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  • in Development

    15 Seconds of Fame: Why Post-2015 Doesn’t Need More ‘Participation’

    116 Views

    The UN’s commitment to participation is commendable, but genuine inclusivity is about more than just poll-taking of the poor and a seat at the table for a lucky few NGOs.

    By Lyndsay Stecher

    Commonwealth education ministers working group on post-2015 development agenda for education at Marlborough House, London. Photograph by Commonwealth Secretariat.

    The scramble to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is well and truly on. The jury may still be out on just how successful the goals – which set various development targets to be met by 2015 – have proven, but with their expiry date just two years away, there is a clear sense that for the post-2015 agenda, something different is needed.

    And if the sounds coming out of the UN are anything to go by, that something different is ‘participation’.

    One of the major criticisms aimed at the MDGs has been the lack of inclusivity that went into their drafting, and this time around, the UN seems keen to make amends. Official statements and tweets have all emphasised the importance of including those living in poverty in the process of forming the post-2015 goals; a glossy World We Want interactive website whose proclaimed mission is “to amplify people’s voices in the process of building a global agenda for sustainable development” has been launched; and this June, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon vowed, “I want this to be the most inclusive development process the world has ever known”. Furthermore, in a couple days on 17 October, the UN will mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty under the theme: “Working together towards a world without discrimination: building on the experience and knowledge of people in extreme poverty”.

    However, away from the sound and fury of the new buzzword echoing around UN corridors and development roundtables, questions persist about the actual substance of this commitment to ‘inclusivity’. After all, while the concept is undoubtedly a positive one, if attempts to ensure the participation of the poorest are not deep, meaningful and – crucially – structural, there is a risk that ‘participation’ could be diluted down to a mere slogan and appropriated by those in power to legitimise decisions that are ultimately still their own.

    Another day, another “multi-stakeholder panel”

    So what does this UN inclusivity look like in practice? Well, the devil is, of course, in the detail, and perhaps the best place to start looking is the nexus of countless consultation meetings, panels and events organised by the UN at which the post-2015 goals are negotiated and discussed. While on the surface these are open to civil society participation, behind the scenes things are a little more complicated. At first glance, even if civil society is represented, it can be easy to lose sight of it amongst the lists of “eminent” speakers. But in fact, just turning up can be a bridge too far for many.

    Firstly, for NGOs not already in official “consultative status” with the UN, their presence at meetings has to be approved by all UN member-states; that is to say, specific NGOs are only ‘welcome’ if no-one (and it only takes one state) objects to their attendance. According to Madeleine Sinclair of the International Service for Human Rights, this ‘no-objection’ policy “not only risks excluding relevant and valuable voices, but can also lead to censorship and politically motivated exclusion of critical voices”.

    Secondly, even if permission is granted, there remain significant logistical and financial challenges. Places at events are limited, and a scarcity of funding assistance for visa and travel expenses rules out many organisations without the necessary means themselves.

    Noah Musoke of the Volunteers for Development Association in Uganda, for example, was approved to attend the special UN General Assembly event on the post-2015 goals on 25 September, but could not afford the expenses and was denied a travel grant. Although the forum was technically open to him, the reality was very different. Without small NGOs’ ability to participate, Musoke worries that the post-2015 framework will feel like “an imposition of the foreign agenda”.

    Chinyere Ezenwokike, from the Tomorrow’s Women Development Organisation in Nigeria, also had to pull out due to insufficient finances. “Accessing funds from UN organisations in Nigeria can be very taxing,” she tells Think Africa Press, “especially if one does not have a prior relationship or a person introducing the organisation”. With the competition for limited assistance so high, Ezenwokike has witnessed a strengthening culture of ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’, and expresses her disappointment at her inability to attend the UN event: “This is too bad because it kills the dreams and intentions of the civil society activists”, she says.

    15 seconds of fame

    For those lucky enough to make it to meetings, the problems and dangers of disappointment don’t end there.

    Many events are simply too short for in-depth engagement; the upcoming People’s Voices Series on 17 October, for example, is scheduled to last just 90 minutes and will start with a series of pre-prepared video presentations. And when civil society groups do get the chance to speak, their participation can often seem cursory and token.

    Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Advisor for Oxfam, for example, has described a personal “low point” when 200 NGOs involved in a High-Level Panel consultation were each given just 15 seconds to talk; in the end over half didn’t get the chance to speak at all.

    Justin Tyoakaa from the Martina Centre for Sustainable Development in Nigeria, who attended the much-hyped 25 September UN meeting and surrounding events, similarly believes that participation can be completely superficial.

    “Sitting in these meetings without giving a single contribution removes the sense of participation and creates more of an elitist approach”, he says. “Decisions appear to have been taken and simply brought to meetings for rubber stamping. There’s no voting conducted nor discussions held for or against resolutions.”

    Tyoakaa believes that this marginalises civil society and maintains the “undue advantage” of governments in negotiations. “There is no denying the fact that the ‘Major Stake Holders’ – i.e. governments – are rather allowed to dwarf the voices of the ‘Ordinary Stake Holders’ – i.e. civil societies”, he says.

    This is something with which Paul Quintos of IBON International, which launched the Campaign for People’s Goals to strengthen grassroots voices, agrees. Quintos argues that the UN has “hardly managed” to reach out to organisations not already involved in advocacy or monitoring, and believes that “many events were organised in haste, trying to beat the UN calendar”. Rather, he says, “public debate should have been promoted in village assemblies and real town hall meetings, allowing ideas to percolate from below.”

    I participate? E-participate

    However, the UN’s attempts at inclusivity are not restricted to such international events, and the organisation might argue that initiatives such as their World We Want online platform offer exactly that opportunity for ideas to be shared and expressed from ‘below’. Though some admirable national-level consultations have taken place on the ground, the site works mainly through online discussions and aims to “gather the priorities of people from every corner of the world and help build a collective vision”. It seeks to reach out to people far and wide to get their opinions, and does this through such things as its MyWorld survey, which invites users to pick six issues from a list of 16 that they see as the most important.

    But as well as being overly simplistic and somewhat condescending, many of these measures – like civil society organisations given 15 seconds to speak – are also highly superficial, and Green dismisses such attempts at participation as “pretty perfunctory ‘clicktivism’”.

    Furthermore, these initiatives can suffer from problems of representativeness. According to MyWorld’s own data, two thirds of survey respondents were actually from countries which rank in the middle to the very top of human development indices. And users with post-secondary education comprised the single largest educational demographic. If the perspectives of the poorest are represented in such forms of participation, they are heavily crowded out by those of the privileged.

    Talking more broadly about the consultation process, Bernadette Fischler, Policy Analyst on post-MDGs for CAFOD, suggests that the volume of discussions has reached its maximum “dosage”, cheapening individual contributions.

    “This sheer number of options to input jeopardises clarity and advance planning, and presents a real risk for inclusivity”, she says. “A multitude of differing consultations poses a real risk of losing or muffling valuable voices since only those NGOs with enough time and resources are able to cover all the bases to get heard”.

    Stepping up

    The UN’s commitment to reach out to those previously excluded is no doubt commendable, but so far the routes to enhancing participation have largely been insufficient. The good news, however, is that a number of organisations have sprung up to fill the gaps in the UN’s ‘inclusive’ process and have shown that while participation is difficult, it is not impossible.

    The Participate Initiative, for example, puts cameras and other tools in the hands of the marginalised to tell their own stories, and this summer conducted ground-level panels (GLP) in four countries. At these GLPs, a diverse range of individuals – including those suffering from rural poverty, internally displaced people, members of nomadic indigenous communities, and sexual minorities, amongst many others – were brought together to discuss the challenges confronting them and express their visions for development.

    These GLPs have been praised for focusing more on participant challenges than time constraints, with Green contrasting them with “all that superficial online ‘tell us what kind of world you want’ nonsense’”.

    However as Joanna Wheeler, co-founder of Participate, explains, the importance of the GLPs goes beyond the discussions themselves. Participation also needs to be about building capacity for the future.

    “In order to understand how people have been left behind by the MDG approach, we need to understand what prevents people from making the changes that they are calling for, and how they think these obstacles can be overcome”, she tells Think Africa Press.

    Indeed, genuinely enhancing inclusivity is not about a one-off garnering of opinions, but something more long-term and structural.

    As Wheeler puts it, “Citizen participation in the new global development framework is not just about a small global elite in the UN ‘hearing the voices of the poor’. Meaningful participation is about creating sustainable and long-term mechanisms for citizens to be involved in decision-making at all levels – from local to global”.

    This position is supported by the African Common Position, a group representing 53 African countries, which has criticised the post-2015 development agenda for focusing on outcomes rather than enablers of development.

    Ultimately then, inclusivity is about more than just coming up with technically-effective and efficient ways of gathering information in remote areas. It is about more than taking polls of the poor that can be cited in faraway international meetings. It is about more than adding a few extra voices to the growing hubbub clamouring to shape the post-2015 agenda. Genuine participation of the poorest is about politics and power. And the imbalances that have so far stymied meaningful participation are arguably the same ones underpinning the main problems with the UN’s post-2015 High-Level Panel – a failure to address the root causes of poverty; a preoccupation with the market rather than unemployment and deprivation; and a failure to tackle the inequality in wealth, resources and, crucially, power.

  • in Egypt

    Can Gulf Money Save Egypt’s Economy?

    94 Views

    In recent months, Egypt has received nearly $20 billion in loans and grants from its Gulf allies. But the price of political stability is a lot higher.

    By James Maxwell

    King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (left) meets Bahrain’s foreign minister. Photograph by Bahrain Foreign Ministry.

    At the end of August, Egypt’s military-backed interim government – established in the wake of former president Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow – approved an infrastructure spending package worth $3.2 billion.

    Following months of political unrest and mass protests, the package – to be rolled out over the next ten months – is aimed at boosting an economy struggling against the effects of widespread unemployment and rising food and fuel prices. These were problems which went largely unaddressed by the Muslim Brotherhood administration and which had contributed to Morsi’s plummeting popularity before he was deposed at the start of July.

    Most analysts have now welcomed the infrastructural investment as an essential first step on the road to economic recovery. But concerns have also been raised about how exactly the government will pay for it.

    Friends and neighbours

    Although Egypt’s budget deficit now stands at more than 10% of GDP, government officials have ruled out tax rises or public spending cuts as possible ways of balancing the books. Meanwhile, over the summer, negotiations between the Egyptian government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were abandoned when the Egyptian government rejected the IMF’s loan conditions, which included ending the bread and petrol subsidies many Egyptians depend on.

    As a result, Egypt has become increasingly reliant on loans and grants from friendly Arab states. In recent months, Egypt has received a $2 billion interest-free loan from Libya as well as nearly $5 billion in Qatari aid. Not long after the overthrow of Morsi, a further $12 billion in loans, grants and fuel shipments was pledged by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of which $5 billion has already been delivered.

    It is this money that will fund the additional expenditure on new railways, roads, sewage treatment plants and an extension to the Cairo metro, among other big ticket items, but the loans also have broader implications.

    Big Friendly Giants?

    Saudi Arabia’s decision to channel funds to Egypt is significant. Riyadh is keen to limit the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood – a group the Saudis view as a threat to their status as the regional ‘protector of Islam’ across the Middle East – and the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, gave his full backing to Morsi’s toppling.

    The Saudi regime may therefore have been pleased that the reassertion of military control in Egypt this summer was followed by a swift crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. The first and second tier of the Brotherhood’s leadership was arrested, while its assets were frozen and affiliate organisations banned. Morsi himself is currently in custody awaiting trial.

    The funds sent to Egypt also further bind the Egyptian economy to Saudi Arabia, where as many as 2 million Egyptians currently reside as guest workers and whose remittances are an important source of income for many Egyptian families.

    Moreover, the increasing closeness of the Egyptian authorities to Saudi Arabia signals a loosening of Egypt’s ties to the United States and Turkey, both of which have given substantial amounts of aid to Egypt in the past, but often in return for structural economic reforms – not least to the subsidy system – opposed by the Egyptian people. By contrast, the financial support provided by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE (and even Libya) is not conditional on the government reigning in public spending or selling-off public assets.

    Shifting away from the West and towards the Gulf will temporarily liberate the government from having to make the sorts of difficult economic decisions which could ignite further social unrest. This will buy it some time as it ponders its next move.

    Temporary relief

    What that next move will be remains to be seen. The interim president, Adly Mansour, has said he will stick to the pre-existing electoral timetable, which means another round of presidential and parliamentary elections should be held early next year. However Mansour has not kept all his promises. Despite an earlier pledge, for example, the country remains under a state of emergency.

    Meanwhile, although the political unrest that followed Morsi’s overthrow has died down to an extent, poverty continues to rise as it has done in recent years, and nearly a fifth of the population is now suffering from food insecurity.

    Egypt’s interim government will hope its Gulf stimulus package will be sufficient to take the economy back to its pre-revolution growth levels (5% in 2010, as opposed to the current 2%). It will need extra revenue to pay off some of its debts. But it would also do well to remember that the revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 was inspired as much by growing levels of poverty and inequality as it was by widespread frustration at Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.

    Money from the Gulf may represent a convenient short-term alternative to the West’s liberalising influence, but it will not be enough to secure Egypt’s long-term political stability.

  • in Ethiopia

    Slow but Sustained: Ethiopian Muslims’ Struggle for Rights Continues

    153 Views

    For more than twenty months, the Ethiopian Muslim community has been protesting for their constitutional rights to be respected.
    By Joris Leverink.
    A Muslim woman walks in front of a mosque in Harar, Ethiopia’s largest Muslim city. Photo by Joris Leverink.

    Muslims in Ethiopia have been protesting against government interference in religious affairs for more than twenty months. But ever since the violent crackdown by Ethiopian security forces on peaceful protestors during the Eid al-Fitr celebrations in Arsi last month, the Muslim community has been wary of organising new rallies. Whereas some observers believe that the movement has lost its momentum, activists engaged in the protests vow to continue their peaceful resistance until their demands are met.

    State violence and peaceful resistance

    The protestors identify themselves as a civil movement and have three clear demands: for the government to stop meddling with religious affairs; the right to elect the members of the High Islamic Council known as the Majlis; and for their leaders, who have been jailed for over a year under “trumped-up” charges, to be released.

    During the past a year and a half of demonstrations, several protestors have been killed by the security forces, and dozens, if not hundreds, have been arrested or taken into custody. The Ethiopian Government has denied allegations of police brutality and called accusations of human rights abuses that were made by Amnesty International, “one-sided and largely inaccurate, based on hearsay, political calculation or, all-too-often, downright invention.”

    Independent reports of the events are difficult to come by because the government cracks down heavily on anyone trying to cover the protests. Last month, two journalists working for Radio Bilal, a station that has been covering the Muslim protests, were arrested and kept in detention without charge for over a week.

    Fears of radicalisation

    Nationwide unrest started in December 2011, when the government dismissed the administration of the Awoliya religious school in Addis Ababa, because it perceived the institution to be a breeding ground for Islamist radicalism.

    The school received part of its funds from the Saudi based International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), in contravention of the Charities and Societies (CSO) Proclamation law, adopted in 2009, which made it illegal for Ethiopian NGOs to receive more than 10% of their funding from foreign sources. The CSO law has been widely criticised for curtailing the power of NGOs working on human rights and governance issues, effectively criminalising many organisations engaged in promoting the political space and freedom of the Ethiopian population.

    The Muslim community has perceived the (mis)use of the law by the government to close down the Awoliya school as a direct attack against their community. Addis-based lawyer and blogger Daniel Berhane, in an interview with Think Africa Press, points out that, although the law was not issued specifically for Awoliya, this was “a law that affected all NGOs across the country, and there cannot be any [exceptions]”. This said, the impression of many is that the Muslim community has been singled out by the government.

    Ethiopian Muslims Est. 615

    The Ethiopian government has feared the radicalisation of its 32 million-strong Muslim population since its US-back invasion of Somalia in 2006. On top of that, Ethiopia faces an insurgency from its domestic Somali population in the Ogaden region, who have organised themselves under the umbrella of the ONLF to promote an ethno-nationalist agenda.

    Alemayehu Weldemariam, visiting Professor of Government at Suffolk University, argues that the Ethiopian government harbours a rational fear for Islamist terrorism. “But,” he continues, “whether that fear arises from a threat posed by its own Muslim population is dubious.”

    Muslims have a long history in Ethiopia. The country, known for its unique branch of Christianity embodied in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, is also home to one of the oldest Muslim communities in the world. About a third of the country’s population adheres to the teachings of Mohammed, whose first followers fled across the Red Sea from the Arab Peninsula to the Ethiopian kingdom of Axum in 615 AD, an event known as the First Hijra. The Christian king of Axum offered protection to the refugees, thus laying the foundations for a mutually tolerant relationship between the two religious groups in the African kingdom.

    According to Berhane, it is precisely because of these longstanding relations that there is little suspicion between the two religious groups. “The government has been promoting religious freedom for the past 21 years,” the blogger contends. “There is general support for that, so that cannot be a point of argument between the Christians and the Muslims. Everyone supports demands for religious freedom.”

    Demanding constitutional rights

    Everyone except the government, if the Muslim protest movement is to be believed. Ever since the government violently cracked down on a protest rally in July 2012 and arrested hundreds of participants, demonstrations have occurred across the country. Although most of those arrested were released shortly after, a group of 29 were charged with conspiracy against the state under the country’s new 2009 Anti-Terror Proclamation.

    No-one from this group has been released to date and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has voiced its concern that these individuals are not getting a fair trial: “We are deeply concerned that Ethiopia’s government is seeking to silence peaceful religious freedom proponents by detaining and trying them in secret under trumped-up terrorism charges.”

    The protestors have stated that they do not intend to overthrow the government, but are merely demanding their rights as laid down in the country’s constitution, which “provides for freedom of religion and requires the separation of state and religion”, according to Professor Weldemariam.

    During a recent three-day conference to promote a religious culture of tolerance and coexistence, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn publicly reaffirmed that the state did not interfere in religious matters and that, “Ethiopia’s constitution clearly showed the separation of state and religion”. However, human rights groups have pointed out that the government policy of promoting a specific branch of Islam, known as the al-Ahbash sect, is coming at the cost of the more Sufi-oriented local traditions.

    The government fears a growing influence of Saudi Wahhabism, partly because of institutions like Awoliya which received significant funds from the IIRO and were thus believed to be regulated by them. But as one local activist, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out to Think Africa Press, it was highly respected Muslim intellectuals who were firmly entrenched in the Sufi traditions that were heading the school: “It is thus easy to conclude that the Saudis were not meddling with the curriculum of the school and with its leadership.”

    A better, not a different government

    Meanwhile, the peaceful nature of the Muslim demonstrations seems to have inspired a wave of political activism in the country. A new opposition party called the Semayawi, or Blue, Party organised a rally in Addis Ababa on June 2 with thousands of supporters attending. These demonstrations were the first since 2005, when a crackdown on opposition rallies left 193 protestors dead. The Blue Party demonstrations called for human rights to be respected, political prisoners to be released and for greater freedom of expression.

    In a clear attempt to tap into the success of the Muslim demonstrations, opposition parties are openly appealing to the Muslim community. Berhane describes this attempt as “sugar-coated”, meaning the secular opposition parties have voiced support only for the most general demands of the Muslims. “They wanted to attract these protestors into their rally so that they can boost their numbers,” he says.

    After the heavy-handed crack-down during the Eid al-Fitr, no major rallies have taken place. Berhane suggests that it was natural for the movement to lose momentum and he thinks that there will be no further calls for demonstrations: “From my perspective they have achieved much, they should not expect to achieve 100 per cent.”

    But, as the anonymous Muslim activist told Think Africa Press, the struggle still continues and will only stop after the three basic demands are met. It has been suggested that the movement is keeping a low profile and is following a strategy of ‘sustained low-level protest’ in order to avoid direct confrontation with the state.

  • in Legal

    Why a Multimillion Dollar Clock Might Mean Time is Up for Francafrique

    74 Views

    The French investigation into the massive wealth of long standing Central African rulers and French allies may be changing the French model of neo-colonialism in Africa.

    By Jamie Pickering

    Clockwise, from top left: Francois Hollande, Obiang Nguema, Ali Bongo and Denis Sassou Nguesso. Photographs by Parti socialiste, Pablo Manriquez, Chatham House and United Nations.

    For three Central African leaders, the days of impunity and scandalous accumulation of wealth could be over, following an investigation by French prosecutors. The case of the ‘ill-gotten gains’ was first brought to court by two non-governmental organisations and an association of the Congolese diaspora in 2007. It aims to bring Central Africa’s most flagrantly corrupt leaders to justice for their alleged theft and embezzlement of public resources.

    William Bourdon, who has previously advised French President François Hollande and is now the president of Sherpa, one of the organisations prosecuting the case, told Think Africa Press that “The case is historic and could open the door in the future to the prosecution of elites in other countries.”

    Lavish lifestyles under the loop

    For now, two authoritarian leaders and one former head of state of small, oil-producing Central African countries are under investigation: President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea and the now-deceased President Omar Bongo of Gabon. Since 2007 these leaders have had much exposed about their lavish lifestyles. French investigators have revealed that between the three of them, the Central African leaders and their immediate families own 60 luxury properties in France, mainly in Paris, maintain tens of millions of euros worth of supercars, and hold over 200 bank accounts.

    Since the case uncovered the extent of the leaders’ wealth in France, prosecutors have been investigating how the funds were accumulated, in the hope of proving that the money was stolen from state budgets.

    Although Omar Bongo died in 2009, his son Ali Bongo is now the President of Gabon and the family is alleged to have retained the wealth Omar Bongo had previously misappropriated. As part of their investigation, French prosecutors raided one of the Bongo family’s 39 French homes in February of this year, but it has not yet been made clear exactly how the money was extracted. Ali Bongo, however, does seem worried by the scaling up of the investigation against him and his family and is reported to be in the process of changing his team of lawyers.

    Investigations of the Nguesso clan have been more successful. In July ‘ill-gotten gains’ investigators revealed that Nguesso had been using Franck Export, a French company based in Orly, to launder money, treating the firm like a personal piggy bank for him and his entourage. Their findings show that, amongst other dubious transactions, €9 million ($12 million) was transferred directly from the Treasury of the Republic of Congo to the company’s accounts between 2005-2011. Despite these findings, Nguesso continued to reject the notion of standing trial when he visited the Élysée Palace in June.

    Teddy Bear’s free picnic

    As for the Obiang family, in July 2012 Judge Roger Le Loire issued an international arrest warrant for Teodoro ‘Teodorin’ Obiang, son of President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, for his embezzlement of public resources. Teodorin appealed against the warrant, protesting that his 80-million euro pad was actually part of the Equatorial Guinean embassy. As his father had swiftly appointed him Second-Vice-President of the country following the issuing of the arrest warrant, he has tried to claim diplomatic immunity from prosecution.

    Teodorin, even by the nepotistic standards of the ‘ill-gotten gains’ case, is an example of outrageous opulence. When not rapping under his pseudonym, ‘Teddy Bear’, Teodorin tours the world, spending his money on supercars, a gulfstream jet and nearly two million dollars worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia. Between 2004-2011 he spent a dazzling $315 million on these and several other luxury items.

    Teodorin claims to have accumulated his spending money legitimately, yet his official government salary is just $6,799 per month, meaning it would take him over four decades to afford just one clock he bought. The chasm between his government salary and his lavish spending habits is reported to have been bridged by his cooperation with foreign timber companies – including the French logging firm, Isoroy – in manipulating logging contracts whilst he was Forestry Minister.

    In a breakthrough ruling on June 13, the Paris Court of Appeal rejected the request of annulment brought by Teodorin against the international arrest warrant. This judgement has allowed France to continue to seize assets under the guidance of ‘ill-gotten gains’. In July the state auctioned off Teodorin’s supercars for over three million euros. Although the case has received a recent setback as a result of Interpol’s anouncement this month that they will no longer support the arrest warrant issued against Teodorin beyond the Schengen zone, Teodorin can still be arrested by France in countries subject to bi-lateral extradition arrangements. The investigations against other members of the Obiang clan, as well as the Bongo and Nguesso families, continue.

    Francafrique, the source of all the misery?

    Despite the progress made by the case, there are fears that the shady political, economic and diplomatic ties between African rulers and their French counterparts, commonly known as ‘Francafrique’, and is believed to be the ultimate source of corruption, will continue. France has indeed moved on from a time when dictators in Africa bankrolled French elections, French intelligence agencies rigged the empowerment of chosen Francophiles (including Omar Bongo), and French firms that bribed officials abroad could deduct the price of the corruption as business expenses. Yet some believe that whatever progress the case makes, personal and business ties will continue to bind nepotistic French-African elite interests together.

    Hollande nevertheless seems determined to distance himself from past excesses of the French-African relationship, declaring in Dakar, Senegal in 2012 that “the time of Francafrique is over”. Yet, despite this claim, earlier this year Nguesso was welcomed in Paris to reaffirm the friendship between France and the Republic of Congo. Although Nguesso complained about judicial proceedings against him, the French Presidency stated that it “agreed to continue the development of economic relations between France and the Congo”.

    Behind cosy political friendships such as this, there exist longstanding economic interests. The French conglomerate Bolloré Group’s investment of €570 million ($750 million) in a container terminal at the port Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo, was facilitated by a French Development Agency loan of €29 million ($38 million) in 2009 – an example of how financial interest can successfully blur the spheres of development and big business.

    The end of the road

    To some, the intervention in Mali earlier this year is indicative of the continuing existence of Francafrique; the French desire for prestige, power and influence on the continent; and the failure of the ‘ill-gotten gains’ case to change anything but the French political narrative. However, Marie Rodet, Lecturer in the History of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies, believes that the conflict was in fact more of a practical decision.

    Rodet told Think Africa Press that “Mali isn’t somewhere where France has strong business links like in the Republic of Congo. The decision to intervene in Mali was circumstantial and based on the desire to fight against a brand of extremist Islam which had previously threatened France. Hollande wished to avert the destabilisation of West Africa and prevent a humanitarian disaster in a region so close to Europe”.

    Rodet believes that there has been a noticeable shift in the French-African relationship in the years since the ‘ill-gotten gains’ case began. She argues that “Although there are too many interests and the French-African relationship is too complex for it to transform overnight, there has been a shift of French policy towards the continent in the past two years. Hollande has clearly stated his desire for reform and the ill-gotten gains proceedings have shown that France is no longer willing to cover the illegal activities of leaders and families in the country”.

    A decade or so ago the progress of a case like this may not have even been possible. To some, therefore, the very pursuit of the case demonstrates that attitudes concerning French-African relations are changing. Bourdon states that there has been a significant wind of change. “Hollande is committed to tackling international corruption,” he says. “He has clearly stated his respect for judicial independence with regards to this case and he has opened a new period with African countries.”

    However, Bourdon does not believe that the seized assets of the kleptocratic Central African leaders can be returned just yet to the populations from whom they were stolen. He argues that “Money recovered cannot go back to leaders who despise their own populations. We are not going to send money back to the beneficiaries of fraud. The money will only return when we are sure that the money will go towards the benefit of the population”.

    Corruption is like a snake

    Lucas Olo Fernandes, the Central Africa Regional Officer at Transparency International, explains to Think Africa Press that the ‘ill-gotten gains’ case will struggle to sentence kleptocrats due to its complex nature. There are also concerns that current international law will prevent the conviction or imprisonment of the African leaders involved. Bourdon explains that “The case has prosecuted family members who are beneficiaries of corruption, such as Teodorin, but heads of state remain another story.”

    Unfortunately the case may struggle to clean up the illicit deals and informal agreements made under the umbrella of Francafrique because, as Olo Fernandes believes, “The problem with corruption is that the perpetrators are always looking for new methods. Corruption is like a snake: just when you think you have got it from one side it changes its position.”

  • in Uganda

    Uganda’s ‘Literary Desert’ is Back in Bloom

    143 Views

    In 1969, Taban lo Liyong declared Uganda “a literary desert”. In 2013, Oscar Ranzo and a growing number of Ugandan authors would beg to differ.

    By Amy Fallon

    Students at Bukaya Primary School in Njeru, Buikwe district, in Uganda’s central region, reading Saving Little Viola, written by local author Oscar Ranzo. Credit: Oscar Ranzo.

    Kampala, Uganda:

    The heroine of The Little Maid, Viola, is an eight-year-old Ugandan girl who lives with her destitute grandmother and dreams of going to school. Instead, she is sent to live with her aunt, who promises to pay her school fees if Viola works for her first. Viola becomes a maid, forced to wash clothes, scrub the bathroom, cook and live in servants’ quarters. But every day when her cousins’ tutor arrives, she crawls underneath the dining room table to eavesdrop on the lessons. Eventually Viola learns to read and write and escapes the clutches of her evil aunt, who is found guilty of child abuse and child slavery and ordered to school her niece.

    It could be a true story. In Uganda there are an estimated 2.75 million children engaged in work, although not many of those will have the happy ending. But The Little Maid is a work of fiction, written by Oscar Ranzo, a Ugandan social worker turned author who has penned five children’s books. Now, The Little Maid is being distributed to schools across the country low-cost (5,000 Ugandan shillings or $1.90 each) through his Oasis Book Project. The project aims to improve the reading and writing culture in Uganda and provide school-children with entertaining but educational stories to which they can relate. Ranzo sells most of his books to schools, with the proceeds used to publish more titles. However, he also donates copies to more impoverished areas.

    In 1969, Professor Taban Lo Liyong, one of Africa’s best-known poets and fiction writers, declared Uganda a ‘literary desert’. “What we want to do with this project is create an oasis in the desert,” explains Ranzo. “That’s why I called it the Oasis Book Project.”

    The small print

    Excluding textbooks, there are only about 20 books published in Uganda annually. According to a study last year by Uwezo, an initiative aimed at improving competencies in literacy and numeracy among children aged six to sixteen years in East Africa, more than two out of every three pupils who had finished two years of primary school failed to pass basic tests in English, Swahili or numeracy. For children in the lower school years, Uganda recorded the worst results.

    Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Ranzo was privileged to have a grandfather who had a library and attended a private school that held an after class reading session. He was a particularly avid fan of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series.

    “But Mum was a nurse and she wanted me to be a doctor. I wanted to pursue literature and she told me ‘no you can’t do that’, so I did sciences,” says Ranzo, stressing that literature, which remains optional in secondary school, is not taken seriously in Uganda.

    Furthermore, many local publishers do not see writing fiction as profitable. “They’d rather publish textbooks and get the government to buy them,” Ranzo explains.

    His books are available in two central Kampala bookshops for 8,000 shillings ($3). But in the past 15 months fewer than 20 have moved from the shelves, while he has sold over 3,000 to 20 schools in three districts.

    Fiction imitating life

    Saving Little Viola, his first book in which the female protagonist, Viola, was introduced, was published in 2011 by NGO Lively Minds. The story ends with Viola being saved by her best friend from two men who want to use her for a ritual sacrifice. UNICEF funded its distribution to 36 primary schools across Uganda as part of a child sacrifice awareness programme.

    The primary aim of the Oasis Book Project is to encourage reading, although Ranzo admits he would like people to discuss his stories, which have themes close to his heart. Children being forced into work, the theme of The Little Maid, is something he has witnessed himself.

    “Many kids are brought from villages to work as maids in homes in towns or cities, and the treatment they are subjected to is terrible in many cases,” says Ranzo.

    His next book, The White Herdsman, which will be released in 2014, deals with the impact of oil production on communities, a timely subject for Ugandans with oil production expected to start in 2016. The book tells the story of a village where water in the well has turned black after an oil spill. A witchdoctor blames the disaster on an albino child.

    Ranzo’s stories have been welcomed at Hormisdallen Primary, a private school in Kamwokya, Kampala. English teacher Agnes Kasibante, speaking to Think Africa Press, praises the book’s impact. “It’s actually a big problem in Uganda, most children don’t know how to read. At least those books give them morale to continue loving reading,” she says.

    Ranzo has also penned Cross Pollination, a collection of fictional stories for adults about the spread of HIV in a community. According to a recent report, Uganda may not meet its target to increase adult literacy by 50% by 2015.

    “I’ve worked in a big multinational company where people have jobs but they can’t write. Reading can help develop this,” says Ranzo, who is currently attending the University of Iowa’s 47th annual International Writing Program (IWP) Fall Residency.

    Uganda’s literary comeback

    Jennifer Makumbi, 46, a Ugandan doctoral student at Lancaster University, is one of a new generation of Ugandan authors. She won the Kwani Manuscript Project, a new literary prize for unpublished fiction by Africans, for her novel The Kintu Saga. She said Taban Lo Liyong’s description of Uganda as a literary desert was “heartbreaking, especially as in the 1960s Uganda seemed to be poised to be a leading literary producer”.

    “But perhaps it is exactly this description that is pushing Ugandans to write in the last ten years,” she continues. “Yes, we have not caught up with West Africa yet but… there are quite a few wins.” In recent years, two female Ugandan authors, Monica Arac de Nyeko and Doreen Baingana, won the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize respectively. Makumbi’s Kwani prize adds her to a list of eminent Ugandan authors.

    Makumbi is optimistic about the future of Ugandan literature: “These I believe are indications that Uganda is on its way.”

  • in Ethiopia

    Ethiopia: When a Traditional Past Collides with an Irrigated Future

    170 Views

    Are the government’s large-scale developments in southern Ethiopia forcing local populations to move with the times or just move out the way?

    By William Davison

    Nyangatom people by the Omo River. Photograph by William Davison.

    Kangaton, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region, Ethiopia:

    A short stroll away from the bloated Omo River in Ethiopia’s far south, a new type of settlement is forming on the outskirts of Kangaton, a frontier town occupied by Nyangatom people and highland migrants.

    The empty domes are traditionally built: bent sticks lashed together with strips of bark and insulated with straw. But instead of the typical handful of huts ringed by protective thorn bushes, hundreds of new homes are clustered on the desolate plain.

    This is a site in the Ethiopian government’s villagisation programme, part of an attempt to effect radical economic and social change in the Lower Omo Valley, an isolated swathe of spectacular ethnic diversity.

    Agro-pastoralists such as the Nyangatom, Mursi and Hamer are being encouraged to abandon their wandering, keep smaller and more productive herds of animals, and grow sorghum and maize on irrigated plots with which officials promise to provide them on the banks of the Omo.

    The grass is greener

    The government, now rapidly expanding its reach into territory only incorporated into the state a little over a century ago, says it will provide the services increasingly available to millions of other Ethiopians: roads, schools, health posts, courts and police stations. But critics, such as academic David Turton, argue that this state-building is more akin to colonial exploitation than an enlightened approach to the development of marginalised people.

    Longoko Loktoy, a member of the Nyangatom people, says all he knows is herding, as he carves a twig to clean his teeth, occasionally glancing behind to check the movements of his sheep and goats. But, he adds, “our educated boys under the government structure” have told him life in the resettlement site will be better.

    Longoko says his family straddles two worlds, with some of the children from his two wives receiving education in regional cities and others raising animals in the Omo. In line with his “educated boys”, he says security and services will improve in the commune, but wants to retain the option to move to high land or to the Kibish River when the Omo runs low.

    “I don’t think the government will tell us not to move”, he says, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. Nearby, boys hunt doves by firing metal-tipped arrows from wooden bows, while women, their necks swaddled in a broad rainbow of beads, begin a long trudge back from the Omo with jerry-cans perched on their heads.

    Longoko is unaware of plans for the under-construction upstream Gibe III hydropower dam to control the flow of the Omo River, ending the annual flood that leaves behind fertile soil for locals to cultivate on when waters recede. The regulated flow will be used for the country’s largest irrigation project: 175,000 hectares of government sugar plantations, some of which will occupy Nyangatom territory.

    “Even though this area is known as backwards in terms of civilisation, it will become an example of rapid development”, was how former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced the scheme in 2011, heralding the final integration of the people of the Lower Omo into the Ethiopian state.

    “We are from the sovereign”

    In 1896, Emperor Menelik II led Ethiopian fighters to a famous victory over invading imperial Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa – the key moment in the ancient kingdom’s successful resistance to European colonialism. A year later, it was Menelik’s turn to expand further, as he sent his generals out to conquer more of the lowlands to the east, west and south. An account of the subjugation of the Lower Omo area was provided by Russian cavalryman Alexander Bulatovich, who Menelik, an Orthodox Christian like many Ethiopian rulers, invited to accompany his general, Ras Wolda Giorgis, on the offensive.

    The invading highlanders faced little resistance as they marched from the recently-conquered Oromo kingdom of Kaffa, a place Ethiopians claim to be the birth of coffee, according to an account of the trip translated by Richard Seltzer in Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes by Alexander Bulatovich.

    “If you don’t surrender voluntarily, we will shoot at you with the fire of our guns, we will take your livestock, your women and children. We are not Guchumba (vagrants). We are from the sovereign of the Amhara (Abyssinians) Menelik”, the Ras told local chieftains when he arrived in an area slightly to the south of Nyangatom territory where the Omo flows into its final destination, Lake Turkana, which mostly lies in Kenya.

    “A civilising mission”

    Anthropologist David Turton from the African Studies Centre at Oxford University has been visiting the Omo valley and particularly the Mursi people since the 1960s. He sees the current approach of the ruling party to development and state-building in the south, with its “civilising mission” and “racist overtones”, as similar to that of previous regimes, going back to Menelik.

    Schemes imposed from the centre that force people off their land are bound to create resistance, he believes, although direct, violent forms of protest are inconceivable given the overwhelming power of the state. In the past, there was space for people like the Mursi to move out of the way of the state. Today, he says, they know this is impossible.

    “They know that they are practically finished”, he explains. “Their way of life, their livelihood, their culture, their identity, their values, their religious beliefs – all this is being rubbished by a government which sees them as ‘backwards’ and uncivilised. No human being could fail to feel threatened by this, physically and morally.”

    At the core of Turton’s dismay are the accumulated findings of research on ‘development-forced displacement’. This shows, he says, that people who are forced to move to make way for large-scale development projects always end up worse off than they were before, unless concerted efforts are made to prevent this.

    “Ideally the government would have taken them into its confidence from the start, given them full information well in advance, fully consulted them about its plans, included them in the decision-making, and provided proper compensation for the loss of their land and livelihoods” he says.

    But instead, Turton claims, none of this has happened, and the result will be increased poverty among the many ethnicities that populate the Omo valley. That was the fate of Oromo and Afar pastoralists when Emperor Haile Selassie applied a similar top-down method to Ethiopia’s first major river basin development on the Awash River in the 1960s, he explains.

    For the greater good?

    Marking a departure from the past, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) argues that since it seized power in 1991, it has empowered rather than oppressed the over 80 ethnic groups that live in the Horn of Africa nation. This is done through an innovative system of ethnic-based federalism that enshrines the right of each group to govern itself and protect its language and culture. Critics, however, counter that centralised policymaking and the de facto one-party system that maintains political control denies autonomy for regional actors. This tension can be seen in attitudes to nomadic people: while Ethiopia’s 1994 constitution guarantees pastoralists the right to grazing land and not to be displaced, previously in 1991, the EPRDF adopted a policy “to settle nomads in settled agriculture”, according to a Human Rights Watch report from that year.

    In the official narrative, sugar plantations and the new communes in the Omo are consistent with ethnic federalism, as they will reduce poverty and bring some trappings of modernity to minority groups.

    “In the previous backwards and biased government policy, there wasn’t a systematic plan and no meaningful work was done for the pastoralist areas”, Meles said in his 2011 speech. “Now we have started working on big infrastructural development.”

    This stance is reinforced by pro-government media such as the Walta Information Center, which, in a recent article, presented the projects as unanimously welcomed by local people. “We had no strength when we have been living scattered. Now we have got more power. We are learning. We are drinking clean water”, Walta quotes Duge Tati, a local in Village One, as saying. Another villager was said to aspire to own a car.

    However, reports from advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch and Survival International present a starkly opposing view on recent development in Omo. They contain countless accounts from locals detailing how they’ve been coerced and beaten into accepting policies that steal their land and ruin their livelihoods.

    They are a-changing

    The Nyangatom have historically been so peripheral to Ethiopia’s highland heart that in 1987 the Kenyan government bombed them with helicopter gunships in the Kibish area after a particularly murderous bout of ethnic clashes. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ethiopia’s nationalist military dictator at the time, allegedly assented to the operation.

    Today, officials from Kangaton, the administrative capital, have to take a boat across the Omo to attend meetings with regional bosses. Despite this isolation, the impact of missionaries, traders and government is displayed in aspirations for services and technology, and the adoption of non-traditional dress and cuisine – at least among some people living in or near Kangaton.

    Lore Kakuta is a Nyangatom who became a Christian after attending school run by missionaries. He is also the security and administration chief for the Nyangatom-area government. Wearing a replica Ethiopian national football team shirt and a head torch bought in Dubai, he sketches out the plans for irrigated agriculture and a shift to cows that produce more milk.

    Lore is uncertain about how much Nyangatom land will be lost to sugar plantations. And he is clueless about the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers that it is said will soon be attracted to the area, and the impact they could have on his people’s welfare and their constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Nyangatom culture is strong enough to withstand any influx, he says, weakly.

    As a meal of goat stew mopped up with flat bread from the Tigrayan highlands is served, he explains how the traditional culture has changed already, mainly due to the influence of missionaries. So for Lore, the imminent transformation is nothing to worry about.

    “There is not anything that is going to have a negative effect”, he says, now garbed in a billowing traditional robe after dusk inside his compound. “We are teaching people to modernise.”

  • in Kenya

    A Day in the Life of a Kenyan Goth

    833 Views

    All dressed in black and adorned with piercings, a small but growing community of goths is one manifestation of the new cultures and subcultures emerging in Kenya.

    By Rowan Emslie

    On the streets of Nairobi. Photograph by Matthias Kihr.

    Nairobi, Kenya:

    David Lith is a tattoo artist working out of Nakuru, the third largest urban centre in Kenya. On weekends he embarks on a two-hour journey on a minibus known as a matatu to the capital, Nairobi. There he works extra shifts in a couple of larger tattoo parlours that service the city of over three million people. In both the capital and in his hometown, David sticks out.

    I meet him at The Goth Shop, a clothing store and tattoo parlour housed in a mall in the affluent Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi. The very existence of this shop is noteworthy – it is fairly unusual to hear rock music in bars or shops in East Africa, much less experience anything related to goth culture. For some, old Dolly Parton and Jim Reeves cassettes in supermarkets remain the closest thing to even “rock culture” available in the mainstream.

    David is acting as my guide, taking me on a tour of the awkward little tattoo parlours, shops and bars that occasionally host the itinerant goth population of East Africa’s regional hub. A profile in local newspaper The Star estimated that Nairobi’s goth scene extends to about 300 people. Clothed head-to-toe in black and adorned with multiple piercings, David attracts many stares from passersby as we walk around the centre of town. Most are curious or entertained, a few fearful or openly hostile, but whatever the reaction, David does not seem to mind too much.

    New generation, new identities

    It is rare to see much about Kenyan youth culture in the media. Most international news stories focus on the plight of the young and unemployed or the demographic trends that promise perhaps the largest generation of 15-to-24-year-olds in history. Especially amidst a lack of jobs for many, commentators ask: How can this generation be harnessed to drive growth? And how can we avoid the kind of disenchantment that could potentially lead to unrest and even violence?

    These are good questions addressing important economic and political dynamics, but in these narratives, the dimension of culture ought not to be neglected. There are dramatic cultural differences between this youth generation and their predecessors. This is a generation which is less concerned with tribal loyalty than their parents, and which is looking to forge a new, contemporary identities. Whilst the notion of tribe has driven most of Kenya’s post-independence politics, young people born and raised in urban centres have stopped speaking in quite the same terms. In fact, many young Kenyans speak a wholly different tongue – an informal English-Swahili mix called Sheng – which is increasingly replacing their parents’ regional languages. And they are seeking identities in new ways, such as through purchasing power, consumer goods, nightlife, and other entertainment.

    Some changes are occurring that are aiding this transition. Nairobi used to have such a serious reputation for crime that it earned the unfortunate moniker ‘Nairobbery’. In recent years, however, crime rates have begun to drop and excursions into the nightlife of the city are less fraught. There are various types of bars and clubs catering to the ever-growing youth population, who represent divergent attitudes on both culture and politics.

    The meaning of style

    Back in Westlands, a wall unit displays uniformly large, black, leather, metal and plastic boots. They appear heavy and warm, and are particularly at odds with the general trends of East African fashion.

    “Once we sold a pair”, the clerk explains with a smile, “to a mzungu”, slang for a white person. “We sell mostly t-shirts, trousers, jewellery. These”, he says gesturing to the shoes “are too much!”.

    The clerk himself is dressed in a plain t-shirt, jeans and trainers. He does not seem to buy into goth culture but enjoys the work well enough. “We have maybe seven or eight customers a day on weekends”, he reveals, “on weekdays it’s even less.”

    Later, David takes me to see Taz (pictured above), a fashion designer who makes goth-inspired accessories and clothing. Taz has been a goth for several years and claims to be amongst the most committed members of the scene. He informs me that the interest in goth culture came about shortly after tattoos were popularised in the early 2000s through MTV and other Western music channels. Across the several parlours visited, most had at least one goth-influenced artist on staff.

    Kenyan goths largely share an aesthetic rather than a strictly defined musical taste. Yet while their look is their most defining feature, many will take it on and off like a costume, only displaying their goth credentials in the safety that comes in numbers. Even in the tattoo parlours, stares and smirks at the goth artists are obvious. But while walking through town dressed as a goth is rarely a pleasant experience, those involved in the scene are hoping that that will change.

    Dangerous identities

    Thanks to the launch of a rock-heavy radio station, XFM, and an increasingly popular metal DJ called Van Doom, the number of young Kenyans partaking in goth culture seems likely to expand in the near future. While this means increased sales and a wider acceptance of his sub-culture, Taz expresses some reservations about the newest converts.

    “There’s these young guys – let’s say posers – and then the older crowd. The older guys are relaxed, they just enjoy. Some of these kids are crazy”, he says.

    Indeed, many people share stories of dangerous and sometimes harmful public behaviour emanating from the goth scene: the teenage goth who publicly self-harms at events in town, cutting himself and drinking so heavily people are forced to physically pick him up and put him in a taxi; or the young man who set himself on fire after watching one of the local metal bands playing, eventually dying of his wounds. Then there are the countless stories of goths becoming involved with the slum-based drug runners; use of ‘brown sugar’, a volatile mixture of heroin, marijuana and tobacco is reportedly on the rise.

    While these stories could very well be distorted or entirely false, they do allude to the negative perception of goth culture in Kenya which has forced much of the scene to remain underground. Goths are seen as unusual, violent and anti-Christian. Most of the older goths are in fact practising Christians, but their attire is misinterpreted as an attack on traditional or conservative values, particularly by the older generation. Many bars are unwilling to host metal or goth nights because of the crowd they believe will be attracted. Events are planned and cancelled, moved and rearranged.

    The negative public image of the goth scene also extends beyond the general public and is apparent in the attitudes of local authorities, at times with dramatic consequences. David used to have long hair, another way to stand out in a country where men tend to wear it very short. A couple of weeks before I met him, he was walking in town at dusk, waiting for the bus back to Nakuru, when a police car pulled over in front of him. The police approached him and asked to see his passport, which he was not carrying, before they accused him of looking like ‘an al-Shabaab’ – a Somali militant Islamist group responsible for several terrorist attacks in the region.

    David denied this, stating that he was a Kenyan. The police then challenged him as to why he had untidy hair and facial piercings, preposterously claiming that these are hallmarks of Somali terrorists. They put him in their car and drove him to a nearby barber where they forced him to shave his head. They said that this would “stop confusing them”, and they told him to “dress like a decent person” in future.

    When I first met David one of the first things I asked was whether he wore his preferred clothes all the time. I asked most of the goths this question and generally they admitted to travelling incognito, blending into the crowd. David, however, looked vaguely insulted at my question before replying, simply, “Me, I even wear this in Church”.

  • in DRC

    DRC: Who are the Raïa Mutomboki?

    503 Views

    Amidst the clashes between local Congolese militia that have been increasing in frequency the past weeks, the group called the ‘Raïa Mutomboki’ keeps being mentioned.

    By Christoph Vogel

    A young Congolese girl with her younger sister on her back, Mugunga camp, eastern DRC. Photograph by Colin Delfosse/Oxfam International.

    Bukavu, Democractic Republic of the Congo:

    After a period of relative calm, fighting has erupted once more around the town of Bunyakiri in South Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Reports from the area suggest that in early June, members of two armed groups burned down villages of their opposing constituencies following a dispute. In the subsequent days, further skirmishes evolved, ultimately including a third rebel group based in the area. The violence involved a militia called the Raïa Mutomboki clashing with Nyatura, a Hutu armed group allied to the Congolese army, and with the Mayi-Mayi Kifuafua, a former splinter group of the Raïa Mutomboki.

    The Raïa Mutomboki are a frequently discussed militia group in reports of conflict in the DRC. But who are they, what are their origins and what are their motivations?

    Who are the Raïa Mutomboki?

    The Raïa Mutomboki – meaning ‘citizens in anger’ in Kiswahili – are a mix of localised self-defence militia and decentralised rebel army. Made up of many loosely-affiliated units, the Raïa Mutomboki emerged in 2005 among remote rural populations in the disputed eastern DRC, a region in which the Congolese government and army have been largely absent for long periods of time. Raïa Mutomboki’s membership is fluid and is mostly made up of civilians who take up arms at specific points in time. This makes estimating the size of the militia difficult, but there may be as many as a few thousand members.

    The Raïa Mutomboki purportedly emerged as a means of self-defence following the massacre of 12 civilians in the village of Kyoka by the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu rebel group predominantly made up of the genocidaires who fled into eastern DRC from Rwanda following Rwanda’s 1994 civil war.

    The Raïa Mutomboki engaged in a relatively quick and successful campaign against the FDLR in the mid-2000s, gaining in strength as they went along. As Rémy Kasindi, founder of the Congolese think tank CRESA, points out, “successful attacks on FDLR yielded weaponry for the Raïa Mutomboki that only fought with spears and arrows in the first place”. After managing to establish their dominance over the FDLR, the Raïa Mutomboki lay largely dormant for a number of years.

    In 2011, the group re-emerged as a decentralised franchise once more, in response to increased insecurity. This time the regional security vacuum was partly caused by a reshuffling process within the government army (the so-called regimentation process).

    How is the Raïa Mutomboki organised?

    The movement’s founder and spiritual head is local healer Jean Musumbu. According to combatants, Musumbu’s dawa – a magic potion believed to render them invincible – is particularly strong and has helped them defeat better-equipped enemies, such as the FDLR in 2005.

    However, asides from this figurehead and a few other known commanders, the Raïa Mutomboki do not really have an established organisational structure. The Usalama Project’s Jason Stearns refers to the group as a series of “armed franchises” due to the vague diffusion of the Raïa Mutomboki label.

    Although similar to the Mayi Mayi groups that have partaken in the Congolese conflicts for decades, and even referred to as ‘Mayi Mayi Raïa Mutomboki’ by various media, the group differs from other militias in the Kivu provinces. While most armed actors have more or less centralised structures of command, Raïa Mutomboki is extremely decentralised. A Bunyakiri-based commander explained to Think Africa Press that the group is fluid and has a flat hierarchy, in part due to the way in which the Congolese government has managed to co-opt or buy off leading commanders in an attempt to decapitate different groups.

    Nevertheless, the Raïa Mutomboki do have a system of swelling their ranks, called arsenal. Under this strategy, once a village is defended or liberated from FDLR or other ‘Rwandophone’ militants, males from that village are initiated into the movement, creating a sort of snowball effect. If a subsequent neighbouring village is then attacked, new recruits are expected to lend a helping hand. In a sense, local social pressure plays a more important role in the spread of the movement than forceful recruitment.

    What role does the Congolese government play in all this?

    The Congolese government is intertwined in these dynamics in a number of different, complex, and sometimes contradictory ways.

    As mentioned above, one of the reasons for the emergence of the Raïa Mutomboki was the insecurity in South Kivu in the mid-2000s. This was again the reason for the group’s re-emergence in 2011, when the government’s attempts to undermine the influence of former CNDP rebels in the national army backfired. In the security vacuum left behind by this failed policy, the FDLR was able to regain territory that had previously been lost and re-start terrorising civilians.

    The Raïa Mutomboki can also be seen as one particularly stark manifestation of the government’s failed policy of disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR). As part of the Sun City peace agreement of 2002, which negotiated the end of the Second Congo War, thousands of combatants were to be integrated into the national army whilst others were to be demobilised and reintegrated into civilian life. Corruption in DDR, however, was rampant, and thousands of demobilised combatants never received any assistance to return to non-military professions, especially those in the most remote areas. To an extent, the re-emergence of a militant group in the area such as Raïa Mutomboki was somewhat predictable in the face of failures to demobilise former militants.

    Not only have disarmament policies brought perverse incentives to create or maintain armed groups, in order to be awarded the funds to then demobilise, but their uneven implementation has also created imbalances in the fragile local contexts, sometimes pitting communities against one another.

    How have local dynamics played a part in the militarisation of communities in the region?

    The militarisation of communities in the eastern DRC can partly be seen as one of the logical consequences of long-term governance without government – whereby non-state actors take on some of the roles of the state or blend into the very same – in the region.

    The failures of reintegration have also contributed to the dynamics of militia formation. As Verweijen and Baaz have shown, lukewarm efforts at army integration have been marred by irregularity and caprice. Integration into the Congolese military has typically either deprived communities of their own defences or – when applied inconsistently – allowed some groups to maintain their military strength over others. For example, many former CNDP rebels were awarded key positions when integrated into the national army, an imbalance the failed regimention process was attempting to address. While by contrast, various Mayi Mayi were redeployed outside Kiv,u leaving their communities at the mercy of other potentially hostile local militia.

    In these local security contexts, militia such as Raïa Mutomboki have emerged again and again. They engage in warfare for the sake of deterrence and revenge whilst aiming to maintain their relative strength over other possible enemies in the region.

    What is the latest security situation in the eastern DRC?

    The last few months in the eastern DRC have been particularly volatile. In North Kivu, the stalemate between FARDC and the M23 rebels ended with fighting restarting around the provincial capital of Goma, further north, the Allied Defence Forces, an Ugandan militia operating in the DRC, have caused thousands of refugees to flee to neighbouring Uganda, while Masisi territory has been marred by fighting between APCLS and Sheka militias – two local militia groups.

    In South Kivu, a faction of the Raïa Mutomboki clashed with FARDC in Mwenga territory, while members of Raïa Mutomboki have fought with Nyatura and Kifuafua rebels in Kalehe. Towards mid-July 2013, the clashes moved into Southern Walikale territory of North Kivu. One of the main dangers now is that these dynamics in North Kivu somehow merge with the Masisi-related events.

    In the meantime, there have also been reports of smaller units of Raïa Mutomboki effectuating a merger in order to better coordinate their politico-military futures. Whether this alleged new coalition will emerge as a more uniform movement or not is as yet unclear. Coalition-building of this sort, however, has seldom proved to be a step towards peace.

  • in Mozambique

    Mozambique’s Rising Tensions

    88 Views

    Renamo’s road block could have deeply negative impacts on the country, but it remains to be seen how the political impasse will be broken.

    By Gustavo Plácido dos Santos

    President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique speaking at an event. Photograph by Chatham House.

    Over 20 years since the end of Mozambique’s brutal civil war, tensions appear to be on the rise again between Renamo, the country’s main opposition party, and Frelimo, the ruling party. This antagonism has been brewing for some time but seems to have come to a head in the past few months.

    In the latest chapter of hostilities between the two parties, Renamo, on 20 June, followed through on its threats to block road traffic between the Save river – which cuts across Mozambique, virtually dividing North and South – and the town of Muxúnguè. The next day, gunmen attacked vehicles along the targeted route, resulting in two fatalities, five injuries and two burned out trucks. Renamo’s Information Chief was arrested for inciting violence and civil disorder. And a few days later, Renamo members targeted a bus and a transportation truck which were part of a convoy under military escort.

    Frelimo eventually responded by proposing negotiations, but these quickly fell apart after the two sides failed to agree on the demilitarisation of Renamo, one of Frelimo’s conditions for talks. Meanwhile, some of Renamo’s demands are also being discussed in parliament, though given that parliament is heavily dominated by Frelimo members – Frelimo holds 191 of the 250 seats – it remains to be seen if the political impasse will be broken.

    Rising tensions

    Tensions between Renamo and Frelimo have increased significantly over the past few months, especially since October 2012, when Renamo’s president, Afonso Dhlakama, along with 800 ex-guerrilla fighters decamped to their former civil war base in Gorongosa Game Park. Explaining his motives, Dhlakama cited the Mozambican government’s failure to meet Renamo’s demands, which ranged from electoral reform to the broader distribution of wealth from mineral resources.

    Relations did not improve and on 4 April, government security authorities raided Renamo’s headquarters in the central town of Muxúnguè. This move was purportedly carried out in order to disperse 250 Renamo members allegedly doing military manoeuvres, and 15 people were arrested. Some hours later, Renamo gunmen attacked the police command where the 15 were being detained, resulting in 4 deaths and 8 injuries. Then, in May, further clashes between government forces and Renamo members erupted a few kilometres from Dhlakama’s base.

    This June, things heated up even further with Renamo’s road blockade. In the words of Renamo’s Information Chief, Brigadier Jerónimo Malagueta, this move was aimed at “impeding any vehicle carrying people or goods, since the government uses those same vehicles to secretly transport weaponry and army men, and concentrate them near Satungira [close to Gorongosa Game Park] and attack Renamo’s president”.

    However, while Renamo may see the road block as necessary to protect itself, the action could undermine the country’s domestic economy and have disastrous effects on its social and economic conditions. Cutting off North and South restricts the free movement of people and basic goods. Meanwhile, disruption of the railways carrying coal from the central Tete province to the port in Beira could seriously destabilise the 7% GDP growth that Mozambique has been reporting, and scare away investors.

    Renamo’s grievances

    With presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2014, one of the issues causing friction between Renamo and Frelimo is electoral reform. Since Mozambique’s first multi-party elections in 1994, two years after the end of the devastating civil war, Frelimo has won every single presidential and legislative ballot. And every time, Renamo has complained of electoral fraud.

    With elections again on the horizon for 2014, one of Renamo’s main demands today is electoral reform. One particular point of contention is representation in the National Electoral Commission (CNE). According to Mozambican electoral law, political parties are awarded fewer representatives in the electoral watchdog than civil society, and parties with more seats in parliament are allocated more representatives.

    Seeing this as unfair, Renamo has demanded that more power is given to political parties and that all three major political forces in the CNE are given equal say under the principle of parity. Renamo has threatened to boycott the two upcoming elections if these demands are not met.

    The government has responded by saying that although the request may be “legitimate and urgent”, electoral law is parliament’s exclusive competence – i.e. it must go through a whole legislative process and cannot be amended unilaterally by the executive – and has insisted that the principle of parliamentary proportionality should be maintained. Renamo demands are now being discussed in parliament, though given Frelimo’s overwhelming majority of seats, whether electoral reform goes through depends almost solely on Frelimo’s political will.

    Another Renamo grievance with the government regards natural resources and funding. According to some estimates, Mozambique could have the world’s fourth largest reserves of natural gas, and the opposition party has been calling for greater access to the benefits of this booming resource wealth. In a letter addressed to the Mozambican cabinet this April, the Renamo leadership said that “it does not understand why it remains excluded from enjoying the wealth which resulted from the peace it helped to achieve and maintain during the past 20 years”. The letter also states that Renamo needs access to more wealth if it is to peacefully complete the transition of its military branch into a political force.

    The government replied to these demands in a somewhat evasive manner, stating that the equitable distribution of wealth – political parties included – is already part of the government’s programme. The government also denied that Renamo has officially requested more funds to complete its transition from a military to a political force.

    Regarding funds, it is also worth noting that political parties are partly financed by the state, and that funding is allocated according to the number of seats in parliament a political party holds. In part due to the emergence of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) – a breakaway group from Renamo – Renamo went from holding 90 seats to just 51 in the 2009 legislative elections, dramatically reducing Renamo’s state income. This could be one reason behind Renamo’s current demands.

    What next for Renamo?

    Renamo’s recourse to undemocratic activities – such as the recent road blockade – to get its voice heard appears to stem from a realisation that, under this status quo, Renamo is increasingly unlikely to rise to power through democratic and peaceful means, whether due to a lack of finance, political strategy or popular support. But while Renamo’s political power may be dwindling – especially with the emergence of the MDM – the road and rail blockade demonstrates its ongoing ability to disrupt Mozambican affairs.

    Frelimo is highly unlikely respond with a full-scale offensive – with the brutal civil war still in many Mozambicans’ living memories, few are willing to entertain a return to hostilities – and Frelimo has indeed attempted to appease Renamo by proposing talks. But with Frelimo in such a dominant political position, it remains to be seen if a political compromise will be reached. In the meantime, if Renamo continues to employ undemocratic methods, it seems that it will be ordinary Mozambicans that will suffer the most.

  • in Tanzania

    Tanzania’s Islamist Militants: A Domestic Threat from a Domestic Context

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    To ease religious tensions, the Tanzanian government will have to reassure the Muslim public that its grievances are being taken seriously.

    By Hanno Brankamp

    A church and a mosque stand out looking across Stone Town in Zanzibar. Photograph by Chris Gansen.

    On 5 May, 3 people were killed and 67 injured in a grenade attack on St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in the Olasiti suburb of Arusha, Tanzania. The assault was blamed on Islamist militants and has raised concerns about Muslim-Christian relations in parts of the country.

    In recent months, tensions between elements of Tanzania’s Christian community – who make up an estimated 60% of the population – and some of the country’s Muslim community – who make up around 35% – have escalated, with a handful of outbreaks of communal violence.

    The Arusha bombing perhaps signals one of the most serious threats yet, given the scale and type of violence, but policymakers ought to be careful not to elide Tanzania’s domestic militants with their more potent regional counterparts. Tanzania’s Islamist fighters have emerged out of locally-specific contexts and histories, and the government ought to ease tensions through reconciliation and by addressing underlying grievances.

    The rise of militant Islamism

    In 1992, when multiparty politics were introduced in Tanzania, militant Islamism was on the rise in the wider region, especially in the then stateless Somalia and on the Swahili coast of Kenya. In Tanzania, the one-party system of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party had left the urban Muslim youth in a state of economic frustration and political paralysis. The emergence of the Islamic organisation Baraza la Uendelezaji wa Koran Tanzania (BALUKTA) – Swahili for ‘Council for the Promotion of the Koran in Tanzania’ – in the late 1980s gave a new voice to those seemingly disenfranchised Muslims, primarily in Tanzania’s economic hub of Dar es Salaam.

    BALUKTA staged major protests in opposition to the government’s plan to incorporate church institutions into national healthcare and education programmes. The protest movement culminated in the occupation of the headquarters of Baraza kuu la Waislamu Tanzania (BAKWATA) – Swahili for the ‘Supreme Council of Muslims in Tanzania’– a less radical and government-sponsored Islamic organisation, which had alienated many Muslims due to its staunch support of CCM’s liberalisation policies.

    Around this time, street battles sometimes erupted between Christian youth and their Muslim counterparts over inflammatory sermons held in mosques in Dar es Salaam. These inter-religious clashes were further sparked by agitation from BALUKTA leader Sheikh Yahya Hussein, whose followers were involved in the destruction of pork butcheries and raids on shops selling alcohol in Dar es Salaam. In April 1993, BALUKTA was officially banned on the grounds of allegedly plotting the overthrow of the government.

    Attacks and the economy

    In a new upsurge of Islamist activity in February 1998, the militant group Simba wa Mungu (‘God’s Lion’) – apparently linked to the ‘radical’ cleric Sheikh Ponda Issa Ponda – stormed the Mwembechai mosque in central Dar es Salaam. The forcible re-capture of the premises by police led to the death of at least three people. In 2002, violence erupted again when Islamic activists gathered to commemorate the Mwembechai shootings of 1998. Two more people were killed.

    Sheikh Ponda, allegedly an initiator of the gathering, was subsequently portrayed as the face of Islamic radicalism in Zanzibar and the coastal mainland. In recent years, Ponda has assumed leadership of the Jumuiya na Taasisi za Kiislamu (‘Association of Islamic Organisations’), making provocative public appearances and holding lectures about the necessity of a ‘Muslim liberation’.

    Currently, the marginalisation of Tanzania’s Muslims is most clear in Zanzibar, which has a Muslim-majority population. Zanzibar has witnessed the rise of the Uamsho (‘Awakening’) movement demanding the island’s secession from the Tanzanian mainland. In April 2012, government forces violently cracked down on the Uamsho protesters that had rallied in spite of a public ban on demonstrations.

    The rift between Muslims and Christians has also widened in the recent past. In mid-February this year, Catholic Priest Evarist Mushi was shot dead in Zanzibar’s touristic capital Stone Town. It was the second attack of its kind, following the shooting of another priest on Christmas Day. Last year, the reported desecration of a Koran also provoked the vandalising of numerous churches in Dar es Salaam. And now, the Arusha bombing further stirred the hornets’ nest.

    These incidents arouse serious concerns about Muslim-Christian relations in both the archipelago and the mainland. However, cross-cutting fault-lines within Tanzanian society mean broader mobilisation of Muslims against Christians is highly unlikely. Unemployment and political frustration underlie civil unrest more so than sectarian animosity. Indeed, it is from this popular discontent and feelings of abandonment by the ruling elite that the likes of Uamsho and Sheikh Ponda have drawn support. By trying to criminalise those voices, the CCM government has failed to acknowledge their legitimate political demands for economic opportunities, jobs and recognition as Muslim Tanzanians.

    It is crucial to distinguish between Islamic activists voicing legitimate concerns and demands – as provocative as those might sometimes be – and militants that promote the indiscriminate use of violence such as the Arusha bombing.

    The need for reconciliation

    Tanzania’s domestic militant Islamist movements are currently far more modest in capacity and scope than their regional counterparts such as al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in East Africa (AQEA). These transnational movements may increasingly influence and manipulate Tanzania’s indigenous militants – and the 1998 bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi show how easily regional Islamism can turn against a country – but the danger of this seems limited at least for the moment.

    To avoid this, it is crucial to recognise the unique domestic grounds out of which Tanzania’s militants have emerged and to tailor an agenda accordingly. President Jakaya Kikwete’s vow to beef up security measures at religious places of worship is a sign of pragmatism in the face of an immediate physical threat. But whilst acts of violence must be tackled decisively and without delay, the same must be done for underlying grievances.

    First of all, Tanzania’s Islamist movements must be seen as what they are: a home-grown domestic threat. An attempt to put Islamic activists – militant or not – under general suspicion by portraying them as the potential fifth column of al-Qaeda is likely to backfire. Instead, it is now more important than ever for the government to reassure the Muslim public that their demands are being taken seriously.

    The administration’s investment in long-term measures – i.e. the empowerment of civil society and the creation of public spaces for all religious communities – will be decisive for the prevention of both enduring sectarian violence and militant domestic Islamism. Despite a healthy anxiety for the security of Tanzanians, concern should not be translated into fear and paralyse societal dialogue.

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