How bad are things in Central Africa?

It's so bad that even the pygmies have their own militia to protect them.

scroll down this report on StrategyPage

The Katangan separatists and a Pygmy militia fought in May 2014. Pygmies, because of their short stature, have long been persecuted and tend to live by themselves deep in the jungle. There they acquired a reputation of being experts in getting around the bush and as hunters. The wide availability of cheap firearms since the 1990s has evened the combat odds and the Pygmies are now able and inclined to shoot back when attacked.

one is reminded of the Shona proverb: Even a small snake has a tooth...

ngo's

StrategyPage has a long article on NGO's.

The red cross is the "oldest" NGO, but they note:

 Actually, the Catholic Church could be considered one of the first major NGOs, as it organized large scale charity efforts over a thousand years ago.

 ah but the problem?

 Several decades ago, the main thing these outsiders brought with them was food and medical care. The people on the receiving end were pretty desperate, and grateful for the help. But NGOs have branched out into development and social programs.
These new activities caused unexpected problems with the local leadership. Development programs disrupt the existing economic, and political, relations. This is especially the case if the NGOs try to change the way things are done. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local worthies may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local, and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners

so although one sees a lot of criticism of churches that push religion with aid, a lot of NGO's push western ideas with aid instead.

. NGOs are no longer seen as just charitable foreigners come to help. The local leadership often sees the NGOs as a potential threat. While the material aid the NGOs bring is appreciated, the different ideas are not. And there are more NGOs showing up with more agenda than physical aid

Pushing birth control as part of the agenda is a big thing: I had to laugh when the flooding in Manila left many taking shelter in schools, and the UN came and gave out condoms...the locals were insulted, because it implied our women were sex crazed and couldn't refrain themselves. Then the UN defended this by saying it was because of rape, which locals got even more upset, since it implied Filipino men were sexually crazed rapists.

of course, if the aid is given to local politicians etc. a lot of it ends up in their pockets.

Yet paying huge salaries to western aid workers increases the overhead cost too.

 Often more than a third of it disappears into the pockets of government officials, their kin and friends. But letting the donors, and NGOs (Non-governmental organizations, like the Red Cross), handle the money also sees about the same portion lost. (italics mine)

This is because these donations often come with requirements that much of the money be spent on goods and services from the donor nation. This particularly bothers the locals as it means a lot of highly (especially by local standards) paid Western aid workers are supervising whatever is done in in the aid receiving nation. The higher NGO pay standards are very visible because the Westerners tend to live much better than locals.

StrategyPage is observing, not criticizing. Without the NGO's and church charities, the place would be worse, especially in times of disaster.

Crossposted from my main blog

Africa update

Mugabe is throwing out the last of his "white" farmers.
Well, they stole the land fair and square so expect them to yelp.

But the rest of the Africa headlines are furthur north, where the war on terror is brewing a religious war (actually a war between the farmers and those who herd cattle).

And now, Ebola.

Nigerian troubles

a good story on locals vs the terrorists  from the WAPOST

In fact, residents said a riot did break out briefly between young Muslims and Christians near the market after the blasts, but community leaders quickly helped police contain it and the tension subsided. “There will always be youths who drink or take drugs and act out, but I think we have reached a level of understanding among the leaders,” Begu said. “They know that Boko Haram is not made up of local Muslims.”
On Wednesday, as rescue workers and survivors picked through the rubble of more than 200 destroyed shops, a pall of horror and grief lingered in the smoke-
tainted air. Muslim-owned carpet stalls lay in ruins next to Christian-owned appliance shops. Hajjia Aisha’s snack stand was a charred shell; so was the Father X-Mass shoe shop next door.
Gabriel Ucheodum, 32, pointed to blackened yams and oranges in front of his electronics shop where a pair of elderly women had been selling produce when the bombs exploded. The first woman’s head and legs were blown off in front of him, he said shakily. The second woman was torn in half.
“I can barely believe God let me live,” Ucheodum said. “I saw such horrible things and I lost so many neighbors. Some were Christians like me, some were Muslims, but none of them deserved to die like this.”
Nearby, Muslim trader Alhajj Harun, 55, fingered his prayer beads and peered into the blackened shops. He said he had lived through some of the area’s ugliest sectarian clashes and then helped work to overcome them. He proudly mentioned that he had been to Jerusalem as well as Mecca and that he had three daughters in college or in professional jobs.
“There were problems between us, but everyone has worked hard to manage them, and things have been calming down,” Harun said. “None of us want to have our religion and our country blamed for these terrible things. If these barbarians want to divide us, let them die trying.”
© The Washington Post Company

ANC wins election inSouth Africa

One party state: what could go wrong?

Al Jezeerah link here.

Boko harum

The elites in the US just noticed them, and the Islamophobes are upset that the press there doesn't dare say they are radical Islamicists.

Uh, yes, and like other radicals wanting to impose Islam from the 8thcentury, they kill "moderate" Muslims, not just Christians... and the prophet would disown them too.

and they are so bad that even AlQaeda has disowned them.

Full background at StrategyPage includes this snippet:

Nigeria uses Britain as a model for its military, as Britain was the former colonial power in the region and helped establish the Nigerian military half a century ago. But the corruption that is endemic to the region eventually had its way with the armed forces. Leadership and training have suffered. But U.S. training teams (to improve peacekeeping and counter-terror skills) have been in Nigeria during the last decade, and report that the armed forces are not completely demoralized and debilitated by the corruption, and with some intense training, and elimination of the most corrupt officers, combat capabilities would be much improved.

A new tool to fight the tsetse fly

NYTIMES:

After 10 years of effort, a team led by scientists at Yale has finally decoded the genes of the tsetse fly, a bloodsucking scourge of Africa. With that knowledge, they hope to find new ways to repel or kill the insects, whose bite transmits sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease that, like rabies, drives its victims mad before they lapse into a coma and die. The flies also carry nagana, which weakens or kills cattle and renders whole regions of Africa inhospitable to most livestock.

it is a major cause of disease, but the real benefit would be to open large amounts of land so that it can be farmed.

Get rid of the tsetse fly and bring in irrigation, and Africa could feed the world. which is why China is buying up farmland and investing in Africa.



Tsetsefly collars for cattle? this Xinhua news story of a European funded initiative to stop cattle deaths:

Since time immemorial livestock farmers in most parts of Kenya have been forced to lighting fires to smoke away tsetse flies every day.
The well to do farmers have been using drugs (trypanocides) to help repel the flies away from the grazing fields and within the homesteads.
Because of this circumstance, the farmers have been forced to graze their livestock late in the morning hence completely avoiding early and late evening grazing everyday when tsetse flies, a routine that is hard to keep given that livestock especially cattle feed a lot.
But in a bid to help farmers solved this menace, the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) has developed a repellent collar that is tied around the animal's neck and in the process repels tsetse flies.
"The repellents have been identified from odors of animals avoided by tsetse, like the waterbuck, a big antelope species that is common in tsetse-infested areas of eastern Africa but which is rarely fed on by the flies," the Principal Investigator of the project Dr. Rajinder Saini said.
He noted that these repellent collars slowly dispense the chemicals in them, thereby protecting the animals and their herders from the flies.
Saini observed that the disease levels in protected cattle had been reduced by more than 90 percent and that repellent collars performed better than traditional traps that had been used by the institution in areas such as Lambwe Valley in Homa bay County.

and that story notes why this is important

These flies carry the trypanosome parasites that cause human African trypanosomosis, commonly called sleeping sickness, and the livestock disease nagana.
The problem of tsetse and trypanosomosis thus lies at the heart of Africa's struggle against poverty.
About 60 million people are at risk of getting sleeping sickness in Africa and more than 300,000 are infected yearly, of whom 95 percent do not receive any treatment because of the remoteness of the affected areas.
Trypanosomosis currently causes annual losses of some 1.5 billion US dollars and over the long run has had the effect of limiting Africa's agricultural income to some 4.5 billion dollars a year below its potential level.
About 3 million cattle die annually due to the disease. The flies are one of the main reasons why 80 percent of the continent's land is still tilled by hand due to the absence of draught-power.
Few livestock also implies less availability of manure that could be used as organic fertilizer, consequently leading to lower yields of crop and fodder plants.
Almost more than any other disease affecting people and livestock, trypanosomosis thus straddles the ground between human health, livestock health and agricultural production, and thus rural development.

radiation has also been used to control the fly. from the VOA

After the sterilization, a plane spreads thousands of non-productive tsetse flies every Wednesday in various parts of Ethiopia, especially along riverbed breeding grounds. So far, more than a million laboratory flies have been released. Now sterilized flies outnumber fertile flies, eight to one.

Sacrificing children to get ahead.

BBC article on child sacrifice 


sigh. When I worked in Liberia, newspapers reported about two mangled bodies were found and one teenager managed to run away and talk to the press.

When HIV started hitting the elites, many went to these shamans (not witch doctors: witch doctors DIAGNOSE witchcraft...those who do things like this are witches).

headsup TurtleBay and beyond blogspot, who note that Americans and Europeans have no problem sacrificing children so they can succeed...the difference being, of course, that Americans and Europeans sacrifice their own children before birth.

Sending home Ethiopian migrants

Saudi Arabia is sending home 160 thousand Ethiopian migrants.

many are maids...

Central African Republic

It's not a "religious" war unless it is pay back for previous atrocities.

From StrategyPage

Most of the mayhem is in the largely Christian south and especially in and around the capital, where most of the Moslems are in the south. This all began when the capital was captured by Moslem rebels in early 2013. That was followed by rebels engaging in extensive looting and other crimes. Most of their victims were Christians. This included some deliberate attacks on churches. That resulted in Christians forming militias to fight the rebels. In the last year over 2,000 people have died, most of them in the last six months. Now the Moslems remaining in the south are arming themselves and fighting back at Christian civilians. This caused the number of refugees in and around the capital to go from 20,000 to over 200,000 in March.

The Christian militia are also angry because the peacekeepers failed to curb rebel violence against Christians last year. The general chaos of the last few months has caused over a million people (a quarter of the CAR population) to flee their homes

Punishing the poor to force Africa to be PC

From the (gov't run) Zim Herald:

An article about Uganda passing an "anti gay bill"

In a speech after signing the law, President Museveni warned Western nations not to meddle in the east African nation’s affairs — and that he was not afraid of aid being cut.
Some donors were quick to punish Kampala by freezing or redirecting aid money, while Sweden’s Finance Minister Anders Borg, who visited the country on Tuesday, said the law “presents an economic risk for Uganda”.
The Netherlands froze a seven-million-euro subsidy to Uganda’s legal system, while Denmark and Norway said they would redirect around six million euros each towards private sector initiatives, aid agencies and rights organisations.

expect those "rights" organizations to push to change the law.

But Opondo said Uganda’s government was not worried.
“Western ‘aid’ to Africa is lucrative and (a) profitable trade, they cannot cut off completely,” Opondo said.
“Slave trade, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation, Africa must stand up to Western domination.”

expect China to fill in the gap.

This 2010 article from Xinhua new agency says China is the second largest invester there.

This 2009 article from the ChinaInAfrica website notes how China is active in the Ugandan economy.

Another field to benefit from Chinese interest is agriculture. China has evolved the best technique of growing rice to yield bumper crops, and has passed on this technique to Uganda as well. The first rice-farming project has been in Kibimba in eastern Uganda spread over 1721 acres of land.
China is interested in the oil deposits recently discovered in Uganda. As of now Uganda exports leather goods to China, along with timber, agricultural products, cotton, copper and fish. The total trade between the two countries amounted to $247 million in the year 2008. However, this includes Chinese exports amounting to $230 million, and Uganda has the remaining share of $17 million. The present division is extremely lopsided, and this is not perceived as advantageous to Uganda. Chinese goods have also replaced the domestic products since they are so much cheaper.

so all the "greens" who work with aid agencies are pushing organic and natural ways of growing traditional methods, while China is actually changing their agricultural infrastructure.

And Chinese shops are all over, replacing the previously owned shops run by immigrants from India and their children that were widepspread in colonial days.

This is bad and good: cheap goods can make local manufacturing wither (as we see here in the Philippines), and the ability of Chinese immigrants to money (in the past, via family links these shops essentially took over the small business shops in SEAsia) mean they crowd out locals trying to run such businesses. (cultural problem too: A kid brought up by business oriented parents will be more likely to succeed, and as I noted in colonial times, the opportunities for locals were limited due to the Indian shops...no, this is not "racist", since in places like the Philippines, where only locals could own land or businesses, the merchants quickly intermarried, which is wny many of our families who run the place are part Chinese).

This article discusses the resentment against this neocolonial push:

from the WATimes (Right wing US paper):

KAMPALA, October 3, 2012 - Chinese, the renowned ‘investors’ in Africa have shifted positions, turning to small retail trade in massive numbers.  This is especially true in Uganda’s capital Kampala, where they are suffocating the local traders who are calling for government intervention through regulation of trade to foreigners.
Taking advantage of favorable terms of trade and reduced costs of imports, Chinese traders who are widely present in Kampala’s arcades sharply cut prices for their products, undercutting the prices charged by local traders.
The loathed Chinese cheaply import from their home country to the detriment of Ugandan traders who import the same products at much higher prices from China.  The local sellers lament that the practice is completely unfair, and that they need government support to even the playing field.
Ugandan traders bitterly complain that they are on the verge of losing their businesses, thanks to price slashing by their Chinese competitors.  In July, the traders staged a demonstration against the increasing Chinese suffocation, calling for the government to intervene before local traders are forced from business.

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/africa-relayed/2012/oct/3/uganda-moves-evict-chinese-competitors-retail-busi/#ixzz2uZWSDjt0
Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

 the Monitor (Uganda) discusses this from a local viewpoint, published Feb7 2014:

“China gives aid without political ties. African leaders don’t want to be dictated upon. That is why they like China not the Western countries which insist on democracy and social freedom,” Prof Makara said at a workshop organised by Makerere University department of Journalism and Communication, Bergen, Norway and Chr Michelsen Institute with support from the Norwegian Embassy in Kampala.

“Over dependence on China exploitation of natural resources is unsustainable in the long term. Taking minerals and oil to China doesn’t create jobs in Africa and Uganda in particular. They are Chinese who benefit. They are exporting our minerals to China. If they are exported and they are over, will they still need us? Sustainable development may not be realised in the long term.”

also on that paper: There is an anti obscenity law and the police have had to save women from roaming mobs undressing women  to punish them for wearing miniskirts.
This is happening in Iganga which is a city in the SE area of Uganda.
According to Wikipedia, that is an area with a large Muslim population.

the Iganga District in eastern Uganda has the highest percentage of Muslims. The rest of the country has a mix of religious affiliations.[107

and although the US activists point to "fundamentalists" for being behind the "anti Gay" law, the population doesn't have a large percentage of them. Again, from Wikipedia:

Religion in Uganda[2]
Religion			percent
Christianity			84%
Islam			12%
Other or None			4%

Church in Entebbe

According to the census of 2002, Christians made up about 84% of Uganda's population.^[106] The Roman Catholic Church has the largest number of adherents (41.9%), followed by the Anglican Church of Uganda (35.9%). Evangelical and Pentecostal churches claim the rest of the Christian population. There's a growing number of Presbyterian denominations like the Presbyterian Church in Uganda, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Uganda and the Evangelical Free Church in Uganda with hundreds of affiliating congregations. The next most reported religion of Uganda is Islam, with Muslims representing 12% of the population.^[106]

 and, as the local paper the Monitor points out: While you were being distracted, lots of other scandals are going on.

mainly economic problems but this one caught my eye:

* We heard that about Shs40 billion of your taxes and mine given to the Presidential Initiative on Bananas is missing. This was always going to be an exercise in modern-day alchemy; what large global market is out there for banana flour? Why not spend it on coffee or tourism?

 Two items in this snippet:

One: Notice the money gone missing? One of the biggest problems in Africa and Asia (including the Philippines and China) is graft and corruption.

Two: the "initiative" is "modern day alchemy" because the local scientists are using gentic modification to try to save a threatened banana plague.

ALL bananas have a narrow genetic spectrum, and could easily be wiped out, resulting in a famine resembling the Irish Potato famine.

The UKGuardian, which is a left wing paper that usually pushes the green agenda, has a nice article on that here.

In recent years a devastating bacterial disease has swept across Uganda and, to a lesser extent, neighbouring countries, causing annual banana crop losses to the region of more than $500m (£310m). The rapid spread of banana Xanthomonas wilt, or BXW, which destroys the entire plant and contaminates the soil, "has endangered the livelihoods of millions of farmers who rely on banana for staple food and income", according to an article in the journal Molecular Plant Pathology last year.
With no resistant varieties or chemical cures available, growers such as Kamenya have been forced to destroy large sections of their plantations. For smaller farmers the damage has been so severe many have given up on the fruit.
But local scientists have not. On a sprawling campus outside Kampala, Wilberforce Tushemereirwe and his colleagues at the National Banana Research Programme have been on a quest to defeat the disease by building a better banana. This has involved adding to the fruit a sweet pepper gene that has already improved disease resistance in several vegetables.

There are plenty of human rights problems in Uganda, but essentially the law is popular because of the perception that gays are predators.

Like other rural areas, often kids go to boarding schools, which have a bad reputation for letting kids be abused, be they the "fagging" in the UK public school system, the abuse of Canadian Aborigenes that got a lot of publicity there (not as much in the US, since most of the schools were Anglican etc). This article discusses the abuse of missionary's kids at African boarding schools (presumably for the elites.) And yes, I know a missionary whose son was abused this way in South America at a Christian boarding school

Christianity today has an article here.

this is of white kids in Christian boarding schools for the elites.

Are we supposed to think that black kids weren't abused?

The reason I think there is a big story here is:

One: Homosexual rape was probably common in pre colonial times, but we have no documentation except for the case of the Uganda martyrs, whose major "sin" was refusing to be abused by the king and his court.

Two: Many British families sent their problem sons to Africa in colonial times. The sexual shennanigans of the colonists was notorious in the more chaste Bantu neighbors, who have taboos on who you can and cannot sleep with. (I have no information on the Nilotic or Masai tribes, except to note that the high rate of infertility in Masai women was from STD related PID, which is why in the good old days they kidnapped and/or married the women from other tribes).

Three: It is a hierarchical society, where you obey your superior. This includes your teacher, your relatives, and of course your employer. So if your employer "hits" on you, you say "Yes"...and although this is more common with women (which is why tribes only allowed "houseboys", I know of cases where the boys were used sexually by their employers).

Four: by taking men from their villages and making zoning laws that didn't encourage women to accompany them (and tribal laws that meant you lost your land if your wife didn't work it for you), you encouraged not only family breakup but homosexuality in the huge worker's dormatories.

Five: There have been wars and revolutions in Central Africa including Uganda.Female rape has resulted in a lot of reporting, but male on male rape is also being done, mainly as a way of punishment.
Time magazine report here. 
NYTimes article here. 
UKGuardian report here.

and few of these rapes are reported, because of the stigma.

Six: Sex tourism. All sorts of sex tourism, because of all those lovely beaches. If you google, you will find articles on western women seeking love from local men while on vacation (reminds me of the film "Shirley Valentine"). But it also includes the nasty problem of enticing poor children into a risky life of prostitution. Western liberatarian see this as a free choice, but hunger sort of obscures the free choice part.

from ask.com:

If you are gay or lesbian and wish to travel to Africa it is wise to do a little research before you plan your trip. Homosexuality is illegal in almost every African country (bar South Africa) and is considered a criminal offense in several top tourist destinations like Egypt, Morocco and Kenya. 

and the BBC in 2010  asked for comments on pedophilia in Africa: read the comments and weep.
most of this is about girls, but the boys are at risk too.

A lot of this depends on when you decide it's pedophilia or if you count sex with teenagers over whom you have power. That too can result in great rage by the boy but often he keeps quiet from shame.

Why Mandela was a great man

 from the Diplomad:

He seemed to have an understanding that whites and other non-blacks were essential for a peaceful and prosperous South Africa. He also, surprise, did not go full Mugabe. He won election--although the vote counting was suspicious--served his term, trying to unite blacks, whites, Asians, and others into accepting the new post-apartheid South Africa. He did not try to drive the whites out, and did not go around confiscating farms and businesses. He did not encourage revenge against whites and sought a reconciliation of the races. A practical politician, he turned a blind eye to the rampant corruption among the ANC, finding it better to let the party members expend their revolutionary fervor making money. At the end of his term, he stepped down. Yes, he stepped down. That is an amazing thing in Africa; he stepped down on completing his term of office.

Africa: the new economics

Video at TED Talks.

China in Africa

The ChristianScience Monitor, whose overseas reporting on the background of the news is usually excellent, has a long article on China in Africa.

Congo is increasingly influenced by the penetration of all things Chinese, and that in turn is bringing high hopes for development.
But it is also raising wariness here that Africa's new benefactor may sometimes be driven by the same self-interested motives as the Western nations that preceded it in the colonial and postcolonial periods.
Like most Chinese here, Wei lives a separate life, socializing exclusively with his Chinese co-workers except for an occasional foray down the street to buy groceries and exchange pleasantries with a Congolese street vendor.
Yet to the Congolese, the Chinese have increasingly become a necessary part of everyday life. To buy a cellphone, people go to Chinese electronics shops that offer knock-off Blackberry models at a third of the market price. When people want to enjoy a soccer game, they take a seat in the bleachers at Kinshasa's "Martyrs Stadium," a gift from China in 1993. A drive through downtown Kinshasa runs along a grand central boulevard, newly widened and repaved by a Chinese construction company.

read the whole thing

Zimbabwe article

In First Things magazine, an article on the history of Zimbabwe under Mugabe

But why, with many articulate opposition leaders, do they use a photo of a white Zimbabwean? And stress the evil deeds of Mugabe (such as the slaughter of the Ndebele opposition in the 1980's) without mentioning that the Ndebele are traditional warriors, and could have started a civil war for his opponent?

Did this small genocide prevent a much larger genocidal civil war?

As for European farm seizures: a bad move economically, but the hysteria by the UK was ridiculous. This did not require sanctions that ruined the economy. I mean, Nixon didn't put sanctions on the Philippines when our land was seized and "sold" to our tenant farms (who were given years to pay us for the land, and never did).

As for the opposition: They seem to have shot themselves in the foot too many times.

Yet the punishment of the democratic opposition (beatings, arrests, destruction of Hatfield and other suburbs where too many voted for the opposition), the economic collapse, the fleeing of the educated class can mostly be put at the foot of Mugabe.

China in Africa

A long article in StrategyPage discusses how China's investments in Africa might fail:

the problems?


Instead of hiring locals, they import their own workers, who live in segregated compounds.


Support of hated dictators (and folks will remember this long after they forgot what the development projects helped: The USA is learning this over and over again in the Middle East).

But mainly Chinese racism against Africans.

Neocolonialism, anyone?

The Chinese were mainly after raw materials, especially oil. A lot of that $13 billion was bribes for local officials. As usual, the average African was getting screwed by these deals. For example, a lot of the investment was for infrastructure (roads, bridges, structures), and a lot of those deals stipulated the use of Chinese labor for most of the work. There was never any intention of employing many Africans. The Chinese pay such low wages that they could afford to fly in Chinese for many jobs. China is also flooding African markets with inexpensive goods. Both of these tactics are hurting local businesses, and causing unrest among African business owners and workers. As a result, it's become common for opposition parties in Africa to accuse China of "neo-colonial exploitation." The accusation fits, and the Chinese will pay for it down the road, as will peacekeepers brought in to help clean up the mess.

Chinese merchants have been doing this to SE Asia for a couple hundred years: And even as late as World War II, their kids were called "Chinoys", and there is an Asian hospital in Manila that was started to treat them.

Of course, here in the Philippines, the rule is that foreigners are not allowed to own land or businesses, so usually the Chinese married Filipinas from rich families and put the businesses in their names (local custom allows women to run businesses). So most of the elite who run the country have Chinese ancestry (you can identify them by their paler complexion and round faces).

This intermarriage is not being done in Africa, so makes the Chinese more vulnerable to being ousted, similar to Idi Amin's deporting the many Indian merchants who ran the country, or Indonesia's ethnic cleansing of their Chinese community years ago under the guise of fighting a communist takeover.

As for Chinese exports: here in the Philippines, the exports have ruined a lot of local industries because of the Chinese low wages and their artificially low currancy. The good news is that they are cheap. The bad news is that they are poor quality. For example, our American plumbing fixtures bought 20 years ago still are okay but the ones we had installed in the new area of the house have deteriorated in two years, so we had to replace them from the hardware store in the mall (and have to hope that they are not counterfeit). Ditto for shoes, clothing, and (alas) drugs. Counterfeit and sub standard drugs (originating in China and India) kill hundreds of thousands every year, including Africa,  but when the US "green" types discuss the need to replace the expensive US/European brand names with "generics" for the HIV and other aid programs, this fact tends to be ignored.

Elections

I am lax in posting to this blog about Mr.Mugabe mainly because I no longer ave the time or energy or contacts to know if what I read in the papers is accurate enough to post.

so I will limit my links to articles from places I trust, mainly about the development in Africa.

As for Zimbabwe, my last contact there now has a cellphone and internet access from the high school where she teaches, so things seem to be improving.

China in Africa

from StrategyPage:

These unreported economic problems (because the chinese overreport their economic success) are one reason over a million Chinese have headed for Africa. But that place has not always been the land of opportunity. For example, Ghana recently cracked down on illegal gold mining and among the many people arrested were 134 Chinese. This was not unexpected as the Chinese are displacing Arabs as the main facilitators of illegal activities (mining, logging, poaching, smuggling, and so on) in Africa.

Male rape and gay laws

Instapundit cluelessly suggests Obama pressure Africa to stop passing laws against Homosexuality.

Which only proves he lives in an equal society, where gay sex is assumed to be consensual between equals.

Yet in Africa (and to a lesser extent, here in the Philippines) we have a hierarchical society, where inferiors are supposed to obey superiors.
And, with tribal conflicts, rape, including homosexual rape, is a weapon of war:

So what about nowadays?

From AlJazeerah: a report on male rape in tribal conflicts.

The use of rape as a weapon against women in Congo's many conflicts has been widely reported. However, the number of male victims is also suspected to be high. Most cases remain unknown because men, like women, are often too ashamed to come forward and talk about their ordeal.

From IRIN

CAPE TOWN, 13 October 2011 (IRIN) - Sexual violence against men, including rape, is under-reported, poorly addressed and has a severe impact on both men and their families, according to a presentation at the annual Sexual Violence and Research Initiative (SVRI), held in Cape Town, South Africa...

Male rape is here often associated with homosexuality, which in Uganda is condemned and stigmatised. Men also choose not to speak out for fear of being branded homosexuals, and victims cannot get proper support because they are accused of being gay.

Yet this is the tip of the iceburg.


So sleeping with the maids in the third world is "normal" (which is why most of our maids insist we hire them in pairs, for a chaparone), and if your employer is "gay" and you are an attractive  male, well, watch your back... literally....And then there are the boarding schools and high schools, where teachers prey on their student (including pressuring girls or boys to become prostitutes).


However don't point fingers:

One of the unreported story of Africa is the sexual outlet of the "white bwanas". The Dominican sisters entered Rhodesia to nurse the first settlers. They soon were setting up schools, not just for the white students, but for the "coloured" children who quickly appeared. When the whites objected, sister said sarcastically that they were "their" children (and hinted she'd name names) so they'd better provide money...

Yet another unreported story of colonialism is that many of the white settlers (at least in British colonies) were exiled there because of their behavior: They were "gay". And of course, in Africa, your employees don't dare say no to a superior.

And gay abuse predates colonialism, as the story of the Uganda martyrs shows.

Yet colonial policies imposed taxes for money on village people, so essentially forced men to work to pay taxes, and colonial policies hired men without making accomadations for their families. Under Apartheid, where pass books were needed, this was even enforced by law.

Then you have the problem of old age: No social security, so an aging man would have to support himself or be supported by his family on his land. But in African custom, the land is owned by the tribe, so this meant you had to leave your wife at home to care for the land or the land would be given to another, meaning you would have no way to support yourself when you returned if she went with you. And although polygamy was legal, few men were rich enough to buy more than one wife.

So where did the men get sexual release? Prostitutes cost money...

Despite all the American talk of "cross cultural understanding", few medical studies of the problem seem to realize that Africans or Asians might not think the same as upper middle class white educated Americans.

Western investigations of gay identity such as this one from Princeton see the problem via western white culture.

This report also discusses MSM in South Africa but ignores the elephant in the living room: The fact that men are pressured by the system to leave their families behind while they go to work in the cities.

Teenaged boys who have sex with each other may not be gay, but merely not have access to girls: ditto for factory workers or those whose wives are at home in the villages caring for the family land. And in rural areas, if a tribe has taboos against vaginal intercourse with a pregnant or nursing wife, one would expect some MSM to be going on to relieve sexual tension (yet without putting that into context you are again missing the problem)

Then there is the problem of street children. When I adopted, we were told to assume if we adopted an older girl we should assume that they had been abused, and we were warned that many of our boys had also been abused.

One report said the MSM abuse rate was 25% among street kids in Addis Ababa

which, by the way, is the same rate as reported among inner city kids in the USA.
(in contrast, a broader survey shows that only 5% of teens admit sex below age 13, but 20 plus percent of gay kids...this does not include rape or sex under threats of violence, 10%).

What is going on in Africa is that with modernization (and the fruits of colonialism) you see a break down in tribal rules. You get chaos and all sorts of immoral behavior (not just sex but monetary corruption and violence) that were limited by tribal laws and customs in the past, but now have few ways for the community to protect itself from predators and sociopaths.

These countries however do have an alternative: religion.

Christianity, which for years was seen as an outside influence, is now indigenous (including many indigneous Christian churches). Even the hated "boko Haram" of Nigeria, seeking Sharia law, is more about stopping the epidemic of Nigerian corruption/bribery than about Islam per se.

The mosques and churches teach strict religious rules, and use shame to enforce them.

The breakdown of the family, a lot of which can be laid at the foot of an oppressive colonialist system that destroyed tribal ties and customs, is a major problem, and the churches are trying to solve it by preaching strict behavioral rules that encourage marriage between equals.

 So the "anti gay" laws are part of a spectrum of laws trying to redevelop and heal the culture from the chaos and immorality inherited from colonial times.

And outsiders who see this as a "gay rights" problem are missing the point. It's not about two equals chosing to marry each other, even though they are the same sex. It's about trying to reestablish morality on many levels.

Westerners who assume  it is about sex between equals are merely making things worse, because the average African sees this an merely another western plot against Africa.

And the revulsion against gays is visceral,

You see sex between equals, so whenwhen you say "don't make homosexual actions illegal", you are saying: "Let those born gay be able to have sex with one another as equals without punishing them".
But Africans interpret it differently: They hear: Let men rape our boys and get away with it.

Given the sex tourism with boys we see here in the Philippines, one could suggest they may have a point.

Zimbabwe's new constitution

From aljazeerah.

VIDEO

Approved overwhelmingly in a referendum in March this year, the constitution clips the powers of the president, limits presidential tenures to two five-year terms and does away with the post of prime minister.

However, it does not apply retroactively so the 89-year-old Mugabe could technically extend his three decades in office by another 10 years.
"This day is an historic day, it's about the future,"  Eric Matinenga, the Constitutional Affairs Minister said at the signing ceremony.

"I can assure you that this document which is before us is a good document."

A new constitution is one of the pre-conditions for elections to pick a successor to the shaky compromise government Mugabe formed four years ago with  Tsvangirai.