In contrast to ludicrous [see previous post, Nigeria’s former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, talks about a “Different Africa” [which will be the focus of TED Africa] in this snazzy haute couture of videos.

One thing I do agree with is “We have to do it for ourselves”. The Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dwellers have shown us and proved that a social movement can engage in real participatory democracy and stand up to oppression, elitism, BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) for the few, racism and economic apartheid. People get very excited when talking about this “other Africa” - the one of growth in telecoms and of course huge profits, most of which are made from the poor subsidising the rich (cheaper tariffs and better deals for contract versus “pay as you go”). Privatisation policies which include privatisation of basic needs such as water, and electricity and again the poor subsidising the rich who pay less for their electricity than the poor and commercial enterprises being subsidised by consumers. And the big wow - Nigeria now has a shopping mall where businesses are turning over 4 times more than projected. Hows that for progress? Especially when it runs on its own private set of generators and God knows where it gets its water from? And even more exciting is the new “mining code” legislation which would be a great leap forward except it has somehow now reached the oil industry. But with all these great leaps forward where is the money going - not into social programmes, not in constructing an electric power system and running water.

I must say I find it pretty grim when someone speaks of having worked for the World Bank for 20 odd years and was finance minister of Nigeria describes a shopping mall and property development as progress. This is not about another world- another Africa - its about Africa joining and supporting the global market - carrots for the few and weeds for the rest.

Will human rights / social justice be on the agenda of a “Different Africa? Talks of trends towards democracy and growth rates of 5% per annum. But where are all the profits from these business ventures going? A different side of Africa but lets try having a holistic and inclusive approach. You cannot talk of democracy and investment ventures when human rights are at best marginalised and in most cases completely ignored; when there are millions of citizens who are stateless; millions who live in the equivalent of garbage dumps; when the majority of leaders are dictators trying to pass themselves of as democratic leaders; a muzzled uninspiring mainstream media; a justice system that is compromised by government interference and corruption - the list goes on. Sweeping the masses under the carpet then scrubbing it clean and selling it wont hide what’s underneath for very long. Take for the example the proposed “KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill” supposedly to prevent landlords from renting out shacks. The idea of the local government is to move the shackdwellers into temporary transit camps - as lawyer for the Legal Resource Center, Ranjith Purshotum comments

“Instead of saying that people will be evicted from slums after permanent accommodation is secured, we have a situation where people are being removed from a slum, and sent to another slum. Only this time it is a government-approved slum and is called a transit area. This is the twisted logic of the drafters of the legislation,”

The real intention here is to move the Shackdwellers to out of town locations in a similar policy to apartheid, where they will become invisible, where there are no facilities, schools, clinics, shops and so far from the town that finding work will be even more difficult. For the very few who do have work, they will have to spend even more on transport costs. Once the shackdwellers are out of town and out of sight, then the landowners and property developers can move in, build shopping malls, fancy apartments for the BEE recipients and make loads of money none of which will reach the people of Abahlali. But the politicians and economists can speak of the great leap forward as Africans do it for themselves. BUT Abahlali are not moving until the land promised them is developed and they can remain on their lands and retain their right to decent housing, water and electricity. Their determination to fight on for their land and homes, now that IS progress.

Now here is something to think about - “Why squatter cities are a good thing”. According to TED guest speaker, Stewart Brand - “everyone in squatter cities are employed” WTF! where, how, doing what? Something he would do I wonder? Is this an example of “critical thinking” ?

I haven’t put the video up as I cant stand the aggressive noisy corny marketing of it all but note at the end how the world starts with the US and spreads out from there finally reaching out to Step 100: the ultimate driving machine

today there was a mass march in johannesburg (from library gardens to the zimbabwe consulate) in solidarity with the folks in zimbabwe and against mugabe. it was an intense day. i was a bit annoyed with all the talk of the need to try “inclusive dialogue”… inclusive dialogue between whom? mugabe just kills off his opposition–he is not trying to have any kind of conversations. how inclusive can a meeting of state leaders be? furthermore, the leadership in SADC has already proven to be non-responsive to the needs of their people and the demands from mass movements so why should we depend on them to come to some viable solution? we all know how “inclusive” these dialogues will be for civil society. all this talk of dialogue is creating a protracted drama played out on the international stage and it shamelessly panders to further destruction and mugabe’s hagiography. we are at the moment of mass movement.

when we arrived at the zimbabwe consulate the person who was supposed to accept our memorandum refused to come out so he sent out one of his other folks. this dude was arrogant, but if you looked closely you could see the arrogant, stoic attitude was hiding some serious fear. i managed to push past the people with their big cameras and forced my little camera into the crowd and got some pictures of this guy. he never said a word. not a damn word. as he was leaving the stage someone threw some zim dollars at him which i quickly picked up–not because they are worth anything because inflation is damn near 1700%, but because they are in memory of this day which i think is extremely important. even with the police surrounding him and others pushing marchers off the platform, the zim consulate representation was still rushed by a few eager marchers. these marchers were pushed and blocked by the police officers. one nearly pushed me, but i managed to make eye contact and he just shoo-ed me away.

i’ve posted some photos here. please look at the photos of the construction workers. during their lunch break many watched and joined in with the singing. some of my favorites photos:

****Above is a picture from I took at the Human Rights Day March in Johannesburg on March 21, 2007.****

Zimbabwe has made headlines recently following the of Zimbabwean police’s killing of Gift Tandere, a young activist who organized against human rights abuses and the brutal beating of the MDC faction leader Morgan Tsvangirai. This is in addition to the growing attention on Zimbabwe related to high inflation rate (near 1700%), reports of human rights abuses, the growing refugee communities fleeing Zimbabwe (also check here), the HIV/AIDS orphanage crisis, the Look East policy and emerging relations with Iran. Trying to gain a coherent grasp on the situation in Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe can quickly develop into a masochist and tiring exercise that leaves you feeling more frustrated then enlightened. I receive about 40 emails a day concerning Zimbabwe and each email does the work of further obscuring a complex situation, but at the same time (rather unintentionally) does the work of illustrating how important it is to be firm, but careful in our critique of Mugabe. Careful not because we don’t want to disrupt some hagiographic metanarrative about the greatest of Mugabe, but careful because we must not/cannot a) deploy ahistorical myopic discourses that paints Mugabe as a liberation leader (who by the way readily accepted structural adjustment programs, and delayed “land reform” until he was practically forced) or the image quite rampant in the Western imagination of a brutal, savage dictator and b) must not mimic or become ventriloquist of imperial endeavors. This delicacy in speaking about Zimbabwe does not mean we stay silent—engaging in the quiet diplomacy that South African president Thabo Mbeki has seemed to master; it means that we develop the strategies to speak about Zimbabwe in productive ways. In 2003, The Black Commentator published a feature article entitled “The Debate on Zimbabwe Will Not Be Throttled,” in which it is written: [Read more…]

“On this continent it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.” ~Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Address to the Conference of African Heads of State and Government. 24th May 1963.

I would love to get into the “are we really independent” debate, but I am unable to. I would love to tear apart the entire speech and get into the pluses and minuses of the man who called himself “Osagyefo” (saviour), but again I am unable. I am unable to, because I cannot wrench myself far enough out of the grasp of my longtime passion, my major preoccupations, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The word that catches my eye in this manuscript is “humiliating.” That colonialism and neo-colonialism were and are humiliating, is not something you hear too often. Unjust, surely, irksome maybe, but humiliating? At what point does this set in?

Perhaps it was the moment at which black hands loosed the grasp of white hands on arbitrarily demarcated portions of the continent, and proceeded to squeeze it just as hard. Or harder? In 1957 it mattered what the rulers looked like. But only a few years later that did not seem to matter anymore, for I suspect that people could not be sure how they had changed. And so the saviour steps in with the solution, African Unity. Unity with a capital U, because it was to be a tangible thing that we could all see. It was to have a body and that body would speak and hopefully its words would instill in us all a sense of unity with a lower case “u.”

1957:the beginnings. So what label do we give to 50 years later? That is the problem with milestones. One is forced to take stock and make some conclusive statement on where one is currently. Preferably even give that stage a name. 2007 can hardly be called the beginnings still. I call 2007 the year that vindicates Nkrumah. In fact, I think all the years after independence vindicate him, because his diagnosis was right. And maybe his prescription? That depends on whether borders mean much to you at all. Where do borders come in? Nkrumah hoped for an “African Unity which will render existing boundaries obsolete and superfluous.” But we have jealously guarded those borders, our most troublesome hand-me-downs from colonialism, which at the same time are the markers of our sovereignty. So why is 2007 the year that vindicates Nkrumah? Because he said,

“If we do not approach the problems in Africa with a common front and a common purpose, we shall be haggling and wrangling among ourselves until we are colonized again and become the tools of a far greater colonialism than we suffered hitherto.”

And so 50 years later, we still “suffer” the “humiliation” of shackles. A far less visible but far more insidious kind. But today is a day of celebration. What would we do otherwise? Independence day for Ghana was a momentous occasion after all, and rightly so. And so we dance with our manacles on and hope that we don’t look too awkward.

Take a listen

All Things Considered, December 18, 2006 · While a majority of U.S. voters say they would vote for a black presidential candidate, many people say the United States is still not likely to put an African-American in the Oval Office quite yet.

Michele Norris talks with campaign strategist Donna Brazile about what an African-American candidate — like Sen. Barack Obama, for instance — would have to do to win.

Norris also talks with Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy, author most recently of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption; and Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama and the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.

Both Kennedy and McWhorter have spent a lot of time studying race in America. We also hear opinions from around the country.

Tags: Barack Obama, Race, Presidential Elections 2008, American Politics