Human rights activists, Grace Kwinjeh has started a series of weekly summaries for the Center for Civil Society based at the University of KwaZulu Natal. This particular piece reports the violence against Women of Zimbabawe Arise ( WOZA). Violence that inlcudes

Political threats, insults by police officers, unlawful detention, and humiliating and degrading treatment were all reported with extremely high frequency, but assaults, psychological torture and physical torture were also very high. The women endured various forms of torture, including beatings with a variety of instruments, e.g. baton sticks, booted feet, wooden planks, being slapped, and falanga (beatings on the bottom of the feet). Some violations occurred in the street during arrest, whilst others took place in police vehicles and/or in police custody.
The forced removal of underwear when in custody is recorded separately as it implies threatened sexual violence. Other forms of degrading and humiliating treatment the women suffered included being forced to kneel or crouch for prolonged periods and being insulted and threatened by the police. Examples of insults include being called whores, or telling married women that they should stay at home and look after their husbands and that their husbands are not ‘real men’ as they leave their women to run amok in the city. Threats included death threats.

**Eyes on Zimbabwe is a new blog / online portal by the OSI (Open Society Institute)

for individuals to learn about the crisis and to take action in support of the
people of Zimbabwe. The centerpiece of the effort is an arresting video
documenting the abuses of the government through the words and images of the
Zimbabwean people.

There is an online petition and readers can send letters to the UN Security Council asking them to investigate human rights abuses and monitor the forthcoming elections. The site is an excellent source for understanding the background to the current crisis in Zimbabwe and a timeline of events plus videocasts and podcasts. The OSI have also chosen to open the blog up to the African blogging community to provide input and advice on a range of human rights, the environment, democracy and global economics. There is also a FACEBOOK group

There are also a number of other groups and causes eg Get Rid of Mugabe Cause on FB

** The Batonga Foundation is a World Education initiative girl’s education project fronted by Angelique Kidjo who is now UNICEF’s “Goodwill Ambassador” (some may remember UNICEF’S recent attempt at publicising the lack education in Africa which was eventually removed following complaints from bloggers over the racist nature of the adverts.) I have the utmost respect for Angelique Kidjo, but am still not totally convinced about anything UNICEF are involved with, not just because of the racism of their recent campaign but my experience are large organisations is that they are disconnected from the grassroots, over weighted with employees and overpaid bunch that really contribute very little in reality.

Again there is also a FACEBOOK site along with the website. Seems like every blog and website now comes with a Facebook group/page - maybe I should start a Black Looks Facebook group - no no I spend enough time already with my own personal facebook - sorry but it’s friends only access though I use the term “friends” rather loosely as at least half the people I have never actually met!

** Delusions of Power - an excellent essay by John Samuel on InfoChange Analysis. Samuel asks some poignant questions on why inspite of all the micro credit, empowerment programmes, civil society initiatives, have failed to make any dent whatsoever in the super structures of macro power and macro economics.

This is not to argue that micro politics or micro power is not important. On the contrary, micro power and micro politics are very crucial for individual empowerment and women’s empowerment at the level of family, community and local power relations. Indeed, transforming micro politics and the injustice that is embedded in gender relations and challenging feudal power structures and historical marginalisation require change in unjust and unequal relationships within the family and communities. However, the problem is that larger power structures, political forces and corporate interests are so organised in terms of their interests, networks and control over the institutions and interests of the military, market and media. The institutionalised power of macro politics can make the power of micro politics redundant in the larger power play. One of the key reasons for this is that micro politics is most of the time dispersed, disorganised and disoriented in the larger context of the political economy of power and institutions. Hence, micro politics do not translate into collective power that can challenge and change macro power and the institutions that control and reproduce such macro power and macro economies. The key reason for this is the hegemonic power paradigm that influences and shapes power relations

The point here is that unless the micro is organised in such a way as to form a circle or spider web of micros connecting to each other in many different ways then the super structures that control and oppress cannot be dismantled.

Tags:
Zimbabwe;
WOZA
Poverty

A mixture of too much travel, personal issues, life changes, relocating and just plain old tiredness equals Blogger purgatory - that place you find yourself when you cannot think, read or write. Not only have I hardly written anything I have hardly read any blogs for weeks so today in the hope of finding some inspiration I checked out a few. I ended up feeling worse. All my daily and weekly reads full of pages of posts and still no inspiration. I did find one post that linked to a series of photos of the Burmese Buddhist monks protesting in Rangoon.

But seriously, these peaceful Burmese monks marching in their thousands for 7 days now in defiance of a repressive military regime - have given me my greatest inspiration this year.

I spent a long time staring at this photo hoping again to be inspired. I saw a young man with faith and courage standing in the rain for something he truly believed in. It should have inspired me but it just made me feel sad and humble as the drops of rain turned into the tears of thousands and thousands of people who just couldn’t take it any more.

Burma

WHAT BASOTHO NEED

Great discoveries are often accidents. Roentgen was investigating something else when he realised that x-rays could project the skeleton onto a screen. An apple fell of Newton’s head and knocked him into understanding gravity. While what I’m about to say is no scientific discovery, and is no accident, the question remains: why didn’t someone think of it before?

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has completed a historic purchase by buying maize directly from a group of small-scale farmers in Lesotho. (1)

Simple, as most good ideas are. Less red-tape, fewer Maloti wasted on transport and storage, more benefits for the local population, more jobs for them, too. Why didn’t we do it before? I’ll venture a guess. It is probably due to the incompetence of the people in power, who usually just go with the motions without rocking any boats. As long as they are comfortable, that is. Their keyword is maintenance, not improvement. How do I know this?

I know because there is virtually nothing that has changed markedly in Lesotho since the country became independent from Jonathan’s regime. In fact, things seem to have doubled back and taken a step in the reverse direction. Nothing daring has been done. Oh sure, we’re having periodic elections. But the streets are dirtier. People are poorer. There are more dust-legged boys begging in the streets than there ever were: you can’t park your car without at least two of them fighting over helping you park, all for the prospect of getting a coin or two in return. These kids should be in school or apprenticeship situations. What are we building, here?

Since Leabua’s regime, Maseru is more confused, it seems, and the taxis (what I call buxis, and what Kenyans would call matatus) are amok all over town. And right there in town, people sell food or clothing from car boots. I know that the drought and the HIV virus have done much to deteriorate the situation, but they haven’t deteriorated it for everyone, see? Just for the vast majority of Basotho.

What is worse in my eyes is that in a little more than two years the world cup of football is coming to South Africa. South Africa is Lesotho and Lesotho is South Africa, but do you think we will “make a killing” from the fans that’ll be all over the region? Think again. One of our potential sources of money is tourism, but tourists don’t just visit places. They want to be assured that they’ll receive quality rooms, transport, food, that they’ll be safe and well looked after, that they’ll have things to see. We must clean up our act, otherwise we are going to lose out big time.

“This is a win-win situation,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, speaking from the agency’s Rome Headquarters. “It helps provide income for small-scale farmers while saving money for WFP.” (2)

Damn right!

By Rethabile

It seems like weeks since I have journeyed through the blogosphere and visited old friends and spaces - here are a few posts I thought of mentioning.

I read this post on No Longer At Ease which provides a reality check into what ordinary people want and what they think of democracy.

But what do the people of Hong Kong really want?. A BBC reporter asked one of the people of Hong Kong what he thinks:

Across the lane, Ming Chan was crouched over his flower stall, preparing an extravagant bouquet of purple flowers. He too was cynical.

“In the past, if you were poor, you could work hard and get on”, he said. “That’s not true any more. In today’s Hong Kong, you’ve got to be educated, a middle class professional. Not an uneducated entrepreneur.”

So what about democracy, I asked. He laughed. “Democracy? The poor don’t want a vote, we all want a better life”. “As for democracy”, he added, “we barely know what the word means.”

On a related topic, Annansi Chronicles wonders about the role of Africa’s billionaires in the scramble for Africa’s resources and where do they get their money from?

While this means there is more African representation in Robert Frank’s Richistan, many of us in lower to not-even-close Richistan, are beginning to ask even more questions about what role Africans play in the scramble for Africa’s resources. A BIG question raised in the conversation about African billionaires on Forbes’ list was, where are those billionaires getting their money?

An awful disturbing story from AfroMusing on the rape of a small baby in Kenya. Lucy is being cared for by the Nest home in Limuru, Kenya. As Afro says, her story is not comfortable reading but we still need to read it. For details on how to support Lucy see Afro’s blog.

Definitely.

see more photos

Also, check me at: kameelahwrites
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I am not sure why I have yet to post something on the strikes in South Africa, especially considering I was at both the big march in Pretoria on May 25th (where I was nearly trampled) and the smaller march in Johannesburg on June 1st. I think part of my hesitancy is influenced by my interest in not coming to hasty conclusions and punctuated by a desire to not just ‘report’ on the situation. Since I was trapped between ‘reporting’ and punitive conclusions, I stopped…but, now it is time to pick up on the issue and maybe pose a few questions.

On Friday, June 1st South African public sector workers staged the largest strike since apartheid. That is right…the largest strike since apartheid.

The strike was called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, or Cosatu, an conglomeration of about 1.8 million workers, most employed by national, provincial or local governments. The group’s unions demanded a 12 percent salary increase and other benefits, but lowered their wage demand to a 10 percent increase after recent talks. During the talks, the government raised its initial offer of a 6 percent increase to 6.5 percent. This did not sit well with many strikers, and an indefinite strike in the public sector has been launched. We are now on day 18.

According to Barbara Slaughter over at WSWS

Many strikers spoke bitterly about the contrast between their demand for a 12 percent increase and the 57 percent that has been recommended for President Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet. One striker told Reuters, “They live in luxury, we still stay in poverty.”

Slaughter further writes that:

A report published by the South African Institute of Race Relations demonstrated that the living conditions for millions of South Africans have worsened since the ending of apartheid 13 years ago. Official unemployment currently stands at 26 percent, but the real figure is 41 percent—double what it was 10 years ago. Millions of workers earn less than US$150 a month, and 4 million people are living in conditions of extreme poverty, defined as less than US$1 a day.

You can say that again.

Why must people be at war just to feed their children?

Some of the Critiques:

1. The Politics of Solidarity; Lack of service delivery affects the poor not the Mbekis
2. Violence and Intimidation
3. The Strike isn’t about wages; The Strike is about a Power Struggle in the ANC
4. The Lack of Subversive Elements in the Strike
5. COSATU selling out?: Support for Zuma, The Abandonment the original demand for 12 percent without consultation for a 10 percent pay rise
_____

1. The Politics of Solidarity; Lack of service delivery affects the poor not the Mbekis
Public schools are closing and students are missing mid-year exams. Hospitals are understaffed and those with urgent medical needs are not being served efficiently. Are the strikes selfish? Are the strikes punishing the working-class who depend heavily on public services–the same working-class for whom strikers are assumed to be allied with? Do these strikes have the potential to divide South Africa’s working class? Some workers who are not participating in strike action also took part in lunchtime protests. Apparently, while the ’strike so far has inconvenienced millions of South African adults and children girding for midyear exams but has done little lasting damage.’ However, cities like Durban were brought to a complete standstill. If you choose to keep working to ensure that your kids can eat, are you committing some form of class betrayal or simply trying to survive? For those who cannot strike, what other forms of resistance can they engage in? And does this resistance mean anything? What about the politics of solidarity? There are likely to be solidarity protests, and some strikes, in the mineworkers’ union NUM, metalworkers’ union Numsa, as well as the municipal workers’ union Samwu which amount to over 600,000 workers. The sympathy strike received massive support all over the country. Some workers who did not take strike action also took part in lunchtime protests.

Time for solidarity!?

Even the babies are involved. This 5 year old was with her mother at the big May 25th protest & march in Pretoria.

2. Violence and Intimidation

Others are critical of the strikes because of the violence and the intimidation of non-striking workers. In the editorial ‘South Africa: Strikes Are All About Mbeki, Zuma And Control of the ANC,’ an editorial written by Cape Town’s Cape Argus, it is argued that:

The SA Democratic (there’s that word again) Teachers’ Union this week justified its invasions of non-striking schools with the explanation that “it is now a war situation” and “in a war there are no rules”. Not that the Geneva Convention’s rules would likely influence Sadtu’s disgracefully threatening behaviour towards non-striking teachers.

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has unashamedly used the spectre of violence to engineer a government climbdown. “Workers will soon be angry, they will be frustrated, and they will see anybody going to work, irrespective of how genuine their reasons are, as basically betraying their cause. And very soon the strike will turn violent,” said Vavi.

The police unions sketch similar scenarios of chaos and violence. Although as an essential service they are precluded from striking, union leaders have warned that their members are likely to defy the ban. As with Vavi, the underlying tenor is one of incitement, of tacitly condoning illegal acts before they happen, in the hope they will happen.

These are not necessarily idle threats. Violence is not a new phenomenon in a country where poverty and frustration make an explosive combination.

Last year 67 security guards were murdered because they dared to ignore the national strike called by the SA Union of Security Workers. Not one suspect has been arrested. read more

President Mbeki condemned the violence at the Budget Vote in Parliament Tuesday, saying:

All of us should ask ourselves, what kind of society we are building and what moral lessons we are imparting when insults, violence against fellow workers and damage to property become the stock-in-trade during protests of this kind.

[…] neither do workers themselves, in whose name these acts of thuggery are committed.

3. The Strike isn’t about wages; The Strike is about a Power Struggle in the ANC

Besides a critique of the violence associated with the strike, there has been an more serious accusations which is that ‘[t]his strike has not been about a fair wage, as Cosatu claims, nor about performance measures and containing inflation, as government claims. It is part of a battle for the soul of the ANC.’

Apparently, the strikes are not about fair wages or an emerging wave of working-class solidarity. Instead it is argued that the strikes orchestrated by union bureaucracy (not the workers themselves) is more about those who want Deputy President Jacob Zuma as the next president of the ANC over Mbeki or one of his ‘anointed.’ Even Mbeki had the nerve to condemn what he called the unions’ ‘message of selfish own interest.’

Having spoken to people at the marches and looking over friend’s video footage of the strikes, I am not so sure if I would hastily assume that the strikes are simply about a power struggle in the ANC. Which is not to say that a power struggle in the ANC does not influence the strike. However, such a conclusion undermines the reality that 7% inflation and stagnant wages are a real concern for South African workers (as well as the 40% of those unemployed) and deploying the former analysis that obscures such a reality is more than irresponsible–it is revisionist and myopic. Other than the former analysis being problematic for ignoring some serious economic realities, it also ignores another very important point:

[A]long with the South African Communist Party (SACP), [COSATU] is an integral partner in the ANC alliance. It is a supporter of the government and has never broken from it. Any differences between Mbeki and Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of COSATU, are of a tactical character—how best to defend the interests of big capital in the face of mass opposition. read more

4. The Lack of Subversive Elements in the Strike

And something I found on one of my many listservs…something I think needs to be taken seriously:

Myself, I am less concerned about any wackyness of the Cosatu demands as their lack of any subversive element. In other words, Cosatu appears to be so adjusted to capitalist reality (the capitalist presentation of reality) in South Africa, that it has even forgotten the demand for a Basic Income Grant - or whatever it has been called in SA.

One could imagine a set of demands that had depth as well as breadth, going to the roots in two senses: one of addressing, appealing to and mobilising the working people (and those denied even the possibility of work), the other of undermining such capitalist normalities as wage labour - or what the early movement called wage-slavery.

5. COSATU selling out?: Support for Zuma, The Abandonment the original demand for 12 percent without consultation for a 10 percent pay rise

Along with the SACP, COSATU favours the candidacy of Jacob Zuma, the supposed “people’s president,” who is no left-winger. Zuma was Mbeki’s second in command until last year and has never opposed any of the government’s pro-market privatisation policies.

In the course of the present strike, COSATU is attempting to demonstrate that it is the champion of the working class. But it is clear that it is not prepared to take on the government. On the eve of the mass action on June 13, COSATU abandoned the original demand for 12 percent without consultation and called for a 10 percent pay rise. The move was a gesture to the government that a sell-out was in the cards. read more.

Let’s just hope COSATU is not using workers as pawns in a larger power-play.

South Africa
Strikes
COSATU
ANC
Capitalism
Poverty
Solidarity