An exceptionally long rant about Nigerian 419ers and Ghanaian politicians - not sure of the connection except they sound very much like Nigerian politicians…

We can never move forward as a people, if we don’t end the culture of indiscipline and impunity that pervades our nation from the very top to the lowest rungs of the social ladder. It is this collective indiscipline that has made it well nigh impossible for us to move ahead since the 1966 military coup.

There is yet to be discovered anywhere on the planet Earth, the evolution of a successful social model, of a prosperous and civilised society, which wasn’t built on a firm foundation of discipline and honesty. John Mahama, is no Osagyefo Dr. Kwme Nkrumah; General I.K. Acheampong; or Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings. And that is precisely what this largely lawless society needs now: A strong leader. Period.

We are waiting and waiting…my brother is seriously contemplating moving to Ghana - if he goes, I go. I will throw away my laptop and become his cook or something. Meanwhile continue reading….

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Ghana

Kubatana.net is the second Zimbabwean human rights group to use Web 2.0 technology to monitor and report on the elections and the third in Africa following the Ushahidi project on the Kenyan elections started in January.

Sokwanele [Enough is Enough] created a google map for mapping election breaches using data they collected from their Zimbabwean Election Watch series.

Elections are a process, not an event, and the same applies to rigging: the scene has been set for unfree and unfair elections on March 29th, and the conditions on the ground have been developed through many months of non-compliance with regional electoral standards.

The events and incidents mapped on the Zimbabwe Election Watch map represent a small sample of the breaches identified under the project since we started monitoring the government’s non-cooperation with regional standards in July 2007. All the information logged under Zimbabwe Election Watch is derived from media sources.

Kubatana.net works with Zimbabwean civil society organisations to strengthen the use of email and internet strategies and provides an online resource on human rights and civic information. Using Frontline SMS, Kubatana set up an sms election service for subscribers to receive up to date election information and results. They have also been running a campaign “What would you like a free Zimbabwe to look like?” Ken Banks, creator of Frontline SMS explains how it works…

Zimbabweans have been incredibly responsive, with many people saying that the question gave them hope in uncertain times. According to Kubatana:

“It’s also been a real learning experience for us, reminding us that ordinary Zimbabweans have a wealth of good ideas to contribute, and our political and civic leadership must work on building a more participatory environment”

A combination of SMS and email were used in the initiative, with text messages such as “Kubatana! No senate results as at 5.20 pm. What changes do YOU want in a free Zim? Lets inspire each other. Want to know what others say? SMS us your email addr” sent out to their mobile subscriber lists. FrontlineSMS was used to blast the messages out, and then used collect responses which were then distributed via an electronic newsletter and on the Kubatana Community Blog

Ushahidi, Sokwanele, Kubatana and the NNEM (Nigerian election reporting project) have all shown the power of Web 2.0 and mobile phone in the hands of civil society in Africa.

Tags:
Zimbabwe
Elections

The Atlanticist : Africa needs tough love, not more aid poured down a rat hole:

There is not a single state on the African continent that would not today be better off administered under a colonial regime, as Hong Kong was by Britain. If the West genuinely cared about Africa and wanted to make a difference rather than more charity, it would send soldiers to overthrow corrupt and despotic regimes, and constitutional law experts and administrators to architect and operate governing legal and economic systems there patterned after our own.

Like it did in Iraq? I kind of followed this line of thought, clipping my mouth shut with clothes pegs at places, so I wouldn’t yell out obscenities in front of my children. And I went through without a single f-word. I think the writer does identify the problem most of the time:

The African continent is a patchwork quilt of artificially drawn and imposed borders, established, for the most part, by European colonial powers.

Apart from the wars being fought now in Africa, the ones that the colonial west interrupted (while the west itself was free to fight its own murderous wars and get them over with — effectively establishing its borders without African or other outside interference) — but I was saying, apart from these wars, frontiers on the African continent were established entirely by the colonial master and mistress. It is inaccurate therefore to say for the most part. Nevertheless, the writer identifies there a seed for conflict.

Monetary aid is poison. It does not encourage more responsible government. […] A deluge of aid will not fix what ails Africa.

Of course it doesn’t, and it won’t. Whoever said it did or will? But, again, the writer has identified part of the problem. Here’s the thing, as an African, I want the west out, not in, for several reasons. The writer mentions the first one. The second one is unfair trade practices from which Africa is getting thinner and its western trade partners fatter. The third one is that the west messed Africa up once, it’s time it stopped. Got on the bus home. Knowing that “legal and economic systems […] patterned after our own,” as the writer so shamelessly puts it, seem to the west to be the best because ours were uprooted and incapacitated by the same west.

Lack of access to Western markets for products in which African producers enjoy comparative advantage such as sugar, cotton and textiles is a huge problem. Western import restrictions and tariffs stymie wealth creation in Africa.

There again, the writer concurs with me. It is of course a huge problem. And the solution?  “American and European markets should be unilaterally opened to Africa goods, with protective regimes for Western producers being discarded.” Why not stop there, and also provide logical solutions for the other problems so nicely identified? Why talk of colonial regimes in Africa administered by America and Britain? We’re quite tired, as a people, of fighting the west off. We want to be left alone.

That’s all we’ve ever wanted, really, even as the west scrambled for chunks of our land. But guess what… instead of getting out, the west is getting in deeper: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7026197.stm . I think somebody took your advice, dear writer. The shame of it is that it’s a waste of money, and we’ll just have to fight and kick the west out again, albeit with an even more messed up continent.

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Pambazuka News has created an Action Alert blog for up to date news and alerts on Kenya.

Below is a press release from human rights and civil society organisations:

Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice

Statement from concerned citizens and governance, human rights and legal organizations
We speak in the name of Kenya’s governance, human rights and legal organizations, as well as the concerned citizens who have contacted and chosen to work with us over the last two weeks.

In our previous statement, we noted that, at the heart of the three forms of violence now being experienced across the country—disorganised and spontaneous, organised militia activity and disproportionate use of force by the Kenya Police Force and the General Service Unit—is the violation of fundamental freedoms and rights directly related to the electoral process. It is clear that the electoral anomalies and malpractices experienced during the counting and tallying of the presidential vote were so grave as to alter its outcomes. Some of those electoral anomalies and malpractices were, in addition, illegal—thus rendering the supposed presidential outcome not only illegitimate but also illegal. We therefore consider Mwai Kibaki to be in office still on his first term.
[Read more…]

For those who have been closely monitoring the events in Kenya over the past two weeks, political activist and author of the Kenyan Democracy Project blog, Onyango Oloo has written an excellent analysis of the opposing political consensus in Kenya. From the progressive side is the view that a “civilian coup with increasingly fascist tendencies” has taken place and set in motion a rage from the poor masses who have turned their betrayal and anger against each other in a frenzy of ethnic based violence which if not stopped “threatens the very notion of Kenya.” The treat is not just to Kenya but also for the major capitalist players…..

6. The major players in the capitals of capital- from Condoleeza Rice at the US State Department, to David Miliband the British Foreign Secretary to their counterparts and opposite numbers in Ottawa, Canberra, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere are concerned that the current unrest could degenerate into something that they cannot control or to a situation that threatens the economic and geopolitical strategic interests of international global monopoly capital;

From the reactionary and soft side which also has populist tendencies and which many of the mainstream media voices in Kenya, Africa and the West are proponents as well as many blogging voices. The Western media in particular have as usual failed to move much beyond a “tribal” depiction of the violence. Oloo writes…

there is a desperate fight back to revise the reality of the recent developments and create a counter-discourse that is characterized by the following hall marks:

(a) A strident attempt to force a shot gun marriage between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki that will effectively legitimize the December 30th civilian coup and undermine the potency of Raila’s popular, national democratic bedrock of support around the country;

(b) A dishonest attempt to broker “peace” without paying attention to the blatant injustices perpetrated on the Kenya people by the stealing of the presidential election;

Returning to the ethnic violence that has been unleashed and who exactly is responsible for murders, rape and maiming of Kenyan citizens, Oloo raises the issue of charges of genocide which are entering into the discourse when the reality is that the majority of violence has been carried out by the state.

In my opinion, I think it is RECKLESS and DISHONEST to further inflame passions in the already taut Kenyan crisis by making sweeping statements about genocide in Kenya whereas the facts seems to suggest that among the poor in the cities and countryside there have been widespread criminal acts of murder, rape, looting, plunder and even ethnic cleansing TARGETING specific tribes among them the Agikuyu, especially in the Rift Valley.

This ethnic targeting include the case of a Kikuyu mob torching houses in Kikuyu Township inhabited by Luhyas and non-GEMA communities; Kisiis being singled out for allegedly voting for the President; Luos in Kibera and elsewhere being killed and forcibly circumcised by gangs allegedly associated with the dreaded Mungiki sect.

All of these ethnic specific terror attacks are reprehensible and should be condemned by ALL Kenyans irrespective of their political affiliations.

In other words it is patently DISHONEST to suggest that it is only the Agikuyu who are being targeted………………

The highest number of deaths has been caused by the STATE itself, working at the behest of masterminds who want to “protect” the illegal Kibaki usurpation.

Judging the bullet riddled bodies in hospitals across the country, it is clear that it is the police and the paramilitary who are responsible for most of the killings so far.

Oloo concludes with what I see as a transformational opportunity for Kenyans at this juncture in their history. He suggests that patriotic Kenyans rise above the interests of imperialism, create their own vision of democracy, expose the narrow agenda of the mainly PNU led, “tiny Kenyan comprador/petit bourgeois business elite”. Finally he calls for an intensive campaign in Kenya and the Kenyan Diaspora whose single focus is the removal of Mwai Kibaki.

We as progressive, patriotic and democratic Kenyans must immediately do the groundwork to form A NATIONAL MOVEMENT built on the four cornerstones of PEACE, DEMOCRACY, TRUTH and JUSTICE.

The bedrock of this movement should be Kenya’s youth, the women, all democrats and anti-imperialists and not forgetting the huge community of patriotic Kenyans abroad.

This movement should be publicly launched before the end of January 2008 and it should have as it main immediate goal:

The removal of the illegal Kibaki civilian junta which usurped power during the infamous December 30th Coup.

Links: No Justice, No Peace

It’s the Kenyan People Who Have Lost the Election

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Kenya
Elections