BBC report on the Mujuru fire

LINK

An inquest into Zimbabwean ex-military chief Solomon Mujuru's death has been told an on-duty policeman was asleep when the fire that killed him started.

After waking, the policeman said he was unable get help as his phone had run out of credit and his radio was faulty.

The inquest also heard that when the fire-brigade arrived at the farm, it had no water to extinguish the blaze.

Gen Mujuru was one of Zimbabwe's most senior politicians and married to Vice-President Joice Mujuru.

and then there is this:

At the time of his death, he was believed to have been pushing for leadership renewal within Zanu-PF.

He was the only person believed to have had the stature to challenge Mr Mugabe during party meetings, our correspondent says.

Media freedom in Zimbabwe

article at the African Executive

compares media freedom in Ghana to the lack of it in Zimbabwe

Witchcraft

A good article on witchcraft in Africa at the African executive

In this African witchcraft universe, every existential challenge – death, hunger, accidents, disease, conflict and poverty, among others, are attributed to witchcraft. There is no human agency responsible for glitches. Witchcraft is responsible for all problems. Witchcraft beliefs are so dominant that they decide the African’s fortune, asphyxiate him and renders him helpless. How bizarre and troubling! ...

,

the African is nurtured into such inexplicable witchcraft beliefs by certain parts of the African culture. It feeds into the African’s strong believes in evil spirits, demons, witches, juju and other malevolent forces as responsible for life’s difficulties. The African isn’t accountable for his or her actions.

Such predicaments reveal the battle between rationality/human agency and irrationality in the soul of the African. The African appears helpless under this bizarre battle. There are two possibilities: 1. The believer in witchcraft does not question why witchcraft is responsible for life’s tribulations. 2. The witchcraft believer acts under not only the cultural circumstances but also his or her human agency. In such frame of mind, the witchcraft believer is guilty of atrocities committed against victims of witchcraft accusation and not witches influencing circumstances.

OF course, western societies who killed millions shouldn't point fingers.

The "victims" of communism (Kulaks, Ukrainians, "hoarders", "Old thought people") or those exploited and left to starve (e.g. Ireland) because Malthus said they were overbreeding and inefficient, or those "inferior gene pool" (the Jews, the Gypsies, the Slavs, the retarded) types killed by the Nazis were also victims of a secular type of witchcraft....

Africa Unleashed

I don't remember if I posted this awhile back. It's from Foreign policy magazine.

What is less well known is that Africa's prospects have changed radically over the past decade or so. Across the continent, economic growth rates (in per capita terms) have been positive since the late 1990s. And it is not just the economy that has seen rapid improvement: in the 1990s, the majority of African countries held multiparty elections for the first time since the heady postindependence 1960s, and the extent of civic and media freedom on the continent today is unprecedented. Even though Africa's economic growth rates still fall far short of Asia's stratospheric levels, the steady progress that most African countries have experienced has come as welcome news after decades of despair. But that progress raises a critical question: what happened?...

long article explains what happened.

In Radelet's view, five main factors have conspired to turn Africa around. Expanding democratization has opened up governments, bolstering popular accountability. Improved economic policies have curbed the worst tax and regulatory policies that had plagued African households and investors. Debt reduction has freed up resources for education and health care. New technologies (most notably the ubiquitous cell phone) have boosted Africans' access to markets. And the rise of a new generation of energetic leaders, the so-called cheetah generation (in the evocative terminology of the Ghanaian scholar George Ayittey), has brought new ideas and attitudes to the fore.

and presumably China has a role in the upswing of capitalism..

from "Making it" magazine: the investments are small but growing.

but so far, China is importing raw material and exporting manufactured goods....

Stystem D: Entrepeneurs in Africa

ForeignPolicy magazine has an interesting article about how small entrepeneurs get around a lot of regulations and improve the lot of people.

The growth of System D presents a series of challenges to the norms of economics, business, and governance -- for it has traditionally existed outside the framework of trade agreements, labor laws, copyright protections, product safety regulations, antipollution legislation, and a host of other political, social, and environmental policies. Yet there's plenty that's positive, too. In Africa, many cities -- Lagos, Nigeria, is a good example -- have been propelled into the modern era through System D, because legal businesses don't find enough profit in bringing cutting- edge products to the third world. China has, in part, become the world's manufacturing and trading center because it has been willing to engage System D trade.

In the US, this used to be the way to make jobs, but the government, in it's search to regulate everything, is busy destroying the small business owner.

Volcano photos from the Congo

check Wired blog for photos and report.

Islamicists undermining African prosperity

a long article in Reuters explaining why the terrorists are trying to destroy Africa to set up religious dictatorships.

however, they link Kenya and Nigeria as examples, even though their problems are different.

In Nigeria, the failure of the northern tribes to get an education means they are poorer, and their terrorists oppose modern education. Since Christians educate, they are the ones being killed (and when they retaliate the press says "sectarian conflict to minimize the one sided war, similar to how the press ignores the attacks and fleeing of Christian villagers here in the Philippines when they are attacked).

But it goes beyond religion: it is tribal and also a conflict between the agricultural tribes of the south and the herders of the north, of the Sahel.

in Kenya, it is a blowback from the Somalian civil war. (Kenya's tribal problems are not part of this, since the terror is from Somalian tribes). I don't see Luo terrorists, for example, complaining they are kept out of the gov't.

peacekeeping in Africa

long article about what the US will do and why at Strategypage.

AFRICOM sees its mission as aiding African armed forces with training, advice and small grants of weapons and equipment. But Congress is aware that, in the past, small numbers of professional troops have gone in and quickly eliminated outfits like LRA. For example, in 2005, Britain sent in a few hundred commandos to shut down some holdout rebel groups in Sierra Leone. That worked. But the U.S. Army is reluctant to divert any of its counter-terrorism forces for an African pacification mission. Such an operation would require a lot of aircraft support, and other troops to establish bases. Instead, the hunt for Kony will be assisted, not carried out, by AFRICOM.

Long term strategy for Africa

from Time argues that the long term plan of President Obama sending troops in to get the LPA is to stablize an unstable Africa

No direct threat to cite here, and no linkages to transnational terrorism, so this is a pure humanitarian/regional stability play - exactly what Africom was initially sold as doing. Lately, Africom's focus has shifted dramatically to killing bad actors as part of the long war against violent extremism, so this is a good image-enhancing move already being applauded by human rights groups. Nobody likes the LRA. They're essentially an insurgency that outlived the civil war and they've been doing their crimes for so long that they don't know how to stop, so the key here will be crafting some exit strategy for the rank and file while separating the leadership for prosecution. The longtime leader, Joseph Kony, is a true nutcase.

The nice upside of this move: it has Africom working with militaries and governments in Uganda, the D.R. Congo, Central African Republic, and fledgling state South Sudan - all states in real need of military mentoring. So this is the right subject, right sort of states, and helping in the way Africom was designed to work. It's a nice move by the Obama administration that speaks to the reality that a lot of this work still needs to be done across Africa. China won't do it, so it's us or nobody

.

US troops to Uganda: backstory

strategypage summarizes who is the LRA and who is supporting them. LINK

Some of this I didn't know (e.g. Sudan's use of them to stop Uganda from helping Southern Sudan).

In 1999, Sudan and Uganda agreed to end support for rebel organizations (ie, the LRA in Sudan's case, the southern Sudanese rebels in Uganda's case). Khartoum let Ugandan forces pursue the LRA into its territory.

Since 2003, the LRA has diminished in size, shrinking from several thousand fighters to a remnant band of some 200. Its ferocity, however, has not diminished, nor its capacity for bloodshed, nor its potential usefulness to Khartoum.

The Ugandan government has accused Khartoum of continuing to secretly provide support for Kony, though no one has publicly produced hard evidence of Sudanese complicity. Yet Kony has shown an uncanny ability to evade capture. That suggests he has high-level intelligence sources. Khartoum is a terrorist facilitator waging a genocidal war in its own Darfur region. South Sudan has repeatedly accused Sudan of inciting tribal wars with the goal of making South Sudan a failed state. The LRA's continuing existence contributes to South Sudan's instability.

Uganda may possibly have new intelligence regarding Kony's precise whereabouts. This would make an American-supported effort to end Kony's career quite timely. Removing the LRA scourge will improve security conditions in Congo's northeastern provinces and South Sudan. It will also remind Khartoum's leaders that fomenting chaos has consequences. Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, faces International Criminal Court war crimes charges for atrocities committed in Darfur. Kony's arrest might provide Bashir with a sudden dose of sobriety.

US sends soldiers to fight the LRA in Uganda

a lot of Republicans in the US are rolling their eyes up in mockery at the report that President Obama plans to send in US troops to fight the so called "Lord's Resistance army" in Uganda.

I'm pleased that he plans to do so.

This group is a very nasty violence filled cult (can you say "demonic" cult in today's world? that would describe their violent actions, rape, murder and turning kidnapped children into soldiers).

BBC report here.

what is being sent in is not "combat troops" but soldiers with expertise in finding the bad guys.

The force will use hi-tech equipment to assist in what analysts say is a "kill or capture" policy, the BBC's Marcus George in Washington reports

.

That is the same way that the US is helping us here in the Philippines to help the Abus and other terrorist offshoots of the MILF (who are fighting for their own land and ironically have cooperated with the US and AFP to catch these guys, whose tactics often kill fellow Muslims).

Lots of new techniques to find the bad guys were used in Afghanistan and Iraq: but in Afghanistan, it is easier to send in a drone and kill them. In the Philippines, they send in the local troops to find and catch them. (Local law forbids Americans from firing weapons, although there are rumors by human rights groups that in a few cases that they have pulled out guns to protect themselves).

So I am happy.

But, as Senator McCain pointed out, the president again bypassed congress in this decision, and it will not please congress, who is after all the only ones allowed to okay a war and holds the purse strings.

One reason the President is in trouble in the US is similar one sided arrogant actions in the past, which he could get away with when he had his own party in charge of congress, but will not help him with the present divided congress, who may ask nasty questions.

What kind of nasty questions?

well, I figure that there are three reasons that the president decided at this time to send in the help.

ONE: To help an ally. After all, Uganda has sent troops to Somalia (and in this interesting article, as private security guards to Iraq...hmmm...wonder how many Pinoys are there too)...

Showing a "quid pro quo" here isn't a problem for most folks, although saying it that way is not very diplomatic.

Two: To be able to say we fight ALL terrorists, not just Islamicists inspired ones.

and the real reason a lot of folks will be sceptical:

Three: it's election year, and every war helps the one in office.

Rowan hand Mugabe a nasty letter

from the BBC:

Abuses detailed in the dossier given to Mr Mugabe included:

• Zimbabwean bishops had received death threats by phone, in person and at gun point
• Access to to churches, schools, clinics and mission stations had been denied
• Police had tear-gassed and beaten congregations
• An Anglican Church member had been murdered after refusing to join Dr Kunonga's Church
• Clinics had been told they could not accept donated drugs - leading to deaths when drugs were rejected
• Priests had been evicted from their rectories

Anglicans accuse Mr Mugabe of helping Nolbert Kunonga, the former bishop of Harare dismissed by Dr Williams, to carry out assaults on them.

Liberia

Two African women from Liberia won the Nobel peace prize.

I was in Liberia before the first civil war broke out. It was a corrupt oligarchy, where the American-Liberians ran the place, and locals had little power or money.

I left/was thrown out just before the first civil war started there. (visa problems, and it was easier to return to the US and get a new visa than try to bribe folks to update it there). Two days later, they started an uprising, killed the president, and were shooting looters in front of the Hilton, where I used to disco dance. So I stayed safe at home, and wasn't there several months later when the US Marines had to evacuate all US citizens in August.

There was a terrible civil war, followed by "peace" when Charles Taylor "won" the election. This was followed by a second civil war, which is where the women played an active role in establishing peace.

Film: Pray the Devil Back to Hell.
Plot

A group of ordinary women in Liberia, led by Leymah Gbowee, came together to pray for peace. Armed only with white T-shirts and the courage of their convictions, they demanded a resolution to the country’s civil war.^[5]

Under Leymah Gbowee's leadership, the women managed to force a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extract a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana. Gbowee then led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process.^[6] They staged a silent protest outside of the Presidential Palace, Accra, bringing about an agreement during the stalled peace talks.

Asatu Bah Kenneth is featured in the film. She is currently Assistant Minister for Administration and Public Safety of the Liberian Ministry of Justice.^[7] At the time, she was president of the Liberia Female Law Enforcement Association, and inspired by the work of the Christian women's peace initiative, she formed the Liberian Muslim Women's Organization to work for peace.^[8]

Working together, over 3,000 Christian and Muslim women mobilized their efforts, and as a result, the women were able to achieve peace in Liberia after a 14-year civil war and helped bring to power the country's first female head of state.

of course, it was a bit more complicated than that. God got a little help from the US Marines:

From Wikipedia:

On August 14, Rebels lifted their siege of Liberia's capital and 200 American troops landed to support a West African peace force. Thousands of people danced and sang as American Marines and ECOMIL, the Nigerian-led West African troops, took over the port and bridges which had split the capital into government and rebel-held zones.[1]

more information HERE. The US troops were the pathfinders, helping with logistics to stablize the country with the help of African peacekeepers.

So Blame Bush for ending the war, because without the Marines and US logistics and support, the local peacekeepers would not have succeeded.

The real role of the women was that they established the infrastructure for a civilian resumption of the government. But that job is a lot harder and messier than the summaries suggest.

So the women do deserve their peace prize.

Whether or not it will help Mrs. Johnson to win reelection however is another story. More on her HERE and HERE.

she is running against a Tubman, which means a grandson of a previous AmeriLiberian president.

She herself is both, since both her indigneous father and mother were adopted and raised by AmeriLiberian family she is would have links with both the patricians and the hoipolloi....and she worked for the Tolbert government (the AmeriLiberian one that was thrown out by Sargent Doe). After that, she worked a lot for think tanks. So she has ties with the elites of the world.

AlJezeerah's report here.

"A win for Johnson-Sirleaf will come as no surprise," he says. "It would be a win for the West, a win for many Liberians and a win for the international investor community. Only time will tell if it turns out to be a win for the poor, the disillusioned and the hungry."

Gberie suggests that it is ultimately these distinct economic and ethnic fault lines that will dictate the course of the election. "The key issue in Liberia, I think, is the gap between Monrovia and the rest of the country. Educated Liberians tend to play this down, but most educated Liberians don't make an effort to understand rural Liberia - the anxieties, hardships, struggles of the rural poor," he says. "Even so-called natives who grew up in Monrovia and are educated hardly speak the native languages. It is the only country in West Africa where you find this kind of thing. [It is] rather bewildering and this cannot help [with closing] the gap between Monrovia and rural Liberia."

a lot of this sounds like the Philippines, where the elites and clan leaders run the place, but we can chose between the clan leaders.

Despite the drawbacks of poor institutions, rampant corruption and divisions along social and ethnic lines, upon being elected six years ago, Johnson-Sirleaf invited rival political parties and civil society into her cabinet and pushed for social cohesion. She has been credited with diversifying her cabinet and appointing women to key ministerial positions, including finance, foreign affairs and commerce and industry, as well as ambassadors to postings like Germany, South Africa and Scandinavia.

Moreover, she is seen to have advanced greater transparency and freedom of speech, while reducing political persecution and, through the support of the US, arranging the cancellation of billions of dollars of foreign debt.

Ajiyi says that even her critics have lauded her attempts to establish stability, whether through infrastructural development or regular salaries.

"She seems to have laid the foundations of governance to build on. Liberia needs foreign direct investment from the rich West, and if they, the rich West have already expressed that they would rather do business with Johnson-Sirleaf then technically, in a strange but real way, it is in Liberia's interest that she wins," Ayo Johnson says.

African peace prize

I worked in Liberia and left in a hurry when it fell apart (I was actually deported but that's another story).

But I haven't followed the war there, mainly because until the internet got going and was available in the rural US clinics where I worked (which was about 1998) I rarely had access to decent news, and such things are not followed by the US newspapers/TV. Yes, I did have shortwave for the BBC but not the time to listen every day.

So the news of the Nobel peace prize being given to two Liberian women including their president is good news.

But GetReligion Blog has a backstory ignored by the clueless press, about their religious inspiration.

(GetReligion gets it's name from the quip that the US reporters don't "get" religion, i.e. understand how religion is seen and practiced by ordinary folks in the US. It is part of our press bias against the ordinary American by the elites who run our institutions).

Their report HERE.

BBC report on witchcraft

LINK

if an African witchdoctor arranged to kill a child so a rich businessman could be successful, or be cured from HIV, it is terrible.

But the west doesn't think it's wrong if a woman goes to an abortionist and kills her child so she can be successful (e.g. not drop out of school, not be burdened with a child) or if a man pressures his lover to abort (because he is too greedy to pay child support) so he too can be richer.

The Devil is behind both types of killing.

Dambisa Moyo has a new book

via Booker Rising:

. However, Penguin Books has announced her next book, Winner Take All: The Race For The World's Resources: "Winner Take All represents the penetrating research Dambisa Moyo has conducted to uncover the realities behind the numbers. By looking at the developing trends in our commodities markets, and recent geo-political shifts, she has revealed the true state of the contemporary world and the shape it will take over the coming decades. This is not just about oil. Commodities permeate virtually every aspect of the modern world: from the energy complexes that power transport and the electricity grid, to the water needed for all life. From land for food production to the long list of minerals without which technology ceases to exist. What Moyo shows is we are in the middle of unprecedented times. She details how China has embarked on one of the greatest commodity rushes in history and examines the effects this is having on us all. Where is China taking control of land and water? Who is giving up their title to these precious resources? What will be the financial and geopolitical effect of all this? And is large-scale resource conflict inevitable or avoidable?"

Remembering Wangari Maathai of the Greenbelt movement

NYTimes obituary

Dr. Maathai, one of the most widely respected women on the continent, played many roles — environmentalist, feminist, politician, professor, rabble-rouser, human rights advocate and head of the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977. Its mission was to plant trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create firewood for fuel and jobs for women.

GetReligionBlog notes the religious inspiration behind her work:

And Dr.E at PersianParadox discusses meeting her (Dr. E also works on ecological preservation)

Learning to grow Rice

I have neglected this blog since I haven't had the time or energy to keep up on the news in Zimbabwe.

But I will keep posting various news items that have to do with development.

For example, this is from Oryza, a website for the rice industry:

Twenty-five African agriculture extension workers have been training in the Philippines for the duration of the rice season. It's left them with the confidence to help increase the rice yields in their countries two-three times over. The head of the extension group says the group will return home to teach farmers there about technologies and practical experience gained in the Philippines. The participants were given training on the “PalayCheck” and “Palayamanan” systems at PhilRice farms and lecture areas and in six rain-fed areas. PalayCheck is an integrated crop management system for rice while Palayamanan is a diversified rice-based farming system. At least 75 agronomists, researchers and agriculture technicians from 10 more African countries are scheduled to train on rice farming in the Philippines in the next two years, PhilRice officials said. In Uganda, for example, rice farmers yield 1.5-2.5 tons per hectare. With a production area of only 95,000 hectares and increasing demand, Uganda imports an average of 45,000 tons of rice yearly. Most Ugandan farmers are using the New Rice for Africa (Nerica) in favor of traditional varieties that yield lower harvests.

yes, I know: Zimbabwe doesn't have the rain to grow rice...however, with irrigation they could do it.

Libya's New Racism

via Migrant Rights org.

...black African migrants have been the target of attacks by anti-Gaddafi forces on suspicion of being mercenaries for the regime since the conflict in Libya began. recent reports suggest that the danger for migrants from Subsaharan African countries has intensified since the Gaddafi regime lost control of Tripoli, with rebels turning their wrath against those suspected of being mercenaries. Dozens of migrants are being held in a prison in the Suq al Jouma neighbourhood of Tripoli, according to the New York Times and Time magazine... but the line between regime soldier and dark-skinned southerner or migrant worker has become blurred in the midst of the conflict, writes Time‘s Abigail Hauslohner in Tripoli.

Hauslohner visits a camp outside Tripoli and examines the background in depth:

The displaced mostly hail from countries across West Africa, like Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. Many have lived in Libya for years — even decades — and carry the legal papers to prove it. Their presence is rooted in Gaddafi’s legacy of fostering close relationships with fellow African regimes and recruiting loyalists from among their citizens. But for a man who often sought to portray himself as a leader of the continent, Gaddafi may have done more to divide his country’s future than to encourage tolerance and respect.

It’s popular knowledge among the predominantly Arab and Berber rebel ranks here that Gaddafi funded questionable African warlords and armies, even as his own population struggled. And at his home in Tripoli’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound, rebels hold up old pictures of Gaddafi posing with African children dressed in fatigues as further evidence of their former ruler’s betrayal.

His alleged mercenaries — particularly the men who populated the fearsome Khamis Brigade, which was used to assault the rebels over the course of their six-month revolt — often came from the southern town of Sabha or the neighboring countries of Mali, Niger and Chad. The foreigners were alleged to receive benefits and even fast-track residency in exchange for their services as loyalists and fighters — a practice, whether real or exaggerated, that has fueled deep tribal, ethnic and geographic mistrust.

China scooping up Congo's minerals

From StrategyPage

August 16, 2011: Complaints from the Congo are growing about the U.S. legislation intended to stop illegal mineral sales. The Dodd-Frank bill (also called the Obama Law) has a clause that prohibits the sale of so-called conflict minerals may have been well-intentioned but it was not well-thought out. Rather than run the risk of buying any minerals that might have been smuggled from the Congo, many major mining companies are simply refusing to buy minerals from central Africa. The result is a de facto embargo. There are few buyers for Congo’s valuable minerals, especially tantalum and tungsten which have many hi-tech uses. This has damaged the Congo’s economy, because the nation relies on mineral exports. According to some sources, China, which does not have to meet Dodd-Frank standards, is snapping up many minerals at very cheap prices.