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Nov 3rd, 2006 - 15:01:36 |
King TUT JR.
we're trying to settle our huge debt problem.
Trade to top China-Africa summit
More than 40 African heads of state and ministers are in Beijing for a summit with China on trade and investment.
"We take great pride in China's strong and warm friendship with Africa," said Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi at the opening of the conference.
As its economy booms, China's drive to buy African oil and other commodities has led to a big increase in two-way trade, worth $42bn (£22bn) in 2005.
Africa is also a growing market for Chinese goods.
But critics say Beijing is stifling African manufacturing.
Some analysts have said Africa is the only place left to go, as most of the world's other big oil reserves are already being developed by major Western energy companies.
The three-day summit celebrates 50 years of diplomatic relations between China and Africa.
It opens with talks between foreign ministers from at least 45 African nations and China.
But the discussions will primarily be about the rapidly expanding economic ties between the two sides.
Trade between China and Africa has increased tenfold since 1995.
Officials have said that up to 2,500 separate business deals could be under discussion during the summit. Many of them are expected to revolve around China's hunger for African mineral resources, particularly oil.
One of the countries taking part in the summit is Nigeria - Africa's biggest exporter of crude oil.
'Exploitation'
Some critics have voiced concerns over how Chinese-owned firms are treating African workers.
I think many of us African leaders have in fact taken independent positions that may or may not be consistent with China's own policy stance
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Liberian President
Protests broke out in Zambia in July about the alleged ill-treatment of workers at a Chinese-owned mine, and there have been reports of pay disputes in Namibia.
China's supporters point to the fact that it has invested billions of dollars in aid, cheap loans and helping to upgrade roads, ports, railways, telephone lines, power stations and other key infrastructure across Africa.
Often, Chinese money is funding projects that Western investors had deemed too risky.
Many economists argue that overall, China's growing economic ties to Africa are benefiting the region.
Taiwan displeased
Meanwhile, the international community has criticised China's attitude towards some African countries: notably, its refusal to criticise Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, and its reluctance to force the Sudanese government to accept UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
But in an interview with the BBC, Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said that accepting China's investment would not mean agreeing with its political standpoint.
HAVE YOUR SAY
I hope Africa and China can share honest free trade
Max Debutante, Ottawa
"When it comes to certain continental political positions, I think Africa must look at the positions we take, irrespective of what stance China takes, whether it's on Darfur, whatever else, and I think many of us African leaders have in fact taken independent positions that may or may not be consistent with China's own policy stance," she said.
Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf said that her own country was a prime example of an African nation standing up to Chinese policies.
"In Liberia, we're trying to settle our huge debt problem. China wanted to provide some resources on the basis of sovereign guarantees. We said no, we can't take your money on that basis," she said.
In a separate development, Taiwan has called on the five African countries with whom it has diplomatic relations not to attend the summit.
Gambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Swaziland and Sao Tome all have links with the island, which China regards as a breakaway renegade province rather than an independent state.
China has said that the five countries are welcome to send observers to the Sino-African summit, though they remain ineligible to join in the Sino-African strategic economic partnership as long as they continue to recognise Taiwan.
November 3, 2006 | 2:56 PM
May 6th, 2006 - 13:04:14 |
BEN HUR
We will be There on time All are Invieted to come as A summit on Africa is set to be held in Iran This This Entry is about: Iran
.........................................
Iran to hold summit on Africa.
against a background of serious misrepresentation of the situation in African by some Western powers.
A summit on Africa is set to be held in Iran on May 16 as part of the republic's efforts to understand more about challenges being faced by the region, Iranian head of the cultural section in Zimbabwe, Ahmed Ahmadi said this morning.
Ahmadi told AND Network that the sumit comes against a background of serious misrepresentation of the situation in African by some Western powers.
He said that several ambassadors from most southern african countries were expected for the summit.
"We have set aside May 16 as the day when we will commemorate Africa Day in Iran. We have a summit that we have planned for the day where ambassadors of several countries in the region will present papers on the stituation in the region,"
He added that the summit would also provide a platform for the ambassadors to explain the situation in Africa to students in Iran who are undergoing studies in both political and civic issues.
"They (ambassadors) will interface with the students and also have a time to hold interviews with Iranian journalists about the situation in Africa.
"This is solely because Africa has been portrayed as the worst continent on earth and this summit is exopected to enable the leaders to give the real picture on what is transpiring on the ground
May 6, 2006 | 12:56 PM
May 3rd, 2006 - 12:05:04 |
NaBeeel
La PARTIE # le fondamentalisme 8 islamique l'élévation en
fondamentalisme religieux dans une grande région de l'Afrique peut
également être vue en partie comme réponse à la misère atroce que
le réglage structural est imposant sur nos personnes et partiellement
aussi, le résultat de cette culture politique anti-Occidentale
croissante. Dans les cas spécifiques du fondamentalisme islamique la
nouvelle hantise occidentale avec l'Islam aide à étendre la vue que
l''Islam est la réponse 'et les seuls 'rectifient 'la force contre la
domination et l'unipolarism occidentaux.
Le fondamentalisme dans le discours occidental et les medias
politiques et intellectuels signifie toujours invariablement l'Islam
pourtant il y a une élévation générale en fondamentalisme
religieux : Christianisme, bouddhisme, hindouisme, Sikhisme, Islam,
églises charismatiques américaines, etc...
Par exemple un des groupes rebelles opposés au gouvernement de NRM de
l'Ouganda, seigneurs Resistance Army (LRA), qui détruit le ravage
dans le nord du pays espère installer un gouvernement 'basé sur les
10 commandements. L'inférence du ce des idées fausses au sujet de
fondamentalisme est que tout autre fondamentalisme est CORRECT et sous
la commande occidentale excepté l'Islam, qui doit être apprivoisé.
Le problème pour l'ouest est vraiment cet Islam ; l'Arabe et l'huile
semblent coïncider. Tant qu'il n'y a aucune source ènergétique
alternative économique à huiler et le Moyen-Orient reste le plus
grand fournisseur quelque chose qui menace le rapport confortable
entre les aristocraties de feudalist de la zone et de leurs la
'associés occidentaux deviennent volonté issue 'globale '. Si la
majorité d'Arabes n'étaient pas des musulmans et ils n'avaient pas
l'huile, elle ne sera jamais de n'importe quel intérêt à l'ouest.
Les amorces islamistes politiquement motivées, niées n'importe
quel point d'entrée dans les affaires politiques de leur pays peuvent
combiner cet opportunisme occidental nu, des régimes locaux altérés
et despotiques et les solutions religion-basées simples de welfarist
sont empaquetés car la volonté d'Allah en réponse à l'avarice de
capitaliste et à l'économie occidentales de vautour.
Ils offrent souvent ces perspectives philosophiques simples qui sont
attrayants aux multitudes des chômeurs, des professionnels
mécontents et des même éléments bourgeois nationalistes qui
recherchent une sortie des embrayages occidentaux. Dans les endroits
aimez l'Egypte ou l'Algérie, comme dans le reste du Maghreb (et en
effet du monde arabe) il est souvent difficile de distinguer le
nationalisme arabe et l'Islamism. Plus l'ouest déteste l'Islam et
fait de son mieux pour protéger, défendre et mettre à jour des
régimes "islamiques" antidémocratiques altérés en Afrique du nord et
le Moyen-Orient, plus l'appel révolutionnaire de l'Islam est grand.
L'hantise occidentale a substitué la vieille hystérie
anti-Communiste avec anti l'Islam dans son remontage périodique des
ennemis dans et sans cela a dû être écrasée, est que la voie est
lui allant être. ? ? ? ?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Apr 29th, 2006 - 17:06:30 |
NaBeeel
The Real power in Africa,That
UK, US worried by China's growing African presence
UK, US worried by China's growing African presence
Chinese companies are pouring billions of dollars into major infrastructural development projects in Africa in a move which has officials in Washington and London worried, according to the Guardian.
From the Cape to Cairo, China has been investing in massive engineering projects such as the Nairobi to Mombasa road, a luxury resort in Sierra Leone, a conference centre in Madagascar, repairing rail lines in Angola, a national stadium in Rwanda and a myriad oil-related projects.
The common theme in these projects is oil, and it is this which is reported to be worrying some western governments. In Sudan in particular, China has been at the forefront of oil exploration which is expected to see a new oil pipeline pumping 500,000 barrels a day by the end of the year.
China holds a 41 per cent stake in the national oil consortium as part of total investments of around £8 billion ($12.8 billion). China firms are also building the 200-km pipeline and are rehabilitating electricity stations, building a bridge over the River Nile and constructing the £1 billion ($1.6 billion) Merowe hydroelectric dam.
Moreover, Chinese firms are being welcomed with open arms by African governments as they don’t ask questions over issues like transparency, human rights or conflict.
"Where Western companies shy away because of corruption, conflict or the risk of losing their shirt, Chinese firms are plunging in," the Guardian said. "President Hu has dispatched diplomats to dangle large, low-interest loans before impoverished countries with the sole stipulation that work is done by Chinese contractors.
"African governments appreciate China’s tendency to keep its nose out of domestic affairs in contrast with the demands for transparency that accompany loans from bodies such as the IMF."
Straight talk is the Game
I think the Western powers as one of my teachers would call them still have a way of tapping into Africa since they actually have the Colonial remainders with them, ofcourse they haven't left the poor continent alone even after giving them freedom and thats really the cause of the grip loose.
The UK and US are busy picking into the different governments in Africa and trying to resolve(did I say create?) diplomatic Issues for African countries while the Chinese have recognised where the real power in Africa is and are really tapping into all check a long list of their investments; Food, Clothing, Mobile phone petty shops and finally oil. these are really the Basic things that africa need, and their key as I will always say is "Talk Straight" as they only come in to do their business and get what they want without trying to know or correct your pattern of living or leadership.
Competittion Galore!
We live in a world where those with greater economic powers try to bully who have less.As e result, each country is trying hard to ensure greater influence on other territories.
CHina,as a friend told me seems likely to be the next world super power and they are not leaving anything to chance in achieving that.
I only pray that Africa does not continue to suffer the basket of double standards and discrimination metted out to her by the powers that be.Africa will surely rise again-time will surely tell!
Apr 22nd, 2006 - 15:52:55 |
King TUT JR.
AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE
ON GLOBALISATION
by
Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem,
General-Secretary, Pan African Movement (Kampala, Uganda)
Africa and Europe have had a continuous contact of more than 400 years. It has been a relationship of domination, exploitation and oppression. Whatever happens in Europe tends to have ripple effects in Africa. Therefore any idea that has become fashionable in Europe trickles down into intellectual and political discussions/battles in Africa.
One of the key aspects of this globalisation is information. There is a sense in which the world has become a village. Thanks to CNN and the radical transformation in Satellite broadcasting, many places in Africa where it may be difficult to get a clean cup of water, you can still watch CNN. One of the ironies of this technological advancement is that while Europeans and Americans are struggling for supremacy in space, struggling to hoist their flags and competing about who makes it in the shortest time and highest orbit, in Africa as, in many parts of the Third World, "We are still trying to get to the Village" as Prof. Ali Mazrui puts it.
Thus, while people in Europe may be obsessed by Globalisation, we are still talking of Villagisation, getting to the village where the majority of our people work and live.
The discussion on globalisation has a particular context - i.e. the collapse of the previously existing socialist block (U.S.S.R and Eastern Europe). This discourse has been ushered in by various intellectual ideas and Political conclusions drawn from them such as Samuel Huntington's CLASH OF CIVILISATION and Francis Fukuyama's END OF HISTORY. The theory of end of Ideology has of course been with us before Fukuyama's annihilation of history and the triumphalism about the hegemony of western values, ideas and civilisation. In short, a celebration of the assumed victory of capitalism over socialism. The collapse of Eastern Europe has bought about a new arrogance by Euro-American imperialist powers, with no check from a countervailing force. Thus there is a drive to homogenize the world at all levels (economic, ideological and political) but more perniciously, at the cultural level. Its ideologists insist that we must think the same way, organise society in the same way, not allowing any alternatives to Western values and systems of organising society. In this hegemonic scheme, the rest of us, who are actually the vast majority of humanity, are supposed to be non-starters or at best, late comers whose only destiny is to follow the lead and paths already trodden by the West. To put it more crudely: America won the cold war and the prize of that victory is for the rest of us to Americanise.
There is a saying." if two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers". But it is also true that even if two elephants make love, the grass still suffers. That is the conclusion we in the Third World can draw from Soviet collaboration with the West and the collapse of Eastern Europe.
When the USSR and the USA were at each other's throats during the Cold War, we were victims. Our political groups and movements, our governments and states were judged whether they were pro-west or pro-east. The tragic consequences of that experience can be seen today in places like Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia and Mozambique, just as they are evident in Vietnam and Cambodia or Nicaragua.
A worrying aspect of this current fad of globalisation is the lack of historical context and political responsibility in discussing the Third world and especially Africa. We are seen as the "problem continent", "forgotten continent", and "poor cousins of the rich north". These are the dominant imagery of Africa in the West. Without contextualising the various conflicts on the continent, Africans have popularly become a bunch of hopeless people who cannot do anything for themselves; a continent and a people needing help, charity cases and humanitarian junkies. Yet these countries and the perennial conflicts did not just come out of the blues. What is Somalia, Liberia or Nigeria? These are artificial states created by European colonialism. They are the result of a previous globalising mission: Globalisation of Colonialism. That was why the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884/85 was convened to rationalise European imperial greed. It was a global attempt by the dominant European powers of that time to settle the Colonial question in Africa, to reduce competition by parceling out exclusive markets and labour reserves for those powers, namely Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, Belgium and Spain.
That is why today we have 54 odd and ugly countries with arbitrary borders that should course nightmare to any sensible Cartographer. Some of the borders are straight lines drawn up by drunken colonialists and their cohorts marooned together in a do-or-die conference in Berlin with different wines competing with the odd assembly of maps, rulers and compasses. Where straight lines won't do they compromised around principles like natural boundaries (i.e. rivers, mountains and lakes!). There are many anecdotes about the whimsical ways in which European globalising colonialists decided the borders and therefore subsequent history, culture and politics, of the colonial peoples. Take for instance the Kilimanjaro Mountain (the highest mountain in Africa) and about one million people who live around it. It used to be part of colonial Kenya until a British Monarch who was stuck about what gift to give to a German Kaiser for a birthday celebration decided on a 'cute little mountain in Africa'. And with that the fate of the people was determined. A decision that has a permanent socio-economic and political consequence for them. For instance, education which had till then been in English had to change to German who were then the Colonial powers in Tanganyika (since 1965 called Tanzania). Thus you cannot talk about the problems of nation building in Africa today without understanding or focusing on the way in which these borders were created for the convenience, greed and vanity of Europe's rulers.
What is new?
We do not see this globalisation as a new thing. There may indeed be a new context. But we have seen globalisation before. We have also gone through New World Orders before. The order that has now become old that we are supposed to be burying and replacing with a newly declared World order was only declared 50 years ago. It was the result of the balance of power after the defeat of fascism in Europe in 1945, the outcome of genocide in Europe. Again, almost 50 years later (in April 1994) in the throes of another New World order we had genocide in Rwanda.
There is a wide concern that this new globalisation, as in the past, is almost inseparable from Westernisation and Americanisation. The collapse of Eastern Europe has helped to popularise this new orthodoxy that, there is no alternative (TINA) to Western capitalism, as a new global religion. Tough regime of the market and the sanctity of capitalism are the preferred mantra. In Africa the record of capitalism does not match this myth. While people in Eastern Europe may claim that they are running away from socialism/communism (even though current developments there have tempered earlier capitalist optimism with realism), the majority of African states have never been socialist. Therefore our people cannot be running away from it. If we are running away from anything it is the brutality and mass poverty that continue to dominate our lives our lives under global capitalism. The majority of our states remained loyal servants of the West and its markets and yet the majority of them cannot show the growth, let alone substantial development that their romance with the capitalist wolf has bought to the majority of their peoples in even the richer countries like Nigeria, Zaire, South Africa, Senegal, Ivory Coast, etc. So this newly received wisdom about the market rings hollow in Africa's ears because the record of capitalism in our countries has neither been democratic or developmental.
However the reality is that the West/America control our economies and have politico-military hegemony over global political economy. Our subordination is supervised and guaranteed under the tight leash of allegedly multilateral institutions (controlled by the West/USA) of which we are technically and theoretically equal members such as the UN. System, the Breton Woods Institutions, World Trade Organisation, etc.
The IMF/WB are in direct control of most of the African States and spread Western economic gospels to states that cannot afford to say no. They have global solutions to all problems regardless of local specificities. Their solutions are like the ever present quack pharmacists and doctors found in our cities peddling concoctions that can cure 1000 diseases, from ant bites to high blood pressure! So the Structural Adjustment Programmes proposed by these institutions call for deregulation (read devaluation) of currency markets and the monetary system; privatisation of public enterprises; retrenchment of public employees; liberalisation of the economy; cut backs in welfare Programmes and generally a return to an atmosphere of Hobesian state of nature where human beings become predators on fellow human beings in the name of "free competition" and "survival of the fittest".
If I may give a personal example of the havoc that such policies are wrecking on our people. I was born and brought up in the northern part of Nigeria, a region that is historically less developed (in terms of western education, modern industries etc.) than the Southern part of the country. This is largely because colonial trade, commerce and Christian missionaries and their schools, came in through the coast thereby giving coastal populations the advantage in the incorporation into global capitalism. The historic uneven nature of capitalist development often accentuates disadvantages that were often exploited politically to buy off opponents, seal up support or neutralise resistance and thereby prolong colonial rule.
Since independence political attempts have been made to try to bridge the gap between the North and South of Nigeria. My generation and probably not more than 2 or 3 generations of post-independence kids in Northern Nigeria were beneficiaries of that affirmative action. It meant that we went to school virtually free (Primary/Secondary education). There was also generous scholarship for those lucky enough to go up to the university. In spite of education being free, less than 50% of kids of school going age actually went to school. Of this proportion only a minority still made it to higher education and university degrees. If poor parents did not take advantage of free-fees to educate their children is it now under IMF/WB liberalisation, and cost-sharing that has seen school fees sky rocketing that they will be sending their children to school? How can they afford this when education is competing with family food, as the economies are privatised and people become poorer? In this type of context state policy that insists on market and market only, must decide will never work to the benefit of the vast majority of the people.
Globalised markets do not only work against the majority of workers and peasants, even the local and indigenous capitalist classes suffer from its crushing impact. They are often very small with small enterprises and little capital base. They cannot compete with the big financial and industrial establishments of the west, the multinational corporations, with enormous political influence. Thus the beneficiaries of privatisation have been foreign business interests. The logic of global marketeerism dictates that we produce what we are best at which condemns us to commodity production for exports just as in colonial times. In this enforced situation we produce what we do not consume and consume what we do not produce. And the West/U.S.A. that dominates global political economy dictates both prices.
Yet it was the same Western development experts, policy-makers and planners who in the 1950's and 1960's used to advocate modernisation (i.e. import-substitution industrialisation, westernisation through education and transfer of technical and non technical knowledge) as panacea to our technological backwardness. In those days even the number of Radio receivers per head was used as an indices of our progress in addition to traditional indices like rate of urbanisation, number of hospitals and doctors, number of schools, percentage of our people who are in 'modern' industry as opposed to those in "traditional" sector: agriculture.
Under structural adjustment policies, the modern sector we were bullied into building, is being dismantled through the collapse of our educational systems and other social services and the continuing de industrialisation of the few industries built (being submerged by bigger companies from outside). The resultant retrenchment of workers in mass is producing sprawling cities with high employment and a mass of lumpen proletariat that has no industry to work in and is removed from agriculture. This is wiping out the middle class and the skilled labour force that only two decades ago, Samuel Huntington and other modernisation theorists, told us was indispensable for our development. The same people are now talking about clash of cultures and civilisations. The modernisation paradigm that was the gospel of the post-colonial state was of course a buzzword for Westernisation and Europeanisation.
Our problem was seen only as due to our not being Western. If only we could be like them then the march of progress from the 'heart of darkness' to the heart of civilisation was unstoppable. But things did not quite work out exactly the way this unilinear Eurocentric model envisaged. Instead colonial capitalism was replaced by neo-colonial capitalism without any significant development for a majority of the peoples. What Africa is going through now is a re colonisation, not by individual European countries anymore but under the aegis of IMF/WB and the supportive and collaborative service of Western bilateral/multi lateral Aid increasingly run and channeled through Western NGOs.
RESPONSES
Therefore both our reality and the history of how we got there have conditioned our responses. Generally this has created distrust, suspicion, anger and bitterness at the West and whatever new or repackaged issues it now seeks to impose on the rest of the world.
In particular there is an even greater distrust of America and consequently anti-Americanism even among those who uncritically consume CNN. The American arrogance strutting around the world as Global Policeman and selective use and abuse of the UN. System to further its narrow interests.
The first direct evidence of this, since the collapse of the Soviets was the American invasion of Somalia in the winter of 1992, shortly after George Bush had proclaimed the New World order, which we know, is a new world disorder. Somalia provided the first test of how this disorder was going to work out in Africa.
There was Bush, a president who had been roundly defeated by a relative new comer, in spite of 'winning' the Gulf War and kicking Sadam Hussain's ass. Somehow the tag of being a 'wimp' still hung on George Bush and he wanted to go out, literally, with a bang. What better excuse to prove that he had plenty of bile in his belly than the humanitarian tragedy occasioned by the clan warfare in Somalia. To prove that he is a 'real man' Bush decided to go and sort out General Aideed, put a 'responsible government' in place and the boys were going to be back home before Xmas to salute their retiring commander in-chief before he bows out of office in January 1993. With that Bush hoped his reputation would be newly enhanced and rehabilitated as a Commander for Conflict Resolution around the World and making the world safer for democracy in the grand delusion that has never failed to seize every American President since 1945.
As usual with American gun ho diplomacy he read the situation upside down. Somalia was not Iraq, Aideed was no Saddam Hussein who gave Americans opportunity for what J.K. Galbraith called "painless Patriotism" (i.e. war without or negligible American casualties) by allowing America and the Allied powers to collaterally bomb his country back into the Middle Ages. Somalia was different: Laser missiles, collateral bombing and aerial high tech had no use there. It was a street brawl: literally and laterally, man to man. The Americans were bugged down, overloaded by the arsenal of the latest high tech military hardware confronting roving bands of clansman with primitive weaponry.
As is the case with the politics and diplomacy of the new globalisation, the Americans then turned their unilateral intervention into a UN. Mandate, even though they had gone in without consulting the UN. let alone the African States, the O.A.U. and least of all the Somalis they claimed they were helping. If they had succeeded it would have been another victory for the leader of the Free World. But their failures are transformed into global failures and emergency issue for the so-called international community (whose popular and working definition are really the U.S.A and its Western Allies and a few of their motley of ever-complacent regional powers). Whatever concerns America and its allies are global issues and what they are not interested in cannot by definition is a 'threat to world peace and security'. For instance in February 1996 there was a big conference in Cairo, Egypt attended by all the African States at which, after a lot of arms twisting, force, bribery and intimidation, all of them were persuaded to sign the NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION TREATY. The Americans moved the heavens and the Earth to ensure that outcome.
Then there was another meeting in Geneva in April, this time in Geneva Switzerland. It was also about arms. Specifically, a ban on manufacture and Sale of Land mines throughout the world. At this meeting there was no consensus to ban this most timid yet very lethal of all military inventions (it is not directed at any military target but just anybody unfortunate enough to step on one) because they are no threat to the West.
None of the African states (apart from two or three) which assembled like school pupils in Cairo had any nuclear capacity and can ever develop one. But the issue of nuclear arms concerns the West: It must not be in the wrong hands (meaning non European/American, hands apart from China and Israel) therefore the legal framework for the restriction had to be guaranteed internationally so that breaches can be punished under international law and the liberal use of coercion (economic sanctions, military threat) by the West/USA.
However when it comes to landmines (which all the African states and the rest of the third world have unlimited access to from Western arms industry and some of them who cannot feed themselves are self-sufficient in land mines!) there could not be a universal ban. Instead a curious compromise was reached. The current land mines which have long life potential are going to be phased out, to be replaced by a new generation of land mines that can self-detonate after a couple of years. What a compromise for global security! No one bothers to tell us what happens in between the two years before the new mines automatically detonate themselves? Yet we are supposed to take somber solace in the reduction in the life span of these mines. Does it matter whether I step on them on the first or last day? Is this a solution for the people of Angola who reportedly have over ten million mines across their country? Most of the military aid that prolonged the war were given by the U.S.A. (especially under Regan ) and apartheid South Africa to that bastion of anti-communism, Dr Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA rebel force.
Would the self-detonating mines also have alarm bells fixed on them to warn potential victims? Of course they won't, and even if they do, it does not matter. There is no ban on sales so any warlord or rogue regime can always pile up supplies and replace them every two or three years. This does not matter because land mines are not directed at the West or America (the way Nuclear arms can be). They are poor peoples' laser missiles. In all the civil wars, armed conflicts and wars of self-determination taking place in Africa and other parts of the Third World there is none where there is any threat of nuclear warfare. Majority of our peoples are being killed or maimed by so called conventional light weapons, including land mines, most of which are imported from Western armament industry, extended as part of military/security aid or procured by private arms dealers. Only a few African countries like South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe have any big domestic arms industry. The West dominates the Industry (in spite of competition from a few Latin American and Asian countries like Brazil, China, India, Chile and Pakistan). That is why there can be no agreement on light weapons and land mines. But this is a small issue for the West.
These are part of the ambiguities and blatant hypocrisy in the globalisation processes that are fuelling distrust and suspicion in Africa. Of course the West is not the only profiteer in this deadly game. African and other Third World despots, arms dealers and rogue regimes are also beneficiaries of the blood industries, both materially and politically. They can use them to continue to keep their people down.
Almost without exception all the despots who have or continue to mess up their countries and loot their treasuries, apart from their grandiose palaces in Africa and vulgar bourgeois opulence amidst abject poverty in their countries, keep their wealth investments and maintain real estates in Europe and America. For instance, that famed 'good bloody bastard' of the West, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (in power since 1965, thanks to the C.I.A, the French and the Belgians and the UN who actively supported or just looked on as he personally assassinated the elected Prime Minister of his country, Patrice Lumumba who was accused of being communist) was one of the richest individual presidents in the worked. His personal wealth was generally believed to be inversely proportional to the wealth of his country. His personal wealth is even greater than the national debt of Zaire. One does not need any super intelligence to deduce who owes whom? Yet Zaire (now Democaratic Republic of the Congo) and its future generations is lumbered with the debt crisis that was procured, secured and largely kept by Mobutu and his hirelings. The story can be repeated for many other African countries. These fortunes are kept in Europe and America whose governments, aid agencies and their IMF/WB continue to lecture us on financial probity, transparency and accountability in managing our economies and politics.
Consequently these issues are seen as yet another Western ploy. The distrust is so great that many of us are beginning to have almost instinctive reaction to anything Western. It is a new cold war. If the West says come this way our scarred memories of previous obeisance instructs us to go the other way. A world without frontiers or trade without frontiers Another aspect of globalisation is the prospect of creating global citizenship and governance and removing borders and barriers to trade and investment. Borders have indeed come down for Europeans in spite of loony screams by countries like Britain (that still hankers after a 'glorious' past when Britannia ruled the waves!). However borders have gone up in Europe against Africans and other Third World citizens. While Europeans and Americans are truly global citizens because their passports give them unhindered entry into all parts of the world the same is not true for us even on our own continent.
You do not have to go to the Third World in order to 'discover' it. Every major city in Western Europe has its own Third World within it; immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers or 'guest-workers' as they call them in Germany. They are often the poorest of the poor, victims of all kinds of racist discrimination in medical care, accommodation/housing, law and order, etc. In America (chief executive of the global army) in some states children of immigrants are denied education or medical care unless they can prove the legal immigration status of their parents. Therefore whatever the economic, social or political problems the working people of Europe and America are facing the Third World within them suffer even more. And their status in Europe is a reflection of the place of their countries of origin globally. Thus the globalisation hysteria can only legitimise the right of the advanced capitalist states and their citizens to dominate the rest of humanity. It affirms the right of capital to move around the globe but is restricting the freedom of labour (people). Those who desire a global humanity must therefore struggle to humanise the globe and free human beings to live, work or settle, anywhere they may wish.
Democratisation and Human Rights Globalisation also calls for respect for human rights and demands steps towards democratisation in Africa and the Third World in general. It is a sort of liberalise the economy and also the politics.
True, Africa needs democracy, like it needs clean air. There is no doubt that we cannot have development, social progress and democracy without the fullest participation of the greatest number of our people. However there is a very stony suspicion of the intentions and arrogant manners in which the West is pushing their pro-democracy agenda.
People ask themselves how come those same people that kept our despots and dictators in power in the Cold War era because they were 'moderate' pro-western puppets, now tell us that they want democracy. They helped the dictators in suppressing many popular uprising and abusing human rights and civil liberties of their people in the name of 'communist threat'. People also ask why human rights and democratisation have now become a condition of aid, grants and loans? Why is nobody asking Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States or the authoritarian states of South East Asia (the much praised, until now, Asian tigers) to democratise? In South East Asia, lack of democracy and gross abuse of human rights do not seem to have affected the growth of capitalism whereas the gulf states with their abundant oil wealth can dispense with democracy and human rights altogether. Otherwise why would America and the so-called allied powers have gone to war, in the Gulf only to restore feudal family rule? Indeed another war is being threatened again not because of democracy but to cut sadam to size so he does not threaten his authoritarian neighbors!
In addition to its lack of consistency in applying the democracy and Human rights test in all regions of the world, there is also the inconsistency in supporting the democratic progress in countries where the outcome threatens to bring into power forces/interests that are seen to be anti-West. A case in point is Algeria. Throughout the cold war era, the West and its Allies (and especially the government of the U.S.A and Saudi Arabia) were putting pressure on the 'communist' FLN regime by sponsoring agitation among the non Arab Berber minority and also the Islamist forces. However as soon as the Berlin Wall fell and the one party regime in Algeria caved into multi party politics the tune of the West changed. When it became clear in the national elections for the Parliament, that the so called Islamic fundamentalists, Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was going to win power, a military coup with the support of the U.S.A and France halted the process. The issue is not whether one likes the policies of the FIS or not but the principle of people electing those that they wish. However it seems that the West only prefers a 'democratic' outcome that 'does not' as the Americans say 'upset the apple cart'. That means democracy with Western veto. That attitude can hardly promote long lasting democratic institutions or culture. The misguided short-term interests of imperialism in Algeria have now driven the FIS into underground politics where extremists seeking martyrdom are the dominant forces. Any rational outlook is now treated as treachery and selling out to the enemy. It strengthens anti-democratic revolts because democratisation is seen as yet another western import and imposition.
The rise in religious fundamentalism in a large part of Africa can also be seen partly as a response to the excruciating misery that structural adjustment is imposing on our people and partly too, the result of this growing anti-Western political culture. In the specific cases of Islamic fundamentalism the West's new obsession with Islam is helping to spread the view that 'Islam is the answer' and the only 'true' force against Western domination and unipolarism. Fundamentalism in Western political and intellectual discourse and media always invariably means Islam yet there is a general rise in religious fundamentalism: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, American charismatic Churches, etc.
For instance one of the rebel groups opposed to the NRM government of Uganda, Lords Resistance Army (LRA), which is wrecking havoc in the north of the country hopes to set up a government 'based on the 10 commandments'. The inference from this misconceptions about fundamentalism is that all other fundamentalism is OK and under Western control except Islam, which needs to be tamed. The problem for the West is really that Islam; Arab and oil seem to coincide. For as long as there is no economical alternative energy source to oil and the Middle East remains the biggest supplier anything that threatens the cosy relationship between the feudalist aristocracies of the area and their Western 'partners' will become 'global' issue. If the majority of Arabs were not Muslims and they did not have oil, it will never be of any interest to the West. Politically motivated Islamist leaders, denied any entry point in the political affairs of their country are able to combine this naked western opportunism, corrupt and despotic local regimes and simple religion-based welfarist solutions are packaged as Allah's will in response to capitalist Western greed and vulture economy.
They often offer this simple philosophical outlook which are attractive to the multitudes of the unemployed, disaffected professionals and even nationalist bourgeois elements who are looking for a way out of western clutches. In places like Egypt or Algeria, as in the rest of the Maghreb (and indeed the Arab world) it is often difficult to distinguish between Arab nationalism and Islamism. The more the West hates Islam and does its utmost to protect, defend and maintain corrupt undemocratic "Islamic" regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, the greater the revolutionary appeal of Islam. The West's' obsession has replaced the old anti-Communist hysteria with anti Islam in its periodic re-assembly of enemies within and without that had to be crushed.
Other Cultural Responses
While Islam represents (among Muslim majorities) both a cultural and spiritual revolt against the Eurocentric cultural orthodoxy of the current globalisation there are other cultural responses.
In many African countries where the neo-colonial state system is being replaced by direct IMF/WB control of the state and Western NGO harmony in civil society and loyalty to the central state system (which had never been strong because of the artificial nature of the post-colonial state) is waning very fast. Centrifugal forces are growing with people seeking a more realistic collective identity in pre-colonial identities or in some cases colonially determined regional identities. Being Kenyan, Nigerian or Liberian means little to many people when the states cannot protect them, safeguard their property or guarantee their security. In fact the State is often the source of their nightmare as in the Sudan, Rwanda under genocide or in a place like Nigeria where the Army and other security forces are riding roughshod over the citizens.
The push and pull of the global capitalist restructuring is making many of the African states to realise that they have become irrelevant in the international system save for a very few rich or strategically important ones, like South Africa, the Democratic republic of Congo, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Libya etc. With the end of the cold war every little space and tin pot dictatorship has ceased to be of strategic importance to the survival of imperialism save for lingering neo-colonial hangovers by some ex-colonial masters (especially France) which still try to hold on to ineffectual states.
The African leaders look back to the cold war era with nostalgia because of the opportunity for self importance that "the search for friends and allies" gave them to play the West against the East. The cold war really prolonged the lives (and therefore the misery of the people) of these lifeless states. They could always threaten to go to the other side if their demands were not met. Now there are no sides (at least in the emerging global power nexus) to defect to. The Red Bear of communism has been tamed. The last surviving big communist power, China, made its peace with imperialism long before the Soviet edifice crumbled. It is not interested in promoting its ideology but trade and where possible, to deny diplomatic recognition to Taiwan. It is not in a position to engage in any break-neck competition for political influence over the Third World with the West.
Therefore Africa's cold warriors are left out in the cold: Their response is to renew their lapsed interest in bigger regional organizations which they had paralysed before due to lack of political will. Thus there is a renewed enthusiasm in regional economic and political institutions like Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); Southern Africa Development Co-operation Council (SADCC); East African Co-operation (E.A.C.); Preferential Trade Area of East, Central and Southern African States (PTA); COMESA (Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa states) and the Maghreb Union. Even the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) through the Abuja treaty of 1991 and the Harare summit declaration of 1997 is committed to the establishment of an African Economic Community during the first quarter of the next century.
These institutions have been there but were not functioning, as they should due to a number of reasons. The chief one is the reality that most of the African States had neo-colonial economies that were under the control of both the former colonial masters and the multi national corporations. The economies were structured to serve the needs of foreign capital. They are competitive instead of being complimentary. They are all tied to the production of primary commodities like cotton, groundnuts, cocoa, rubber, gold, diamonds etc. These are commodities with little internal markets but raw materials for Western countries, which in turn sell most of our finished products to us.
This political economy of producing what you do not consume and consuming what you do not produce made the economies vulnerable to external shocks because of the unfair terms of international trade that is dominated, fixed and manipulated by the rich industrialised countries.
The cold war distorted the reality and mediated it with pockets of 'developing' enclaves, which were producing mostly import-substitution goods on behalf of MNC's. Now that globalisation is forcing painful restructuring in the North and brutal adjustment in the South are rationalising industry, trade, commerce and investments necessitating continental and intra-continental and inter-continental adjustments.
The European Union, the NAFTA agreement by the USA and the Japanese/Chinese push for dominance in the Asia-pacific region are examples of this new reality. African states are responding in a way that may make them relevant by promoting regional trade, commerce and investment.
The reality of today dictates bigger unions. Therefore if Pan Africanism never existed before it would have been invented now. The same European powers that balkanised Africa into Francophone. Lusophone, Anglophone and the entire phony phones that force physical, political and mental barriers amongst our peoples and states are now uniting in an economic vultures club. If we could not stand up to them as individual colonialists what chances do we have against them as a collective?
This reality is forcing a confluence of Pan African ideas in many sectors of our society both civil and governmental, business and professional circles, popular forces and other groups. The kind of regionalisation that we are talking about is different from what you people in Europe are concerned with. You want local control and autonomy in the face of over weaning states and corporations. For us we need to renew the capacity and legitimacy of our state structures within a wider Pan African continental framework. Our motto is therefore not "small is beautiful" because our historical circumstance demands being big enough (economically) in order to advance the collective interests of our many small states.
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