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On the 28th 26th April, Zanele returned home from Seoul, South Korea to discover that all her work between 2008 and 2012 stored on 20 hard drives and including backups had been stolen on the 20th. The thieves also stole her cameras, lens, memory sticks and laptops. There are no words to describe Zanele’s feelings at this time as an entire original archive of Black queer lesbian history has been destroyed and that impacts on all of us – makes invisible what Zanele has worked so hard to make visible and speak of through her photography.
Zanele has started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to replace her equipment – PLEASE watch the video and donate what you can
I”ve lost all the work I produced from 2008 – 2012. Also backups were stolen.
I thought of the day I spoke with another friend about alternative storage. Now it is too late.
I feel like a breathing zombie right now.
I don’t even know where to start. I’m wasted.
I’ve sent out a note to friends to tell them about the incident.The person/s got access to the flat via the toilet window, broke the burglar guard and got away with my cameras, lenses, memory cards and external hard drives, laptop, cellphones…
Whoever ransacked the place got away with more than 20 external hard drives with the most valuable content I’ve ever producedI am hoping that a few of my good friends are willing to go to pawn shops or to other places where this type of equipment is sold. I do not even want to know who the thief is.
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Do not forgive me, I am nuanced. For to write a short review of a friend/publisher/editor/colleague’s book is to traffic in subjective subtleties; the kind that, incidentally, populates City of Memories, Richard Ali’s new novel and first book.
I am thinking of courage. “Some books are acts of courage,” writes the Washington Post in response to Moshin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. If in the final analysis, we wish to find a word to describe City of Memories, let it be ‘courage’. Let it be the incrassated feeling that comes from reading a book courageous enough to wear its conviction as a band.
This conviction is rooted in a fierce tale of love and loving and being in love – love that overreaches itself, because it is soaked in the murky waters of conflict. A love affair that ends ‘happily ever after.’ Only that, this time, the sorrows borne by the lovers, the livid questions they ask, the starless sparkle of their experience, is difficult to dismiss.
I love you, but I cannot love you (p. 130)
It is as simple as it gets – Faruk Ibrahim is in love with Rahila Pam, and the parents of both lovers are sworn political enemies. What I find too capsulated is the violence Mrs Pam engineers because of her opposition to Alhaji Ibrahim, and her love for her daughter. But I believe this is the endearing ambitiousness of City of Memories, defining nationalistic concerns through otherwise myopic lenses.
Frank and Rahila’s love is dangerous, perhaps a compromise, because it tethers itself with the question of identity. Identity as a tool or burden, as a formula, as a generic classification, as a sense of history, as a sense of self. What is love’s business with identity? What is distinctly fascinating about Faruk’s journey to Bolewa – the city of memories – to interrogate his identity, and thus, his love? How courageous can a novelist get; tangling the otherwise emotional business of romance and needing with the overarching furore of pluralistic contemplations? Ah, haba, this is a politico-eros story, as must be seen.
But I would not dismiss City of Memory’s preoccupation with tangled identity – not yet. We see a questing unfold in Rahila’s voice, persona, her idealistic aura. She invokes Nietzsche. “I saw my demon for the first time, and I have been running away from confronting it.” (p. 253) I tried, unsuccessfully, to hear the sound of her footsteps as she ran – it is, I think, Ali’s ploy to soak us in the beauty of language, of philosophic declarations, that we forget the loose ends that are tied up in other, less ambitious stories. I came to the end of the book looking for a grander resolution, one that lived up to ungraspable possibilities. But what is chiselled into the narrative is the dreamy idealism of triumphant lovers, do-gooders, and nationalists; a task that the author finds more endearing than long-ranging imagination. In this he is certainly closer to Habila than to Okri.
[click to continue…]
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Following the recent guilty verdict delivered to Charles Taylor [read my commentary here] I conducted a number of interviews in the Hague immediately following the verdict. To listen to the interviews, visit SOAS Radio
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Much has changed since I covered the first day of Charles Taylor’s trial for Pambazuka News on June 4, 2007. That day, he failed to show up to court, calling the case against him a “farce.” Today, he was in full view, stoic, resolute and somber. As I sat in the public gallery of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon building at The Hague, peering at the man portrayed as the most notorious African warlord in contemporary history, Taylor’s fate was solidified by one word: “GUILTY.”
After nearly nine years in limbo, Taylor was convicted today on all 11 counts of crimes against humanity and violation of international and Sierra Leonean law in that country’s civil war spanning November 1996 to January 2002. Taylor is the first head of state — and the first African — to be convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremburg trials of 1946. The UN backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was mandated in 2002 to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for the war that destabilised much of West Africa and stunted economic/political activity. Taylor’s trial is the last one.
Sierra Leone and Liberia have both been touted as post-conflict success stories, following what some would argue is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ externally imposed system of state-building. But while Sierra Leone and Liberia have attempted to emerge from the ashes of civil war, the specter of Charles Taylor has always hung over their fates like an ominous cloud, forever linking the two neighbours beyond their peculiarly similar historical trajectories. Taylor may have wreaked havoc in both countries, but he has languished in a Hague prison for the past five years, facing the full weight of international law for only aiding and abetting rebel factions in Sierra Leone’s civil crisis, privately providing arms and ammunition to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) while publicly promoting peace as a standing head of state in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
It is clear, however, that the decision to convict him was not unanimous. After Taylor’s verdict was announced, Judge Malick Sow, an alternate judge, disagreed with the judgment openly while being rebuffed by colleagues, who stormed out of the court: “I disagree with the findings and conclusions of the other judges…the guilt of the accused from the evidence provided in this trial is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution.” Sow, like others before him, had argued that Taylor did not make or break the war in Sierra Leone.
In the concluding chapter of ‘When the State Fails: Studies on Intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War’, [1] Tunde Zack-Williams, editor of the book, argues that Taylor simply tipped over an already bubbling pot: “…it is doubtful if Taylor’s intervention would have been so successful without other underlying long-term factors including: the marginalization of youth, patrimonialism and bad governance, deterioration of the economy and the general crisis of peripheral capitalism in Sierra Leone. By the time Taylor decided to show ‘fraternal revolutionary solidarity’ with Sankoh, Sierra Leone was a failing state, with crumbling social and physical infrastructure, a regime that could provide neither social citizenship, nor security for its people, with an alienated youthful population and an electorate that was at its wit’s end with their tormentors” (Zack-Williams, 2012: 247).
Regardless of the dissenting judge, Taylor’s sentence will be announced on May 30, two weeks after the prosecution and defense have given their oral arguments in a hearing. He will be transferred thereafter to a British prison to serve whatever sentence he is given. Again, another non-African prison will hold Taylor for crimes committed in Africa. Lest we have selective amnesia, Taylor walked out of a Plymouth prison in Massachusetts while undergoing extradition charges to Liberia in 1985. That was the beginning of Liberia’s tragic epic. Presumably it was also the beginning of Sierra Leone’s.
Brenda Hollis, chief prosecutor in Taylor’s trial, said: “Today is for the people of Sierra Leone who suffered horribly at the hands of Charles Taylor and his proxy forces. This [guilty] judgment brings some measure of justice to the many thousands of victims who paid a terrible price for Mr. Taylor’s crimes.” It may be coincidental that Sierra Leone will be celebrating its 51st Independence Day tomorrow, April 27, but I question whether this verdict represents a major victory beyond its symbolic value. Although the verdict is certainly relevant, clearly sending shockwaves across Africa, I’m not convinced that it has far enough reach to impact the lives of Sierra Leoneans who still suffer from the consequences of the reign of terror wreaked on them for 11 years. Nor does it bring back the deceased in Liberia, where justice still remains elusive.
What Charles Taylor’s verdict signifies for me is the need to reconfigure Africa’s domestic systems of justice, so that we don’t have to rely on the West to judge when, where, and under what circumstances we can punish for transgressions that we deem unacceptable. If a mob can stealthily executive an alleged rogue for stealing a loaf of bread from a local market anywhere on the continent, then surely we can channel that kind of misappropriated anger and violence to constructively tackle the most egregious criminals who break the public trust. Surely we can ensure that wielding money and power and influence cannot cloak a common criminal from facing the full weight of the law, no matter who s/he is.
Hollis’ rhetoric proves that she would theoretically agree with this position on an international level but I question her assertion that: “Today’s historic judgment reinforces the new reality, that Heads of State will be held to account for war crimes and other crimes…This judgment affirms that with leadership comes not just power and authority, but also responsibility and accountability. No person, no matter how powerful, is above the law.”
International justice is clearly blind to the atrocities committed by Western agents as well as non-Western countries that wield international clout or power. For instance, Russia, China and the U.S. never ratified the International Criminal Court because they were concerned that their nationals could be held accountable for crimes committed in other countries. And in May 2009, Sri Lanka successfully organised a counter resolution, backed by India, Russia and a majority of Asian, African and Latin American members, when a UN resolution was passed accusing the administration of war crimes. The administration argued that “human rights must not be regarded as a new version of the white man’s burden” in Sri Lanka. This just goes to show that it’s not enough for the likes of Taylor, Bashir, Kony and other Africans to be called before an international tribunal. All those who commit atrocities around the world deserve the same kind of justice, argues Taylor’s attorney, Courtenay Griffiths, from the former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, to former President of the United States, George Bush, for their participation in an illegitimate war in Iraq.
As radical as this view appears, Griffiths has made an important point. Until international justice can prove that it is blind to political maneuvering and power, it will always suffer from the virus of illegitimacy. As argued by Hochschild: “No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at peace. And I suspect it will be a long time indeed before three Africans in black robes sit in judgment of the likes of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for their endorsement of torture, or Vladimir Putin for his war in Chechnya, or Chinese officials for their actions in Tibet. But if we are serious about the idea that basic human rights belong to all people on Earth, no matter where they live—a principle enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights—then a justice system that can cross national boundaries is essential.” [2]
There has been a new, yet subdued, movement of people questioning the selective nature of international criminal justice, with Taylor’s attorney chiming the alarm bells with alacrity. According to Griffths, Taylor’s case has been politically motivated, “replicating blackness and criminality at the international level.” He is not the only one who questions the legitimacy of international justice. Paul Kagame of Rwanda argued that the over $1 billion spent in international donor money on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) — established in 1994 against the wishes of the Rwandan government, and modeled after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — could be spent on building local justice systems in Rwanda, such as the gacaca village level systems or the Rwandan courts. He argued that the ICTR’s physical detachment from Rwanda prevented it from meaningfully engaging with the Rwandan people. The same argument could be made for the Taylor trial in The Hague. And further research shows that dissenting opinions are not just confined to the continent of Africa. Bosnians, for instance, have moved from an earlier support of the ICTY to a more recent position of skepticism that questions the political neutrality of ICTY judges, leading to the insistence that future cases involving Bosnian victims be tried in indigenous rather than international tribunals. [3]
The fact that hybrid tribunals such as the ICTY and the ICTR average an annual budget of US$100 million should be called into question when domestic judicial institutions in Africa and elsewhere must be strengthened. Domestic actors need to ‘own’ the process and international actors can only play a supportive role, if invited to do so. Assuming that no surviving structures of policing or justice worthy of international support undermines what may already exist in countries recovering from complex political emergencies. [4] What were the indigenous systems of justice in Africa used before the onset of colonialism? Why not return to those, borrowing what is relevant and discarding the rest as historical artifact? It seems to me that we cannot continue to rely on international justice systems to protect us from each other. We must do that ourselves.
Two days before the Taylor verdict, a press release was issued from the Government of Liberia, as a founding member of the UN, endorsing its faith in the international justice system. It is ironic that Liberia has yet to deal with its own confounding justice system, or with a set of recommendations from a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that endorsed prosecutions for those who bear the greatest responsibility for Liberia’s civil war. These recommendations have yet to be implemented, with some arguing that they are unconstitutional. It is ironic that Liberia has praised an international system that asymmetrically favors selective justice. It also is ironic that Taylor’s former allies continue to wield political and economic power in Liberia.
A perfect international justice system is one that doesn’t have any trials, as former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Ocampo, once argued. But are we anywhere near making the ICC or other international justice bodies unnecessary? Durable peace in post-conflict countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia require domestic institution building of justice systems, not an expensive, internationally funded legal apparatus. In the Thomas Lubanga ICC trial alone, one man was convicted in one decade, costing the international community US$1 billion. In the case of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), under whose jurisdiction Taylor’s verdict was rendered, it was originally projected that the SCSL would cost US$35 million total. To date, lead donors such as the UK, U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, and Nigeria have helped to raise much more than that. Although the UK has funded judicial capacity in Sierra Leone considerably, clearly more needs to be done, and the investments must come from the Sierra Leone national budget. The fact that the vast majority of Liberians and Sierra Leoneans do not access formal court systems is a telltale sign that we must not be doing something right, that domestic justice systems, just as their international counterparts, are not blind, but rather selective.
To listen to a podcast produced about the verdict, based on interviews conducted in the Hague, visit SOAS Radio
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Shailja Patel writing in Pambazuka News responds to the shockingly brutalisation of African women’s bodies by the Swedish Artists Organisation – Lets be clear this action and the response by the artists in question does not stand alone. It should be studied closely in itself AND along with the growing acceptance of racism and racist action all of which point to the continuing brutalisation of African people in Europe and America [USA & Canada] and the attempt by white liberals to deflect the Black reality through the insidious myth of a post racial world.
The missing ingredient in Sweden’s racist-misogynist cake
What makes the cake episode so deeply offensive is the appropriation, by both artist and his audience, of African women’s bodies and experiences, while completely excluding real African women from the discourse. It is a pornography of violence.
TOP LAYER
The scene is Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art, on Sunday, April 15th. The event is the celebration of World Art Day, and the 75th birthday of the Swedish Artists Organisation. Five artists have been asked to create birthday cakes for the occasion.
This is what the world will see, in photos and on video, the next morning.
On the table, a huge cake, with a smooth shiny black surface, in the form of a caricatured African female body, sans legs. Naked, splayed on its back, it is composed of crotch, belly mound, large pendulous breasts held by truncated stick arms, a row of neck rings. Where the neck rings end, a living human head rears up through a hole in the table. The head belongs to the kneeling body of a man. It is tricked out in exaggerated blackface –large white circles around the eyes, drawn-on cartoon red mouth and pointed teeth.
Sweden’s female Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, approaches the cake with a knife in her hand. She performs a simulated clitoridectomy, cutting the first slice from the crotch, to reveal a moist spongy red interior. The head of the body moans and shrieks with pain. A roomful of white Swedes, men and women, laugh and applaud. Cameras flash. In the photographs, faces appear alive, avidly entertained, as the minister feeds the slice she has cut to the grinning head. More people cut and eat slices of the cake body, dismembering it. The head moans, yells, screams with each knife-stroke.
There are no people of colour in the room. There are no black women in the room.
The images go viral. The African Swedish National Association demands the Minister’s resignation, as do hundreds of viewers across the world. Hundreds more register outrage and disgust on social media. It is unacceptable that the body of an African woman can be represented this way, as an object for violation and consumption. It is unacceptable that a government minister of Sweden can publicly enact the violation and consumption of that body, and laugh as she does it.
SECOND LAYER
The artist who created this cake-installation, Makode Linde, is a biracial Swedish man, of mixed black and white heritage. He refers to himself as an Afro-Swede. It was he who knelt under the table, playing the head of the cake-woman.
“Within my art I try to raise a discussion and awareness about black identity and the diversity of it,” Linde says on Al-Jazeera. “The discussions [about my cake piece] have been mostly if I or the culture minister are racist or not. I think it is a shallow analysis of the work. It’s easy to take any image and put it in the wrong context.”
His intention, he says, was to prompt action against the female genital mutilation (FGM) practiced by certain African communities. The performance “went off the exact way I wanted it.”
“It’s sad if people feel offended, but considering the low number of artists in Sweden who identify as Afro-Swedish I find it sad that the Afro-Swedish Association haven’t followed my artistry and do not understand what my work is about.”
And he continues:
“If people can get this upset from a woman cutting a cake, can’t they use that energy towards the real battle against female genital mutilation?”
He displays no ambivalence about his appropriation of the body and experience of an African woman. There is no suggestion that he has ever spoken to women from communities which practice FGM, the ones his installation is supposedly intended to benefit, or that he has invited their feedback on this piece.
THIRD LAYER
The plot thickens.
Swedish arts blogger Johan Palme frames the incident as a ‘very efficient mousetrap’ for the Minister of Culture.
Apparently, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, the culture minister, “is reviled by large parts of the art world for her culture-sceptic stance and for previously condemning provocative art in what many see as a kind of censorship.”
Therefore, she arrived at the event acutely conscious of the need to repair her tattered image and dissolve the perception that she is a threat to freedom of expression in Sweden. Handed a knife, and asked to cut into the crotch of the cake-woman, she knew that if she balked or questioned, she risked being pilloried as an enemy of provocative art.
“ Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth tries to play along as best she can in what she sees as a “bizarre” situation, reciprocating the laughter.” writes Palme. “And on the other side of the cake, placed in the narrow space in front of a glass wall, stands one of the minister’s fiercest critics, visual artist and provocateur Marianne Lindberg De Geer, camera at the ready. And she snaps pictures of the whole series of events, as the minister is egged into doing more outrageous things, performing for the crowd.”
Palme also reveals that artist Makode Linde’s has another life: “he’s a club promoter and DJ, one of Sweden’s most successful, who knows exactly how to manipulate crowds and their emotions.”
Following the global outcry the Minister releases a statement:
Our national cultural policy assumes that culture shall be an independent force based on the freedom of expression. Art must therefore be allowed room to provoke and pose uncomfortable questions. As I emphasised in my speech on Sunday, it is therefore imperative that we defend freedom of expression and freedom of art —even when it causes offence.
I am the first to agree that Makode Linde’s piece is highly provocative since it deliberately reflects a racist stereotype. But the actual intent of the piece — and Makode Linde’s artistry — is to challenge the traditional image of racism, abuse and oppression through provocation. While the symbolism in the piece is despicable, it is unfortunate and highly regrettable that the presentation has been interpreted as an expression of racism by some. The artistic intent was the exact opposite.
It is perfectly obvious that my role as minister differs from that of the artist. Provocation can not and should not be an expression for those who have the trust and responsibility of Government representative. I therefore feel it is my responsibility to clarify that I am sincerely sorry if anyone has misinterpreted my participation and I welcome talks with the African Swedish National Association on how we can counter intolerance, racism and discrimination.
Still missing: the voice of any black woman. I wonder why Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden’s dynamic Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, and the only black woman in Sweden’s cabinet, has not been asked to comment. In 2006, Sabuni created a storm of controversy when she called for mandatory gynecological examinations of all schoolgirls in Sweden in order to prevent genital mutilation. If she had been the speaker at this event, would she have been asked to cut the cake? Could her absence from the debate be because the inconvenient fact of a live articulate powerful black Swedish woman, who actually makes policy on FGM, shows up Linde’s shock art for the puerile nonsense it is?
THE BASE LAYER
Nothing about me, without me has been the rallying cry of numerous movements for justice and representation at the tables of power.
It’s tragic that in 2012, this basic tenet of any political art or advocacy is continually ignored by the entitled. And never more so than when it comes to African women and girls, the world’s favourite target for rescue, the population everyone loves to speak for and speak about, but rarely cares to listen to. What makes this cake episode so deeply offensive is the appropriation, by both Linde and his audience, of African women’s bodies and experiences, while completely excluding real African women from the discourse. It is a pornography of violence.
Jiwon Chung, leading theorist of Boal’s Theater Of The Oppressed, offers a useful set of questions to apply to any art that claims to address the suffering of a particular group or class of human beings. Let’s apply them to Linde’s cake installation, and the argument of his supporters that it somehow serves women and girls from communities that practice FGM.
1) Cui bono? Who benefits?
Linde has achieved overnight global fame from this exercise – the kind of exposure and media spotlight artists dream of. Sweden’s Culture Minister, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth has established herself as a champion of provocative art. It’s not clear how any woman who has had FGM, or any girl at risk of FGM, is materially better off.
2) How do those whose suffering / body / experience is depicted feel? Do they feel they’ve been done justice?
A brief survey of comments on media sites and facebook postings about this event suggest that the overwhelming majority of African women feel ‘outraged’, ‘violated’, ‘furious’, ‘sick’.
3) Are you speaking for them (because you have a voice, and they don’t), or are they speaking for you, because what they have to say is so much more compelling than you?
The only one vocalizing anything in Linde’s art is – Makonde Linde. His caricature of an African woman doesn’t even vocalize words, just sounds of pain.
The next five questions, only Linde can answer.
4) Are you attributing clearly (giving clear credit?)
5) Are you dialectical?
6) Is your I a we? Is your we an I?
7) If their suffering were to disappear, would you be truly happy? Or would you have to look for something else onto which to glom your dissatisfaction?
Do you belong, do you truly claim solidarity with the suffering — or do you do it only when it fits in with your concerns and schedule? How do you support them outside your art?
Here’s an idea for truly provocative art. No more male artists, black or white, speaking for African women. No more ever-more-graphic ever-more-voyeuristic art on the suffering of African women. Stop using the female African body as raw material to be worked – unless you happen to live in one. Then, notice that African women are making their own work about their lives and struggles. Look. Listen. Learn.
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April 12, 1980 is often described as the beginning of Liberia’s end. I think of it as the preface to Liberia’s long, complicated biography, the beginning of our awakening. It was a day when our pomp and circumstance left a deafening echo; when we were all exposed, laid bear by the realization that being the first African republic meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
It was a day when the bubbles in our carefully watched ground-pea soup spilled over; when the chunky pieces of that brew refused to blend in. It was when we imploded and exploded at the same time.
It was a day of ‘enough is enough.’ We all have one of those days, when we decide to throw caution to the wind, when we decide to step out on faith, even if the consequences might be dire.
April 12 held such promise for Liberia. It was a day when marginalized Liberians finally realized that the system could work for them, that ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time.’ It was a day when we all realized that oppression is man-made, and that another Liberia is possible.
Unlike most people, I don’t think the 28-year-old revolutionary zeal of Samuel Kanyon Doe was misplaced or misguided by ‘invisible [CIA] hands,’ necessarily. Doe was probably very committed to change, to dismantling a system that was rotten to the core.
One day, his story will be written, and we will discover that the young man who boldly entered the Executive Mansion in 1980 was very different from the head of state who sat half-naked on a concrete floor in 1990, begging for forgiveness while his executioners emasculated and tortured him. On April 12, he was a hero to many.
I was born on April 12 in a time of relative peace two years after the 1980 coup, so I’ve had 30 long years to rearrange the pieces of the puzzle, to question why some of us mourned while others celebrated. My relationship with April 12 has always been ‘complicated.’ Today it is a day of meditation and contemplation.
Those born in April are known for their bravery, fierceness and commitment to equity and fair play. They often pay a price for that courage with social isolation. People born in April say the things that everyone else is afraid to, and do the things that people dare not.
We naively believe that the underdog can and should prevail. That’s how I view Doe’s actions on April 12, as the underdog attempting to rage against a machine that he probably wasn’t completely prepared to change.
Whenever I think about what April 12 signifies for me on a micro level and Liberia on a macro level, I can’t help wondering what could have been. I wonder what the young master sergeant was really thinking when he entered the Executive Mansion. I wonder what would have happened if power had not gotten to his head, what would have happed if his own paranoia had not gotten the best of him. I often wonder why and where it all went wrong, when the dream of April 12 slowly spiraled into a nightmare.
The entire month of April, for that matter, has become a reflection on some of our most turbulent moments—from the rice riots of April 14, 1979, to the execution of Tolbert’s 13 Cabinet officials on April 22, 1980, to one of the bloodiest battles during the civil war on April 6, 1996.
The great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said that ‘power concedes nothing without a struggle.’ Let’s remember that the struggles defined by April 12 have not disappeared, nor have they been resolved. Indeed, the stakes are higher now than they ever have been for Liberia.
They lie in Liberia’s contemporary struggles to protect the rights of gays and lesbians because a nation that can accept all of its citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation, is a nation willing to embrace true transformation. They rest in the struggles to marry the ‘traditional’ with the ‘modern,’ validating Sande principles while upholding the rights of women and girls.
They lie in the struggles to not replace the 19th century Indigenous vs. Settler divide with the 21st century Homeland vs. Diaspora/Returnee divide. Because we all know that those of us who have returned from abroad are not making any real sacrifices—financial or otherwise.
The entire month of April, for that matter, has become a reflection on some of our most turbulent moments—from the rice riots of April 14, 1979, to the execution of Tolbert’s 13 Cabinet officials on April 22, 1980, to one of the bloodiest battles during the civil war on April 6, 1996.
The entire month of April, for that matter, has become a reflection on some of our most turbulent moments—from the rice riots of April 14, 1979, to the execution of Tolbert’s 13 Cabinet officials on April 22, 1980, to one of the bloodiest battles during the civil war on April 6, 1996.
The truth of the matter is Liberians who remained in the country during the war sacrificed their livelihoods, and often their lives, to keep things afloat when we had the luxury of escaping for safety.
They rest in the struggles for equitable land re-distribution, learning from the failed mistakes of Zimbabwe, where land was owned by less than 10 percent of the population.
They lie in the struggles to attract foreign direct investment while protecting rural dwellers from environmental degradation, economic exploitation and land grabbing.
They rest in the struggles to clean Monrovia and other urban centers while respecting the dignity of the displaced.
They lie in the struggle to ensure that all Liberians are paid a living wage, regardless of their positions in any hierarchy—from our drivers, cleaning staff, and security guards to our young parking attendants.
They rest in the struggles to promote reconciliation while ensuring that justice prevails, because no matter how much we’d like to sweep the TRC recommendations under the table for political and ideological reasons, we must deal with the past head-on.
For starters, it is unacceptable that Volumes 4&5 of the TRC report—testimonies in which Liberians for the first time had an opportunity to speak their truths, to purge themselves of the specter of what they did or suffered during the war–have yet to be published. A nation that is able to move beyond its past without sentimentality, anger, or vengeance, is a nation that is forward-looking.
Let’s memorialize April 12 as a day of remembrance and April as a month of meditation, so that we don’t forget what could happen when the vast majority of Liberians feel that they are second-class citizens, or no citizens at all. Let’s make the promise of April 12 a promise of 2012 and beyond.
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey is an opinion fellow with New Narratives, a project supporting leading independent media in Africa. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Ph.D. Scholar. She can be reached at robtel@newnarratives.org
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The fundamental principle underlying the right to a fair trial is that every individual is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Hence no one individual should be treated like a criminal until a court of law has passed a decision declaring them so. Even if the circumstantial evidence points to the guilt of the individual, they must still be given the opportunity to go through all the motions of a trial to present their case, present mitigating circumstances – if they are there – and receive a sentence that is proportionate to the gravity of their crime. Amongst the motions of a fair trial should be the ability of an accused to be granted bail. This is dependent on the state giving sufficient evidence to prove that the accused is not a fit and proper person to grant bail. Of course, there is need to balance the interests of justice in granting bail: for instance, whether the accused will interfere with witnesses, tamper with evidence, or attempt to flee (among such other issues) must be taken into account.
My problem with the justice system in Zimbabwe is that the application of these factors is always unpredictable, and their fair application seems to depend on the social status and political affiliation of both the victim and accused.
In May 2011, a policeman was killed in Glenview, a densely populated suburb in the capital city of Harare, Zimbabwe. His name was Inspector Petros Mutedza. 29 MDC-T members were rounded as suspects. They are still languishing in prison. They have been detained in remand for nearly a year. They are being held in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, receiving inadequate food, and constantly denied bail. The High Court of Zimbabwe keeps postponing the bail hearing indefinitely since the arrest and imprisonment of the accused, stating that they are a flight risk. Given this standpoint and the Court’s assertions, should they therefore not proceed to hear the matter on the merits and give the accused the chance to prove their innocence? One wonders, is the incarceration of these people serving justice and is it in line with the principle of a fair trial, or their continued detention is vindictive, serving a political agenda?
On 17 March 2012, police in the mining town of Shamva, in the Mashonaland Central Province of Zimbabwe, killed a man. His name was Luxmore Chivambo. His crime was apparently related tothe disappearance of a purse (containing some money and a cell phone) of the wife of the officer in charge at Shamva Police Station. Residents at Ashley Mining compound, including Luxmore, were savagely attacked by police officers as the officers tried to recover the stolen ‘goods’.
Why am I raising these two stories?
Oh well, the people who are alleged to have killed the police officer in Glenview are still rotting in prison. The police officers who were seen killing Luxmore, namely; Motion Jakopo (41), Simon Mafunda (32), Michael Makwalo (30), Lee Makope (23), Benedict Tapfuma (22) and Blessing Saidi (26) and injuring 11 other people have been released on $50 bail. Where is the justice in that? Are police officers more important than ordinary civilians, hence making their murder more critical and their alleged criminals guiltier than those who kill ordinary people? Is the known crime of police officers, who clearly ill-treated citizens to whom they owe a constitutional mandate to protect, a less serious offence than that of rowdy citizens who allegedly attacked a police officer?
We stand on the eve of Zimbabwe’s independence and I cannot bring myself to embrace the celebratory mood that others seem to have. After all what is there to celebrate when the oppressed (under colonial rule) have become the oppressors (black Zimbabweans suppressing black Zimbabweans). Such freedom where others are more índependent’ than others leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
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Military governments found their most marked expression on the African continent recording an unprecedented eighty-five violent coups and rebellions from the time of the Egyptian revolution in 1952 until 1998.Seventy-eight of these took place between 1961 and 1997. Undoubtedly, West Africa was the worst affected region and it continues to experience more coups, rebellions and civil wars. Given this history, it is no wonder then that this region formed a regional bloc, The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to foster regional economic integration but also prioritising the maintenance of peace and security in the mandate of its bloc cognisant of the intimate link between peace, security and stability and economic growth.
Over the years, ECOWAS has proved itself determined to see an end to unconstitutional changes of government including coups, rebellions and incumbents who refuse to vacate office after losing elections.
In 2009, ECOWAS suspended Niger from ECOWAS after Mamadou Tandja successfully changed the constitution to permit him to run for office for a third term, and went ahead with elections which were boycotted by the opposition. When the army staged a coup against Tandja claiming to protect the constitution, ECOWAS swiftly negotiated a return to civilian rule and the holding of democratic elections. After 14 months of transition, the military junta in Niger formally handed over power to newly elected President Mamadou Issoufou as promised.
In 2010, when Laurent Gbagbo of Cote D’Ivoire lost a presidential election to Alassana Quattara but refused to vacate office, ECOWAS threatened to remove him by force and faced opposition from many sections of Africa including SADC heads of state. In the civil war that ensued, they maintained their position insisting on recognising Quattara as the legitimately elected leader. As the then Ghanaian President John Kufour stated “if Gbagbo [had been] allowed to prevail, elections as instruments of peaceful change in Africa [would have] suffer[ed] a serious setback.”
Earlier this year, when former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade decided to stand for an election against the spirit of the new Constitution limiting presidential terms arguing that the constitutional provisions did not apply retrospectively, Senegalese citizens protested this decision. The violence that erupted could have gone out of hand and led to a civil war but the maturity of the Senegalese people themselves as well as the heavy involvement of ECOWAS through political talks allowed for a relatively peaceful transition of power through an election in Senegal. Today Macky Sall stands the democratically elected leaders of the Senegalese Republic.
ECOWAS condemned the recent coup of 21 March 2012 in Mali led by Amadou Haya Sanogo and swiftly took action. They suspended Mali from ECOWAS, applied an embargo on Mali, froze access to finance from the regional bank in Dakar and began discussions for a negotiated plan to return to civilian rule. Their intervention resulted in an agreement by the military junta to restore constitutional order by handing over the reigns to the Speaker of the National Assembly today as a first step towards returning to democratic rule. They also considered the possible deployment of the regional Standby Force, should the rebels refuse to observe a ceasefire and engage in dialogue.
Surely this record speaks volumes to the regional bloc’s seriousness and commitment to see democratic rule where the people’s choices and voices are respected and to restore peace and security. ECOWAS continues to reiterate the regional bloc’s commitment to the principles of democracy and the rule of law, and their opposition to unconstitutional transitions of power.
The Southern African Development Committee (SADC) on the other hand has increasingly displayed its inadequacy to address similar issues. In 2008 when Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe lost an election to Morgan Tsvangirai and the subsequent runoff was marred by horrendous violence, SADC did not make a firm decision to respect the people’s choice. Instead they negotiated a power-sharing deal which was not only unconstitutional but in violation of the demands of a minimum democracy where the ruler must be instated at the choice of the people, chosen by the people and his term of rule exhibit governance patterns that respect the will of the people. Despite many violations of the negotiated deal that SADC negotiated, the regional body has largely failed to ensure that these terms are respected and that democracy is served.
In 2009, when Marc Ravalomanana of Madagascar was ousted out of power by Andry Rajoelina in a coup staged by the army which then ceded power to Rajoelina as its leader, SADC failed to take decisive measures to ensure a swift return to civilian rule. Since then, the High Transitional Authority, a negotiated deal by the African Union in collaboration with SADC setting up a leadership authority comprising the members of the Ravalomanana and Rajoelina camps has been in power and the people of Madagascar’s right to choose their own leadership continues to be undermined.
Yes, SADC believes it is being strategic diplomatically when it pursues the non-interventionist policy towards resolving regional governance issues. In the end it is us the citizens who are being done a disservice. Such precedents where the bloc is placating undemocratically elected individuals to enjoy power and continually denying SADC citizens the right to choose who they want to lead them are unsustainable. Maybe we ought to learn a thing or two from ECOWAS or better still, borrow them the next time we have similar crises. Bottom line, SADC needs to act decisively, with consistency and with one voice in the face of such blatant disregard to the will of the people.
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Reality Check: Sexy Chocolate – M.I.A.
While in retrospect, the films of the Blaxploitation era provided us with many cringe-worthy moments, they did contribute two things that can be viewed as positive. Black actors got work. And it was abundantly clear not only that Black was beautiful, but it was damn sexy to boot!Many a curious adolescent snuck into a screening at the multiplex from some G rated fare next door, and the more daring braved a trip in the trunk of the car, to enjoy the experience at the drive-in (remember those?)
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Interesting article on the online / print debate of academic journals”So do people really prefer their book review to appear several months down the line, in a print outlet that is not accessible to everyone? Do they want their incisive and up-to-date commentary on contemporary events to be available, open-access, tomorrow, or do they want it to go through a production process and appear in print some time down the line? Do they want this work, where there is a choice, to be available world-wide, to people in institutions that don’t have access to subscriptions, or who are not affiliated to institutions at all?”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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