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Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Nobel Peace Prize 2019.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

In February 2018, in the midst of ongoing political turmoil, few could have predicted the radical political change of direction Ethiopia would experience within a matter of weeks.

The election in March 2018 of Abiy Ahmed as Chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and consequently the country’s Prime Minister heralded the beginning of a major shift in leadership style and approach in one of Africa’s most authoritarian polities.

Within his first 100 days, Abiy had released thousands of political prisoners, liberalised press and freedom of speech, legalised various once-criminalised opposition groups, placed his own stamp on Ethiopia’s military-security complex, committed the country to genuine multi-party democracy and ended 18 years of latent conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
Many expect Abiy, who at 42 is the continent’s youngest leader, to be announced as the next Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Abiy was a relative newcomer until shortly before becoming Prime Minister. A technocrat within the then Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO, one of the four members of the EPRDF coalition), his emergence owed much to two key interlinked elements of the polity built by the EPRDF since May 1991. The first was ethnic federalism: the rationale behind ethnic federalism was to embed the rights of different ethnic groups and peoples within the state, preventing a single ethnic group dominating the rest.

To that end, the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia provided for a federal political system based on nine regions, whose shapes and boundaries derived from the ethnicity of the majority of citizens living there. The second key element was the leadership style of one of Abiy’s predecessors, Meles Zenawi, who turned into an authoritarian strongman at the beginning of the new century.

To secure his position, Meles and his allies purged the TPLF of critics and detractors, and forced out figures in the other three parties who had sided with his opponents during the crisis.
In doing so, Meles re-shaped the EPRDF coalition into a body whose leaders owed their loyalties directly to him. The post-2001 Meles government also sought to impose stricter and more personalized control over state and party machinery nationwide.

Meles died in August 2012, leaving a vacuum. With no appointed successor and plenty of rival candidates, a power struggle ensued within the EPRDF. A compromise saw Hailemariam Desalegn, viewed within the movement as a political “neutral”, elected Prime Minister as the various factions plotted their next move. Without a strongman directing from the centre, regional administrations and power-brokers saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

This growing free-for-all also opened up new space for regional leaders and citizens to reassess their relationships with one another and with the TPLF-dominated government. Several critical flashpoints emerged in this regard during 2015 and 2016 in Ethiopia’s two most populous regions, Amhara and Oromia. In Amhara, the arrest of activists agitating for a reallocation of territory from Tigray to Amhara led to mass protests in mid-2016.

Six months earlier, in Oromia, a federal ‘master plan’ to expand the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia state had produced a similar result. Over time, and partly in response to the government’s heavy-handed and violent response, the protests spread and shifted from being about the integrity of the country’s internal state boundaries to wider opposition to perceived political and economic marginalization and human rights abuses by an authoritarian TPLF-controlled system. It was in this context that Hailemariam eventually resigned in February 2018.

Abiy’s rise can be explained to some extent by his work in Oromia realigning the OPDO with Oromo aspirations and acting to tackle Oromo grievances against a federal government perceived to be oppressive, anti-Oromo and chauvinistic.

Before becoming Prime Minister, Abiy himself was little known as a leader as opposed to an administrator. He followed a path well-trodden by many other Meles-era technocrats and gave little indication that his premiership would be transformative. Instead, he has taken significant risks. He has also shown himself to be a leader with mettle – facing off against some of the most embedded vested interests in the EPRDF state within months of taking office. He has not, however, demonstrated significant interest in building wider alliances to secure a more stable political trajectory for his government, preferring to rely on his own image and message as a mobiliser.

A major criticism leveled at Abiy by some of his opponents is that he is ‘all talk’. While there is some truth to this, the Ethiopian leader has generally proved decisive when necessary. He has taken critical decisions, which have profoundly disrupted the status quo. Within weeks of taking office, for example, Abiy dispatched the two most fearsome TPLF securocrats in the nation – the army chief of staff (Samora Yunis) and the national intelligence chief (Getachew Assefa), two of Meles’ most longstanding and effective enforcers.

Moreover, Abiy has shown himself magnanimous, releasing thousands of political prisoners and decriminalizing opposition parties and armed groups once labelled terrorists, including the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). His record with individuals, however – particularly those most strongly associated with the Meles era – is somewhat more ambiguous and in line with the more traditional EPRDF approach. Indeed, Abiy’s medemer posture has not been built only upon uplifting words, progressive acts and reformist pledges. It has also rested upon a more cynical and somewhat irresponsible positioning as the un-doer and opposite of everything EPRDF that had come before.

Cynical, because Abiy was himself a part of the EPRDF machinery throughout the 2000s and a senior figure in an intelligence agency. Irresponsible, because in some of his speeches he has deliberately blurred critiques of the Meles/Hailemariam regimes with attacks on the TPLF and, most significantly, slurs on Tigrayans themselves. This has served not only to stoke further tensions between Tigrayans and their Amharic and Afar neighbours but – ironically – to strengthen the TPLF’s legitimacy and support in Tigray at a time when the party’s popularity had been in terminal decline.

Abiy has demonstrated much less interest in building coalitions and networks with the multitude of power players inside and outside the EPRDF than he has in appealing over their heads directly to the people. In the latter regard, he has managed to cultivate genuine affection and support from wide and diverse populations. Shortly after taking office Abiy undertook a tour of the country, where his appeals for unity, reconciliation and change resonated widely and inspired many.

The love of the crowd alone is, however, an unstable foundation for genuine progressive change in a country as multi-faceted as Ethiopia. This is particularly so as Abiy’s honeymoon period comes to a close and citizens begin to judge him by his achievements as well as his rhetoric. Moreover, ever since a rally in Addis Ababa was targeted by Abiy’s opponents with grenades in June 2018, with one death and over 100 injuries, these affairs have been more and more tightly policed and uneasy. Increasingly, the Ethiopian leader appears in public behind bullet-proof glass.

Abiy appears to have increasingly retreated into a highly personalized approach to government. Some of his most significant policy decisions were made without reference to wider government stakeholders and were implemented through informal or ad hoc mechanisms. Following the assassination of the Amhara Regional State President Ambachew Mekonnen in June 2019 Abiy replaced him with one of his own closest security aides, Temesgen Tiruneh, while EPRDF officials have openly speculated that the Prime Minister will either transform the EPRDF into a unitary, pan-Ethiopian party. Certainly, the next phase of Abiy’s premiership will require more institutionalization of “Abiymania” if it is to produce sustainable results.

The same is true for Abiy’s leadership in foreign policy, the arena where he has undoubtedly achieved the most in the shortest amount of time. Securing peace with neighbouring Eritrea after an 18-year cold war was a major triumph for the Abiy government, and has profound implications for regional security, stability and cooperation. The normalization of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations has relied heavily on the maintenance of friendly personal relations between Abiy and Isaias, who have undertaken numerous trips to each other’s capitals and beyond. The changed relationship between the two states remains, however, largely bound up with this personal relationship, rather than in a more formal, bilateral arrangement.

Despite a declaration of intent signed in Asmara and Jeddah in 2018, numerous key issues including trade, tariffs, currency, security and citizenship remain outside any formal legal arrangement. More generally, a resurgent Eritrea carries both opportunities and risks for Ethiopia, particularly given the growing significance of Gulf powers in the Horn. There is no guarantee that this mutually beneficial arrangement will last, particularly without a more formal legal basis.

Unlike Isaias, though, Abiy enjoys the support and confidence of Western aid donors, who continue to finance a significant part of Ethiopia’s national budget, and its security complex. While to some extent he inherited these ties from his predecessors, they are also founded on a genuine optimism in Western capitals regarding the Ethiopian leader. For decades, Western donors to Ethiopia have awkwardly balanced a stated foreign policy commitment to promoting democratization and respect for human rights with unfailing support to authoritarian regimes in the name of security and stability. Abiy represents an opportunity for donors to support a reformer and a force for regional stability.

A critical appraisal of Abiy’s leadership must also take into account the immense challenges of governing a state as diverse and complex. Ethiopia today faces an acute political and humanitarian crisis, which have made Ethiopia the country with the largest number of internally-displaced persons on the planet.

The Ethiopian leader’s hopeful rhetoric and progressive policies provide much-needed hope and optimism for the following years. Abiy’s early successes as a regional trouble-shooter are impressive, and his preparedness to challenge and overturn some of the most vicious and problematic features of the EPRDF polity shows courage and decisiveness.

That being said, a review of his record cannot help but leave one with the impression that he is contending with forces the magnitude and shape of which he has yet to fully grasp. There are pressing issues, however, which will force the matter. The first is the ongoing ethnic violence and the wider political crisis.
The second is the forthcoming election, due to be held in 2020. This will be a major test of Abiy’s leadership.

Jonathan Fisher
University of Birmingham

Music. Noa. Seeds of peace.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

Deeply rooted in the land and culture of his ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known in the world of art as Noa, is still sending out a message of peace that involves all of us.
The western world came to know of her when, in 1994, with her own special grace and simplicity, she performed her own very personal version of the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, on live worldwide television in St. Peter’s Square, for Pope John Paul II. Accompanying this Yemenite Jewess from Tel Aviv, was guitarist Gil Dor as she wove musical Arabesques in that immortal melody to which she had added a somewhat pacifist text. That same music occupied the final spot on her first international album produced together with her mentor Pat Metheny.

A star was born. However, that Ave Maria and that performance gave rise to an avalanche of criticism from the ultraorthodox. And that criticism is still active today and, despite her worldwide popularity, has resulted in her being practically prevented from performing in her own country where her concerts are few and far between. Nevertheless, that same Ave Maria concludes her first album, ‘Letters to Bach’: in confirmation that neither time nor extreme views have calmed her desire for intercultural dialogue, or her desire to communicate, through her art, universal values of peace and brotherhood.

In this performance we discover her extraordinary voice, the faultless guitar-playing of Gil Dor, and nothing other than the immortal genius of Bach which she reinvents in her own way, adding her own words, like twelve timeless flowers, sung at times in English and at times in Hebrew: a risky project from which the woman emerges with her usual class – a result due also to the mythical producer Quincy Jones – confirming, on the one hand, her eclecticism of expression and, on the other, showing that certain musical treasures continue to speak to us and inspire us even beyond the confines of time and cultures.

The mother of three young children, and deeply rooted in the land and culture of her ancestors, Achinoam Nini, known to the world of music as Noa, continues to send out messages that involve all of us and, despite coming from a perennially disturbed country, has reached her fifteenth album (in a career lasting almost thirty years). She has also received a number of awards testifying to her intercultural humanism such as the Franciscan Pilgrim of Peace and the Crystal Award of the World Economic Forum and has been for years the FAO Ambassador and is also involved with a number of humanitarian organisations.

Despite the criticism of many of her compatriots, Noa continues her struggle for dialogue, especially between Israelis and Palestinians: “If we refuse to recognise the rights of both parties and to accept our obligations – she wrote some time ago in her blog – if each of us sticks to their own version, holding that of the others in contempt, if we continue to prefer the sword to dialogue, if we sanctify the land and not the lives of our children, we will all soon be forced to seek a colony on the Moon, given that our earth will be soaked in so much blood and covered with so many stones that we will no longer have anywhere
we can live”.
Franz Coriasco

Nigerian gangs.

Sunday, 1 December 2019 8:00

A large part of the drugs coming from Latin America and Asia is controlled and managed by gangs of Nigerians (such as the Area boys known as Agberos, other gangs of young boys called Bakassi and the fearsome violent confraternity of the Black Axe) dominated by the powerful Nigerian mafia which, with its centres in Europe and the rest of the world, exports drugs together with the trafficking of women.

The establishment of such groups worldwide has been facilitated by the Nigerian diaspora, present in many parts of the world as well as by Nigeria’s membership of the Commonwealth. This latter fact, in particular, has made possible close commercial relations with the Indian sub-continent, a producer of opium and heroin, and with the world of the Anglo-Saxon consumer. Such aspects, together with the qualitative leap by the Nigerian mafia in recent years, both economically and technologically, have made it a real nerve centre, capable of governing and managing a large part of the African drugs trade.

The important increase of the area, as a strategic hub for narcotics, had its beginnings in the eighties when the country became one of the main distribution points for the trafficking of cocaine coming from South America and of heroine coming into the country from Central and South-East Asia that were destined to end up in the European markets. It reached its peak in the nineties when, in 1992, the discoveries of cocaine at Lagos airport were so great that they led the Nigerian authorities to suspend direct flights to Rio de Janeiro. The trafficking was being managed by a great trans-national network with its main fulcra in Nigeria. The organisation was moving large amounts of drugs which, after leaving Colombia, were transferred to Brazil and later reached Nigeria from where they were forwarded to the main European centres. The organisation was led by Nigerian citizens and the lower levels were occupied especially by Ghanaians.

Since then, the Nigerian traffickers have been considered the main vectors of drugs, a real industry at the service of heroin and cocaine trafficking. They are present in all the key points of production and trafficking and, through their compatriots living abroad, they have formed criminal gangs comparable to those of Colombia, Turkey or China. These organisations, like others, base their strength on the tribal system and the ethnical solidarity that exists between clans and families.
The transfer of narcotics to the western markets takes place mainly through a large number of couriers who hide the drugs in their luggage or, more often, swallow them, after wrapping them in condoms or some other plastic material.
This method is so widespread in Nigerian gangs that, between 2006 and 2008, the years in which the phenomenon began to assume considerable proportions, of 1,400 couriers discovered, 57% of them were Nigerian. It is not unusual to have more than one courier on the same flight: during the previously mentioned period, more than thirty couriers were discovered on a flight to Amsterdam.

As early as 1995, the US authorities estimated that 50% of the heroin circulating in their country was brought there by Nigerians. Organised Nigerian crime, as has been emphasised several times by UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), has for some time been active beyond Nigerian borders and is now widespread in various areas of the world, led by Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Brazil and Japan.
The Nigerian mafia for the transit of drugs, both in Nigeria and its bordering countries, is compelled to ally itself with the fierce Islamic groups of Boko Haram at the height of its power in the region. In the nineties, a group was formed with a centre for studies of religious questions for the purpose of introducing Sharia Law into Nigeria.

However, in 2002, led by Mohammed Yusuf, it changed its form and its mission and its guerrillas, camped in the jungle in the north east of Nigeria, began to launch attacks on institutions and those peasant villages which resisted their extortionate demands. The turning point came in 2009 following a clear and heavy defeat in an offensive against the police which resulted in the death of about 700 insurgents and the capture and execution of Mohammed Yusuf. This situation demanded a change in leadership, assumed by Abubakar Shekau, and in strategy which led the group to carry out real terrorist attacks. According to reliable analysts, Boko Haram is not so much an expression of radical religion as of internal divisions within Nigeria where the south is rich in petroleum and the north is extremely poor. (F.R.)

Namibia. Nothing Surprising.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

Ever since it won the first democratic elections, held in November 1989 and supervised by the UN, by a comfortable 57%, the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO, now called the ‘SWAPO Party of Namibia’) has continued to enjoy an absolute majority
over its opponents.

A majority that grew even further over the years from over 70% in the nineties to 80% in 2014, keeping in power the President who is the executive head in the semi-presidential system outlined in the Constitutions. The outcome of the next elections, planned for this month of November, is taken for granted.

Namibia’s President Hage Geingob.

After the three mandates completed by Sam Nujoma, ‘Father of the Nation’ and historical leader of SWAPO, from 1990 to 2005, and the two mandates of his successor, of the same age and his companion in the struggle (also an Ovambo), Hifikepunye Pohamba, the November elections ought easily result in the comfortable re-election of Hage Geingob, born in 1941 and a Damara, who was elected Head of State in 2015 after having served for twelve years as Prime Minister under his predecessors Nujoma and Pohamba, from 1990 to 2012. As with the others, the ascent to power of Geingob developed within the majority party, shielded from any pressure from the electorate, depriving the opposition, within and without SWAPO, of any possibility whatever of affecting or interfering with it.

During the many years of SWAPO domination, the opposition progressively lost any ability to re-open electoral competition. Initially, the governing party, while enjoying a clear competitive advantage due to the unconditional support of the Ovambo who alone make up half of the electorate, had to contend with competition from the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), the moderate cartel of parties representing the other ethnic groups (Herero, Nama, Basters, as well as the whites, represented by the Republican Party of Dirk and Flenk Mudge) created between 1977 and 1983 by the ‘Turnhalle Conference’, at the desire of the South African government, to counteract the UN decision
to recognise SWAPO as ‘the only legitimate representative of the Namibian people’.
After the assassination of its first leader, Clemence Kapuuo, and its defeat in the 1990 elections, its exclusion from power exposed the DTA to defections and splits, compensated for only in part by the entry of those leaving SWAPO, which led to a reduction from 23% in 1990 to 5% in 2015 even to it being undermined in its role of official opposition by the many other groups into which the national party system fragmented.

Popular Democratic Movement leader, McHenry Venaani.

The desire to bring about a more serious and effective challenge to SWAPO domination stimulated attempts at renewal, such as the selection in 2013 of young McHenry Venaani (born in 1977) to take the place of Katuutire Kaura and even a change of name for the party – renamed the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) in 2017.
Still, the main opposition power seems very far from worrying SWAPO. It is not by chance that the few concerns to be seen within government circles regard not so much the Venaani party as the possible emergence of a new populist movement, the Landless People’s Movement, founded with the clear objective of reopening the question of land distribution.
As in South Africa, the lack of alternative politics at government level is compensated for, at least in part, by the demonstrated strength of the guaranteeing institutions – which are, according to liberal theory, the independent press, the rule of law and private enterprise. Having come to power after a long guerilla campaign supported by the Soviets and Cubans, and due also to political support from within the UN building in New York and to western diplomacy, the ruling class of SWAPO never sought to seriously limit the freedom of the press, the judiciary or private business.

The rather creative and articulate system of the Namibian media, considering the scale of its market with three TV networks, a score of national radio stations, five dailies and several weeklies, is considered the freest in the continent according to the ‘Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index. At the same time, the government, while preventing the privatisation of all the para-state institutions inherited from the South African regime, has never shown itself as wanting to limit property rights or economic freedom. Furthermore, the governing class within SWAPO has hitherto been free from the serious scandals that obscured the credibility of the African National Congress in South Africa and has never been in conflict with the judiciary. (R.R.)

Economy. Too much inequality.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

The structure of the economy of Namibia reflects the contradictions that are typical of all southern Africa.

On the one hand, the country may boast of one of the highest per capita incomes in the continent (almost 12,000 dollars which, in terms of 2017 real purchasing power, amounts to five times that of the poorest African countries), due especially to its administrative, juridical and financial structures and a transport system that is decidedly superior to its counterparts in the rest of the continent. On the other hand, it presents very high imbalance in the distribution of income, making it one of the countries with the highest levels of inequality in the world, with values on the Gini index from 60 to 75.

Husab Uranium Mine.

Like that of South Africa, to which it is closely linked, (the Namibian dollar is linked to the Rand), the economy of Namibia seems to be much more diversified than that of most sub-Saharan countries.
The mining of minerals (especially diamonds) provides 10% of GDP and a quarter of state income, while a growing quota of exports is guaranteed for meat and fish products. The tourism sector is also important.
Financial services and the manufacturing sector, though limited by the small internal market and South African competition, also play an important part.

However, the most characteristic aspect seems to be the contrast between a developed market economy, concentrated in the cities and well integrated in the economy of neighbouring South Africa and the international circuits, and an informal economy to which a large proportion of the population belongs, especially that of the countryside.
Almost half of all Namibians depend for their survival on subsistence agriculture, while commercial agriculture is dominated by around 4,000 commercial farms, many of which belong to whites or foreigners, who hold 50% of the fertile land.

Liberal Changes

It is therefore no surprise that, also in Namibia, the continuity between the ‘two-speed’ economy created under the segregationist regimes and that reformed after democratisation in the nineties, is still the most relevant political question. Just as in South Africa, here too, the coming of non-racist democracy brought to power a movement with a socialist-inspired economic programme. Like the ANC, once in power, SWAPO set aside its more radical reform plans and adopted ‘orthodox’ political policies, directed more towards growth than towards redistribution, aimed especially at attracting investments and at having the country take its place in the global economy.

The Foreign Investment Act of 1990, the law governing foreign investment, for example, besides providing protection against the dangers of nationalisation, allows foreign investors to repatriate capital and profits, the exchange of the currencies and access to guaranteed procedures for dispute resolution. This unexpected liberal turn on the part of a movement that had emerged from a long armed struggle with Soviet and Cuban support, left intact the divide that separates those who participate in the modern economy and those of the internal peripheries involved in the informal economy.
Even though the absence of large metropolitan areas has spared Namibia any growth in the sort of social protest or criminality that South Africa has to face, with the slow-down of economic growth which, between 2010 and 2015, remained around 5% or 6% p.a., there is increasing pressure on the government to respond to growing unemployment, now at almost 30% and which, also here, assumes alarming proportions among the young. Life expectancy is around 64.9 and adult literacy is about 88.3%.

Indigenous Communities and Land
In 2018, moved by initiatives adopted in South Africa, the debate on the redistribution of white-owned agricultural land has gained quota. Also in Namibia, the promise to restore lands taken by German colonialists from indigenous communities – especially the Herero and the Nama – to create the large farms on which Namibian commercial agriculture is still based, has always occupied a central position in the rhetoric of democratic governments.

The principles of voluntary sale and compensation at current market value, however, have rendered the project largely inoperative and, up to now, it has not really affected the distribution of agrarian property.
Namibia does not have to manage growing pressure on space in urban areas which seem to be the real scene of conflict in South Africa, and the total power of SWAPO shelters the Namibian government from pressure from the left that the South African President Ramaphosa has to contend with. For this reason, too, voices have been moderate for the present: President Geingob, officially reopening the question during a national conference held last October, stressed that whites, too, “have Namibian blood” in their veins. But the motive seems obvious: if South Africa were to take substantial steps in this direction, its old ‘fifth province’ would not want to be left behind.
Rocco Ronza

Research and Rating, a tool of Advocacy.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

Advocacy is a strategy used around the world by NGOs, activists, and even policy makers themselves, to influence policies. Advocacy is about creating reform of policies, and their effective implementation and enforcement. A policy is a plan, course of action, set of regulations adopted by government, business or an institution, in order to influence or determine decisions and procedures.

Advocacy is a way to address the problems through programming strategies. Beyond any doubt, the main problem to address today is how to make corporations accountable for their actions regarding human rights, climate change, economic sustainability, social cohesion and national interests of each country where they work. To this aim, many advocacies can be implemented: Research and rating, Collecting and producing documentation, Lobbying, Public awareness, Campaigning, Alliance Building. Research and investigation is often the Cinderella in many NGOs plans of action, which is the essential support of all other actions. Self-consciousness is also, what more corporations are lacking.

To fill this last gap was borne Standard Ethics. Standard Ethics is an independent sustainability-rating agency. It has been making a name for itself in the world of Sustainable Finance and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) studies since 2004. It aims to promote sustainability and governance standard principles emanating from the European Union, the OECD and the United Nations.

It believes in the notion of Sustainability as a planetary theme, linked to human knowledge, a shared and a global concept. Sustainability has to do with that climate, social and economic phenomena that go beyond the borders of nations, the aims of a company, the expectations of individuals. It states that a bank, an investment fund, a company or a conglomerate – however important they may be – are in position to decide what should be considered sustainable for the planet
and for the future.

According to the three laws of Sustainability devised by Standard Ethics earlier this year, being sustainable means that corporations should voluntarily align their activities with well-defined strategies and objectives that are provided by the above-mentioned international democratic institutions – institutions that are open to accountable decision-making processes, institutions that render the participation of experts unavoidable. These strategies are processes in which science and sharing prevail over individual positions. Only by measuring said conformity with comparable, transparent and third-party methodologies is it possible to ascertain the degree of Sustainability of an economic entity and the efforts it is making for tomorrow’s generations.

The Standard Ethics Rating (SER), which is assigned upon a client’s request through a direct and regulated bilateral relationship, combines ‘solicited’, ‘standard’, and ‘independent’ characteristics.
Its proprietary algorithm is aligned to the guidelines and recommendations on governance and sustainability issued by the European Union, the OECD and the United Nations. Its formula is mathematical based on five major variables, some of which are already familiar to long-term investors.
Standard Ethics Rating is not a forecasting rating nor is it a probabilistic model. Nevertheless, as the economist Irving Fisher said: “The future casts its shadow on the present”, and the analyses on policies and governance highlight levels of implicit vulnerability vis-à-vis the future, which can be consequently addressed together with the corporations requesting it.

SER, advocating of best practice Sustainability standards, uses Italy as a test market and has already been key in assisting some of this country’s most important corporations to comply with the international indications provided. Environmentally aware companies such as A2A S.p.A (one of Europe’s largest multi-utility businesses) or Fineco Bank (the first online bank in Europe) have used Standard Ethics’ services and have incorporated the Standard Ethics Rating in their communication on Sustainability, using it as a benchmark for any necessary future improvements. The agency’s intention is to expand its offer to other markets, and continue to support the most enlightened entrepreneurs in the enhancement of their vision, their ideas, and their intuitions.

John Paul Pezzi, mccj
VIVAT International NGO
with consultative special status at UN

Burkina Faso. Father Jacques. Biologist and Geneticist.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

A Camillian and also professor at the University of Ouagadougou, Father Jacques Simporè assists the sick and most neglected. He has always worked with tenacity against the spread of HIV decimating
the country.

Fr. Jacques Simporè’s dream was to place himself at the service of science and the poor: besides the motivation he received from the Camillian charism, he found within himself the strength to respond to those passions that can transform life into an exceptional and unique experience. Fr. Jacques is a native of Burkina Faso and is professor of genetics and biology at Ouagadougou University. With his studies and what resulted from them, Fr. Jacques Simporè has already published more than 300 articles in the most important scientific magazines in the world (Nature, Sciences, Nature Genetics, Nature Communication and Lancet Hematology are but some of these).

The chief motivations of this researcher: to help others, the sick and the most vulnerable. The forgotten ones, those suffering from sickle cell disease, children afflicted with malaria or measles and those who are HIV positive in the many villages scattered throughout the bush with no access to medical care, in despair and stigmatised by a devious and terrible disease. The HIV virus which causes AIDS became a challenge for Fr. Jacques.
Twenty years ago, the situation in Burkina Faso and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was indeed very serious. Burkina Faso, a landlocked country of the Sahel, was considered one of the poorest among those occupying the lowest places according to the human development index.

The Fathers and Sisters of the Order of Saint Camillus, during their forty years of work in Burkina Faso, have seen thousands of lives lost due to HIV. In a population of around 14 million inhabitants, it is estimated that around half a million are HIV positive with a mortality rate of over forty thousand per year.
A strong response was required both by way of research into new treatments and into prevention, as well as providing information in the more remote areas where public health workers would rarely go.
Fr. Jacques said: “Research into new treatments, the possibility of providing antiretrovirals free, providing information throughout the country, and creating a decentralised health system able to reach the most isolated areas were our main objectives”.

With the support of the Camillians, the public health plan of the Burkina Ministry of Health was launched for the purpose of reducing the pandemic, containing the mother-child transmission of the virus, of training personnel capable of managing HIV positive patients and of creating a basic network of information to halt the terrifying situation created by the spread of the HIV virus.
The Camillians created the equivalent of a task force and, in a period of about ten years, set up the Candaf Centre and the Pietro Annigoni Centre for Biomolecular Research (CERBA) in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, for the reception and treatment of HIV positive children and adults, with special attention to the terminally ill. They brought into operation a laboratory for blood analysis for the diagnosis and treatment of the condition. The work in their field was and is unending, not only as regards hospital services but even more so in that of research.
Some of Father Simporè’s publications: ‘Risk factors associated with mother to child transmission of HIV-1 spontaneous abortion and infant mortality in HIV-1 infected women in Burkina: a prospective study’, an invitation to continue the research, to learn more about the problem and to be a voice of the sick who cannot speak for themselves.

Father Jacques adds: “Poor health education in some remote country areas and discrimination are the enemies we must fight. To confront the enemy we must look it in the face and concede nothing to it. We must never lower our guard”. This is exactly what Father Jacques is doing, never lowering his guard, giving dignity to all those patients who, not so long ago, felt they were ignored.
Consideration for others is the first motivation that brought Father Jacques to do research in the field for which he was decorated in 2017 with the highest honour conferred by the government of Burkina Faso for his educational service to research and teaching. Ever since the time when he was a student at the University of Rome, while in the context of Camillian public health, where he felt he could experience with every breath the famous motto ‘More heart in those hands’ with which Saint Camillus urged his followers to treat the patients, Father Jacques never looked back. Instead he worked ever harder, with more motivation and with more energy. It is certain that there was no fear of work in this man whose name Pope Francis added to those of the College of Academics of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Antonella Bertolotti

Western Sahara. The wall that nobody talks about.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

The 2,720 kilometre wall, which separates the areas occupied by Morocco and those liberated by the Polisario Front in Western Sahara, is actually the largest active military barrier in the world, and the second longest wall after the Great Wall of China.

One can observe the wall only from the mandatory safety distance of five kilometres, imposed by a mine field. From that distance, the barrier, which separates the Polisario-controlled areas from those occupied by Morocco, looks like a large mound of sand in the middle of the desert. This 2,720 kilometre military wall, is the largest active military barrier in the world and the second longest on the planet, exceeded only by the Great Wall of China (21,196 km); and yet it has remained practically invisible to the outside world.

At a time when the current president of the USA, Donald Trump, has made talk of building walls to secure borders become fashionable, by calling for the expansion and improvement of the already existing wall at the U.S.-Mexico border(1,123 km), it is worth comparing the barrier dividing Western Sahara with the 819 km long Israeli West Bank barrier; with the wall built between Pakistan and India which is about 750 km long; and the one that divides the two Koreas whose length is 248 kilometres; the 12 km-long Melilla fence; that of Ceuta which extends 8 km, and the historic Berlin Wall that was 155 kilometres long.
The Western Sahara wall is not a linear construction, but a succession of six barriers built between 1980 and 1987, during the war between the Polisario Front and Morocco, after the Alawite occupation – with the Green March, in 1975 -, and the definitive withdrawal of Spain from its province number 53, a year later.

A suggestion from Israel
“By 1979, when Mauritania withdrew from the conflict, the Polisario Front had been able to recuperate 80% of the Sahrawi territory. The end of the 1970s was marked by intense fighting between Moroccan forces and the Sahrawi army. During those confrontations, the Moroccan forces, despite their superiority in numbers and military power, had many military defeats. Israeli military advisers suggested to King Hassan II of Morocco that the country change strategy, moving from offensive to defensive tactics in order to stop the attacks of the Sahrawi army, and to protect the so-called “useful triangle” which includes the cities of El Aaiún, important for its fish catch, Bu Craa, for its phosphate mines, Esmara along with the south point of Dakhla , also important for their fish catch.

King Hassan II of Morocco therefore ordered the construction of a huge line of defensive walls whose construction lasted seven years. “Morocco is the closest Arab country to Israel in history” says Mohamed Uleida, director of the National Resistance Museum, located in the Saharawi refugee camps in Tinduf (Algeria) .
Tiba Chagaf, co-founder of the youth platform “Cries against the Moroccan wall”, describes the physical structure:“The wall is a series of sand and stone walls of two to three meters high; it extends along topographic high points (such as peaks and mountains) throughout the Sahrawi territory. It is protected by bunkers, ditches, trenches, barbed wire, mines and electronic detection systems and defended by more than 150,000 Moroccan soldiers.
Every 5 kilometres of the wall, there is a military base of about 100 Moroccan soldiers. About four kilometres behind each major observation post, there is a mobile rapid intervention force (with armoured vehicles, tanks, etc.) A series of overlapping fixed and mobile radars, with a range of 60 to 80 km, are placed along the wall.”

According to Mohamed Uleida,: “Morocco spends 3.5 million Euro daily to maintain the wall, since every five kilometres there is a base with two guard posts, on the right and on the left, with radar that has a range of about 60 kilometres, and between each of these bases, there is another military sub-base, in addition to 240 heavy artillery batteries and 20,000 kilometres of barbed wire. The money needed for the wall derives from three main sources: first of all, from the generous help of the Saudis and the Gulf monarchies; second, from the exploitation of Saharawi territory, from the phosphates exported to USA and fish to Europe; and the third, the millions of Euro that Morocco receives from Europe, under the pretext of combatting illegal immigration ”.

Phosphate being processed at facilities operated by Morocco’s state-owned OCP, near Laayoune, capital of Western Sahara,

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which is a global network in some 70 countries dedicated to putting an end to the suffering caused by antipersonnel landmines and cluster bombs, Western Sahara is one of the ten most mined areas in the world.
Malainin Mohamed Brahim, director of the Sahrawi Mine Action Coordination Office (SMACO) estimates that the fortified sand wall is lined with over seven million mines. “It’s impossible to calculate exactly the total number of mines that infest the entire area, because there are many of them also in the occupied areas and Morocco does not allow international organizations to enter there. We can only estimate the number of mines surrounding the wall, which is between 7 and 10 million mines of different types: anti-tank, anti-personnel mines, unexploited shells, and cluster bombs and fragmentation, the latter being the result of aerial bombings. There is an estimated 40 million in the rest of the territory. In early 2019, the Polisario Front destroyed, in the presence of UN representatives, 2,500 anti-personnel and antitank mines, collected in the liberated territories of Western Sahara.

Thousands of dead
According to ICBL, since 1975, more than 2,500 people have been killed by landmines in Western Sahara. The United Nations Mine Action (UNMAS) team estimates that 80% of the victims are civilians. “We have conducted a census which, though it only includes survivors, shows that the number of victims of landmines has reached 1,700 people.

We do not have figures on fatalities, but we think that the number of 2,500 dead, estimated by ICBL is correct , ” says Aziz Haidar, president of ASAVIM, the Saharawi Association of Landmine Victims, who had both legs amputated after a landmine explosion in 1979. Aziz adds: «ASAVIM has helped more than 600 people by providing crutches, prostheses, wheelchairs, medicines, beds for paralyzed people or financial aid to start small cooperatives or businesses”. “Due to their nomadic lifestyle, Bedouins and their herds of camels are those more affected by mines. Besides, victims increase during the rainy season because there is plenty of grazing land in proximity to the wall. Not only the Saharawi shepherds take their herds to graze in the liberated territories, but also shepherds from neighbouring Mauritania, because there are not such good pastures there, ”says Malainin, director of SMACO.

Not just a physical separation
The physical barrier represented by the wall also involves other types of less visible separations. «The structure divides a people, the majority of which lives under Moroccan occupation – forty percent of the population of El Aaiún, and twenty percent of that of Dajla is Saharawi. As a matter of fact there is a strategy planned in order to eliminate the Saharawi identity. For example, there is not a single university in the occupied territories, and the Saharawi have to go to Morocco to study.

The Hassania dialect is disappearing as well as our traditional clothing. The Saharawi people are victims of constant cultural plundering. We are children of the clouds. Our culture is transmitted orally. Landmines endanger the traditional Saharawi lifestyle linked to the desert and prevent divided Sahrawi families from transmitting to their children the traditions and cultural values of their society. Our grandfathers are our library, when they leave us we lose our “oral books” and therefore our culture and identity forever, ” laments Tiba Chagaf, co-founder of the Cries Against the Wall platform.
Malainin Mohamed Brahim, director of SMACO, underlines: «The wall deprives us of our natural wealth and a decent standard of living. We have lived for 43 years in refugee camps and we survive thanks to international aid, though our territory is one of the richest in the world.

The wall has also an environmental impact on the area, in fact, the construction of the wall and the infrastructures that it contains have led to profound changes in the surface of the land that has become more vulnerable to wind erosion and water stagnation.
Due to its structure, the wall acts as a barrier to the flow of water into the areas southeast of the wall. This situation has increased desertification in those areas and hinders agriculture, while on the other side of the barrier there is fertile land.”
“The wall also transforms the occupied territories into a large prison.
This situation has contributed to aggravating the sense of isolation, alienation and vulnerability among Sahrawi population in those areas. War can’t end with the wall still standing”, concludes the president of ASAVIM, Aziz Haidar.
Eugenio G. Delgado

South Sudan. Death. A place of Rest.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

The Bari, a South Sudan ethnic group who live on the Savannah along the White Nile, believe that death is not a curse but a ‘going to rest’ .

Among the Bari, death is seen as something natural, the common fate of all. It is desired by God but is not seen as a curse. God sends death indirectly through illness, old age or wicked spirits.

He intervenes directly only when he sends the lightening. This means that anyone struck by lightning, or their family, has committed some evil act, and God punishes them. Epidemics are also seen as God’s punishment. These considerations, however, are concerned only with the manner of death. Death in itself is long rest, without tiredness or pain. The elders, especially, are happy to meet with their beloved dead of former times and say: “At last I am going to rest”.

Death is liberation from all worries. Dying parents may be displeased if their children are still young as they would still need them. Fathers and mothers who are about to die weep and say: “I am weeping because my children will be left alone with no one to look after them; I am going to my rest leaving them nothing but suffering”. Still, the thought that their children will continue the family consoles them: they have fulfilled their duty as parents. The sorrow a young person feels when about to die is, instead, that of not having left even one son to continue the family line.
The Bari believe death is sent by God but this does not remove the fear and suffering accompanying it. Almost all of them think death is accidental. Many take poison to end their pain. Suicide is available to all due to the abundance of poisonous fruits that cause death in less than five minutes. Hanging is also an option, taken especially by girls who do not wish to marry the man chosen for them by their family. In any case, suicide is seen as cowardice in the face of the problems of life.

Funerals
When a gravely ill man or woman is about to die, the women surround them while the men remain outside the hut. All the people of the village go to the family of the dying person, without saying much. As soon as the person dies, the women burst into loud cries of mourning. Some men then go inside to verify the death. One of them goes out and sounds the drum to announce the death.
All the people of the village, and even men and women from nearby villages, go to the hut of the deceased to offer condolences to the family.When all the relatives have come – the presence of the maternal uncle is essential – the funeral rites are begun.

The drum continues to sound and some men dig a grave in front of the house of the deceased; in the case of a young unmarried person, the grave is dug in front of the house of the mother. The gravediggers must work barefoot as the soil they dig up is sacred. Meanwhile the closest related women wash the corpse, shave its hair and, in the case of a woman, anoint it with seed oil and dress it in its finest clothes and ornaments. At this point, some men enter the house and cover the body with a funeral sheet, leaving only the face uncovered. Now only men may touch the corpse. They carry it to the grave where the relatives say their last goodbyes, dipping a finger in the seed oil and brushing the face.
There is a deep silence. The face is covered with the sheet and the corpse is lowered into the grave, resting on its side, after the Bari sleeping custom.
Then the relatives, while looking at the corpse, each say a double prayer (not ‘for’ but ‘to’ the deceased: they ask them to pardon any trouble they may have caused them during their life and ask not to be forgotten before God during their glorious repose.
One of the relatives – or one of the parents if they are still alive – throws a little earth into the grave. Then the drum begins to sound, sending out the message that the burial has taken place, while the women recommence their loud weeping and wailing.

Other rites
If the deceased belonged to a large family or had an important social role (sorcerer, village chief, etc.), people dance at their grave throughout the day. After a day free of dancing, the dancing is resumed daily for a month, then less frequently, for a whole year. At first the songs and dances are very sad but gradually become more joyful. Besides these main rites, there are others that are complementary.
For example, after the men have dug the grave, they do not go to the river to wash as they usually do on other days. It is the task of the women to bring them water to wash themselves near the grave: even the soil adhering to them is sacred and they may not take it elsewhere. Other rites concern the relatives of the deceased. On the day following the burial they shave off all their hair: this may take one or two days according to the number of relatives. Afterwards, each person is given a necklace of palm fibres. If the dead person was a married man, his wife will wear a bracelet similar to the necklace, she will dust her whole body with ashes and will not wear her usual clothes for at least a year.
The closest women relatives will keep their heads sprinkled with ashes for at least a month.

All those who come from other villages for the funeral are provided with food by the family of the deceased who kill two or three cattle and obtain two or three barrels of merissa, the local beer. Once those coming from a distance have left, the neighbours gather round the relatives of the dead person to console them. They never leave them alone so as to avoid the possible suicide of the brothers, sisters or parents of the deceased. Games or play of any kind are prohibited; the children of the neighbours are kept at a distance. The children of the family in mourning stay with the adults to weep for the dead person. For at least a week, and sometimes for a month or more, nobody sleeps in the house of the deceased but outside it, close to the grave. The neighbours do the same, in solidarity. All the above concerns only the death of adults. In the case of a young man or woman, or a child, the ceremonies are much shorter: there is no dancing at the grave, not many people come from far away, the drum is not sounded and no cattle are slaughtered. At most a lamb will be provided. The reason for this is social. Among the Bari, an adult man, unlike a child, has many relations; he helps, defends and participates in important times in the lives of many people both in his own village and in others. When he dies, all the good he has done is remembered everywhere he has been.

After death all are equal
While it is true that the Bari see death as a going to rest, they nevertheless do not like to die. Dying is rarely spoken of and people may simply say death is inevitable, a mystery about which one should not speak. Instead, they feel much more at ease saying that, after death, all are equal, both rich and poor.

Death is the last word for all the things of this world. For this reason, nobody should exalt themselves in this life. When a man or a woman shows outstanding talents of superiority, whether real or false, the Bari say: ‘Have no fear, after death we are all equal’. So it is that the poor and those in any situation of inferiority, console themselves. Even children tell their cleverer or stronger companions that they will all be equal after death. The true and only superiority belongs to the one who never dies. For them, this is God alone. All the others, even if they are chiefs, must be humble since there were other more famous chiefs before them and yet they are dead.
Pitya – E. Lado

An Unhappy Fish.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

0nce upon a time there was a colony of little fishes who lived together in their own small pool, isolated from the rest of the fish in the river. It was a still, grey pool, dotted with stones and clumps of weed, and surrounded by thorn bushes and a few palm trees.

Most of these fishes were as happy and as friendly as they could be. But there was one fish, much bigger and stronger than all the others, who kept himself aloof, and who would draw himself up in a haughty manner whenever the others came near him.

“My good fellow,” he would say, opening his eyes as wide as he could, and balancing himself erect on his handsome tail, “do stop making such a commotion in the water beside me. Can’t you see I am having my afternoon siesta? Go away! And take that rabble away with you,” he would add, sweeping one glistening fin towards a shoal of cheerful small fish darting in and out among the shadows.

This sort of thing happened so often that one day one of the older fish said sarcastically: “I wonder you don’t leave this tiny pool and go off to the big river. A fish as large and important as you should surely mix with others of his own size and excellent breeding.” The big fish thought things over for several days, and puffed himself even bigger with pride when at last he decided to leave his home and search for a better one.

“My friend is quite right – he said to himself. – I should be happier if I lived among fish of my own size. How tired I am of these stupid little creatures! With all the rain we’ve been having lately the time must be near when the big river overflows its banks, and the flood-water will soon be coming up into our pool. When it arrives, I’ll go with it and let myself be swept down into the big river, and get away from all this.”

He told his companions what he had in mind. The older fish congratulated him on his enterprise with solemn faces, but the younger ones could not conceal their delight at the thought of being free from the big fish’s criticisms, and they swam backwards and forwards, talking about it among themselves.

After a few more days of heavy rain the floods arrived. They covered the little pool, and the big fish rose to the top of the water and allowed himself to be swept downstream to the river. Once between the banks in the depths of the river itself, he noticed how different the water tasted, and how much larger the rocks and the weeds were. Then he sighed with relief and anticipation, thinking of the good life that lay ahead.

He was resting for a few moments beside a large stone when he felt the water swirling behind him. Suddenly four or five fish, much bigger than he, passed over his head. One of them looked down and exclaimed harshly: “Out of our way, little fish! Don’t you know this is our hunting ground?” Then the others turned on him too and drove him away.

The poor fish hid beneath a large clump of weeds, and peered out anxiously from time to time. Presently two large black and white fish came rushing towards him, with fearsome jaws wide open. They would surely have eaten him up had he not managed to wedge himself in a crevice in the bank, just out of their reach.

“Oh dear!” he gasped, when the two monsters had at last tired of waiting about for him. “I do hope there aren’t any more fish like that in this river. How am I to live if I have to spend the whole day in hiding, with no chance to search for food?”

All day long he stayed in his hiding-place, but when night came he slipped out and began swimming freely in the black water, looking for some supper.

Suddenly he felt a sharp nip in his tail, and turning swiftly he saw the be whiskered face of a large tiger-fish. He was just about to give himself up for lost when a huge dark object passed overhead. It was a canoe, although the fish did not know this, and it disturbed the water so much that he was able to streak away from the tiger-fish and hide in the mud.

“Alas! – he said to himself -. Why did I come to this terrible place? If only I could get back to my own little pool, I would never grumble again.” At last he determined to find the point where he had first entered the river, and then make his way back to the pool before the last of the flood-waters receded. He wriggled slowly along the muddy bottom of the river, until he recognized the spot where he had first arrived. Then with a leap he was out of the river and into the large expanse of flood-water which was surging past him.

How he struggled as he tried to force his way against the swirling water, until at last, when his strength was almost gone, he found himself back in the pool again. There he lay panting on the bottom, too tired to move, and as he turned his eyes this way and that and saw the old familiar landmarks, he said to himself: “If I had only known what the river was really like, I would never have left the safety of our pool.”

After that the tiny fish played undisturbed wherever they pleased, and never again did the big fish say he was too grand to live among them, even though sometimes he may have thought so.

(Folktale from Tanzania)

Eswatini. Arriving unannounced.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

Originally from the Argentine, Mons. José Luis Gerardo Ponce de León has for five years been Bishop of Manzini in the Kingdom of Eswatini, the former Swaziland. He shares his experience with us.

Before becoming Bishop of Manzini I had been appointed, in 2009, to the Apostolic Vicariate of Ingwavuma in South Africa, a diocese on the border with Mozambique. These are the two different nations where I lived: firstly in South Africa and, starting five years ago, in the Kingdom of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. In both places I started in the same way. I didn’t know much about the area entrusted to me and so I decided to visit each and every community, great or small. Here in Eswatini there are 120. I came unannounced. I didn’t want the people to be there ‘because of the bishop’ but because of the Lord’s Day (Sunday).

It was no simple matter for people to accept my manner of visiting them since they would have liked to welcome me differently. The impact was deeply felt since, in many places, it was the first time for the people to see the Bishop among them.
“Today, we are the cathedral”, they would say, smiling broadly. There were places where they were happy to see a new face among them but it never occurred to them that it belonged to the bishop.
The mission always involves going out to meet others and, especially those who do not feel worthy of such a visit. In fact, my episcopal motto: The Word Became Flesh has become a form of greeting in the diocese. Whereas people used to say: “Praised be Jesus Christ”, they have now begun to say: “Izwi laba yinyama” – The Word became flesh. And people would answer: “Lahlala phakathi kwethu” – And dwelt among us.

The diocese is witnessing to this encounter in fragility, with initiatives unique to this nation. Eswatini is the country with the highest percentage of AIDS sufferers in the world. For the past twenty years, the diocese has been running a home for adults and children who are AIDS patients. First opened when AIDS was a death sentence, it accompanied many to the encounter with the Father. Today, instead, it is a place where they recover their dignity and return to their homes. The challenges lie in having them go back home where they always lived as well as they did with us. The care of the disabled (children, youths and adults) is another expression of this love that raises people up. A few weeks ago, a missionary of the Servants of Mary received an award for having introduced the use of braille for the education of the visually challenged. That man, who died a few years ago, often said to me: “I have managed to do a lot for the disabled but I never succeeded in changing the way their families and society see them”. It is for this that our centres have become expressions of the love of the Father.

The situation of the refugees is a call to look beyond our own little world where we are tempted to close ourselves inside. For many years now, ‘Caritas Swaziland’, as the organ that implements the agreements between the government and the UNHCR, runs the centre for refugees that was opened during the civil war in Mozambique. Today it receives families (composed of a husband, wife and several children) who come from countries of the region of the Great Lakes (Rwanda, Burundi, Congo). They travel the breadth of the continent in the hope of a better future. In response to the appeal of Pope Francis and according to the initiative launched by the laity of the diocese, all the parishes gather once a year at the cathedral to celebrate Mass and present their gifts.
The mission is all of these … a culture of encounter, opening one’s eyes, learning to see, gratuitous love and always the Good News about Jesus who gives us life in abundance.
In welcoming Pope Francis’ appeal to revive the missionary commitment, I asked our diocese to deepen its missionary commitment and awareness by celebrating not just one month but an Extraordinary Missionary Year (EMY), from October 2019 to October 2020”.

The appeal was received with great interest and joy. This year will be an opportunity to deepen the missionary spirit that gave birth to our Church in the Kingdom of Eswatini when four members of the Order of the Servants of Mary came to Mbabane in 1914. After those humble but spirited beginnings, today we thank God for his abundant blessings to be plainly seen in the 17 parishes and the 120 small Christian communities: our commitment to public health through the Good Shepherd Hospital and College and the other medical centres, as well as our commitment to education by means of 47 primary schools and 13 high schools. Last October, during the vigil at our cathedral, a special ‘Missionary Year Candle’ was lit. The candle will visit each parish and community of the diocese to light up our missionary commitment. (R.L.)

Namibian Mosaic.

Friday, 1 November 2019 8:00

With only 2.6 million inhabitants and an area of 824,292 square kilometres, Namibia presents a particularly complicated ethnic and cultural geography.

Low population density and the absence of large urban centres of development (Windhoek, the political capital and the main city of the country, has little more than 300,000 inhabitants) deprive Namibia of the powerful aggregation factor which, in other parts of the continent, is provided by rapid growth in the major metropolitan areas.
The most useful way to interpret Namibia is to note the counter-position between the central-southern area, which includes the capital and the main urban centres, and the northern region bordering Angola, separated from one another by the Etosha Pan, the great saline depression containing the main nature reserve of the country.

The centre and the south show more clearly the influence of South Africa and the imprint of German colonisation. It was due to the Afrikaans-speaking semi-nomadic ‘Cape Coloureds’, supported by the English and German missionaries of the Rhenish Missionary Society (predecessors of the Basters community of Rehoboth and the other coloured communities that today make up 6,5% of the population of Namibia), that, during the eighteen hundreds, Windhoek and the other towns with Dutch names scattered throughout the country, were founded. It was also they who made the first attempts at the political organisation of the region involving also the Khoikhoi groups (the Nama who today number 5% of the population) and the Bantu (Damara, 7%, and Herero, 7%), who were already settled in the region.

German-speaking minority

Starting in 1884, this fluid and unstable mosaic was under German domination that unified the country within its present boundaries and left behind it a network of roads and a very efficient postal system, the spread of the Lutheran version of Christianity and a German-speaking minority that today numbers around 30,000 people (little more than 1% of the population), concentrated mostly in the business and professional communities of the major centres. The period from 1915 to 1918, when it was under South African protection, was a decisive moment in the transformation of ‘South West Africa’ into a sort of appendix to its more powerful neighbour to the south.

While it may be true that the long drawn-out controversy over the extension of the mandate (originally conferred by the League of Nations) attenuated somewhat the impact of apartheid law, the transformation of the country into a ‘fifth province’ of South Africa favoured the birth of a white Afrikaner minority (now little more than 4%) and the increasing gravitation towards the South African economy and Cape Town which finds itself functioning as the ‘capital’ of the country of Namibia.

Ovamboland

Far from the colonial centres of development, relegated to the margins of the history of the country up to the Second World War, the northern periphery has taken a leading role since the sixties. Still living in tribal conditions, despite being evangelised by the Lutheran Finnish missionaries, the Ovambo (now by far the largest ethnic group, with 50% of the population of Namibia) took a neutral stance during the violent repression by the Germans of the violent Herero and Nama revolt of 1904-1905 and did not participate even in the first phases of resistance against the segregationist South African regime, led by such Hereros as Mosea Kutako and Clemence Kapuuo, in the forties.

However, their role increased when the industrial revolution, sorely in need of manpower, began to force them, during the time of the harsh ‘Contract Labour System’, to move to the large centres. During the fifties, the Old Location in Windhoek (the only large black township in the country) and the industrial areas of Cape Town became the stage for the awakening and political mobilisation of a new Ovambo elite, which would give rise to the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), an organisation which, during the seventies and eighties, would gradually impose its hegemony of black liberation.
The change to armed struggle (1961) also helped to accelerate the shift of the centre of gravity of the country towards the north.
The fall of the authoritarian Portuguese regime in Angola and the formation in Luanda of a black, Marxist-inspired government in the mid-seventies made Ovamboland the main infiltration area for SWAPO guerrillas and the natural stronghold of the liberation movement. It remained so even after the guerrilla war had ended and Namibia had become independent, restoring SWAPO majorities in all elections held from 1989 until the present day and thus contributing decisively to ensuring that the SWAPO movement continued to be in control of the new democratic institutions. (R.R.)

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