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Africa’s Challenges at the AU – EU Summit.

The sixth African Union (AU) – European Union (EU) Summit will be held on 17-18 February 2022 in Brussels.

This meeting has been postponed in the last two years due to the situation of COVID’19 in order to be able to hold it in a face-to-face mode that ensures the presence of the leaders of both parties
involved in the meeting.

There seem to be different interests towards the meeting on the part of the EU and Africa respectively. While Europe is prioritising post-pandemic economic recovery, climate change concerns and security issues (including migration control), new challenges are emerging in Africa because of economic, political, social, technological, demographic and climatic changes.

It is interesting to note that the Africa-EU Summit will coincide with the French Presidency of the European Council. France is probably the European country that has the most economic interests in the African continent, especially in the West African economy, through business investments and the extraction of mineral resources in countries such as Senegal, Niger, and Mali.Indeed, the financial stability of the francophone West African (14 countries) depends directly on France’s support and these African countries continue to finance French public debt through the CFAS franc.

But what are Africa’s challenges at the next AU-EU meeting?  Challenges arising from the pandemic COVID-19
The challenges created by the pandemic have been addressed differently by governments in Africa and Europe. On the one hand, the EU has acted in a coordinated manner in the purchase and distribution of vaccines and has developed prevention measures, which seek to eradicate the virus. However, the behaviour of the EU has shown that their measures to fight the pandemic are not being effective.

Europe and countries with ready access to vaccination have thought that they could fight the pandemic on their own territory and have developed selfish vaccine hoarding strategies that have excluded other countries and regions. Thus, while Europe enjoys a high vaccination rate (over 70%) among its population, in some African countries the vaccination rate is less than 10%.
The virus continues to mutate and generate new strains that keep the virus active and reduce the effectiveness of vaccines.

The current pandemic situation means that the main challenge for Africa is not the post-pandemic economic recovery as in Europe, but a challenge that is still very much in the pandemic. While Europe has been busy hoarding vaccines, the population in Africa has developed its own way of dealing with the pandemic, with a different view of the risk of the disease and doubting the benefits of immunity, generating unfounded fear of side effects and misinformation about vaccines. And the European “generosity” of the COVAX vaccine distribution programme has come too late to a population accustomed to resilience.

Climate challenges
Africa is experiencing extreme erratic weather conditions caused by climate change; more severe severely than other parts of the world, such as droughts, floods and frequent heat waves.
These phenomena are leading to desertification of large parts of its territory and causing forced migration due to climate change.
However, the gas emissions generated by Africa account for less than 4% of the CO2 emissions causing climate change.

For its part, the EU finds its living conditions threatened by global warming and considers that its efforts to control rising temperatures must be coordinated with other regions of the world. The EU therefore believes that Africa’s commitment to the environment and the fight against climate change must be a priority for the continent and that we must fight together to curb the rise in temperature.
However, the means and capacity to fight global warming are completely different in each continent.

Africa’s situation of transformation and economic growth is almost incompatible with the capacity to generate resources that avoid climate change because its economy is based on fossil energy sources that generate CO2. Therefore, Africa’s challenge in its fight against climate change will only be possible if its governments are involved in global decision-making and in no case as an imposition of other treaties or economic aid.

The challenge of the green agenda in Africa is linked to the investment of infrastructures that promote clean energy, that promote an industry that controls gas emissions, that generates an agriculture that eliminates over-intensive cultivation and that is capable of generating a transformation into an economy based on renewable energy sources.

Economic agenda
Sub-Saharan African countries are experiencing a real economic expansion. Their economic growth rate is above average even in times of recovery from the pandemic (2.8% in 2021 and expected to reach 3.3% in 2022). This economic growth must be transformed into human development growth that enables the creation of jobs and opportunities for its people.

Macroeconomic data together with its wealth of natural resources (energy) and privileged access to renewable energy sources places the African continent in a privileged position to fight its main challenge, which is extreme poverty in some parts of the continent.

Africa’s economic challenge should not be focused on the repetition of obsolete economic structures that copy Western economic treaties such as the African Continental Free Trade Area that repeats the same scheme as the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and African regions where richer countries will continue to leverage their economic power over poorer countries.
On the contrary, Africa must seek innovation based on the digital transformation of its economy and address its economic agenda based on the capabilities of its new generations by promoting opportunities for education and sustainable work.

However, Africa has a great challenge with respect to its own land, which requires putting limits to the plundering and sale of its land to foreign companies. According to SECAM (Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar), more than 25 million hectares of African land have been sold to transnational corporations during the first 10 months of 2021.  Political elites must limit their personal ambitions and curb corruption through easy contracts that bring them a lot of money in exchange for more poverty for their people.

Africa should define its own challenges and ambitions, develop its capacities and develop opportunities that ensure stability, solidarity and democracy. The EU-Africa Summit’s challenges for Africa are therefore the challenges of a young continent that must be addressed from the perspective of the needs of the people and not from the economic interests of transnationals or political power elites.

If Europe really wants to empathise with the challenges of the African continent, then it will have to relax its ambitions to control wealth in Africa and only then will it have understood its own values of solidarity and justice.

José Luis Gutiérrez Aranda,
Trade Policy Officer,
Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network (AEFJN)

South Africa. Second-Hand Books Take Over the Johannesburg Literary Market.

Johannesburg, often associated with skyscrapers, insecurity, crime, begging, and in some areas, difficult access to basic services such as electricity or water, boasts more than 10,000 street stalls and shops selling books.

The Bridge Books bookstore, characterised by a wooden door, is located at 98 Commissioner Street, a major street in the Central Business District of Johannesburg, where one can admire the imposing Carlton Centre, the second tallest building in the continent.
Bridge Books is always crowded with university volunteers doing inventory, with young people patiently waiting to be assigned the tasks of the day, and with the small groups of foreigners who before the pandemic were tourists and who today are only expatriates working in the country for embassies or private companies.

Johannesburg informally known as Jozi, Joburg, or “The City of Gold”, is the largest city in South Africa.

Griffin Shea welcomes people visiting the bookshop offering them a drink. This jovial and enthusiastic American, who first visited downtown Johannesburg as a young journalist a decade ago, was struck by the intensity and harshness of this place and decided to stay. He enrolled in a creative writing course at Wits University, and finally in early June 2016, he made his dream come true, and opened his own bookstore, Bridge Books. A journalist and writer who turned book seller. This big change in his life was the consequence of the long time spent walking through the centre of Johannesburg talking with the booksellers in the streets and visiting every single bookshop of the city such as Kalahari Books, L´Elephant Terrible or Skoobs -Theatre of Books, where the international and second-hand book market prevails. During his long strolls around the city and conversations with its booksellers, Shea was able to perceive the connection between books and those passersby who walked with their mind immersed in their work and responsibilities.

There are more than 10,000 stalls and bookstores where 90% of the books on offer are second-hand and by foreign authors.

“Here in Johannesburg, there are more than 10,000 stalls and bookstores where 90% of the books on offer are second-hand and by foreign authors. Pocket editions, or second-hand books. Books are part of the needs of passersby”, Shea explains. He spent a lot of time talking with booksellers at Park Station, the central bus and train station located in the Hilbrow neighbourhood, an area where two million people used to pass by on working days before the pandemic. “At the time I was attending the course at Wits University, there was a great debate about the decolonization of literature, and one of the criticisms that was made was about the lack of bookstores in the city centre and in the townships. This is why I began to stroll around the centre of the city and found dozens of people who were selling books in the streets, in markets, or even in hairdresser shops or those shops that sell hygiene products or diapers for babies. I was impressed”.
Shea realised how important was a fictional story for people in order to escape hard everyday life or fantasy narratives to nourish imagination; this made him decide to become one bookseller among those at Park Station. “I quickly sold 20 books, and then many more. I could see that people were willing to buy books as much as essential goods, this made me decide to open a book store”, he adds.

Shea’s project
At Bridge Books, 75% of the books are by African authors, and the international fiction section is relegated to a corner. Thabiso, Shea’s right-hand man in the business, is enthusiastic about his collaboration with the American journalist turned bookseller; besides, Thabiso has proved to be a good bookseller too. He selects books, taking into consideration that the choice of content is what gives the bookstore its identity. He also keeps separated new books from second-hand and old books which are much less expensive.

The Bridge Books bookstore.

Shea and Thabiso also work as distributors for dozens of street booksellers who do not have access to large publishers and distributors. “We sell customers many old books but also new ones, especially political essays and biographies”, Thabiso explains. The Bridge Bookstore is located very close to the Rand Club, the city’s most enduring social institution and reading club founded in 1887, which has witnessed the most important events of the city. In fact, its construction dates back to the first years of the discovery of the gold mines, and its founder was the British businessman and politician Cecil John Rhodes. “The club has a membership of 600 and today it is representative of contemporary South African society and is open to everyone who shares in its ethos, regardless of gender, race or creed”, comments Shea, while showing the reading rooms and the large library whose book loan registration is still done in writing by hand in a notebook.

Booksellers in Johannesburg are currently suffering the economic difficulties that Covid-19 has caused. “People stay at home, many work from home, we have lost customers who used to come here every day”, says a vendor who sells both second-hand books and clothes at his stand.The National Library located farther down the street contains a million and a half books.
It is currently closed due to the damages to the roof caused by the rains. “It is a splendid place, and it is open to everyone for consultation; it is a pity that what this place offers is not widely publicised. This city is full of smart and creative people who like to read”, says

Griffin Shea (R), talking with a bookseller in the street of Johannesburg.

Shea, who believes, in order to enhance reading, books in South Africa should be published in all the eleven official languages of the country, should reach communities through neighbourhood bookstores and, at the same time, small libraries should be created in schools. “In South Africa”, Shea underlines “people love to read, but there are unglamorous, logistical issues that get in the way of promoting a culture of reading”. Because of this,  the owner of Johannesburg’s Bridge Books has launched the African Book Trust, a new non-profit dedicated to donating local books to South African libraries and schools. There is no doubt that the book market is very much alive in Johannesburg, and it adapts itself to the readers of different contexts; books can be sold in stores as well as on a sidewalk. Book markets share space with begging in the streets of Johannesburg. The need for reading is there, at street level.

Carla Fibia García-Sala

The Market. Where Women Reign Supreme.

It is still dark when Esther rises. The children are still asleep and her husband murmurs something inaudible. Today is market day. She fills a large basket with produce from her field.  She hopes to sell it and buy something for the house. Whatever the husband earns is his own and what she earns is for the house.

She sets out on her journey and meets Olete and Sammy on the road; they too are on their way to the market. It takes them three hours to reach the market and they find it already quite busy. She briefly greets the other vendors from nearby villages.
Esther and Olete take their places. For years, they have gone to the market on the same day and the same spot.
They lay out their goods while smiling and exchanging a few words of greeting like all the vendors. The topics are always the same: the children, the field, and the relatives.

One is immediately attracted by the sounds and colours of the market but what is unmistakeably immediately apparent is the large number of women. In actual fact, one essential characteristic of African markets is that they are exclusive places for women. It is the women who carry the goods to the market to sell them and buy others. A mere glance at the stalls shows they are all run by women. The men usually sit at the sides while they chat and discuss together as they create their network of social relations, but they never take part in the business. That belongs exclusively to the women. It is the woman who, using her savings buys a canopy for herself or others and so creates a fixed spot for herself in the market. The rest, who are the majority, only come occasionally and take whatever free spaces are left. Mary says: “What I earn is not an important part of the family finance, but it helps to keep things going and, most importantly, it brings in some cash for the family”.

For the most part, the entire produce of the fields is used for food, with no money to show for it. Thanks to the market and their work, the women manage to earn a little cash by transforming agricultural products into cooked food (polenta, manioc, beer made from sorghum, etc.). They may also exchange food for clothes, pots, batteries, or other useful objects. The majority of those tilling fields are women, even if the fields hardly ever belong to them. The women control 70% of agricultural production, produce 80% of food and ensure 90% of the commercialisation of these products.
Time passes under a scorching sun while the women sell their goods and chat together. It is late in the afternoon and time to go home. Esther goes to buy some things for the house and copybooks for her children. She joins Olete and Sammy for the journey home.

Once home, she greets her husband who smells of alcohol but fortunately has no reason to complain today. Electrical power has been turned off several hours ago. The power lines stop at the road, at the present time. Soon, the government will bring the power lines to the houses – or so they have been saying for years.
The day’s work is not yet done. She still has to prepare some food. At long last, she can unroll her sleeping mat at the foot of the table near the doorway. As she closes her eyes, she thinks of the day that is about to begin. She likes to think that when she falls asleep, a new day begins. This is her way of ensuring the new day begins well since it starts with the first peaceful hours of the night, the only chance she has to rest. Before dawn, the cock will crow, or the suffocating heat of her hut wakes her from her sleep and she is back to the long, hard, work-filled day of the African woman.
Mary Mutesa

 

Latin America 2022. The Coming Back of the Left.

After the victory of the left in Honduras and Chile, now attention is centred on Colombia and Brazil.

On February 6, 2022, the presidential and legislative elections will take place in Costa Rica, a country of five million people, which shows the greatest political-institutional development among those in the Latin American region.

The President, two Vice Presidents and the entire Legislative Assembly (57 deputies) will be elected. The President of Costa Rica is currently elected for a period of four years, which is not immediately renewable. The current President, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, is a member of the centre-left Citizens’ Action Party (PAC). Recent polls show candidates José María Figueres of the National Liberation Party and Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz leading the polls.

Costa Rican presidential candidate Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz of the National Restoration Party.

Muñoz, four years ago, was defeated in the run-off by the current president Carlos Alvarado Quesada. If no candidate receives 40% of the vote in the first round, a second round will be held on 3 April between the two top finishers.
The electoral trend shows the elections in Costa Rica along the lines of the classic political model of the last decades in the West: a competition between the centre-right and the centre-left, which generally leads to governments oriented towards centre wing politics. Costa Rica dissolved its Armed Forces more than half a century ago.
Panama is the second country in Latin America to permanently abolish standing armies following the US invasion in the early 1990s. The country now has a National Guard, which is a military force with police and military functions.

Colombians will go to the polls, first, on 13 March, when elections will be held to renew the two houses of Congress and then on 29 May for the presidential elections. The president is restricted to a single four-year term and is barred from running for re-election. Colombia had historically a two-party system, which means that there were two dominant political parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, resulting in considerable difficulty for anybody to achieve major electoral success under the banner of any other party.

Francia Márquez, an Afro-Colombian human rights and environmental activist.

During the time between the middle of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, an agreement between the two forces allowed them to alternately be in power, thus trying to overcome conflicts. But during this time, the Marxist-oriented guerrilla developed, and it generated strong institutional tension. The arrival of Álvaro Uribe, coming from the Liberal Party, reconfigured Colombian politics, giving rise to a new force based on both schools of thought: liberalism and conservatism.
In the meantime, the left started to gain electoral strength. Four years ago, the run-off was between president Uribe-backed, right-wing, Iván Duque and a leftist candidate and former guerrilla, Gustavo Petro, who will run again in 2022 and who is first in voting intention. Federico Gutiérrez, former mayor of Medellín, who has good relations with Uribism, and Francia Márquez, an Afro-Colombian human rights and environmental activist, are the other two most voted candidates.

As for Brazil, the first round of the 2022 elections is scheduled for the second of October. If no candidate reaches a majority of the votes, a second round will be held on October 30. The president of Brazil serves for a term of four years and may be re-elected for a single consecutive term. This two-term limit, however, is not for life; a former president who has served for two consecutive terms may run for the presidency again after at least one term has elapsed. Former President Lula, who ruled between 2002 and 2010, is running again after being imprisoned for more than a year after a sentence for corruption and money laundering. His conviction was annulled and he is running again as a candidate for presidency. He remains the most popular political centre-left figure in Brazil. His advantage is overwhelming.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the latest voting intention, Lula still has a double-digit lead over incumbent right-wing populist and former military man and current president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2022 presidential race. The traditional centre-right forces are too weakened to present a third candidate to challenge Bolsonaro. Lula won the first round and the run-off defeating Geraldo Alckmin in the 2006 presidential elections. On December 15, 2021, Alckmin formally announced his departure from the PSDB, the party that was founded by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and he might decide to run for Vice President behind the former head of state Lula, relying on centrist voters. Brazil, which has the largest electorate in Latin America, is the most influential country of the region. Chilean citizens elected Gabriel Boric as their new president last 19 December and they will go again to the polls for the 2022 Chilean national plebiscite which will be held in the third quarter of 2022, in order to determine whether the public agrees with the text of a new Political Constitution of the Republic, drawn up by the Constitutional Convention.
The presidential election showed a country split between the far right candidate, José Antonio Kast, and the left-wing progressive Gabriel Boric, who was supported by the Communist Party. This is a very different result from that of May 2021 when Chileans went to the polls to elect 155 delegates to the Constituent Assembly, which will rewrite the new constitution. Chilean voters elected a left-dominated slate to serve on the Constitutional Convention. Based on these electoral results, diverse left-aligned forces seemed ascendant, poised to sweep away both traditional right-wing parties and the neoliberal centre. A very different result from that of six months later, which is probably the consequence of the violent social protests of 2019 and 2020, where representatives of the ultra-left, anarchists, indigenous people, and independents took an active role. Rewriting the new Chilean constitution won’t be an easy task.

Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the most popular political centre-left figure in Brazil.

There is still much uncertainty around the outcome of the process, and it is not just a question of left vs right. Many assembly members, in fact, come from groups engendered by social movements that came together for electoral purposes only, and besides, even within parties, consensus is not a given. No political sector possesses the two-thirds majority required to approve a bill, nor the one-third to veto. The draft constitution must be approved by two thirds of members and then proposed to the public in another referendum in the third quarter of 2022.
In conclusion: Costa Rica’s presidential election will surely confirm the political model of stability and moderation that has characterized the country for more than half a century. The Colombian presidential election shows a growing political-ideological polarization between a left-wing candidate and a group of centre-right forces without a clear candidate up to now. With regard to Brazilian presidential election, which will be decisive for the region, polls show a clear preference for centre-left former President Lula, who would obtain in case of victory, his third presidential term. Finally, the plebiscite to approve the new Chilean constitution is expected to take place in the third quarter of 2022, although there is still a difficult path ahead.

Rosendo Fraga/Nueva Mayoría

Iraq. The Madans live on the water. At risk.

In the Mesopotamian swamps, people live in symbiosis with five-thousand-year-old waters. This treasure of biodiversity is in danger: “We are in the middle of a water emergency”, says activist Ali Alkarkhi.

At Chibayish, 400 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the water that finds its way into the cane fields is dotted with mashufs, the streamlined canoes that are the perfect means of transport in this place.
In the swamps people fish, hunt for birds and ducks, cultivate rice, and raise animals. It is a paradise of biodiversity that is home to rare species like the sacred ibis and a resting place for the flocks of birds migrating between Siberia and Africa. It is no accident that, according to tradition, the Ahwar of Iraq, about eight thousand square kilometres of marshlands in the heart of Mesopotamia where the Tigris and Euphrates flow and bring life before throwing themselves into the Shatt al-’Arab river, is what the Bible calls the Garden of Eden.

Shatt al tigris, Iraq. ©homophoticus/123RF.COM

In 2016, UNESCO designated the area, together with the archaeological ruins of the Mesopotamian cities of Ur, Eridu and Uruk, as world heritage sites. “But this unique ecosystem, where, for five thousand years, the Madans have lived in symbiosis with the natural elements, is now in danger”. Ali Alkarkhi, a young activist and founder of the Humat Dijlah (‘Protectors of the Tigris’), has again re-launched the alarm sounded by the international organisations according to which the growing shortage of water represents a most serious threat to this exceptional habitat and the 130,000 people who still live there.
“The so-called ‘Marsh Arabs’ are the first autochthonous community of the region and they have preserved in time an economic-social system based on an abundance of hydric resources”, explains Alkarkhi. “The fine balance was upset in the time of Saddam Hussein who, in 1991, ordered the draining of the wetlands as a reaction against the inhabitants accused of offering refuge to rebel combatants: more than a hundred thousand people were forced to emigrate”.
In 2003, after the fall of the regime, the transitional government made great efforts to restore life to the area, removing the dams and canals that had been built along the courses of the rivers. However, on the one hand the ecosystem requires a long time to recover and, furthermore, those people who, decades ago, moved to the cities today often prefer not to return to a precarious existence where services are few and the new generations cannot foresee any professional prospects. At the same time, other serious threats are bearing down upon the Ahwar.

Mosque and Mudhif, the traditional house of Marsh arabs aka madan in Iraq. ©homophoticus/123RF.COM

“In recent years, the bordering countries have built some large dams on the waterways that flow to their countries before reaching Iraq: examples of this are the Illisu dam built by Turkey on the Tigris, and that of Iran on the Sirwan, which have seriously impacted the flow of the two rivers”, Ali explains. “The Iraqi governments, on their part, have never promoted adequate hydric policies and the local administrations are inefficient while the population continues to use unsustainable methods of irrigation. The scenario is aggravated by global warming which brings increasingly frequent droughts and increasing salinization of the soil”.
The UN classifies Iraq as the fifth country in the world in vulnerability to climate change. The local communities, one of which is the Madei people, followers of a most ancient gnostic faith whose traditional rites are closely linked to an abundance of water, fight daily to retain their territory. “Here the lifestyle depends totally on the marshes”, recounts the young activist. “The local economy revolves around raising a local species of buffalo which provides them with meat and milk that is used to produce guemar cheese. They use the horns and the skins and even the excrement is used as fuel for the kitchen. These animals, that represent the currency of Ahwar, do not survive without a sufficient supply of water”. The Madans live on the water. Their customary houses are called mudhifs, spacious houses of cleverly woven reeds standing on tiny islands surrounded by the swamps.
“They must use boats to travel anywhere; canoes are used to go to the market, to school or to the doctor. There are no roads by which cars can reach these centres and when there is a drought, the communities are cut off for months on end. Our fear is that, with climate change, the emergency will become the norm”.

Shatt is an arab landscape with grass nature. ©homophoticus/123RF.COM

This is the reason why the activists of Humat Dijlah who operate in sixteen Iraqi cities and involve four hundred volunteers actively promoting environmental awareness at the grassroots level, have decided to launch some specific programmes for the region of the swamps. “We work on different levels”, explains Alkarkhi. “On the one hand, we support the application of the law instituted a few years ago by the environmental police and that of the rivers to monitor harmful practices such as hunting and intensive fishing or the use of methods harmful to the ecosystem, but also illegal draining for agricultural purposes. Parallel to this, we train communities to monitor the environment and to document violations by means of photos and video taken with cellphones, as well as urging them to pass from traditional irrigation by submersion to that of drip irrigation. Then we have our lobbying work aimed at the local administration concerning the management of water resources and the treatment of sewage which today goes directly into the swamps”.
In a country where 70% of industrial waste is dumped into the rivers or the sea, wastewater dumped into the marshes causes pollution and the concentration of heavy metals which, through the flora and fauna, also threaten the inhabitants. This does not take into account the deterioration of the environment – with the miasmas that infest the air along the banks where picnicking families roast the fish they have just caught – representing one of the factors that discourages the return of local tourists: a crucial challenge to guaranteeing a future for this corner of the Fertile Crescent.

Marshes of Iraq in Dhi Qar province, which is located south of Iraq, show where water bodies and Cane papyrus, and Animal of buffalo. Rasoulali/123RF.COM

“The Governorship of Dui War aims at promoting economic growth while preserving the cultural heritage, offering especially young people and women the opportunity of training for work in the eco-tourism sector. By means of small cooperatives, we see the creation of an ecological village at Chibayish, a factory for traditional boats, craft, and souvenir shops. Artistic and cultural events are also planned.
“It is our hope that the influx of visitors generates income for the residents, making them ever more independent of external aid”, explains Raed Mikhael, activist of Humat Dijlah.
Side by side with the local initiatives, the efforts of the central government are still fundamental. “During recent decades, tormented by wars and terrorism, the protection of the environment and the management of water resources has always been at the bottom of the agenda of succeeding administrations while today it should be given top priority”, affirms Ali Alkarkhi. “Above all, the Iraqi government must commit itself to serious negotiations with bordering countries to reaffirm the right to water of all the inhabitants of the area. It is not just a national but a regional question: even though it covers four different countries, Mesopotamia represents a unique entity from the point of view of ecology: we can only overcome the water emergency by working all together”. (Open photo: Mesopotamian Marshes, habitat of Marsh Arabs aka Madans, Iraq. ©homophoticus/123RF.COM)

Chiara Zappa/MM

 

Zimbabwe. Business Creates Agreement.

After the expropriations of the lands of the white ranchers during the Mugabe era, the aristocratic von Pezold family is on the trail of compensation and new deals. Thanks to the policy change by President Mnangagwa who wants to end international sanctions and re-launch the economy.

An immense villa is perched on a huge granite rock over the Gota dam and looking out over the Forrester estate. The location is called Mvurwi, in the province of Mashonaland, in Zimbabwe. It is the work of British-Austrian architect, Christina Seilern.
This is the epicentre of the agro-industrial empire of the von Pezolds, an aristocratic family descended from German nobility whose veins also run with Swiss and Austrian blood.  In Zimbabwe, ever since the late eighties, anyone wishing to buy tobacco or timber must go through them. The pioneer of this European entrepreneurial adventure in the heart of southern Africa was Rüdiger von Pezold.

Heinrich von Pezold.

Ever since he first purchased lands, the von Pezolds forged ahead. With his demise in 2014, Rüdiger’s place was taken by his eldest son Heinrich, the only one of seven sons who today manages the family business on the spot. The others live in London, Zurich, Prague and at the castle of Gusterheim, in Austria.
In Zimbabwe, the von Pezold business went well until, at the start of the 2000s, they came under the agrarian reforms of President Robert Mugabe. Almost one-third of their property was first confiscated by the government and then redistributed to small peasant communities, many of which belonged to Mugabe’s party Zanu-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front).
The von Pezolds fought back and, in 2010, began to challenge Mugabe in the courts obtaining, in 2015, their first victory with the sentence handed down by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), according to which Harare was ordered to pay compensation of more than 200 million dollars for the illegal expropriation. The first instalments of the compensation were due in 2018 but the von Pezolds have received nothing since then.

Where to find the money
Things began to change in November 2017 when Mugabe was deposed, and Emmerson Mnangagwa came to power. The new president took charge of the question of the confiscations, creating discontent within Zanu-PF. However, he was not being reckless. He realised that it was only by compensating the von Pezolds and all the other white ranchers that he could release the country from the sanctions imposed by the international community. Those sanctions have been a burden to Zimbabwe since 2003, and ever since then, they have limited its ability to conduct foreign business. In particular, they blocked the growth of some companies partly owned by exponents of the government and personalities close to Mnangagwa.

President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The business most affected by this obstacle was the Minerals Marketing Corporation, the leader in the export of minerals and precious stones, goods which alone amounted to 60% of exports. The sanctions marked the end of this flow of foreign currency so crucial to Zimbabwe funds, and are now complicating the programme for the re-launch of the economy on which Mnangagwa is relying in view of the next elections in 2023. For these reasons, the president has no intention of continuing to fight with the von Pezolds. Last July, the government entrusted the London-based company Newstate Partners the task of planning how to raise more than 1.7 billion dollars, the amount the state must repay before the end of July 2022 to the white landowners for sanctions to be lifted. Time is running out, also since, on 25 August, the von Pezolds again went on the attack, demanding what was required by the court sentence in 2015.

Rift Valley Corporation
For the tobacco and timber magnates, the amount of compensation in question is well over 200 million. If they win this round, they will be able to extend their influence over all of Southern Africa, strengthened also by alliances created in recent years. In 2004, the von Pezolds came to an understanding with the Norwegian Høegh family involved in maritime transport since the 1900s. Together, the two families founded the Rift Valley Corporation.

At the centre of this fusion, there are the three large estates of the von Pezolds in Zimbabwe, as well as those of Forrester, Border and Makanda, for a total of around 400,000 hectares where tea, coffee, avocadoes, and bananas are produced. This is so, despite the fact that the core business is still tobacco (10% of national exports) and timber, managed respectively by Northern Tobacco and Border Timbers.
The business of the Rift Valley Corporation also extends outside Zimbabwe: to Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Malawi where the joint venture ranges from trading in bananas to gas exports. In this web of economic interests, there is another court case showing that the von Pezolds are not likely to abandon this long legal battle until they achieve victory. The matriarch of the family, Elisabeth von Pezold, a member of one of the most important aristocratic families of Austro-Hungarian Bohemia has, since the nineties, fought a legal battle against the Czech Republic for the restitution of family goods confiscated by the Gestapo in the forties, and then given to Czechoslovakia during the socialist period.

Rocco Bellantone

DR Congo. Forging New Talents.

In the Congolese capital, as in the rest of the country, cultural spaces are almost non-existent. Kin ArtStudio is therefore an exception with its aim of stimulating and creating a place where various artists can express themselves. We paid a visit to the Centre.

Located in Kinshasa, the Kin ArtStudio was opened in 2011 by the Congolese artist Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondoy with the aim of encouraging creativity in the field of visual arts and other forms of contemporary expression, reinforcing the ability of young Congolese artists and promoting exchange between artists the world over.
Kin ArtStudio occupies a large space where once there was a factory of wax fabrics. It has more than ten studios for artists as well as offices, a library, a restaurant and more. At least 150 artists, mostly Congolese, have passed through this house. Some of them took part in workshops and art exhibitions in Africa, Europe, and the United States.

The Congolese artist Vitshois -Mwilambwe Bondoy, the founder of Kin ArtStudio.

At Kin ArtStudio, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and design are combined. The artists concentrate their gaze on the historical, cultural, and intellectual patrimony of their country, questioning the succession of historical moments from the time of the Belgian Congo to Mobutu’s Zaire and up to the present day.
The richness of its land, the extent of its territory, its great ethnic diversity, its cultural specifics and, of course, the violence it suffered in its spiritual, economic, and political identity give this country a unique dimension and a far from ordinary destiny in the entire continent.

Two intertwined histories
We met Nathanaël Mutelezi Maza as he sat on a high stool, concentrating on mixing different colours of paint. He is using aquarelle, pastel, and a pen. His still incomplete picture is of a woman desperately looking at the ground. The image recalls the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says Nathanaël, “My picture represents a woman who lost many members of her family during the recent war in the DRC. This work seeks to recall this reality so that it may never be forgotten”.
Nathanaël is 23 and studied at the Kinshasa Institute of Fine Arts. There he was interested in contemporary art until he began to attend competitions in modern art. In 2018, he met the founder of Kin ArtStudio, Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondoy, and with him began an artistic career that has lasted up to the present day.

Aristotel Mago, artist. The works of Aristotel contain his personal experiences.

Going through the ArtStudio, we were struck by a picture by an artist called Aristotel Mago hanging on the wall. The work seems incomplete since none of the three figures represented has a head. Three other works laid out on the floor had the same characteristic. This is his way of expressing the resistance of the African people: “We sometimes live here in Africa as if we were extra-terrestrials. I often ask myself how we can overcome this situation of poverty imposed upon us. Resistance is so strong that a woman manages to live by selling five tomatoes and with this income, she buys food and sends her children to school. This is not normal but it is how we live”.

The works of Aristotel contain his personal experiences that are connected to each other and become questions for society. One thing that has already become part of his life is the woven plastic bag that has supported him while producing his works. In fact, it is not just a bag but his own personal history: “I was brought up by my grandmother in very difficult times. She used to sell plastic bags and I helped her to support the family. When I began my artistic career, I remembered my grandmother … and the bag. I drew designs on it and then I sewed the vertical and horizontal lines that formed the framework and that is how I am still working. Nothing happens by mere chance. It is the reflection of my personal history and a society marked by years of dictatorship. It is the history of a population troubled by the political and social situation”.

Maker of dreams
When the founder of Kin ArtStudio Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondoy was still only six years of age, he liked to copy photos he saw in magazines his father would buy. After discovering his artistic vocation, his parents sent him to the Kinshasa Institute of Fine Arts where he studied from 1994 to 1999. He was to exhibit his work in professional venues. Some of the postcards he designed and sold in school have been displayed in the same school and at the Academy of Fine Arts. He began to frequent the library of the French Institute where he discovered the riches of contemporary art and some renowned artists who led him to take a different view of art.

Kinshasa is the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the largest city in Africa.

From 2008 to 2010, Vitshois continued his training at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasburg and at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam where he met artists, curators, theorists, historians, and art critics from all over the world.
He now lives in Kinshasa where he works to promote the visual arts and other forms of contemporary expression and facilitate exchanges between young Congolese artists and artistic initiatives in all parts of the world. For more than a decade, he has been organising exhibitions and holding workshops, but he is also responsible for one of the main programmes for artists and curators in the DR Congo. In 2019, he organised the Congo Biennial, the first international biennial of contemporary in Kinshasa which, with its first edition, brought together almost forty artists from all parts of the world and more than 100 works in four different venues.
Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondoy says that there are many artists but there is no one to accompany them in their process of learning and producing. He states: “I have seen many highly talented young people and, at the same time, I was surprised to see that, apart from the Kinshasa French Institute, there was no platform in the DRC to develop their abilities, no professional art gallery where they could exhibit their work and nowhere for them share with other artists. Seeing that the government had failed in its mission, I took on this commitment, having gained experience in other countries, to accompany young artists so that, once they have finished their studies, they may not waste their talents but make art their life’s work in their own country and abroad”.

Vitshois -Mwilambwe Bondoy with a young artist.

The founder of Kin ArtStudio is moved by the conviction that art, as a reflection of society, ought to contribute to cultural and economic development and also improve the image of the country: “the artist participates in the development of his country, challenges the surrounding reality and seeks to decolonise the mentality so that people may take control of their own lives. Apart from aesthetics, it reawakens the sleeping population. Our role also consists in transmitting hope to people, showing the positive side of our situation and denouncing the pathologies they suffer as a people. In this way, we help those with a passion for culture to see the world in a different way”.

As a curator, Bondoy contributes to the development of the Congolese scene. He attracts well-known artists to work and display their works in Kinshasa, bringing them face to face with the reality of the city. Now, thanks to a network of international exchange, the art producers are invited to other countries to share experiences with other artists. This takes for granted long-term accompaniment that requires not only that they are helped to concentrate on their work but also to reflect upon themselves and their work as artists.

The ancestors
The first Congo Biennial in 2019 was attended by forty artists, designers, architects, art historians, curators and art critics from all five continents. The second is planned to run from 16 September to 23 October 2022. The theme of the exhibition is ‘The Breath of the Ancestors’, and it will be on display in various venues of the capital city. It will also be integrated with workshops of cultural journalism and art criticism as well as training workshops for visual artists and works centred on cultural learning. Since remembrance of the ancestors is deeply inscribed in a large part of African culture, the artists may express the close relationship the elders have with the world and with the dead. In Africa “The dead are not dead”, as the Senegalese poet Birago Diop once said. (Open Photo: The Kin ArtStudio)

Lwanga Kakule Silusawa

 

 

Desmond Tutu, the People’s Archbishop.

Symbol of non-violent resistance to apartheid and the creation of a new nation, Tutu (1931-2021, Nobel Peace prize-winner for 1984) took the path of dialogue and forgiveness. Right to the end, he was the guardian of human values.

On 26 December last year, at the age of 90, Desmond Tutu died. He was one of the most important and meaningful figures of contemporary South Africa and known to all as ‘The Archbishop’.
He was born into a Xhosa and Tswana African family in the town of Klerksdorp in a province in the north of the country once called the Transvaal, the scene of battles during the Anglo-Boer War and the site of two concentration camps – one for whites and the other for blacks – in which a large number of people died.
An Anglican Christian, after his marriage to Leah Nomalizo – with whom he had four children – he entered the priesthood and studied theology at King’s College, London. In 1984, he was appointed bishop and, in 1985, Archbishop of Johannesburg; in both cases, he was the first African to occupy the posts. In 1986, he became Archbishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Catholic Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban in a 1985 photo. Tutu had strong ties to Catholic Church.

From his boyhood, Desmond Tutu encountered the racism and discrimination of the colonial world. He wanted to study medicine but the socio-economic circumstance of his family prevented him from doing so and he took up teaching instead.
While teaching at the Johannesburg Bantu High School, he resigned in protest against the Bantu Education Act which, during the fifties, created a school system based on racism in the context of the apartheid system that came into force in 1948. As an Anglican pastor, he became chaplain to the Blacks-only University of Fort Hare, a centre of anti-apartheid resistance and a place of formation of the African elite whom he helped to guide and support during those years.

The choice of Soweto
After his period of studies in England, his strong, committed voice was increasingly heard in the public arena and his presence grew in influence in the society of his time. He used the dignity of the episcopal purple not for ritualistic ceremonials but to add strength to the burning issue of support for human rights, always on the side of the weak and oppressed to the extent that he became a most popular champion of resistance against the apartheid regime and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. He helped to orchestrate the support of different Christian churches for anti-apartheid movements by means of finance and various sorts of logistic and cultural collaboration.

At the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, Archbishop Tutu addresses a meeting in Alexander Township (1986).

He kept up a lively dialogue and friendship with the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), especially Sisulu, Thambo, and Mandela. He knew how to be close to his people in the worst moments of crisis and bloody repression such as that of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 and the Soweto revolt in 1976: the same Soweto where he had chosen to live (in Vilakazi Street, not far from the Mandelas), instead of opting to isolate himself in his residence as his episcopal status would have allowed him.
He was always, in short, a man of the people in every moment of his life and, as such, he fought alongside the movements of change, insisting on adhering to the policy of non-violent resistance that was always part and parcel of the original ANC.

February 21, 1990. After his release from Robben Island prison, Nelson Mandela visits Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Desmond Tutu was a man of determination and a character who was sometimes impulsive but always tempered by the deep empathy that bound him to human beings and governed by a deep respect and love for the whole of humanity, beginning with those who seemed most in need of help.Gifted with an intelligence that was both lively and reflective, he had explored the more advanced aspects of African liberation theology and had drawn his own ethical and pastoral conclusions, to the point of devoting himself with indomitable passion to the cause of justice and human rights.
His personality was especially attractive, and he had an extraordinary ability to socialise and communicate at all levels; some of his public speeches were truly unforgettable such as the one he delivered after the death of the popular ANC leader Chris Hani, assassinated in 1993, on the eve of the first democratic elections.

Helmsman of Reconciliation
Though during the apartheid era, Desmond Tutu had been an important element of support for the resistance and, at the same time, of opposition to the ever imminent threat of the outbreak of violence, after the liberation, his presence was fundamental to the development of a transition to a democratic system that was as peaceful and moderate as possible. Consequently, it happened that, when Mandela, who had now become President, decided in 1995 to launch the process of a South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), it was inevitable that he should entrust its presidency to Desmond Tutu.

Tutu receives the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize from Nobel Committee Chairman Egil Aarvik during the annual ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

The TRC operation proved to be a complete triumph for the figure of Desmond Tutu who assumed the role of leading coordinator at a crucial point in the life of the country, a time when the horrors of the past were faced, seeking to transform the wounds of the social body into signs of consciousness and memory that could be acceptable to those who had suffered unspeakable horrors and might lead to the discovery of common truths. The Archbishop became the great director of a collective drama that engaged the consciences of the entire nation from 1996 to 1998, through a series of public sittings of the TRC. During these sittings both those who had suffered wrongs and violence as well as those who had inflicted such violence met face-to-face, during which countless hidden stories became known and all sorts of complicity and allegations were revealed, in a tense atmosphere that strained towards the accomplishment of what was hoped to be for the good of all.
The work of the TRC had its ups and downs and was not always favourably accepted. Keeping a steady course in this undertaking must have been very hard for the little man dressed in purple who was seen to take upon himself an immensity of suffering and despair, together with the negative resistance of those who could not, or would not, see what was happening in South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu addresses the Academy of Achievement at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, during the 2009 International Achievement Summit.

There were times when the Archbishop seemed to vacillate, like when he gave way to uncontrollable weeping after the first day of depositions by the victims, or when he found he was suffering from cancer. Nevertheless, he managed to recover and continue his work of pursuing with unmeasured energy the search for the facts hitherto concealed and denied. One of the interesting aspects of his participation in the work of the TRC was the language he used to mould the experience: as noted by Antjie Krog in ‘Land of My Blood’, “not the language of declarations, of the news or testimonies.
It is the language that spreads like wildfire, elaborated by the vision of where we want to go and the awareness of where we are now. It is the language that draws the people together in the process”.
His work as commissioner was not without its critics and there was no lack of dissent even among those who were by his side in the resistance struggle. It is beyond doubt that he, as a pastor, gave a Christian slant to the work of the TRC, being indulgent towards a request for forgiveness even though this was not among the premises set out by Mandela. The victims were to be asked to tell all but not necessarily to forgive, just as the perpetrators were to be asked simply to make a total and complete confession without, however, necessarily requiring their repentance.

Furthermore, there were many who rebelled against the idea of restorative justice for the victims but without demanding retribution from those responsible for the long-drawn-out atrocities. In any case, it was decided to grant an amnesty to those who had acted out of political motives and who now made a complete admission of responsibility, while acts deemed to be ordinary crimes or perpetrated in yet unclear contexts and not yet admitted, were excluded. Confession assumed a major role in this protracted public drama, and it did not always appear to be sufficiently credible or acceptable.
The country emerged shocked and shaken by the public procedure but still there were those who kept out of it whether through deviousness or an invincible internal resistance to speaking openly and bringing to light matters that were often painful as well as shameful. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the TRC set in motion an extraordinary regenerative process directed towards healing a wounded, ulcerated and divided nation; and that Desmond Tutu held the reins of the difficult process with firm hands and a profoundly compassionate spirit.
During the following years, the Archbishop continued his work as the guardian of human values and in support of the achievements set out in the new South African Constitution. He was the champion of the fight against all forms of discrimination based on race, religion, gender or homophobia, and in favour of the individual right to euthanasia and abortion (a policy that often brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical establishment).
In politics, he fought against the corruption that was undermining the system of the country and he was a bitter opponent of President Jacob Zuma and his entourage. To sum up, Desmond Tutu never abandoned his principles of life and public or private morality, and leaves behind an indelible record for the memory of the nation.

Itala Vivan

 

 

 

Where is Africa in the Negotiations of the Treaty on Business and Human Rights?

A Legally Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights (Legally binding Instrument- LBI) is being negotiated at United Nations
since 2014.

The idea of a treaty of this character is not something that came from the whim and caprice of civil society but from the need to protect the people of developing countries from the violations and crimes committed by Transnational Companies (TNCs) in the exercise of its economic activity (such as the cases of the Shell company in Nigeria, Chevron in Ecuador, Brumadinho in Brazil, or Rana Plaza in Bangladesh).

Inappropriate behaviours causing environmental disasters, economic crimes, or systematic violations of human rights carried out by TNCs has been reported against public and private institutions during decades. However, only through this means would is there a real possibility of achieving effective mechanisms to hold TNCs responsible for such behaviour and that allow those responsible to be brought to justice. This LBI is an opportunity to end the impunity of TNCs and allow local communities in the poorest countries to have the tools to protect their natural resources and guarantee the protection of their population.

Although the western countries of the Global North have consolidated democracies in which the rule of law prosecutes, with greater or lesser severity human rights abuses, the countries of the Global South often lack the institutional power and mechanisms to prosecute crimes against human rights in their territory, especially those committed by TNCs.

In the case of Africa, governments have for decades facilitated the arrival of foreign investment through TNCs and they have abused their economic power to put their economic benefits before the rights of the populations. Consequently, TNCs continue to operate today with impunity for crimes committed against human rights.

Thus, to know the importance of the LBI, it is necessary to know what is at stake. Among other objectives, the most relevant demands of this instrument would be: to ensure the responsibility of companies for crimes committed against human rights and the environment, guarantee access to justice for victims and affected communities, remedy violations of the human rights and compensate the victims, as well as ensuring that the standards of respect and prevention of human rights are mandatory and not voluntary. Likewise, it is important to point out that the norms of prevention of the abuses of the human rights cannot exempt the TNCs of the responsibility for the damages caused by them.

Recognizing the relevance of a LBI, it would be expected that developing countries and especially African countries (which have suffered for decades from the plunder and abuse of TNCs) would put all their joint efforts to achieve a treaty to protect their populations. Unfortunately, the presence of the African Union and the different African governments in the negotiation of the treaty was almost insignificant in the last session of the working group for the elaboration of the LBI. Only 4 out of 54 countries have made significant contributions such as Namibia, Egypt, Cameroon, and South Africa. Other countries have attended the sessions, but without making any comments or presenting proposals.

In recent years, the commitment of the African governments has decreased with the progress of negotiation of the LBI, and they have hardly made interventions expressing strong interest in achieving the objectives of the treaty. Not even the African Union has sent a delegation or read any institutional statement supporting the creation of the LBI. This silence during the LBI negotiations is difficult to understand when what is at stake is the lives of millions of people in Africa.

The lack of commitment of African governments in the negotiations of the LBI allows the positions defended by rich countries that are more permissive to the economic powers of large corporations (Corporate Capture) to gain prominence in the negotiations. Likewise, the lack of a forceful position that defends the interests of Africa allows TNCs to develop their strategies and exempt themselves from their obligations to respect human rights and the environment, which is ultimately respect for the lives of people living in Africa.

The paradox is even greater when countries that are against the LBI such as the United States, Russia or China or those that present less demanding positions such as the European Union have been present in the negotiations defending their interests. Meanwhile, Africa is silent and this attitude allows large companies to continue developing their strategies to exploit Africa’s natural resources to enrich themselves at the expense of the needs of the population.

In our point of view, African governments should present a more active attitude in the future of the treaty negotiation and ensure that their presence among the group “Friends of the Chair” that defend the achievements made in the negotiation in recent years.
The political commitment of governments in Africa must be above the interests of each country and region, working together to defend the human rights of their peoples.

However, the success of the LBI will not depend exclusively on the result of the text that emerges from the negotiations but will require a serious commitment from the governments of the States that sign the treaty to facilitate its implementation, as well as the creation of adequate national legislation to prosecute human rights violations. Along with this, a serious commitment against the corruption that is threatening the prosperity of the African continent will be necessary.

Indeed, the United Nations and the EU have the obligation to extend democratic values in their treaties, establishing standards of respect and social commitment to all peoples. But it is the responsibility of all governments to work for international treaties that strengthen democracies and protect their populations.

The LBI is one more step in the construction of economic and social justice with the countries in Africa, but this cannot be done without the constant commitment of their governments. Governments in Africa cannot abandon to its fate a treaty that wants to be born with a vocation of ending impunity for TNCs and protecting human dignity. (Photo: © Can Stock Photo / kgtoh)

José Luis Gutiérrez Aranda,
Trade Policy Officer,
Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network (AEFJN)

Ethiopia. Maqbasa. Name-giving.

One of the greatest feasts among the Guji – an Oromo ethnic group – is that of name-giving. Like all other great feasts, it is sealed with the sacrifice of a bull, dancing and youthful games.

In speaking of the maqbasa or name-giving ceremony, we must first mention the gadaa system which divides life from birth to old age into ten grades or periods of eight years each. The passage from one class to another implies a new title and new social functions within the group along with the signs and symbols that accompany them.
The celebration of name-giving takes place when children enter the generational class of qarree. In this phase, a collective name is assigned to the children by which they begin to identify themselves with one of the five age-names, robale, halchiisa, harmuufa, dhallana and mudana, which the people call the fincaan Guji (the seeds of the Guji people).
The rite, like almost all other Gadaa rituals, is carried out once every eight years and all the men of generational Gadaa age give a common name to all their children.
The ritual is led by Abbaa Gadaa and involves the killing of a bull, prayers and the performance of popular songs known as qexala.

In choosing the date for the name-giving, it is necessary to make sure it will be an auspicious day.
Starting on the previous day, an altar is built in front of the hut: some branches of a sacred tree stuck in the ground and tied in a bundle. The altar is the place where God will be invoked and the sacrifice will be carried out. The father invites all the neighbours and friends who come with abundant milk and werk as a contribution to the feast. The dancing and singing begin on the previous day and go on all night.
During the ceremony itself, the Abbaa Gadaa wears a small horn full of honey on his wrist and holds a phallic rod in his hand, both of which are signs of fertility. Sitting on a wooden stool, he receives from the mother of the children due to be given a name a pumpkin full of milk together with a bunch of fresh herbs which she places at his feet.

Then, in order of birth, each of the children receiving a name lies in front of him. Abbaa Gadaa, in full view of everyone, pronounces the following sentence: “I give the name to my children”, as if they were his own. They all answer in unison: “May he hear you and may you lead many animals to pasture”. The Abbaa Gada shaves his children, leaving a small quiff of hair on their heads. This upper part that is not shaved off is called qarree, which literally means ‘summit’. The shaving is followed by a speech by the Abbaa Gada who repeatedly says: “I am naming my children, listen to me “. The public answer saying: “We have heard”.
The Abbaa Gada then calls the children by one of the names of the Guji age series, according to the child’s age. If the age-group to which the child belongs is mudana, the name of his children will be robale which means five age-groups (40 years) after him. When the Abbaa Gada calls the name, robale, for example, the public repeat the same name. As a result, the same name is given to all the children of men belonging to the same Gadaa generation.

The sacrifice
All then go to the cattle enclosure which is built of bamboo poles a few metres from the hut. Abbaa Gada gives a long blessing, oiling the enclosure and its entrance with butter; holding the phallic rod over the animals he asks that they be protected from all evil, that they may grow healthy and fat and multiply. They then walk slowly back to the hut and drink the milk from the pumpkin.
Now, it is the tonsured children alone who, bare-breasted, take the bull from the enclosure and bring it close to the altar of branches in front of the hut. Abbaa Gada greases the animal with butter and passes a stick over its chest while praying: “Give us peace. Keep my cattle healthy. Let them grow and fatten. Let me live with them. May I be saved from all evil. May he live in peace and grow old”.

All the participants, in hierarchical order, pronounce the same words, passing the palms of their hands over the chest of the victim. The women do not take part or pray but sing and dance in the hut.
The bull is tied and thrown to the ground, its head is turned and the horns are stuck in the ground. The Abbaa Gada brushes the whole neck with some fresh herbs as far as the front armpits where he fixes them. Then, with a lance with some leaves on its blade, he pierces the windpipe of the animal. Those who have been given a name open both cheeks with knives. The lance of the Abbaa Gada completes the cut in the neck and the blood flows into a skin without falling on the ground. Some is collected in a container to purify the huts and enclosures of all those who have received a name.
Before anointing himself with a wooden spoon full of butter, the Abba Gada opens the entire throat of the animal. Then, placing their hands where blood is still flowing, he and all the participants in hierarchical order apply it to their heads. Strips are taken from the skin of the lower abdomen for those who have been given a name, to be placed on their heads like crowns, signs of good fortune.

Feast
The sacrifice is followed by the feast.  Songs of qetala (war) are sung around the sacrifice and the tree with lances on their shoulders, moving at a very tranquil pace. The meat of the victim is cut up and boiled to be served at a common meal where the men sit on one side and the women on the other. A large quantity of local beer is drunk.

After the meal, the songs may continue separately, with the men on one side of the hut and the women on the other. The men dance in close lines, each one with his arm on the shoulder of the man nearest to him. They sing, answering a soloist with a very deep voice and striking the ground rhythmically with the right foot. The sound they produce is similar to that of a stormy afternoon or the roaring of lions.
The women, their heads greased with abundant butter that flows down on their faces and necks, dance in a closed circle, singing songs that mention cows, children, husbands.The ceremony ends with the men withdrawing to a valley where the younger ones challenge each other at wrestling, the only prize for which is the applause of the exclusively
male spectators.

Joseph A. Beekan

Economy. Dynamic Development.

The country is extremely rich in water resources and minerals. The latter have featured largely in its economy.

On the contrary, the agricultural sector occupies a secondary position but, despite this, it employs as much as 37% of the workforce, a much higher percentage than the industrial sector which absorbs about 14,3%. These figures show that the economy of Azerbaijan leans greatly towards agriculture. The other sectors and services, still underdeveloped, employ 48% of the entire workforce of the country. It must also be noted that there is a high degree of growth in the production of energy from alternative sources rather than fossil fuels by using the many water-courses present in the country, the largest of which have been dammed for hydroelectric installations.
Since independence, the country has seen various economic phases. Immediately after independence, there was a decline for various reasons among which were the acute phase of the conflict with Armenia, the lack of government experience, the deterioration of the productive sectors, the break in relations with the traditional markets of the former Soviet republics, and the end to financing from Moscow.

Nevertheless, since the early years of the new millennium, there has been a notable inversion of trends that enabled the country to achieve a dynamic phase of development mainly due to development in the petroleum sector. All of this was due also to the results produced by creating new road infrastructure, the agricultural reform granting the lands to farmers and the development of private farms, but most of all to the effects produced by the energy policy followed by the State and the famous ‘contract of the century’.
This accord was signed in ’94 by the then President with as many as eleven large oil companies from various countries, thus offering Azerbaijan the opportunity to integrate internationally.
The new energy policy established that 20% of national hydrocarbons was, or is, managed by the State company SOCAR, while the remaining 80% of production is managed by means of a series of commercial development agreements by British Petroleum and by an Azerbaijani consortium which included the foreign companies (AIOC).
This has favoured an enormous influx of foreign capital which has generated exponential growth in the Azerbaijani economy with a relative increase in the number of employed, an improvement in local infrastructure and annual average growth in GDP of 10% during the decade from 1996 to 2005.
Of importance in the strengthening of the economy of the country has been the export of oil using the newly built pipelines Baku-Novorossiysk and Baku-Supsa, completed respectively in 1996 and 1999.

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that takes Azerbaijani oil to Western markets via Georgia and Turkey.

In those years, a contract was also signed for pipelines linking  Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyan (Btc) and Baku-Tibilisi-Erzurum (Bte), greatly desired by the Americans and British since the nineties when NATO was revisiting its geopolitical orientation to allow the country to diversify its routes to other countries independently of Moscow. Those years also saw the construction of new schools, hospitals, sporting facilities, social and communications structures (some are still under construction) among which the rail and motorway link between Baku, Tbilisi and Kars, the new port of Alat for maritime commerce, as well as advanced naval shipyards, also in the province of Alat, as well as the construction of the new Baku airport. The main objective of the new infrastructure development is to exploit the geographical position of the country to create a hub in the transport sector with logistical centres connected to the main international supply chains in both directions: north-south (within the Caucasus and the macro Asiatic region) and east-west (mainly reinforcing links with the West) and therefore an important crossroads of exchange between Europe and Asia.
The finance for the development works of the country comes through the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan which allocates the economic surplus from oil exports. However, the country has never moved towards real economic diversification, and this produced tremendous growth of around 28% per annum when the price of crude was over $100 a barrel, and also great hardship when, in 2016, it fell to $30 a barrel and the Manat lost 30% of its value.

Panoramic cityscape view of Baku in the morning,

The pandemic, together with the conflict with Armenia that broke out again in 2020, the collapse in the price of crude and consequently of fiscal income, further damaged the Azerbaijan economy which is paying the price for the lack of diversification and is now aiming energetically to develop the logistics sector by creating new transport structures, technological parks, solar electricity centres and wind farms, as well as the development of the agricultural and tourism sectors. Ambitious projects are also to be found in the ‘Baku City Master Plan 2040’, to convert the capital into a Smart City.
It is also worth noting that, following the ceasefire with Armenia, greater public investments in infrastructure have been assigned to the so-called ‘liberated territories’, now under Baku control, for their reconstruction, among which is a new railway expected to connect Azerbaijan to its former enclave of Nakhchivan. (F.R.)

 

Burundi. When Rare Earths come before Human Rights.

On the last 19 November, President Joe Biden created shock and indignation among human rights activists after he signed an executive order to lift sanctions against Burundian officials which were imposed by Barrack Obama in 2015.

During the Obama administration, the State Department said that the late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s pursuit of a third term caused a humanitarian, economic and security crisis, and it had received multiple reports of targeted killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and political oppression. Six years later, Joe Biden justified his decision to repeal the visa ban and assets freeze against eight Burundians including seven officials (and an opposition leader), arguing that the situation had improved in Burundi since the election of Evariste Ndayishimiye as president in May 2020. Biden praised namely “the positive reforms pursued by President Ndayishimiye”.

President Evariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi

But the nature of the regime is the same, since Ndayishimiye whose election was marred by fraud belongs to Nkurunziza’s CNDD-FDD party. Besides, local and international human rights NGOs claim that facts contradict Joe Biden’s assessment of the situation.
According to the exiled president of the Association of Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) in Burundi, Armel Niyongere, since Ndayishimiye, took power in June 2020, there has been a continuous regression with many cases of forced disappearances, tortures and assassinations”. ACAT-Burundi counted 695 cases of killings since the beginning of Ndayishimiye’s term. By end November, there were still over 1,000 political prisoners in Burundi.
Such analysis confirms a report published in September 2021 by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Burundi which found that in some aspects the situation had even ‘deteriorated’. This report also mentioned that some violations perpetrated by the security services could represent
‘crimes against humanity’.

Biden’s decision United States’ attitude towards Burundi is also in contradiction with the European Union’s decision to renew on the last 18 October its own sanctions including a visa ban and a freeze of assets in the EU, targeting a Burundian rebel general and three officials. Those are namely, the Burundian Minister of Interior, Gervais Ndirakobuca, aka ‘Ndakugarica’ (I kill you), the presidential officer, Godefroid Bizimana who ordered disproportionate use of violence against demonstrators in 2015 and national security officer Mathias Joseph Niyonzima, who is accused to have organised the training of the dreaded paramilitary Imbonerakure militias of the ruling party, which are among the main perpetrators of human rights violations in Burundi.
Yet, the reconciliation between the US and Burundi, did not come entirely as a surprise. Indeed, after a meeting between the American ambassador in Bujumbura, Melanie Higgins and President Ndayishimiye, on the 21 June 2021, a press communiqué from the Burundian presidency announced that the US were planning to lift the sanctions against several Burundian officials and to resume their support to the Burundian peacekeeping troops in Somalia.
The difference between the attitude of the US and of the EU is largely owed to the involvement of the former US Special Envoy for the Great Lakes between the 29 October 2018 and the 1st March 2020, the Vietnamese American diplomat J. Peter Pham. He could also rely on the advocacy from US evangelical churches and from America’s religious right. One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the late President Peter Nkurunziza who passed away thon the 8 June 2020 was the Republican Senator of Oklahoma and chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, James Inhofe who joined sessions of Nkurunziza’s crusade prayer group in Burundi.

Vietnamese American diplomat J. Peter Pham

When he chaired the African Centre of the Atlantic Council think tank, Peter Pham invited on several occasions the former Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe and his brother, Willy Nyamitwe, who was the special advisor of President Nkurunziza. Even after his mandate of Special Envoy for the Great Lakes, Pham, who has been Special Envoy for the Sahel Region (between the 1st March 2020 and the 20 January 2021) expressed on many occasions, his support to the Burundian regime. On the 1st July 2020, he rushed to Bujumbura in order to attend the military parade of the Independence Day in the company of President Ndayishimiye and of Prime Minister Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, despite the fact that the latter was still on the US sanctions list.
Beyond religions links between the late Burundian President and some American politicians, the reconciliation between Washington and Bujumbura coincides with the US interest for the supply of critical rare earths elements. In a global context where according to the United States Geological Survey, China represented last year 58.3% of the production of rare earths elements worldwide while hosting36.6% of the global reserves, the United States only produced 15.8% of the world total and hosted less than 2% of the world reserves.
In such context, Burundi appears as a strategic actor. It is the only African producer of rare earths and the holder of the license of the main deposits of Gakara, Rainbow Rare Earths, whose chairman is the Cypriot businessman Adonis Pouroulis, claims to produce one of the highest-grade concentrates in the world. According to the company, its reserves amount to 1.2 million tonnes of concentrates.

Gakara, Rainbow Rare Earths

As a remarkable coincidence, on the 17 May 2021, Rainbow Rare Earths appointed Peter Pham as non-executive director. His role in the reconciliation between Washington and Bujumbura was hailed by Pouroulis who praised Pham as “the architect of efforts to reform and rebuild US relations with Burundi”.
The company seems to have attracted interest in Washington for quite some time. Before Pham joined the board, another American was already among its members: Shawn Mc Cormick the former director for African Affairs at the National Security Council under Bill Clinton
For Rainbow Rare Earths, Pham’s appointment came as blessing since the company is facing a difficult period. Indeed, in order to put pressure on mining companies and improve the terms of the mining contracts it signed with them, in the context of a soaring demand for minerals which can be used as batteries for the electric cars, the Burundian government ordered last April, a ban on all mining exports and suspended all mining activities in July.But the appetite for Burundi’s rare earths is not only American. Although it renewed last October its sanctions against Burundian officials, the EU was considering in early December to lift economic sanctions imposed on the country since 2015.

Previously, the EU ambassador to Burundi, Claude Bochu, announced in June that he was working to lift these sanctions adopted until Article 96 of the Cotonou agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the EU in the case of violations of human rights and the rule of law. Despite the NGOs’ warning about on-going human rights violations, eurocrats were mentioning as well “positive developments” initiated by President Ndayishimiye “in terms of good governance, rule of law and human rights.”
If the EU economic sanctions are lifted, there is no doubt that Rainbow Rare Earths’ main client, ThyssenKrupp Metallurgical Products of Germany which signed an off-take agreement to buy 5,000 tonnes of rare earth concentrate would be delighted.

François Misser

 

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