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Pambazuka News 473: Land reform is common sense
Updated: 4 hours 24 min ago

Highlights from this issue

4 hours 24 min ago
ACTION ALERTS - Stop the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences FEATURES - Zimbabwe’s land reform is common sense, says Grasian Mkodzongi - Mphutlane wa Bofelo on the ANC's left-wing words and right-wing actions - Azad Essa on the World Cup and poor South Africans - Alemayehu G. Mariam considers Meles Zenawi's misappropriation of famine aid funds in the 1980s - Saree Makdisi on Israel's racism and denial - Rosemary Okello-Orlale on International Women’s Day + more ANNOUNCEMENTS - Tell us what you'd like to see in the Pan-African Diary 2011! COMMENT & ANALYSIS - Hope of Sokwanele on Zimbabwean girls' ambitions for equal rights PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD - Horace Campbell on the Jos tragedy and women's rights ADVOCACY & CAMPAIGNS - African civil society organisations campaign against Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill + more BOOKS & ARTS - Firoze Manji reviews 'The ten commandments of Nigerian politics' - Raj Patel's 'The Value of Nothing' reviewed by Jamie Pitman AFRICAN WRITERS’ CORNER - J.K.S. Makokha's poem 'Ode on a beat generation' BLOGGING AFRICA - Sokari Ekine on the rumours surrounding Yar'Adua, the violence in Jos, aid money around Ethiopia's 1980s famine and International Women's Day EMERGING POWERS IN AFRICA WATCH - Adams Bodomo highlights dubious US-China 'cooperation' with Africa

STOP the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 EG Justice Needs Your Help. Sign the petition - http://www.gopetition.com/online/34452.html/ now to STOP the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences. In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences, named for and financed by the autocratic and abusive president of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. The prize is said to recognize 'scientific achievements that improve the quality of human life.' Meanwhile, the quality of life in Equatorial Guinea today remains abysmal. In spite of having attained the highest GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa, 60 per cent of Equatoguineans live on less than US$1 a day in conditions comparable to Haiti or Chad. President Obiang has neglected to invest available resources in basic social services, resulting in declining primary school attendance, poor health indicators, and needless poverty. The UNESCO Obiang Prize is a cynical ploy to co-opt the worthy name and reputation of UNESCO to enhance the image of a notorious dictatorship. The prize amounts to international approval for this kleptocratic and abusive regime and it undermines UNESCO’s mission to promote education, science, culture, and human rights. You can help, by signing this petition to UNESCO! - http://www.gopetition.com/online/34452.html/ Let’s send a message to UNESCO that corruption and abuse should not be rewarded and that funds used to create this prize should be reinvested in the people of Equatorial Guinea.

Zimbabwe’s land reform is common sense

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zimbabwe_n002.jpgZimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debate nationally and internationally, largely polarised between supporters of radical land reform and supporters of market-oriented reforms, writes Grasian Mkodzongi. While it is ‘undeniable’ that Mugabe used land reform ‘to boost his political legitimacy’, how can one ‘justify the continued existence of a dualistic land ownership structure decades after independence, in a country whose struggle for liberation crystallised around the land issue?’, Mkodzongi asks.

A long walk from Soweto to Sandown

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/warrenski/2922817548/Nelson Mandela’s 1990 statement on nationalisation sparked uproar from big business, but there’s little sign of private sector anxiety following ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s recent call for the formation of state-owned mines. There’s only one explanation for the ‘relatively muted response’, says Mphutlane wa Bofelo – that ‘after 15 years of ANC government, the owners of capital now know that the radical leftist terminology that the ANC uses is just a rhetorical spin to sell rightwing programmes'.

Ethiopia: Licensed to steal

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sacca/3472013210/Two former leaders of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front have alleged in a BBC radio programme that the TPLF leadership – which included Meles Zenawi – used millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the 1980s to buy weapons and enrich themselves. ‘The facts are plain to see,’ writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, ‘We know now that these thieves did not stand for the people of Tigrai at the critical hour in 1984. They sure as hell do not stand for the people of Ethiopia today.’

South Africa World Cup 2010: 100 days to what?

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-10 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulk/2213157212/in/set-72157603775646770/ The press conference celebrating 100 days before the World Cup kick-off left the big question unanswered, argues Azad Essa: How will South Africans benefit from the World Cup? For Essa ‘only the dim-witted, government or FIFA communication officers walked away feeling that the World Cup was really about anything more than ending Afro-pessimism and stroking a couple of shiny suits'.

A racism outside of language: Israel's apartheid

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/517083982/While South Africa's apartheid may represent the closest historical precedent to Israel–Palestine, writes Saree Makdisi, the Israeli state's treatment of Palestinian people in many respects eclipses the suffering imposed by the South African apartheid government on 'non-white' people. Though its supporters worldwide refuse to countenance that any form of systematic racism is perpetrated by Israel, Makdisi stresses, the country's racism is one 'practised in practice rather than in language' and is rooted in treating Palestinians as not merely inferior, but subhuman.

International Women’s Day: A long journey

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ychow/2052652050/This 8 March marked 100 years since Clara Zetkin first proposed the annual International Women’s Day (IWD) at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, a motion unanimously approved by over 100 women from 17 countries, writes Rosemary Okello-Orlale. When IWD was honoured for the first time the following year, more than one million women and men attended rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.

Peace on earth, war in the home

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/advocacy_project/3777034603/Around the world on 8 March, thousands of women (and men!) worldwide celebrated International Women's Day by gathering on bridges from San Francisco to Congo to call for an end to war and demonstrate that women can build the bridges of peace and hope, writes Loveness Jambaya. This action, organised by Women to Women International, is just one of the actions by communities and organisations in the global campaign ‘Say NO UNiTE to End Violence Against Women’, initiated by the United Nations secretary general.

Haiti needs solidarity, not charity

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 In a revealing interview, Amanda Zivcic asks Marilyn Langlois of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) about the country's efforts at recovery following its devastating earthquake in January, the dubious practices of foreign organisations ostensibly operating in support of the Haitian people, and the debilitating historical and contemporary role played by US policy.

Zuma says 'Drop Zimbabwe sanctions'; Kenyan parliament makes Obama offer

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-10 Gado's cartoons this week feature a trouser-dropping Jacob Zuma appealing for sanctions on Zimbabwe to be dropped, and the Kenyan parliament's offer to pass President Obama's healthcare bill – at a cost.

Pan-African Diary 2011: Call for entries

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 Pambazuka Press is planning to publish a Pan-African activists' diary for 2011. The diary will be a handbook of key information about Pan-African history, quotations from thinkers and activists (women and men) in Africa and the diaspora, pictures of critical events in our past, information about key events during 2011, and lots more. EVENTS If you would like us to include events – meetings, conferences, festivals, actions, courses, publications etc - that your organisation is planning to hold in 2011, please send details to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot] org. QUOTATIONS If you would like to suggest quotations for publication in the diary, please send them to panafdiary [at] pambazuka [dot]org. Make sure you include the source of each quote so that those who want to read more will know where to find it. SUGGESTIONS If you have suggestions about information you would like to see in the diary, please send them to panafdiary[at] pambazuka [dot] org. Help make this diary the essential handbook for all activists in Africa and the diaspora. Make sure you get your recommendations in to us by 14 April 2010. Don’t be left out – let us know what events you are planning for 2011. We can’t guarantee that we will include everything you suggest, but we’ll do our best! The 2011 Pan-African Diary: the essential tool for freedom and justice!

‘Hallelujah’ moments: A small victory for women’s rights

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/frerieke/3296970933/in/set-72157615081598993/‘Please tell me how we address this patriarchal society and how we can reach a point where women are superior’ is what one young girl from an impoverished school in Zimbabwe replied when asked what she thought was standing in the way of her dreams of a trail-blazing career. ‘She’s going to need that kind of bull-headed feistiness to move herself forward in her life’, writes Sokwanele’s Hope, ‘especially if she stays in our country’. It is voices like those of this young girl, says Hope, that will help silence the few who seek to ‘preserve the status quo by denying rights to others'.

Demands from Jos, Nigeria and the world: Invest in caring, not killing

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 Following the tragic killings of predominantly women and children in Jos, Nigeria, on 8 March's International Women's Day, Horace Campbell honours the memory of the victims along with 'the millions of poor women whose lives are devalued everyday'.

African CSO campaign against Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 Following the tabling of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill before the Ugandan Parliament that provides for imprisonment and the death penalty for infringements of the bill, civil society organisations in Africa are mobilising to persuade Ugandan parliamentarians to block this pernicious bill. The bill could become law during the course of this year. Organisations and prominent individuals are invited to endorse a statement as part of the campaign to block the bill.

Petition for release of GCAP Malawian activists

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 We the members of civil society organisations across Africa are shell-shocked at the news of the arrest and detention without bail of Edward Chileka, Howard Jimu and Awonenji Chimera (associated with Eye For Development, a youth-based NGO) in Malawi. This is an event that we cannot take lightly.

US personalities demand visas for wives of Cuban five

4 hours 24 min ago
2010-03-11 Coinciding with International Women's Day, a group of personalities from the United States have sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, asking them to immediately grant humanitarian visas to two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands in US prisons.

Don’t let aspiring rulers get hold of this!

4 hours 24 min ago
A review of ‘The ten commandments of Nigerian politics (or how to hook the Naija Mugu)’ 2010-03-11 ‘It’s one thing to have a secret manual for Nigerian rulers,’ writes Firoze Manji, ‘but quite another to have one that provides the recipe for class rule by the rogues and rascals that roam the rest of the continent. This short pamphlet should have been banned long ago.’

Probing the free-market 'house of cards'

4 hours 24 min ago
Review of 'The Value of Nothing' 2010-03-11 Jamie Pitman reviews Raj Patel's new book 'The Value of Nothing,' which he finds to be 'excellently written, passionate and engaging'.

Hiding behind homophobic rhetoric

4 hours 24 min ago
A response to ‘Homophobia is the problem, not homosexuality’ 2010-03-11 When times are tough it’s easier to pick on people than to fix the economy, says solomonsydelle.

Culture of Africa

African culture is characterised by a vastly diverse patchwork of social values, ranging from extreme patriarchy to extreme matriarchy, sometimes in tribes existing side by side.
Modern African culture is characterised by conflicted responses to Arab nationalism and European imperialism. Increasingly, beginning in the late 1990s, Africans are reasserting their identity. In North Africa especially the rejection of the label Arab or European has resulted in an upsurge of demands for special protection of indigenous Amazigh languages and culture in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. The re-emergence of Pan-Africanism since the fall of apartheid has heightened calls for a renewed sense of African identity. In South Africa, intellectuals from settler communities of European descent increasingly identify as African for cultural rather than geographical or racial reasons. Famously, some have undergone ritual ceremonies to become members of the Zulu or other community.

Music of Africa

Egypt has long been a cultural focus of the Arab world, while remembrance of the rhythms of sub-Saharan Africa, in particular West Africa, was transmitted through the Atlantic slave trade to modern samba, blues, jazz, reggae, rap, and rock and roll. The 1950s through the 1970s saw a conglomeration of these various styles with the popularization of Afrobeat and Highlife music. Modern music of the continent includes the highly complex choral singing of southern Africa and the dance rhythms of soukous, dominated by the music of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Recent developments include the emergence of African hip hop, in particular a form from Senegal blended with traditional mbalax, and Kwaito, a South African variant of house music. Afrikaans music, also found in South Africa, is idiosyncratic being composed mostly of traditional Boer music, while more recent immigrant communities have introduced the music of their homes to the continent.

African Languages

By most estimates, well over a thousand languages (some have estimated over two thousand) are spoken in Africa. Most are of African origin, though some are of European or Asian origin. Africa is the most multilingual continent in the world, and it is not rare for individuals to fluently speak not only multiple African languages, but one or more European ones as well. There are four major language families indigenous to Africa. Following the end of colonialism, nearly all African countries adopted official languages that originated outside the continent, although several countries also granted legal recognition to indigenous languages (such as Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo (also spelt Ibo) and Hausa). In numerous countries, English and French (see African French) are used for communication in the public sphere such as government, commerce, education and the media. Arabic, Portuguese, Afrikaans and Malagasy are other examples of originally non-African languages that are used by millions of Africans today, both in the public and private spheres.

Legends of Africa

Fifty-three African countries have football teams in the Confederation of African Football, while Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana have advanced to the knockout stage of recent FIFA World Cups. South Africa will host the 2010 World Cup tournament, and will be the first African country to do so.
Cricket is also popular in some African nations. South Africa and Zimbabwe have Test status, while Kenya is the leading non-test team in One-Day International cricket, and has attained permanent ODI status. The three countries jointly hosted the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Namibia is the other African country to have played in a World Cup. Morocco in northern Africa has also hosted the 2002 Morocco Cup, but the national team have never qualified for a major tournament. A number of African nations, especially Ethiopia, Kenya, and Morocco, have fielded world-class long-distance runners such as Abebe Bikila and Cosmas Ndeti. South Africa hosted and won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and also won the 2007 World Cup.

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