemplation of individual artistic vision could be dangerous. I would have wished that we look at the world the way we wish to, and not be judged on the question of whether our view represents “a true and collective African voice” (who even defines this?) But we understand that if this is the case we would have no complaint from Ikhide, and we do need him to complain (?) Yet we also need to, as writers, find a way to speak. I care less if I am accused of making a case for “writing to please the West.” For me, it is more dangerous to make a case for “African writing” when being an artist begins from an individual standpoint than from the collective. As such, it is arguable that Adichie corroborates this in “The Thing around Your Neck” and “Half of a Yellow Sun” and Habila in his short story “The Immigrant” and Evans in “26a.” Important, then, is the subject of identity. Identity is often an imagined state, so it gives room for very innovative ways to look at Self. We agree that we are who we are different from others because, for instance, we have the same language, live within each other, have knowledge that our parents and their parents before them lived in the place we now live or the place we call “home.” This is changing very much. For instance, I speak the Igbo language badly, although I hail from Afikpo. I have lived in up to seven cities, and my parents visit our hometown irregularly. Does this make me fractured? Yes, I think, very much. I agree that there is every need to locate myself within an ethnic space and maybe speak from that space, but I disagree that I must be more conscious of a collective identity than my fractured self.

  How then does this resolve? First, this does not resolve, and it should not. An artistic life as individual as mine cannot be explained collectively, neither can a creative process be ascertained with mathematical precision. So I am thinking that Arundhati Roy is right when she speaks of “deploying a private language.” In her Guernica interview she suggests that it is interesting to try walking the path between honing language to make it as private as possible, and looking around, seeing what is happening to millions, and deploying that private language to speak from the heart of a crowd. And I add that this private language could then become public, spoken by the crowd to the crowd and for the crowd. There can be (and should be) attempts to judge the deployment of my private language. But whoever is interested in judging must give room for his (blissful) ignorance, for even the Devil, as I was told in my undergraduate law class, does not know the mind of a man.

  Second, I agree that there can be the “ethics of narrative.” Abani makes this case in his essay in Witness Magazine – “Ethics and Narrative: the Human and Other” – which suggests that we must find the intersection between our capacity as artists and our capacity as humans (that is, I should write the story that leads your mother to the other side). If this can be incorporated in our grand objective of story-telling or Caine Prize-writing, whether or not there are Ikhide Complaints, I trust we would be fine. More so, it is very human and ethical for the narrative to be true to itself – If we go to the places described in the story, in Beatrice Lamwaka’s Uganda for instance, would we find characters as those she created in “Butterfly Dreams”? And third, this funnels into the idea that I am first human before anything else, towering above every other purpose. Therefore I am content with finding it difficult to define this humanness, because I am always groping for who I am and how best to narrate who I am within a fraternal space.

  _

  Emmanuel Iduma holds a degree in Law, and has been published online and in print. He co-publishes Saraba Magazine.

• links for 2011-06-23

  Posted: June 23, 2011, 5:01 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • Egypt: A Multi-Generational Revolt
  • Why Egypt’s Nonviolent Victory Is a Win for Us All : Nonviolent Action Network

• Aminatta Forna “The Memory of Love”

  Posted: June 22, 2011, 5:39 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Aminatta Forna discusses her new book “The Memory of Love” with BBC Africa’s Bola Mosuru

  Part 2

  Links:
  Reviews

  The Devil Danced on the Water

• links for 2011-06-22

  Posted: June 22, 2011, 5:02 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  • Haiti: what WikiLeaks' US embassy cables reveal Conditioned by a century of superpower status, the US still acts as if it may dispose of Haiti as it chooses: as colonial dominion (tags: wikileaks Haiti)
  • Wikileaked Cable Describes How State Department Influenced Aljazeera's Post-Quake Coverage of Relief Effort Diligently following up on Secretary Clinton’s instructions, the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar noticed that “On Sunday, January 17, Al Jazeera's English (AJE) news channel, headquartered in Doha, began running inaccurate coverage of U.S. and international relief efforts in Haiti.” In response, the Embassy took actions resulting in a State Department spokesperson appearing on Aljazeera English in Washington “within hours”; called Aljazeera English Director Tony Burman ahead of another call by Judith A. McHale, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and made sure Burman  “understood the serious concerns that the Undersecretary would convey” (tags: Haiti earthquake wikileaks AlJazeera)
  • On 60th Anniversary of Refugee Convention States Failing Refugees Today, this critical and life-saving convention turns 60 years-old. As a result of its existence tens of thousands of lives, if not more, have been saved, and nations have absorbed new cultures, languages and food, adding to the richness of those societies.
    At the same time, unfortunately, the last decade has seen governments pay lip service to the rights of refugees while in practice devoting their energies to keeping refugees away from their borders so that they do not have to honor their obligations. (tags: humanrights refugees)

• Waow! Parents decide not to coercively gender their child

  Posted: June 21, 2011, 6:41 pm by Mia Nikasimo

  
  
  

  “A tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation” A Canadian couple make a decision not to gender their child in an act to free zim from coercive stereotyping. This is a brave decision and it’ll be interesting to see whether a precedent has been set and other parents follow in what is a direct challenge to heterosexism and a cis-supremacist agenda.

  Predictably, the backlash against this act that was not in compliance with coercive gendering came to a head and Internet Shitstorm Machine sprang to life.

  As one can imagine in our cis-centric society, the family has received an enormous amount of criticism and little praise for their parenting choices. They have been accused of making their baby in to a “social experiment”, of “borderline child abuse”, and “being amoral hippies” in commentary from a multitude of sources. This fire storm of controversy and personal accusation have all come in the name of the “the good of the baby”.

  But it’s hard for me to believe that any of this criticism can be counted on as being intellectually honest or in the interest of Storm. Storm and zir’s parents are experiencing what trans people are well used to, namely, they’re receiving criticism that is not about Strom at all. Instead, Storm and zir parents are being used by cis people as foils for their own personal conflicts, confusion and stereotypes about gender and gender relations.

  The parental position is remarkable. Against all odds Storms parent are saying an emphatic, “fuck off” to the adversarial socialisation that is cis-supremacy. Touche to them both. Actually, by the time Storm comes of age in Canada bullying zir will be a punishable offence. The paranoia of the press is typical… They offer more scaremongering than substance and that’s a shame.

  I commend Storm’s parents and the attention they have brought to this issue. How many transpeople do you know that are not in hiding? Why do some have to hide? And to what end? Passing is a form of hiding. We must all learn from what Storm’s parent are offering. We also need to accept that we cannot “fix” every aspect of nature using the tools of cultural construction… Nature will have its way whatever paranoid cranks like the press get up to. You do not know how long I have waited for someone to take this very stand. And Canada is the place for it. The spotlight is on how the rest of the world go forward. Waow!

• Links for 2011-06-21

  Posted: June 21, 2011, 4:06 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  By Boat to Lampedusa and a New Life

  Johnson left on a boat with 110 other migrants, among them several women and children, at 4am on 11 June. After being tracked by Lampedusa’s coastguards, the boat was escorted into port at midday the following day. “The sea was a little bit rough,” he said. “But I believed we would arrive.”
  “Johnson paid US$800. The boat captains are usually also migrants who have paid a slightly reduced rate to agents who ask them to operate the boats. Often they have limited experience at sea and are treated like the other migrants. The boats are often impounded and a “boat graveyard” is appearing by the port.”

  North African Dispatches Sarkozy and Africa: a matter of (dis)respect
  

  A short article on Sarkozy’s imperialist fantasies in North Africa. “Nicolas Sarkozy, often said to be the European George Bush (W. evidently), is also considered to be an indelicate and brash statesman. His self-aggrandizing visits to former French colonies throughout his first term have done little to help the country’s increasingly tarnished image abroad.”

  DRC: Angola’s `sans papiers’ violently deported in latest wave of expulsions

  Angola deports thousands back to the DRC – many who are women who were tortured by the Angolan police. A truly shameful act on the part of Angola. As usual it is the most vulnerable who are victimised for inter government disputes and selfish greed by politicians …

  “The women in Luiza said they were forced not to wear underwear by the Angolan military. You can obviously understand what their intention was. African women are reluctant to say they have been raped and so they need psycho-social support. Very few of the women can say they have not been assaulted by the military,” said Clovis Buala, regional coordinator for CISP in Kasai Occidental. He added that Congolese inmates at a prison in the region of Lunda Norte, Angola, had medication added to their food to make them tired in order to prevent them from escaping and to facilitate their transport en masse to the border. “

  Nollywood for Human Rights

  Nigeria’s filmmaking industry, Nollywood, takes on the issue of children’s rights and witchcraft

  Monsanto Out to Monopolize African Agriculture

  While Monsanto touts itself as an agricultural company whose aim to help farmers produce more while conserving more through their Genetically Modified (GM) seeds, the reality is that it’s all about the bottom line for Monsanto. The company simply wants to monopolize the seed market in the world and make the highest profits it can, with no concern for the adverse effects their actions have on the livelihood of farmers. In other words, it’s all about greed.

• Putting risk and sexual assault in context – #EndSH

  Posted: June 20, 2011, 6:40 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  This is a blog post is in solidarity with the “Blogging and tweeting Day Against Sexual Harassment and Gender Violence in Egypt.”

  I joined Facebook sometime in 2008 and  I have been sexually harassed a number of times but two were particularly horrible. In one I was sent pornographic photos and the other, what I thought was a fairly banal and short conversation ended with an abrupt verbal assault. I didnt report the first one – it completely freaked me out and I just deleted everything but the second I did report. FB’s response was because I had engaged with the person there was nothing I could do. This felt to me like because the guy [a gay identified man] knocked on my door and I had invited him into my space for a chat, I had no defense against being raped. In other words it was my fault. Even though the second incident was relatively mild compared to the first, I felt horrible and turned off my FB for a couple of days. Once I had recovered from feeling shit and blaming myself  because I had been careless about people wanting to add me to their “friend” list, I started to feel really angry. What makes men think they can violate you and walk away and say its a joke.

  I remembered a comment left here a couple of weeks ago in response to a statement on “corrective rape” in South Africa in which the man described rape as “a bit over the top” but he could understand the reasoning behind the barbaric acts.

  Men from Africa are seeing what is happening to men in North America and Europe. We are second class citizens. We are being turfed from the classroom and workplace at an alarming rate. There is no wonder African men feel defensive. While rape is a bit over-the-top, I can understand the reasoning behind their barbaric acts (though I do not condone violence).

  I thought of not publishing but changed my mind even though the comment itself acted as a violent trigger. I seriously believe that the vast majority of women in this world face some kind of sexual assault on a daily basis. And I seriously believe that the majority of men in this world are with their silence complicit in these assaults even when they are not the direct perpetrator. I have been subjected to racist and homophobic abuse on this blog and there are male bloggers who should know better but remained silent and unsupportive. Yet these men do not think of themselves as abusers.

  Sometime ago I read this article by Amanda Taub at Wronging Rights. who puts “risk” and sexual assault in context. Just by the fact we are women we are always at risk – always.

  And second of all, guess what? If women never went anywhere where we risked being sexually assaulted, we’d never go anywhere, period. We certainly couldn’t go to work on foreign aid projects. Or to U.S. military academies. Not to college. Not on dates. Not to parties. Not to bars. Or on cruises. Not to work as models. Or security contractors. Except that even if we never went any of those places, we’d still be screwed (pun intended) because of course a high percentage of rapes happen in the home, committed by perpetrators whom the victims know. Putting the responsibility on women to prevent sexual assault by restricting their own behavior – or on their employers to limit it for them – won’t actually solve the problem, it will just reinforce gendered norms about what “good” women “should” do.

  Links:

  Harass Map = Facebook - Website - Map

• Maghreb uprisings: Truth is ‘impossible to find’

  Posted: June 13, 2011, 6:14 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  This post was first published in Pambazuka News 534

  LIBYA

  With all the analysis and news on Libya, we still do not know very much about who the rebels are and where their support comes from. This week I try to shed some light on anti-Gaddafi supporters as presented by Libyan bloggers and Tweeters as well as the highlight the humanitarian crisis which has developed as a result of the intervention. Twitter accounts by far outnumber blogs and many of these consist of photo and video dairies.

  FEBRUARY 17TH

  
  Feb 17

  By far the most informative and interesting site is Feb 17: The Libyan Youth Movement (@Feb17Libya) which has live stream updates from a huge bank of sources – western and Arab media, tweets, personal videos and photos. This report by Ayesha Daya for Bloomberg on who in OPEC and the Middle East is supporting the rebels and how the cartel plan to offset the loss of Libyan oil production – a mix of “personal politics and economic reasoning”.

  ‘OPEC’s decision on production quotas this week may be complicated by hostilities inLibya as members meeting in Vienna find themselves supporting opposing camps of a military conflict for the first time in 21 years…Not since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 has the producer group gathered with some nations giving financial and military support to a movement seeking to topple the government of a fellow member.

  ‘The main regional supporters of the rebels, at least those who admit to doing so, are Qatar, the U.A.E., Kuwait whilst Algeria is the lone Gaddafi sympathizer which seems to contrary to the African Union position. President Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania who heads the AU panel trying to find a resolution has also called for Gaddafi to go whilst at the same time condemning NATO bombing. Other countries which have formally recognised the rebel led National Transitional Council are Senegal and Gambia and of course, the US, UK, Canada, Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. Russia not willing to commit to either Gaddafi or the rebels has taken the position of supporting both sides. On Tuesday Russia special envoy to Africa made the following statement on a visit to Benghazi.

  ‘“Russia has a unique situation in Libya now: We did not sever relations with Tripoli, we have established relations with Benghazi,” Margelov told Russia’s state-run Rossiya-24 television upon arrival in Benghazi.

  ‘“We are ready, if it’s possible, to act as middlemen in establishing an internal Libyan political dialogue. Russia is ready to help politically, economically and in any possible way.”’

  YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!

  
  Enough Gaddafi

  Enough Gaddafi by blogger and tweeter, Sofiyan Amry (@enoughgaddafi) writes a mix of personal accounts, rebel reports and criticism of Gaddafi and any one who continues to support his regime. Here he reports on one reasons Gaddafi must go, the oppression of the Amazigh (Berbers) by Gaddafi (and elsewhere in the Maghreb):

  ‘For the past 42 years, the Libyan government has participated in a deliberate movement to erase the Amazigh from Libyan history and to assign them an Arab identity in order to justify nationalist ideological claims, despite long-lasting exchange between ethnic groups. The “Arabicization” of Amazigh history began with the onset of Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution, declaring Libya as an Arab state, naming Arabic as Libya’s only language and ignoring the 10 percent of Libya’s population that identifies as Amazigh. Their indigenous language, Tamazight, was outlawed, and those who were found speaking it were punished.

  ‘In Gaddafi’s Libya, Amazigh names were also banned, and Amazigh history was excluded from school books. Amazigh Islamic religious practices, based on the Ibadi School of jurisprudence, were rejected by the regime. Even Amazigh cities, primarily located in the region west of Tripoli called the Nafusa Mountains, have been stripped of their Amazigh names and replaced with Arabic monikers.’

  Who are the rebels? Gaddafi’s claim that the rebels are part of al Qaeda is refuted by Najla Abdurrahman:

  ‘Although Libya is in some ways a traditional society, al Qaeda remains deeply unpopular among its people, many of whom have been keen to stress that this uprising is in no way connected to the terrorist organization. Indeed, they have repeatedly scoffed at Qaddafi’s absurd accusations to the contrary. The Libyan revolution is a decidedly nationalist, democratic movement, two characteristics that render it fatally incompatible with al Qaeda’s delusional goal of resurrecting a pan-Islamic caliphate; the Libyan people have no intention of allowing their movement to be hijacked by al Qaeda. That a handful of rebel fighters may have a history with the LIFG does not mean that the Transitional National Council or the pro-democracy fighters are connected to al Qaeda, yet this is precisely what the Qaddafi regime would have the international community believe. Indeed, the council just released astatement refuting allegations aimed at associating al Qaeda with the revolutionists in Libya, and affirming its commitment to combating terrorism and implementing Security Council resolutions on counterterrorism.”

  Mistaken ideals? Cythnia McKinney, ‘deluded and ill informed’ is taken to task for her continued support of Gaddafi as ‘NATO and the international community continue their efforts to force Gaddafi from power.’

  ‘What a triumph for the sinking ship that is the Gaddafi regime—as Here is their shiny white knight: an American diplomat who’s willing to defend them against the Western-Imperialist-Al Qaeda-rats. Mckinney continues to defend Gaddafi as a ‘hero’ of African rights and refuses to acknowledge the crimes of his regime’.

  ‘In this narrative NATO’s imperialist forces have become the savior of liberation struggles for democracy – not bothering to recognise the increasing removal of democratic rights and freedoms from their own citizens. But thats another story, one not told here. This is a highly competitive and bloody game of propaganda – if it’s on Sky News then it must be true!

  ‘Cynthia Mckinney says she’s in Tripoli because she wants to “understand the truth.” And yet professional journalists who’ve been stationed there for months say that the truth, in Tripoli, is impossible to find. “If there is a hell for journalists,” wrote Sky News’ Emma Hurd, “It will probably be a lot like the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli.”’

  There is truth in some of the reasons presented by the writer: Gaddafi’s support ofCharles Taylor and Fonday Sankoh; his war against Chad; acting as Europe’s proxy border control by imprisoning of thousands of African migrants in the most terrible conditions, to name a few. He also refutes claims about Libya’s subsidized “healthcare and education and housing”:

  ‘Again, these are not state secrets. A cursory Google search would’ve led Mckinney to the truth. Instead, Mckinney stews in conspiracy and panders to the Libyan government, disseminating their lies and perpetuating a Gaddafi-approved narrative. Mckinney freely lambasts Obama and NATO— who are in no way above criticism—but refuses to acknowledge the irrefutable war crimes of the Gaddafi regime. She would rather not acquaint herself with the truth, it seems—instead, she’d prefer to rub elbows with known war criminals and mass murderers on Libyan State TV.’

  Sofi misses the point and is so taken with his own position and propaganda that he cannot or does not want to acknowledge McKinney’s position – which is against UN/NATO imperialism and the bombing campaign. Opposing these is not the same as supporting Gaddafi, though in McKinney’s case she does state her support for him and his regime.

  Other Libyan blogs such as Feb17th Tripoli (in Arabic), Epic Libyan, Libyan Thinkerand Rubicon Libya, use photo and video to report on the conflict and some of the many Libyan Tweets @Libyan4life, @ShababLibya, @ArabRevolution, @LibyaAlHurra and @LibyansRevolt who also blogs at the comprehensive Libya 17th February. See here for a list of Libyan social media sites.

  LIBYA AND AFRICA

  The refugee crisis in Tunisian camps and on the Mediterranean continues as thousands and thousands of migrant workers and Libyans flee the conflict. There are reports of an increasing number of migrants escaping in flimsy boats and drowning at sea. It seems to me that this humanitarian crisis is not only being ignored by NATO countries but they are in fact making the situation worse as their concern does not extend to helping the most vulnerable. At the very least providing safe passage and properly equipped boats to evacuate refugees. Last month the Telegraph reported that 800 refugees had drowned whilst trying to escape. Mayibuye Blog by Priority African Network has a series of reports on the fate of refugees. Pan African Newswire reports on the latest deaths of 150 African migrants found of the Tunisian coast last Tuesday.

  ‘“Up to now 150 bodies of refugees have been found off the shores of Kerkennah,” Carole Laleve, an official with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters. She added: “Search operations are continuing.”

  ‘The boats encountered problems on Tuesday about 12 miles off Kerkennah as they headed for Italy, Tunisia’s state news agency TAP reported.

  ‘Tunisian coastguards and military rescued 570 people, but many others went into the water when a stampede to get off the small fishing boats – combined with the effect of rough seas – capsized some of the vessels, an official said.’

  To put the Libyan rebels’ view in perspective, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report, makes the important point that everyone was consulted before the Libyan attacks except Africans ‘whose latest peace plan has been rejected’. He also comments on the rebels:

  ‘These rebels have lost all legitimacy in deciding to become the ground troops for an invasion of neo-colonial North Africa.’ As subordinates, they will only obey orders……The U.S. and Europe consider that Africans have no say in what happens in Africa. The President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma , made a second trip to Libya this week on behalf of the African Union to negotiate a diplomatic end to NATO’s war against the government of Muammar Gaddafi. Colonel Qaddafi has accepted the peace plan just as he had agreed that a peacekeeping mission last of the African Union in early April. And exactly the same way, the so-called rebels and their U.S. and European bosses have refused to even consider a ceasefire. It is obvious from the beginning of this farce “humanitarian” than white European moguls and “Mascot Wall Street” as the U.S. called on Obama, want a regime change in Libya and nothing else-and the devil Africans and their ideas on the issue!’

  Two activists from ‘Global Peace for Civilians in Libya’ send a number of informative video reports from Tripoli. Lizzie Cocker’s report counters much of the West/NATO/Libyan rebel propaganda. There is very little security in Tripoli, business is as usual. There is a shortage of labour as many Black Africans have fled not least because of attacks against them due to the stories of ‘Black mercenaries’. (It would be interesting to try to find out where Black Africans were fleeing from and specific reasons!).

  In a second video Cocker interviews the general secretary of the Pan African Democratic Movement on the lynching of Black Libyans and migrants in the East of the country – rebel-held areas. None of this has been reported. To return to the point made by Enough Gaddafi, the interview mentions nothing about Gaddafi’s imprisonment of thousands of black migrants in the south of the country and insists there is no racism in Libya.

  Sukant Chandan, who blogs on Sons of Malcolm, interviews a hospital worker in Tripoli on the large numbers of people dying from NATO bombs. In a personal videocast, Sukant is highly critical of the anti-war movement in the West, which has been silent on Libya. He goes on to comment on Human Rights Watch report, which states that the cluster bombs found in Misrata are NATO’s not Gaddafi’s and that there are no black African mercenaries. Unfortunately CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera – which is itself so much part of the North African/Middle East uprisings, but which is becoming more like CNN everyday – simply unquestionably repeat NATO/UN statements.

  MOROCCO: JOINING THE CLUB OF KINGS

  Morocco has been invited by Saudi Arabia to ‘join the club of kings’ -

  the Gulf Cooperation Council, intended to protect the interests of monarchs against the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in the region’

  Promises for constitutional reform have not taken place instead there has been abrutal crackdown against dissent.

  ‘The wave of demonstrations rumbling through the main streets of many Moroccan cities today indicates that the woes of Moroccans are deep and intractable and the government and the political parties are dispassionate and guileful; now that the stone wall of fear has tumbled down, grievances that have long been stifled are bubbling at the surface. Resentment against a government no longer trusted, nor feared by the people, runs high. Most see the King ‘speech and government officials’ promises for the soon-to-be-implemented reforms as nothing more than temporizing.’

  Last month Maghreb Blog commented on the international news media’s lack of interest in the ‘Moroccan spring’ and increasing police brutality against the pro democracy movement:

  ‘It is apparent that early statements on reforms were mere strategies to diffuse a rapidly contagious and popular movement for change in Morocco. That early tactical retreat by the regime was meant to allay the Feb 20 movement, riding high on the wave of Arab spring. However, the plight of the Moroccan spring is in tatters as the little media attention it once garnered has virtually faded, especially with atrocities committed in Syria, Bahrain, ongoing conflict in Libya and shaky post-revolt tumult in Tunisia and Egypt. The regime is betting on this “quiet repression” of the protests, while engaging in rhetorical support for clichéd talking points of democratic change.’

  On 29 May a member of the country’s main opposition group, Kamal Amari was killed in the city of Safi, allegedly at the hands of the police which led to thousands protesting across the country this past Sunday. Journalists have been beaten and arrested and there have been reports of Moroccan security forces harassing activists in their homes.

  ‘Following Amari’s death, Safi witnessed massive demonstrations on Sunday, with people calling for political reforms, an end to corruption and a democratic constitution with credible elections. Meanwhile in Rabat, thousands marched in defiance of a protest ban. Casablanca, Fez, Tangier, Marrakech and other cities also saw reform rallies.

  ‘Demonstrators held up black flags and banners to express their grief. Some also carried coffins to symbolise Amari’s funeral. Others chanted slogans demanding the trial of his alleged killers, while condemning authorities for using violence against peaceful protestors.’

  Lastly Slate Afrique publishes a list of the top ten African dictators addicted to powerwith their name, country, age and number of years in power: Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya, 69, 42 years in power; Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea, 69, 32 years; Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, 69, 32 years; Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, 87, 31 years; Paul Biya, Cameroon, 78, 29 years; Yoweri Museveni, Uganda, 67, 25 years; Blaise Compaore, Burkina Faso, 60. 24 years; Omar el-Bashir, Sudan, 67, 22 years; Idriss Deby, Chad, 59, 21 years; and Isaias Afewerki, Eritrea, 65, 18 years.

  Libya, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Cameroon have all seen uprisings to some degree. Africans wait for them and the rest to fall. Yemen has shown us all that with perseverance and conviction the house of cards will fall – eventually.

  ‘“En Afrique, on ne peut pas désigner quelqu’un du doigt en disant qu’il est un ancien chef.” Cette phrase qu’aimait répéter l’Ivoirien Félix Houphouët-Boigny explique que l’alternance politique ne soit pas la valeur la mieux partagée en Afrique. Quand on a du mal à transmettre à ses enfants le sceptre presidential, on s’y accroche d’années en décennies. Le Nigérien Mamadou Tandja aura payé de sa réputation cet appétit insatiable. Mais son expérience ne semble guère servir de leçon.’

• Turning pain to power: City of Joy in Bukavu

  Posted: June 8, 2011, 5:05 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Eve Ensler [V-Day founder] and Congolese Activist Christine Schuler Deschryver [director of V-Day Congo] discuss with Amy Goodman, the opening of the City of Joy in Bukavu which will be run by survivors of rape in the eastern Congo. The American Journal of Public Health published a report this month which estimates more than two million women have been raped in the DRC since 2006.

  CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: The City of Joy is really like a dream that is coming true, because it was something that was created by the Congolese women. And at the beginning, it was just like a dream. And thanks to V-Day, who was like the wind behind our back, it becomes a reality. And we started receiving the first women like two weeks ago. So we are in the process. And it’s all amazing. I left Congo like two weeks ago. And every time I’m with them on the phone, they have new things. It’s like it really belongs to the Congolese women. So I just told them, “As long as we respect, you know, our budget and the program, just go on.”

  Last December in Walikale between 400 and 500 women were raped despite the presence of UN forces. Eve Ensler made a number of points on the failure of the UN forces to protect women: economic and corporate interests and the merging of these with those of governments, both foreign and the DRC; most of all a lack of will and intention to protect women against sexual violence.
  

  And I think until we really understand what sexual violence does, what one rape does to a woman’s life, how it determines the rest of her existence, how her whole life will be shaped by that and robbed by that, how it will determine her self-esteem, her ability to be intimate, her ability to connect, her ability to have a job, her confidence, her ability to—the way she treats her boy children—until we understand the magnitude of one rape, there will really be no—because I think it’s all about intention in the end. I really do.

  Similar to Haiti, millions and millions of $US are being spent but never reach the people – where does the money go? And like Haiti the DRC is full of NGOs feeding off the poor to pay their salaries and keep them in comfort to “take care of the Congolese” people. Millions of $US are spent on UN ‘peacekeepers’ and support personnel but no one knows what they do for Haiti or the DRC. Christine Schuler Deschryver calls for an audit of the DRC and accountability of NGOs working in the region.

  CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: An expat, that means they decided to bring, like, people from outside to take care of the Congolese. So all the monies go to the salaries, to their comfort, to their cars and everything. And at the end, you just have few parts left for the Congolese. They don’t even give enough jobs. And when they have jobs, they are not paid……….And I think, slowly, you know, that the Congolese have to take their power back and decide how the money has to be used, because all this money goes to the outside debt from Congo. And they are not—they don’t even take benefit of that money. And that’s something that really gets me so mad, because it’s like everyone has his conscience and say, “We gave this amount of millions to Congolese. But what for?” You know, it’s like for the U.N. What for? What are they really doing for the Congolese?

• Uprisings: East and Southern Africa

  Posted: June 6, 2011, 7:06 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  This post was first published in Pambazuka News “Defiant in the face of brutality”

  Recently the Dar es Salaam, Citizen published  an OpEd piece, “News is not coming out of Africa” in which it criticised African media for the focus on reporting “events” and failure to follow through with informative opinion and commentary.  Instead African media continues to rely on western media for in depth analysis of African affairs.  Events such as the Nigerian elections, the political crisis and conflict in Cote d’Ivoire, uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and the International Criminal Court hearings on Kenya’s 2008 post election violence were reported only as “news events”.

  “I could cite other examples to make the point that our media has such an event focus that it fails to follow developments in ways that would make Africans knowledgeable and interested about Africa as Africans.   In this it fails its core mission of educating Africans about their own contexts and situations. A major reason for this apparent amnesia and what comes across as disjointed coverage is the fact that most South African media do not have sustained coverage of the continent of their own. For a start, South African media houses have no regional bureaus of their own with journalists conversant in languages other than English.
  
  When the international media cease or reduce coverage there is an automatic effect on our own media even if we might still be interested in the issue. In this regard it could be said that our media are an appendage of Western media.”

  The article highlights the importance of Pambazuka News in providing exactly what the rest of Africa’s media is either ill equipped or just too lazy to do.  The purpose of the “uprising” reports is not just to inform readers of events as they happen but also to give a sense of the continuing struggle and a broader view of the continental wide discontent with the status quo regards democracy, the lack of adherence to all areas of human rights and the primacy of western governments and corporate interests over that of African people.

  Uganda – Lets shoot the people!

  In February’s elections President Museveni’s 25 year rule was extended for a further 5 years, amidst accusations of widespread fraud.  Why bother to vote when the outcome has already been arranged!   Makerere University law professor Joe Oloka-Onyango, described Uganda’s political system as “yet to become a functioning multiparty democracy” and

  “the fact of incumbency guaranteed President Museveni unfettered access to state coffers, such that the NRM reportedly spent $350 million in the campaign. Whether or not this is true, we have not yet received a proper accounting of how much the NRM [or indeed any other party] spent and from where they received this money; already, this means that we are being held hostage to the lack of transparency and the underhand nature of politics that we thought we had long left behind.

  Indeed, the enduring image of the past several months has been that of the President handing out brown envelopes stashed with cash for various women, youth and other types of civic groupings. I don’t know if religious leaders were also beneficiaries of this largesse. If you were, then you must acknowledge that you have become part of the problem. For in those envelopes lies a key aspect of the problem: the phenomenon of institutionalized corruption that has become the hallmark of this regime.’

  Whilst voters may have been apathetic during the elections, they have shown their dissatisfaction with the government and it’s policies in the Walk to Work [#walk2work] protests which started on the 11th April following the arrest of  a group of opposition leaders including, Dr. Kizza Besigye and his supporters, for inciting violence as they walked to work in protest against rising prices and job losses.  Although the protests have met with a violent response from the security forces as one Ugandan reporter pointed out

  “many Ugandans are now aware of their rights to speak out. This right is provided by the state through the constitution that guarantees freedom of speech. So this time many Ugandans are supporting what the opposition is doing because they want the government to listen to their pleas.”

  The government has blamed inflation on external factors out of their control obviously believing Ugandans are so ill informed as to not make the connection between the $740 million spent on fighter jets and tanks plus of course the maintenance costs – ‘to protect oil….territorial integrity and wealth”   and the price of bread and fuel.   Even Nigeria – another highly militarised state, with nearly 20 years of conflict over oil in the Niger Delta has thankfully, not deployed fighter jets to bomb militants in the forests and rivers of oil production!

  Musoveni who in a show of militarism, chose to wear military fatigues during the recent swearing in of MPs complained that  his guests, President Kabila of the DRC and Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria were pelted with stones by people.  In typical dictator fashion,  which tends to be accompanied by a good helping of paranoia,  Musoveni went on to describe the local and international media as “enemies of Uganda”.   Possibly he has been too busy brutalising Ugandans to watch much TV and hasn’t seen what is happening  in other parts of  Africa and the Middle East.

  Rosebelle Kagumire described the protests of 29th April in her blog as follows:

  “In today’s protests the police used live bullets again leaving horrific pictures for the media. One of man was lying down with a bullet hole right through his eye. Reports say about four people died today, over 100 were injured and over 300 were arrested. Since the election campaigns and the North Africa protests, the government here has grown intolerant to criticism……….In many areas there were reports of abuses against journalists mainly by forces. TVs and Radios have been threatened over live broadcasts and today they obliged……….. Besigye’s health is still not good but whatever happens, Ugandans are becoming more and more defiant in the face of brutality and his homecoming will probably see us go into another protest..”

  Rosebelle also discussed the ongoing protests on Al Jazeera’s stream on 23rd May [http://bit.ly/mfZNlK].   The strategy behind the “#Hoot4Change” in which people honked and hooted in support of “Walk2Work”, is to widen the protests.  She made the point that whilst food prices had risen locally Ugandan farmers were getting very good prices for their food being sold in south Sudan and the DRC.

  Echwalu Photography has an excellent photo essay of the protests and subsequent arrests and violence on the streets.

  Finally a report by Julius Barigaba in the East African on the deployment of tanks around Kampala’s Constitutional Square.  According to Barigaba, this is not because there might be another “Tahrir Square” but more like a Tiananmen Square

  “Tahrir collected a million anti-Mubarak protestors over three weeks, leading to the dictator’s fall in February this year. In Beijing, however, Tiananmen was the scene of a massacre by a military whose mindset is that of anarchy, akin to that of Uganda’s armed forces, according to political analyst Mwambutsya Ndebesa, professor of history at Makerere University.”

  The Square has become a no-go area, barricaded by blue Mamba APCs, tear gas trucks and anti-riot police. To dare to go there is to court arrest, unlimited doses of teargas, gunshot wounds, and possibly, death.

  On May 10, former presidential candidates Norbert Mao, Olara Otunnu, Sam Lubega and Mohammad Kibirige Mayanja attempted to access Constitution Square and stage a rally there. Somewhat Mao and Mayanja sneaked through the first line of police cordon but could not go past the next.

  “We want to hold a rally in the Square that is named after our (1995) Constitution. It is our right,” Mao yelled at the police as they pushed him back.

  But Otunnu, Lubega and others were not lucky. A police truck spewing pink liquid pushed them 200 metres away, bathing them in a deluge of crimson — police’s latest anti-riot innovation.

  That is the norm in Kampala these days — people wake up to a menu of live bullets and teargas. Access to some roads is blocked, as boda boda cyclists, unemployed youths and Kisekka Market traders engage the military and police in running battles. Occasionally, a military chopper eerily monitors the action. Files of military men, with guns held combat style, patrol the streets; APCs are at entry points into the city.”

  Kenya – Revolutionary ideals over narrow nationalisms!

  Back in February while Tunisia was celebrating the removal of Ben Ali and Egypt was bathing in the warmth of Tahrir Square revolutionary love, a group of online Kenyans decided to celebrate “Kenyan nationalism” day on February 28th.   Along with a show of badges and 12 reasons to be “proud”,  Kenyans were asked to stand united and speak with one voice at 1pm on the day….

  “wherever you are, at work, in the supermarket, in traffic, in school, on campus, in hospitals, in churches, in mosques, in temples, in synagogues, on sports pitches, in court, on your farm, at police stations, at armed forces barracks, in matatus, in buses, on the beach, in the game parks, at the airport, in parliament, in State House, in your homes…”

  The hope was the “world would watch” but in the end, the world was too busy watching and tweeting the televised revolutions to care much about Kenyans saluting flags.

  Wambui Mwangi didn’t feel there was  much to be proud about and as inspiring as these declarations might be they are hardly transformational.  Nationalism, patriotism and notions of rule based belongings are exclusionary and counter-revolutionary.

  “Six of our leading representatives and public figures are under grave suspicion by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity, but this apparently does not perturb us.  Our internally displaced citizens continue to languish in refugee camps, which disturbs our comfort not at all.  Millions of young people are unemployed and frustrated but we would rather not discuss it.  Ethnic militias gather force and virulence: still, we are content.  A vulgar misogyny accompanied by a homophobia as vile as it is pervasive finds extensive purchase in our collective psyche: we are unflappable.  We seem to enjoy all these, or at least not to mind them enough to engage with their implications.”

  Instead of the call for a nationalism based on denial Wambui suggests “singing” to remember those “collective issues waiting for our attention”, and to re-organise, “align principles with practice”…….and

  “We should sing to acknowledge that we are responsible not only for the current state of affairs but also for its multiple necessary modes of resolution.  As we sing, ‘we the people’ should remember that sovereignty comes with responsibilities as well as rights, obligations as well as freedoms.”

  The beauty of these songs is they are not just for Kenyans but for every African and recently her final two questions 1] So What? 2] Now what?   have been answered in what appears to be a new awakening in Kenya.  Grassroots movements such as  Bunge La Mwananchi” [the people’s parliament], the “Unga Revolution” [a collection of civil society groups including Bunge La Mwananchi] campaigning for economic and social rights have been formed in response to the rising cost of living and loss of social benefits.   On May 1st a planned rally organised by Unga Revolution was illegally cancelled by the Kenyan police which the organising committee described as

  “This action is a relic of the old constitution and reminiscent of the dark days when peaceful gatherings were violently dispersed. It can also set a bad precedence for future engagements between peaceful citizens and law enforcement officers; in as far as exercising of democratic rights is concerned.

  Since our campaign to petition the government to implement article 43 is nationwide in scope and grassroots in nature, we are hoping that your forces will allow Kenyans all over the country to assemble, discuss and push for the implementation of their rights and that you will accord them ample security as we all strive to work within our rights and responsibilities as set out in the supreme law of the land.”

  Swaziland

  The Swazi pro democracy uprisings which began on April 12th were met with beatings, teargas and hundreds of arrests.  Many of the protesters were driven 100 miles into the country where they were dumbed by the police.   Student leader Maxwell Dlamini  and Musa Ngubeni of the  SWAYOCO movement were  arrested, tortured and remain in detention.  The National Coordinator of the International Research Academy for Labour and Education (IRALE), Percy  Masuklu was one of those driven and dumped in the countryside.  He gives his account below

  “On 12 April 2011 leaders of the labour movement, political formations, youth and student organisations, civil society organisations like the Swaziland Democracy Campaign and ordinary Swazis were all arrested and treated to the ‘hospitality’ of the police of the ruling royal Swazi regime by means of torture and other dehumanizing elements characteristic of this corrupt regime.

  There were running battles between the various organisations and the police and armed forces in which the forces prohibited the workers, students, youth, democracy activists, faith-based organisations and women’s organisations from marching into the city centre in Manzini. The main intention of the march was to raise high the issues that the government of Swaziland has failed to deliver; these demands had been raised earlier by, largely, the labour formations. The city centre was turned into a battle field where workers were tear gassed, baton-charged and pursued into various directions by the heavy-handed police who understood nothing but the language of violence”.

  Six weeks on from April 12th and the Swazi pro democracy activists and their supporters continue to protest in the capital, Mbabane, South Africa and the UK.

  “The recent spate of pro-democracy demonstrations against the regime in Swaziland, which so far culminated in the mass demonstrations in March and April of this year, shows the increasing willingness of Swazis to face intimidation and police brutality to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the regime.   The reason for this dissatisfaction, says Sikelela Dlamini, is the monarch’s spending on prestige projects and personal luxuries, and the regime’s financial mismanagement and corruption. “Mswati III’s major handicap has to be his continuously lavish lifestyle when the majority of his people languish in untold suffering.”

  On June 1st hundreds of members of  The Swaziland Teachers Association closed schools and marched through the capital to the South African and US embassies demanding the latter freeze the Kings assets.  Some of the tweets of the day were in response to a SABC2 Special Assignment on Swaziland…..showing both the hope and frustration amongst Swazi people.

  @msi_001: The people of Swaziland will be liberated sooner or later…….AMANDLA to my jailed comrades

  @presciousestevao:  please focus and try to create some sort of movement when it comes to our comrades being killed in Swaziland.

  @specialassign: Swaziland is under financial struggles, who funds the monarchy? Since many people there are living below the poverty line.”

  @SpecialAssign: Democracy in Africa’s last standing monarchy? Political prisoners or criminal terrorists in Swaziland’s jails? Watch tonight 21h30 on SABC3

  Countries to watch:

  Botswana

  In neighbouring Botswana  much revered in the west as “Africa’s success story”, public sector workers – transport, schools, clinics and government staff, began striking on April 18th.  The ruling party has been in power for 45 years and people are calling for a change. The leader of the opposition, Duma Boko has called for an “Egypt’ style uprising, though I doubt this will happen.  The strikes and protests have been peaceful with none of the violence seen in neighboring countries.

  “There are different ways to take over governance, and that includes by force,” he said at a recent press conference in support of the strike held by the opposition parties….“If we can come together we can take our government as it happened in Egypt and Tunisia.” For the Botswana Movement for Democracy, a breakaway party from the BDP, the strike undermines the ruling party’s contention that Botswana is a model democracy………“This is clear from the government’s refusal to accept workers’ demands for a pay hike, under the pretext that the economy has not yet recovered from the recession,” said its leader, Gomolemo Motswaledi.

  The government has now ordered the some 90,000 workers back to work after offering a 3% pay rise rather than the 16% demanded.

  Ethiopia

  Pro democracy activists had called for a “Day of Rage” on Saturday 28th May.  An online campaign “Beka” meaning Enough in Amharic had hoped to mobilize thousands. In the end it was Meles Zenawi’s supporters who turned out in their thousands.

  Like uprisings taking place in other parts of the continent, Uganda, Swaziland,  Kenya, and Botswana actions are in response to concerns over food security, rising unemployment particularly amongst youth, political marginalisation, corruption of government officials and a push back against the entrenched leadership of  the circle of ‘rulers for life’.   Military dictators have been replaced by democracy dictatorships under militarised states.   Despite the transformational actions taking place across the country, one particularly marginalised group remains invisible.   The LGBTIQ movement continues to be largely isolated and it remains to be seen if the new struggles for social justice will be wholly inclusive.  At the same time it is up to the the LGBTIQ movement itself to grow in visibility and to enter into dialogue with other movements at the crucial time of change.  This is especially true in countries such as Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa where established LGBTIQ groups have existed for many years.

  More articles by me on Pambazuka can be found here

• Are we ready for interracical yet

  Posted: June 3, 2011, 5:07 pm by Liesl Theron

  
  
  

  Liesl Theron, the director of Gender Dynamix, South Africa, guests blogs on “cross-racial / interracial” relationships in Post-Apartheid South Africa.

  Cross-racial and interracial, two terms that are used interchangeably and yet I learned that when discussing or defining a couple from different races in a relationship, they have different meanings, or at least represent two different viewpoints.

  All of this came about on the morning of 22 April 2011, when my partner and I started planning an event or rather an interactive exhibition, we want to host – in August this year during women’s month. We want to celebrate female friendships and intimate partners sharing love. Our discussion obviously moved towards the theme of cross-racial or interracial relationships too. Needless to say, due to our own relationship, it is a topic that is close to the heart of us both.

  I jotted down some thoughts, as we want to remember the ideas we had in planning this upcoming celebration. When I read back some of my notes and spoke of ‘cross-racial’ she said to me she prefers using ‘interracial’, explaining that ‘cross-racial’ sounded too harsh – as if there are barriers and it really did not feel like a friendly, loving space.

  At that moment I felt silenced, I did not know or did not want to answer, as I felt that that was exactly the reason why I wanted to use the term ‘cross-racial’. On my conscious level I also knew I did not want to use the word ‘cross-racial’ because of how I value our relationship or describe our individual attitudes towards each other – but that I wanted to employ the word ‘cross-racial’ because we are not in Utopia either.
  
  When my beloved mentioned that ‘cross-racial’ refers to barriers, I was silently listening and thinking back to the dialogue between student-characters on page 90 of ‘The ethnographic I’’, a book written by Carolyn Ellis. Says Hector: ‘I wonder
  about your term interracial dating’. When he was asked to explain further and
  suggest alternatives he stated: ‘Some scholars use “cross-racial”, to indicate
  that boundaries exist between races and it’s hard to cross them successfully.
  “Inter” communicates a fallacy – that one can really penetrate racial constructs so that the border disappears’

  I read this piece for the first time in 2009, thinking that I really agreed with the statement, and today I was confronted by my partner with the very same sentiment, basically critiquing the argument. And I am caught in the middle – I can’t make up my mind ‘whose side to pick’, that of the written piece I read two years ago and agreed with, or this statement by my partner of the opposite thought, backed up in search for a more loving space.

  I ask myself – did our relationship evolve from a cross-racial relationship in 2009 to an interracial one in 2011? Is there a continuum that relationships between two people of different races are placed on, and is it flexible enough to flow along the fluidity stream from one end to the other? At what stage did our relationship graduate from cross-racial to interracial? What are the criteria, the markers?

  
  Image: Zanele Muholi

  Then I had to come back to another set of thoughts. When speaking of cross-racial or interracial by whose sentiments and experiences are those relationships validated as either? Who decides? Is it the couple who find themselves in it or the ‘onlookers’? And if it is the couple who ends up being the judges of defining it, is it a reflection of their own experience of being that couple or is it their mirroring to the society who accepts, communicates and reacts to them moving in public spaces, holding hands and interacting intimately. If I, for example, say I am in an interracial relationship – is it because I have a positive reaction for a substantial amount of time from my community, friends, family and strangers, or is it how I feel treated in my relationship? Again, if I say I am in a cross-racial relationship; is it because of the way I feel community, friends, family and strangers validate the relationship or not and mirror it back by saying I am in a cross-racial relationship, or is it how I personally feel I struggle with these barriers? Can we as a couple refer to our relationship as interracial when we speak of the loving
  space we experience with each other, and refer to cross-racial when we want to
  critique society? And by us using it interchangeably – are we making sense, or
  does it sound like we are also just using either term?

  These questions brought me back to the discussion in Ellis’s book where Hector continues by saying: ‘They’re filled with problems associated with race, such as how negatively family and friends reacted. Besides the family’s response, several spoke of that defining moment when the issue of race came up in the relationship and the black person didn’t feel the white partner could understand his or her experiences’ – and then the point that really got me thinking and asking more questions about this – ‘or a racial stereotype was invoked and one partner felt he or she didn’t fit into the other person’s
  world’.

  As we all know, in a post-apartheid South Africa racism does not have to be in your face, obvious prejudice tangible incidents only, but most often are subtle comments or encounters. Those are hard to define, but, as a couple from two different racial backgrounds we experience the latter form of racism frequently by both black and white people, by family and strangers – waiters – black and white – at restaurants who only take the order from me or who present the bill to me, even if my partner is the one paying. We are in South Africa still bearing the brunt of apartheid. I am all too conscious that my partner will not shy away from speaking out loud about the time my mother introduced her to a friend as the photographer who is being fortunate enough that her gallery [and another well known photographer] ‘sent’ her to Canada to study further.

  It was a wrong impression from my mother’s side, she didn’t have all the facts or she just didn’t know my partner and her [life] story well enough as it was shortly after we started our relationship. We there and then interrupted my mother’s introduction to her friend, by saying, ‘No, she had not been sent by the gallery to study abroad’ and that ‘whatever assistance she gets from the gallery or whoever will be paid back somehow’. Instead of quietly agreeing, my mother just managed to dig herself deeper into trouble by saying: ‘all I meant was that her work is so good that the gallery recognises it by assisting in any way possible’. All of this was interpreted by my partner as my mother’s need to validate my partner as a black person, as black artist to prove she is ‘worthy and good enough’ to date her white daughter.

  By the same token, I am thinking back to the time when visiting her family in Umlazi during her mother’s funeral and a year later again at msebenzi. My partner was outside, doing chores and helping with preparations there, organising the young people into what they must do. I found myself in the kitchen with the women preparing vegetables or washing dishes. Every now
  and then my partner would come into the kitchen, ensuring that we are still ‘on
  schedule’, working hard. She would remind her sisters [speaking in English to
  make sure I also understood] that I am no different from them, I must work
  equally as hard, my white skin not be taken as an opportunity to sit back and
  rest. I frantically peeled carrots or washed dishes like there was no tomorrow.

  A little while after she left the kitchen, one of her older sisters [my
  interpretation – from an older generation who really comes with many years
  working experience from the apartheid era] said to me: ‘You must rest a bit,
  you worked really hard now’, followed by an offer of a cup of tea. In walked my
  partner, catching me, the ‘white madam’, sitting on a chair doing nothing, but
  drinking tea. Embarrassed by this ‘lazy white woman’ she brought home, she shooed me: ‘come, come get up – you have work to do, there are a lot of preparations to be done still’. I pushed my tea cup aside, pulled my chair closer to the table and continued peeling carrots again. When she walked out we all shook our heads, knowing I was ‘told to rest a bit’ and drink tea.

  Then there is the issue of language. The few times my partner goes with me to visit family, she somewhat distances herself from conversations. The reasons might be multiple. At my sister’s English flows easier since they are a bilingual household, even before my partner and I were together we would speak both Afrikaans and English at my sister’s house. When my partner is present we speak English – the language which has also become our household’s language.

  When visiting my mother, a full conversation in English for a few hours feels somewhat stranger than at my sister’s house. During one of the early visits to my mother, she asked my partner whether she understood Afrikaans. Growing up in a time when schooling took place in an apartheid system she replied yes, she hears and understands Afrikaans but does not fully feel comfortable speaking it. My mother suggested this can be her opportunity to gain confidence and speak it more. We both simultaneously chimed in that: ‘no, Zulu is her first language, Afrikaans is mine so English became the common ground – where we both could speak, communicate and express ourselves equally. This sounds like the practical and fair solution to me, not necessarily only during the times we visit my mother, but in general. Since that day, whenever we visit my mother together we remain speaking English, though my partner would take long walks in the garden giving us the opportunity to switch to Afrikaans.

  When visiting home in Umlazi the spoken language is Zulu. I can follow many conversations to some small degree, and on many topics I would like to contribute. But I catch only some words and know a certain topic is discussed, but not necessarily the angle of the discussion. I have thus not the confidence to just chirp in in English as I am not sure if I will sound like I come from some far away, out of touch corner. Many of the family visits become for me a time of completely switching off from the world and just thinking, reflecting – being in my own headspace.

  We have mixed friends and multiple friend circles. There are a number of friends here in Cape Town who is also Zulu-speaking, which means that when we visit them, the conversation automatically switches to Zulu. During these conversations I feel I really want to participate or could contribute, we are contemporaries and share thoughts in social values, etcetera. Those are the
  times I feel most excluded, as these are people with whom I am also friends,
  who have the potential to become much greater friends, but those friendships to
  whatever extent are mostly only fostered when my partner travels and I see them
  independently – then we speak English.

  When we are with family and friends who are speaking Zulu and I am not following the conversation I am reminded each time that I should learn to speak Zulu, sometimes only jokingly and sometimes it becomes a discussion point with the potential to turn quite heated – it really depends how long I prolong that argument.

  A while ago, when our relationship was still fresh I investigated learning Zulu. In 2009 I also embarked on obtaining my honours degree. There alone sit two sides of my story in why I did not learn Zulu yet. On the one side I thought since I have a student loan at the bank, I would also add into the package a language course,
  Zulu. I did not find Zulu at UCT, since this is the geographical area to learn
  to speak Xhosa. I also looked at a language school that periodically sends me
  advertisements of language classes – they also do not teach Zulu but only
  Xhosa. On the other side of my argument, to work full time in a very
  responsible position which keeps me at work for about 12 to 14 hours a day, or I
  am busy with work and studying full time. My challenge: when would I get a chance for language classes too, while also trying to keep a house, have some private and relaxing time and keep a relationship romantically and otherwise going?

  Do any of these factors make me love my partner less? – No!

  Do any of these challenges become the reason for us to not be in a relationship? – No!

  Do any of these factors and challenges add to the complexities of relationships with two people from different cultures, races? – Yes, definitely!

  Are we cross-racial or interracial? – I dont Know

• Pink Washing the Middle East

  Posted: June 2, 2011, 7:31 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  An excellent example of “Pink Washing” written by Amina Abdallah on “A Gay Gal in Damascus”.  She refers to a CNN article on the position of LGBTI people in the Middle East uprisings.  The article “Will gays be ’sacrificial lambs’ in Arab Spring?” repeats the usual “homophobic” homonationalist Arabs/Muslims spiel used to demonize Islam which we are used to hearing in the west.

  Thankfully, I don’t regret what I myself am quoted as saying. But the others … well, they provide the sort of pinkwashing that the enemies of Arab freedom have come to rely on increasingly in recent years. We’ve gotten used to being used rhetorically by the advocates of war, occupation, dispossession, and apartheid as ‘evidence’ that the primitive sand-people don’t deserve anything other than killing by the enlightened children of the West; we’ve seen this story used to advocate murder of Afghan villagers, Palestinian refugees, Iraqis and so on. It’s given as justification for genocide by the ranting bleach-blond buffoon in the Dutch parliament and as reason for reviving the worst of the Third Reich by neo-fascists across Europe and America. Now, it’s being used as an argument against democracy.

  It is so impossible for people in the west to believe that Queers in the Middle East, Africa or anywhere outside of AmerEuroland do not walk around bent over with the weight of homophobic hostility like iron bars on their shoulders, shuttling around in corners fearful for every minute of their days.

  I recently spent a week in Jamaica described in that much loved western media designation as the “worst place to be….” [fill in the gap] gay in this case. I spent much of my time at a LGBTIQGNC community space which was full up every evening with loving sisterly and brotherly people. It was not a “hidden” space but in a residential area where all the neighbours had been contacted and informed of the space and no one had objected. I also met a number of out lesbians. This is not to say that there is no homophobic abuse and violence in Jamaica – but to put it into a reality of people’s every day lives. Amina Abdallah explains her reality…

  ” Reality, of course, is different. Having lived in both worlds, I can tell you this in all honesty; I have never once encountered any problem here on account of my sexuality that I would not have encountered were I straight as an arrow. I have never once been attacked or beaten or even screamed at for being a lesbian in an Arab land. On the other hand, I have had dung thrown at me in America for wearing a hijab, been attacked and struck by strangers for being an Arab …
  So why pinkwashing? Others have brilliantly dissected the way this rhetoric has been used to turn gay rights into a weapon of imperialism, specifically in Palestine.

  Continue reading here

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes