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Political Uncertainty.

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Thailand is now witnessing the disappearance of its myth as a ‘Teflon Country’, unmoved by any crisis and capable of regaining its solidity after temporary setbacks. Officially, such things are never due to internal reasons but only to international contingencies.

Apparently immune to what it sees as from outside, Thailand is occupied solely with presenting an image of a paradise for investors, a Garden of Eden for tourists and a free port for all profitable traffic. It is an image, or rather, a reflection of a reality that is now no longer sustainable. On the other hand, it is actually the Thailandese analysts and media that speak of ‘a lost decade’. Those years, from 2007 to 2017, saw the collapse of elective democracy, however unrealistic, and the advent of a situation having as protagonists the armed forces, determined to no longer be at the service of the elite but, as from May 2014, to govern the country in all areas. It was not an original situation, given the coups, successful or not, since 1936, the year in which the monarchy changed from being absolute to constitutional under pressure from a military dictatorship that effectively took control.

Thailand has not emerged unscathed from its more recent convulsions. Political uncertainty, tensions as well as ever-present accentuated nationalism, have alienated capital and investors. The outstretched hand of Beijing meets some of the needs of the regime but scepticism, corruption and suppressed participation cloud the official optimism. International opinion polls, analyses and tests show that, though it is still among the top ten in ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations), with a strong industrial sector, Thailand is the country least prepared culturally to face change. The cocktail of openings for foreign capital, the availability of resources, a docile workforce and an infrastructure that launched the country without disturbing the internal status quo, now seems to have evaporated, bringing to light needs and problems that were avoided for far too long.

Nevertheless, unlike its more or less hagiographic past, the danger of recession is still real and social inequality is increasing. Not by chance, perhaps, the often optimistic data provided by the Ministry of Finance and noted by the economic journalist ‘Wichit Chantanusornsiri’ have shown that, in 2018, there were 14.17 million requests for government grants in a population of 67 million. Of these, as many as 7.3 million had an annual income of not more than 30,000 Baht (around 750 Euro). The opportunity gap is also growing. The Office for Political Finance notes that, in 2017, the top ten per cent  of earners in the population had an income 27 times that of the bottom 10 per cent (to be compared with 20.9 in 2000 and expected to worsen), making Thailand the country with the worst discrepancies in income and opportunities in the world.

There is nothing to indicate any improvement with the cost of living on the increase, rising taxes and more job insecurity. Other data show the centralisation of resources in the capital, for example, and the different possibilities of having a good level of education due to the unaffordable fees for those on a minimum wage which, in the capital, is 300 Baht (7.5 Euro), and less elsewhere. Again, the concentration of the land in the hands of 10 per cent of the population is 878 times more than that held by the bottom 10 per cent, notes ‘Chantanusornsiri‘, and 0.1 per cent of bank deposits amount to 49 per cent of the total.
Among the ten ASEAN economies, Thailand is the least culturally prepared to take on the necessary changes which must, first of all, be cultural.Who should manage the changes? The men in uniform dominate the country today, leading it towards a ‘democracy’ which they propose as an alternative to that of the populist and corrupt civil governments that the military regimes ousted, but which has considerable limits with respect to its credibility. Since they took power, a large number of critics have been arrested, politicians of the former government parties, students, intellectuals and leaders of movements with different orientations are in prison or under close surveillance.

Non-authorised gatherings of more than five people are forbidden and reporting and condemnation are incentivised. Censorship of the media is more suffocating towards blogs and social media. After the criminalisation of the distribution or sharing of information not in line with the wishes of the regime, those who access these sites now run the risk of being accused and receiving severe prison sentences. The project for a single gateway to the global network has, and will increasingly have repercussions not only for civil liberties and human rights but also for the economy of the country which, while it would like to launch itself into a new era, instead finds itself in bottlenecks of technology and censorship in such vital areas as communications. (S.V.)

 

Brazil. Bringing hope to the inferno of Cracolandia.

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Living with the street people. Evangelising the “inferno” of drugs. Experiencing “Mission Bethlehem”.

It is just a small plywood house with a few bits of furniture, a chair or two and a wooden bed that is always covered with things. In a corner there is a small kitchen with a few cooking pots. There are a few plates in the sink waiting to be washed.
This is where Father Gimapiero Carraro lives, 56 anni years old, an Italian, a missionary, in a slum in the heart of São Paolo.

For thirteen years now he has shared life with those he calls “my brothers and sisters of the streets”: drug addicts, alcoholics and people with no fixed abode. He is one of the few – perhaps the only one since not even the police will do so – who has succeeded in entering Cracolandia, the land of ‘crack’, a synthetic drug, in São Paolo: a square kilometre in the middle of the city where hundreds of people peddle and consume their drugs in broad daylight. However, it is at night that things happen. Once the shops have closed, the streets begin to fill with the “slaves” of crack looking for peddlers and arguing over a crumb or two of this “drug of the devil”. Just skin and bone with shining eyes and a filthy old blanket over their shoulders and unwashed they wander in the darkness of the night looking for a scrap of crack, “the magical poison”. Suddenly the pavements are lit up with hundreds of cigarette lighters used to “burn” the rocks.  There are women, pale, lean and with dark eyes and cracked lips, with nothing left of their feminine character. Recently, the situation has worsened as the great drug industry has invented OXI, a drug worse than crack (made from the waste of cocaine waste with added chalk, petrol, formaline…).

Father Giampiero tells us: “There is a holy poverty which is that of Jesus and a slavish poverty which is that of destitution and addictions”.
“We came on the streets – he tells us – to live in communion with those who live there: people who, in most cases, feel they have reached the end, rejected by all and with no hope at all”.
He describes his calling as “a calling within a calling. From slaves to saints”.  Like his fellow missionaries, he sleeps under the bridges and on the pavements together with “the people of the streets “.
Years have gone by since but Father Giampietro will never forget the first time he came to Cracolandia: “We were about 200 people marching in procession. I was in front bearing the Blessed Sacrament. Then, right in front of us, a human wall of no less than 500 people appeared. I said a prayer to Lour Lady and the wall opened up, people stepped aside, including the drug pushers, and we passed through them. From that moment on, we repeated those visits among the poor with Jesus in the Eucharist and we never once had any trouble”.

Father Carraro explains how and why the idea arose to bring the Blessed Sacrament into the inferno called: “Cracolandia in São Paolo is surmounted by a large statue of the Risen Jesus belonging to a church of the Salesians. By bringing Jesus there, into that context of absolute misery and neglect, we wanted to show openly that Jesus is Risen and brings resurrection everywhere there is nothing but death. This is not just a nice theory: every time we go to Cracolandia, an average of twenty people join the procession and then ask to be admitted to the Missão Belém movement and try to change their lives”.
In 2005, Father Carraro started Missão  Belém, a movement officially recognised by the diocese in 2010 which has the purpose of incarnating the miracle of Bethlehem among the poor, with the poor and for the poor. Today, this great family welcomes children, the elderly, the sick and people who live on the streets.

The headquarters of Missão Belém is nothing other than Father Giampiero’s house. From there, day after day, the missionaries and their collaborators go forth to meet the lowest of the earth to give them a second chance.
The secret, Father Giampietro explains, is called spirituality, and implies seeing the poor with authentic eyes of faith. “There is nothing poetic about getting up close and personal with the really poor. The situations we come across are terrible: people are often soaked in their own urine, covered with fleas, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It is not easy to embrace people like that”, Father Giampietro affirms. And he adds: “During the first year of Missão Belém, Sr. Calcida and I went to Assisi. In the presence of Saint Francis we came to understand something essential: there exists a holy poverty like that of Jesus who became man for us in Bethlehem, and the poverty of slaves, of the victims of alcohol, drugs and exclusion. Our aim is not to make the poor rich but to transform the poverty of slavery into holy poverty. For us the challenge consists in this which we call ‘evangelising Hell’”. Father Giampiero stresses this a lot: “Even though Missão Belém, if we look at the numbers, is the main welcoming entity in Brazil today, ours is still not a social work but a work of evangelisation”.
In a period of 13 years, Missão Belém has helped 100,000 people, with a total of 4 million days of hospitality. “I say this not to boast – Father Carraro points out – but to show what has been done for these people, without the help of the state”.
In Brazil, Missão Belém has 2,200 beds in 170 houses. As many as 60 of these are reserved for the mentally and physically ill.

For the most part, the people who manage the houses are volunteers: people coming from the streets who, once they have recovered, set about serving others full time: “They are about  200, or 1% of the  20,000 who, in total, we have succeeded in ransoming from the slavery of drugs or alcohol”. Father Gilson is one of them: with the physique of a bouncer and a contagious smile. “Today he is a priest but he was a drug addict; he was even one of the founders of Cracolandia”, Father Carraro tells us. “Once out of the dead end of drugs, twelve years ago he came to know us and, with us, little by little he found his vocation and was eventually ordained priest by Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer, of São Paolo”.
This is the sort of miracle that happens at Missão Belém. “Marcio, in his former life, used to steal lorries and ended up in prison. Today he is in charge of a series of hospitality houses of ours”. Per In the words of the Gospel: the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.Today Missão Belém is present in Brazil, in Haiti, in Bosnia and even in Italy, with about a thousand supporters. (G.F.)

 

 

Thai Identity.

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The nation, the monarchy and Buddhism are the pillars commonly attributed to the Thai identity. A mixture of doctrinal rigour contaminated in practice by many Hindu and animist elements, Thailandese Buddhism, which belongs to the Theravada current, is in substance a ‘religion of works’. Offerings, donations and almsgiving are its determining elements, associated for many Thais with experiences of monastic life or periods of spiritual retreat.

The monastic organisation, 400,000 strong with 30,000 temples and monasteries undoubtedly possesses some power, even though it shows cracks on several fronts, including that of morality which is preached but practised little  – as shown by the extreme cases that emerge
in the mass media.

Buddhism is ritualised and accompanies every essential step of social and individual life with a large number of ceremonies and recurrences, some of which form part of the national calendar. It is a kind of Buddhism at the service of the status quo, a source of consolidation for the less favoured groups in the population but providing no stimulus towards equality and justice. The 4.5% of Thailandese who are Moslem (concentrated in the South but with a considerable presence in Bangkok and in other North-Central cities) practice a normally tolerant faith, not excessively rigorous doctrinally or practically, with a broad capacity for co-existence with different faiths. The revival of the 2004 insurgence in the provinces with a Moslem majority has rendered relations between Moslem and Buddhist communities more difficult but this is also due to repressive military action and interests that cannot be ignored.

As an expression of a tiny minority of Catholics (around 300,000 out of 67 million Thailandese, half of all Christians) the local Church (with two archdioceses – Bangkok in the centre and Chiang Mai in the North – and eight dioceses), runs a patrimony of educational institutions through which a good part of the Thailandese elite has passed. Nevertheless, in a situation largely indifferent to it, the Thailandese Church has not been allowed, historically, to take an active part in development but it has been an active participant in humanitarian emergencies.

Today, having only recently completed the renewal of its diocesan and central vertices, it wishes to adopt a role of mediation within the complex situation of the country. The mission ad gentes has, in turn, a concrete role of promotion and development and to its protagonists of various origins it entrusts necessary areas and ‘frontier’ initiatives, especially among tribal minorities, the poor, the sick and the seriously handicapped, and street children… in conditions that are often difficult due both to the ‘fast-moving’ society in which they find themselves working and to the intrinsic characteristics of the country where inequality and exploitation are rarely recognised or condemned.
“It is necessary to re-think the teaching of ethics”, stated the Cardinal Archbishop of Bangkok, Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovithavanij, shortly after he received the red hat, referring to the fight against corruption, “an unacceptable evil” in a “civilised society”, which is still a duty, especially at a time when the country is going through a period of instability and deep political crisis. In Cardinal Kovithavanij’s view, “what we have seen in Thailand (in recent times) could become a turning point for the improvement of Thailand society”. “The time has come ‘to correct the problem’ (of corruption)”, His Eminence stressed in unusual tones, given the general caution of the Catholic hierarchy which is now moving away from the traditional priority of instruction in prestigious institutions to go out to the peripheries.

Stefano Vecchia

 

Asia 2019. Troubled Waters.

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Important political events will mark the Asian panorama in 2019 while the evolution of strategic and economic questions will play a role in regional and global relations. Once again Chine will take the lead.

 Again in 2019 the gaze of the world will be turned towards China, the economic colossus which, in the second half of 2018 began to slow down appreciably due to duties imposed by the Trump administration amounting in all to a total of 220 billion dollars, almost half the value of US imports from China, and to which Beijing has reacted by imposing duties on almost all imports from the USA, worth 110 billion dollars.

The plan to accomplish the reforms necessary to stabilise the country desired by President Xi Jinping, economic-productive restructuring and the drastic dimensioning of the “shadow” economy which sustained development during the past twenty years at the cost, however, of wide social divergence, is now faced with a slow-down in exports and the growing protectionist tendencies in the West. The gamble of greater openness, coherence and transparency in the Chinese system, as demanded by international investors who are ready for a massive return of the great Far-Eastern country, still finds itself faced with the regime’s need for control and, in an ever increasingly open manner, for strategic supremacy in areas that Beijing sees as its competence or priority.
It is worth noting that the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Republic (in October) occurs in a special year, in a complex situation and that, through its management, China gambles on its future which involves guaranteeing general well-being and adequate assistance for a population that has reached the peak of its demographic growth and is now ageing, redefining the work market.

The year opens problematically for Taiwan after the defeat in local elections on 24 November 2018 of the government party and the recovery of his pro-Beijing opponent, the Kuomintang. The dimensioning of the progressive democratic party of President Tsai Ing-wen opens a time of new uncertainty in a situation which, as recently as in 2016, seemed to have relegated the  succeeding nationalist party of Chiang Kai-shek to the role of a historical relic, a turning point reached two years ago in the guise of independence that excluded any further dialogue with Beijing towards a “two-system country”, for many close to de facto  independence, with the risk of a military intervention by continental China in the “rebel province”.
In question there is also the real potential of the island whose democratic, social, economic and cultural unity will be sorely tried, both by relations with the continent and by new interior balances.
The New Year will also be a year of transition for Japan, with economic-social policies that it finds hard to implement and with the attention of both businessmen and people focussed on two questions. The first is the foreseen increase of 10 per cent on consumer tax. This was budgeted for November 2019, after a slide of three years and almost five since the move from 5 to 8 per cent on 1 January 2014. This increase is deemed necessary in order to deal with the public debt which reached 236 per cent of GDP (152 per cent, after subtracting government assets) and the foreseen increase in social spending despite the risk of a contraction in growth. The funds have already been ear-marked to satisfy ever more pressing needs. First on the list are the free pre-schools and other initiatives to encourage Japanese people to have more children and the guarantee of greater possibility for mothers to continue working in an almost dramatic situation of population reduction.
The second question that will deeply affect the Japanese will be the abdication of Emperor  Akihito on 30 April, the first to do so for two centuries. The designated heir is Prince Naruhito who, on a date still to be established and with an inflexible and antique ceremony, will become the 126th Emperor of an uninterrupted dynasty.  The background includes not only the frail health of Akihito but also his convinced pacifism, shared by the majority of the population. This is in contrast with the more interventionist policy of the government led by Shinzo Abe who intends to change the Constitution to make it possible for the forces of self-defence to participate directly on foreign fronts if requested. A real pacification of the Korean peninsula would render this commitment less urgent but it is unlikely that he would abandon it.

It is foreseeably a year of transition also for South Korea which, though it now views the North more optimistically, has to deal with lower production, youth unemployment, the need to tackle marginalisation starting from the elderly, some of whom are consistently without any pension or assistance. There is also the gap in work opportunities, in a country that sees itself as well off, happy and a promoter of technology widely diffused in Asia but marked by deep divisions such as the role of women and corruption in a society bound by Confucian concepts in which even Christianity, triumphant up to a few years ago, now seeks a more up-to-date role and definition.
There are especially two questions which, for two years now, creating excellent victims in the world of politics and business, have become central to the action of civil society and the judiciary: the attenuation of the excessive power of industrial-financial giants (chaebol) over public life and the moralisation of public life and the end of the political-business marriage at the centre of great scandals. As well as these, there is the matter of peace with neighbouring North Korea, a priority in the programmes of Catholic President Moon Jae-in.

In Thailand, whose turn it is to preside over ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations), it is expected – unless there is an about-turn at the last minute – that there will be a round of elections with unforeseeable results on 24 February. The regime that took power after the coup in May 2014 did all it could to black out the entire run-up to the elections to exclude any credible opposition and, at the same time, imposed a twenty-year “road map” to consolidate the grip of the armed forces on the sharing of power with the aristocracies and big business. However, the opposition showed itself more than once last year to be growing, especially among the youth, contrasted by a “soft” repression that moves in step with the low tendency to rebel of the Thais and with the capillary infiltration of the regime in all sectors of public life. Even though censorship has been strict and very harsh laws have been enforced – such as that in defence of the monarchy – the internet has become a formidable vehicle for ideas and complaints, both concerning the inability of those in government to re-launch the stalled country  and to keep open a form of detached from traditional movements and parties but which is rather the expression of paths of renewal, of struggles against corruption and privilege that goes against a strongly stratified socially and culturally backward situation.
Quite different and certainly more open to achieved democracy, the biggest economic and demographic power in south-East Asia, Indonesia goes to the polls on 19 April to elect a new parliament and, for the first time contemporaneously, its Head of State. These polls are important and not only because they are the first “double election” which many hope will consolidate and prelaunch the policies of relative openness, decentralisation and development of the final four years of President Joko Widodo. The general situation of the country and, once again, its desire for development to be confronted with its Islamic identity, its aspiration to “unity in diversity” to be weighed against integralist forces, will be central to the choice of the voters but also to the interests of the international community during the coming twelve months.
Of less importance but certainly indicative will be the elections in May in the Philippines – elections for the total renewal of the Camera of Deputies and the partial renewal of the Senate. Here are many motives for an election which, in the Philippine context, always presents problems and issues. In question is also the judgement of the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte in his fourth year and his high-impact, even lethal campaigns – such as that against drug users – carried out prejudicially and with little regard for democracy. It has been subjected to severe criticism by the Church, by broad sectors of civil society and many diplomats. The background is one of a country that grows on alternate days but which, overall, makes heavy work of finding direction and stability, still fighting against various guerrilla movements and the danger of Jihadism in the south of the country. One of the gambles in 2019 will be that of concretising the peace agreement signed in 2018 which has at its centre far-reaching autonomy for its regions with s strong Islamic presence.

It is difficult to see substantial changes taking place in the situation of uncertainty that prevents the economic resurgence of Myanmar whose population remains one of the poorest in Asia despite the tendency towards improvement in profits and the standard of living. While the residual power of the military and the rekindling of the situation in areas inhabited by minorities, including the Moslem Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine, are certainly “thorns in the side” of the Myanmar government, it is also true to say that it causes dialogue to start between the government and ethnic minorities with the purpose of bringing lasting peace to the country. This alienates part of the massive investment foreseen and discourages international openness towards the civil government which remains under the control of the generals. For some time, relations between the government of Naypiydaw and Beijing, the traditional ally of the military regime until, have cooled and dialogue with the de facto executive led by Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and now national councillor and foreign minister, seems to have stalled after the suspension or reduction of mining and hydraulic projects and infrastructure made in China.

In the Indian sub-continent, no particularly great shocks are expected in Bangladesh, a country that is gathering pace on the level of incomes, employment and the control of militant and terrorist Islam.
Not very different but a step or two ahead, the situation in India, whose outgoing government  led by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its leader Narendra Modi, will seek confirmation in the elections in May for the Lower House of Parliament (Lok Sabha). The background is five years of economic growth, but also minorities on the defensive due to Hindu extremist action and controversies involving discrimination. The Bharatiya Janata Party is not expected to lose but the voting could mark a turn from the almost plebiscite preference accorded since 2013. Obviously, there is much at stake in a country that is gaining in strength and soon wants to challenge its Chinese rival, relying especially on its demographic resources, but which, in order to enjoy international support and prestige, must be convincing in the field of progress, equality and public morality.

The situation of Pakistan has for a long time been problematic. Identified as a receptacle of religious extremism and Islamic terrorism, the great country, a rival of India and, like it, a nuclear power, will reply much if not entirely on the charism and international profile of Imran Khan, an ex-cricket champion and leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf , the winner of the elections in July of last year.
The task is hard for Khan who must join combat on several fronts: underdevelopment, religious and ethnic sectarianism, political litigiousness, the virulence of religious extremism with its two militant associates, Jihadism and Talibanism.
Taliban extremism is also the great unknown in Afghanistan where, after the renewal of parliament in the October elections, and, if it is not necessary to postpone or cancel them, the presidential election on 19 April where the residual possibility of stability and development will be at stake – something impossible without sharing power with the Taliban who, in 2018 gained territory and negotiating power – as will be the future of international military protection. In brief, it is a country at a crossroads, with little certainty – and backwardness is one of them – and many dangers.

Stefano Vecchia

Ethiopia. Timket. The Feast of the two Testaments.

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The feast of Timket or Baptism of the Lord is celebrated in Ethiopia on January 19, 12 days after Christmas. An original feature with regard to this celebration is that in Ethiopia the Old and New Testaments are combined, since, in addition to commemorating the baptism of Jesus, the Ark of the Covenant or Tabot is also venerated. We can even say that it is the true protagonist of the celebration.

To explain this peculiarity, it is necessary to refer to a deeply rooted Ethiopian legend, still held today as undoubtedly historical in the circles of the Orthodox Church. According to it, the so called Queen of Sheba, who went to Jerusalem to admire the wisdom of Solomon (1 Kings 10: 1-10), was none other than the queen of Ethiopia, who, after her visit to the Jewish king, returned to her land pregnant and gave birth to a son named Menelik I. When he grew up, he wanted to meet his father and made a visit to Jerusalem, where he returned bringing with him the Ark of the Covenant, which he removed from the temple of Jerusalem, replacing it with a fake one. After many vicissitudes, the legend states that the ark was deposited in the city of Axum, where it is still preserved in a chapel near the main church. The ark or Tabot is the most sacred object that the Orthodox Church venerates. Every church has a Tabot, that is, a chest containing the tablets made of wood or stone, which are blessed by the Patriarch and placed in the Holy of Holies, the innermost compartment of the church.

The feast of Timket begins on the eve with the departure of the Tabots of each church to a place where there is abundant water. Around noon, groups of people of all ages begin to take to the streets. Most wear the national dress.  Women wear white dresses, embroidered with crosses and men the gabí or shawl, this one also invariably white. Choirs are formed singing and dancing around a drummer. Generally, they sing church chants, but there are many dances that have little or nothing to do with the sacred. There is also room for traditional dances and for spontaneous dancers who take the opportunity to show their talents.

Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, a group of priests dressed in multi-coloured sacred ornaments and under multi-coloured umbrellas appear at the door of the church. One of them has a particularly hieratic posture and carries on his head a flat object wrapped in rich linen cloths. This is the Tabot. At that moment, a concert of screams and ululations commences. When it calms down, the procession begins its journey to the place where the Tabots of several nearby churches will be gathered. The route can be long, up to five km. or more. All the way, the crowd accompanies the procession with their songs and dances. Once they reach the appointed place, the Tabots are placed inside a large tent, sheltered from the public eye. Songs, sermons, prayers, bustling … will continue well into the night.
In the early morning on the day of the feast, the priests celebrate the Eucharist inside the tent. Then they approach the place of the water which may be a river or pond, bless it and sprinkle the crowd, who will be happy if their clothes are completely soaked.
After that moment, where it is possible, everyone throws themselves into the water, splashing each other, swimming …. Mothers like to immerse their babies in the water.

Towards the middle of the morning, when the water pandemonium ends, the return of the Tabots to their respective churches begins, accompanied by the crowd who continue to sing and dance. Upon arrival, a particularly solemn dance takes place, performed by priests, deacons or singers. These stand in two rows facing each other. In their right hand they hold the sistrum and in the left the makomia, a long stick with which they mark the rhythm. One or two drummers rotate in the  middle between the two rows. The intensity goes on growing until reaching a peak moment after which the dance concludes.
It is the so-called dance of David and recalls the passage of the Bible (2Sam 6, 12-15) which describes the transfer of the ark to the city of David, while he danced in front of it.
There are cities especially famous for the celebration of Timket to which thousands of pilgrims come from other parts of the nation. Axum, Gondar and Addis Ababa are the main ones, partly because of the suggestive scenery where the celebration takes place. At Axum, it is celebrated in the Mai Shum (Water of the Chief), a very big pond excavated in the rock, in which tradition says the Queen of Sheba came to bathe. At Gondar, Timket is celebrated in the Baths of Fasil, the pool that King Fasil built for himself in which to bathe.

Currently, the pool is filled only for the Timket feast. Addis Ababa is a city too big for the Tabots of its 250 churches to be concentrated in one place. But there is a privileged scenario where the celebration acquires special solemnity and where the Patriarch usually goes. It is the Jan Mieda or Field of His Majesty, a huge esplanade to the east of the city, which Emperor Menelik II (1889-1913) used as a racetrack and as a landing field for the first airplanes that flew in Ethiopia. As there is no river or pond in the esplanade, a small pool of cement and tiles was built, surrounded by a fence.
Within it, the priests can perform the liturgical functions in an orderly fashion without being pressed by the crowd.
Both the Tabot and all the ritual that surrounds the feast of Timket speak of the great influence of the Old Testament in the life and liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
And whatever the explanation of this phenomenon may be, it is necessary to admit a strong Jewish presence prior to the arrival of Christianity. When this came, it assumed much of what in the religious field was already being practiced. This explains the combination, in the Timket feast, of two sacred events that apparently have nothing to do with each other.

Juan González Núñez

The Limpopo River. Collateral Victim Of The Mining Industry.

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The Limpopo River Basin is a fragile environment threatened by the combined pressure, of climate change, urban waste disposal and mining activities.

The sluggish waters of the Limpopo, called Espiritu Santo River by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498 and much later the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo» by Rudyard Kipling, flow from South Africa through Botswana, Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique
The 1,750 km long River is the main source of life for the 15 million people who live in its 415,000 square kilometres basin. But at the same time this precious ethics asset is fragile. Indeed the Limpopo River has a quite modest mean discharge of 170 cubic meters/second. Rainfall is seasonal and unreliable. In dry years, the upper parts of the river, flow for 40 days only or even less, especially in the arid upper part of the drainage basin, in the Kalahari Desert.  But during the rainy season, terrible disasters may occur as well as that was the case in February 2000 when heavy rainfalls, due to a cyclone, caused catastrophic
floods in Mozambique.

Model projections by the University of Zululand suggest a down trend of the flow as drying is projected across the basin. Other sources also estimate that the present water scarcity is likely to be exacerbated in the future by climate change and that this will pose a problem of water allocation between different users ranging from irrigated agriculture to mining. Today, the use of water irrigation is dominant. But this will change by 2025, with climate change making water scarcer, anticipate climatologists. The situation is critical for some time: water demand exceeded scarcity in 2000 and in 2005, the main tributary of the Limpopo, the Olifants River ran dry. This fragility is expected to have serious consequences on the exceptionally rich biodiversity of the basin  In the North-Eastern corner of South Africa the river borders indeed the Kruger National Park.

Between the Mokolo and the Mogalakwena Rivers, high concentrations of hippopotamus are found.  Zambezi sharks or bull sharks which tolerate fresh water, are often spotted in the lower parts of the river in Mozambique. Crocodiles are also common. It is no coincidence that one of the main tributaries of the Limpopo was named the Crocodile river. The destruction of mangroves in the estuary is also a matter of concern, since the livelihoods of many rural people there depend on the ecosystem goods and services. Mangroves provide indeed fish crabs and firewood to the local people. For this reason, the United States Agency for International Development (US AID) partnered with the Centre for the Sustainable Use of Coastal Zones in Mozambique to work with the local communities in Xai-Xai, in order to replant and rehabilitate mangrove vegetation in the river estuary.
Land degradation and pollution from pesticides and nutrients from the agro-industry are posing increasing threats to the wildlife.

Water is contaminated with bacteria and algae. But one of the main causes of pollution is the mining activity which is intense in the river basin with a total of about 1 900 mines in the basin. In 2010, mining activities accounted for 10 percent of water use but by 2025 mining activity is expected to grow by 30% and energy by 26 %, adding to the pressure from rapid urban growth and energy projects on the basin’s water resources. A 45% increase of water demand by 2025 is indeed projected.The pressure will also increase particularly in Mozambique, where recent discoveries of large deposits of coal and natural gas will impact future water requirements. There is already much need of more regulation. In South Africa, 125 mines were operating without a water license revealed a South African parliament investigation in 2010. Along the river, particularly in South Africa and Botswana, sand mines for construction purposes are degrading local environments, which is leading to riparian degradation, including wetland destruction, bank erosion and increases water turbidity.  In 2014, the Bosveld Phosphates Company had to pay a Rand 2.55‑million fine after local inhabitants managed to prove that it had polluted a tributary to the Olifants River, in the Limpopo River Basin. The spill polluted waters which irrigate farming land in western Mpumalanga and killed hundreds of crocodiles and fish in the Kruger Park.

Acording to the south African newspaper Mail and Guardian, Sasol’s petrochemical complex at Secunda and Eskom’s power stations along with the mines that supply them Eskom — are adding doses of pollution to the river.  Tests from the University of Venda showed elevated levels of metals and other pollutants in fish and showed  that tiger fish in the Olifants were half the size they would have been if they were healthy. High levels of pollution acid drainage from old mines from Mpumalanga Highveld effluent are also reported by other sources.
Data on water quality in the Olifants River, collected in the Kruger National Park by Venda and Rhodes universities researchers also point to a threat which is worse than mining. Accordingly, the more dangerous pollution comes rom wastes emanating from municipal wastewater treatment plants. The result is appalling: South Africa’s water and sanitation department, lists most of the plants along the Olifants River as being in a poor or “critical” state.
Finally, the presence of all the coal power stations along the river and the construction of the huge 4,800 MW thermal Medupi power station in Mpumalanga is raising much concern among the local farmers. They fear that these projects will pump large quantities of water from the Crocodile River tributary which feeds the Limpopo. Engineers from the South African electricity corporation ESKOM claim that the Medupi thermal power station will be using a dry cooling technology which saves water, unlike older generation power stations which use vast amounts of water to cool their systems. But the farmers point out that the mining capacity needed to feed the huge Medupi power station will induce a considerable pressure on the water resources anyway. The consumption of water by the coal mining industry to reduce the hazards of fires and explosions and to manage the dust produced during the processing state, is very high indeed. It is estimated that it amounts to 250 litres per ton of coal.

François Misser

The Zambezi River. Threats and opportunities for the ‘Great River ‘.

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The Zambezi River is one of Africa’s main energy assets and could become as well one of the continent’s main water highway, but many threats ranging from climate change to  the risk of collapse of the Kariba dam, must be addressed.

With a total length of 2,574 km, the Zambezi River, called the “Great River” in the Tonga dialect of Zambia is the fourth longest river of the Africa after the Nile, Congo, and Niger rivers. Its average flow ranks second on the continent with a figure of 4,134 cubic meters/second, after the Congo River and its largest tributaries.
The Zambezi River which flows through six countries between its source in north-western Zambia and the Indian Ocean. Including also Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, is also one of the most important energy assets of the continent, with a hydroelectric potential of 20,000 MW.

This sizeable resource is however vulnerable to climate events such as El Niño and La Niña. When sea surface temperatures rise by 0,50C above normal, El Niño bring less rainfall to Southern Africa. As a result, the Basin experienced an extremely severe drought in 1994, which caused the loss of large livestock populations due to lack of adequate water resources and grazing pasture. In 2016 again, one of the strongest El Niño events in 50 years was recorded, causing massive livestock losses in thousands of farms in the Zambezi river basin. In February 2016, water level declined to only 12 percent of the capacity of Lake Kariba at the border between Zambian and Zimbabwe, one of the world’s largest artificial reservoirs and an important resource for agriculture and fisheries. Conversely, when sea surface temperatures fall by at least 0,50C below normal, La Niña brings much more rainfall. This phenomenon has caused terrible disasters. The floods provoked by the Cyclone Eline in February 2002 in the Zambezi Basin left 700 people dead and over 500,000 people homeless.

Such changes have dramatic consequences on the hydroelectric production of the river whose huge potential has been only developed up to30 percent, more than half of it in Mozambique, with the 2,075 MW Cahora Bassa dam, the third of the continent after the Aswan dam in Egypt on the Nile River and the Lauca dam in Angola on the Kwanza River. The Cahora Bassa dam and the 1470 MW Kariba Dam at the Zambia-Zimbabwe border have reduced the floodings of the Zambezi but they also disrupted fish and other wildlife feeding and breeding patterns. One inconvenience is that as regular flooding have decreased after the construction of the dams, people have inhabited floodplain areas, but these areas are still inundated during extreme flood events. Huge rainfall and drought fluctuations have of course an impact on the hydropower availabilty but claim the Independent Consulting Hydrologist Arthur Chapman, and Doctor Francis Davison Yamba from – the Centre for Energy of the University of Zambia the vulnerability of the hydropower production in the Basin is also owed to the accelerating economic growth. It increases indeed the competition for water between hydropower and irrigated agriculture

But the most immediate risk is the vulnerability of the Kariba dam which poses a huge threat for the entire Zambezi valley. The dam which was inaugurated in 1959 could collapse owing lack of maintenance, warned the South Africa-based Institute of Risk Management in 2014. In October of that year, the BBC reported that since the contruction the dam built on a seemingly solid bed of basalt, the torrents from the spillway have eroded that bedrock, carving a vast crater that has undercut the dam’s foundations. Engineers also warned that in the event of a collapse, a tsunami-like wall of water would wipe out everything downstream in the Zambezi valley, reaching the Mozambique border within eight hours and overwhelming Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa Dam and knock out 40% of southern Africa’s hydroelectric capacity. According to the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) the lives of 3.5 million people are at stake.
The dam rehabilitation works cofinanced by the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Swedish Government started in September 2018  and are expected to be completed by 2025.
Yet, the rehabilitation has become even more urgent. Indeed, owing to higher rainfall, the Kariba dam water level has rised markedly up to 83 percent by June 2018.

The last important threat of the Zambezi River is the water pollution, caused by sewage effluent, due to inadequate water treatment facilities in all the major cities of the region. This has resulted in eutrophication of the river water which has facilitated the spread of cholera, typhus and dysentery. This eutrophication process, was largely provoked by the use of fertilisers such as phosphates which facilitate the proliferation of water hyacinths which affects power generation and transport, while impairing reproduction and fish growth.This led the ZRA to implement a special control programme for the Lake Kariba where it. Gold panning is also prevalent resulting in soil erosion and water resources pollution. Land degradation triggered by poor agricultural practises contribute to accelerate the process of soil eroson, leading to siltation and pollution of water sources.Environmentalists are also expressing concern about the Zambezi Seaway Scheme, a U.S. $ 10 billion project to set up a 1,500 km long navigation corridor between the Victoria Falls and the Indian Ocean for the transportation of goods and particularly the coal of Mozambique’s Tete Province. According to its promoters, the Zambezi Seaway will offer a cheaper, faster and more efficient route to the Ocean, thus boosting local economies. But the impact of the project on the wildlife along the banks of the river has not been considered sufficiently, complain environmentalists. (F.M.)

 

 

Uganda. To Give Dignity.

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Hundreds children are begging in the streets of Kampala City.  A Comboni missionary, Father John Bosco Mubangizi has launched a project “Karamoja Streets Kids”. Respect, protection and future for these children. He explains us the initiative.

For decades, the Karamoja region in the north-eastern of the country has been characterised by violent conflicts, high levels of poverty, semi-arid conditions and food insecurity. An estimated 82 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty.  As a result, the area has been dependent on food aid and donor assistance for decades, with numerous emergency aid programs.
To survive, many families in Karamoja have decided to send their children into urban centres hoping to get better opportunities. But in the end many of them end up begging in the streets. Most of those begging on the street in Kampala city are Karimojong children and youth.

Not everyone welcomes these street kids from Karamoja. They compete with and face resistance from the older street children and are subjected to caning, or their money is taken away from them. During the rainy season the leaking temporary structures in Katwe and Kisenyi,  suburbs of Kampala, where they live are too crowded and they are supposed to contribute some money for this ‘accommodation’ despite the poor hygiene. They suffer all kind of diseases and no proper medical attention is offered to them. They are prone to accidents from the street since their main location is at traffic junctions where cars stop and where they can beg. They are often victims of motorcycle “hit and run” accidents and sometimes sustain fractures from these accidents without medical care. The worst happens when children simply disappear from the streets and are never seen again maybe because of the practice of child sacrifice witch doctors. Sadly, these children are used as sex slaves, defiled and/ or forced into prostitution. Many are impregnated, infected with HIV/Aids and other STI’s; because of this; there is a tremendous number of single mothers, aged 12-23 years old on the streets. Some child mothers can be seen on streets breast-feeding fellow children or carrying them on their backs.

I went to visit them

I met the Karimojong street children in Kampala in 2015, when I was still Parish Priest of Matany in Karamoja. One day on reaching Kampala Road in Kampala city near Diamond Trust Bank, about 50 Karimojong children surrounded me chanting my name in Karimojong “Pader Bosco, Pader. Bosco…..” …meaning Father John Bosco. At the beginning, I was surprised, but quickly I interacted with them; one thing I realised was that about 80% of these children were from the Matany area. Most of them were from Lokopo Chapel, one of the churches in the parish. They were my parishioners.

The following day I came back to the same place and asked them to take me to their places of residence and we followed Entebbe Road until we reach Kisenyi-Katwe slum. This is one of the worst slums in Kampala which is a haven for all sorts of vices ranging from smoking tobacco to drug addiction to all sorts of strong drugs. It is a common practice to see children picking food from dustbins, sniffing aviation fuel and smoking marijuana. Prostitution is rampant, theft, murder, alcoholism and general lawlessness is the order of the day in Kisenyi slum. Whether you are a child or an adult, life is the same. Children live an adult life but I think they are traumatised by it. At the end it is the innocent Karimojong children who are new to town life that suffer most of all. They are suffering the complete denial of their natural entitlements as human beings. At a deeper level of interaction, I found out that some children often go a whole day without any solid food. At night they sleep in groups and in turns in small shanty rooms made of wattle and mud to maximise time and space. The first group sleep for 6 hours and then give way to others who sleep for the rest of the night. Over 30 children occupy a room just eight feet by nine. When it rains, they cover themselves with sheets of polythene and stand for the whole night.

These are so-called Out of School children and so are illiterate. They have only one meal a day and sometimes nothing at all. They have no access to any health services. As a result, illnesses go untreated and some die. Most diseases they suffer from are preventable. For these children, using a toilet is a luxury because the use of a toilet costs an average of 200-300 shillings in the slum. The life of these children is without dignity and their rights as children are denied them.
They are extremely vulnerable and are greatly abused physically, psychologically and sexually. They are victims of commercial sex exploitation and there are no system in place for their protection. Not content with denying these innocent children basic care, education, food, health services and psycho social support, the adults behave towards them like predators.
Seeing these children abandoned, with only the help of God to rely on, made me wonder if we appreciate the value of the gift of life  our own and that of the extremely marginalises children on the streets
of Kampala.

We must do something to help

In 2017, I was transferred to the Comboni Missionaries community in Kampala and this gave me an opportunity and, at the same time, a challenge to start from scratch for the wellbeing of the Karimojong children in Kisenyi and Katwe.
One year earlier, during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Matany Catholic Parish, in Karamoja, Mons Michael Blume the then Nuncio to Uganda said during his homily “ Matany Parish has celebrated its Golden Jubilee with many pastoral achievements what remains as the Parish Pastoral challenge are the Matany Children on the  streets of Kampala looking for  sweets that are never there…..” This statement entered deep into my heart and soul and the voice I felt within me told me I had to do something for these children but I didn’t know, what…”

Finally, Bishop Damiano Guzzetti of Moroto Diocese discussed the question of the Karimojong children with the Archbishop of Kampala Cyprian Lwanga. They decided to start a pastoral initiative to help the children under Nsambya Parish.
Knowing the Karimojong language has helped me a lot. Children feel at easy when they can talk and understand what somebody what to say.  For a year now, I have been going every Sunday to the slum in Katwe and celebrate mass for the Karimojong community.  On average 200-400 Karimojong attend mass every Sunday. They have elected a temporary structure made of eucalyptus and polythene sheets where we celebrate mass.From the same structure we have started literacy and feeding programmes to provide education opportunities and food for the hungry children. So far two adults have been selected:  one to prepare food and porridge for these children and another one to give literacy classes for the Out of School Children. When children fall sick the leaders inform me and we provides medicine or the child is taken to a health facility.
Before considering a more sustainable, relevant and effective intervention, I have decided to see first to the immediate needs of the children – a matter not simply of human rights but of survival.

Ethiopia. Hope For A Forgotten People

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The Menjas live in the south-west of Ethiopia. They are marginalized and discriminated by other ethnic groups. Two Catholic sisters stand up for them.

In the shadow of the giant jungle trees, Kenito Atumo squats on the ground, plucking out every green stalk that sprouts from the ground near his little coffee plant. “Weeds are the enemy of the coffee plant”, he explains to sister Kidist Habtegiorgies, who is kneeling next to him. Under the umbrella of the rainforest that protects from the blazing sun, the man grows coffee seedlings. It takes three to four years of intensive care before you can pick the cherries from a coffee tree.

“We cannot live from growing coffee alone. We still do not have enough fully grown trees”, says Kenito. The Sister listens attentively. She knows the difficult situation of the families in her village. “They work very hard. But despite all efforts, sometimes they can afford just one meal a day”, explains Sister Kidist. She is a member of the ‘Little Sisters of Jesus’. She and her colleague Sister Askalemariam Kario look after many families in Wush-Wush, a small town in south-western Ethiopia. Most of them belong to the group of Menjas, a small population of forest dwellers who mostly follow the faith practices of traditional African religions. Due to their cultural diversity, especially because they eat certain wild animals, the Menjas are marginalized and discriminated against as ‘untouchable’ by the Kaffa people, the majority population in the region.

Social Isolation

Formerly excluded from feasts and gatherings, the Menjas were not allowed to enter the Kaffa houses, to sit at table with them, or to dine with them. Today, through education and enlightenment, the acceptance of the Menjas has improved although social isolation and discrimination still shape community living. The two Sisters are not willing to accept that and try to have direct contact with the Menjas families.
A  simple round hut made of branches and clay and covered with a leaky thatched roof is the home of Kenito Atumo’s family. In a field next to the hut, the 22-year-old father grows corn and bananas. His two children, four-year-old Israel and his one-year-old sister Mekidze, run barefoot toward Sister Kidist. Again and again they rub their eyes and brush away the flies buzzing around their heads.

Mother Tigist looks worriedly into their reddened eyes and says apologetically: “We do not have clean water here. I have to get it from far away every day”. Sister Kidist invites the two to join the Congregation’s kindergarten. There the Sisters offer not only care but also washing facilities and a hot meal. Kenito promises to bring the children there, even if it is a long way to the kindergarten. “When we came to Wush-Wush a couple of years ago, we thought about how to help these people, how to improve their financial situation, how to increase their self-esteem”, says Sister Kidist, the superior of the religious community in the small village of the Catholic Vicariate of Jimma-Bonga.

Although at first everything seems green and fertile in the tree-covered region, the inhabitants often do not have enough to eat. They simply lack the necessary knowledge to cultivate the land effectively. Added to this is the phenomenon of the ‘green drought’. It does not rain enough, the seeds do not sprout and people go hungry. The sisters taught a group of women how to grow vegetables effectively so that they could earn some money. “At the beginning it worked very well. The women were really excited and proud”, recalls the 45-year-old. “But then a group of wild monkeys found their way to the vegetables and destroyed the whole crop”. But giving up was out of the question for the Sisters. They bought a knitting machine for the women, and now the group produces cardigans, sweaters and blankets which she sells in local markets.

Request for Help

“Almost every day, people knock at our door asking for advice or pleading: ‘Please help us, my child is ill.’ or, ‘my wife is dying’, Sister Askalemariam reports. “We help wherever we can, whether it is a leg fracture or pregnancy complications. Our pick-up is available to the entire village for emergencies”. The Sister recalls a seriously ill girl she spotted on her visit to the village. She did not think twice but put her in the car and drove her at a brisk pace to the two-hours distant city of Jimma and a larger hospital. There the girl was treated and survived.
But sometimes the sisters are unable to help. “If parents ask us to bear the costs so that their children may go to the high school or to the college, we must decline. Because these facilities are located in the city and we would also have to pay for lodging and maintenance. For that we simply lack the financial resources”, says Sister Askalemariam. For younger children the church runs a boarding school that accepts also children from poor families.

Additional Income

In Wush-Wush, some students earn something extra in the coffee factory run by a Catholic. In their spare time, they sort out coffee beans that were not peeled off during the mechanical processing. The factory owner pays the farmers a fair price if their coffee is of good quality. Also Kenito Atun would like to sell his coffee to him if his cherries are of good quality. The young man is confident: “God is the creator of all things. He gave me two children. As a way of saying thanks, I named my son Israel. I trust in God”.

Sister Askalemariam is happy about his confidence. She still remembers her early days in Wush-Wush. “Our Menjas were all very shy”, she says. “I used to talk to a woman who used to sell firewood to us. One day I asked her to come in to our house but she felt ashamed. ‘Alemeto, come in, you are our friend’, I said to her. Finally she entered. We sat down, ate bread from the same plate and drank coffee together, as is customary among us here in Ethiopia. When Alemeto said goodbye, tears came to her eyes and she said: ‘Today your God and my God have met’. I also started crying – for joy.”
Since then much has changed. When the Sisters invite people to a feast, the Menjas families with whom the sisters have become friends also come. They also attend the religious service. They say, “You are our sisters, you are our friends. We come to your church where we are accepted and understood. Now it is our church too”.

Bettina Tiburzy – photos: H. Schwarzbach

 

 

Africa 2019. A Challenging Year For The Continent.

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The year 2019 looks extremely challenging in many countries of the continent where crucial elections are scheduled, if they take place.

In Northern Africa, one of the main challenges is whether or not the presidential election will take place in Algeria, next April. By mid-December 2018, there was no visible sign that the ruling Front de libération nationale (FLN) party was even preparing a campaign. Neither did any opposition party publish its programme. So far, the paralysed President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika who has already been hit by several strokes, has not said anything about his intentions and the new FLN’s secretary general, Mouad Bouchareb, has declined to answer journalists’ questions about a possible postponement of the election. Constitutionnalist Fatiha Benabbou warns that such scenario and a possible extension of the mandate are only possible in a war situation.
The future is even more unpredictable in Libya, where the election which was initially scheduled for end 2018 has been postponed to 2019. The UN envoy Ghassan Salame says a national reconciliation conference to be held in early 2019 will set the stage for the elections. But doubt remains that it will be the case. Indeed, the existence of two rival administrations in Tripoli and in Bengazzi, each with its own parliament, central bank and national oil company, poses the risk of further delays. None of them is indeed eager to relinquish its power. As long as the militias are not reined in, the prevailing feeling is that anything can happen.

There is less suspense in Tunisia where presidential and parliament elections are due in October. According to the last polls, the Prime Minister Youssef Chahed would score 17.9%, ahead of the incumbent President, Béji Caïd Essebsi (15.4%), Dr Kais Saïed (14.8%) and the former interim President Moncef Marzouki, (11%). The islamist party Ennahdha would score 36.1% at the parliament elections, ahead of Caïd Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes (29.8%)
In Western Africa, parliament elections are scheduled in both Guinea Conakry and Guinea-Bissau in January. But there are doubts that they will be held on time. By early December, the crucial issue of the voters’ registry was not solved in Guinea Conakry. And on the 7 December, the Bissau government announced that it had stopped electoral census operations because of suspicions of fraud. The situation prompted both the African and European Unions, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries to express concern to Prime Minister, Aristides Gomes.
The February parliamentary elections in Benin are not tainted with such uncertainty but the opposition leader Candide Azannaï is accusing President Patrice Talon to have set up an electoral reform, which could enable him to manipulate the elections in order to retain a majority of seats in the parliament.

The whole region will also follow with interest the Nigerian general elections on the 16 February. Muhammadu Buhari, the incumbent President who is seeking re-election will face a serious challenger, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party. A few days later, on the 24 February, President Macky Sall of Senegal, should probably, according to polls, come first in the first round of the presidential elections with 45.9% of the votes, far ahead of his rivals, Karim Wade (15.1%), the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade and Ousmane Sonko (14.8%).
In April, President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of neighbouring Mauritania will also seek re-election for a third mandate. He will try to capitalize on his success in containing the djihadist threat owing to the reorganisation of the security services. But the incumbent President is also facing accusations from the anti-slavery movement because his leader, Biram Dah Abeid, who is a member or parliament and a presidential candidate, is in jail since August 2018 and cannot therefore participate to the electoral campaign.

In Central Africa, the main political event will be the consequence of the presidential election on the 23 December 2018 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indeed, omens indicated that a massive fraud was on the cards to enable Joseph Kabila’s hand-picked candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary to score a victory in front of more popular opposition rivals, such as Félix Tshisekedi and Martin Fayulu. There were fears that protests could spark a new wave of repression and insecurity, in a country, where civil strife is on going in the East and in the Centre, which in turn, might increase the number of refugees in the neighbouring countries which amounted to 781,000 at the end of October 2018.  In such context, there is no guarantee that the Senate election will take place as scheduled on the 6 March in the DRC.
In Chad, the parliament elections are scheduled in May and would be the first since 2011, after having been postponed several times. But government sources don’t rule out that they could be postponed again this time because of security reasons, since the army is fighting Boko Haram in the North of the country and because of budgetary constraints caused by the fall of oil prices.
In Madagascar, the main question is whether the winner of the presidential election, either former elected President Marc Ravalomanana or former self-appointed President Andry Rajoelina who came very close at the first round in 2018, can secure a majority at the parliament elections, scheduled on the 20 March 2019.  Another question is whether tropical cyclones will disrupt the poll and a third one is whether the country will be stable enough to enable pope Francis to visit the country, for the first time since John Paul II’s visit 30 years ago. It is still unclear whether the parliamentary elections in Mauritius take place in late 2019 or early 2020. In either case, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth promises that a new Constitution Amendment Bill will ensure a better representation of the communities.

In South Africa, the incumbent President, Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to be re-elected after another victory of the African National Congress (ANC) at the election of the National Assembly in May, the sixth election held since the end of the apartheid system in 1994. The main suspense is the extent of the victory of the ANC which has lost votes over the last years to its rivals, the centre right Democratic Alliance and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party.  During the same month, the embattled Malawi’s President, Peter Mutharika, will be running in a difficult climate, faced with corruption allegations and calls to resign by the opposition. On the 15 October 2019, the ruling Frelimo party and President Filipe Nyusi are expected to win the presidential and parliament elections in Mozambique, after the FRELIMO’s landslide victory at the local elections of October 2018, getting in control of 44 city councils out of a total of 53.
The main question though is whether the main opposition party, RENAMO will accept the results or will again provoke a new cycle of post-electoral violence, on the base of fraud allegations.

In neighbouring Botswana, the suspense will be limited at the forthcoming general elections in October. Ex-teacher and former Minister of Education Mokgweetsi Masisi who became president in April 2018, after the resignation in his favour of the incumbent, General Ian Khama, is the likely winner. Indeed, potential rivals within the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) have given up to run against him. Likewise, with no meaningful opposition in front of him, the incumbent Namibian President Hage Geingob, who was elected by the ruling SWAPO congress in November 2017, as its candidate, is most likely to become his own successor for the next five years after his first term ends in November 2019.

François Misser

Middle East 2019. Another Uncertain Year Ahead.

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The Return of Palestine and A Deepening
of the Shi’a-Sunni Divide.

One of the clearest lenses through which to gaze into the scenarios that could develop in the Middle East in 2019 is the next Israeli legislative election. It is scheduled to take place on November 5, 2019. But Israeli officials may move the vote ahead to the early spring because current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s margin of majority has been reduced to one seat in Parliament. In turn, that could either postpone or delay the unveiling of the latest White House peace plan for the Middle East. Given that Gaza, and its fate, will represent a top election issue, the Plan could be interfering in the campaign.

Trump is eager to see the plan, the terms of which have been completed, implemented; even if it’s unclear how that might be feasible, given that – apart from Israeli electoral factors – the Palestinians, and the officially recognized Palestinian National Authority (ANP) have not participated in any aspect of the plan to protest Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. That does not bode well for what the U.S. president Trump has described as the ‘Deal of the Century’. As for the incorrigible, and often misguided optimists, such as NY Times veteran Thomas Friedman, they merely need to look at the map of the Middle East to understand just what obstacles, the formation of any Palestinian State that does not also establish a full return to the pre-1967 boundaries must overcome. The best outcome at present, would still leave the creation of a divided State, featuring the two non-contiguous territorial sections of Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Add to that the difficulties related to the unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as Capital of the Israeli State, and it’s evident that the only possible outcome is a fiasco.

Unfortunately, since the end of the Cold War, or the fall of the Berlin Wall if you prefer, the dynamic, or chief dialectic, in the Middle East has gradually shifted away from the Palestinian question, which culminated with the 1973 Oil Embargo, to one that has exploited and stoked the ‘divide’ between Shi’a and Sunni. That so-called Arab Spring has allowed that divide to become the central idea of the current Middle East; all but disintegrating the post-colonial nationalist projects of the Republics, while favoring the Sunni monarchies and their vassals – Egypt included. Indeed, if it was once possible to analyze the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) together, it’s no longer the case now. The two are ever more ‘indifferent’. Egypt remains a key player in the Middle East, because of its links to Gaza and the so-called Peace Process. But, it’s a far cry from the defiant and nationalist Egypt of Nasser or early Sadat. The Camp David Accords of 1979 have beholden Egypt to American financial aid, which has become as essential as oil is to the Gulf States, placing Egypt directly in the ‘Sunni’ camp.
And in 2018, the Sunni States have given every indication of towing the White House line on Israel, even going as far as establishing bilateral peace deals or overtures as Oman has clearly done when it invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Muscat.

And then there’s the all but declared alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has agreed with the Trump administration and Israel to allow the latter to continue occupying the Jordan River Valley. That includes allowing all illegal settlements in the West Bank to remain. Of course, it also means that the Palestinians can forget about a capital in East Jerusalem. Clearly, the Palestinians will never accept such a proposal. And, the Israelis and Americans know that if, or rather when, the Palestinians reject it, they will appear as the deterrents to ‘peace’. And Iran will clearly emerge as the Palestinians’ only ally, cementing the Saudis and Israelis’ joint effort against Tehran and its allies.
Clearly, to find challengers to the ‘Deal of the Century’, therefore, we must look to the Shi’a States, and that means, of course, States that have enhanced their relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past few years. Therefore, the war in Yemen will continue. The assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have shed unwelcome limelight on the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (aka: MbS), but it has not discredited the war that the latter has waged with the backing of Egypt, the UAE and now Pakistan (reluctantly) against the Houthi rebels (Shi’a related sect) in Yemen in 2015. Therefore, that war and the related Saudi (and American) accusations against Iran for supporting the Houthis will continue despite the short burst of attention it received amid gruesome details of Khashoggi’s death.

Of course, it will also mean that despite its vast territorial gains in 2018 and the start of reconstruction, the President Bashar al-Asad’s government in Syria will continue to struggle in 2019. The Last Chapter of the Syrian Conflict Has Not Yet Been Written. Admittedly, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Asad pulled off what at the beginning of the Syrian conflict looked impossible: stay in power. Almost eight years after the first protests in Dara’a escalated into an armed insurrection, Bashar remains president. He has survived ISIS, al-Qaida and its variations such as al-Nusra, the Turks, the Americans, the Saudis and Qataris. But his biggest challenge is about to start. Few remember that before the conflict began in Syria, it and Israel had launched a series of Turkish brokered talks between 2008 and 2010 aimed at resolving the Golan Heights issue. Now, facing the prospect of a Syria stabilizing under Asad’s banner, Israel feels more threatened than at any point in the conflict.
Unlike Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Moammar al-Qadhafi in Libya, the ‘unthinkable’ (as Robert Fisk put it), that is the victory of Bashar al-Asad’s forces over the ‘rebels’, had happened. The Syrian army, backed by its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies, had managed to win back almost all the areas that the rebel/terrorists from ISIS, al-Nusra or Fatah al-Sham were occupying. If the Syrian Government were left unencumbered (by a multitude of foreign armies, intent on carving out zones of influence and security to advance improbable imperial goals like Turkey or protecting a regional ally’s superiority such as the case of the USA vis-à-vis Israel and Saudi Arabia), it would successfully shut down any remaining resistance, potentially even reaching a federalist arrangement with the Kurds in the so-called ‘Rojava’.

But, to allow Asad to succeed like that would represent an utter humiliation for all the major ‘parties’, which have driven the proxy conflict in Syria. In 2019, the Americans and Israelis could become more involved in Syria because of two main reasons:
First, the Syrian army and Hezbollah’s victories mean that they have become quite simply the most experienced fighting force in the region. They have all too real-world training fighting militias in urban settings and non, using a variety of tactics. They have also enhanced their ability to work together as allies, mastering the art of coordination. In other words, should Israel attack Hezbollah or Syria at a point, they will have face a fiercer and more capable enemy than they did when they suffered a humiliating ‘draw’ in July 2006.
Second, because of the Syrian-Hezbollah’s army’s greater and proven ability, the Israel (and the United States) will be even more determined to overthrow the al-Asad government. The conflict in Syria may have left death and destruction, but it has also strengthened the loyalties around the presidency and the Ba’ath Party.
Third, Turkey’s Erdogan wants to get something out of his ‘investment’ in the Syrian conflict. He wants to grab hold parts of northern Syria around Afrin (and Iskenderun/Hatay). These are areas, which, apart from their Kurdish interests, have long been a source of tension between Ankara and Damascus.
Meanwhile, Syria will become ever more isolated from the Arab States, interested as they are in pursuing better relations with Israel – independently of any U.S. ‘peace plan’. It will leave Syria ever more reliant on Iran and, in turn, the Arab States (those aligned with Washington and now Jerusalem) will consider Iran to be their real enemy.

Syria faces a higher risk of becoming the stage for a war against Iran.

The Trump administration has changed a longstanding position on the Golan Heights – a Syrian territory that Israel occupied in 1967. Since 1973, the United States formally maintained a policy demanding Israel give up the Golan. In 2010, in closed-door talks in Turkey, the Syrians and Israelis even came close to a deal over the disputed territory, that would have seen a return of Golan in exchange for a bilateral peace agreement. The Arab Spring ended any such hopes. Yet, recently Trump has ended any pretense of the U.S. promoting the idea of Israel giving up the Golan in exchange for peace. Rather, the United States has de-facto accepted permanent Israeli control of the Golan.

Apart from having given Israel PM Netanyahu – who may pull seek military wins to boost his election campaign in 2019 – the Golan and Jerusalem, Trump appears to have given the Jewish State carte blanche to expand however it wishes in the Middle East. This could imply any lands in southern Syria or, another invasion of Lebanon or offensive against Tehran backed Hezbollah, as a provocation to trigger a conflict against Iran. That conflict has already begun in the form of economic isolation, or more ‘sanctions’: the U.S. State Dept.’s ‘favorite word’.
Syria was always just the opening act. Before embarking on a complicated war, reasonable leaders evaluate such basic aspects as ‘can a war against Iran be won?’. While, there are good reasons to suggest that Donald Trump may be less than reasonable, he’s not much different than any of his predecessors; especially, when it comes to confronting any subject that concerns Israel. If the Israelis and their many supporters in the U.S. Congress are concerned about Israeli security, the Christian Zionists are trying to accelerate the second coming of the Messiah to save the world. Trump is a practical man. He does what he must to achieve specific and tangible targets.

In 2019, the clearest aspect of the Middle East is that the Israelis and the Saudis have the same enemy: Iran. Trump is happy to comply because the American industrial-military complex secures hundreds of billions in sales to both. It matters not, whether the sales are U.S. taxpayer or Saudi oil funded. The earnings are posted by the likes of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and others. In 2018, the U.S. imposed a trade embargo on Iran in order to foment anger, dissent and protests in the streets – Arab Spring style. But it has not worked yet. In 2019, the sanctions could get tougher. Will the policy succeed? Not likely, the Iranian Revolution may have had unified along a Shiite content, but it also had a nationalist character, determined to reject foreign influence. Thus, no matter how long Trump chooses to dangle the nuclear deal treaty carrot, he won’t succeed in curbing Iranian influence (and its allies) in the Middle East.

Alessandro Bruno

The Senegal River. Threatened by Drought, Climate Change And Man-Made Disasters

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The Senegal River is a main source of life and prosperity for three West-African countries. But its vital role is put in jeopardy by a number of threats.

The 1,641 km-long Senegal River, which has two headstreams in the Fouta Djalon highlands of Guinea and one in Mali, is vital for the four countries of its basin: Guinea Mali, Mauritania and the country which bears its name. Over 60% of the drink water in the capital of Senegal, Dakar, comes from the Senegal River. The proportion reaches 100% in the capital of Mauritania, Nouakchott and for the World Heritage city of Saint Louisa at the mouth of the river. Infrastructure that has been built and is managed by the Senegal River Basin Development Organization OMVS provides over 350,000 hectares of potential irrigable lands. The best land agricultural is found in the alluvial valley of the river between Bakel and Dagana.

Millet, rice, and vegetables mature quickly on the banks where the floods retreat each year. At Richard-Toll, sugarcane is produced on large irrigated estates. A large proportion of the waters channelled to the above-mentioned city come from the Diama dam 500 million cubic meters reservoir, located at 40 km upstream from Saint-Louis, which permits floodwaters to pass through it sluice gates while preventing the encroachment of salt water. The other source is the Manantali dam, in Mali, which stores about 11 billion cubic meters of water. The nearby Manantali 200 MW hydropower station is the main one in the region and, supplies 55 percent of its electricity to Mali, while the rest is equally shared between Mauritania and Senegal.

At the same time, the Senegal River is under serious strain. Climate change is likely to affect severely on the river basin, warns climatologist Lamine Diop from the Saint-Louis-based Gaston Berger University. Projections for the 2050 horizon show indeed a decrease of annual streamflow ranging between 8% and 16% compared with the 1971-2000 reference period. Such decrease could have a significant negative impact on the rice cropping systems. Already this year, Senegal is experiencing a third severe drought in six years, after 2011 and 2014, leaving a quarter of a million people food insecure in the districts of Podor, Kanel and Matam, along the Senegal River. In the district of Podor, rains in 2017 decreased by 66% compared to the previous year. After a field visit last May, the World Food Programme staff warned about worsening hunger and malnutrition conditions. Since the river level did not rise, peasants could not plant along the banks of the river.
Another problem derives from an unintended consequence of the construction of the Diama dam, explains the former OMVS High Commissioner, Kabiné Komara. After the dam was built, typhus invasive plants proliferated in the river delta and covered an area of more than 50,000 ha. Typha does not only absorb as much water as rice for the equivalent surfaces. The proliferation of typha also prevented access to the water of the population and disturbed fishing activities. Accordingly, there have been however attempts to face the challenge. On the one hand, the OMVS has tried bio control techniques first tested in South Africa and also the drying up of some areas by erecting embankments

At the mouth of the Senegal River, man-made changes have also provoked serious problems. The mouth of the river has been deflected southward by the offshore Canary Current and by trade winds from the north.  The result has been the formation of a long sands pit, the Barbary Tongue. Yet, the digging of a channel on the Barbary Tongue led to an ecological disaster.  According to the UN’s Habitat Agency, Senegal’s World Heritage historic city, Saint-Louis is “the city most threatened by rising sea levels in the whole of Africa” with a combination of climate change and a disastrous anti-flood measure, as the main perpetrators.

In 2003, fearing particularly heavy floods which might have destroyed Saint Louis, the Senegalese government decided to build a four meters wide emergency channel straight from the river to the Atlantic Ocean through the sands pit, to evacuate the water. But the emergency channel opened the door for the voracious Atlantic. And the channel, invaded by the ocean waters, expanded up to 6km in width, submerging everything on its way, destroying several fishermen villages. Moreover, at the end of the day, the rising sea levels and the ever-widening breach has exposed the once-protected Saint-Louis to the wrath of the Atlantic. Beyond that, the salt water from the Atlantic flooded into coastal wetlands, killing mangroves, and affecting both flora and fauna.  The infiltration of Atlantic water in the Senegal River increased salt levels and agricultural tracts near the mouth of the river have gone fallow. In an effort to cope with the disaster, Senegal hired a French construction company to build an embankment that will shield coastal homes from the ocean. Both France and the World Bank have joined efforts to protect Saint Louis from coastal erosion. But much damage has been already been done. (F.M.)

 

 

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