Africa

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 21, 2022 3:26 pm

African Countries Mull Standby Force to End Insurgencies​​​​

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Illegal armed groups in Nigeria, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @StrawberryNG

Published 21 November 2022 (2 hours 51 minutes ago)

This initiative seeks to contain the advance of armed insurgents and the jihadist groups in Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.


On Sunday, Ghanaian National Security Minister Albert Kan Dapaah announced that seven member states of the Accra Initiative are considering setting up a standby military force to deal with armed insurgencies within the region.

He disclosed this at a press briefing to throw more light on steps so far to protect the territorial integrity of member states and the subregion in general.

"We are seriously considering establishing a standby force, but the form it would take is still under consideration," Dapaah disclosed.

"Chiefs of defense staff from our states have been holding discussions on the details of the standby force, and once we are ready, we would inform the public on the form it would take," he said, disclosing that porous borders in the subregion and ungoverned spaces in the various countries were some of the key attractions to the armed insurgents and the jihadist groups.


"One of our key considerations is ensuring that there are not many ungoverned territories in our member countries. We will also make it difficult for the jihadists to radicalize youth in border communities," said Dapaah.

"Youth unemployment is one critical factor in radicalization. Our ability to handle youth unemployment in a more coordinated manner so that it does not become a threat to national and regional security will be key in dealing with the armed insurgencies in the member states," he said.

The Accra Initiative was established in 2017 to enhance intelligence and security cooperation among the member states, which include Ghana, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, and Niger.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Afr ... -0003.html

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Burkina Faso Confronts a Humanitarian Catsatrophe as Jihadists Besiege Cities
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 19, 2022


The government of Burkina Faso calls for calm, restraint and not to risk plunging the country into the maelstrom of demonstrations.

A political struggle at the service of jihadists

On Saturday, the government of Burkina Faso called on residents to “remain calm and exercise restraint” following a demonstration against the French presence in the country against a background of rumors that Russia supports the recent coup led by the young captain Ibrahim Traore (34), turning the conflict into a hidden battle of influence between Paris and Moscow.

This hidden conflict comes at a time when residents of cities besieged by jihadists are suffering from hunger and a clear government deficit.

“The government calls on the population for calm and restraint, and not to risk plunging our country into an endless cycle of demonstrations that offend our goals of peace, stability and security sought by our people,” government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.

He added that the government ” calls on young people in particular not to deviate and focus on defense goals in the comprehensive war we are waging against terrorism (…) instead of these demonstrations, the usefulness of which has not yet been proven on the cause of the struggle of our people.”


Jihadists consolidate their positions

رفض الوجود الفرنسي متواصل Burkina Faso security forces on Friday dispersed a demonstration in Ouagadougou in which hundreds of people protested against the presence of France, some waving Russian flags, saying they wanted their leaders to strengthen relations with Russia.

The demonstrators gathered at the United Nations roundabout in the heart of the capital and headed to the French embassy, some on motorcycles, to the campoinsin base on the outskirts of the capital, where France has a military presence within the sabre force.

The government of Burkina Faso stressed on Saturday that it “will not abandon the rules and principles of protection that it adheres to towards diplomats and diplomatic missions located on the territory of Burkina Faso”.

On October twenty-eighth, hundreds demonstrated to demand “France leave Burkina Faso within 72 hours”.

On the anniversary of the September thirtieth coup that brought Ibrahim Traore to power, who has since become interim president, demonstrators attacked French interests in Burkina Faso, including the embassy and two French institutes.

Moscow enjoys growing popular support in several French-speaking African countries, while the reputation of France, a former colonial power, is increasingly being tarnished, especially in Mali, a neighboring country of Burkina Faso, which has also been led by military coup since 2020.

In Burkina Faso, the ruling military council has not closed the door to rapprochement with Russia, but has not shown any hostility to France, which continues to support the Burkina Faso army in its fight against jihadists.

As Burkina Faso finds itself caught between France and Russia, residents of a large number of towns in the north of the country, NGOs and the authorities emphasize that the humanitarian situation is “catastrophic” and getting worse in this region besieged by jihadist groups.

Idrissa Badini, spokesman for a group of civil society organizations in the province of SOM and its capital, Jibo, said that “the situation is catastrophic” in this city, explaining that “hunger has reached a level that kills children and the elderly”.

He added that 15 people died of hunger in October in this city, which has been besieged by jihadists for months. ”There are probably more victims and not all of them have been reported”.


By blowing up bridges and launching deadly attacks against convoys supplying this large city in northern Burkina Faso, the jihadists have plunged Djibo and its region into destitution.

“All the shops are closed, ” said Slimane Diko, a resident of Djibo who moved to the capital Ouagadougou. There is nothing to eat and nothing to sell”. “Whether you are poor or rich, you cannot buy anything because the products are not available,”

“The worst thing is that in the dry season the leaves of trees or other herbs that we used to cut to boil are no longer available. People are starving. It is very difficult to supply the city by road, ” he explained in response to an AFP question. When we walk the wild road we realize that we are in the axis of death, the axis of Jibo – burzanga”.


Dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About a million people are currently living in areas under siege.

Along this road, several convoys carrying supplies have been attacked recently. In September, 35 people, including children, were killed when a mine exploded while a truck carrying them was passing, while 11 soldiers were killed in another ambush targeting a convoy.

These supplies are essential. In many parts of the country, agricultural production has stopped and access to the fields is difficult due to insecurity.

Ibrahim Traore chose to go to Djibo on his first trip in the country at the beginning of November. He did not underestimate the seriousness of the situation.

“Go see the children whose skin has become glued to their bones, the elderly who are starving, and women who can no longer breastfeed because they have no milk left,” he said a few days ago in Ouagadougou to representatives of political parties and civil society organizations.

“Let’s not pretend” that everything is fine, he added, stressing that “this is happening, people are eating leaves of trees in order to survive. The situation is alarming ( … ) in a land that has almost been lost”.


For years, Jibo has become a gathering point for displaced residents of the northern regions who fled the jihadist violence of groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Its population has tripled and today it is estimated at about 300 thousand people. But at the moment, some are trying to flee south to the capital Ouagadougou.

“After being deprived of water, food, medicine and a telephone network, many are leaving Jibo on foot at night in the hope of reaching areas that are still accessible,” said one humanitarian worker, requesting anonymity.

The United Nations says dozens of towns in Burkina Faso are facing the same conditions as in Djibo. About one million people currently live in areas under siege in the north or east of the country.

Idrissa Badini cites the example of the town of arbinda, located east of Djibo, where tens of thousands of people from neighboring areas gathered to escape the attacks.

“The regular land convoys that used to provide the population with food and living materials have stopped and nothing is reaching Arbinda anymore,” he said. “The population, which has exhausted its reserves, is about to face a humanitarian catastrophe,” he added.

Despite the attacks, supplies have recently resumed. At the end of October, the army transported seventy tons of grain by air to the city of Jibo, which then provided it by land on the second and third of November with more than 300 tons of food, according to the General Staff. Seven mines were deactivated en route.

“We have managed to supply some villages, but the supply of other villages has not yet been completed,” said Captain Traore.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), some 3.5 million people will need emergency food assistance in the coming months in Burkina Faso.

Al Arab

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ge-cities/

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“South Africa’s ‘Just’ Transition climate deal with the west is a betrayal of the working class”

South Africa is set to implement an $8.5bn plan funded by western countries to transition from coal-based energy to renewables. The country’s biggest union NUMSA has warned this plan will only intensify privatization while burdening South Africans with debt and poverty.

November 20, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh

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President Cyril Ramaphosa and the International Partners Group at the JET Investment Plan meeting on the sidelines of COP27. Photo: @PresidencyZA/Twitter

During the World Leaders Summit at COP27, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP).

The plan is the product of a process that began a year ago at COP26, when the US, the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union, collectively called the International Partners Group (IPG), announced the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa.

The JETP set a lofty goal — “to accelerate the decarbonization of South Africa’s economy, with a focus on the electricity system” to help it reduce harmful emissions as set out in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.

However, progressive forces have warned that the plan will have a disastrous impact on working class communities, especially those dependent on the coal sector for their livelihood, while driving a massive privatization of South Africa’s energy sector.

Presenting the Investment Plan on November 7, President Ramaphosa stated that South Africa would need $98 billion over the next five years to enable a just transition. The plan identified three priority sectors for investments: electricity, green hydrogen, and new energy vehicles. The Plan was endorsed by South Africa’s Cabinet on October 19.

For its first phase, the IPG is ‘mobilizing’ $8.5 billion including “grants, concessional loans, and investments and risk sharing instruments” from both public and commercial lenders. According to an official statement, the funding will be geared towards coal plant decommissioning, funding alternative employment in coal mining areas, investments towards renewable energy, and new sectors of the green economy.

$2.6 billion will be allocated through the Climate Investment Funds Accelerating Coal Transition Investment Plan, $1 billion each from the US, EU, France, and Germany, and $1.8 billion from the UK.

“A ‘Just’ approach underpins the Plan,” a joint statement declared, “aiming to ensure that those most directly affected by a transition from coal – workers and communities including women and girls – are not left behind.”

How is the JETP actually approaching just transition in South Africa — by pushing a country where over 55% of people are already living in poverty and 46% are unemployed further into debt? Only around 4% of the IPG funding package is in the form of grants. 81% is loans.

Not only that, nearly 90% of the financing is geared solely towards infrastructure. Skill development and economic diversification and innovation, which would undergird any commitment to justice in the JET-IP, have been allocated only 0.1% and 0.3% of the financing respectively.

Privatization and energy poverty in South Africa
On paper, nearly 85% of South Africa’s population has access to electricity. However, rolling blackouts or loadshedding and high prices have effectively placed it out of reach for millions in the country.

Instead of developing and properly managing the state-owned, and coal-power dependent, utility company ESKOM, the South African government has chosen the path of austerity and privatization.

“By virtue of it being a state-owned entity, ESKOM can drive a developmental agenda, which means that by its very nature, it should not be making profit, rather it should be creating space for the provision of affordable and reliable electricity. If it was well-run, it would be able to do that,” the national spokesperson for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, told Peoples Dispatch.

“ESKOM’s challenges have everything to do with poor governance and the African National Congress’ own policies of dumping our state owned entities (SOEs).”

The Institute of Economic Justice points out further that the JET-IP deal relies heavily on using funds to ‘de-risk’ private investment. Moreover, financing is “tied to the expansion of private-sector energy generation, through lock-ins and demand agreements, which will likely raise the cost of energy provision thereby limiting access and exacerbating energy poverty.”

It added that the plan ignored “energy affordability concerns,” focusing instead on access to the grid as a means to reduce energy poverty. The JET-IP emphasizes “cost-reflective tariffs,” which the institute argues will lead to continued high electricity prices and restrict cross-subsidization for the poor.

As Hlubi-Majola stated, “There is no privately-owned company that will care about providing affordable energy for all, for the poor and the indigent. That is not the goal… their goal is to drive profit.”

“Despite the public perception that the accelerated drive toward renewable energy is fueled by climate change,” argues engineer and researcher Brian Kamanzi, “the reality is that it is primarily driven by imperatives to implement private sector reform in the power generation sector. This is done by leveraging the advances in renewable energy systems.”

This is clearly evidenced by the fact that, as NUMSA points out, the government’s plan says nothing about the future of ESKOM— “ESKOM’s role seemingly is simply to enable the private sector to access the grid, but it will not have any direct role in providing renewable energy to the population.”

A major share of new investment will be private and in the form of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Program (REIPPP). NUMSA had tried to block its rollout in 2018, arguing that its introduction would mean that coal-fired power stations would be shut down to make way for privately-owned renewable energy companies.

Even though the government has committed to shutting down power stations, Hlubi-Majola stated that affected communities had not been meaningfully engaged — “This is a total violation of the principles of a just energy transition as defined by the International Labor Organization which stipulates that communities and workers must be the ones to not only drive the consultation process, but also that they must be the ones to define the resulting plan because that plan must benefit them directly.”

“What we have seen instead is the government embarking on a box-ticking exercise after already beginning the process of shutting down power stations.”

An estimated 124,000 jobs would be lost by 2030 in an escalated decommissioning of ESKOM. 8,000 people in Mpumalanga in the coal belt would directly lose their jobs, not to mention families and communities that would be impacted in a myriad other ways. There is no social plan in place for them. According to NUMSA, 12 out of ESKOM’s 15 coal-fired power stations are located in the region.

ESKOM has already started leasing the land around its power stations in Mpumalanga to renewable energy companies. It employs approximately 30,000 people across the country.

Looking at the REIPPP more specifically, Hlubi-Majola added, “Earlier this year, when ESKOM was making an application to the national energy regulator, NERSA, to increase its tariffs, it stated in its submissions that a big part of the increases was a result of the cost of the REIPPs. These REIPPs are a part of ESKOM’s cost burden.”

“ESKOM is spending a large portion of the money it has on exorbitant primary energy costs which, for over the last 10 years have increased by 17% year by year.The REIPPs are a part of these primary energy costs which are choking ESKOM and choking the consumer.”

“You are not even future-proofing your own state-owned entity to play an important role in this climate change scenario…t is a mistake for the South African government to hand over this process of transitioning from coal to renewable energy [from ESKOM] to the private sector and hoping that the private sector will miraculously deliver on a developmental agenda,” Hlubi-Majola had earlier emphasized in an interview with Breakthrough News.

“By handing over ESKOM in this way, basically destroying its future and enabling and allowing the private sector to play a greater role in energy generation, the government is betraying the working class. They are guaranteeing that South Africans remain poor, that the country’s status as the most unequal in the world continues for generations to come,” she told Peoples Dispatch.

“We have a duty to ensure that our SOEs play a direct role in empowering the working class and the masses. Unfortunately, the South African government has been reading from the playbook of the World Bank and other international financial institutions who have been driving an agenda of neoliberalism and privatization”

A just transition for the people, not profit
Even as the global South is already bearing the historically unjust burden of the climate crisis, industrialized countries of the North seem to be moving backwards, re-opening coal plants to secure their own energy supplies while touting the importance of a just climate transition on the international level.

“You cannot industrialize your economy based on renewable energy alone because it is an intermittent form of energy, you need a base load supply that is either coal or nuclear.” Hlubi-Majola explained. “Even as Germany is reopening its coal plants, South Africa is closing them down. Germany is not the one facing frequent blackouts.”

“Load shedding has cost South Africa’s economy over $4 billion rand (US$2.3 billion) in 2022 alone.This has a direct impact on our economic outlook. If we are serious about job creation, about building the economy and absorbing the unemployed, we must industrialize. Unfortunately, the renewable energy plants are not labor-intensive.”

Despite the fact that all of Africa has contributed a miniscule portion of global carbon emissions, Hlubi-Majola asked, why are countries on the continent “racing to implement a transition which we know objectively is very disruptive and will result in more poverty and unemployment. Why are we doing more than those who are actually responsible for this climate crisis?” Especially when there is no plan in place to mitigate the effects of the JETP deal on local communities.

The importance of a just transition is not lost on the global South, where communities at the frontlines have been fighting for survival for decades. The question is what does a truly just transition look like?

For years, NUMSA has been calling for a ‘socially-owned renewable energy sector’.

“When you look at the JET-IP, there is no ownership component for the benefit of workers or communities,” Hlubi-Majola noted importantly, “they are not talking about renewable energy companies that are owned through cooperatives.”

“For us, a just transition would have been one that allowed workers and communities of Mpumalanga, who stand to lose the most from this deal, ownership of renewable energy companies. The technology that is being used should be owned by South Africa… How do we stand to benefit from this deal when there is going to be so much disruption and displacement for ordinary workers and their families?” she asked.

“The only people who stand to benefit are a minority of the elite. Among the biggest beneficiaries is Patrice Mostepe, who is related to President Ramaphosa through marriage, and whose firm won 12 out the 25 renewable energy plans.”

A just transition, Hlubi-Majola stressed, would have been one where “ESKOM (an SOE) would control at least 70% of the renewable energy space in this country. In doing so, you would have safeguarded the jobs of the thousands of workers at ESKOM, you would also be transforming it from the coal-guzzling, polluting entity that it is to one that is contributing to tackling climate change directly.”

“They must stop perverting the term just transition. There is nothing just about this current process.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/20/ ... ing-class/

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People gather in Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 to call for an end to sectarian divides and support for Palestine (Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr commons license).

Towards a just transition: breaking with the existing order
Originally published: ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy) on November 15, 2022 by Hamza Hamouchene, Ouafa Haddioui and Katie Sandwell (more by ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy)) | (Posted Nov 19, 2022)

The mainstream narratives on the climate change, the ecological crisis and the energy transition in North Africa are still dominated by international neoliberal institutions, whose analyses are biased and exclude questions of class, race, gender, justice, power, or colonial history. Their proposed solutions do not address the root causes of the climate, ecological, food and energy crises. The knowledge produced by such institutions is profoundly disempowering and overlooks oppression and resistance, focusing largely on the advice of ‘experts’, to the exclusion of voices from below.

The historical, political, and geophysical realities of the North Africa region mean that both the effects of and the solutions to the climate crisis there will be distinct from those in other contexts. North Africa was forcibly integrated into the global capitalist economy in a subordinate position: colonial powers influenced or forced North African countries to structure their economies around the extraction and export of resources—usually provided cheaply and in raw form—coupled with the import of high-value industrial goods. The result was large-scale transfer of wealth to the imperial centres, at the expense of local development.1

The persistence today of such unequal and asymmetric relations reaffirms the role of North African countries as exporters of natural resources, such as oil and gas, and primary commodities that are heavily dependent on water and land, such as monoculture cash crops. This entrenches an outward-looking extractivist economy, exacerbating food dependency and the ecological crisis while maintaining relations of imperialist domination and neo-colonial hierarchies.2

There are therefore crucial questions that need to be raised when addressing climate change and transitioning towards renewable energies in the region: What does a just response to climate change look like here? Does it mean the freedom to move to, and open borders with, Europe? Does it mean the payment of climate debt, restitution, and redistribution by Western governments, by multinational corporations, and by rich local elites? Does it mean a radical break with the capitalist system? What should happen to fossil fuel resources in the region that are extracted to a significant extent by Western corporations? Who should control and own renewable energy? What does adapting to a changing climate mean, and who will shape and benefit from it? And where are the key agents who will fight for meaningful change and radical transformation?

What is ‘just transition’?
The concept of ‘just transition’ has emerged as a framework that places justice at the centre of the discussion. It is usually traced back to the U.S. in the 1970s, when labour unions, local communities and other social movements sharing an interest in a liveable environment and decent, safe, and fairly paid work aligned against polluting industries and their unfair policies. Over the following decades, the concept was adopted by a range of social movements around the world who have built coalitions and shared visions of transformative solutions for the climate crisis that tackle underlying causes, and that put human rights, ecological regeneration, and people’s sovereignty at the centre.

A just transition is not a stand-alone concept but a field of contestation; a space where struggles about genuine responses to the climate crisis can be formulated and put into practice. Progressive social movements have an abiding conviction that people should not bear the heaviest costs of a sustainable transition. They should rather be the leading agents in shaping such a transition. From feminist and indigenous perspectives to regional and national programmes, movements are advancing their own definitions of both ‘justice’ and ‘transition’ in their diverse contexts.

For us, discussions of a just transition in North Africa and beyond must respond to the reality of unequal development caused by imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, a just transition must include radical transformations that increase the power of working people and reduce the power of capital and governing elites. We need to also recognise that environmental issues cannot be addressed without addressing the racist, sexist, and other oppressive structures of the capitalist economy and that the environmental crisis is much broader than just the climate crisis. Ultimately, a just transition cannot be achieved without transformations of political, as well as economic, power towards greater democratisation.

The concept of a just transition has been shaped partially by labour movements, so the question of decent work remains central to many serious proposal. The International Trade Union Confederation has dubbed the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region the worst in the world for workers’ rights, with systematic violations across the region. Across the Arab world, youth unemployment is almost twice the global average and about two-thirds of workers in North Africa are employed in the informal sector.

Today, the vast majority of humanity, regardless of the kind of work they do, are giving up some part of their essential daily consumption, their human rights, or their ability to live a dignified life in order to keep propping up the super-profits of transnational corporations. Whether this is because their food, health, energy and care systems have been privatised, putting the full burden of care on the family unit—because they have lost or are at risk of losing access to their lands, territories or fishing rights—or because they are unable to find work and struggle to make a living in an informal economy where they have no means to demand a living wage, the effects are the same. It is no coincidence that this precarious and exploited majority is also the group most at risk from climate change, and least able to protect themselves from its effects.

The dynamics are complex and obviously different across countries of North Africa, yet many shared challenges and questions also emerge from an exploration of what would a just transition look like: Whose needs and rights should be prioritized in an energy transition? What model of energy production, and extraction, can deliver energy to all working people? How are Northern countries and International Financial Institutions forcing the region into shouldering the burden of the energy transition, and what would a more just solution look like? What role should states play in driving a just transition, and what are the possibilities for democratic control of state power for this transition? What alliances of working people are possible, and what role can international solidarity and resistance play in supporting these?

The dossier
In the various essays in Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute, the contributors initiate a deeper discussion of what just transition means in the context of North Africa and the Arab region.

Mohamed Gad debunks the World Bank’s claim that the liberalisation of electricity prices in Egypt ended subsidies to the rich and redirected resources towards the poor. Instead, he shows how it paved the way for the entry of international finance, at the expense of the poorest—radically turning a basic service into a commodity.

Jawad Moustakbal, in his article on the energy sector in Morocco, asks important questions including, who decides on, who benefits from, and who pays the price for Morocco’s so-called energy transition?

In their contribution on Tunisia, Chafik Ben Rouine and Flavie Roche show how the country’s energy transition plan relies heavily on privatisation and foreign funding, while neglecting democratic decision-making, situating the country firmly within the global neoliberal programme for the development of renewable energy.

In her article on Algeria, Imane Boukhatem highlights the opportunities, challenges and potential injustices facing the green energy transition in Algeria and argues that the country must rapidly transform its energy sector, with a core focus on social justice.

Mohamed Salah and Razaz Basheir, in their contribution on the electricity crisis in Sudan, they chart the evolution of the energy sector in the country since colonialism and attribute its uneven development to policies from that era and to their continuation in the post-colonial period.

Karen Rignall shows how solar energy is embedded in a long history of extraction in Morocco and reveals some of the striking continuities between fossil fuel commodity chains and those of renewable energies in the country.

In his article, Hamza Hamouchene shows how renewable energy engineering projects tend to present climate change as a problem that is common to the whole planet, without ever questioning the capitalist energy model or the historical responsibilities of the industrialized West.

Joanna Allan, Hamza Lakhal and Mahmoud Lemaadel, in highlighting how extractivism operates today in the part of Western Sahara currently occupied by Morocco, emphasize the voices of the Saharawi population and argue that current renewable energy projects in Western Sahara simply sustain and ‘greenwash’ colonialism, undermining a just transition that could benefit local communities.

Finally, Sakr El Nour, in his essay argues that countries in the region are subjected to unequal exchange with the Global North, particularly the EU, through trade agreements that enable the North to benefit from North African agricultural products at preferential rates. He contends that North Africa needs to recast its agricultural, environmental, food and energy policies.

Breaking with business as usual
It is increasingly clear that a just transition for North Africa requires a recognition of the historical responsibility of the industrialized West in causing global warming. It needs to acknowledge the role of power in shaping both how climate change is caused, and who carries the burden of its impacts and of solutions to the crisis. Climate justice and a just transition should mean breaking with business as usual that protects global political elites, multinational corporations, and autocratic regimes, while promoting a radical social and ecological transformation.

The imperatives of justice are increasingly leading to a consensus among activists on the need for climate reparations to be (re)paid to countries in the Global South by the rich North. This must take the form not of loans and additional debts but of massive transfers of wealth and technology, cancelling current odious debts, halting illicit capital flows, dismantling neo-colonial trade and investment agreements like the Energy Charter Treaty and stopping the ongoing plunder of resources. The financing of the transition needs to take into account the current, ongoing and future loss and destruction caused by the changing climate, which is occurring disproportionately in the South.

Yet since inequalities exist not only between North and South, but also within all countries of the world, how can a programme of climate reparations be combined with the creation of a just, democratic, and equitable energy system within the countries of North Africa?

In many ways, the climate crisis and the urgently required green transition offer us a chance to reshape international politics. Coping with the dramatic transformation of our climate will require a break with existing militarist, colonial and neoliberal projects. Therefore, the struggle for a just transition must be fiercely democratic. It must involve the communities who are most affected, and it must be geared towards providing for the needs of all. It means building a future in which working people have enough energy, and a clean and safe environment. Above all we must build a future that is in harmony with the revolutionary demands of the African and Arab uprisings: popular sovereignty, bread, freedom, and social justice.

This is a version of the introduction to the dossier Just Transition(s) in North Africa compiled by the Transnational Institute.

Hamza Hamouchene is the North Africa Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute. Ouafa Hiddioui is the North Africa Programme Assistant at the Transnational Institute. Katie Sandwell is the Agrarian and Environmental Justice Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute.

Notes:
1.↩ Amin, S. (1990) Delinking: Towards a polycentric world. Zed Books; Amin, S. (2013) The Implosion of Capitalism. Pluto Press. See also Rodney, W. (2012) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Pambazuka Press; and Galeano, E. (1973) Open Veins of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
2.↩ Hamouchene, H. (2019) ‘Extractivism and resistance in North Africa’. Transnational Institute; Riahi, L. and Hamouchene, H. (2020) ‘Deep and comprehensive dependency: how a trade agreement with the EU could devastate the Tunisian economy’. Transnational Institute.

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 24, 2022 5:58 pm

Kidnapped People in Kaduna

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Security operatives in Kaduna | Photo: Twitter/ @newsThenigerian

Published 22 November 2022 (4 hours 24 minutes ago)

Last week, gunmen wielding sophisticated weapons blocked a road with roadblocks in the Giwa local government area to abduct commuters.

On Monday, the Nigerian police said that security forces have recently rescued 76 travelers after they were abducted by unidentified gunmen from their truck on a road in the restive northern state of Kaduna.

Mohammed Jalige, a police spokesperson in Kaduna State, said that the police received a report on Friday night, saying many gunmen wielding sophisticated weapons blocked a road with roadblocks in the Giwa local government area to abduct innocent commuters.

"A combined team of police and military was immediately mobilized to the location," Jalige said, adding that on reaching the location, security operatives found a truck with no one on board, and "information garnered indicated that the gunmen had moved a large number of passengers on the truck off the road."

Security forces immediately launched a search and rescue operation into the adjoining forest, and encountered the gunmen during the process.


"Due to the sheer force of firepower and pressure mounted on them by security operatives, they were forced to abandon their nefarious mission and flee with injuries," he said, adding that 76 people held by the gunmen were rescued and a preliminary investigation revealed that they were passengers on the truck.

Jalige said operatives are still operating within the general area in search of the truck driver and two other passengers who are yet to be accounted for.

Armed attacks have been a primary security threat in parts of Nigeria, resulting in deaths and kidnappings.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nig ... -0004.html

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The US Is Determined to Drive a Wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 23 Nov 2022

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Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki embraced after signing a peace agreement in 2018. The TPLF waged the war against Eritrea while it controlled the Ethiopian state.

The US seems willing to accept Ethiopia’s defeat of its former puppet, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), if it can just drive a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Western officials and pundits never stop trying to drive a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Their screams that Eritrea must get out of Ethiopia have grown louder and louder every day since Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a peace agreement to end the two-year civil war. The US should get out of Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and outer space before it brings an end to life on earth, but of course that’s not on the table.

Instead we hear that the Ethiopian peace agreement is likely to collapse if Eritrean troops don’t leave Ethiopia. Biden, Blinken, and rabid pro-TPLF Congressmen like Brad Sherman, D-CA, continue to threaten Ethiopia, but even more so Eritrea, with sanctions.

Thanks to US sanctions imposed in November 2021, Eritrea is already among the four nations excluded from the SWIFT system for executing financial transactions and payments between the world’s banks; the other three are Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Now American Enterprise Institute fanatic Michael Rubin has called for adding it to the US list of state sponsored terrorists —Cuba, North Korea, and Syria—triggering sanctions that penalize persons and countries trading with Eritrea.

In “Responsible Statecraft ,” imperial mouthpiece Alex de Waal wrote, “The biggest issue in the two agreements is Eritrea, named only as ‘foreign forces.’”

No one seems to have any hard proof that Eritrean troops are actually in Tigray at this point, but even if they were, Ethiopia and Eritrea would be within their sovereign rights to form bilateral, regional, or broader cooperative security agreements like the Tripartite Agreement that Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, and Somali President Abdullahi Mohammed Abdullahi, aka Farmaajo, signed in 2018.

Since 2007, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has established cooperative security agreements with every nation in Africa except Zimbabwe and Eritrea, planting troops and bases all over the continent. As Glen Ford said, it got Africa to colonize itself. But Ethiopia can't cooperate with Eritrea?

NATO, a US-dominated alliance of 30 lethally armed white nations that's brought us to the brink of nuclear war, could not tolerate the Tripartite Alliance between three nations in the Horn of Africa. In May, Somalia’s President Farmaajo was replaced by Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a leader more to the US’s liking, and now the US is going full bore after Eritrea. It even seems willing to accept Ethiopia’s defeat of its former puppet, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), if it can just drive a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Why the US hates Eritrea

Why does the US foreign policy establishment so hate Eritrea, a tiny, poor country of 6 million on the far eastern edge of Africa? Eritrea, like China and Cuba, is a one-party state. It practices democratic centralism within the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice in accordance with the party’s fundamental commitment to uplift the people. It doesn’t mimic the hollow democratic forms that the US and Europe have tried to force on the rest of the world on pain of death.

It refuses to collaborate with AFRICOM and controls its own security forces, and thus its air, land, and sea. (Unlike Somalia, which doesn’t have the sovereign navy and coast guard that it needs to stop Europe from dumping its toxic waste off its coastline, as it has for decades. US and EU navies are all over that coastline, but they don’t care.)

Eritrea has an egalitarian social and economic model, and it demands a fair price for its natural resources.

These are passages of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice Charter which are unlike anything in the US Constitution:

“Our vision is for Eritrea to become a country where peace, justice, democracy and prosperity prevail. Our vision is to eliminate hunger, poverty and illiteracy from Eritrea. Our vision is for Eritrea to preserve its identity and uniqueness, develop commitment to family and community care, and by advancing economically, educationally and technologically, find itself among the developed countries.

“The political system must be based on democracy. Democracy, however, is a controversial concept. Democracy is sometimes narrowly viewed in terms of the number of political parties and whether regular elections are held. Such a view, which limits the meaning of democracy to its form, is superficial and not historical. Viewed in its broader and deeper historical perspective, democracy means the existence of a society governed by democratic principles and procedures, the existence of democratic institutions and culture, broad public participation in decision-making and a government that is accountable to the people.

“. . . People should participate in all decisions that touch their lives and their country, from the inception to the implementation of ideas. Without public participation, there cannot be development; it is vital for people to participate at all stages of development projects--from planning to implementation and assessment. However, the participation cannot be effective unless people are organized. Thus, not only should people have the right to establish organizations, they should also be encouraged and assisted to do so.

“. . . Social justice is a very broad and flexible concept open to different interpretations. However, for us, based on our actual experience, social justice means narrowing the gap between the haves and have-nots, ensuring that all people have their fair share of the national wealth and can participate in the political, social and cultural life of the country, to creating balanced development, respecting' human rights, and advancing democracy. To be meaningful and have a stable foundation, political democracy must be accompanied by economic and social democracy.”

The Charter isn’t perfectly consistent, and Eritrea hasn’t achieved all the goals it lays out. Eritrea haters will likely say that it’s just words, but when I visited Eritrea earlier this year, nothing struck me so much as its egalitarian atmosphere. There were no gross disparities of wealth on display and this is not something that can be readily disguised for a visitor.


I spoke to doctors, scientists, and ministers whose commitment to developing the country was clear. I visited a hospital where doctors explained the national health service and the mass vaccination mobilization that had all but eliminated transmissible childhood disease, making it one of the few countries to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. In November 2014, the UN Development Program reported that, “Eritrea has now achieved all the three health MDGs namely MDG-4, reduce child mortality, MDG-5, improve maternal health, and MDG-6, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.”

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that the US, which represents its oligarchs and corporate empires, is determined to drive a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It would take out Eritrea altogether if it could. Like Cuba, Venezuela, and any other nation that has attempted to distribute its wealth among its people and control its own security forces, it sets a threatening example.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-de ... nd-eritrea

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Ethiopia – Tigray: Total Uncertainty After the Signing of the Agreement
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 23, 2022
Viktor Mikhin

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The second round of peace talks between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took place in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The talks focused on “military details” to achieve a “lasting” end to violence in Africa’s second most populous country. Delegations from both sides included military leaders and political negotiators. The talks discussed how to monitor the agreement, which the two sides recently signed in South Africa. Details of the talks also covered how to provide humanitarian aid and basic services to the millions of Tigrays who are literally cornered in the rugged mountainous region in the north of the country.

The Ethiopian government and the TPLF signed a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement in South Africa on November 2, brokered by former presidents of Nigeria and Kenya, Olusegun Obasanjo and Uhuru Kenyatta. The signed Agreement provides for the disarmament of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the restoration of aid to Tigray, which has been experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis since the war began two years ago. The Agreement, which is supported by African countries, was welcomed by UN and some European countries. In theory, the agreement ends a two-year war between the Ethiopian government, backed by neighboring Eritrea, and national militias.

According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), who is from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the war has led to “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.” The war and the famine and disease it has caused have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. More than a million people have been displaced and unable to harvest their crops. In addition, thousands of women have been raped or killed, and their children have been denied the right to a normal education. Tigray suffers from severe food and medicine shortages, as well as limited access to basic services such as electricity, banking and communications. It should be noted that 70% of the country’s northern Tigray region is currently under military control. Although aid deliveries to the area have reportedly resumed, there is no confirmation yet from aid workers or Tigray officials.

Ghebreyesus said the world has ignored the suffering of the six million Tigray who are under siege by the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. He suggested that racism was the reason the Tigray crisis had not received international attention and asked why it was not covered as extensively as the war in Ukraine US-NATO. According to him, the EU welcomed the Ukrainians with open arms, while the press showed little interest in the civil war in Ethiopia. “Maybe it’s because of the color of people’s skin,” he said.

UN agencies and international aid organizations have warned of famine that could affect millions in Ethiopia, which is home to more than 110 million people. The peace agreement stipulates that Ethiopia will “accelerate” both the delivery of aid and supplies to the long-cut-off Tigray region, which is running out of food and essential medicines. After a lull in the fighting earlier this year, about 8,000 trucks of humanitarian aid were able to reach the region, according to the United Nations. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations humanitarian agency did not immediately confirm that trucks carrying humanitarian aid had arrived in the Shire. A spokesman for the humanitarian organization, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said his organization had not yet begun delivering aid because it was still checking the safety of roads and waiting for permits.

Meanwhile, Ahmed’s government has called the agreement an “achievement,” raising more questions than answers about its implementation. Observers see many loopholes in the agreement, which was signed in just nine days, and leaves many questions unanswered. It depends more on the “good will” of the government in Addis Ababa than on its opponent, the TPLF. The biggest gap, however, is the lack of mention of Eritrea, which is not a party to the agreement but is Ethiopia’s main partner in the war and is accused of committing war atrocities and crimes against humanity in Tigray. Observers assume that Eritrea’s absence from the agreement and its failure to declare that it must withdraw its troops from all Ethiopian soil will prevent it from complying with the terms of the agreement, which Ahmed’s government must abide by. Eritrea, which sees the existence of a strong Tigray as a threat to the regime of its president, Isaiah Afwerka, called for a massive military mobilization in mid-September to provoke the Tigray and find a pretext for a new round of war. In most Western media reports, the mandatory military mobilization was seen as the goal of a protracted war against the Tigray, who had entrenched themselves in the mountainous regions.

Moreover, the agreement makes no mention of the Amhara fighters who control the agriculturally rich western Tigray region. The Amhara, who make up 28% of the population, and the Tigray, 7%, refuse to negotiate among themselves. This military situation does not encourage the TPLF to give up their weapons and integrate into society. The population’s loss of confidence in the TPLF could also complicate the situation in the region and form a tougher political bloc against Abiy Ahmed’s government.

In the meantime, the peace agreement appears to be a sign to the Abiy Ahmed government that toughness is the solution to the problem of rebellious Ethiopian nationalities. The siege of Tigray, the famine, and the killings that amounted to genocide led to the “subjugation” of the people of Tigray and the fulfillment of “100% of our demands,” Ahmed told a crowd of supporters two days after signing the agreement. It now appears that Ahmed will take a similarly tough stance on other Ethiopians, especially after the Oromo-majority Liberation Front, which makes up 34% of the population, announced the capture of towns in the westernmost part of the country. This has exacerbated already difficult security conditions in the country, which is home to representatives of 80 ethnic groups, most of whom have their own liberation fronts demanding separation from Addis Ababa and control of Amhara.

Recently, a peace agreement was signed to silence the guns. But hopes that this will succeed are fading, given the numerous political and military loopholes in the agreement. For example, the disputed western region of Tigray, occupied by Ethiopian Amhara militias since the beginning of the war, is one of the problems plaguing the peace process, and the agreement barely addresses it. The TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades until the election of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018, has consistently refused to negotiate on the issue, a position supported by the Amhara, who also lay claim to the region. Even more troubling, the agreement has a “hole the size of Eritrea,” according to Ben Hunter, Africa analyst at news service provider Verisk Maplecroft. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki “has not signed the agreement and is still pursuing expansionist ambitions,” Hunter told AFP. “He is likely to try to provoke the NFLF into violating the ceasefire,” Hunter added, pointing out that the two sides have been enemies for decades. The Eritrean presence in Tigray, whose troops have been accused of horrific atrocities against civilians, also casts doubt on whether the TPLF will disarm its fighters as it has promised.

Tigray authorities “will not lay down their arms in exchange for vague promises,” said Benjamin Petrini, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, referring to the atmosphere of deep mistrust between the parties. “What security guarantees does the TPLF offer for disarmament?” he asked, stressing that the agreement contains “too many unknowns.”

The biggest unanswered question concerns the future of the TPLF, a party whose influence on Ethiopian politics has been undeniable for years, but which now faces an uncertain future.

Shortly after the peace agreement was announced, the head of the negotiating delegation from Tigray, Getachew Reda , acknowledged that his side “made concessions because we need to build trust” But his willingness to meet the government’s demands may not sit well with Tigray’s six million residents, who “paid a heavy price for two years” as the war dragged on.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... agreement/

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Photo: Party headquarters of the Sankarist UNIR/PS im Quartier 1200 Logements in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. (Source: Wikicommons)

Thomas Sankara: “We didn’t import our revolution”
Originally published: Liberation School on November 1, 2022 by André Brecourt interviewing Thomas Sankara (more by Liberation School) | (Posted Nov 22, 2022)
Imperialism, Revolutions, State Repression, StrategyAfricaInterview
Editorial introduction

This is the first English translation of this interview and the opening installment in a Liberation School series of previously untranslated work by Thomas Sankara. This translation series is the result of a collaboration with ThomasSankara.net, an online platform dedicated to archiving work on and by the great African revolutionary. We would like to express our gratitude to Bruno Jaffré for allowing us to establish this collaboration and providing us with the right to translate this material into English for the first time.

Thomas Sankara (1949-1987), who is sometimes referred to as the “African Che Guevara,” was the Marxist-Leninist leader of the Burkinabé Revolution from 1983 until his assassination in 1987, which is finally being investigated 1. Sankara made major contributions to the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle, the defense of national self-determination, the construction of socialist internationalism, women’s liberation, the fight against capitalist-driven environmental destruction, and many other significant fronts of global class struggle 2.

The text below was originally published in L’Humanité, a newspaper with strong historical ties to the French Communist Party, before being republished on ThomasSankara.net 3.
“We didn’t import our revolution”

On January 23, 1984, the very young “President of the National Revolutionary Council of the Republic of Upper Volta” was “the guest of L’Humanité.” Read the entire interview in which Thomas Sankara chose to speak the truth.

He is a smiling, relaxed, humorous, frank man who received us at length, one Sunday evening, in his office at the Conseil de l’Entente, at the end of a twelve-day stay in Upper Volta [the country would take the name of Burkina Faso in August 1984—editor’s note], which allowed us to meet him on three occasions. He insisted on telling us after the interview that he had known our newspaper for a long time and would take this opportunity to “say hello to all our fellow readers.”

André Brecourt: Much has been written about the young revolution in Upper Volta. Its style is surprising, and it disturbs a lot of people. Can you tell us why?

Thomas Sankara: It is true that our revolution bothers and surprises a great number of people. It is surprising in the sense that it broke very clearly with generally accepted cliches, which make the military’s coming to power into a banal coup d’etat. What we achieved here was not what you could call a coup d’etat. There was a thoroughly prepared popular insurrection in which progressives, revolutionaries and democrats came together to end a regime of submission to imperialism. This is what surprised those who don’t want to understand the direction in which the history of the people of Africa is evolving. What is also surprising is that the Voltaic soldiers are far from being the poor brutish soldiers that people know of elsewhere, or some imagine here. The vast majority of Voltaic soldiers are very politicized. They are linked to their people and share their aspirations and daily struggles. They know who their principal enemy is and how to combat this enemy.

If our revolution worries some, it’s primarily because of the example it can set, and not just in our sub-region. We didn’t import our revolution, let alone decide to export it. It is the result of a historical process—scientifically verified and inevitable—in the transformation of the struggles that the social classes have to wage against each other in order to achieve this form of revolution that only asks to be perfected, the same causes producing the same effects no matter the skies under which one finds oneself.

André Brecourt:You intend to progress forward quickly. However, feudalism in the countryside remains powerful, and the same goes for the comprador bourgeoisie. Both retain the upper hand over the economy. What measures do you intend to take to limit their power?

Thomas Sankara: There is a first step, which consists in issuing decrees and ordinances; we reject this because it is essentially bureaucratic. The second consists in lifting the popular masses out of obscurantism. That is the measure we endeavor to undertake.

Fighting against obscurantism means allowing each individual of Upper Volta to elevate their level of political consciousness. It means being a people for itself [un peuple pour soi] and not for others [pour autrui], and this is not easy insofar as access to knowledge is still controlled by the bourgeoisie and feudal forces. We are determined to confront them, and for that we intend to accelerate the process of democratization in order to drive them out.

This does not happen without excesses; but how could it be otherwise? We are pleased with the updates regarding what is occurring in the countryside. For the first time, peasants dare to inform the authorities of the abuses they suffer. We do not see this as an act of snitching, contrary to certain assertions, but rather as the beginning of an awareness among our peasants, who now intend to effectively participate in the daily management of power.

We intend to demystify these forces of the past and present them as they are to our people. This is why we are in favor of a responsible, militant press, of a radio service that will allow us to be heard in the farthest reaches of the country and in the languages that our compatriots understand.

André Brecourt: Your country is living in the hour of the “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.” However, it seems that these also serve as a refuge for counter-revolutionaries. How do you plan on going about cleaning up the ranks of the CDRs so that they can really play their role?

Thomas Sankara: It’s true that you find a little bit of everything in the CDRs. You encounter reactionaries, who have cleverly integrated themselves, as well as left opportunists. The problem isn’t limited to these two categories. It is essential to understand that the CDRs constitute the main weapon, the frontline shock troops in the battle that will allow our revolution to triumph. So we are working to purify them, that is to say that we are working to get rid of counter-revolutionary elements. This can only be done with the patient but determined development of the democratisation of our structures.

We have already noted some results!

This is how some old authorities were deposed, on the basis of irrefutable facts presented by the CDRs. In contrast, other CDRs have had their practices condemned and have been obligated to re-elect their delegates and replace their office staff. There are also all kinds of excesses. This is normal and was foreseeable.

Between the Voltaic executive, an intellectual, who leaves his petty-bourgeois social milieu in order to join the revolution, and the Voltaic worker who has lived for twenty-three years under a neocolonial regime, between these two people the understanding of the revolution, as well as the practice, are not the same. One intends to carry it out with white gloves, and the other thinks that the revolution must give them the freedom to satisfy their every whim. We understand these behaviors very well.

Our revolution has defeated fatalism. The people, today, have the possibility of expressing themselves. Today, they liberate their instincts. Tomorrow, it will be their consciousness that is liberated, mobilized.

André Brecourt: What should, in your opinion, the place of unions be in the current process?

Thomas Sankara: The unions in Upper Volta have a longue tradition of struggle, although they are not homogeneous. We have had progressive, as well as reactionary unions. The latter were the secular arms of certain leaders under prior regimes. In the hour of revolution, we don’t have a choice. We can spare no effort in blocking the way of the reactionaries, whatever organization they take refuge in, whether it be unions or underground parties, because we know that they will spare no effort in their attempts to destroy us.4 Besides, soon after the 4th of August, 1983, an official from these “unions” proclaimed loud and clear that he would fight our revolution with his sword drawn if necessary.

As for the progressive unions whose actions serve the interests of the masses, we are counting on their support in order to move forward. By their capacity to mobilize, they occupy a prominent place in our revolutionary process. However, we don’t want a rivalry to develop between these unions and the CDRs. We are against that. For now, we don’t think there can be, from the point of view of revolutionary principles, any opposition between these unions and the CDRs. On the other hand, we are convinced that there can be, from a subjective point of view, oppositions, and we will have the courage to fight these in broad daylight, because we will denounce them as being practices of left opportunism.

André Brecourt: On October 28th, shortly before your departure for Niamey, you reported, in a highly publicized declaration, that there had been attempts to destabilize the state of Upper Volta. Could you tell us more about these?

Thomas Sankara: No, I don’t want to do that. We don’t want to pit our people against other peoples. But the subversive activities against Upper Volta are very real, constant. They are both national and international. We have proof of this. But we don’t think it would be appropriate to disclose it at this time as we don’t want to create an atmosphere of xenophobia amongst our people.

We want to circumscribe the evil and its origins, and clearly dissociate those who attack us from their people, whom we consider to be like our brothers, our friends. This is the reason why we don’t really want to share the evidence as it would amount to us pointing the finger at the nationality in question. That said, I solemnly confirm the reality of these plots. They do not stem from a simple logical analysis; this reality is obvious to everyone, except to those intent on demonstrating their short-sightedness. It stems from investigations that we have conducted and from information that sympathetic militants have provided to us.

We were thus able to see that a just revolution is never isolated. And this is, for us, a great comfort.

André Brecourt: How do you see your relationship with France?

Thomas Sankara: We want a dynamic cooperation of self-realization that allows the French and the Voltaic people to open up to one another. This type of cooperation will only see the light of day if the French and the Voltaic people rid themselves of the cold calculations that hide behind the interests of one state to another. This will happen only if they are both convinced that every form of neocolonialism, imperialism, and paternalism is excluded from this type of relationship.

This means that our dignity must be respected, as well as our sovereignty. This also means, and above all, that we must essentially work to bring our two people together and not to cultivate official, formal relations. It is only in this way that we will be able to have a substantial policy on both sides. The France that has emerged from May 10th, 1981 [the day the Socialist Party won power with the election of François Mittérand as president of France—translators note] makes some beautiful declarations that win the sympathy of African peoples. But what we want is that everyday reality would live up to these declarations, to the promises made. Remember those made by the Socialist Party before the 10th of May, 1981, and compare them with what is happening in concrete terms today. Certainly I do not underestimate the weight of international capitalism, with everything that implies, but still.

The behaviour of the French government is surprising, clashes with our convictions and our hopes when it continues to maintain relations with South Africa [under the Aparthied regime at the time—editor’s note from L’Humanité], when it sends its troops to Chad to support the regime of Hissène Habré. It is these facts that hurt us. We tell them to the French in an act of friendship, in all honesty, in order to allow them to better understand us, just as we expect them to criticize us, to tell us how to be better understood by them. The cooperation between France and Upper Volta can be beautiful and exemplary on the condition that we accept that our enemies be condemned no matter where they are found, even if it hurts us due to our parallel alliances.

Translation by Maxime Delafosse-Brown, Gabriel Rockhill, and Hope Wilson

References:
1.↩ See Miernecki. Katie. (2021). “34 years after Sankara’s assassination, killers finally stand trial.” Liberation News, October 15. Available here.
2.↩ For a general overview of Sankara’s work, see Malott, Curry. (2020). “Thomas Sankara: Leadership and action that inspires 71 years later.” Liberation School, December 21. Available here; and Bakupa-Kanyinda, Balufu. (2018). “Thomas Sankara: A film by Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda.” Liberation School, August 23. Available here.
3.This interview was originally published in French as Brécourt, André. (2017). “Thomas Sankara: ‘Nous n’avons pas importé notre révolution.” L’Humanité, October 12. Available here. It was republished here on ThomasSankara.net here.
4.↩ A few passages in this interview contain minor errors or unclear formulations in the original French, which are most likely due to it being transcribed from an oral exchange. While the minor errors were easy to correct, the formulation at the beginning of this sentence appears contradictory, and we therefore modified it according to the overall sense of the passage. Literally, it reads: “We cannot spare, not block the road to reactionaries [Nous ne pouvons ménager, ne pas barrer la route aux réactionnaires]”—translators note.

https://mronline.org/2022/11/22/thomas- ... evolution/

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The legacies of clonialism persist with white people still controlling a large chunk of the South African economy. (Photo: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko)

Open veins of Africa bleeding heavily
Originally published: JOMO on November 21, 2022 by Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla (more by JOMO) | (Posted Nov 23, 2022)

DAKAR and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22, 2022 (IPS). The ongoing plunder of Africa’s natural resources drained by capital flight is holding it back yet again. More African nations face protracted recessions amid mounting debt distress, rubbing salt into deep wounds from the past.

With much less foreign exchange, tax revenue, and policy space to face external shocks, many African governments believe they have little choice but to spend less, or borrow more in foreign currencies.

Most Africans are struggling to cope with food and energy crises, inflation, higher interest rates, adverse climate events, less health and social provisioning. Unrest is mounting due to deteriorating conditions despite some commodity price increases.

Economic haemorrhage

After ‘lost decades’ from the late 1970s, Africa became one of the world’s fastest growing regions early in the 21st century. Debt relief, a commodity boom and other factors seemed to support the deceptive ‘Africa rising’ narrative.

But instead of long overdue economic transformation, Africa has seen jobless growth, rising economic inequalities and more resource transfers abroad. Capital flight—involving looted resources laundered via foreign banks—has been bleeding the continent.

According to the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, the continent was losing over $50 billion annually. This was mainly due to ‘trade mis-invoicing’—under-invoicing exports and over-invoicing imports—and fraudulent commercial arrangements.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) and criminal networks account for much of this African economic surplus drain. Resource-rich countries are more vulnerable to plunder, especially where capital accounts have been liberalized.

Externally imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), after the early 1980s’ sovereign debt crises, have forced African economies to be even more open—at great economic cost. SAPs have made them more (food) import-dependent while increasing their vulnerability to commodity price shocks and global liquidity flows.

Leonce Ndikumana and his colleagues estimate over 55% of capital flight—defined as illegally acquired or transferred assets—from Africa is from oil-rich nations, with Nigeria alone losing $467 billion during 1970-2018.

Over the same period, Angola lost $103 billion. Its poverty rate rose from 34% to 52% over the past decade, as the poor more than doubled from 7.5 to 16 million.

Oil proceeds have been embezzled by TNCs and Angola’s elite. Abusing her influence, the former president’s daughter, Isabel dos Santos acquired massive wealth. A report found over 400 companies in her business empire, including many in tax havens.

From 1970 to 2018, Côte d’Ivoire lost $55 billion to capital flight. Growing 40% of the world’s cocoa, it gets only 5—7% of global cocoa profits, with farmers getting little. Most cocoa income goes to TNCs, politicians and their collaborators.

Mining giant South Africa (SA) has lost $329 billion to capital flight over the last five decades. Mis-invoicing, other modes of embezzling public resources, and tax evasion augment private wealth hidden in offshore financial centres and tax havens.

Fiscal austerity has slowed job growth and poverty reduction in ‘the most unequal country in the world’. In SA, the richest 10% own over half the nation’s wealth, while the poorest 10% have under 1%!

Resource theft and debt

With this pattern of plunder, resource-rich African countries—that could have accelerated development during the commodity boom—now face debt distress, depreciating currencies and imported inflation, as interest rates are pushed up.

Zambia’s default on its foreign debt obligations in late 2020 has made headlines. But foreign capture of most Zambian copper export proceeds is not acknowledged.

During 2000-2020, total foreign direct investment income from Zambia was twice total debt servicing for external government and government-guaranteed loans. In 2021, the deficit in the ‘primary income’ account (mainly returns to capital) of Zambia’s balance of payments was 12.5% of GDP.

As interest payments on public external debt came to ‘only’ 3.5% of GDP, most of this deficit (9% of GDP) was due to profit and dividend remittances, as well as interest payments on private external debt.

For the IMF, World Bank and ‘creditor nations’, debt ‘restructuring’ is conditional on continuing such plunder! African countries’ worsening foreign indebtedness is partly due to lack of control over export earnings controlled by TNCs, with African elite support.

Resource pillage, involving capital flight, inevitably leads to external debt distress. Invariably, the IMF demands government austerity and opening African economies to TNC interests. Thus, we come full circle, and indeed, it is vicious!

Africa’s wealth plunder dates back to colonial times, and even before, with the Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans. Now, this is enabled by transnational interests crafting international rules, loopholes and all.

Such enablers include various bankers, accountants, lawyers, investment managers, auditors and other wheeler dealers. Thus, the origins of the wealth of ‘high net-worth individuals’, corporations and politicians are disguised, and its transfer abroad ‘laundered’.

What can be done?

Capital flight is not mainly due to ‘normal’ portfolio choices by African investors. Hence, raising returns to investment, e.g., with higher interest rates, is unlikely to stem it. Worse, such policy measures discourage needed domestic investments.

Besides enforcing efficient capital controls, strengthening the capabilities of specialized national agencies—such as customs, financial supervision and anti-corruption bodies—is important.

African governments need stronger rules, legal frameworks and institutions to curb corruption and ensure more effective natural resource management, e.g., by revising bilateral investment treaties and investment codes, besides renegotiating oil, gas, mining and infrastructure contracts.

Records of all investments in extractive industries, tax payments by all involved, and public prosecution should be open, transparent and accountable. Punishment of economic crimes should be strictly enforced with deterrent penalties.

The broader public—especially civil society organizations, local authorities and impacted communities—must also know who and what are involved in extractive industries.

Only an informed public who knows how much is extracted and exported, by whom, what revenue governments get, and their social and environmental effects, can keep corporations and governments in check.

Improving international trade and finance transparency is essential. This requires ending banking secrecy and better regulation of TNCs to curb trade mis-invoicing and transfer pricing, still enabling resource theft and pillage.

OECD rhetoric has long blamed capital flight on offshore tax havens on remote tropical islands. But those in rich countries—such as the UK, U.S., Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore and others—are the biggest culprits.

Stopping haemorrhage of African resource plunder by denying refuge for illicit transfers should be a rich country obligation. Automatic exchange of tax-related information should become truly universal to stop trade mis-invoicing, transfer pricing abuses and hiding stolen wealth abroad.

Unitary taxation of transnational corporations can help end tax abuses, including evasion and avoidance. But the OECD’s Inclusive Framework proposals favour their own governments and corporate interests.

Africa is not inherently ‘poor’. Rather, it has been impoverished by fraud and pillage leading to resource transfers abroad. An earnest effort to end this requires recognizing all responsibilities and culpabilities, national and international.

Africa’s veins have been slit open. The centuries-long bleeding must stop.

Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist working at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar. He authored The Fair Trade Scandal. Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story. He also edited Economic and Monetary Sovereignty for 21st century Africa, Revolutionary Movements in Africa and Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt.

https://mronline.org/2022/11/23/open-ve ... g-heavily/

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King Mswati’s forces in Swaziland attack public transport workers during strike action

Speaking from the hospital where he was admitted after being allegedly tortured by the security forces, union leader Mbhekeni Dlamini told Peoples Dispatch, “I will keep on fighting until all my comrades are freed from prison, until all Swazi people are freed from the monarchy”

November 21, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni

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(The article contains graphic visuals of police violence on protesters)

Several public transport workers were shot, abducted, and tortured by the army and the police during a strike action on November 15 and 16 in the Kingdom of Swaziland. The strike followed another two-day strike on November 10 and 11.

Condemning “the brutal attacks by the armed forces opening fire on bus drivers,” International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) general secretary Stephen Cotton said on November 17, “Murders of transport workers have increased over the past year.”

He said that the ITF will hold the authorities of this southern African country, which is the continent’s last absolute monarchy, “accountable to its actions at all international levels including the International Labour Organization (ILO).”

Despite the police violence, ITF’s national affiliate, the Swaziland Transport Communication and Allied Workers Union (SWATCAWU), successfully brought most cities and towns in the kingdom to halt with their strike action. The union represents over 3,000 of the around 5,000 public transport workers in the small land-locked country, with a little over a million people.

“Even the sugar-mills owned by the King, which is the largest employer in Swaziland after the government, had to be shut down because of our strike. The mills are a key source of the monarch’s income. We know we have delivered a blow to the regime when we shut these mills,” Sticks Nkambule, general secretary of SWATCAWU, told Peoples Dispatch.

Times of Swaziland reported that buses remained parked and most businesses remained shuttered due to the strike on November 15 and 16. The usually busy streets of capital Mbabane, commercial hub Manzini, and other cities and towns wore a deserted look – except for instances where security forces attacked the striking workers.

Many of the larger businesses that were brought to a halt by the strike are owned by King Mswati III and his cronies, who control most of Swaziland’s economy and run it for the benefit of the royal family, Sticks points out.

The monarch’s indulgences, including palaces, private jets, a fleet of Rolls Royce cars and extravagant celebrations and parties, have become an eye-sore in the country where up to 70% of the population survives on less than two dollars a day. Wages of public transport workers, who are government employees, start at R2,400, which barely adds up to USD 4.5 per day.

Along with demanding an increase in wages and better regulation of the sector, the public transport workers are also insisting on the release of incarcerated pro-democracy members of parliament (MPs) Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube.

The MPs were arrested last year after they came out in support of the demand for a multi-party democracy as put forth in the mass-demonstrations and rallies that for the first time spread across rural areas, largely thought to be loyal to the King.

When these peaceful rallies that had unprecedentedly spread across Swaziland faced a violent crackdown by the army and police, an insurrection erupted in the industrial areas around the cities, which have long been a hotbed of anti-monarchist sentiment.

Mass attacks on properties and businesses owned by the King and his cronies began by the end of June last year, whereupon the king briefly fled the country, returning only in mid-July when the insurrection had been put down by the army which killed over 70 and injured hundreds.

In the several protests and strikes witnessed since – be it by students demanding scholarships to access education or public workers and civil servants demanding living wages and decent working conditions – “Mswati must fall!” became a common slogan across Swaziland.

King Mswati III appoints the prime minister and other ministers of the cabinet, as well as the top jurists, 2/3rds of the upper house of the parliament, and 12% of the lower house. No political parties, all of which are banned, are allowed to participate in the “elections” for the remaining seats in the lower house. Only individuals approved by the King’s local chiefs can contest these seats.

Mabuza and Dube were two MPs within this undemocratic setup who however rose to popularity after taking the side of the masses against the monarch by calling for democratization of Swaziland.

‘We will paralyze the state with another strike’

The demand for multi-party democracy and the release of political prisoners including the incarcerated MPs has consistently been raised alongside the different economic demands put forward in the demonstrations and industrial actions by different groups.

These political demands are not incidental but central, Sticks reiterates. “If the MPs are not released during their next hearing in court in December, we will paralyze the state with another strike,” he said.

The first day of the transport workers’ latest strike was intentionally scheduled to coincide with the court hearing of the MPs on November 15. Deputy chairperson of SWATACAWU in Manzini, Mbhekeni Dlamini, along with other union members, were headed to the court in Mbabane to express solidarity with the MPs on trial.

Just before reaching Mbabane, they were confronted by a group of armed security personnel who threatened to shoot if they did not return home. “We were not even marching or shouting slogans. We were only walking in our union T-shirts. The government had said only a day ago confidently that November 15 will be a normal day. And yet, the security forces were behaving as if there was a curfew,” Mbhekeni told Peoples Dispatch. “When we were walking back home, we were suddenly attacked by heavily armed policemen.”

The policemen allegedly fired shots and chased those who fled, while Mbhekeni, who was held at gunpoint, was forced down into the leg-space of the backseat of a private SUV with a South African number plate. Held under boots with his face covered, he was kicked all the way as the vehicle was driven to a jungle on the outskirts of Manzini, where he was lashed repeatedly with a leather whip.

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“They were seven. They took turns one after another. One kept beating and lashing me till he got tired and handed over to another. It lasted for two hours. Then they dumped me in the bush and drove away,” Mbhekeni recalled.

“I was dizzy, in too much pain – did not know where I was. A passerby found me and asked what happened. I told I was kidnapped and tortured by the police. He helped me out. We made a phone call to my comrades who came to pick me up in a car.”

At the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Manzini, where he was admitted for treatment, he found that his comrades who had tried to flee the abduction attempt by the policemen were also later admitted in a wounded state.

“There are policemen in civil clothes roaming the corridors outside. They are keeping a constant eye on who comes to visit us,” he said on November 16, speaking on phone from the hospital ward where he was admitted. Nevertheless, he added, “I have been receiving many visits from my comrades,” reiterating that the transport workers are not intimidated.

But the regime imposes a high cost on those who dare. “I am a bus driver. They have dislocated my elbow. I cannot drive for at least one month now,” Mbhekeni said, adding that he doesn’t know how he will make ends meet. “I only know that I will keep on fighting until all my comrades are freed from prison, until all Swazi people are freed from the monarchy.”

‘Monarchy is an economic liability to workers’
The workers calling for the overthrow of the monarchy are not necessarily motivated by a political ideology, explains Sticks. “It is because they understand that the monarchy is an economic liability to them. They understand that so long as the monarchy exists, they will never secure decent wages and labor rights. That is why they are willing to fight for democracy and make all sacrifices necessary.”

At least two protesters were reportedly shot that day. The Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku, however, said on November 15, “We note that today was generally peaceful, despite a few skirmishes as a result of provocation from those few individuals who decided not to heed the Government’s pronouncement about the illegal protest march and that no one should engage in it.”

“His Majesty’s Government would particularly like to acknowledge the role played by State security officers in maintaining peace, the rule of law and order across the country, despite several attempts by small groups of people to disrupt operations,” he added.

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[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1592476916145356802[/youtube]

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Many more transport workers had been shot during the earlier strike on November 10. Sticks explained that while the November 15 strike had been planned in advance, the strike action on November 10 was not.

After “nothing substantial came out of the commissions set up in October by the government,” which was forced to the negotiating table when the strike by public transport workers had gone on for two weeks last month, the union had decided to strike again on November 15.

“To disrupt our planned strike on the 15th, the police arrested five of our key activists on November 9,” he said. These activists had earlier complained to the police that registered transport workers were being undercut by private vehicles illegally ferrying customers. “But the police did not act. So the union had intervened to stop this practice,” he added.

The police painted this intervention as an offense, and the five activists were in and out of court for some time when suddenly, “less than a week before the planned strike, the court handed them into police custody. We knew the purpose was to disrupt the oncoming strike. So we struck the very next day on November 10, demanding their release. And we succeeded in securing their release on November 11.”

This success came at a cost. Several workers were shot and injured by the army and the police during the agitation on November 10, which continued into the next day.

The Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) said in a statement on November 11, “We celebrate the bravery of this important sector of society, who despite being the most downtrodden and marginalized, are always able to defend their own.”

“[W]hen one of their own is unjustly incarcerated, SWATCAWU is their first and last line of defense. This is something we must aspire to make a culture in the Mass Democratic Movement,” it added. “SWATCAWU membership braved and held fort even when the military was deployed into the streets. They stood firm on their demands even when the state’s security forces used live ammunition.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/21/ ... ke-action/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:58 pm

‘The Demonization Was Meant to Pacify Readers to Accept the Brutality’
CounterSpin interview with Milton Allimadi on New York Times and Africa
JANINE JACKSON

Janine Jackson interviewed Milton Allimadi about New York Times coverage of Africa for the September 17, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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New York Times Magazine (4/18/93)
Janine Jackson: Benighted. Backward. Tribal. Corrupt. Inherently violent, yet somehow also docile unto imbecility.

Listeners will be familiar with the imagery that corporate media have long used to talk about Africa and Africans. Not just tabloids that blare their racism in crude cartoons–elite media have been key in promoting the narrative in which Europeans represent civilization, which they feel moved to provide, on their own terms naturally, to Africans that could never otherwise attain it.

In 1877, a New York Times editorial explained that inferior intellectual development gave Africans “an old touch, a tertiary or pre-tertiary touch about them, affiliating them with the ancient hippopotamus and the crocodile.” It continued, “Surely this is a case where the introduction of European civilization would be most justifiable and might well repay the cost.”

That’s a long time ago, you say. OK, but the Times piece “Colonialism’s Back and Not a Moment Too Soon,” that argued that “the civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern,” ran in 1993.

A new book makes the point, and illustrates it expansively, that dehumanizing coverage of African nations and African people has never been accidental or incidental, but part of efforts to justify violent colonization and resource theft, and to rationalize continued economic exploitation of Black people and the institutionalized racism intertwined with it.
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Kendall Hunt, 2021
The book is called Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media, out now from Kendall Hunt. We’re joined now by the author, Milton Allimadi. He teaches African history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and publishes the Black Star News, a weekly newspaper here in New York City. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Milton Allimadi.

Milton Allimadi: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that excellent summary, actually, of the book.

JJ: Well, I appreciated it very, very much. The book has historical sweep, and that’s appropriate, because the usefulness of portraying African people as savages, as something less than human, really goes back to early contact, doesn’t it?

MA: Yes, it does. And I decided to focus on the precolonial era, when the so-called “explorers” started to go to African countries from Europe, names like Samuel Baker from England, and we’re talking about the early parts of the 19th century. These were actually agents of colonialism, which, of course, was to come much later, the last two decades of the 19th century. They were out there to map the territorial zones in Africa, find the resource locations.

And yet they claimed they were there to discover the source of the Nile, or some other lake. And, of course, as you know, they also arrogantly renamed those large bodies of water. So for example, Luta Nzige, in east central Africa, became Lake Victoria.

And they were very malicious, I’m sure as you recall in some segments of the book, when you read the writings of Baker, when he was describing Africans, and he was saying they were not to be compared with the noble character of the dog. And other such ugly language.

But at the same time, if you read him carefully, that had a specific purpose. Because then he goes on to outline the need for Europeans to come and take control of the African continent, and to force them to start trading with Europe.

So that was actually the primary purpose. The primary purpose was colonial economic control over Africa. The demonization was just the language meant to pacify readers and the citizenship back in Europe, to condition their minds to accept the brutality that would be necessary in order to take control of the African continent. And that was the entire agenda.

So I focused on that, and then I showed how the template created by these so-called explorers was later on adopted by professional writers, including by United States media outlets such as National Geographic magazine and the New York Times, when they started sending writers actually to go to the African continent.

JJ: Along with the adjectives “tribal” and “savage,” that soften the ground for public acceptance of violent interventions in Africa, because, after all, these sort of people kill each other all the time.

MA: Exactly.

JJ: Misreporting of African countries has left holes in basic historical understanding. If you think about an event or a thing that happened, that if Africa were appropriately covered, everyone would know, it would be integrated into our public database, is there a particular event that comes to mind?

MA: OK, very good. So let’s go back to the Battle of Adwa, for example.

JJ: Yes.
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Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II (left); Italian Gen. Oreste Baratieri
MA: Ethiopia was actually the only African country not to be colonized by European power. And why was that? Because Ethiopians took up arms and they defeated an imperial state. And it was shocking to the entire European establishment. And that was the Battle of Adwa, March 1, 1896, when Italy also wanted to get a chunk of territory in Africa.

And King Umberto sent an invading army, led by General Baratieri and four other generals. So you have five generals. And you had many senior officers. You had thousands of Italian troops, with African soldiers from the Italian colony of Eritrea also fighting on behalf of Italy. So you had 17,000 soldiers invaded–at that time, Ethiopia was referred to as Abyssinia–and expected to quickly conquer the country. In fact, the invading commander-in-chief, General Baratieri, had promised King Umberto that he would return back to Rome with Emperor Menelik II in a cage, so he could be displayed in the zoo.

But that battle lasted all of six hours. The Italian army was completely annihilated. Two generals were killed. One general was captured. Baratieri, the commander-in-chief himself, who promised to come back with Menelik in a cage, fled the battle scene for his dear life. And he was later tried for cowardice, although he was acquitted. Three thousand Italian soldiers were captured, and they were marched back to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. And they were put to work.

So now you have the tables turned. You have Africans now actually subjugating Europeans to work, almost like enslaved laborers. And they were there until the following year in October, when Italy was forced to pay millions of pounds in reparations before the Italian prisoners were released.

But the interesting part about that battle was how the New York Times covered it. Initially, when Italy invaded and was seizing a lot of territory in Eritrea, the coverage was exuberant, really glorifying colonial conquest, and actually saying we would not be glorifying it if this was a normal situation. I’m paraphrasing now.

JJ: Right.
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New York Times (3/4/1896)
MA: But this is actually great, because it’s a victory of civilization over backwardness, over barbarians, and over people that had no religious beliefs–when, in fact, Ethiopia had been a Christian country since the third century.

And also, it then said that now Ethiopia could be brought into the international system of commerce, and the riches of Ethiopia are now going to benefit the entire civilized world. That was if Italy was still winning.

And then, when the tables were turned and Ethiopia defeated Italy, the headline was now, “Italy’s Terrible Defeat.”

JJ: Yeah.

MA: It was not “Ethiopia’s Great Victory.”

So that was then, 1896. But now let’s come to the contemporary era, when we see the coverage of the conflict in the Congo, eastern Congo in particular. Mineral-rich eastern Congo. It’s always portrayed, even in the New York Times, as “tribal wars,” when, in fact, it is a war by design, by corporate interests. Western companies, United States, Canadian, British and other European companies, are benefiting from that war.

Now, they don’t fight it directly with European or American soldiers. But they use their puppet regimes in Uganda and Rwanda, who are armed by the US and other Western countries. And the invasion of Ugandan and Rwandan soldiers are tolerated by the West.

And why is this? Because at the same time that all these Congolese are being killed, these Western mining corporations are actually mining minerals from eastern Congo. The general reader would not know any of this because, in their mind, this is just another one of those typical “African tribal wars.”

JJ: You do focus in the book on the New York Times to some extent, which makes sense. It’s an influential voice.

MA: Yes.
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Emanuel Freedman (New York Times, 1/28/71)
JJ: And also the importance of an editor. Emanuel Freedman was the New York Times foreign news editor during a very important period. And you say he never took Africa seriously, and the reporting reflected that.

MA: Yes, he never took Africa seriously. And unfortunately, he was there for a very long time as the foreign news editor, at very critical times, in the history of, the evolution of Africa. He was there when the apartheid system in South Africa was being consolidated, this very barbaric system of racist segregation in all spheres and all aspects of life, whether economic, whether educational, whether social.

And this is a critical time. If the New York Times, for example, had chosen to take a much more objective approach, rather than embracing and actually providing, I would almost say, PR for the apartheid system, things might have turned out a bit differently in South Africa.

But always, you can also interpret it this way. Because, at that time, of course, the US also had its own domestic issues, particularly in the South, for example. So the New York Times basically took an approach, and accepted the argument by the European minority that was governing South Africa, that Africans are not really used to our system of civilization, and that’s why we need an apartheid system, separateness. And, of course, they never explained why the Europeans had to take the lion’s share of the resources, and why it could not be the other way around.

And we find Emanuel Freedman, rather than looking at the seriousness of the apartheid system, was focusing on trivial stories that would caricature Africans and show them as, essentially, people that are uncivilized.

So, for example, he would send memos to New York Times correspondents in Africa, and ask them things like, Oh, we hear that in Africa, where the concept of the wheel was not known until recently, bicycles are now proliferating. Could you do us a piece on that? And he would say, Do they have bicycle garages? Do they ride naked on the bicycles? What impact is it having?

And then the second major story that was going on in Africa, of course, was decolonization. So in the late 1950s, the New York Times sent Homer Bigart, who by that time was well-known in American journalism. He’d won the Pulitzer Prize twice, before he joined the Times, actually, when he was with the Herald-Tribune. So he was sent to cover how independence was faring in Ghana, which, of course, was the first African country south of the Sahara to win its independence from Britain in 1957. And then from there, he was to go to other African countries that were about to win their independence, and then file his reports.

So when he gets to Accra in Ghana, he writes this letter, and now I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have it in front of me, to Emanuel Freedman. And he’s confessing that, I really cannot get answers to what you asked about the so-called emerging republics. The leaders are “either crooks or mystics.” And he says that Nkrumah, who was, of course, this great Pan-African hero, and first prime minister of Ghana, was like “a Henry Wallace in burnt cork.” He says, I pretty much prefer the “primitive bush people,” because “cannibalism,” after all, is the best “antidote” for the population explosion that everybody is complaining about.

How did I find this? I found this, actually, when I did the research and I went to the archives of the New York Times many years ago, when I was still a graduate student at Columbia. And when I came upon this memo, I knew the extent of the racism. But this was still a bit shocking.

Then I said to myself, maybe this was one individual deranged reporter.

JJ: Right.
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New York Times (6/26/60)
MA: But then I went and I saw the articles published under his byline around that time. And all the language in the articles reflected the language in his personal correspondence with Freedman as well. Terms like “savages,” “cannibals,” “macabre,” those are the kind of words he used in his news stories.

But then there was also a lot of distortion, and even fabrication. So, for example, when he left Ghana, he went to the Belgian Congo–it was called the Belgian Congo at that time–about to get its independence. And he wrote another memo to Emanuel Freedman, and he said he had been hoping to find Pygmies. And, by the way, Pygmies, one of the most maligned people in all of Western writing about Africa, the Pygmy.

So he said he wanted to find Pygmies, to interview them as to what independence meant to them. But he could not find them. They were all in the woods, for example, he said. But then when this article appears in the New York Times, now he’s saying: to Pygmies, independence means they can now have more meat, they can now have more beer, they can now have more salt.

And, of course, it’s so sad, because the Belgian Congo experienced perhaps the most horrific history of European colonialism in Africa under demonic King Leopold II.

JJ: Yes.

MA: He is estimated to have exterminated as many, during his regime, up to 10 million Congolese. And this was the moment where the Times could have taken a serious look, and perhaps interviewed some maybe elderly survivors of that genocidal era, or at least the descendants of those who suffered under Leopold. But, instead, this was the kind of story, demonizing the Pygmies, that Bigart and Freedman were focusing on.

So it was beyond just inheriting the template from the so-called explorers. It was adopting it and even exceeding it in maliciously distorting the image of Africa.

And when the reporting did not really conform with this image, they sometimes took matters into their own hands. So I found a letter written by a Times correspondent in the 1960s. I believe it was ‘66. And this was Lloyd Garrison, a descendant of the famous abolitionist William Garrison. And he was complaining about the edited and final version of his article that he read. He found that the editors had inserted a scene describing Nigerians dressed in grass leaves. This is something that Garrison did not himself write.

JJ: Mm-hm.

MA: And he was shocked when he saw it in the final version of his article. And to his credit, he was one of those who took this seriously and complained about it, and said he had found this type of reference to “tribesmen” in his other articles in the past, and he strongly objected to that.

JJ: Finally, Milton, you have been working on these ideas for some time now. And for some time, people have been saying, this is all very interesting, but…. I wanted to ask you to talk a little about your efforts to get this information about media into media.

MA: Yes, that is a story in itself. And it’s been a great learning experience, actually, to me. And it really lets you look back at the whole concept of objectivity in journalism, which is something they hammer in all the journalism schools, at least when I went to Columbia Journalism in ’92.

Because this research that has now ended up in this book started off as a master’s paper at Columbia, for the master’s degree in journalism. And I said, this is really a golden opportunity, because the demonization of Africa was something that had bothered me for a very long time, even when I was a teenager, a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, actually. So now I have a chance to actually write something serious that can contribute to a literature which is missing.

So when I did the research, the paper was actually recognized at least by my peers, and by the faculty. It was awarded the James Wechsler Award. And then Columbia Journalism Review invited me to submit it for publication. And, of course, I thought that was very good. This might actually help me start putting it into a potential book form eventually.

I kept waiting for it to be published. One issue came out. A second issue came out. And now I’m about to graduate, and obviously I would have preferred for it to be published before I graduate.

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Mike Hoyt

So then I contact the Review. And I spoke to the editor at that time, Michael Hoyt. And I asked when my paper was going to be published, my article. And then he tells me, “Oh, there’s been a decision made not to publish it.”

And I was very shocked. I said, “Well, when were you going to tell me this?” And there’s no response. And then I say, “Well, what was the problem? You invited me. You seemed very enthusiastic. What happened?”

He says, ultimately, two editors supported publication. Two opposed. And the executive editor at that time, Suzanne Levine, opposed publishing. And I said, “What was the problem or the objection?” He said there was some thought that “these things happened a long time ago.” And then I said to myself, how are you going to write a history and a critique without going back into the history? So I was very perplexed.

And then even more confusing was when I asked to have my paper back. He actually asked me, he said, “Why do you want it back?” Which anyone, of course, would find very shocking, an editor asking you why do you want your paper back, especially after they say they’re not going to publish it.

JJ: Exactly.

MA: Actually, he added onto that. He said, “Why do you want it back? After all, it’s not the same as what you gave us.” And then that really lit up something in my mind. I said, “In that case, that’s precisely why I want it back.” And I went quickly to the Review’s office, which was in, of course, the same building as Columbia Journalism School. I don’t know if it still is.

And something else shocking happened when I walked in. He didn’t expect me to come in that quickly, so he was standing behind a pile of papers. And he was sort of shoving something beneath the pile. And then he sees me, and he’s shocked. And I wasn’t in the mood for niceties; I said, “I just want my paper back.” And then he starts going to different locations and drawers searching for this paper. And then he comes back to the same spot where I’d found him standing, and he pulls the paper out from beneath the pile. And now I’m really shaking my head. I’m saying this is something very strange here.

JJ: Yeah.

MA: I take my paper and I leave. And before I even got in the elevator, I started reading the paper. And sure enough, the Review editors had actually inserted an apology on my behalf at the very beginning of the paper. I can read it verbatim very quickly.

JJ: Please.

MA:

Recently, the Times granted me access to its archives, including correspondences from the 1950s when the paper sent Bigart to Africa on a temporary assignment. After studying the archival material, I interviewed several present and former Times reporters. The following excerpts from the material and from lengthy interviews are not intended as an indictment of the Times, whose African coverage has occasionally been distinguished, but as a means of highlighting a problem that all news organizations need to address.

JJ: Wow.
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Milton Allimadi: “Until we understand how Africa, Africans and descendants of Africans, including in this country, were really made into the Other, we will not understand what needs to be done going forward.”
MA: So even after this insertion, they still decided not to publish it. So I could only read that one way, that this is coming out of a fear of how the New York Times might react to this. So I did them a favor, and I sent it to the publisher of the Times at that time, I believe it was Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.

And to his credit, Joseph Lelyveld actually did write to me. And he said yes, he acknowledged the crude language in their past coverage that my research had discovered. And then he also added that, he did say things have changed since then, because he himself was a part of pushing for that change. In his case, I do agree. But there’s still a lot that needs to be done.

JJ: Is there anything else you would like to add for listeners who might be intrigued by this set of ideas?

MA: I hope that people do get a chance to read this book, because I think until we understand how Africa, Africans and descendants of Africans, including in this country, were really made into the Other, we will not understand what needs to be done going forward, including for domestic issues of racism right here in the United States.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Milton Allimadi. Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media is out now from Kendall Hunt. Thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin, Milton Allimadi.

MA: My pleasure. Thank you so much.

https://fair.org/home/the-demonization- ... brutality/

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Tigray Receives First-Round Humanitarian Aid After Peace Accord

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A woman gets humanitarian relief from the World Food Program, Somalia, Nov. 28, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @WFP_Media

Published 28 November 2022

0ver 90,000 quintals of wheat and nutritious food were distributed to more than 450,000 people.


The Ethiopian government disclosed that more than 450,000 people in the country's conflict-affected northernmost Tigray region have been reached in the first-round humanitarian assistance after the recently signed peace accord.

The Ethiopian National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) said the Ethiopian government has intensified humanitarian supplies to vulnerable people in the Tigray region via four road corridors and air transport system, state-run Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) quoted NDRMC officials as saying late Saturday.

In the first round humanitarian supplies alone, more than 90 thousand quintals of wheat and nutritious food were distributed to more than 450,000 people, according to the NDRMC.

The national relief body further said more than 60 heavy vehicles loaded with humanitarian supplies have arrived at their destinations in the region.


The latest humanitarian aid provision in Tigray came after senior commanders of the Ethiopian government and the rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), de facto ruler of the Tigray region, agreed to facilitate humanitarian access in conflict-hit parts of northern Ethiopia in an agreement facilitated by the African Union (AU).

The parties to the conflict have agreed to promote unhindered humanitarian access for all in need in Tigray and neighboring regions and facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid workers.

They have also agreed to provide security guarantees for aid workers and humanitarian organizations as well as protection for civilians in accordance with the provisions of the "permanent cessation of hostilities" agreement signed by the two sides on Nov. 2.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Tig ... -0002.html

Somalia: Al-Shabab Militants Attack Villa Rosa Hotel

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A soldier near Villa Rose Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia | Photo: Twitter/ @GaroweOnline

Published 28 November 2022 (3 hours 29 minutes ago)

Witnesses said the extremist group set off the explosion at the gate of the hotel near the presidential palace.


Al-Shabab militants launched an attack on the heavily fortified Villa Rosa Hotel in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Sunday. Casualties remained unknown.

A huge bomb exploded at the busy hotel, which is frequently used by government officials, local police and witnesses said.

"The forces rescued government officials and members of the public who were trapped in the building," Sadiq Dudishe, spokesperson of the Somali Police Force, told the Somali National News Agency without disclosing the number of casualties.

The police operation was underway to end the siege at the hotel. Witnesses said the extremist group set off the explosion at the gate of the hotel near the presidential palace.

"The government forces arrived at the scene to rescue the people and are still fighting the militants inside the hotel. We can hear gunshots from the hotel," a resident said.

Al-Shabab militants, who have been fighting to topple the government for over a decade, claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying they targeted a gathering of officials at the hotel.

The African Union Transition Mission in Somalia strongly condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with the government and people of Somalia, saying it "applauds Somali security forces for the swift response to prevent further casualties and property damage."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Som ... -0001.html

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Tanzanian farmers mobilize for agroecology, food sovereignty and Pan-Africanism

On November 17-18, over 400 smallholder farmers gathered for the 27th annual meeting of MVIWATA or the National Network of Small-Scale Farmers Groups in Tanzania. Peoples Dispatch spoke to them about their struggle for dignity and justice

November 25, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh

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(Photo: MVIWATA)

Hundreds of smallholder farmers gathered in the city of Morogoro on November 17 and 18 for the 27th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Tanzania or the National Network of Small-Scale Farmers Groups in Tanzania (MVIWATA).

The organization was founded in 1993 by self-organized farmers in the wake of the country’s first Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) under the IMF and the World Bank between 1986 to 1989. The neoliberal reforms ushered in during this period marked an absolute departure from Tanzania’s centrally-planned economy under socialist president and leading anti-colonial figure Julius K. Nyerere.

In 1967, Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration, committing Tanzania to the principles of socialism and self-reliance and paving the way for nationalization of key industries and the collectivization of agriculture.

“The peasantry and the workers were declared as the engines of the Tanzanian economy, there was massive state investment geared towards them. Farmers were depending on the government and selling their produce through cooperatives,” Theodora Pius, the Head of Program at MVIWATA, told Peoples Dispatch.

However, this changed with the withdrawal of the state in the SAP-era reforms. At the same time, Pius added, while there were strong cooperatives of farmers growing cotton, tea, and coffee, other farmers growing maize and small grains were not a part of these collectives. Under these circumstances, MVIWATA was born.

“Groups of farmers came together and decided that they would travel throughout Tanzania to call on peasants to unite and have a unified voice, to demand their inclusion in national policies, to demand better prices for our produce, and to provide alternatives on agricultural extension services. It was their dream to ensure that MVIWATA goes to every village in Tanzania,” Pius said.

Ensuring dignity and justice for farmers
MVIWATA has organized farmers stretching from groups at the grassroots all the way to a national network as the issues that it was founded to address three decades ago continue to persist in Tanzania today.


“The system that oppressed the farmers in the late 80s and the 90s is the same today, it has just changed faces. Our priorities have remained the same, we continue to speak on issues of land, on markets, on access to finance – just the context has changed,” Pius said. In response, MVIWATA has continued to update its strategies.

Leading up to this year’s meeting, the organization developed its 2022-2026 strategic plans, identifying six areas of priority. The first is to “retain the dignity of the farmers as a class.” The second area is agroecology and food sovereignty. “The agribusiness model has been used against our people, our rights, and the planet. This model has taken away our land, our seeds, our culture and our dignity,” Pius said.

“Agroecology and food sovereignty is an alternative system which tells us that farmers can produce in a just system that respects the rights of the producers and the consumers, the environment and biodiversity. It tells us that we can produce keeping in mind that food is a right, not just a mere product to be sold.”

In contrast, there has been a proliferation of agribusiness, Pius explained, with villages being told that conventional farming and agribusiness were the “missing link” for wealth creation for farmers.

MVIWATA is also organizing extensively around land rights and security amid growing evictions, land grabbing, land speculation, and with farmers not having access to land.

“Every day there are reports of evictions, of people being told to vacate their villages and move. The pressure of capital is pushing people from their lands. This is taking place under the guise of investments for the ‘national benefit’ but also through other, formalized means. The majority of people facing these evictions are farmers in rural areas,” Pius stated. “If a farmer is evicted but they want to remain on their land, they are allowed to stay but only if they cultivate particular crops wanted by the investors.”

Among the resolutions adopted at the AGM, farmers committed to strengthening their unity and advocacy for land issues, “especially in the Mbarali district where 21,000 farmers are facing threat of eviction,” she said.

Farmers also deliberated on existing legal mechanisms and how they can be used to ensure land security, and how MVIWATA could work to reduce conflicts among small scale producers on issues of land use as “access to land continues to shrink.”

Another key area of focus for MVIWATA is economic justice. “Farmers are producing under very difficult conditions and then when they go to sell their produce in the market the price they get is very low. Farmers do not have money to buy inputs, so the middlemen come in and offer some amount of money. When it is time to harvest, these middlemen take everything without regard to the existing market price,” she said.

In response, MVIWATA is trying to build savings and credit groups of farmers, and mechanisms and systems to ensure that farmers are getting a fair price, including through the collective selling of their produce. Resolutions adopted at the AGM also included a focus on strengthening financial services and cooperative groups for farmers.

“Organizations like MVIWATA are articulating a people’s answer to land, food, and agrarian questions,” Jonis Ghedi-Alasow, a member of Pan-Africanism Today and an international delegate at the MVIWATA meeting, told Peoples Dispatch. “They have demonstrated that the peasants of Tanzania are not only feeding the country, but are also, when organized, able to insist on a fundamental break with neocolonialism.”

Prior to the AGM on November 18, MVIWATA organized a workshop titled ‘The Future of Small-Scale Farmers in the Context of Investment and Free Market in Tanzania’ with three areas of focus – land, seeds, and markets.

“The workshop saw several strong interventions – one, that farmers must produce products that can make them independent. This requires producing for the local market,” Ghedi-Alasow stated.

“In the past, solidarity among peasants in the global South made it possible to sell produce beyond our own countries without having to pay tariffs. There is a commitment to rebuilding these links of solidarity among peasants, particularly in Africa, to fight against debilitating tariffs on products that peasants are, in fact, exporting.”

He added that there is also a renewed commitment to using local seeds, including from seed banks. At the AGM, farmers resolved to advocate for increased budgetary allocations towards agriculture aligned with the priorities of smallholder farmers along with pushing for a change in existing seed laws to also include local seeds.


Farmers also pledged to continue to fight evictions and the so-called ‘investors’. “The government is not the leadership, the people are the leadership. This is why they come back every five years to ask for our votes,” declared Veronica Sofu, one of the leaders at the forefront of this struggle.

Farmers also discussed external trade agreements, particularly the Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the East African Community (EAC). Tanzania is a member of the EAC. While it has yet to sign the agreement, the AGM discussed its potential impact on farmers.

MVIWATA is also organizing around issues of gender justice, with a focus on peasant feminism, including developing actions to end violence against women and strategizing with women in rural areas. On International Women’s Day in March, MVIWATA and Pan Africanism Today had organized a workshop to discuss peasant feminism, which was attended by leaders from across Africa.

The organization also works with the youth, educating them on agroecology, self-reliance, and political economy.

‘We must build together’
“When we speak of the system that oppresses the farmers in Tanzania, it is the same system that oppresses farmers in Bangladesh, in South Africa, in Namibia,” Pius said. “If the forces that oppress us are joined together why mustn’t we come together to forge solidarity and counterattack?”

MVIWATA has been committed to the principle of Pan-Africanism, engaging with movements and organizations across the continent.

Speaking to Peoples Dispatch, Mercy Dedaa Osei, a member of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG), affirmed that MVIWATA was an “important instrument for Pan-Africanist struggles because it is entrenched in defining a peoples answer to the land, food, and peasant questions not just in Tanzania but Africa and the rest of the world.”

“It is creating a platform to bring together voices against the mass exploitation of peasants…It is imperative to solidarize, work, learn, agitate and grow together into a powerful force in the fight for the rights of peasant farmers.”

“Our slogan ‘the defender of the farmer is the farmer’ was coined by a farmer from West Africa who had been invited to one of our meetings,” Pius said. “Pan-Africanism is embedded in the history, the present, and the future of MVIWATA. We must come together not just in times of crisis but also to build our strategies together.”

“Pan-Africanism is, at its core, concerned with a struggle for sovereignty. One aspect of this struggle is, of course, anchored in securing political and economic freedom for the African people, the diaspora, and the working peoples of the world. Another important aspect of this struggle is concerned with people providing for themselves. Africa has an abundance of natural wealth, yet we are a continent facing one of the highest levels of hunger,” Ghedi-Alasow added.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/25/ ... fricanism/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:03 pm

Liberating Africa From Poverty Requires Changing Power Relations With the West
NOVEMBER 28, 2022

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Two black women and a girl carrying bowl on their heads. Photo: Ninno Jack Jr.

By Ramzy Baroud – Nov 21, 2022

Soon after arriving in Oslo, my taxi zigzagged through the city’s well-organized streets and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Large billboards advertised the world’s leading brands in fashion, cars, and perfumes. Amid all the expressions of wealth and plenty, an electronic sign by a bus stop flashed the images of poor looking African children needing help.

Over the years, Norway has served as a relatively good model of meaningful humanitarian and medical aid. This is especially true if compared to other self-serving western countries, where aid is often linked to direct political and military interests. Still, the public humiliation of poor, hungry and diseased Africa is still disquieting.

The same images and TV ads are omnipresent everywhere in the West. The actual tangible value of such charity aside, campaigns to help poor Africa do more than perpetuate a stereotype, they also mask the actual responsibility of why natural resource-rich Africa remains poor, and why the supposed generosity of the West over the decades has done little to achieve a paradigm shift in terms of the Continent’s economic health and prosperity.

News from Africa is almost always grim. A recent ‘Save the Children’ report sums up Africa’s woes in alarming numbers: 150 million children in East and Southern Africa are facing the double threat of grinding poverty and the disastrous impact of climate change. The greatest harm affects the children population in South Sudan, with 87 percent, followed by Mozambique (80 percent), then Madagascar (73 percent).

The bad news from Africa, illustrated in the Save the Children report, was released soon after another report, this time by the World Bank, indicating that the international community’s hope to end extreme poverty by 2030 will not be met.

Consequently, by 2030, around 574 million people, estimated at 7 percent of the world’s total population, will continue to live in extreme poverty, relying on about two dollars a day.

Sub-Saharan Africa currently serves as the epicenter of global extreme poverty. The rate of extreme poverty in that region is about 35 percent, representing 60 percent of all extreme poverty anywhere in the world.

The World Bank suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war are the main catalysts behind the grim estimates.

Growing global inflation and the slow growth of large economies in Asia are also culprits.

But what these reports don’t tell us, and what images of starving African children don’t convey is that much of Africa’s poverty is linked to the ongoing exploitation of the continent by its former – or current – colonial masters.

This is not to suggest that African nations have no agency of their own, in contributing to their worsening situation or in challenging intervention and exploitation. Without a united front and major change in geopolitical global balances, pushing back against neocolonialism is not an easy feat.

The Russia-Ukraine war and the global rivalry between Russia and China, on the one hand, and western countries on the other have encouraged some African leaders to speak out against the exploitation of Africa, and the use of Africa as a political fodder for global conflicts. The food crisis has been at the center of this fight.

In the late October Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security, some African leaders resisted pressure from western diplomats to toe the West’s line on the war in Ukraine.

Ironically, French minister of state Chrysoula Zacharopoulou sought “solidarity from Africa”, alleging that Russia poses an “existential threat” to Europe.

Though France continues to effectively control the currencies, thus economies of 14 different African countries – mostly in West Africa – Zacharopoulou declared that “Russia is solely responsible for this economic, energy and food crisis.”

President of Senegal, Macky Sall was one of several African leaders and top diplomats who challenged the duplicitous and polarizing language.

“This is 2022, this is no longer the colonial period… so countries, even if they are poor, have equal dignity. Their problems have to be handled with respect,” he said.

It is this coveted ‘respect’ by the West that Africa lacks. The US and Europe simply expect African nations to abandon their neutral approach to global conflicts and join the West’s continued campaign for global dominance.

But why should Africa, one of the richest and most exploited continents, obey the West’s diktats?

The West’s insincerity is glaring. Its double standard didn’t escape African leaders, including Nigeria’s former president Mahamadou Issoufou. “It’s shocking for Africans to see the billions that have rained down on Ukraine while attention has been diverted from the situation in the Sahel (region),” he said in Dakar.

Following the elevated political discourse emanating from African leaders and intellectuals gives one hope that the supposedly ‘poor’ Continent is plotting an escape from the grip of western domination, though many variables would have to work in their favor to make this happen.

Africa’s existent wealth alone can fuel global growth for many years to come. But the beneficiaries of this wealth should be Africa’s sons and daughters, not the deep pockets of the West’s wealthy classes. Indeed, time has come that Africa’s children are not paraded as charity cases in Europe, a notion that only feeds into the long-distorted power relations between Africa and the West.

https://orinocotribune.com/liberating-a ... -the-west/

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Maybe Bill Gates’ Billions Don’t Make Him an Expert on Hunger in Africa
JANINE JACKSON


The tire fire that Elon Musk seems to be making out of his new toy, Twitter, is leading some to call for an overdue, society-wide jettisoning of the whole “if he’s a billionaire, that means he’s a genius” myth.
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AP (9/13/22): “Gates’ view on how countries should respond to food insecurity has taken on heightened importance in a year when a record 345 million people around the world are acutely hungry.”
Here’s a hope that that critical lens will extend not just to Elon “don’t make me mad or I won’t fly you to Mars” Musk but also to, can we say, Bill Gates, who, while he doesn’t talk about other planets, has some pretty grandiose ideas about this one.

Fifty organizations, organized by Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and Community Alliance for Global Justice, have issued an open letter to Gates, in response to two high-profile media stories: an AP piece headlined “Bill Gates: Technological Innovation Would Help Solve Hunger” (9/13/22) and a Q&A in the New York Times by David Wallace-Wells (9/13/22) that opened with the question of the very definition of progress: “Are things getting better? Fast enough? For whom?” and asserting that “those questions are, in a somewhat singular way, tied symbolically to Bill Gates.”

In their letter, these global groups—focused on food sovereignty and justice—take non-symbolic issue with Gates’ premises, and those of the outlets megaphoning him and his deep, world-saving thoughts.

First and last, Gates acknowledges that the world makes enough food to feed everyone, but then goes on to suggest responses to hunger based on low productivity, rather than equitable access.

He stresses fertilizer, which the groups note, makes farmers and importing nations dependent on volatile international markets and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, while multiple groups in Africa are already developing biofertilizers with neither of those issues.
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New York Times (9/13/22): Bill Gates is “by objective standards among the most generous philanthropists the world has ever known.”
Gates tells Times readers, “The Green Revolution was one of the greatest things that ever happened. Then we lost track.” These on the ground groups beg to differ: Those changes did increase some crop yields in some places, but numbers of hungry people didn’t markedly go down, or access to food markedly increase, while a number of new problems were introduced.

AP says the quiet part loud with a lead that tells us: Gates believes that

the global hunger crisis is so immense that food aid cannot fully address the problem. What’s also needed, Gates argues, are the kinds of innovations in farming technology that he has long funded.

Presumably “Squillionnaire Says What He Does Is Good, By Gosh” was deemed too overt.

But AP wants us to know about the “breakthrough” Gates calls “magic seeds”—i.e., those bioengineered to resist climate change. Climate-resistant seeds, the letter writers note, are already being developed by African farmers and traded in informal seed markets. Gates even points a finger at over-investments in maize and rice, as opposed to locally adapted cereals like sorghum. Except his foundation has itself reportedly focused on maize and rice and restricted crop innovation.

Finally, the groups address Gates’ obnoxious dismissal of critics of his approach as “singing Kumbaya”: “If there’s some non-innovation solution, you know, like singing Kumbaya, I’ll put money behind it. But if you don’t have those seeds, the numbers just don’t work,” our putative boy-hero says. Adding pre-emptively, “If somebody says we’re ignoring some solution, I don’t think they’re looking at what we’re doing.”
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Community Alliance for Global Justice (11/11/22) et al.: “We invite high-profile news outlets to be more cautious about lending credibility to one wealthy white man’s flawed assumptions, hubris and ignorance.”
The open letter notes respectfully that there are “many tangible ongoing proposals and projects that work to boost productivity and food security.” That it is Gates’ “preferred high-tech solutions, including genetic engineering, new breeding technologies, and now digital agriculture, that have in fact consistently failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised,” and in some cases actually contribute to the biophysical processes driving the problem. That Africa, despite having the lowest costs of labor and land, is a net exporter is not, as Gates says, a “tragedy,” but a predictable and predicted result of the fact that costs of land and labor are socially and politically produced: “Africa is in fact highly productive; it’s just that the profits are realized elsewhere.”

At the end of AP‘s piece, the outlet does the thing elite media do where they fake rhetorical balance in order to tell you what to think:

Through his giving, investments and public speaking, Gates has held the spotlight in recent years, especially on the topics of vaccines and climate change. But he has also been the subject of conspiracy theories that play off his role as a developer of new technologies and his place among the highest echelons of the wealthy and powerful.

The word “but” makes it sound like a fight: between holding a spotlight (because you’re wealthy and powerful) or else being subject to presumably inherently ignorant critical conjecture (because you’re wealthy and powerful). Not to mention this anonymously directed “spotlight”—that media have nothing to do with, or no power to control.

https://fair.org/home/maybe-bill-gates- ... in-africa/

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The UK Assumes Full Control of Libya’s Oil
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Mark Curtis

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An oil and gas platform off the coast of Libya. (Photo: Antonio Sempere via Getty)

British oil giants BP and Shell are returning to the oil-rich north African country just over a decade after the UK plunged it into chaos in its 2011 military intervention, which the British government never admitted was a war for oil.


*BP controls exploration areas in Libya covering nearly three times the size of Wales
*UK company Petrofac, convicted of bribery last year, has secured new oil contract in Libya and sponsored British embassy there
*UK is combining its interest in accessing Libya’s oil with increasing military involvement

Last month Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) agreed for BP to start drilling for and producing natural gas in a major project off the coast of the north African country.

The UK corporation, on whose board sits former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, controls exploration areas in Libya equivalent to nearly three times the size of Wales.

British officials have long sought to profit from oil in Libya, which contains 48 billion barrels of reserves – the largest oil resources in Africa, accounting for 3% of the world total.

BP is one of the few foreign oil and gas companies with exploration and production licences in Libya. Its assets there were nationalised by Muammar Gaddafi soon after he seized power in a 1969 coup that challenged the entire British position in the country and region.

After years of tensions between the two countries, prime minister Tony Blair met Gaddafi in 2004 and agreed the so-called ‘Deal in the Desert’ which included a $900m exploration and production agreement between BP and Libya’s NOC.

BP re-entered the country in 2007 but its operations were scuppered by the war of 2011 when British, French and US forces with the support of Qatar and Islamic militants overthrew Gaddafi.

Terrorism and civil war subsequently engulfed the country and oil company operations were put on hold.

The restart of BP’s operations follows the signing in 2018 of a memorandum of understanding with the NOC and Eni, the Italian oil major, to resume exploration, with Eni acting as the operator of the oil fields. BP chief executive Bob Dudley hailed the deal as an important step “towards returning to our work in Libya”.

The BP-ENI project, an $8bn investment, involves two exploration areas in the onshore Ghadames basin and one in the offshore Sirte basin, covering a total area of around 54,000 km2. The Sirte basin concession alone covers an area larger than the size of Belgium.

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Map of BP’s concession areas in Libya

The UK’s other oil major, Shell, is also “preparing to return as a major player” in Libya, the company has stated in a confidential document. After putting its Libyan operations on hold in 2012, the corporation is now planning to explore for new oil and gas fields in several blocks.

Oil bribery

A third British company, Petrofac – which provides engineering services to oil operations – secured a $100m contract in September last year to help develop an oil field known as Erawin in Libya’s deep southwest.

Petrofac was at the time under investigation for bribery by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

One of its executives, global head of sales David Lufkin, had already pleaded guilty in 2019 to 11 counts of bribery.

The month following the award of the Libya contract, the SFO convicted and fined Petrofac on seven counts of bribery between 2011 and 2017. Petrofac pleaded guilty to its senior executives using agents to bribe officials to the tune of £32m to win oil contracts in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“A key feature of the case”, the SFO noted, “was the complex and deliberately opaque methods used by these senior executives to pay agents across borders, disguising payments through sub-contractors, creating fake contracts for fictitious services and, in some cases, passing bribes through more than one agent and one country, to disguise their actions”.

Petrofac works with BP in several countries around the world, including Iraq, Azerbaijan and Oman and in the North Sea.

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The head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation, Mustafa Sanalla (2nd from right), discusses with the CEO of BP, Bernard Looney (far right), March 2022. (Libya Observer)

Government backing

All three British companies re-entering Libya have strong links to the UK government. In some of the years during which Petrofac was paying bribes, the company was led by Ayman Asfari, who with his wife donated almost £800,000 to the Conservative Party between 2009 and 2017.

In 2014, Asfari, who is now a non-executive director of Petrofac, had been appointed by David Cameron to be one of his business ambassadors.

Petrofac, which is incorporated in the tax haven of Jersey, has also benefited from insurance provided by the UK taxpayer via UK Export Finance (UKEF).

“Petrofac was one of five companies sponsoring the official reopening of the British embassy in Tripoli”

In May 2019, when Petrofac was under investigation by the SFO, UKEF provided £700m in project insurance for the design and operation of an oil refinery at Duqm in the dictatorship of Oman, a project in which Petrofac was named as the sole UK exporter.

In June this year Petrofac was one of five companies sponsoring the official reopening of the British embassy in Tripoli. Ambassador Caroline Hurndall told the audience: “I am especially proud that British businesses are collaborating with Libyan companies and having a meaningful impact upon Libya’s economic development. Many of those businesses are represented here tonight”.

BP and Shell are especially close to Whitehall, with a long standing revolving door of personnel between the corporation and former senior civil servants.

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UK ambassador Caroline Hurdnall and Libya’s oil minister Mohammed Aoun, September 2021

Lobbying

Frank Baker, then the ambassador to Libya, wrote in 2018 that the UK was “helping to create a more permissible environment for trade and investment, and to uncover opportunities for British expertise to help Libya’s reconstruction”.

Since then, new ambassador Hurndall has held meetings with Libya’s oil minister, Mohammed Aoun, to discuss the return of UK oil companies to Libya, and the NOC has set up a hub in London, its only one outside Libya and the US.

The NOC’s London unit, launched in early 2021, is poised to “award consultancy and asset management contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds over the next several years to British companies”, the Times reported.

Also heavily promoting British oil interests is the Libyan British Business Council (LBBC), whose president is Lord Trefgarne, a former minister under Margaret Thatcher, and which is chaired by former British ambassador to Libya, Peter Millett.

The LBBC, which sent a delegation to Libya earlier this month, says it acts “as an influential and informed advocacy group on behalf of UK business in Libya – in dialogue with the British government” and others.

In October 2018, the LBBC and the NOC signed a ‘statement of intent’ on the subject of “enhanced cooperation in the development of Libya’s oil and gas industry”. It also called for “mutually satisfactory contracts”.

The chair of the NOC, Mustafa Sanalla, said at the time that “the UK is a key partner for Libya in boosting oil production” and welcomed “strengthening this partnership”. The LBBC pledged to “facilitate Chairman Mustafa Sanalla’s access to British government ministers”.

Control of oil

Last year, Libya was the UK’s third largest source of oil, after Norway and the US, supplying 7.8% of all British oil imports. Oil is Libya’s lifeline, providing over 90% of the country’s revenues.

But the country’s civil war has provoked a battle for control over the oil industry which has been described as being in “disarray”, with “little clarity on who really is in control of the nation’s most valuable resource”. The UN-backed Government of National Unity, which is supported by the UK, sits in the capital, Tripoli, while in the east of the country sits a rival government.

Most of Libya’s oil fields are in the east, which is controlled by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army allied to the eastern government.

In the international rivalry over accessing Libya’s oil, UK ministers have long tried to get British hands on the key resource. Documents uncovered by oil-focused NGO, Platform, in 2009 showed Labour ministers and senior civil servants met Shell to discuss the company’s oil interests in Libya on at least 11 occasions and perhaps as many as 26 times in less than four years.

Shell was one of the first western oil companies to re-enter Libya after the end of United Nations sanctions and a commitment from Gaddafi to stop funding terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons.

Fuelling rebels

The 2011 war did not stop the UK pursuing its oil interests. During the early months of the uprising against Gaddafi, British oil trading company Vitol provided rebels with refined petrol in exchange for future delivery of crude oil, thus sustaining their military activities.

Those rebels, which included hardline Islamist forces, were being heavily armed by Qatar with British support. The deal with Vitol was masterminded by Alan Duncan, the former oil trader turned UK foreign minister, who has close business links to the oil firm and subsequently took a paid position with the corporation.

When during 2014 to 2016 and in early 2020 Libyan warlords such as Haftar shut down the Libyan oil industry, Vitol also helped to import refined products.

Once again, UK oil interests look set to be accompanied by a resurgence in the British military presence in Libya. In September this year the UK’s senior military official in the Middle East, Air Marshal Martin Sampson, discussed military training programmes with Libyan prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

The meeting followed the docking in Tripoli of UK Royal Navy warship HMS Albion, for the first time in eight years. Around a hundred Libyan and foreign dignitaries were hosted aboard Albion, including “senior Libyan political, military, and civil society figures”, the Royal Navy said.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ibyas-oil/

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AU Deploys Mission to Monitor Nigeria's Upcoming Elections

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Political advertising in a Nigerian street, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @IFEX

Published 1 December 2022 (2 hours 25 minutes ago)

This African country will hold presidential elections in February and state elections in March.

The African Union (AU) said it has deployed a Special Pre-electoral Political Mission to monitor the ongoing preparation for the upcoming general elections in Nigeria.

The pre-electoral political mission, led by former deputy president of South Africa and member of the AU Panel of the Wise Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, is deployed from Nov. 26 to Dec. 4 to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, the AU's Department of Political Affairs, Peace and Security disclosed in a statement issued late Tuesday.

The AU's Special Pre-electoral Political Mission to Nigeria's upcoming general elections also consists of heads of the Pan-African Parliament, AU Commission staff as well as independent electoral experts.

Nigeria will hold general elections on February 25, 2023, to elect the president and the bicameral national assembly as well as state elections on March 11, 2023.


The main objective of the AU's Special Pre-electoral Political Mission to Nigeria is said to assess the state of preparedness for the general elections as well as express solidarity to the federal government and the people of Nigeria.

The AU said the mission is part of the overall efforts to support Nigeria aimed at consolidating democracy, peace, and stability in line with the mandate bestowed on the AU to promote peaceful, democratic, and credible elections as stipulated in various AU normative instruments, the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the 2002 Declaration of Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa.

While in Abuja, in order to gain perspectives on the state of preparedness for the elections, the AU mission is expected to engage with a wide range of key stakeholders in the electoral process including the Independent National Electoral Commission, the Inspector General of Police, Political Parties, the media, the civil society including representatives of youth and women organizations, among others.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/AU- ... -0002.html

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EXCERPT: Brussels Conference Act of 1890
Editors, The Black Agenda Review 30 Nov 2022

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The 1890 Brussels Act provided Europeans with the legal and humanitarian justification for the colonization of Africa. Why have so few heard of it?

The deceptive notion of “humanitarian intervention” as cover for Western imperial theft and hubris has a long history. In fact, if there’s anything that European nations and its white dominions (“the West”) are good for is looting the resources of the world and telling us that it’s for our own good. “Humanitarianism,” in the language of bringing Christianity to “savage” Africans, was the reason given by Belgium’s Leopold II, the unabashed “Monster of the Congo,” for the theft of Congo’s resources and the genocide of its peoples. Leopold’s hold on the Congo was solidified via the 1885 Berlin Conference, where European nations (along with the US) met to partition and continue their conquest of the African continent, through the principle of “effective occupation.” The Berlin Conference was effectively an agreement among thieves, and “effective occupation” gave European powers the right to claim areas of the African continent.

But there is no honor among white thieves. In 1890, European powers got together again - this time in Brussels - to settle their ongoing disputes over the African continent, and importantly, to find ways to control the trades in firearms and liquor, which they believed threatened their hold on parts of the continent. Africans with access to firearms could potentially challenge the European goal of “effective occupation,” while African access to liquor, Europeans believed, diminished their productivity as colonial laborers. At the same time, Europeans needed to consolidate their control over African land, people, and resources –and diminish the potential for more inter-European disputes. While the Berlin conference had nominal humanitarian claims - the 1885 Berlin Act had a nonbiding aim of ending the slave trade in Africa - the Brussels Conference Act loudly proclaimed itself as a primarily humanitarian venture.

Many have heard of the 1885 Berlin Act , the decree partitioning the African continent for European colonial rule. How many know of the 1890 Brussels Conference Act? And how many are aware of its role in providing the Berlin Act its “legal” and “humanitarian” justifications? Officially named the “Convention to the Slave Trade and Importation into Africa of Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors ,” the Brussels Conference Act both laid out in detail the process of formal colonization of the African continent, and gave colonization its moral argument by framing it through a discourse of humanitarianism. We are supposed to believe that European nations who had begun, continued, and massively benefited from the transatlantic commercial trade in Africans as well as the industrialization brought about by the institution of slavery, were suddenly concerned about African welfare.

In the Brussels Act, the colonial powers explained away the establishment of the colonial administration apparatus, protecting its missionaries, while providing its corporations and trading companies with African labor – in effect, establishing theft of African land and the exploitation of African labor as an antislavery measure. A quick review of the first article of the Act tells a different story. The article calls for, among other things, the “construction of roads, and in particular railways,” “organization of administrative, judicial, religious and military services in the African territories placed under the…protectorate of civilized nations,” and “the establishment of telegraphic lines.” We are asked to accept that only European colonial rule would end the slave trade and slavery on the African continent.

We reprint the first fifteen articles of the one-hundred-article Brussels Conference Act of 1890 below in part to show how systematic the European colonization of the African continent was, and how European laws of conquest were rebranded as “international law.” Most importantly, the text of the Act also demonstrates how devilish, self-serving, and hypocritical European powers have been in covering their crimes under the veneer of humanitarianism. Readers today should be able to see that the thieves have not changed their tactics.

General Act of the Brussels Conference of 1890 or, the Convention Relative to the Slave Trade and Importation into Africa of Firearms, Ammunition, and Spiritous Liquors.

In the Name of God Almighty.

His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia, in the name of the German Empire; His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, &c., and Apostolic King of Hungary; His Majesty the King of the Belgians; His Majesty the King of Denmark; His Majesty the King of Spain, and in his name Her Majesty the Queen Regent of the Kingdom; His Majesty the Sovereign of the Independent State of the Congo; The President of the United States of America; The President of the French Republic; Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India; His Majesty the King of Italy; His Majesty the King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxemburg, &c.; His Majesty the Shah of Persia; His Majesty the King of Portugal and the Algarves, &c.; His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias; His Majesty the King of Sweden and Norway, &c.; His Majesty the Emperor of the Ottomans, and His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar;

Being equally animated by the firm intention of putting an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the Traffic in African Slaves, protecting effectively the aboriginal populations of Africa, and insuring for that vast continent the benefits Of peace and civilization;

Wishing to give a fresh sanction to the decisions already taken in the same sense and at different epochs by the Powers, to complete the results obtained by them, and to draw up a collection of measures guaranteeing the accomplishment of the work which is the object of their common solicitude;

Have resolved, on the invitation addressed to them by the Government of His Majesty the King of the Belgians, in agreement with the Government of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, to assemble with this object a Conference at Brussels, …

Who, furnished with full powers which have been found in good and due form, have adopted the following provisions:--

CHAPTER I.— SLAVE TRADE COUNTRIES.—MEASURES TO BE TAKEN IN THE PLACES OF ORIGIN.

ARTICLE I.

Ihe Powers declare that the most effective means for counteracting the Slave Trade in the interior of Africa are the following:—

1. Progressive organization of the administrative, judicial, religious, and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations.

2. The gradual establishment in the interior by the Powers to which the territories are subject of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by slave-hunting.

3. The construction of roads, and in particular of railways, connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to such of the upper courses of the rivers and streams as are broken by rapids and cataracts, in view of substituting economical and rapid means of transport for the present means of carriage by men.

4. Establishment of steamboats on the inland navigable waters and on the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks.

5. Establishment of telegraphic lines, insuring the communication of the posts and stations with the coast and with the administrative centres.

6. Organization of expeditions and flying columns, to keep up the communication of the stations with each other and with the coast, to support repressive action, and to insure the security of high roads.

7. Restriction of the importation of fire-arms, at least of modern pattern, and of ammunition throughout the entire extent of the territories infected by the Slave Trade.

ARTICLE II.

The stations, the inland cruisers organized by each Power in its waters, and the posts which serve as ports of register for them shall, independently of their principal task, which is to prevent the capture of slaves and intercept the routes of the Slave Trade, have the following subsidiary duties:—

1. To support and, if necessary, to serve as a refuge for the native populations, whether placed under the sovereignty or the protectorate of the State to which the station is subject, or independent, and temporarily for all other natives in case of imminent danger; to place the populations of the first of these categories in a position to co-operate for their own defence; to diminish inland wars between tribes by means of arbitration; to initiate them in agricultural works and in the industrial arts so as to increase their welfare; to raise them to civilization and bring about the extinction of barbarous customs, such as cannibalism and human sacrifices.

2. To give aid and protection to commercial undertakings; to watch over their legality by controlling especially contracts of service with natives, and to load up to the foundation of permanent centres of cultivation and of commercial establishments.

3. To protect, without distinction of creed, the Missions which are already or are about to be established,

4. To provide for the sanitary service, and to grant hospitality and help to explorers and to all who take part in Africa in the work of repressing the Slave Trade.

ARTICLE III.

The Powers exercising a sovereignty or a protectorate in Africa confirm and give precision to their former declarations, and undertake to proceed gradually, as circumstances permit, either by the means above indicated, or by any other means which they may consider suitable, with the repression of the Slave Trade, each State in its respective possessions and under its own direction. Whenever they consider it possible they will lend their good offices to the Powers which, with a purely humanitarian object, may be engaged in Africa upon a similar mission.

ARTICLE IV.

The States exercising sovereign powers or protectorates in Africa may in all cases delegate to Companies provided with Charters all or a portion of the engagements which they assume in virtue of Article III. They remain, nevertheless, directly responsible for the engagements which they contract by the present Act, and guarantee the execution thereof. The Powers promise to receive, aid, and protect the national Associations and enterprises due to private initiative which may wish to co-operate in their possessions in their repression of the Slave Trade, subject to their receiving previous authorization, such authorization being revocable at any time, subject also to their being directed and controlled, and to the exclusion of the exorcise of rights of sovereignty.

Article V.

The Contracting Powers undertake, unless this has already been provided for by their laws in accordance with the spirit of the present Article, to enact or propose to their respective Legislatures in the course of one year at latest from the date of the signature of the present General Act a Law for rendering applicable, on the one hand, the provisions of their penal laws concerning the graver offences against the person, to the organizers and abettors of slave hunting, to perpetrators of the mutilation of adults and male infants, and to all persons who may take part in the capture of slaves by violence; and, on the other hand, the provisions relating to offences against individual liberty, to carriers, transporters, and dealers in slaves.

The associates and accessories of the different categories of slave captors and dealers above specified shall be punished with penalties proportionate to those incurred by the principals.

Guilty persons who may have escaped from the jurisdiction of the authorities of the country where the crimes or offences have been committed shall be arrested either on communication of the incriminatory evidence by the authorities who have ascertained the violation of the law, or on production of any other proof of guilt by the Power on whose territory they may have been discovered, and shall be kept without other formality at the disposal of the Tribunals competent to try them.

The Powers will communicate to each other within the shortest possible delay the Laws or Decrees existing or promulgated in execution of the present Article.

ARTICLE VI.

Slaves liberated in consequence of the stoppage or dispersal of a convoy in the interior of the continent shall be sent back, if circumstances permit, to their country of origin; if not, the local authorities shall facilitate as much as possible their means of living, and, if they desire it, help them to settle on the spot.

ARTICLE VII.

Any fugitive slave claiming on the continent the protection of a Signatory Power shall obtain it, and shall be received in the camps and stations officially established by such Power, or on board the vessels of such Power plying on the lakes and rivers. Private stations and boats are only permitted to exercise the right of asylum subject to the previous sanction of such Power.

ARTICLE VIII.

The experience of all nations who have intercourse with Africa having shown the pernicious and preponderating part played by fire-arms in Slave Trade operations as well as in internal war between the native tribes; and this same experience having clearly proved that the preservation of the African populations whose existence it is the express wish of the Powers to safeguard is a radical impossibility if restrictive measures against the trade in fire-arms and ammunition are not established, the Powers decide, in so far as the present state of their frontiers permits, that the importation of fire-arms, and especially of rifles and improved weapons, as well as of powder, balls, and cartridges, is, except in the cases and under the conditions provided for in the following Article, prohibited in the territories comprised between the 20th parallel of north latitude and the 22nd parallel of south latitude, and extending westward to the Atlantic Ocean and eastward to the Indian Ocean, and its dependencies, comprising the islands adjacent to the coast as far as 100 nautical miles from the shore.

ARTICLE IX.

The introduction of firearms and ammunition, when there shall be occasion to authorize it in the possessions of the Signatory Powers which exercise rights of sovereignty or of protectorate in Africa, shall be regulated, unless identical or more rigorous Regulations have been already applied, in the following manner in the zone laid down in Article VIII:--

All imported firearms shall be deposited, at the cost, risk, and peril of the importers, in a public warehouse placed under the supervision of the Administration of the State. No withdrawal of firearms or imported ammunition shall take place from such depots without the previous authorization of the Administration. This authorization shall be, except in cases hereinafter specified, refused for the withdrawal of all arms of precision, such as rifles, magazine-guns, or breech-loaders, whether whole or in detached pieces, their cartridges, caps, or other ammunition intended for them.

At the seaports and under conditions affording the needful guarantees the respective Governments may permit private depots, but only for ordinary powder and flint-lock muskets, and to the exclusion of improved arms and their ammunition.

Independently of the measures directly taken by Governments for the arming of the public force and the organization of their defence, individual exceptions shall be admitted for persons affording sufficient guarantees that the arm and ammunition delivered to them will not be given, assigned, or sold to third persons, and for travelers provided with a declaration of their Government stating that the weapon and ammunition are destined exclusively for their personal defence.

All arms in the cases provided for in the preceding paragraph shall be registered and marked by the authorities appointed for the supervision, who shall deliver to the persons in question licenses to bear arms, indicating the name of the bearer and showing the stamp with which the arm is marked. These licenses are revocable in case of proved improper use, and will be issued for five years only, but may be renewed.

The rule above set forth as to placing in depot shall also apply to gunpowder.

Prom the depots can be withdrawn for sale only flint-lock guns, with unrifled barrels, and common gunpowders, called trade powders (‘‘poudres de traite”). At each withdrawal of arms and ammunition of this kind for sale, the local authorities shall determine the regions in which these arms and ammunition may be sold. The regions infected by the Slave Trade shall always be excluded. Persons authorized to take arms or powder out of the public depots (warehouses) shall present to the Administration every six months detailed lists indicating the destinations of the arms and powder sold, as well as the quantities still remaining in the store-houses.

ARTICLE X.

The Governments shall take all measures they may deem necessary to insure as complete a fulfilment as possible of the provisions respecting the importation, the sale, and transport of fire-arms and ammunition, as well as to prevent either the entry or exit thereof by their inland frontiers, or the passage thereof to regions where the Slave-Trade is rife.

The authorization of transit within the limits of the zone specified by Article VIII cannot be withheld when the arms and ammunition are to pass across the territory of a Signatory or adherent Power in the occupation of the coast, towards inland territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of another Signatory or adherent Power, unless this latter Powder have direct access to the sea through its own territory. If this access be completely interrupted, the authorization of transit can no longer be withheld. Any demand of transit must be accompanied by a declaration emanating from the Government of the Power having the inland possessions, and certifying that the said arms and ammunition are not destined for sale, but are for the use of the authorities of such Power, or of the military forces necessary for the protection of the missionary or commercial stations, or of persons mentioned by name in the declaration. Nevertheless, the territorial Power of the coast retains the right to stop, exceptionally and provisionally, the transit of arms of precision and ammunition across its territory, if in consequence of inland disturbances or other serious danger there is ground for fearing that the dispatch of arms and ammunition might compromise its own safety.

ARTICLE XI.

The Powers shall communicate to each other the information relating to the traffic in fire-arms and ammunition, the licences granted, and the measures of repression in force in their respective territories.

ARTICLE XII.

The Powers undertake to adopt or to propose to their respective Legislatures the measures necessary to insure the punishment everywhere of infringers of the prohibitions laid down in Articles VIll and IX, and that of their accomplices, besides the seizure and confiscation of the prohibited arms and ammunition, either by fine or by imprisonment, or by both penalties together, in proportion to the importance of the infraction, and in accordance with the gravity of each case.

ARTICLE XIII.

The Signatory Powers who have in Africa possessions in contact with the zone specified in Article VIII bind themselves to take the necessary measures for preventing the introduction of firearms and ammunition across their inland frontiers into the regions of the said zone, at least that of improved arms and cartridges.

ARTICLE XIV.

The system stipulated in Articles VIII to XIII shall remain in force during twelve years. In case none of the Contracting Parties shall have notified, twelve months before the expiration of this period, its intention of putting an end to it, or shall have demanded its revision, it shall continue to remain obligatory for two more years, and shall thus continue in force from two years to two years.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/excer ... e-act-1890

Dunno how you can cover this subject without mentioning the role played by Henry M Stanley by massively ginning up the post-Transatlantic slave trade in Africa. His writings, based on two 'expeditions' "In Darkest Africa", played a huge role in convincing the so-called educated public of the moral necessity of white colonization of all of Africa cannot be diminished. It is some of the gawd-awfullest crap that I've seen in print, a shit train of lies, racism, Stanley's titanic egoism, bad geography and more racism. Recommended reading for masochists...but hardly different in scale compared to the current output of the MSM.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sun Dec 25, 2022 5:32 pm

Severe Drought in Horn of Africa Affects 20.2 Million Children

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The number of children affected by severe drought in the Horn of Africa has more than doubled in the past five months, according to UNICEF. Dec. 23, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@GermanyinSOM

Published 23 December 2022

"We must act now to save children's lives, preserve their dignity and protect their future," urged Lieke van de Wiel, UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.


The Deputy Regional Director appealed to the international community to act, as severe drought conditions in the Horn of Africa have plunged some 20.2 million children under the threat of hunger, thirst and serious diseases, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The UN agency said the number of children affected by severe drought in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia was about 10 million in July, which compared to the 20.2 recorded to date is a worrying more than two-fold increase.

Regarding the levels of severe acute malnutrition in the region, UNICEF sounded the alarm for the nearly two million children suffering from it and in need of urgent treatment, as it is the most lethal form of hunger.

Noting that certain efforts have prevented "some of the worst consequences that were feared," van de Wiel said that "children in the Horn of Africa continue to face the most severe drought in more than two generations."


According to UNICEF, nearly 24 million people in the region are currently suffering from severe water shortages, and more than 2 million are internally displaced due to drought.

This situation has also forced nearly 2.7 million people to drop out of school, while another 4 million are at risk of doing so, said the agency, which points out that sexual violence, exploitation and abuse are other major concerns caused by the current insecurity crisis in the region.

In the face of such a reality, the official called for continued efforts "to save lives and increase the resilience of the staggering number of children and families who are being pushed to the edge."


In addition, van de Wiel said that when pushed to the limit, families face increased stress, while children are pushed to the risk of "child labor, child marriage and female genital mutilation."

UNICEF seeks 759 million dollars in the context of its 2023 emergency appeal to address the situation in the Horn of Africa with long-term investments for families and children, recovery and adaptation to climate change.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sev ... -0014.html

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If the US Told Rwanda and Uganda to Get Out of Congo, the War Would End
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 14 Dec 2022

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Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Rwandan president Paul Kagame

Rwanda and Uganda continue their plunder and destabilization of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as proxies of the United States.

The European Union has sanctioned five members of different armed groups operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including the spokesman for the M23 militia. It did not, however, sanction Rwanda, Uganda or the Rwandan and Ugandan presidents, despite decades of UN Group of Experts reports that the militias operating in the eastern DRC are largely Rwandan and Ugandan, though they typically claim to be Congolese. I spoke to Nixon Katembo , Congolese journalist and executive producer with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, about the history of the conflict and the situation on the ground today.

ANN GARRISON: Rwanda, and Uganda have been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 26 years, since they first invaded in 1996. And this has been confirmed in report after report by the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, could you give us a summary of what has happened during those 26 years?

NIXON KATEMBO: What has happened in those 26 years is the wholesale destruction of Congolese society, including the pillaging of its natural resources, but not only the natural resources. It has included killing children, and women, old and young women, who have really born the brunt of this conflict.

You will recall that after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, most of the Rwandans fleeing General Paul Kagame's army crossed into the Congo.

And after they got to the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda entered the DRC, chasing and massacring them, but also joining the rebellion against President Mobutu Sese Seko with the blessings of the United States and the United Kingdom. The international community said they needed to assist the regime in Kigali because they had not acted to stop the genocide while it was happening in Rwanda.

The regime in Kigali used the genocide excuse to massacre the refugees, calling them all "interahamwe," meaning Hutus guilty of killing Tutsis during the genocide. But UN reports said that fewer than 10 percent of the refugees were interahamwe or now, FDLR,, However, President Kagame has continued to use this claim that he is going after genocide criminals in DRC as a pretext to pursue the interests of Rwandan Tutsi elites. And he has had the support of the United States, the UK, and many other international powers to the benefit of multinational corporations that need DRC’s resources.

That's what this long running, devastating war has been, in a nutshell. The UN has estimated that about 6 million people have died as a result, but the collateral damage of the war cannot be quantified because there is so much psychological trauma with longterm implications, The generations that have lived through these 26 years of war are deeply traumatized and many have died because of the after-effects of the war, not just due to military violence but also due to the consequence of displacement. They have died in flight or in IDP camps for lack of food, clean water, and basic medicines. Ten or twelve million people have probably died in the Congo during this time, since 1996, with no one lifting a finger to end the catastrophe.

AG: In October 1996, as you said Rwanda and Uganda invaded, ostensibly chasing genocide criminals, but then joined Congolese forces led by Laurent Kabila to drive President Mobutu Sese Seko from power in May 1997. As these forces advanced on the Capitol, Newsweek ran a story headlined "Washington's Africa move ," which said that Mobutu's surrender was by then a formality, and that President Bill Clinton had written Mobutu a letter in April, "firmly telling him that the time had come, at last, for him to go."

Newsweek also wrote that "the letter has signaled something more significant, that the United States intends once and for all, to establish itself as the dominant power in the region." It's therefore arguable that the tragedy that has unfolded since is largely the responsibility of the US. Would you agree?

NK: I agree that it is the responsibility of the US, for one, because the US was a longstanding ally of a powerful dictator, Mobutu, in what was called Zaire at the time, but is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The US actually supported Mobutu over the years, to drive US interests in the Great Lakes Region, but by 1996, they had decided to let him go.

Responsibility also lies with the Congolese state, and with DRC’s neighbors, particularly with Rwanda and Uganda, and Burundi to a certain extent.

But why is the US responsible? Because the invasion of the Congo by Rwanda and Uganda came just a few years after the end of the Cold War, In the early 90s. When the US needed a new ally in the Great Lakes Region. They felt that Mobutu had reached his "sell-by" date, and therefore, given the shifting alliances in the region, the CIA appointed someone new, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the President of Uganda. He was the new strongman picked by the US.

In the early 1980s, Museveni had been a general leading an armed rebellion, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). The National Resistance Army included many Rwandan Tutsis who had fled during the Rwandan social revolutions between 1959 and 1961, which saw Rwanda transition from a Belgian colony and Tutsi monarchy to an independent, Hutu-dominated state.

These Tutsi joined Museveni's rebellion and even became officers or government officials after Museveni seized power in Uganda in 1986. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was at that time the deputy chief for military intelligence in Uganda.

The US came here at that time to nurture these rebellions in the Great Lakes Region, first in Uganda, then in Rwanda. Kagame's army, which was then part of the Ugandan army, invaded and toppled Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, and that triggered the Rwandan social dynamics that had been exacerbated colonial times. The colonial masters, starting with the Germans, then the Belgians, had planted seeds of division by saying that the Tutsi cattle keepers were a race superior to the Hutu farmers. The Tutsi monarchy dominated the Hutu before then, but the colonizers worsened that class divide that erupted in the Rwandan Genocide.

Bill Clinton said that he needed to support Paul Kagame when his troops invaded DRC, which was then Zaire, because he had failed to do anything to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Clinton's UN Ambassador Madeline Albright knew that the Rwandan troops were massacring the Hutu refugees who had fled across the border to escape Kagame’s army, and this was also reported to he United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. But those reports just gathered dust at UN headquarters.

Rwanda and Uganda joined Congolese rebels to take over in Kinshasa and drive the US policy agenda behind the new president, Laurent Kabila. But the US did not anticipate that Kabila would try to be his own man, and drive a nationalist agenda. He not only began to rebuild the Congolese state, but also tried to get rid of the Rwandan and Congolese troops who had helped him drive Mobutu from power. He told Rwanda and Uganda that they needed to pack their things and go, that they could not remain and occupy the Congo.

Kabila also had to die because he was challenging US interests and Bretton Woods institutions by changing the national currency and planning to pay off the International Monetary Fund and World Bank debt. It seemed that he was killed by one of his own but it has since been declassified that the US planned to kill Kabila with the Rwandan Special Forces.

Under Mobutu's misrule, the Congolese state had all but collapsed. The invasion was the last nail in its coffin. Laurent Kabila tried to rebuild it, but no subsequent leaders did after his assassination. The Rwandan and Ugandan invaders backed by the US know that the Congolese state cannot withstand their invasions.

AG: So you’re saying that neither the Congolese state nor the Congolese military have ever recovered?

NK: Yes, and recall that the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries have both been built, trained, and funded by the United States. AFRICOM's first commander, Kip Ward said they were making sure to train them to to serve their mutual interests.

But their interests were not peace or development of the region but serving the multinational corporations of the United States and the Bretton Woods institutions and securing the natural resources of the DRC. DRC has the critical mineral resources needed by the industries of the US and Western Europe.

Congo holds 70% of world's coltan, which is critical to cell phone and computer manufacture. The same is true of cobalt, which is critical for the manufacture of aerospace and renewable technologies. DRC holds about 80% of the world’s cobalt reserves. That should tell you how critical it is to the US and the rest of the West to keep Congo in a state of disarray so that it can’t control and benefit from its own resources.

However, the US and European nations do not want to put boots on the ground in Africa, so they are using Rwanda as a proxy. And you will recall that tiny Rwanda has become not only the top gold producer but also the top coltan producer in the region, thanks to minerals looted in the DRC.

The United States and the West have supported their own agenda but also that of Rwanda's Tutsi elite. The Rwandan population is about 85% Hutus and only 15% Tutsis, but the Tutsi minority dominates and wants to extend that domination to the DRC with the support of the United States and the rest of the West. And they want to play on the Western world's guilt for not stopping the Rwandan Genocide.

AG: Well, it's arguable that the US does not really feel guilty about the genocide because they backed Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front when it invaded, waged a four-year war, and overthrew the Habyarimana government, and then backed their invasion of the Congo. When she was Clinton's UN Ambassador, Madeleine Albright prevented the UN Security Council from expanding a peacekeeping force in Rwanda to stop the carnage. Instead the peacekeepers on the ground were withdrawn.

NK: I think that tells you how deeply the US was involved in that conflict, and it is still involved. When the M23 was starting its war again, there was a group of US Senators in the Ugandan and Rwandan capitals having discussions with those regimes. So it would be naive to say the US is not deeply involved today.

Kagame has also paid millions of dollars to lobbyists in Washington DC, and spent millions on PR campaigns in Europe and Washington to sustain this narrative that Rwanda is a victim of genocide, They always point to the FDLR, a Rwandan refugee militia, as their excuse for being in DRC.

AG: During the first week of December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told President Paul Kagame that he should stop supporting the M23 militia in eastern DRC. “Supporting” is an understatement because, as you've said yourself, not only Rwanda's M23 militia but also Rwandan Special Forces are in eastern DRC.

Back in 2008, the M23's predecessor, the CNDP, was rampaging through the Kivu provinces. Then in 2009, on Obama's Inauguration Day, it was announced that the CNDP would be integrated into the Congolese army. Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice actually came out and applauded that the next day. And then in 2013, those same Rwandan troops that had been "integrated" into the Congolese army emerged as M23, claiming that they hadn't gotten everything they had been promised in the agreement signed on March 23, 2009. Hence the name M23.

So the US is implicated in the creation of M23 and Blinken's statement couldn't be phonier, but do you think the US might finally be serious because of all the international condemnation of M23?

NK: No, I don't think that the US is serious. Making a statement is one thing but the talks behind the scenes are what matter. If they were serious, they would stop supporting Rwanda and Uganda.

The statement by Secretary and Blinken is not genuine, though there may be something coming up. In 2013, the UN Force Intervention Brigade was sent in to drive M23 from DRC, but nothing really changed.

In the context of the Ukraine War, Europe needs to secure alternative energy sources. And the African continent is being seen as the go-to continent for natural gas and other natural resources. Recall that despite the Blinken statement, the European Union actually awarded Rwanda 20 million E uro to support its military action in Mozambique. That was purely because Total Energy, which is a French company, has invested about $4 billion in natural gas exploration in northern Mozambique, in the province of Cabo Delgado, which has been ravaged by ragtag terrorist organizations. So Rwanda has become critical as a proxy force for Western interests in Africa, not only in DRC.

Recall that Rwanda is also in Central African Republic and Mali, where France and the US are struggling to stop the Russian Wagner group.

AG: Okay, just to make things simple for listeners who aren't familiar with this situation. Did you say essentially, that if Biden got on the phone and told Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Rwandan President Paul Kagame that it's over, that they have to get out of DRC, that would be the end of it?

NK: Yes. That would be the end of it. I believe, in no uncertain terms, that if the US told Rwanda and Uganda to back off, the war in the eastern DRC would be over in a week.

However, the US and the West would then have to stop trying to destabilize DRC, so that the Congolese can rebuild state institutions and an effective army to defend its borders.

AG: Do you think that Congolese President Felix Tshisikedi was serious in his recent statement about driving Rwanda out of DRC?

NK: No, I don't. I think he was just electioneering. President Tshisikedi has been in power for four years and he has not addressed the weakness of the Congolese army and the insecurity in the east. The Congolese people want Rwanda out of DRC, so he has to pretend that he's trying to get them out to get re-elected.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/if-us ... -would-end

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NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim

South Africans are fighting for crumbs: A conversation with trade union Leader Irvin Jim
By Vijay Prashad (Posted Dec 24, 2022)

Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on December 23, 2022 by Zoe Alexandra (more by Peoples Dispatch) |

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

In mid-December, the African National Congress (ANC) held its national conference where South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected as leader of his party, which means that he will lead the ANC into the 2024 general elections. A few delegates at the Johannesburg Expo Center in Nasrec, Gauteng—where the party conference was held—shouted at Ramaphosa asking him to resign because of a scandal called Farmgate (Ramaphosa survived a parliamentary vote against his impeachment following the scandal).

Irvin Jim, the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), told us that his country “is sitting on a tinderbox.” A series of crises are wracking South Africa presently: an unemployment crisis, an electricity crisis, and a crisis of xenophobia. The context behind the ANC national conference is stark. “The situation is brutal and harsh,” Irvin Jim said.

The social illness that people experience each day is terrible. The rate of crime has become very high. The gender-based violence experienced by women is very high. The statistics show us that basically people are fighting for crumbs.

At the ANC conference, five of the top seven posts—from the president to treasurer general—went to Ramaphosa’s supporters. With the Ramaphosa team in place, and with Ramaphosa himself to be the presidential candidate in 2024, it is unlikely that the ANC will propose dramatic changes to its policy orientation or provide a new outlook for the country’s future to the South African people. The ANC has governed the country for almost 30 years beginning in 1994 after apartheid ended, and the party has won a commanding 62.65% of the total vote share since then before the 2014 general elections. In the last general election in 2019, Ramaphosa won with 57.5% of the vote, still ahead of any of its opponents. This grip on electoral power has created a sense of complacency in the upper ranks of the ANC. However, at the grassroots, there is anxiety. In the municipal elections of 2021, the ANC support fell below 50% for the first time. A national opinion poll in August 2022 showed that the ANC would get 42% of the vote in the 2024 elections if they were held then.

Negotiated settlement

Irvin Jim is no stranger to the ANC. Born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape in 1968, Jim threw himself into the anti-apartheid movement as a young man. Forced by poverty to leave his education, he worked at Firestone Tire in Port Elizabeth. In 1991, Jim became a NUMSA union shop steward. As part of the communist movement and the ANC, Jim observed that the new government led by former South African President Nelson Mandela agreed to a “negotiated settlement” with the old apartheid elite. This “settlement,” Irvin Jim argued, “left intact the structure of white monopoly capital,” which included their private ownership of the country’s minerals and energy as well as finance. The South African Reserve Bank committed itself, he told us, “to protect the value of white wealth.” In the new South Africa, he said,

Africans can go to the beach. They can take their children to the school of their choice. They can choose where to live. But access to these rights is determined by their economic position in society. If you have no access to economic power, then you have none of these liberties.

In 1996, the ANC did make changes to the economic structure, but without harming the “negotiated settlement.” The policy known as GEAR (Growth, Employment, and Redistribution) created growth for the owners of wealth, but failed to create a long-term process of employment and redistribution. Due to the ANC’s failure to address the problem of unemployment—catastrophically the unemployment rate was 63.9% during the first quarter of 2022 for those between the ages of 15 and 24—the social distress being faced by South Africans has further been aggravated. The ANC, Irvin Jim said,

has exposed the country to serious vulnerability.

Solidarity not hate

Even if the ANC wins less than 50% of the vote in the next general elections, it will still be able to form a government since no other party will attract even comparable support (in the 2019 elections, the Democratic Alliance won merely 20.77% of the vote). Irvin Jim told us that there is a need for progressive forces in South Africa to fight and “revisit the negotiated settlement” and create a new policy outline for South Africa. The 2013 National Development Plan 2030 is a pale shadow of the kind of policy required to define South Africa’s future. “It barely talked about jobs,” Jim said.

The only jobs it talked about were window office cleaning and hairdressing. There was no drive to champion manufacturing and industrialization.

A new program—which would revitalize the freedom agenda in South Africa—must seek “economic power alongside political power,” said Jim. This means that “there is a genuine need to take ownership and control of all the commanding heights of the economy.” South Africa’s non-energy mineral reserves are estimated to be worth $2.4 trillion to $3 trillion. The country is the world’s largest producer of chrome, manganese, platinum, vanadium, and vermiculite, as well as one of the largest producers of gold, iron ore, and uranium. How a country with so much wealth can be so poor is answered by the lack of public control South Africa has over its metals and minerals. “South Africa needs to take public ownership of these minerals and metals, develop the processing of these through industrialization, and provide the benefits to the marginalized, landless, and dispossessed South Africans, most of whom are Black,” said Jim.

No program like this will be taken seriously if the working class and the urban poor remain fragmented and powerless. Jim told us that his union—NUMSA—is working with others to link “shop floor struggles with community struggles,” the “employed with the unemployed,” and are building an atmosphere of “solidarity rather than the spirit of hate.” The answers for South Africa will have to come from these struggles, says the veteran trade union leader. “The people,” he said,

have to lead the leaders.

https://mronline.org/2022/12/24/south-a ... or-crumbs/

*****************

Why do rebel militias continue to kill in the Congo?

In a recent incident, the M23 rebel group has been accused of killing at least 300 civilians by the Congolese government. Kambale Musavuli from Centre for Research on the Congo traces the history of this rebel group.

December 23, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch



In a recent incident, the M23 rebel group has been accused of killing at least 300 civilians by the Congolese government. Kambale Musavuli from Centre for Research on the Congo traces the history of this rebel group, and explains how the mineral wealth of DR Congo has created a culture of impunity allowing such crimes to go unpunished especially when Western countries and their allies are responsible.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/23/ ... the-congo/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 30, 2022 2:24 pm

Africa in Review 2022: Regional Dynamics and Continental Security
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 29, 2022
Abayomi Azikiwe

Image
1958Ghana AAPC, Dec. 1958

Developments in West, Central and East Africa highlights major obstacles to unity and sovereignty

“AGENDA 2063 is Africa’s blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future. It is the continent’s strategic framework that aims to deliver on its goal for inclusive and sustainable development and is a concrete manifestation of the pan-African drive for unity, self-determination, freedom, progress and collective prosperity pursued under Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance The genesis of Agenda 2063 was the realization by African leaders that there was a need to refocus and reprioritize Africa’s agenda from the struggle against apartheid and the attainment of political independence for the continent which had been the focus of The Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the African Union; and instead to prioritize inclusive social and economic development, continental and regional integration, democratic governance and peace and security amongst other issues aimed at repositioning Africa to becoming a dominant player in the global arena.”
Quoted from African Union 2063 introductory paragraph. (https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview)

There of course cannot be the realization of the Africa 2063 project until an internal and interstate relations framework between the 55 member-states which makeup the African Union (AU) reach a level of political equilibrium.

Notions surrounding the 2063 goals envision the greater economic, political and security links among all of the regions and states on the continent.

These ideas are by no means novel since the work of an earlier generation of African leaders such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah advanced a theoretical program as early as 1945-1947, where in his book “Toward Colonial Freedom”, the future prime minister and president of Ghana placed the struggles for independence and development within a broader Pan-African and anti-imperialist ideology. Although the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) did not meet the criteria established by Nkrumah and other anti-capitalist leaders and organizations as the ultimate expression of unification and socialism, since 1963, the concepts defining African governmental cooperation have advanced.

Recognizing the existential threat of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism to imperialism, the intelligence agencies and military apparatuses of the western states sought to destabilize and physically remove those political parties and liberation movements which fundamentally attacked the structures of national oppression and economic exploitation. Subsequently, neo-colonialism became the dominant threat to self-determination and unity among the African people and other post-colonial societies globally.

During the OAU period of the armed phase of the African Revolution for the total liberation of Southern Africa and other geo-political regions, the Liberation Committee played an important role in coordinating material assistance to the freedom fighters. This state assistance to the liberation movements in Africa was a reflection of the broad mass sentiment on the part of workers, youth, revolutionary intellectuals, artists and farmers in support of a rapid process of decolonization.

According to Nkrumah in Toward Colonial Freedom: “That under imperialism war cannot be averted and that a coalition between the proletarian movement in the capitalist countries and the colonial movement, against the world front of imperialism becomes inevitable. It is, therefore, in this alone that the hope of freedom and independence for the colonies lies. But how to achieve this? First and foremost, organization of the colonial masses. The duty of any worthwhile colonial movement for national liberation, however, must be the organization of labor and youth; and the abolition of political illiteracy. This should be accomplished through mass political education which keeps in constant contact with the masses of colonial peoples. This type of education should do away with that kind of intelligentsia who have become the very architects of colonial enslavement.” (https://www.dirzon.com/Doc/ReaderAsync? ... 201947.pdf)

These principles articulated during the post-World War II period must be merged with the contemporary existing realities of the African continent and the overall international situation. Therefore, the interference of imperialism into the internal affairs of the African people remains a major source of disunity and displacement among millions across the continent.

Burkina Faso, Ghana and ECOWAS

A recent diplomatic row between the West African states of Ghana and Burkina Faso provides an example of the role of imperialism in the 21st century. The current Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo has been one of the few African heads-of-state who has ventured to criticize the Russian Federation’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine.

The official position of the AU is characterized by the call for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. This view has been a point of disagreement between the White House and the AU member-states since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in late February 2022 up until the U.S. and African leaders summit held during mid-December.

It is no secret that the political tradition represented by President Akufo-Addo has been the antithesis of that which is represented by Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party (CPP) which led the former Gold Coast to independence in 1957. At present Ghana has security relations with the Pentagon’s United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) while recently receiving clearance for the acceptance of a multi-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Since the overthrow of the CPP government in February 1966, the Ghana experience with the IMF and other western-based financial institutions has been marred by the imposition of policies which stifle the growth of state structures and independent economic initiatives. The 600 industrial projects enacted by the Nkrumah-CPP government of the 1950s and 1960s were liquidated by the subsequent military and neo-liberal regimes which have ruled Ghana for over five decades.

Burkina Faso, which has experienced two military coups during this year, has grown frustrated with the failure of the French military and AFRICOM to defeat the Islamist insurgency which has killed many Burkinabe soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced while the economy has not benefited from the close military alliance with Paris and Washington.

Among the military government and the people, there is a burgeoning political orientation towards the Russian Federation. During the aftermath of the most recent coup which brought Ibrahim Traore to power on September 30, many were seen in the streets flying both Burkinabe and Russian flags. The French embassy was violently attacked by Burkinabe youth and burned along with other symbols of neo-colonialism inside the landlocked West African state.

Could this saber rattling on the part of the Ghana president be a gesture aimed at winning favor from the U.S.? Why would such a statement from Akufo-Addo while representatives from 49 African states were patiently involved in meetings with the White House, the Pentagon and State Department?

Both Ghana and Burkina Faso have gone through revolutionary phases within their post-independence political trajectory. Under Nkrumah between 1948, when he and other leading figures within the United Gold Coast Convention (UGGC) were detained after a national rebellion which swept the country early that year, until he was later imprisoned as leader of the CPP during 1950-1951. The transitional period of 1950-51 marked by the positive action general strike to 1957, the year of independence, remained focused on African unity. After 1957, there was the convening of two major conferences the following year, 1958, which called for the total independence and unification of independent Africa.

In Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Sankara led a military coup of lower-ranking officers in 1983 which sought to initiate a revolution based upon many of the ideas already advanced by Nkrumah and other socialists namely Fidel Castro and Che Guevara of Cuba and Argentina. However, in October 1987, the Burkinabe Revolution was betrayed by elements within its leadership which fell victim to the machination of France and its allies in the West Africa region.

Sankara’s administration was overthrown at the time of his brutal assassination. A trial of the former leader, Blaise Compaore, who was used in the reversal of the Revolution and the cold- blooded murder of Sankara, has taken place inside the country. Compaore was himself removed from office in 2014 by a national uprising of the people in Burkina Faso. It was this fact of history which occurred decades after the October 1987 imperialist-instigated coup against Sankara.

Burkina Faso, Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR) have all invited the Wagner Group, a Russian-based military services firm, to assist them in countering the rebels which have proved to be a formidable adversary. Why should the security imperatives of modern-day Burkina Faso in regard to relationships with the Wagner Group undergirded by the popular solidarity in the country with the Russian Federation emerge as a cause for concern for the Ghana government?

Relations between West African and all continental states in order to be effective needs to be based upon mutual cooperation, interests and respect. Obviously, since the 1960s, the role of international finance capital has further underdeveloped Africa. These diplomatic confrontations involving the summoning and withdrawal of ambassadors from one African capital to another, does nothing to advance the struggle for actual security and genuine sovereignty.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has a noble mission of building unity among its 15 member-states. Such a conflict between Burkina Faso and Ghana further complicates the already delicate status of ECOWAS in its attempts to reestablish civilian rule in Mali, Guinea-Conakry and Burkina Faso.

To be continued in part II

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/12/ ... -security/

***********

A call to the people: If capitalism is to be fought, it has to be fought in the DRC

The mineral-rich eastern provinces of the DRC have been repeatedly invaded and attacked by proxy forces known to be backed by Rwanda and Uganda, both key allies of US interests in the region

December 28, 2022 by Tanupriya Singh

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People internally displaced by conflict in North Kivu, March 2013. (Photo: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid/Flickr)

This is the second of two stories on the ongoing crisis in the eastern provinces of the DRC. Part one can be read here. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/14/ ... the-congo/

On Friday, December 23, the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) officially handed over its positions in Kibumba, in North Kivu province, to the East African Community Regional Force (EACRF), citing the recommendations of the summit held in Luanda, Angola, in November. However, days after M23 announced its withdrawal from its seized positions in Kibumba, displaced communities have still not been able to return amid reports that rebel fighters are still present in the area.

Meanwhile, fighting between M23, Congolese troops (FARDC), and an anti-M23 ‘self-defense’ militia continued on Monday, December 26, in the settlements of Bishusha and Tongo in North Kivu’s Rutshuru territory. According to reports, M23 also detained around 50 people, accusing them of collaborating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and Nyatura, a Congolese armed group fighting M23. However, relatives of those detained told the AFP that they were displaced people who had returned to the area to look for food.

FARDC had rejected the M23’s announcement of withdrawal, arguing that it was a distraction used by the rebel force to reinforce its positions in Tongo, Kishishe, and Bambu, with an intention to occupy the territory of Masisi.

Friday’s purported withdrawal came a day after excerpts of a report by a UN group of experts were made public, stating that there was “substantial evidence” that Rwandan forces had directly intervened in the DRC between November 2021 and October 2022, and provided ammunition, uniforms, and weapons to M23. Not only that, the report also noted that the rebel group had passed through Uganda “unhindered” during its capture of the DRC’s eastern border town of Bunagana in June.

These revelations closely followed statements by France and Germany condemning Rwanda’s support for the M23 rebels, in line with similar stances recently taken by the US and Belgium.

“These are just the usual condemnations, issued ‘in the strongest possible terms.’ It does not mean that these countries have taken any action. As the Congolese people, we are not waiting for any more condemnations,” Kambale Musavuli told Peoples Dispatch. “This is also not the first time that we have heard such statements. After the invasions in 1996, and then again in 1998, no one held Rwanda and Uganda accountable.”

Musavuli also pointed to the events in June 2000, when at least 300 Congolese civilians were reported to have been killed as Rwandan and Ugandan forces fought to gain control over the city of Kisangani, and, by extension, the diamond trade. “All the UN issued at the time was condemnations,” he said.

“What we need is action, which includes the US and the UK cutting ties with Rwanda, to stop arming, training, and equipping a country that is destabilizing the DRC. The weapons that the Rwandan government is providing to militia groups are coming from military aid, Rwanda is not manufacturing them. Stopping this channel of support will have an impact.”

“There is a culture of impunity when it comes to the crimes being committed in the DRC, and there is a lack of political will in the international community, particularly in the case of the US and the UK, to hold their allies accountable,” Musavuli said. “Meanwhile, people in the Congo have continued to be killed in the same way for the past 20 years.”

In October 2010, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a 550-page report based on a mapping exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international law in the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003. The inquiry was prompted by the discovery of three mass graves in North Kivu in late 2005.

“It was a reminder to the UN that the crimes of the past have not been held to account, and that it was important to document what was going on in the DRC,” Musavuli said.

The report looked at 617 of the most severe violations over the ten-year period, including instances of mass killings and sexual violence by armed actors in the DRC, including rebel groups and foreign forces. It concluded that most of the crimes committed would qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In particular, the report looked at a series of crimes committed by the Rwandan army and AFDL between 1996 and 1997, stating that they revealed “a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide.” Calls by the Congolese government to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to establish an international tribunal to investigate the crimes committed in the country have been ignored.

Not a resource, but a capitalism curse
Addressing the All African Conference in 1960, DRC’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had warned, “Our internal difficulties, tribal wars, and the nuclei of political opposition seemed to have been accidentally concentrated in the regions with our richest mineral and power resources… Our Katanga because of its uranium, copper and gold, and our Bakwanga in Kasai because of its diamonds have become hotbeds of imperialist intrigues. The object of these intrigues is to recapture economic control of our country.”

50 years later, the UN mapping report explored the connection between the exploitation of the DRC’s natural resources and the abuses being committed in the country. Resource exploitation had become “heavily militarized” with the first invasion in 1996, with the direct involvement of a growing number of foreign actors, including “rebel groups and armies from neighboring countries,” the report noted.

By the time of the second invasion in 1998, it added, natural resources “gradually became a driving force behind the war.” About 60-80% of the world’s coltan reserves, used to manufacture mobile phones, are located in the DRC. In 2002, a UN panel of experts concluded that “all coltan mines in the east of the DRC were benefiting either a rebel group or foreign armies.”

“Ample evidence indicates that Rwanda and Uganda were financing their military expenditure with the profits from natural resource exploitation in the DRC,” the report stated, adding that according to some estimates, the income Rwanda received provided for 80% of all army expenditure in 1999. Meanwhile, a major part of the gold produced in the Ituri region was “exported through Uganda, then re-exported as if it had been produced domestically…”

Uganda’s gold exports soared from $12.4 million in 1994–95 to $110 million in 1996, the year it began occupying the DRC. In 2019, 95% of the country’s gold exports were of non-Ugandan origin.

In 1999, the DRC approached the International Court of Justice to seek $11 billion from Uganda as reparations for the harms caused by its military occupation. Finally, in February 2022, the court ruled that Uganda must pay $325 million over five years, including $225 million for “loss of life and other damage to persons” and $60 million for damage to natural resources.

“Cobalt, lithium, coltan, these are minerals necessary for the fourth industrial revolution. When we talk of lithium, most people think of Bolivia and not of Monono. The DRC is also the world’s largest producer of cobalt. As long as we have these minerals in the Congo, we will have forces destabilizing the country,” Musavuli said.

“But the minerals are not the problem, capitalism is the problem. Norway has oil, it is a resource-rich country, why don’t we see what is happening in the DRC there as well? It is clear where the DRC has been placed on the capitalist chain of production, as a place whose resources are exploited,” he added.

On December 13, the governments of the DRC and Zambia signed an agreement with the US towards developing an “electric vehicle value chain.” US interest in the DRC’s cobalt reserves is not new, given its importance not only in electric vehicles, but also military equipment. So much so that the US continued to deliberately ignore the very obvious role that it was playing in fueling the violence in the DRC.

Moreover, the deal with the DRC and Zambia did not emerge in a vacuum, Musavuli explained. In fact, both countries had already signed agreements for mineral exploration for the manufacturing of electric batteries back in April. “The US has inserted itself into this process. Why? One of the reasons is the attempt to block out China from the African continent. The DRC being the largest producer of cobalt (around 80% of the global reserves), and with the huge push away from fossil fuels towards wind, solar, and electric energy, the Congo will be at the center of the discussion.”

“The US is just trying to guarantee its flow of resources while ignoring the interests of the Congolese people. The US Africa Summit did not engage in how to bring about peace and stability in the DRC. The focus was ‘how do we gain access to the Congo’s cobalt?’”

Ensuring peace, stability, and sovereignty
During the summit, US President Joe Biden also met with Congolese president Felix Tshisekedi along with the heads of state from Gabon, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone to “discuss their countries’ upcoming elections in 2023.” The US also plans to provide over $165 million to “support elections and good governance in Africa in 2023.”

“The current government of president Tshisekedi is not a government of the people. The facts on the ground show that the 2018 election was stolen, with Tshisekedi being backed by the US,” Musavuli stated. “Today, the Congolese people are facing a situation where they have to solve the challenges facing their country with a leader who was imposed upon them.”

Not only do such meetings raise concerns of further interference, their paternalistic tone is hard to ignore – “Can you imagine an African president calling a leader from Europe to discuss their elections? This tells us very clearly that these are not the leaders chosen by the people. Because a leader chosen by the people will not be summoned to Washington, they will go to the people of Kinshasa, of Goma, to hear their needs,” he said.

The Congolese people had already shared their demands for a free and fair election, Musavuli stressed, for an independent electoral commission and constitutional court, for opposition leaders to be able to express themselves, for journalists to be able to write critical articles without fear of arrest or exile.

“This is also a message to the African people, that these leaders do not represent our will, and that the struggle of the people across Africa, including in the Congo continues to be at multiple levels. We have to fight the compradores, our local elite who are chosen by foreign powers. We must fight the corporations that are looting our resources, displacing our populations, and polluting our waters,” he added.

“We must also fight against multilateral institutions such as the UN, whose peacekeeping and stabilization force has been in the DRC for twenty years, with a billion dollar budget, yet has nothing to show for it. Why are they still in the Congo? The situation in the country now is similar to the one in Haiti, where it is essentially becoming a UN colony.”

“We are trying to solve problems that the Congolese people did not create,” Musavuli reiterated. “We are not going to the root cause of the conflict. The true essence of finding a way forward lies in addressing the Rwandan genocide. There needs to be an inter-Rwandan dialogue, in a country where 80% of the population are Hutus and 14% are Tutsis, being led by a very specific clan within this minority with ties to the monarchy… The monarchy is effectively in power with bourgeois politics.”

He added claimed “The challenge lies with the Rwandan regime led by Paul Kagame and supported by the West, specifically around the Entebbe principles of the 1990s, which were presented by the US when talking about the so-called ‘renaissance leaders of Africa’ – including Kagame from Rwanda, Museveni from Uganda, and Meles Zenawi from Ethiopia.”

“They were given unfettered support. And what do these countries have in common? That they invaded another African country, and that they have the blood of millions of Africans on their hands… For the inter-Congolese dialogue to work, we need to have democracy in Rwanda, where the Rwandan people are able to discuss the future of their country, instead of having a dictator imposed upon them for over two decades. The same needs to happen in Uganda, another key US ally.”

Stability and justice for the DRC also means ensuring an end to the interference by the US and the UK – “We also call upon the working classes of these countries to unite with the Congolese people and understand that their fight to have a just leadership in their countries is directly connected to our struggle.”

“Just as Kwame Nkrumah said, the DRC’s challenges are both internal and external. The external forces will be foiled by our allies, the free and liberated people of the world, who believe in peace and stability and justice in the DRC. As for the internal forces, we, the daughters and sons of Patrice Lumumba, will continue to fight until there is a liberated Congo,” Musavuli asserted.

“The day the Congo is in the hands of its people, the entire African continent will change. As long as Congo is kept unstable, with puppet leaders and in a dysfunctional state, Africa will not advance… Our call is not to governments but to the people, to unite under Pan-Africanism and to understand that if capitalism is to be fought, it has to be fought in the DRC. Because the Congo is where capitalism gets its fuel.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/28/ ... n-the-drc/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 04, 2023 3:31 pm

Struggle for Liberation of Western Sahara Intensifies
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 3, 2023
Pavan Kulkarni

Image
Photo: Saharawi Voice

Fighting between the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army and Moroccan occupying forces has intensified in recent days


Moroccan forces illegally occupying the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) have come under repeated bombardment by the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Moroccan forces currently occupy over 80% of SADR, also known as Western Sahara, which remains classified by the UN as among the last countries still awaiting decolonization.

On Friday, December 30, according to a statement by the Ministry of Defense of SADR, the SPLA “targeted the trenches of the occupation soldiers in several areas of the Mahbas sector.” The SPLA bombarded the positions of occupation forces in this region, in the northwest of occupied territory, for the third consecutive day on Friday. Attacks were also reported on December 28 and 29, inflicting “heavy losses in lives and equipment along the wall of humiliation and shame.”

This wall, called the “Berm”, runs from northwest to southeast across the SADR territory. It separates the areas occupied by Morocco on the coast-side from the inland territory that is under the control of the Polisario Front (PF), recognized by the UN General Assembly as the Sahrawi people’s international representative.

Morocco constructed the berm in the 1980s, with the help of American companies Northrop and Westinghouse. At 2,700 kilometers in length, it is among the largest military infrastructures in the world, and the planet’s second-longest wall. It is reinforced with the world’s longest minefield consisting of seven million landmines.

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Map of Western Sahara

The SPLA has been engaging the occupying troops along the length of the berm since the war for liberation of SADR resumed on November 13, 2020, after 29 years of ceasefire. The ceasefire broke down after Moroccan troops crossed the berm to forcibly remove unarmed and peaceful Sahrawi protesters who were blocking an illegal Moroccan road to Mauritania through their territory. The Moroccan troops crossed into the UN-patrolled buffer zone of Guergarat across the southeastern tip of occupied SADR.

The ceasefire had been secured in August 1991 after the UN Security Council (UNSC) established the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) with the promise of fulfilling the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination. However, backed by the US, UK, and the EU, Morocco successfully sabotaged the referendum promised by the UN, and MINURSO was reduced to a peace-keeping force.

For the Sahrawis under occupation, the nearly three decades of ceasefire are often considered wasted years. Moroccan forces continued “their savagery and violence,” while Sahrawis “were forced by the international community to wait for nothing. There was no war, no peace, no hope,” Hamza Lakhal, a dissident poet from Laayoune, the occupied territory’s largest city, told Peoples Dispatch.

“When the war started, it renewed hope of liberation in the people because our brothers on the other side of the berm had again taken arms again to free us from occupation,” he said. It is with this hope that the people have been able to endure the increasing atrocities at the hands of the occupying forces since the resumption of the war, Lakhal explained.

However, the interests at play in the war go far beyond Morocco’s borders. The occupying power has received key gestures of support from Western powers since fighting resumed, which many argue has emboldened it even further.

On December 10, 2020, the Donald Trump administration in the US announced that “the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory.” Arguing that “an independent Sahrawi State is not a realistic option for resolving the conflict,” the US declared that autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is “the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute.”

The US government’s approval of Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara came in exchange for its normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel on the same day. Since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the endorsement of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara has been reiterated.

Former colonizer of the territory, Spain, which had handed over the territory of Western Sahara to the invading Moroccan forces in 1975, once again in March 2022 rescinded recognition of SADR and accepted Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over the territory.

EU’s stake in the occupation

The European Union (EU) was quick to welcome this decision by Spain. Strong bilateral relations between its member-states and Morocco “can only be beneficial for the implementation of the Euro-Moroccan partnership,” explained EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell’s spokesperson following the announcement.

This partnership, which was cemented by the establishment of a Free Trade Area in 1996, ensures that the EU remains Morocco’s largest trading partner, accounting for 56% of the goods trade in 2019 and for 51% of Morocco’s imports. The “sustainable fisheries partnership” which allows European companies to fish in waters outside the EU is a cornerstone of the partnership. Interestingly enough, over 90% of the fish caught by European fleets under this “Euro-Moroccan partnership” are extracted from the waters of SADR. This continues despite being ruled illegal multiple times since 2018 by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) which, reiterating the 1975 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), concluded that Morocco had no sovereignty over SADR’s territory.

40% of all European phosphate imports also come from Morocco, and this figure is predicted to increase as Europe seeks alternatives to Russian fertilizers in the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. At least 10% of the profits generated by OCP SA, Moroccan state-owned phosphate rock miner, phosphoric acid manufacturer and fertilizer producer, come from the phosphate extracted from the Bau Craa mine in occupied Sahrawi territory.

“We are told this so-called ‘trade’ of our resources between EU and Morocco also benefits our local economy. It is the big lie,” Lakhal said. “All those tens of millions the EU has been paying in return every year goes to Morocco. The money is used to strengthen its occupation forces,” he said.

“The Moroccan policemen outnumber all the Sahrawi civilians under occupation. Including all soldiers and the settlers the regime has brought in from Morocco, we are outnumbered one-to-three.”

‘We will resist the occupation to death; we have nothing to lose – not even our homeland’

Lakhal claimed that all the engineering or managerial jobs in these extractive industries go to the Moroccan settlers, while the Sahrawis only get jobs involving physical labor. “Even these jobs are taken away from Sahrawi workers if any of them are identified as activists. They can’t find any other jobs once they are branded. They are either forced to depend on others for survival or starve,” he alleged.

“Students are pulled out of schools and colleges, and denied opportunity to complete studies when they are identified as activists,” added Lakhal, who himself was a victim as he was suspended from college in 2002 for leading a campaign demanding a university in the occupied territory. “I was barred from continuing studies or holding a job. It was only with the help of pro-Sahrawi activists abroad that I was able to survive.”

It was more than a decade later, in 2015, after his case drew international attention following the publication of his poetry, that he was allowed to finally travel to Morocco to complete his graduation. “We still don’t have a university in [our land]. Students have to go to Morocco to finish their graduation. Anyone seen as an activist is denied this opportunity,” he said, explaining how education is used as leverage against the cause of Sahrawi liberation.

Those who refuse to budge to these systems of control and intimidation and succeed in organizing resistance are subjected to physical attacks, sexual assault and torture. However, “There is no weapon of repression in the regime’s arsenal that has not been deployed against us. And yet, we resist; we will resist the occupation to death because we have nothing to lose – not even our homeland,” Lakhal insists.

“There is nothing the regime can do about it. I mean, look at Sultana Khayya. What more can they do to her?” he asks. Khayya is currently trying to secure a safe passage back to the occupied territory to continue her struggle for Sahrawi liberation in ground-zero.

“It doesn’t matter what the so-called ‘international community’ does. We know our rights, and we will fight for them under any circumstances, with or without their support,” Lakhal asserted, asking the UNSC to “stop its pretense about human rights and democracy.” He also called on the “international community” to “stop its hypocrisy”.

“They will move NATO for Ukraine because they hate Russia, but occupation of Sahrawi against all international laws and resolutions is okay because the occupying power here is a friend,” he remarked.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... tensifies/

Libya: Confusion Over the Performance of the UN Mission Deepens
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 30, 2022

Confusion characterizes the work of the UN special envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, raising concerns among Libyans about the latter’s ability to dismantle the political roadblocks that prevent consensus to end the current impasse.

On Thursday, the United Nations Support mission in Libya (UNSMIL) denied reports of the UN envoy’s desire to form a new government, contradicting previous UN signals expressing support for pursuing this option in light of the existing intractability. This inconsistency reveals that the UN envoy has neither a clear vision nor a practical road map to end the Libyan crisis.

The UN mission said in a statement on its website that it was aware of ”false online reports that SRSG Abdoulaye Bathily plans to announce a new road map and to form a new government. This sort of fake news is aimed at generating confusion about the current political process and in particular the role of UNSMIL which is not to impose but to support a Libyan-Libyan solution”.

The Mission called on ”all parties to refrain from any actions that may threaten the fragile stability of Libya, including spreading misleading and unfounded information”.

Bathily stressed that “any roadmap should be designed through inclusive dialogue among Libyan stakeholders acting in full respect of the rights, interests and aspirations of all Libyan people to be governed by legitimate leadership and institutions. UNSMIL’s mandate remains to support the Libyan people to fulfill these aspirations. The SRSG encourages all leaders to intensify all necessary initiatives to reach this objective in 2023″.

Observers believe that the mission’s denial of the existence of a direction to form a new government may be the result of Western pressure, especially the United States, which opposes this option and prefers that the outgoing national unity government remain until general elections are held in the country.

Earlier this month, US Ambassador to Libya, Richard Norland, said that there is no need to form a new transitional government in the presence of the national unity government. “There is no other appropriate way to form a new government in Libya before the elections,” the US Ambassador to the United Nations said in a speech to the members of the UN Security Council last November.

Observers point out that while the position of the UN mission regarding the formation of a new government would provide comfort to Abdul Hamid al-Dbeiba, it raises questions about alternative options for dismantling the foundations of the crisis.

Since last March, two governments have been fighting for power in Libya, one headed by Fathi Bashaga and entrusted by the House of Representatives in Tobruk (East), and the second recognized by the United Nations, the government of national unity headed by Dbeiba, who refuses to hand over power.

To solve this dilemma, the United Nations launched an initiative months ago that led to the formation of a joint committee of the lower and upper houses of the state (Parliamentary Consultative) to agree on a constitutional basis for holding elections “as soon as possible”.

In light of the slowness and stumbling of this path due to disagreements between the two Houses of state and the deputies, the latest of which is the establishment of a Constitutional Court in Benghazi, the Libyan Presidential Council launched an initiative on the eighth of December to resolve the crisis through a consultative meeting between the three councils (presidential, deputies and the highest state) in coordination with Bathily.

It seems that the Presidential Council’s initiative is gaining the attention of external parties involved in Libyan affairs, as well as the UN envoy, who has stated on more than one occasion that this initiative can be built on to reach a settlement.

The disputes over the constitutional rule revolve around two main issues, namely the participation of military personnel and dual nationals, as the State Council led by Khaled Al-Mishri rejects this order to block the candidacy of Army Commander Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, which is opposed by the House of Representatives.

Observers of the Libyan issue believe that the reality in Libya is that the opposing forces are hiding behind conflicts and contrived disagreements to prevent reaching elections that threaten their influence. On the other hand, international powers are not in agreement on ways to resolve the conflict.

Observers point out that the UN envoy does not seem to have any ability to resolve the crisis, and confusion prevails over his movements and positions since taking office two months ago.

They add that Bathily recently proposed the adoption of alternative mechanisms to agree on elections without providing any details about these mechanisms, all indications that the UN envoy does not have a clear action plan, which raises concerns about whether his task will be limited to managing the crisis instead of solving it, as happened with his predecessors.

During a recent session at the UN Security Council, the UN envoy called for “the use of alternative mechanisms to alleviate the suffering caused by the temporary political arrangements, which are outdated and open without a time limit”. He linked this to the condition “if the two chambers (deputies and the state) cannot reach an agreement quickly”. Bathily ​ held the heads of the Houses of Representatives, Aguila Saleh, and the Supreme State, Khaled Al-Mishri, responsible.

“The constant disagreement between two people, the speaker of the Sejm and the head of the Supreme State Council, over a very limited number of provisions in the constitutional norm is no longer a sufficient justification for holding the whole country hostage,”he said.


Libyans hope that the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections will lead to a transfer of power and an end to both armed and political conflicts that have plagued their oil-rich country for years.

Al Arab

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/12/ ... n-deepens/

NATO Will Confront Russia in West Africa
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 3, 2023
Nikolai Plotnikov and Alexei Romanov

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Mauritania aims at becoming renewable energy powerhouse

Why Mauritania is becoming an outpost of the alliance in the region


Western countries’ peacekeeping missions in Mali seem to be failing. Following France and Britain, Germany began to think about withdrawing its troops from the African country. The justification is standard: the growing activity of Islamists and the alleged growing Russian military presence in the face of Wagner PMC, which has become almost mythical.

However, the collective West, or to be more precise, the North Atlantic Alliance, does not intend to leave West Africa. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania (IRM) is becoming the bloc’s stronghold. It was chosen as NATO’s main partner in the region because it borders Western Sahara, Senegal, Algeria and Mali and is located at the junction of two important areas of West Africa, the Maghreb and the Sahel. The IRM has become even more important since the withdrawal of its neighbor, Mali, from the Sahel Group of Five (G5 Sahel, headquartered in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott, members: Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania).

According to the NATO leadership, cooperation with Mauritania will help maintain influence on the bloc’s southern flank of responsibility – south of the Tropic of Cancer in the Atlantic Ocean and Central Africa. According to Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, this will enable the alliance to compete in the West African region against the growing influence of Russia and China, which are using “economic leverage” to promote their interests there.

It is hard to say where Stoltenberg got his fears about Russian expansion. Perhaps he was frightened by Moscow’s intentions to hold a 2nd Russian-African summit in 2023? But that is a sovereign business of Russia and African countries. Be that as it may, various delegations of the alliance have frequented Nouakchott from Brussels in order to prevent, as the Nato chief believes, the strengthening of the Kremlin’s influence there. In turn, Mauritanian officials have become welcome guests at NATO headquarters.

Since 1995, Mauritania is a partner of the North Atlantic Alliance in the Mediterranean Dialogue (also includes Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia). On the basis of the Individual Partnership Plan, NATO specialists consult and train the command staff of the national army and security structures of Mauritania, assist in capacity building and infrastructure of its armed forces.

The alliance’s Brussels summit in June 2021 declared the escalation in the Sahara-Sahel region “a threat to NATO’s collective security” . At the summit in Madrid this summer, a new aid package was announced for Mauritania, the size and details of which were not disclosed. In general terms, it was said that support for the Mauritanian army in intelligence, special operations, and maritime security would be a priority in this assistance.

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The basis of the bloc’s cooperation with Mauritania is the fight against international terrorism “on the far frontier. This refers to the Islamic State (IS, banned in Russia) and its affiliated extremist structures like al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar al-Dine, and Boko Haram (all banned in Russia). However, despite promises, NATO countries have failed to ensure the safety of the local population during the anti-terrorist operations “Barkhan” and “Takuba” since 2014.

The results of European humanitarian efforts have also been very modest. In addition to worsening terrorism in Mali, the Central African Republic, Niger and Chad, Latin American cocaine and Afghan heroin, illegal migration and arms flow through West Africa to the EU.

But the West is more concerned about access to the region’s mineral resources. The EU industry, including the military, is interested in African supplies of cobalt, mica, zinc, lead, copper, titanium, zirconium, manganese, chromium, platinum group metals, uranium and bauxite. The current situation in West Africa is seen by the NATO leadership as a convenient background for shifting the emphasis of the bloc’s policy in Africa. Having declared its intention to help the countries of the region, Brussels retains the ability to support the crisis processes in the region by projecting power from the territory of relatively stable Mauritania.

The growing geostrategic importance of IRM for NATO coincides with its growing importance as a producer and exporter of natural gas. European NATO countries hope to bolster their own energy security with Mauritania. For this purpose Brussels is planning to facilitate settlement of disagreements between Nouakchott and Rabat and to ensure supplies of natural gas in the mid-term from offshore fields in Mauritanian territorial waters (Torto Ahmeim, Bir Allah and Orca fields) and Western Sahara (Dakhla basin). According to Oil Minister Abdessalam Ould Salah of Mauritania, his country is ready to become one of the sources of gas for Europe against the background of Europe’s rejection of Russian gas.

NATO also hopes that the bloc’s military presence in the region will also ensure the planned construction of the prospective Nigeria-Morocco submarine gas pipeline, which will run along the west coast of Africa. Agreements for that project were signed in September 2022.

Mauritania has thus gone from being one of the partners in the Sahel to the only NATO partner in the region in a short period of time. Judging by the statements coming from Brussels, the role of this country is not very enviable: it should not only become a NATO base to counter the mythical Russian expansion in West Africa, but also take a direct part in countering Russia’s foreign policy in the African continent as a whole.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... st-africa/

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Europe's conflict sees Africa reeling from costs
By OTIATO OPALI in Nairobi, Kenya | China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-01-04 09:14


Whether it's soaring fuel bills or pricier food, the most vulnerable are hit the hardest on continent under pressure

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Kenyan motorcycle taxi riders wait to fill up with costly fuel in Nairobi on April 4. SIMON MAINA/AFP

Rising fuel prices in Kenya give Francis Karanja, a Nairobi taxi driver, plenty to worry about as he has watched his already meager income take a hit over the past year.

During the Christmas holiday period, he was spending about $1.70 for a liter of diesel to keep his cab on the road; in the prior year, he was paying just a dollar. But Karanja is reluctant to ask for higher fares from his passengers.

"The customers themselves complain that their salaries have not increased, and I will lose customers if I increase the fare," said the 35-year-old, who works on commission. "It is like I am doing nothing since the profit I used to make will now have to go on fuel."

Driven by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, prices of fuel and other basic commodities in Kenya and other African countries have kept on the rise, bringing economic hardships to hundreds of millions of people across the continent.

According to Kenya's National Bureau of Statistics, prices of diesel and petrol climbed by around 18 percent and 13 percent, respectively, from August to September last year. The cost of gas and electricity, along with those related to housing and water, rose by nearly 3 percent over the month, with the rising fuel costs to blame, it said.

A recent United Nations Development Programme study found that the most visible impacts of the military operation in Ukraine on Africa are the rising prices for fuel and food, and the financial instability associated with inflation.

The study suggests that the poorest countries in Africa have been hit the hardest, as a larger proportion of cash-strapped consumers' expenditure goes on food and transport.

In Kenya, purchases of cooking gas in the first half of the year dropped to a four-year low, highlighting the impact of the high prices of fuel due to the reintroduction of a value-added tax after the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to data from Kenya's National Bureau of Statistics, homes and businesses used 123,150 metric tons of cooking gas in the six months to June last year, a drop of 35 percent from the same period in the prior year.

The UNDP study says that the conflict is threatening to derail development progress in African countries, pushing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the aspirations of the African Union's Agenda 2063 further out of reach.

According to Macharia Munene, a lecturer of history and international relations at the United States International University in Kenya, the conflict in Europe is bound to affect the prices of key commodities like oil and grains.

Negative effect

"While Ukraine is far from Africa, the fact that the global price of oil is going up has a negative effect and direct impact on the African economy. For anything we import, the price will likely go up because of the problem in Eastern Europe," Munene said.

According to the UNDP study, there are also indirect impacts of the crisis in Ukraine, including imported inflation, difficult energy transitions and a potential geopolitical realignment.

The impact of the conflict "could push Africa into serious debt distress", making countries less likely to meet their debt obligations, the study said. "It could also increase inequality because high food and fuel prices typically hit the most vulnerable households hardest," it said.

Munene believes that increased oil and food prices will exacerbate inflationary pressures that have been building up in the wake of the pandemic and contribute to further monetary tightening and higher interest rates that will dampen global economic growth.

"The hike in fuel and food prices also comes at a time when African countries are faced with the negative impacts of changes in seasonal climate patterns on agricultural production, causing droughts in some areas and floods in others," Munene said.

Research from Statista, an online platform providing market and consumer data, indicates that sub-Saharan African countries have found themselves facing another severe shock because the conflict in Europe has prompted the surge in food and fuel prices that threatens the region's economic outlook.

When it comes to energy, consumers in the Central African Republic pay the highest price — one liter of gasoline cost an average of $2.40 in July, while in Zimbabwe, the retail price for the fuel was nearly $2, according to the research.

Details from an International Monetary Fund study on the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Africa indicate that growth in Africa was expected to slow to 3.8 percent in 2022 from the previous year's rate of 4.5 percent.

In addition, inflation in the region is expected to remain elevated in 2023 at nearly 10 percent. This will be the first time since 2008 that average inflation in Africa reaches that level.

Trade strains

"Higher oil prices will increase the import bill for Africa's oil importers by about $19 billion, worsening trade imbalances and raising transport and other consumer costs. Oil-importing fragile states will be hit hardest, with fiscal balances expected to deteriorate by around 0.8 percent of gross domestic product compared to the October 2021 forecast," the IMF report said.

"Half of Africa's low-income countries are already in or at high risk of distress. Rising oil prices also represent a direct fiscal cost for countries through fuel subsidies, while inflation will make reducing these subsidies unpopular," it added.

The IMF also pointed out that spending pressures on governments in Africa will only increase as growth slows, and rising interest rates in advanced economies may make financing more costly and harder to obtain for some governments.

According to Karanja, the passengers he transports in the Kenyan capital should get ready for at least a 20 percent increase in fares if fuel prices remain high.

"Fuel is everything and it is not our wish to hike the fare," Karanja said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... a78e8.html

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Death toll in Somalia attacks rises to 19

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the explosions took place near a restaurant close to an administrative building in the city of Mahas. | Photo: EFE
Published 4 January 2023 (1 hour 1 minutes ago)

The authorities of the African country attributed the new attack to the terrorist group Al Shabab.

At least 19 people were killed Wednesday and 25 wounded in two simultaneous suicide car bomb attacks in central Somalia, military sources confirmed after police initially put the death toll at nine.

The attack, attributed to radicals from the Al Shabab group, was perpetrated in Mahas, in the province of Hiran, where several months ago the clan militias and the Somali army launched a vast offensive against the terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.

"Nineteen people, including members of the security forces and civilians, were killed in the blasts," said Mohamed Moalim Adan, leader of a government-allied community militia in Mahas, the district where the attacks took place.


According to witnesses, the explosions took place in a restaurant near a city administration building. "I saw the bodies of nine civilians, including women and children. It was a horrible attack," said Adan Hassan, a witness to the attack.

"The terrorists, having been defeated, desperately resorted to attacking civilians, but this will not stop the people's will to continue defeating them," said Osman Nur, a police commander in Mahas.

"Innocent civilians have been killed in the explosions," he added.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/nueve-mu ... -0009.html

Google Translator

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If You Wouldn’t Ask Hannibal Lecter to Stop Mass Atrocities, Don’t Ask “The International Community”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 04 Jan 2023

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The hope that the U.S. will intervene anywhere in the world for humanitarian reasons is misguided in the extreme. Claims of concern are always a ruse hiding ulterior motives. Imperialist actions are always antithetical to human needs.

As someone who spends a lot of time studying African conflict, I often witness and find myself drawn into discussion with groups demanding that “the international community” do something to stop genocide and mass atrocities in their country. Of course I sympathize with any community under attack because of their racial, ethnic, clan, national, class, or political identity, but why would anyone in Africa or elsewhere in the Global South expect “the international community”—meaning the US-dominated West—to stop genocide and mass atrocities? The US dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan even though the Allies had already won WWII in the Pacific, turned Korea and Vietnam into human barbecue pits during the 50s and 60s, and overthrew or attempted to overthrow 47 governments between 1949 and 2014. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, its post 9/11 War on Terror has killed over 900,000 people, cost eight trillion dollars , and created 38 million refugees and internally displaced persons .

During a 2009 presidential presidential debate, even as the War on Terror’s toll continued to mount, NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw created a particularly violent upchuck moment by asking Barack Obama whether the US should intervene for humanitarian purpose “even when our national security interests were not at stake.”

Obama rose to the imperial task, making way for the “stopping genocide and mass atrocities” foreign policy that then superseded the War on Terror as the principal excuse for committing genocide and mass atrocities during his presidency:

“Well, we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.

“If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?

“If we could've stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act.

“So when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.”


(For the real US role in the Rwandan Genocide, see “Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, from Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction ,” “How Paul Kagame Deliberately Sacrificed the Tutsis ,” “In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front ,” “Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later ,” “Post-Genocide Rwandan Refugees: Why They Refuse to Return ‘Home’: Myths and Realities ,” and “Dying to Live: A Rwandan Family's Five-Year Flight Across the Congo .”)

In 2010, shortly after taking office, Obama fulfilled his Orwellian promise by creating the Atrocities Prevention Board .

In 2011, the US and its allies destroyed Libya, the most prosperous nation on the African continent, in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then started stealing its oil . In 2014, the US and its allies began bombing Syria and supporting jihadists in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then started stealing its oil .

Africa has plenty of untapped oil and every other resource the industrial world needs, so it presents abundant opportunities for bombing, sanctioning, debt strangling, and otherwise bludgeoning sovereign nations into submission, all in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then stealing whatever they have.

Or for undermining any nation or nations that dare raise an independent head, as Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia did in 2018, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, and then Somali President Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed, aka Farmaajo, signed an agreement to cooperate on trade, security and cultural issues, the Tripartite Alliance more formally known as the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea .

For more than two years, the US and its allies and press have been crying “Tigray Genocide!” to justify their support of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in hopes of toppling the elected government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, driving a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and busting up the Tripartite Alliance.

On July 10, 2021, the Globe and Mail, a Canadian security state outlet, accused Somali soldiers of committing atrocities in Tigray and complained about the Tripartite Alliance weakening Western influence at the same time :

“Accounts of atrocities by Somali soldiers in Ethiopia’s Tigray war are casting a spotlight on an emerging military alliance that has reshaped the Horn of Africa, weakening Western influence in a strategically important region.

“The Globe and Mail has obtained eyewitness reports of massacres by Somali troops embedded with Eritrean forces in Tigray in the early months of the war. The new evidence raises disturbing questions about a covert military alliance between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia that has inflicted death and destruction on the rebellious Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.”

With the help of Ilhan Omar , the US managed to have Farmaajo removed from power, at least for now, replacing him with the obedient President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed, who approved the reintroduction of US troops into Somalia , US-based Coastline Exploration operations off the Somali Coast, the continuation of EU N AVFOR, a European Union naval deployment, also off the Somali Coast, and the extension of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) , a US commanded peacekeeping force, previously known as AMISOM , which hasn’t been able to establish peace in Somalia since its creation in 2007.

The US and its allies have no honest interest in stopping genocide and mass atrocities in Africa, and their fundamental, paternalistic premise—that the West has to stop African savages from slaughtering one another—is racist to the core.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/if-yo ... -community

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The Hope of a Pan-African-Owned and Controlled Electric Car Project Is Buried for Generations to Come: The Fifty-Second Newsletter (2022)

DECEMBER 29, 2022

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Pathy Tshindele (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Untitled, 2016.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The United States government held the US-Africa Leaders Summit in mid-December, prompted in large part by its fears about Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. Rather than routine diplomacy, Washington’s approach in the summit was guided by its broader New Cold War agenda, in which a growing focus of the US has been to disrupt relations that African nations hold with China and Russia. This hawkish stance is driven by US military planners, who view Africa as ‘NATO’s southern flank’ and consider China and Russia to be ‘near-peer threats’. At the summit, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin charged China and Russia with ‘destabilising’ Africa. Austin provided little evidence to support his accusations, apart from pointing to China’s substantial investments, trade, and infrastructure projects with many countries on the continent and maligning the presence in a handful of countries of several hundred mercenaries from the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The African heads of government left Washington with a promise from US President Joe Biden to make a continent-wide tour, a pledge that the United States will spend $55 billion in investments, and a high-minded but empty statement on US-Africa partnership. Unfortunately, given the US track record on the continent, until these words are backed up with constructive actions, they can only be considered empty gestures and geopolitical jockeying.

There was not one word in the summit’s final statement on the most pressing issue for the continent’s governments: the long-term debt crisis. The 2022 UN Conference on Trade and Development Report found that ‘60% of least developed and other low-income countries were at high risk of or already suffering in debt distress’, with sixteen African countries at high risk and another seven countries – Chad, Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe – already in debt distress. On top of this, thirty-three African countries are in dire need of external assistance for food, which exacerbates the already existing risk of social collapse. Most of the US-Africa Leaders Summit was spent pontificating on the abstract idea of democracy, with Biden farcically taking aside heads of state like President Muhammadu Buhari (Nigeria) and President Félix Tshisekedi (Democratic Republic of Congo) to lecture them on the need for ‘free, fair, and transparent’ elections in their countries while pledging to provide $165 million to ‘support elections and good governance’ in Africa in 2023.

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Chéri Samba (DRC), Une vie non raté (‘A Successful Life’), 1995.

Most of the debt held by the African states is owed to wealthy bondholders in the Western states and was brokered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These private creditors – who hold the debt of countries such as Ghana and Zambia – have refused to provide any debt relief to African states despite the great distress they are experiencing. Often left out of conversations about this issue is the fact that this long-term debt distress has been largely caused by the plunder of the continent’s wealth.

On the other hand, unlike the wealthy bondholders of the West, the largest government creditor to African states, China, decided in August 2022 to cancel twenty-three interest-free loans to seventeen countries and offer $10 billion of its IMF reserves for use by the African states. A fair and rational approach to the debt crisis on the African continent would suggest that much more of the debt owed to Western bondholders should be forgiven and that the IMF should allocate Special Drawing Rights to provide liquidity to countries suffering from the endemic debt crisis. None of this was on the agenda of the US-Africa Leaders Summit.

Instead, Washington combined bonhomie towards the African heads of government with a sinister attitude towards China and Russia. Is this friendliness from the US a sincere olive branch or a trojan horse with which it seeks to smuggle its New Cold War agenda onto the continent? The most recent US government white paper on Africa, published in August 2022, suggests that it is the latter. The document, purportedly focused on Africa, featured ten mentions of China and Russia combined, but no mention of the term ‘sovereignty’. The paper stated:

In line with the 2022 National Defense Strategy, the Department of Defense will engage with African partners to expose and highlight the risks of negative PRC [People’s Republic of China] and Russian activities in Africa. We will leverage civil-defense institutions and expand defense cooperation with strategic partners that share our values and our will to foster global peace and stability.

The document reflects the fact that the US has conceded that it cannot compete with what China offers as a commercial partner and will resort to military power and diplomatic pressure to muscle the Chinese off the continent. The massive expansion of the US military presence in Africa since the 2007 founding of the United States Africa Command – most recently with a new base in Ghana and manoeuvres in Zambia – illustrates this approach.

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Kura Shomali (DRC), Miss Panda, 2018.

The United States government has built a discourse to tarnish China’s reputation in Africa, which it characterises as ‘new colonialism’, as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a 2011 interview. Does this reflect reality? In 2017, the global corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Company published a major report on China’s role in Africa, noting after a full assessment, ‘On balance, we believe that China’s growing involvement is strongly positive for Africa’s economies, governments, and workers’. Evidence to support this conclusion includes the fact that since 2010, ‘a third of Africa’s power grid and infrastructure has been financed and constructed by Chinese state-owned companies’. In these Chinese-run projects, McKinsey found that ‘89 percent of employees were African, adding up to nearly 300,000 jobs for African workers’.

Certainly, there are many stresses and strains involved in these Chinese investments, including evidence of poor management and badly designed contracts, but these are neither unique to Chinese companies nor endemic to their approach. US accusations that China is practicing ‘debt trap diplomacy’ have also been widely debunked. The following observation, made in a 2007 report, remains insightful: ‘China is doing more to promote African development than any high-flying governance rhetoric’. This assessment is particularly noteworthy given that it came from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental bloc dominated by the G7 countries.

What will be the outcome of the United States’ recent $55 billion pledge to African states? Will the funds, which are largely earmarked for private firms, support African development or merely subsidise US multinational corporations that dominate food production and distribution systems as well as health systems in Africa?

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Mega Mingiedi Tunga (DRC), Transactor Code Rouge, 2021.

Here’s a telling example of the emptiness and absurdity of the US’s attempts to reassert its influence on the African continent. In May 2022, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia signed a deal to independently develop electric batteries. Together, the two countries are home to 80 percent of the minerals and metals needed for the battery value chain. The project was backed by the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), whose representative Jean Luc Mastaki said, ‘Adding value to the battery minerals, through an inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, will definitely allow the two countries to pave the way to a robust, resilient, and inclusive growth pattern which creates jobs for millions of our population’. With an eye on increasing indigenous technical and scientific capacity, the agreement would have drawn from ‘a partnership between Congolese and Zambian schools of mines and polytechnics’.

Fast forward to the summit: after this agreement had already been reached, the DRC’s Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula and Zambia’s Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo joined US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in signing a memorandum of understanding that would allegedly ‘support’ the DRC and Zambia in creating an electric battery value chain. Lutundula called it ‘an important moment in the partnership between the US and Africa’.

The Socialist Party of Zambia responded with a strong statement: ‘The governments of Zambia and Congo have surrendered the copper and cobalt supply chain and production to American control. And with this capitulation, the hope of a Pan-African-owned and controlled electric car project is buried for generations to come’.

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Pierre Bodo (DRC), Femme surchargée (‘Overworked Woman’), 2005.

It is with child labour, strangely called ‘artisanal mining’, that multinational corporations extract the raw materials to control electric battery production rather than allow these countries to process their own resources and make their own batteries. José Tshisungu wa Tshisungu of the Congo takes us to the heart of the sorrows of children in the DRC in his poem, ‘Inaudible’:

Listen to the lament of the orphan
Stamped with the seal of sincerity
He is a child from around here
The street is his home
The market his neighbourhood
The monotone of his plaintive voice
Runs from zone to zone
Inaudible.


Warmly,

Vijay

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 06, 2023 2:55 pm

“African Labor in the World Community”: CLR James’ Political Economy
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 5, 2023
Matthew Quest

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On CLR James’ 122nd Anniversary, Matthew Quest celebrates his intervention in global freedom movements by placing his radical political economy in conversation with the African world and the African continent. He argues that CLR James offers a different and better understanding of capital, the state, and the role of the working class than most Pan-African and socialist thinkers on the continent and the diaspora of the 1940s-70s and today. James developed a radical perspective centred on the self-emancipation of the working masses that strives not to reform capitalism but to abolish it.

It is impossible to discuss CLR James (1901-1989) and his economics without underscoring it was a product of his politics first, that wished to bring the new society closer (not a sovereign nation-state in the world system). While James’s economics has profound contemporary implications, we must also remember it was clarified in specific historical contexts in the twentieth century.

Placing James’s political economy in conversation with the African world, and the African continent specifically, requires recalling his interventions in global freedom movements. His underground theorizing is still outside the main currents of recording his legacies and the Black radical tradition. If radical critiques of political economy reject many of the normative frameworks of economics in the name of pursuing some form of equality and sovereignty for peripheral nations, James calls into question what radical views of economics are. Not simply James’s ideals but the creative conflicts within his legacies help us to inquire more deeply.

The best way to remind us of this proposition is to underline what the critique of neo-liberalism means today. Overwhelmingly, it means a critique of one form of capitalism, not opposition to capitalism as a whole. Neo-liberalism is said to be economics based on finance capital and a retreat from industrial production and infrastructural maintenance. While industry has largely migrated from the center to the periphery in the last 30-50 years; the critique of neo-liberalism is largely the same in imperial centers and peripheries. This flawed challenge is a product of the fusion of New Deal/Keynesian and anti-colonial economics.

Failure of the Critique of Neo-Liberalism Rooted in New Deal and Anti-Colonial Economics

Most who desire a Green New Deal (and/or those who cheer on contemporary China) wish to be partners with industrial capital in building and maintaining roads and bridges, water and electrical systems and wish for the development of free or low-cost public housing, healthcare, and education. This means a certain type of state planned intervention, whether it be the one-party state or aspiring welfare state, in the economy. The critique of neoliberalism seeks to enhance both the profits of capitalists and the creation of good-paying, perhaps unionized, jobs. The apparent challenge to neo-liberalism wants the lion to lay down with the lamb.

The critique of neoliberalism is not for the abolition of capitalism but looks for a renaissance in national development where capital is a partner with progressives and labor is politically subordinate. Progressivism by definition is a permanent evasion that exists between propertied liberalism and content-less socialism.

James, a left-libertarian and autonomous Marxist, opposed most frameworks of progressive economics and politics. He was informed by an original interpretation of the intersection of Hegel, Marx, and Lenin. Most anti-colonial economics relies on a certain reading of Lenin’s Imperialism that James does not share. James offers a reading of Lenin’s last writings to advise peripheral statesmen. That does not add to his insurgent legacies. The idea that banks or monopoly trusts can be “good” or “bad,” from the perspective of working-class self-emancipation, is not sustainable.

A Pan-African and Independent Socialist

CLR James, author of The Black Jacobins, the classic history of the Haitian Revolution, is recalled as a Pan-African and independent socialist. A colleague and critic of anti-colonial politicians and activists (Trinidad’s George Padmore, Eric Williams, and Stokely Carmichael, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and Guyana’s Walter Rodney) James’s political economy was fundamentally different than his associates. While there are apparent moments of unity, especially around how the empire of capital underdeveloped Africa and the Caribbean through slavery and colonialism, or how federation might help enhance peripheral nation’s sovereignty, James was distinctive. He saw the state, party politics, democracy, and the working class in contrast to Pan-African and Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy.

The Black radical tradition, after experimenting with European radicalism and socialism, never developed its own independent political economy. As a left-libertarian and autonomous Marxist, James founded his own doctrine with comrades in the Johnson-Forest Tendency of American Trotskyism (1942-1951). These included Raya Dunayevskaya, Grace Lee Boggs, Martin Glaberman, and Selma James.

His mature politics benefited from the journey but was finally a rupture with the Trotskyist movement; this produced small American Marxist collectives, the Correspondence group (1951-1961) and the Facing Reality group (1962-1970). These politics could be summed up as advocating direct democracy, workers’ self-management, the autonomy of Blacks, the colonized, and women, and rebellion against totalitarian bureaucracy.

Before the age of Third World national liberation struggles, most of James’s original economics was expressed in The Invading Socialist Society (1947) and State Capitalism & World Revolution (1950). Facing Reality (1958) also illustrated some aspects of his political economy. These small booklets anticipated problems with general staples of Third World political economy before such theories consolidated themselves. Beginning with a critique of the Soviet Union, James started to develop a political economy for the whole world. While he saw the one-party state and welfare state differently, Stalinist Russia, FDR’s New Deal, Fabian Britain, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy all had something in common. Not simply centralized state planning but a militant hostility to labor’s self-emancipation.

For James, there is a connection between state planning and repression of toilers, and he in no way subscribes to classical liberal market economics. We must remember that James’s mature political economy was worked out not just in response to Russia but Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal welfare state, and its repression of self-directed action during the CIO labor movement.

While James recognized differences between imperial centers and peripheral colonized territories, he did not formulate his economics consistent with anti-colonial nationalist values that assumed there were competing blocs of capital in the world, richer and poorer nations, some being progressive and others reactionary. Instead, James, always with the social motion of independent labor in mind, was analyzing political economy from the approach of how workers and farmers could arrive at their own authority.

From Ethiopia solidarity (1935-1941) to Kenya solidarity (1952-1961), James’s anti-colonialism at first informally and formally functioned toward harmony with a view of labor’s self-emancipation. However, his approach to African political economy started to change when expressing solidarity with Ghana (1957-1966) and Tanzania (1969-1974). His view of state capitalism changed, and his approach to labor’s self-emancipation could disappear and reappear, when analyzing these later struggles. Before we criticize James for his concern for labor’s self-emancipation retreating and advancing, we must inquire whether African or Third World political economy-centred labor’s self-emancipation is foundational to his approach.

James started from the premise that capitalism should be abolished and that the self-organization and self-emancipation of the working class was central to such a process. Nations do not produce wealth, except in perhaps classical liberal and welfare state economics. Workers at the point of production and distribution, even where technology and machinery minimize mass labor, produce and distribute all necessities of life (i.e. food, shelter, healthcare).

His only novel Minty Alley (1936), about women who are cooks, caregivers and servants living in Caribbean barrack yard life, explained how even those who had little to no wages and lived under feudal-capitalist conditions, took steps to stop and start social and economic production. Peripheral toilers, even house servants, could informally strike, despite not having trade union organizations or regular workplaces outside the home. Women toilers in the periphery navigated patriarchy and capitalism.

The following are concise original premises of James’s thought that clash with most progressive or socialist understandings of political economy:

Through an analysis of Stalinist Russia as first a fascist, and then a state capitalist society, James concludes through a close reading of wage relations, incentive pay, and nationalized property, that the law of value functioned in Russian society. This means it is was an exploitative capitalist society, despite its state planning and nationalized property, not a socialist society. Following this conclusion, one could make this analysis of any nation-state and its political economy.
There is no progressive or dual character of government bureaucracy. From 1939-1979, James intermittently expressed openly that the idea of national self-determination in anti-colonialism was a fraud that didn’t take seriously popular self-reliance. His experiences from Ethiopia solidarity to Tanzania solidarity revealed this to him.
A police state cannot be the defender of the proletariat and its economic gains – there are no other kinds of states. That is what states do, they are monopolies of the means of coercion (prisons, military, police, intelligence agencies). Both the one-party state and the welfare state need to be abolished. In pursuit of growth, they transform human needs into decimal points of economic progress. National debts, stock markets, prices of commodities, human rights and development indices may go up or down, but these cannot measure an aspiring revolutionary socialist society rather they are measures of capital accumulation, hierarchies of social classes, and alienation of labor.
The revolt against capitalism is not for more jobs, goods, and services. It is the revolt against value production itself – if we are opposed to wage labor and capital relations, we don’t seek more opportunities for the aspiring capital accumulators, jobs for workers, and development of the poor, prison reform, and homeless shelters. (This is a political economy that sustains social stratification in the name of national development). Such “reforms” are only conceded in insurgent situations where regimes seek to reconvert their hierarchies and domination to greater mystification.
Administrative rationalism is a bourgeois philosophy: socialist planning cannot escape the logic of growth, profits and property relations. Redistribution is absurd, as workers produce and distribute everything already. In fields, factories and workshops, on trucks, docks, sea-going vessels, trains, and planes. If workers as a result of repression and miseducation don’t consistently act in their own interests, they don’t need an elite class of experts to do it for them.
Using Yugoslavia and early Communist China as examples, James believed that post-World War II anti-colonial nationalism in peripheral societies, and their economics, obscures that the only capital they will be allowed to administer is the lives of the local toilers. This is the primary way they will extract capital, through ordinary people’s hides.
Nationalized property or public property is not inherently better than private property. The public or nation at the grassroots has no direct power to use and organize these resources as they wish. Everyday people must invade, occupy, and control both to have direct self-governing power.
If vanguards are valid and have a right to exist, they cannot be a self-declared special class transcending time. They can be at the forefront of the next development of political thought for a specific period of time as recognized by ordinary people. One doesn’t declare oneself “the vanguard.” Rather vanguards, small revolutionary organizations and cadre circles, can have one legitimate task, propagating the destruction of bureaucracy and hierarchy.
Professionals need to be abolished as the embodiment of culture and government. Otherwise, what may be termed economic democracy is not marked by direct majority rule of workers and farmers. There is a basic continuity between James’s theorizing of this principle, it transcends his first American years (1947-1958) and what he expressed at the Havana Cultural Congress in 1968 and his speech “Toward the Seventh Pan African Congress” he gave in Senegal in 1975.
Post-War War II society will not see a fundamental redivision of colonies. Rather, through the World Bank/IMF and the State Department U.S. imperialism is striving to integrate the national economies of other countries into their own. These include both European countries and African, Asian and Latin American countries. This will be carried out through finance capital and the military-industrial complex. This observation was not a lament with a request for more fair banking and trade relations. This was a conclusion that justified the need to organize a world revolution. Coupled with this was the idea that there was no crisis of state leadership or vanguard parties. What was required was the direct self-mobilization of toilers to place tasks of politics and government in their own hands. At his most vivid, James believed ordinary citizens could carry out economic planning, judicial affairs, and foreign relations – all the tasks most political thinkers, even radical ones, associate with professionals and elites.
James’s Core Economic Principles and those of African and Third World Political Economy

Now, we should begin to see that the core economics of George Padmore, Eric Williams, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Stokely Carmichael, and Walter Rodney are very similar, and clash with CLR James’s sensibilities. James’s colleagues’ shared principles of political economy may be summarized like this.

Whether Pan-African socialists are advocates of the one-party state or welfare state, or see retreats or contradictions in the Soviet Union in terms of its anti-colonial advocacy, most view Russia as primarily an aspiring independent political economy or block of capital whose dilemmas anti-colonial nationalists identify with, and appreciate. Russia, like China and Cuba, or post-independence Ghana or Tanzania is trying to navigate a peripheral nation’s development through a hostile world system.
Most socialist-informed anti-colonial nationalists divide their aspiring middle classes and native business sectors between those who are self-aggrandizing and those who are patriotic to the “socialist” state. This means they posit some measure of heroism for aspiring capital accumulators. This is consistent with the nationalist theorizing of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
State capitalism is seen as progressive where it is perceived as breaking up the former plantation or colonial economy. These economics seek peaceful coexistence not wars of liberation against imperial powers. “Peace” means the right of peripheral rulers to manage their own nation’s material resources, subordinate their labourers and extract profits from them, and compete with other nation-states to illustrate which regime can best develop their nation.
Anti-colonial economics shifts the goal of socialist economics from rejecting wage labor and capital relations to accumulating national capital. In anti-colonial economics, the role of workers and farmers is to produce heroically in a disciplined fashion to the state plan. Their labor organization should be state-controlled and not organized strike actions that undermine national security or national production which are seen as virtually the same.
Where it has a sociological view of class formation and inquires if a bourgeoisie (be the capital possessed high or low) and a proletariat (be wages high or low) really exist in most peripheral territories, anti-colonial economics subtly supports domination. This is the basis for coalition politics around hierarchical regimes that administer subordinate lives.
Anti-colonial economics is overwhelmingly hostile to class struggle. Sometimes, it falsely presents professional and bureaucratic objections to larger blocs of capital in the world and desires to delink from imperial centers, as a type of class struggle. Still, the call for “people-centered movements” (if this means everyday people) acknowledges that aspiring rulers and capital accumulators are part of the anti-colonial front.
Anti-colonial economics while informed by Marxism, is also informed by classical liberal and Keynesian economics. It is concerned with unfair trade and banking relations, brain drains (its professional classes migrating to imperial centers – its contempt for indigenous knowledge is the other side of this), and lack of research and development in science and technology. Its search for rational capitalism is the last refuge of the aspiring African bourgeoisie that we are conveniently told as a social class does not exist. Their aspirations and desires to be peers with other capitalists in the world have real consequences for the repression of commoners.
The Double Value of State Capitalist Political Economy

CLR James helps us to see there are conflicting tendencies within state capitalist political economy. Yet, James’s state capitalist analysis had a double value. It most often rejected state capitalism as hostile to independent labor; on occasion, it accepted that it could contribute to breaking up the former plantation or colonial economy. However, his second stance evolved with the emerging currents of anti-colonial economics that evolved later, as summed up by Trinidad’s Lloyd Best, Jamaica’s Norman Girvan, Guyana’s Clive Thomas, Egypt’s Samir Amin, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, and Tanzania’s A.M. Babu.

In The Black Jacobins (1938) there is a critical discourse on J.B. Colbert’s Mercantilism or state capitalist economics that placed France at the center and Haiti in its periphery during the era of the slave trade. In some ways, this is a kindred spirit to Eric Williams’s Capitalism & Slavery (1944) which had similar concerns with Britain’s approach to capitalism and its colonies. However, James’s critique of Williams’s book is it didn’t understand the social motion of toilers that wishes to govern themselves.

While both British and French imperialists could be criticized as denying peripheral nations free trade and opportunities for their own indigenous capitalist development, the irony is the preferred “radical” political economy for self-determination in the Global South (the search for independence under capitalism) is state capitalism. And if, since the 1970s, and certainly after the 1990s Africa and the Global South retreated from state capitalism, today China and Venezuela’s example has many cheerleading this political economy again.

However, we have to keep in mind that state capitalism, whether as a measure of national sovereignty or the repression of workers’ and farmers’ autonomy, is a fruitful means of analyzing any nation’s political economy. For the United States, the great propagandist for democracy as defined by liberal markets has been a state capitalist society for most of its history, with stronger and retreating tendencies. This could be measured in its approach to both central banking and industrialism.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, as depicted not endorsed by James, exhibited the treachery of the emerging post-colonial economy, when in the name of pursuing Haitian independence, he restored the plantation economy, transformed the ex-slaves into wage-earners, and had his Black army attack them with the lash. This was to subordinate Black labor to the perceived need to sustain profits, property relations, and the accumulation of wealth. This was a major characteristic of not merely the first Third World national liberation struggle but everyone subsequently that lived by Marxism to greater and lesser degrees. State capitalist economics exists at the fault line of national liberation and labor’s self-emancipation. There is no heralded or contemporary radical political economy concerned about this post-civil rights, post-colonial perennial problem.

The People of Kenya Speak for themselves

CLR James and Grace Lee Boggs helped write Mbiyu Koinange’s The People of Kenya Speak for Themselves (1955) which was part of a global Kenya solidarity project rarely remarked upon. This pamphlet centered on Kikuyu peasants and women specifically doing their own economic planning, in building independent schools in the rural areas. This pamphlet was meant to counter dehumanizing anti-Mau Mau (Land and Freedom Army) propaganda by the British colonizer. It was consistent with how James saw unsung African rebellions that took on an ethnic, gendered, or religious form as of equivalent value to more modern labor strikes on the African continent. How many observe how Kenyan peasant farmers and women organize their resources to build a school and view this as political economy? And yet if the state gathered taxes and talked of planning, distributing, or appropriating capital to build schools this would be more acceptable to many.

Gathering Capital to Defeat Capital in Ghana?

Yet James was not always focused on everyday people on the African continent when thinking about economics. Consistent with his speeches on the Caribbean federation (1959-1960), his speech to the Conventional People’s Party in Ghana in 1960, and the years he advised Eric Williams’s Trinidad and Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana governments, James could function like an advisor to the nation-state on economic planning.

As recorded in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977), James once suggested that Ghana must tell the global community that it seeks to gather as much capital as it can so it can overthrow the relations of capital in their country. This on the surface seems absurd and inconsistent with his own original formulations on political economy. But this is actually how the main currents of anti-colonial economics often see things.

James also critiqued Nkrumah’s Ghana for his state capitalist planning that tried too hard to catch up with modern industrial societies, such as the Akosombo Dam Project, and therefore created an environment of austerity around Ghana toilers. While James wrote about Ghana’s toilers’ role in the anti-colonial revolution, he did not recognize and record their revolt against Nkrumah, particularly the general strike of 1961, in his post-colonial criticism. This is consistent with his retreating into the silences in the main currents of African and Third World political economy in this era.

Class Contradictions in Ujamaa Socialist Tanzania

As of 1964, there is evidence that CLR James thought Julius Nyerere was a shallow politician. But from 1969-1974 James started to make a global alliance with Nyerere to forge the Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, where he was a mentor to African American and Caribbean younger activists.

James was impressed with Nyerere’s stance that socialism was not racialism. This was significant when young Pan-Africanists were concerned that Marxism or the pursuit of socialism was a white ideology. James after discussing with Nyerere also was impressed that the Tanzanian leader understood that while he nationalized much property in his country, this was insufficient to empower ordinary people.

Still, Nyerere was unclear about what to do next. James’ Nyerere appeared to challenge professionals and the formally educated and wished to center the rural peasant-farmer as the embodiment of African socialism. Yet while there were autonomous ujamaa villages for a time in the Ruvuma district near the Mozambique southern border, Nyerere allowed these to be repressed and then transformed this model into a state plan for compulsory villagization that bulldozed African villagers’ modest homes so they might be arranged into centralized communities in the name of national development.

In James’s A History of Pan African Revolt, he analyzes Nyerere’s TANU Party’s Arusha Declaration of 1967. This manifesto suggests that no party or government leader can do the following things: live by two or more salaries, live by rent, direct a privately owned business or own shares in a privately owned business. That every party and government leader must be a peasant or worker.

James elevated Nyerere’s projection as superior to anything Aristotle, Plato, Marx, or Rousseau ever said. It was also a projection that in no way was implemented in real life. However, as guidelines for measuring what may be radical (or not) about a political economy, it was fascinating. And no standards of radical political economy today can compete with these measures.

Is it Efficient for Every Party and Government Leader to be an African Peasant or Worker?

Perhaps contradictorily, James’ Nyerere also suggested that Tanzania’s politics and economics should be flexible, efficient, and solve real-world problems. Was the elimination of landlords charging rent not a real problem for poor people? Were political leaders living by two or more salaries and collaborating with corporate hierarchies, not a burden? Should there be some other type of political leadership or directors of the economy besides peasants and workers?

We must remember that the contemporary critique of neoliberalism wants badly an alliance with industrial capital, and in no way advocates the direct self-government of toilers.

Now, in the movement for the Sixth Pan African Congress, especially at an organizing meeting in Kent, Ohio, the contradictions of working with the Tanzania government, especially its diplomatic core, threw up dynamic tensions. Tanzania was defining global solidarity with Africa as mobilizing science and technology aid for Africa as facilitated by formally educated professionals.

African American activists Modibo Kadalie and Kimathi Mohammed (both had taken part in the networks around Detroit’s League of Revolutionary Black Workers), were inspired by James’ anti-vanguardist politics. With these ideas, they challenged Courtland Cox, the Caribbean-American leading organizer of the 6PAC and former SNCC member based in Washington D.C.

Kadalie and Mohammed, based on their understanding of CLR James’ A History of Pan African Revolt, argued that the 6PAC approach to science and technology aid was elitist. That it was obvious that African miners, mechanics, market-women, peasant-farmers, and mid-wives could directly govern and had the skills required to self-manage African political economies. Cox by parliamentary manoeuvre found a means to avoid this contestation. But James was at the meeting also, and to Kadalie and Mohammed’s great disappointment, he did not support their stance. At this moment James was a fellow traveller of Nyerere’s state.

African Labor in the World Community

In obscure archives can be found a rare paper by James, “African Labor in the World Community,” an analysis focused on Ujamaa Tanzania. James explained in this projection that the world, especially those in imperial centers, may be surprised to know that Tanzania’s toilers wish to govern their own workplaces. This is consistent, James said, with the most advanced disposition of labor found all over the world. And yet Nyerere’s government insists Tanzania’s toilers are not ready to govern themselves and run the nation’s economy. James underlining the contradiction did not take a definitive stance.

After James boycotted the 6PAC, as a result of Nyerere’s Tanzania, Michael Manley’s Jamaica, and Forbes Burnham’s Guyana conspiring to ban the Caribbean activist delegations, especially those that advocated direct democracy and workers’ self-management, he along with Issa Shivji and Walter Rodney, began to admit to the world community that the self-organization of independent labor was repressed in Tanzania.

James’s notions of African labor are not simply radical politics that went unfulfilled. At the very least they are superior to the most advanced approaches to African and Global South political economy today. There is something about even radical political economy, that in the name of science, reason, and administrative efficiency, fears and trembles before the idea that African labor might directly govern society. At the very least this exposes a new measure for evaluating what is “radical” political economy.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... l-economy/

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Two barrels aim at African People’s Socialist Party
By Don Fitz (Posted Jan 05, 2023)

Originally published: LINKs (International Journal of Socialist Renewal) on December 31, 2022 (more by LINKs (International Journal of Socialist Renewal)) |

With new FBI and Department of “Justice” (DOJ) attacks expected in early January, a defense, mobilization and information session attracted hundreds of allies of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP). On December 23 they zoomed into the “Emergency Mass Meeting: Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!” The APSP told its supporters that it expects indictments in early January and possibly sooner.

Indictments could include many more than the four names listed as “unindicted co-conspirators” during raids on July 29, 2022: Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Party Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chair Penny Hess and Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel.

At 5am that day, the FBI invaded multiple St. Louis locations, including the private residence of Omali Yeshitela and his wife and APSP Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela, and the Uhuru Solidarity Center, as well as the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg FL.

During the December 23 webinar, Yeshitela vividly recalled that flashbang grenades were set off and laser points were directed at his chest when he opened the door of their home, and a drone almost hit Ona when she came down the stairs. Both of them were handcuffed and the entire Black working-class St. Louis neighborhood was under siege for hours. The federal agents seized all of their devices, such as computers and phones, thereby seriously hampering their political work.

As reported by Toward Freedom, in St. Petersburg, FBI agents lured Akilé Anai “outside her home, saying her car had been broken into. Upon opening her car, they forced her to hand over her devices.”

The FBI and DOJ claimed that the raids were sparked by Yeshitela’s having conversations with with Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian they accused of spreading “Russian propaganda.” During the webinar Yeshitela described how insulting and demeaning it was to insinuate that the APSP is unable to analyze African people’s state of oppression and make decisions for itself but can only reach conclusions after Russians tell it what to think.

This is particularly chilling for those who do solidarity work with Latin America, Africa and Asia. According to the precedent set by the July 29 raids and indictments, anyone who meets with any representative of another country could face criminal charges under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which the APSP expects to be used to justify their bullying. Actions against the APSP could lay the foundation for indicting me for interviewing and writing about Cuban doctors.

Legal abuse could be leveled against everyone else who has visited the island and explained what the revolution has accomplished. The FBI/DOJ could indict Monthly Review for publishing my book on Cuban Health Care along with every other publisher who releases books on Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and other countries that have resisted U.S. imperialism.

A noticeable exception would be citizens and lawmakers who meet with and are influenced by agents of Israel. They have no reason to fear harassment. Of course, it might be quite different for those having the temerity to meet with Palestinians.

After the raids, the Black Alliance for Peace announced that it would “concentrate its efforts on not only opposing the U.S. war agenda globally but the war and repression being waged on Black and Brown communities within U.S. borders.”

A major purpose of the December 23 webinar was to build nationwide and international support for the July 29 victims so people are prepared to respond when the indictments come down. In light of this, the Green Party of St. Louis issued a statement which appears further below. Following it are the APSP’s “Principles of Unity”, which it asks organizations to endorse. You can communicate your support at the website handsoffuhuru.org.

What is written above only describes one barrel of the corporate state’s shotgun. The other barrel consists of efforts to shut down the many projects under the APSP umbrella. They simultaneously offer meaningful life-changing needs for those in poor Black U.S. communities and provide examples of what a socialist society could look like.

The projects are part of what the APSP calls its “Black Power Blueprint” (BPB) and what socialist theorists might call “concretization” of its ideas which “prefigure” a post-capitalist society. The BPB’s efforts may be the most extensive integration of theory and practice occurring in the U.S. today.

Perhaps the prime example is Uhuru Wa Kulea (African Women’s Health Center) which has a vision “to provide health and self-care programs that reinforce our traditional African culture, and invest in the future of our community with doula and childbirth educator certification programs along with opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship.” Concepts for the Center rely heavily on the health care system of Cuba, which now has life expectancy greater than the U.S., due to its focus on women and children.

APSP-related efforts also include

• The Uhuru House Community Center, which transformed a condemned building into a three-story community event and program space named Akwaaba Hall;

• A Community Basketball Court to allow for “spirited youth programs” and tournaments;

• Murals at the Gary Brooks Community Garden that has been in operation for two years and at the recently completed Community Basketball Court which depict “Black families controlling our own culture and food economy by planting, growing and harvesting food from the garden;”

• Completed renovation of a 4-plex apartment building devoted to housing for the African Independence Workforce Program which creates jobs for those re-entering the Black community from the prison system;

• The Uhuru Jiko Kitchen and Bakery/Café which, once the refurbishing of an existing commercial structure is completed, will bring African economic and cultural life to a depressed commercial area and will help stop gentrification;

• A planned program for the Black Power Square where condemned buildings have been removed to make way for retail opportunities by utilizing shipping containers to house community-based small businesses and create jobs.

The above are in St. Louis. APSP also runs Uhuru Foods and Pies in Oakland CA and St. Petersburg FL, a community garden/farm in Huntsville AL, furniture stores in Oakland CA and Philadelphia PA, a radio station in St. Petersburg FL and the Burning Spear newspaper.

The goal of attacking the APSP leaders is to exterminate every project and every component of the BPB which Omali Yeshitela speaks of as “building duel and contending power,” funded to a significant degree through reparations raised by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM). The government, of course, has virtually unlimited police and legal resources at its disposal to drown out dissent. If it can force the APSP to divert its energies and limited budget to its legal defense, the FBI/DOJ can undermine projects and terrorize solidarity activists even if it imprisons very few.

This is the message from one barrel of the snarling state:

Don’t hope for a new life …
don’t imagine a new world…
and certainly don’t try to build one …
because capitalism is all you can look forward to.

The other barrel of the shotgun screams that efforts by U.S. citizens to build solidarity with victims of global oppression will be met with the most vicious attacks the corporate state can muster.

Statement by Don Fitz on behalf of the Green Party of St. Louis, December 23, 2022.
The Green Party of St. Louis fully agrees with the right of African people to advocate and organize for the unification, liberation and self-determination of Africa and African People as laid out in the “Principles of Unity.”

The FBI raid of July 29 was not just against the APSP. It was an attack on all working for social justice and liberation.

As has happened many times before, governmental violence was unleashed first against Black/African victims to serve as an example.

The Biden administration is fully responsible for opening one of the most repressive eras in U.S. history.

We would have to go back to the racist president Woodrow Wilson and his imprisonment of Eugene Debs to find a case of people being arrested so blatantly for their political beliefs.

Even during the U.S. war against Viet Nam, people were not arrested merely for listening to Vietnamese views or visiting North Viet Nam.

The current actions of the Biden administration are a message that no one can question his proxy war against Russia—a message that Americans have lost the right to make their own decisions.

The events of July 29, 2022 are meant to intimidate any who stand in solidarity with movements and countries who are struggling for their liberation, such as Cuba.

They are warning that the same could happen to supporters of revolutionary Venezuela.

The FBI raids are a threat to those who defend the right of Nicaragua to chart its own course.

Indictment of Uhuru members aids and abets those criminals who overthrew the democratically elected government in Peru on Dec 7, 2022.

Biden’s proxy war against Russia gives lie to his supposed opposition to climate change. One of the real reasons for Biden’s “Hate Russia!” campaign is to allow U.S. corporations to corner the market of fossil fuels in Ukraine and force Europe to buy U.S. natural gas at absurdly high prices.

Under Evo Morales, Bolivia sought to control its own lithium, a critical element for “alternative” energy. When he was violently overthrown, the Trump/Biden supporter Elon Musk (of Tesla fame) proclaimed “We will coup whoever we want!”

The great majority of the world’s cobalt, also essential for “alternative” energy, lies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (home to many other essential minerals). Efforts of the Biden administration to destroy the APSP reveals his plan for anyone who advocates self-determination for Africa.

APSP Principles of Unity
We unite with the right of African people to advocate and organize for the unification, liberation and self-determination of Africa and African People.

We denounce the FBI and U.S. government’s attacks on the African Liberation Movement historically and currently
We demand that the U.S. government drop the charges against any member of the African People’s Socialist Party, the Uhuru Movement and those named and implied in the indictment and warrants
We demand the return of all confiscated property to the Uhuru Movement and compensation for damages and payment of reparations for the attacks
We demand an end to FBI surveillance and infiltration of the Uhuru Movement and release of all documents on the Uhuru Movement since the 1960s
We denounce the assault on the anti-colonial activity and programs of the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru Movement such as the Black Power Blueprint and other economic institutions and projects.

https://mronline.org/2023/01/05/two-bar ... ist-party/

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Targeting China, the U.S. Brings its New Cold War to Africa
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 5, 2023
VIJAY PRASHAD

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President Joe Biden and other leaders at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, Dec. 15, 2022. | Andrew Harnik / AP

The United States government held the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in mid-December, prompted in large part by its fears about Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. Rather than routine diplomacy, Washington’s approach in the summit was guided by its broader New Cold War agenda, in which a growing focus has been to disrupt relations that African nations hold with China and Russia.

This hawkish stance is driven by U.S. military planners, who view Africa as “NATO’s southern flank” and consider China and Russia to be “near-peer threats.” At the summit, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin charged China and Russia with “destabilizing” Africa.

Austin provided little evidence to support his accusations, apart from pointing to China’s substantial investments, trade, and infrastructure projects with many countries on the continent and maligning the presence in a handful of countries of several hundred mercenaries from the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The African heads of government left Washington with a promise from U.S. President Joe Biden to make a continent-wide tour, a pledge that the United States will spend $55 billion in investments, and a high-minded but empty statement on U.S.-Africa partnership.

Unfortunately, given the U.S. track record on the continent, until these words are backed up with constructive actions, they can only be considered empty gestures and geopolitical jockeying.

Debt bondage vs. debt lifeline

There was not one word in the summit’s final statement on the most pressing issue for the continent’s governments: the long-term debt crisis.

The 2022 U.N. Conference on Trade and Development Report found that “60% of least developed and other low-income countries were at high risk of or already suffering in debt distress,” with 16 African countries at high risk and another seven countries—Chad, Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe—already in debt distress.

On top of this, 33 African countries are in dire need of external assistance for food, which exacerbates the already existing risk of social collapse.

Most of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit was spent pontificating on the abstract idea of democracy, with Biden farcically taking aside heads of state like President Muhammadu Buhari (Nigeria) and President Félix Tshisekedi (Democratic Republic of Congo) to lecture them on the need for “free, fair, and transparent” elections in their countries while pledging to provide $165 million to “support elections and good governance” in Africa in 2023.

Most of the debt held by the African states is owed to wealthy bondholders in the Western states and was brokered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These private creditors—who hold the debt of countries such as Ghana and Zambia—have refused to provide any debt relief to African states despite the great distress they are experiencing.

Often left out of conversations about this issue is the fact that this long-term debt distress has been largely caused by the plunder of the continent’s wealth.

On the other hand, unlike the wealthy bondholders of the West, the largest government creditor to African states, China, decided in August 2022 to cancel 23 interest-free loans to 17 countries and offer $10 billion of its IMF reserves for use by the African states.

A fair and rational approach to the debt crisis on the African continent would suggest that much more of the debt owed to Western bondholders should be forgiven and that the IMF should allocate Special Drawing Rights to provide liquidity to countries suffering from the endemic debt crisis. None of this was on the agenda of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Instead, Washington combined bonhomie towards the African heads of government with a sinister attitude towards China and Russia. Is this friendliness from the U.S. a sincere olive branch? Or a Trojan Horse with which it seeks to smuggle its New Cold War agenda onto the continent?

Trashing China

The most recent U.S. government white paper on Africa, published in August 2022, suggests that it is the latter. The document, purportedly focused on Africa, featured ten mentions of China and Russia combined, but no mention of the term “sovereignty.” The paper stated:

“In line with the 2022 National Defense Strategy, the Department of Defense will engage with African partners to expose and highlight the risks of negative PRC [People’s Republic of China] and Russian activities in Africa. We will leverage civil-defense institutions and expand defense cooperation with strategic partners that share our values and our will to foster global peace and stability.”

The document reflects the fact that the U.S. has conceded that it cannot compete with what China offers as a commercial partner and will resort to military power and diplomatic pressure to muscle the Chinese off the continent.

The massive expansion of the U.S. military presence in Africa since the 2007 founding of the United States Africa Command—most recently with a new base in Ghana and maneuvers in Zambia—illustrates this approach.

The United States government has built a discourse to tarnish China’s reputation in Africa, which it characterizes as “new colonialism,” as former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a 2011 interview. Does this reflect reality?

In 2017, the global corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Company published a major report on China’s role in Africa, noting after a full assessment, “On balance, we believe that China’s growing involvement is strongly positive for Africa’s economies, governments, and workers.”

Evidence to support this conclusion includes the fact that since 2010, “a third of Africa’s power grid and infrastructure has been financed and constructed by Chinese state-owned companies.” In these Chinese-run projects, McKinsey found that “89% of employees were African, adding up to nearly 300,000 jobs for African workers.”

Certainly, there are many stresses and strains involved in these Chinese investments, including evidence of poor management and badly designed contracts, but these are neither unique to Chinese companies nor endemic to their approach.

U.S. accusations that China is practicing “debt trap diplomacy” have also been widely debunked. The following observation, made in a 2007 report, remains insightful: “China is doing more to promote African development than any high-flying governance rhetoric.” This assessment is particularly noteworthy given that it came from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental bloc dominated by the G7 countries.

Who killed the African electric car?

What will be the outcome of the United States’ recent $55 billion pledge to African states? Will the funds, which are largely earmarked for private firms, support African development or merely subsidize U.S. multinational corporations that dominate food production and distribution systems as well as health systems in Africa?

Here’s a telling example of the emptiness and absurdity of the U.S.’ attempts to reassert its influence on the African continent. In May 2022, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia signed a deal to independently develop electric batteries. Together, the two countries are home to 80% of the minerals and metals needed for the battery value chain.

The project was backed by the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), whose representative Jean Luc Mastaki said, “Adding value to the battery minerals, through an inclusive and sustainable industrialization, will definitely allow the two countries to pave the way to a robust, resilient, and inclusive growth pattern which creates jobs for millions of our population.” With an eye on increasing indigenous technical and scientific capacity, the agreement would have drawn from “a partnership between Congolese and Zambian schools of mines and polytechnics.”

Fast forward to the summit: After this agreement had already been reached, the DRC’s Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula and Zambia’s Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo joined U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in signing a memorandum of understanding that would allegedly “support” the DRC and Zambia in creating an electric battery value chain. Lutundula called it “an important moment in the partnership between the U.S. and Africa.”

The Socialist Party of Zambia responded with a strong statement: “The governments of Zambia and Congo have surrendered the copper and cobalt supply chain and production to American control. And with this capitulation, the hope of a Pan-African-owned and controlled electric car project is buried for generations to come.”

It is with child labor, strangely called “artisanal mining,” that multinational corporations extract the raw materials to control electric battery production rather than allow these countries to process their own resources and make their own batteries.

José Tshisungu wa Tshisungu of the Congo takes U.S. to the heart of the sorrows of children in the DRC in his poem, Inaudible:

Listen to the lament of the orphan
Stamped with the seal of sincerity
He is a child from around here
The street is his home
The market his neighborhood
The monotone of his plaintive voice
Runs from zone to zone
Inaudible.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... to-africa/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:35 pm

Sudan: Junta Deputy Chairman Escalates Rhetoric Against Victims of Violence in Darfur
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 7, 2023
Pavan Kulkarni

Image
Victims of violence in camps Darfur. Photo: Darfur Network for Monitoring and Documentation

Over the past two weeks, over 16,000 people were displaced in a fresh round of violent attacks in Darfur in which the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces allegedly played a key role. Now its head and the second-in-command of Sudan’s junta, General Hemeti, has threatened to dismantle refugee camps

The deputy chairman of the military junta ruling Sudan, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemeti, has threatened to dissolve the camps of refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDP) in the Darfur region.

In a speech on January 3, he alleged that weapons have been stored inside, and upped the threats against the very people who have been coming under attacks in the State of South Darfur for the last two weeks by the notorious state-backed militia under his command, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Starting from December 21, the current spate of attacks peaked on December 23. Attacks have continued at a lower intensity since, including on January 5, when, according to the General Coordination of Displaced and Refugees, three more IDPs were shot and wounded by RSF members.

At least 21 people have been killed in these attacks over the last two weeks, Adam Rojal, spokesperson of the General Coordination of Displaced and Refugees, told Peoples Dispatch. Over 50 are wounded and around 16,500 people have been displaced – or re- displaced – in the violence that swept across more than two dozen villages in the Beleil locality to the east of the South Darfur’s capital Nyala.

“11 villages are completely burned and looted,” he said. Four more villages are partially destroyed. Another nine villages were looted when the people had fled. These villages were inhabited by farming tribes who had been displaced in the peak of the civil war in Darfur in 2003 and 2004, and forced to take refuge in different camps for the Internally Displaced People (IDP) in South Darfur.

However, after international organizations stopped providing aid to them, their food-rations were reduced by over 80% by 2017, forcing most of them “to return to agriculture in the areas in which they used to live and whose lands are arable,” Rojal said.

Now, forced back into camps and other shelters in Beleil and nearby localities, they are currently living in a precarious condition, without access to sanitation, clean drinking water and medicines, he explained, calling for urgent international humanitarian aid. There is no food provided by any government agencies, leaving them entirely dependent on the charity of other people.

Their return to their land, Rojal maintains, is not acceptable to the Sudanese state, which is trying to bring about a demographic change in Darfur by ethnic cleansing of the “African” tribes and settling other Arabic-speaking tribes on the lands from which they are displaced.

While the two groups are not racially distinct, the Arabic-speaking tribes are largely nomadic herders, while those referred to as indigenous “African” tribes are sedentary farmers and pastoralists speaking local languages. Exploiting the conflict between this community of farmers and herders over land and water, the Sudanese state recruited the nomads and formed the Janjaweed militias during the civil war in Darfur. At least 300,000 people were killed in this civil war, and over 2.5 million displaced.

In 2013, the Janjaweed were organized into the RSF. They are accused of genocide, war-crimes and crimes against humanity, for which former dictator Omar al Bashir – ousted in April 2019 after months of massive pro-democracy demonstrations starting from December 2018 – stands trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, his coterie of generals – including the head of the RSF, Hemeti, and the army chief and coup-leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – remain in power.

Violence intensified since the Juba peace agreement

Leaders of most of the armed rebel groups which recruited from farming tribes made peace with the army and the RSF in exchange for a share in state power by signing the Juba peace agreement in October 2020, and even went on to support the coup a year later.

“More than two years have passed since the Juba Peace Agreement, and since then, the leaders of former armed groups occupy government positions, including the governor of Darfur, Minni Minnawi,” Rojal pointed out. Minnawi is the leader of the largest faction of a rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA).

However, violence against the farming communities – who the erstwhile rebel groups claimed to represent – has only intensified with the backing of the RSF and other militias, displacing several hundreds of thousands since the agreement.

The violence last month began when a group from the farming community, which was returning from the weekly market to their village, Amuri, was fired upon by camel-riding militia, leading to one death and injuries to three others.

The following day, “the people of the region went out to track down the perpetrators, and they reached one of the areas that housed members of Al-Furqan militia,” which is backed by the RSF, Rojal explained. Injuries and deaths were caused on both sides in the clash that ensued..

Then, on December 23, “there was a comprehensive attack” from all directions by the RSF, which went on a rampage in over two dozen villages. Livestock and properties were looted, and crops they could not loot were completely burned. The attackers, he said, are “receiving technical, strategic and logistical support from the state because they are the state’s militia.”

That day, the RSF started an eight-day conference in Nyala, whose purpose, according to the state media, SUNA, was “to upgrade performance to support the projects of peace, development [and] security.”

A “severe siege” on the Fasha area of Beleil followed for two days, and the villagers in this region, “including women and children, were incapacitated without food and water,” added Rojal.

Hemeti issues further threats to displaced victims and their elected leader

Hemeti, who arrived in Nyala on December 29 toward the end of the conference, gave contradictory assurances. On the one hand, he reportedly said that all the uniformed RSF members seen in the several videos of the attack had been arrested. On the other hand, he claimed that the RSF uniforms were easily available across the country, and had been misused to wrongly vilify this militia, thus distancing its actual members from the attacks.

Claiming further that the forces in RSF uniform had crossed from Central African Republic (CAR), he announced the closure of the border earlier this month on January 2, 2023, during the signing of a “cessation of hostilities agreement” between the leaders of the two tribes.

The head of Darfur Bar Association, Saleh Mahmoud, told Radio Dabanga that “tribal reconciliations in Darfur are superficial and fragile, and do not necessarily reflect the real demands of the victims.” Mahmoud said that community leaders were pressured into signing this agreement. Critics have often pointed out that what is underway in Darfur is not a tribal conflict but is being portrayed as such by the government which is undertaking a depopulation campaign against farming communities on mineral-rich lands.

While acknowledging that according to the Juba Peace Agreement, the Beleil locality belonged to the farming community which had come under attack, he added that “non-acceptance of the other,” i.e the nomadic herders the regime is trying to replace them with, “will lead to the country falling apart.”

The cessation of hostilities agreement that the leaders of the farming tribe were forced to sign “aims to hide the real culprits and legalizes new herders’ settlements,” said Abdelbadi Abakar, a member of the Emergency Room for Relief for the Beleil Victims.

While Hemeti has called on the displaced victims in Beleil to return to their homes – which are mostly looted or burnt down – continuing attacks by the members of his militias have made it extremely dangerous.

Then, on January 3, he called for the dissolution of the IDP camps, accusing them of holding weapons. “We consider these statements as an explicit declaration of war against the unarmed displaced persons, killing them and targeting their leaders, with the aim of liquidating the camps,” read a statement by the General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugee Camps on January 4.

These camps, the statement added, host witnesses to “the crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity” for which former dictator al-Bashir is on trial. These crimes, which began in 2003, “are still continuing with the current rulers”, whose goal is “to bring about demographic change in Darfur” and eliminate all the witnesses, said Rojal.

Hemeti also made personal attacks on the General Coordinator of the camps for the displaced and refugees, Sheikh Jacob Muhammad Abdullah, accusing him of killing two of his cousins. Jacob Muhammad was “was elected by the displaced and refugees as the general coordinator of the camps for the displaced and the refugees. He did not come to this position with a military coup,” pointed out the statement by the General Coordination. “He is one of victims and survivors of the genocide by the Janjaweed militias.”

“We also call on the international community to implement.. the Resolution No. 1556 passed by the UN Security Council in 2004,” calling for the immediate disarmament of all Janjaweed militias, added the statement.

However, the ‘international community’ has been preoccupied with cajoling the right-wing parties and the military junta to reach a power-sharing agreement, through which the military rule can be given a civilian face. As an initial step toward this end, a framework agreement was signed between these right-wing parties of the coalition called the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC).

Such an agreement between the junta and the FFC – which had already shared power with the military from August 2019 until it was thrown out by the government in the coup in October 2021 – cannot address the crisis in Darfur, Rojal pointed out.

“Without justice,” which cannot be ensured under any arrangement where the military holds state-power, “there will be no coexistence or peace,” Rojal said, stressing on the need to dismantle the RSF and “to hand over all the criminals for trial” at the ICC.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... in-darfur/

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South Africa: Ramaphosa Vows to Address Energy Challenges

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Children read by candlelight, South Africa, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @_AfricanSoil

The ANC's National Executive Council decided to give top priority in 2023 to the energy crisis.

On Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged to address energy challenges and enhance efforts to fight against crime and corruption.

Ramaphosa, also president of the African National Congress (ANC), the country's ruling party, made the remarks in his address to mark the 111th anniversary of the ANC at Dr. Petrus Molemela Stadium in Mangaung, Free State Province.

The ANC's National Executive Council decided to give top priority in 2023 to the energy crisis, ANC renewal initiatives, better service delivery, collaboration with social partners to boost job and investment creation, and the fight against crime and corruption.

The unstable electricity supply remains one of the biggest barriers to economic growth and disturbs the lives of all South Africans. "The ANC calls for Eskom and the government to immediately focus on restoring additional units to operation as quickly as possible," he said.


Ramaphosa said the government should prioritize infrastructure investment over other expenditure items, alongside the structural reform of network industries, including electricity, telecommunications, water, rail, aviation, and road infrastructure.

In order to address South Africa's persistently high unemployment rate, which is particularly acute among young people, grants must be linked to opportunities for jobs, self-employment, training, and other types of economic development, he said.

Ramaphosa pledged that the ANC will take action to strengthen law enforcement agencies and public participation in the urgent task of restoring peace and stability across the country.

"Additionally, immediate action must be made to restore the capabilities of law enforcement organizations and other criminal justice system institutions that have been compromised by state capture and corruption," he said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Sou ... -0005.html

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South African CP, Message on the 28th annual commemoration of Joe Slovo passing away
1/9/23 12:46 PM

South African Communist Party

Message on the 28th annual commemoration of Joe Slovo passing away



Delivered by the SACP General Secretary, Solly Mapaila

Avalon Cemetery, Johannesburg, 6 January 2023

Today marks the 28th year since we lost this gallant revolutionary, Joe Slovo, an activist member and leader of our entire liberation movement, on 6 January 1995.

The electricity crisis and load-shedding

We commemorate Slovo amid a devastating load-shedding. Three years after Slovo passed away, the government adopted a White Paper on Energy, in December 1998. This marked the post-1994 beginnings of the devastating load-shedding we face today. This load-shedding is therefore not only a direct result of state capture activities at Eskom. It is also a direct result of the failed neoliberal policy paradigm. Under the White Paper on Energy adopted in December 1998, the government chose to not invest in new public power generation capacity as an immediate priority. This decision was against the imperative to build electricity supply self-sufficiency to keep pace with the impressive post-1994 electrification rollout.

The government prioritised leaving new power generation capacity building for private power producers, the so-called “Independent Power Producers”, and to unbundle Eskom to facilitate the procurement of power from the profit-driven interests. This stance was part of the macroeconomic framework, especially fiscal policy. The government prioritised austerity, cutting budgets in a way that affected key economic and social transformation and development imperatives.

By the time the Medupi and Kusile Power station build programmes came to the fore, it was too little, too late. Old power stations, built under apartheid, were obviously aging. They started breaking down more and more frequently, also failing to cope with the electricity needs of people and the economy within a decade after the government adopted the December 1998 White Paper on Energy. Meanwhile, the construction of the two, badly designed, power stations missed completion deadlines, suffered from poor work, undermining quality standards, resulting in unsustainable cost overruns, contributing, in no small measure, to the rise of the Eskom debt crisis.

The government must resolve the electricity crisis and stop the load-shedding as a matter of urgency. It has been emphasised the transmission grid is important for electricity supply security. This is correct. However, the source of the current load-shedding lies in electric power generation incapacity. This shows that generation capacity is important for electricity supply security. For example, one reason we are given by both Eskom and the government as being behind the current load-shedding is sabotage by contractors in outsourced operations.

To secure electricity supply security, those contracts must be terminated. Every critical aspect of power generation capacity at Eskom must be in the hands of Eskom, not contractors. Those outsourced critical power generation operations must be insourced. The state cannot rely on profit-driven contractors, as well as the outsourcing the saboteurs profiteer from, to ensure electricity power generation security.

Adequately resourcing preventative maintenance at Eskom to avoid plant breakdowns must be strengthened as a matter of urgency and as an apex priority. This will go a long way in reducing load-shedding due to breakdowns.

Equally important, the state has to invest in new electric power generation capacity, instead of continuing the neoliberal path that prioritised investment in new electric power generation capacity by the profit-driven private power producers.

Economic challenges, crises, transformation, and development

The economy in our country is continuing to struggle, with policy inability to overcome the persisting high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Unemployment affects a population of approximately 12 million active and discouraged work-seekers. Unemployment in South Africa rose to and worsened above crisis-high levels greater than 20 per cent by the narrow definition that excludes discouraged work-seekers since 1996 after the government adopted the neoliberal policy called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) in that year. Considering discouraged work-seekers, unemployment has been higher than the official rate, throughout.

Nearly half of the total, and over half the female population, subsists at an income below the upper bound poverty level.

Wages and grants have not been increasing at a rate commensurate with the rising costs of living.

The majority of our people, who live in poverty, are under even greater strain as fuel and food prices have been soaring to unprecedented levels as a result, among others, of the imperialist sanctions imposed on Russia by the US-led NATO regimes.

Besides their active participation in the war they have provoked in Ukraine, the US-led imperialist regimes have weaponised sanctions. They use sanctions as weapons of active engagement in the war in Ukraine, besides the military hardware and technical support that they have been deploying in the war, respectively, actively supporting Ukraine, but primarily using it as a fodder for their imperialist expansionism and insatiable appetite to control every part of the world and the world-economy.

The imperialist sanctions imposed on Russia, which is a major oil producer, like those imposed on Venezuela, the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world, have driven up oil prices. This has translated into rising prices for consumer goods, including, notably, food.

South Africa must exercise its democratic sovereignty. It must buy oil from Russia and Venezuela directly. The US and its imperialist nexus of evil, its Western European allies, must not dictate to us where we can or cannot buy oil, fuel, and other important inputs in production and social reproduction. Our national interests, with the workers and poor at heart, matter. We must stand up for our rights, as a people, and self-determination, as an independent democratic republic.

The high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality persisting in South Africa, as well as the rising costs of living driven, among others, by imperialist sanctions (which affects us in more ways over and above the rising costs of living), all take place in a country considered being the most unequal in the world, compared to 164 countries. The wealthiest 10 per cent of the population in South Africa owns 80 per cent of the wealth, on the one hand. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of our people, the workers and poor, are propertyless.

The impacts of unemployment, poverty, inequality and the rising costs of living in South Africa are racialised and gendered, based on the legacy of the racist colonial and apartheid rule, exploitation and oppression that prevailed in the country.

The high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, and, consequently, the rising costs of living mostly affect black people, women, men, and young people, in the same way as it is black women and men and their children who live in squatter camps, overcrowded townships and under-developed rural areas in former Bantustans. We want to use this fact to caution against “analyses” of gender relations, one of them liberal, devoid of, or blind to, the race and class content of gender realities.

The material conditions of black women, especially the workers and poor, continue to reflect the triple legacy of patriarchal domination, racial oppression and class supper-exploitation. This is case in almost all major economic and social indicators.

When we put forward policy alternatives, including a change in policy direction, we therefore do so with the full understanding that each policy must integrate the elimination of the legacy of racial oppression and gender domination as its key objective.

Yes, South Africa needs a change in policy direction to overcome the persisting high levels of racialised and gendered unemployment, poverty and inequality. The government should counter the rising costs of living, address the impact of costs of living on the workers and poor through caring policies, including price controls, as opposed to the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates uncaringly—without regard to the impact on the workers, poor, lower to middle strata of the middle-class.

Instead of raising interest rates when inflationary pressures are driven by external factors, such as imperialist sanctions and external wars, the Reserve Bank must actively play a developmental role. It must support industrialisation and sustainable employment creation at scale to bring down unemployment.

So far, the monetary policy regime followed by the Reserve Bank since Parliament adopted our current constitution in 1996 has failed, with distinction, to deliver on the central bank’s constitutional mandate to help South Africa achieve balanced and sustainable growth. A new accountability framework is required to hold the Reserve Bank accountable on this constitutional mandate, and on industrialisation and sustainable employment creation at scale.

Our strategy to build a powerful, socialist movement of the workers and poor must take this call forward as part of the key objectives to achieve structural transformation, inclusive development and meet the material needs of the people, of whom the majority are the workers and poor. The mandate of the Reserve Bank must include sustainable employment creation and supporting national production development, not least industrialisation.

For the national democratic revolution to succeed, and for our movement to retain democratic power, it must develop total productive forces as rapidly as possible to meet the needs of the people. Increasingly, the people do not vote based on a sentimental attachment to past revolutionary role, such as the liberation struggle, important as that is. More and more, the people, especially the new generations, vote based on policy responses to their material conditions and aspirations. For instance, no one can argue, successfully, that the electoral decline of the ANC is based solely on subjective factors. As a matter of fact, it is based, and in no small measure, on objective factors.

Our programme of action for 2022 includes deepening wider transformation of the financial sector. The banking sector in our country is dominated by profit-driven oligopolies, a handful of commercial banks. The state has no effective footprint in this critical sector. Monetary policy transmission overwhelmingly depends on the profit-driven banking oligopolies. As part of our financial sector transformation campaign, we will intensify the objective for the government to build a public banking system, comprising national, sectoral and regional banks, all functioning on a developmental basis, to serve the people.

The government must also foster an enabling environment for the co-operative baking sector to grow and thrive. To this end, there must be radical changes in the regulatory and legislative framework. There must also be direct material support.

While pursuing structural transformation in the financial sector, as in the rest of the economy, we will continue to fight for the commercial banks to reduce financial service fees and interest rates, including on home loans. In the ultimate analysis, the commercial banks handle public deposits from the government, other state institutions and members of the public. The banks do use the public deposits as their sources of funds in extending credit, making money from interest rates. The public reserves the right to be treated fairly by the banks, as opposed to being exploited financially.

It is unacceptable for a bank to so-called “buy” a house for R10 or R100, evict the affected family, and then sell the house to a third party at market value, profiteering from injustice. That is nothing but pure theft, criminality, corruption at its best. For a bank to be ordered by a court of law as it recently happened to restore the house to its rightful owner is absolutely correct, but it not enough. The banks must be charged with the criminality and prosecuted like other criminals.

Also, the exorbitant compound interest regime, followed by the commercial banks on home loans and the associated unscrupulous evictions, are unfair and financially exploitative. This must come to an end as well.

Regarding social policy, the key working-class demand we want to underline today is that the government must not terminate the Social Relief of Distress Grant at the end of March 2024. The government must maintain the Social Distress of Relief Grant and improve it towards a universal basic income grant.

In memory of Joe Slovo, the SACP will strengthen its Land, Food and Work Campaign it launched in October 2022, as well as the related efforts to secure integrated human settlement in both rural and urban areas. Rural development must return to the status of an apex priority, including investment, infrastructure and production development, in addition to integrated human settlement and other development programmes.

Joe Slovo dedicated his revolutionary life and times fighting for a caring government and caring economic and social policies, towards socialism. The measures we have committed ourselves to advancing are very much in line with seeking transformation towards a democratic developmental state not as an end in itself but as a means to an end with caring economic and social policies.

Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no real revolutionary movement

Joe Slovo was not only a member and leader of the SACP. He was also a member and leader of the ANC and the joint ANC and SACP wing of the armed struggle, uMkhonto weSizwe, the MK. He contributed immensely to the major documents elaborating the theory of our struggle for liberation and socialism, including but not limited to the Freedom Charter and the first ever ANC Strategy and Tactics adopted in Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1969. Let us remember. It was in Morogoro where the ANC for the first time opened its membership ranks to activists from other national groups.

In joining the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed black majority, Slovo was advancing the principle of non-racialism, which the Communist Party was the first to introduce and advance before all else in South Africa both theoretically and practically. Slovo was taking forward the Party programme towards socialism, which he dedicated his entire politically active life to achieve.

In memory of Joe Slovo, we must defend the advance towards a completely non-racial South Africa, against the many backward tendencies that have emerged, such as narrow nationalism, chauvinism and the reassertion of racist attitudes and tendencies in our country. In one united voice, we must condemn the racist behaviour by the white men who have been charged with crimes, including attempted murder, after allegedly assaulting black teenagers trying to use a resort swimming pool in December 2022.

Concerning renewal and unity: If there is one point we wish to emphasise today, in memory of Joe Slovo, that is that there will be no real renewal and unity of the ANC and our entire movement without a revolutionary theory. For the renewal and unity process to succeed, the movement must throw neoliberalism under the bus, in the same way as it must dismantle the networks of state capture and deal a decisive blow to other forms of corruption. Also, the renewal and unity of the movement will be incomplete without the reconfiguration of the Alliance.

The relationship of the SACP and the working-class at large to state power is part and parcel of the core tenets of the renewal and unity of the movement and reconfiguration of the Alliance. In delivering the Political Report to the 55th ANC National Conference in December 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa correctly drew attention to the process on this matter taking place in the SACP. The formulation the President used was not covered in the official text of the report he delivered. He clearly urged the ANC to pay attention to this question in a frank manner.

During the first quarter of this year, 2023, the SACP will convene a Special Central Committee Plenary to receive a revised report on the implementation of its 15th National Congress resolution on the SACP and state and popular power, including electoral considerations. The resolution is clear the SACP must more effectively contest elections without or without a reconfigured Alliance—in other words, if the Alliance remains not reconfigured, if there is no tangible progress towards the reconfiguration process.

The Alliance cannot exist as an ineffectual article of faith. Its reconfiguration must give play to collective leadership of the national democratic revolution, based on consensus-seeking Alliance consultation and collective accountability. There is no single reason, in principle, why we cannot work together if we are indeed allies.

The international situation and messages of solidarity

The international atmosphere is dominated by hostility. The US-led NATO imperialist provoked war in Ukraine is one of the many indicators of the hostility. The imperialist regimes are engaged in the same agenda in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. At the centre of this imperialist agenda is, as we have said, an insatiable appetite to maintain world dominance and hegemony, to subordinate and control all countries, and to exploit their resources and labour. To counter this agenda, we need to build a world peace movement and intensify our anti-imperialist struggle. The working-class and its allies must intensify this struggle in every country, region and continent. We will do our part, as the SACP. Within this framework, we call for an end to all imperialist machinations, wars and aggression in every part of the world.

We express our solidarity with the people of Cuba against the criminal US blockade of Cuba and occupation of Guantanamo Bay.

We express our solidarity with the people of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and others in Latin America struggling against the US-led imperialist subordination, subversion and attacks.

We express our solidarity with the people of Western Sahara and Palestine against occupation and exploitation of the occupied territories by Morocco and the apartheid Israeli regime, respectively.

We express our solidarity with the Kurds against oppression in various countries in the Middle East. We call for the release of Abdullah Öcalan and express our support for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish Question.

We express our solidarity with the people of Syria and Lebanon against imperialist machinations, occupation and exploitation of their countries or occupied territories.

Our immediate challenge in Southern Africa and Africa at large is to build a strong and united working-class movement. This includes revitalising the African Left Networking Forum, the ALNEF. We will carry out both tasks more decisively.

There must be peace in Sudan and Southern Cameroon, and a transition to democratisation in Swaziland. Therefore, we express our solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy. We call for a peaceful resolution of the situations in Sudan and Southern Cameroon. We strongly condemn state terrorism in Cameroon against the people of Southern Cameroon.

http://solidnet.org/article/South-Afric ... sing-away/
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Re: Africa

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:05 pm

Protests in breakaway Somaliland call for reunification with Somalia

Even as the US and UK are increasingly legitimizing secessionist rule in Somaliland, whose sovereignty has no international recognition, a unionist movement seeking a united Somalia threatens to unravel the self-declared republic

January 17, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni

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A protest in Taleex on January 15. Photo: Khaatumo Media Office

Protests against secessionist rule are spreading across the Sool region of Somaliland, the breakaway region of northern Somalia. Unionist protesters are calling for reunification with Somalia and Somali activists and observers opine that the protests might soon spread across Somaliland, questioning the legitimacy of its unrecognized claim to sovereignty, which the US and UK have been seeking to strengthen with recent overtures.

On Sunday, January 15, protests were reported from the Taleex city, where Somaliland’s tricolor flags were removed and replaced with the blue flags of Somalia. Taleex is about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter of the protests, Las Anod, Sool region’s capital city. Las Anod was captured by Somaliland from Somalia’s autonomous region of Puntland in 2007.

The protests began in the city on December 28. In an attempt to put them down, security forces killed at least 20 civilians over the following five days, before reportedly retreating to the city’s outskirts on January 5.

Somaliland’s commander of Armed Forces, Brigadier General Mahad Ambashe, has, however, indicated his intention to take back the city, saying that his troops “shall continue staying in Las Anod and Sool region to ensure law and order has been followed by residents.”

Defiant, the clan leaders of the region held a meeting in Las Anod on January 12, calling on Somaliland’s forces to withdraw from Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC), where a majority of the people have been historically opposed to secession from Somalia.

Pro-unionist troops under the command of the head of the Dhulbanate clan have taken over the city and sworn to defend it from Somaliland. “Everybody is waiting for the tribesmen in Las Anod to fully announce a war against Somaliland. And you will hear this very soon as they have formed a committee of 33 heads to come up with a roadmap to remove Somaliland from SSC,” Elham Garaad, a UK-based Somali activist whose unionist parents migrated out of Somaliland, told Peoples Dispatch.

The protests had spread to the city of Kalabaydh, 70 kilometers to the southwest of Las Anod, by January 12. Two days later, unionist demonstrations broke out in Xudun, 100 kilometers to the north of Las Anod, and in Boocame, 80 kilometers to its east. Protesters also took to the streets of Boocame’s neighboring Tukarak on January 15, and blocked a minister from visiting the city.

Badhaan, a city in Sanaag region, and Buuhoodle city in Cayn region, have also witnessed protests. The three regions together had formed the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC) state of Somalia, before being forced into Somaliland by the secessionist Somali National Movement (SNM).

Waving the blue flag of Somalia, the protesters have been demanding the “right to self-determination” on the question of reuniting with Somalia, which was fractured after the civil war that ended with the collapse of its federal government in 1991.

“Most regions in Somaliland oppose secession”
“Until 1991, there was no such thing as Somaliland, except when the area was a British Protectorate,” Mohamed Olad, a Somali activist studying law in the US, told Peoples Dispatch. “The idea of forming a country on the basis of this border of the British protectorate,” separating itself from the part of Somalia under Italian occupation, was opposed by two of the three original states of Somalia that came to be part of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland after 1991, he said.

Support for secession was largely limited to the North West state, a stronghold of the SNM, which fought in the war against Somalia’s federal government led by Mohamed Siad Barre. SSC and Awdal “have historically opposed” the notion of Somaliland, Olad explained, adding that Awdal was captured by the SNM with the help of Ethiopia during the civil war.

The SSC leaders, on the other hand, were tricked into signing an agreement on the guarantee that Somaliland would form itself into a single state within Somalia. “That agreement never included secession,” he said, adding that discontent against Somaliland’s rule has since been intensifying, and protests might also soon spread to Awdal.

Three of the four major clans—namely the Dhulbahante, Warsangeli and Gadabursi—along with the smaller Issa clan, had opposed the secession from Somalia, added Elham Garaad. Only the Isak clan, which dominated the SNM and had a strong presence in the North West state, supported the secession and formation of Somaliland. Other clans have since felt marginalized by the Isak, which wields disproportionate power in the government of Somaliland.

But currently, the “Isak themselves are divided,” Garaad said. “Gaarhajis, one of the largest tribes (under the Isak clan), has been vocal about the atrocities in the SSC region.” Defending the right of the people in SSC to be unionist, they have called on the Somaliland government to stop the killings. Garaad maintains that the current spate of protests may soon reach even Somaliland’s capital city Hargeisa, which has been a historic stronghold of the SNM’s secessionist politics, dominated by the Isak.

“SNM was led by the elite and petty bourgeoisie of the Isak clan. They have neither dealt with the class contradictions within the clan, nor succeeded in integrating other clans into the secessionist movement,” historian Mohamed Hassan told Peoples Dispatch. “While the Isak is supposed to be the ruling clan, in effect, what you have in Somaliland is a one-man rule by former army Colonel Musa Bihi Abdi, whose term had already expired in October 2022. [An] increasing number of people within the Isak clan are also supporting unionist politics.”

Somalia is among the most homogeneous countries in Africa, in terms of language and religion, explained Hassan, who is also an advisor to the head of Ethiopia’s Somali state. The clan system from feudal times, preserved under colonial administration as an essential tool for divide-and-rule, remains the key fissure exploited by imperialism to ensure Somalia remains a fractured nation, he argued.

Rising tide of Somali nationalism
“But hundreds of thousands from Somaliland are working and staying in Somalia,” he added. Youngsters from Somaliland make up a significant portion of Somalia’s national army. The large Somali diaspora is getting increasingly politicized and organized by international exposure. All this has contributed to a surge in Somali nationalism, he said, adding that even businessmen in Somaliland, who want a larger and integrated market, seek a unified Somalia.

The tensions between clans—whose leaders choose the MPs in most of Somalia, including in Somaliland—is only a surface manifestation of the tide of Somali nationalism churning from underneath, Hassan argued. In the face of this nationalist sentiment, Somaliland’s existence as an independent entity is facing a “crisis of legitimacy” internally, he maintains.

This crisis is accentuated by the fact that Musa Bihi Abdi’s presidential term expired last October, despite which he has continued to rule without having conducted elections yet. In September, the Somaliland Electoral Commission announced that elections cannot be held for at least nine more months due to financial and technical problems.

Opposition parties, which have 52 of the 82 seats in Somaliland’s parliament, had led protests in August demanding timely elections. At least seven people were killed and several more wounded in the crackdown on these protests. It was the assassination of a popular opposition politician, in the backdrop of a spate of killings of prominent people in the SSC region over the last decade, that triggered the protests on December 28 in Las Anod, which have snowballed into a unionist movement.

While Somaliland is thus unraveling, with internal rifts between ruling and opposition parties, mounting tensions between the clans, and sa urging unionist sentiment contesting its legitimacy, the US and the UK have been increasingly legitimizing the secessionist state.

US military base in Somaliland?
The then Commander of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) General Stephen Townsend met with President Abdi in Somaliland in May, becoming the highest ranking official to visit the breakaway state, whose claims to sovereignty have no international recognition.

While not recognizing Somaliland as a sovereign state, and officially adhering to ‘One Somalia policy,’ the US has lately made several gestures seen as a dilution of this policy. Prior to Townsend’s visit, in March 2022, the Somaliland Partnership Act was introduced in the US Senate by Republicans Jim Risch and Mike Rounds, and Democrat Chris Van Hollen.

The “Biden Administration has limited itself to the confines of a ‘single Somalia’ policy at the detriment of other democratic actors in the country. In this complex time in global affairs and for the Horn of Africa, the United States should explore all possible mutually-beneficial relationships with stable and democratic partners, like Somaliland, and not limit ourselves with outdated policy approaches and diplomatic frameworks that don’t meet today’s challenges,” Jim Risch had said.

The act was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on December 23, 2022, under the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which was the first time a separate reference to Somaliland was made in US law.

The Act commissions a feasibility study by the “Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense,” to determine “whether opportunities exist for greater collaboration in the pursuit of United States national security interests… with… Somaliland.”

It further seeks to identify “the practicability and advisability of improving the professionalization and capacity of security sector actors within the Federal Member States (FMS) and Somaliland.” While adding that “Nothing in this Act… may be construed to convey United States recognition of Somalia’s FMS or Somaliland as an independent entity,” it stops just short of doing that.

Somaliland’s port city of Berbera will also be one of the sites for the US-led multinational 10-day military exercise scheduled to take place in February. On January 13, personnel from AFRICOM’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa [CJTF-HOA] visited Somaliland and surveyed the Berbera port.

“Berbera is now an American military base without settling the secession issue,” former Somali Special Envoy to the United States, Abukar Arman, wrote in the Eurasia review. “Stakes have never been higher for all actors. Against that backdrop, President Muse Bihi was given the nod and wink to march on ahead to secure total control over his claimed territory by any means necessary. He was also granted the reassurance that neither the central government of Somalia nor Puntland will interfere militarily or otherwise.”

“Oil companies want a weak and divided Somalia”
In the meantime, Genel Energy, listed in London Stock Exchange, claimed the right to explore and exploit the oil fields in Somaliland last month. The oil ministry of the federal government of Somalia has said it “categorically rejects Genel Energy plc’s claim to own petroleum rights in Somalia’s northern regions and calls upon Genel Energy plc to cease its illegal claim to own petroleum rights.”

Insisting that it is the only body authorized to grant such rights, it warned: “Any authorization granted in violation of Somalia’s laws and regulations is unlawful and would be considered null and void.”

Refuting Somalia’s Federal government, Somaliland’s secessionist government has claimed “the authority to engage foreign investors in order to explore and exploit the Republic of Somaliland’s potential hydrocarbons and mineral resources. No one other than the Somaliland government has the authority to claim or award an exploration license within Somaliland,” a statement issued on December 29 said, amid the crackdown on the protests in Las Anod.

Las Anod is also claimed by Somaliland’s neighboring Puntland, which has been an autonomous region within Somalia in dispute with Somaliland over the SSC region. On January 9, Puntland declared that it will be independent of Somalia until the Federal Constitution is finalized.

Disputes over the rights to enter into partnerships with foreign companies over oil and other natural resources are reported to be among the key reasons behind tensions between the Federal government of Somalia and Puntland.

“Oil and gas has been found across Somalia, including in Somaliland and Puntland. British capital is heavily invested. These oil companies want a weak and divided Somalia, because a strong and united country will be more difficult to exploit,” Hassan said.

Puntland’s state government maintains that the provisional federal constitution and the constitution of Puntland state allows it to act as an independent entity until the federal constitution is finalized, and all the states’ constitutions are harmonized with it.

Pointing out that Puntland has a constitutional right to be independent until the finalization of the federal constitution, Olad said it is Somaliland that has been blocking the finalization of the constitution. The federal government of Somalia, he said, should ensure that Somaliland will no longer hold the process of finalizing the constitution hostage.

However, a lack of confidence in the federal government led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who is seen as inept and pliable by western powers, is perceptible, despite the surging unionist politics and nationalist sentiment.

The federal government can truly reflect the widespread sentiment of Somali nationalism only when it is elected on the basis of one-person-one-vote, argues Olad. Former President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmajo, who had become a popular representative of Somali nationalism, had promised to break the stranglehold of the clans by implementing universal adult suffrage, but failed to do so. He lost the clan-controlled election last year, and the current government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has failed to materialize the aspirations of Somali nationalism.

Mohamed Hassan sums the situation up by citing Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new is struggling to be born,” he says, adding that “the winds of change are most definitely blowing over all of Somalia.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/17/ ... h-somalia/

Direct from Western Sahara: learn about the struggle of the last colony in Africa

After 30 years of peace, the Polisario Front holds its 16th Congress amidst the war against Morocco’s invasion

January 17, 2023 by Michele de Mello

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16th Saharawi Congress in the Dajla refugee camp in the city of Tindouf, Algeria. Photo: Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

In the middle of the Sahara desert, half a million people resist and fight for their liberation. Under the slogan “intensify the armed struggle to expel the invader and build sovereignty,” the Polisario Front, the political organization that leads the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), is holding its 16th Congress in Dajla – one of five Sahrawi refugee camps in the town of Tindouf, Algeria. After 30 years of ceasefire, this is the first Congress to be held again in the context of armed confrontation with Morocco.

“All the human, financial, and material resources are sent to support the combat on the armed front. Before they were directed to other areas that will continue, but we must focus on the battlefield,” SADR’s Prime Minister Bucharaya Beyun declared.

The Sahrawi Republic was founded in 1975, after gaining its independence from Spain. After expelling the Spanish, the Sahrawi people began to fight against the invasion of Morocco, which sought to annex their territory of about 266,000 km² in North Africa, rich in phosphate and with a vast coastline facing the Atlantic.

Defeated in the war, in 1991, Morocco signed a ceasefire agreement with the Sahrawis, foreseeing the holding of a popular referendum, mediated by the United Nations (UN), which would seal Western Sahara’s independence. At the time, 2,500 Moroccan soldiers who had been captured by the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were handed over. In return, the kingdom of Rabat was supposed to release about 600 Sahrawi prisoners, but only handed over 200 people.

Since then, the Polisario Front leaders have opted for diplomatic means to regain control of their territory. In addition to putting the brakes on a decades-long promised referendum on the territory’s independence, in November 2020, Morocco violated the ceasefire and bombed the Sahrawi people in the region known as the “Guerguerat rift,” a gateway between the Sahara desert and the Atlantic.

Congress
Between January 13 and 17, 2,000 delegates from all the refugee camps and occupied Sahrawi territory met to elect the next president, the secretary general of the Polisario Front, and to define the political tactics for the next three years of armed struggle.

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2,000 delegates are responsible for electing a new government for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the next leaders of the Polisario Front. Photo: Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

Tata Salek is one of the elected delegates of the Polisario Front to participate in the Congress. Born in one of the refugee camps, at the age of 20, this is the first time she has participated in the main political event of the Sahrawi people. “We young people feel very proud to participate, to support our people and to have the opportunity to be more prepared for the debate. I want to continue participating and I hope that we can hold the next congress in our land,” says Tata.

In addition to the delegates, the Congress received more than 300 international visitors, representing allied countries and solidarity associations. The first two days are open to greetings from international guests, while the last days are closed to delegates. The entire event, however, is broadcast live to all refugee camps by Arasdtb TV, the Sahrawi state channel.

“We are in times of war, so the Congress is more focused on the armed struggle. It’s been over 40 years of debating political exits that have led nowhere. So women, men and young people alike have the same idea of taking up arms again to liberate our territory,” argues Tata Salek.

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Tata Salek, a young Saharawi of 20 years old, was elected a delegate and is participating for the first time in the Congress of the Polisario Front. Photo: Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

For her, the central role of women and youth will be the communicational battle.

“Diplomacy, led by men before the war, will now be a central task of women. On social media and in international travel. Even though women can also fight, our cause does not prevent women from participating in the fight, but now we are focused on the communicational fight, in making our cause visible in other countries,” says the young Sahrawi woman.

History
With one of the longest conflicts for independence in history, Western Sahara covers a desert territory of 266,000 km² in North Africa, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. The Sahrawi people represent a population of about 600,000, of which 260,000 are in the refugee camps in Algeria, about 200,000 in the liberated territory, and another 100,000 in exile. Western Sahara has the largest phosphate deposits in the world, in addition to copper, uranium, and iron reserves.

Spain took possession of the territory in 1885, and in 1950 the Sahara lost its colonial character and became Spain’s 53rd province. Since 1963, Western Sahara has become one of the 17 non-self-governing territories recognized by the UN — and the most populous of them. The list includes places such as the Falkland Islands, Bermuda, Gibraltar, and the Cayman Islands.

Only in 1975 did Spain sign the agreement granting independence to Western Sahara, making it considered the last colony on the African continent. The initial agreement was to respect the borders inherited from the colonial period, but interest in the phosphate reserves and the seafood-rich coast with access to the Canary and Celtic Islands caused the Spanish government to violate the pact.

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The Congress of the Polisario Front is broadcast on local television. Photo: Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

Polisario Front

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguía el Hamra and Rio del Oro (Polisario – Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro) was created in 1973, inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The goal was to unify Saharawi political movements and parties into a single political instrument around the struggle for independence from Spain.

The structure encompassed the National Union of Saharawi Women (UNMS), the League for the Protection of Sahrawi Political Prisoners in Moroccan Prisons (LPPS), a youth front, and the Sahrawi Popular Liberation Army. Proclaiming the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic on February 27, 1976, the Front installed a government-in-exile in the city of Tindouf, Algeria.

Already in the first ten years after the end of the colony, SADR gained the formal recognition of 46 states and its membership in the African Union was approved.

“The Polisario Front tried to create a state in an abnormal situation and succeeded. Our government has diplomatic relations, several ministries, contact with other countries, and this is our path. The difference is that now we need to put more efforts on the military front,” defends Prime Minister Beyun.

Relationship with Brazil
Today 82 countries recognize the independence of Western Sahara. In Latin America, the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the Sahrawi Arab Republic was Panama, back in 1978. Only Brazil, Argentina and Chile maintain a neutral position. The other states recognize the right of the Sahrawi people over their territory.

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In the middle of the Sahara desert, the Sahrawi people constitute their Wilayas (states) with their houses and shops. Photo: Michele de Mello / Brasil de Fato

In 2022, with the rise of progressive governments, Peru and Colombia resumed diplomatic relations, while Bolivia has promised to open a Sahrawi embassy in La Paz this year.

“Our strategy is to continue the [military] combat and, in parallel, to advance in the diplomatic strategy, seeking more recognition. With regards to domestic politics, we want to strengthen education, work with women and youth. We want to win on all fronts, not only in combat. We want to guarantee a dignified life for our people,” concluded the Sahrawi premier.

Brazil maintains a position of neutrality regarding the diplomatic status of the Sahrawi Republic. “We hope that Lula, who knows the Sahrawi cause, will be on our side, that Brazil will recognize the Sahrawi Arab Republic and we hope to open an embassy in Brasilia,” said the Polisario Front representative for Brazil, Ahmed Mulay Ali

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/17/ ... in-africa/

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US Airstrikes in Somalia Increased by 30% in 2022
JANUARY 11, 2023

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Fire and smoke rise from a house destroyed by US airstrike in Somalia. File photo.

US airstrikes in Somalia rose by 30% in 2022 as the Biden administration has escalated its involvement in the war against al-Shabaab, Military Times reported on Sunday, January 8.

According to data compiled by the Long War Journal, a project of the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank, US Africa Command launched at least 15 airstrikes in Somalia in 2022, up from 11 airstrikes the previous year.

US airstrikes in Somalia initially dropped under President Biden, with many of the 2021 strikes being launched in January, during the final days of the Trump administration. According to the Long War Journal, AFRICOM launched 45 airstrikes in 2020 and 59 in 2019, which was a record high for US operations in Somalia.

White House Summit With African Leaders Results in Empty Promises


But in 2022, Biden ordered the deployment of up to 500 troops in Somalia and stepped up airstrikes as the US-backed Mogadishu-based government began an offensive against al-Shabaab. There was heavy fighting on the ground during the final months of 2022, when many US airstrikes took place.

AFRICOM claimed it killed 107 al-Shabaab fighters in 2022 and didn’t report civilian deaths. But the Pentagon is known for undercounting civilian casualties, and its operations in Somalia are shrouded in secrecy as there is no Western media presence on the ground and the US-backed government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has strict rules for local journalists.

Al-Shabaab has also stepped up its attacks and claimed responsibility for a car bombing in Somalia’s central Hiraan region that killed 35 people last week. Mohamud’s government said on Saturday, January 7, that al-Shabaab is open to negotiations, signaling there might be an attempt at diplomacy between the warring parties.

https://orinocotribune.com/us-airstrike ... 0-in-2022/

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Burkina Faso demands the departure of French troops from its territory[/b]

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The European nation has 400 soldiers stationed in Kamboinssin, northeast of Ouagadougou, the capital, as part of Operation Sabre. | Photo: EFE
Posted 22 January 2023 (10 hours 29 minutes ago)

From Burkina Faso they accuse the French forces of not doing enough to fight the jihadists in the Sahel region.

The government of Burkina Faso officially asked its French counterpart to leave the French military contingent stationed in the African country within 30 days.

Government sources clarified that this does not mean a break in relations with France, but a readjustment of the military cooperation agreements, signed on December 17, 2018.

The European nation has 400 soldiers stationed in Kamboinssin, northeast of Ouagadougou, the capital, as part of Operation Sabre, at a time when violence and jihadist attacks are on the rise in the Sahel region.


Last Friday hundreds of people demonstrated in the main city of the country to demand the departure of the French troops and the ambassador of the European country, which represented the third protest on the subject in recent months.

The protests accuse France of not doing enough to help Burkina Faso against the terrorist attacks it is suffering, as well as siding with the attackers.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power on September 30, 2022, has repeatedly declared his intention to recover national integrity and sovereignty.

According to specialized sources, the preferred option for France would be to redeploy these special forces in the south of neighboring Niger, where about 2,000 French soldiers are deployed...

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/burkina- ... -0005.html

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Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 22, 2023
Ian Beddowes

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We do not know yet how good or bad the coup governments of Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso will be. But one thing for sure, they have weakened the parasitic hold of France and the USA on a large part of Africa and we must support them at this time.

At the recent US-Africa Summit held in December 2022, a number of countries were not invited: Eritrea voted against the UN resolution condemning Russia for defending the Donbass, Somaliland is not internationally recognised, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic has the greater part of its territory occupied by Morocco, a close US ally.

Then Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso were excluded. These three have a lot in common. All three are former French colonies which recently had military coups supported by their people and have now excluded both the French and the US from their territories.

The common perception is that if a military coup removes a government elected through the ballot box that this must be bad thing.

Well! In most cases it is. But not in all cases.

If a foreign power which controls the economy of your country and also controls the election machinery is that a democracy?

Western countries and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have condemned the miliary coup in Mali which took place in 2020 and the second ‘coup within a coup’ which took place in May 2021 and made original coup leader, position of interim President of the Republic of Mali. But even Western news agencies are finding it difficult to suppress the fact that the coup government has widespread popular support. from the government-backed United States Institute of Peace says: Colonel Assimi Goita, assumed the A report from the government-backed United States Institute of Peace says:

“Malians are so exhausted with instability and graft, they’re willing to give military leaders — thus far free of the taint of corruption — an opportunity to address the country’s longstanding challenges.”

In Guinea on 5th September 2021, Lieutenant-Colonel Mamady Doumbouya seized control of state television and declared that President Alpha Conde’s government had been dissolved and the nation’s borders closed. Conde was 83 years old and has forced to stand for a third term and had won an election marked by violence and fraud

Now in Burkina Faso, a coup has placed Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim President. The coup brought jubilation in Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou with people holding pictures of Malian leader Assim Goita and assassinated former Burkinabe President Tomas Sankara.

What is interesting here is how western countries are selective about which coups they call democratic and which they support!

Immediately after the coup against Tomas Sankara, his murderer, Blaise Compaore won immediate recognition. Likewise when Mali’s first President Communist-leaning Modibo Keita was removed by a coup in 1968 and replaced by the French-backed dictator Moussa Traore who was to be in power from 1968-1991, there was no outcry.

In Guinea, its first President Ahmed Sekou Toure demanded immediate independence from France in 1958 without any remaining control by France. When the French pulled out, they sabotaged everything. They left no money in the government bank account. They destroyed all records and they physically destroyed most of the infrastructure as a lesson to all other colonies which might demand full independence.

As other countries colonised by France obtained nominal independence, the following conditions were imposed:

1. Colonial Debt for the benefits of France colonisation The newly ‘independent’ countries should pay for the infrastructure built by France in the country during colonisation.

2. The African countries should deposit their national monetary reserves into French Central Bank.

The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is /operated by the French Treasury. Under the terms of the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.

More than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks (which control currency, one for West Africa, one for Central Africa) are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury.

It is estimated that France is holding close to US$ 500 billion of African countries money in its treasury.

France allows their African colonies to access only 15% of the money in any given year. If they need more than that, they have to borrow the extra money from their own 65% from the French Treasury at commercial rates.

In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said: “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power” Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterand already prophesied in 1957 that: “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”

3. Right of first refusal on any raw or natural resource discovered in the country France has the first right to buy any natural resources found in the land of its colonies

4. Priority to French interests and companies in public procurement and public building.

5. Exclusive right of France to supply military equipment and military officers

6. Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests

7. Obligation to make French the official language of the country and the language for education.

7 out of the 10 most illiterate countries in the world are among these Francophone African countries.

This includes Guinea, Chad and Burkina Faso. All have under 50% literacy.

8. Obligation to use France colonial money, the CFA Franc

9. Obligation to send France annual balance and reserve report.

Without the report, no money. Reports are audited by the Central Bank of France and the French Treasury.

10. No military alliance with any other country unless authorised by France.

11. Obligation to ally with France in any situation of war or global crisis.

Africans are obliged to fight for France.

We can no longer agree to the military occupation of Africa and the syphoning of African wealth by other countries. France must leave Africa permanently.

The majority of ECOWAS countries and a large number of countries in the African Union are in reality French colonies under French control. No wonder that these organisations are either ineffective or worse — organs of neo-colonial control.

Further, the jihadist insurgency in the region began after NATO armed al Qaeda in Libya during the bombing and destruction of that country. After that, including the genocide against black Libyans, these forces moved south. We know too that there is so much corruption in Ukraine that weapons sent to Ukraine by Western countries are frequently ending up in this region. Of course that then gives the excuse for US and French forces to go in as part of their ‘War against Terror’. In these three countries, US and French forces have been expelled and the Russian Wagner Group has now been employed to give assistance.

We do not know yet how good or bad the coup governments of Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso will be. But one thing for sure, they have weakened the parasitic hold of France and the USA on a large part of Africa and we must support them at this time.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... kina-faso/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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