Africa News Online

INAUGURATION SPEECH

2012-02-02T20:39:00.000+03:00

By McAluodo XKojwang

December 2 2011

Honestly, am honored to have passed through your hands. It is because of you that today I am a darling of the village. I owe you so much with regards to the DEGREE IN LITERATURE AND POLITICAL SCIENCE that I hold hereon. More than ever as a man, I have learnt the art of greatness through you. Well, most important perhaps is that I am not asking for your sympathy or empathy, I need it neither now nor hereafter, but am just conforming to the test of time with no condescending apologies to make till date. Life to me, as you and I attest, has not been any crystal stare. It has had landings in it, the rough road long travelled; the verbose sentiments and the never ending intellectual assistance are all a part of what has become the MC’ALUODO who is a poet today.

Permit me in a manner of speaking need be to say that from now on, I should at all times ascertain the act of self-reproach, only in the sense that the end result of the same benefits the qualification. To achieve this, one must at least if not most, be acquainted with the price of responsibility or should I say burden of proof in skills long acquired not without the fear that obligation carries with it the onus of greatness.

So now, the days seem so near for the future has begun to unravel her maturity in success so to speak. Believe me or not, I now know better than being told that to have peace in oneself, we must know how to end a process, we must preach the gospel according to that which we in the like situation should a lone comprehend to explain its meaning to the world. In so doing, the question of unpalatable selfhood shall be dimed committal to the extent that we get to understand our dreams and re-dream as well.

You and I feel that gone are the days when we listened to and sung war songs in fear of the battlefield and armed soldiers. All the same, the last time I spoke to Robert Greene, for those who believe in his teachings, he said that Life is an endless battle and to paraphrase, only the strong and brave soldiers will peruse through these pages at length. I have decided to go that route and given that I am a life soldier in presence of this DEGREE, the victory of this war is mine since I have had to stay put, not a locked up slave.

I once wrote a few lines of my first poem…...I had a life, a life filled with distress, with nothing, but the courage of my friends. They gave me strength and hope, in return I gave my life and love, but now I am gone never to return. Why on earth did I say these? The tragedy of success is that with each day gone in huff, the Sun rises with its full and untapped experience that perturbs the sluggish Icons. For quite sometimes, I got holed in the same cocoon (worshipping the past). Thanks be to God, the wakeup call rescued me. With this in mind, and to paraphrase Achebe in his book, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, as from today henceforth, I shall guard and watch my hard-won freedom jealously. Never again must I entrust my destiny and that of my family to the hybrid class of western educated and snobbish intellectuals who will not hesitate to sell their mothers for a mess pottage. Thank you and be blessed!

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Jere Ogonda-Asaka, Beryl Roy, Akoth Veronica and 7 others like this.
- Dan Asaka what a speech kudos the degree is well deserved
  December 2, 2011 at 10:10am ·
- Akoth Veronica very nice.Congratulations!!
  December 2, 2011 at 8:53pm ·
- Naphtaly Juma Juma CONGRATS Mr. Odili the man, that is the best of David the ALMNUS OF KANDEGE.
  December 3, 2011 at 1:54am ·
- Elizabeth Aluodo May humility and simplicity most divine cover you Bro.Bless you.
  December 3, 2011 at 7:15am ·
- Nancy Sherin what a speech! Congrats
  December 5, 2011 at 3:27pm ·
- Nancy Sherin GOD BLESS U.
  December 5, 2011 at 3:28pm ·
- Jere Ogonda-Asaka Congratulations r in order okeuwa!
  December 6, 2011 at 3:15am ·
- Jackline Araya congrats nyathiwa hehe
  December 6, 2011 at 7:52am ·
- Austine Oduor Oyata Aluodo iola!
  December 7, 2011 at 2:57am ·
- Jerry Okungu Mc XK! That was thoughtful of you!
  December 8, 2011 at 2:32pm ·
- Onyi-Lawi Amollo Keep it up, nyathi-nyamera!
  December 8, 2011 at 10:36pm · · 1
- Mark Rambara I don't believe u jaus tong.keep it up woud kisumo
  December 29, 2011 at 2:49pm ·
- McÁluodo X KÓjwang' Thinking of LLM, any advise?
  7 hours ago ·
- Dan Asaka Actualise your dream
  2 hours ago ·

AFRICAN LAND GRABS HINDER SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

2012-02-01T21:43:00.000+03:00

NATURE | NEWS

Sales of forest land to corporations are dispossessing inhabitants and harming ecosystems.

Anjali Nayar

01 February 2012

Of the 203 million hectares of land deals reported worldwide between 2000 and 2010¹, two-thirds were in Africa. The acquisitions are dispossessing millions of Africans of their land, to make way for expansive forestry and mineral projects and plantations, say a series of briefs² and a report³ published by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition of groups working to increase community ownership of forests, based in Washington DC.

Forests in Liberia and the rest of Africa are being sold to private investors for development.

G. PIROZZI/PANOS

“The global report shows the scale of the issue as never before: three-quarters of Africa’s population and two-thirds of the landscape are at risk,” says Andy White, who coordinates the RRI.

The land deals stretch across the continent. In Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize — handed over one-third of the country’s land to private investors during her 2006–11 term. That included around 650,000 hectares granted to two palm-oil giants; the move will affect the land and lives of more than one million Liberians.

And soon after South Sudan gained its independence last year, investors acquired around 9% of the country’s lands, including one-quarter of the most productive land around the capital, says David Deng, research director of the South Sudan Law Society in Juba.

Care in the community

“Even though a large investor would prefer to have his thousands or millions of hectares near a port or road, in reality, to get the intact area they want, they are directed to remote, so-called unutilized and unoccupied lands,” she says. “What are they? Forests, rangelands and wetlands. The land rush is very much jeopardizing the existence of these resources.”Most of the large-scale acquisitions occur in environmentally sensitive areas, which tend to be maintained by local communities and are owned under traditional customary-tenure law, says Liz Wily, a political economist and author of the RRI's series of briefs². Such ownership is seldom recognized by governments, so they consider the land easy to sell off, but development can be catastrophic for ecosystems.

In the past, the biggest pressures on locally held natural ecosystems have been agriculture and logging, but large mineral-extraction deals are now catching up. “The footprint of a mine might be small, but the road to the mine will slice and dice rural ecosystems,” says White.

But international efforts at sustainable development are also threatening these areas. Biofuels are made from crops that are often planted on former forest or marsh land, and carbon-offset projects can result in the eviction of inhabitants of wooded areas that are bought up in exchange for carbon credits. Although the official carbon market made little progress in last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, the voluntary carbon market is still dispossessing local custodians of their lands.

For example, Green Resources, a forestry company based in Oslo, has bought up hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests in Mozambique, threatening the food security and livelihoods of local populations by denying them access to their traditional lands and food sources⁴. The company has also expanded to Uganda, Tanzania and southern Sudan. A Dutch firm’s carbon-offset project in Uganda’s Mount Elgon National Park became unmarketable after sustained conflict with local farmers who contest the group's right to the land.

Moving demand

Large-scale acquisitions have increased since global food and oil crises in 2007. Many economists thought that the pressure would ease eventually, but the deals have continued as part of what the RRI report calls a “new world order”³, with business moving to Brazil, Russia, India and China. The growing middle class, especially in Asia, is hungry for food, oil and minerals.

Africa is most at risk because governments fail to acknowledge pre-colonial private ownership of land by villages and communities. Around 98% of forest land in Africa is administered by the government; by contrast, 35% of forests in Asia and 28% in South America are subject to some kind of community tenure³. “Most Africans are permissive tenants of the government, they don’t actually own the land,” explains Wily.

In the 20 years since the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, natural-resource management reforms have acknowledged that local communities manage forests better than governments or multinational corporations. In the run-up to the this year's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio +20, land-tenure experts are hoping to push policy-makers one step further, ensuring that communities get ownership to and protection for the lands that they manage.

“Rio was about devolution of governance but communities need ownership to protect their resources,” explains Wily. “Rio +20 is about the devolution of ownership.”

SOUTH AFRICA RECALLS 1.35 MILLION CONDOMS

2012-02-01T21:32:00.000+03:00

Published January 31, 2012

Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG –

South Africa is recalling 1.35 million condoms given away at the African National Congress party's centenary celebrations amid charges some broke during intercourse and others were porous, an official said Tuesday.

AIDS activist Sello Mokhalipi of the Treatment Action Campaign said he complained after "we had people flocking in, coming to report that the condoms had burst while they were having sex."

Some were panicking because they were infected with AIDS and were concerned for their partners, he said.

Spokesman Jabu Mbalula of the health department of Free State province, which distributed the condoms before the Jan. 6-8 celebrations, said they had recalled the entire batch of 1,350,000 condoms around Jan. 18. He said there was no need for a panic.

But he was unable to say immediately how many of the condoms were used or have been recovered.

In 2007, the government had to recall more than 20 million defective condoms manufactured locally. Media reports said a testing manager at the South African Bureau of Standards had taken a bribe to certify the faulty condoms. In 2008 another 5 million defective condoms were recalled.

The latest allegations involve condoms distributed to hotels and bars in the central city of Bloemfontein, where tens of thousands of people traveled from all over the country for the ANC celebrations. South Africa has the world's highest number of AIDS victims at 5.6 million.

Mokhalipi said the complaints started coming in Jan. 11, prompting his office to run tests on some of the allegedly flawed condoms.

"We poured water into the condoms and they were leaking, not just in one place, they were leaking like a sieve," he said. Looking at them, "you can see there are small pores."

He said the health department had distributed a new batch of condoms last week, which did not leak under the water test.

Health department spokesman Mbalula said pouring water into a condom and applying pressure was not a proper test, though Mokhalipi denied applying pressure.

Mbalula said his department recalled the contraceptives to conduct scientific tests. He did not know when the results of the tests would be available.

He noted that all the condoms were stamped to indicate that they were in batches that had been quality tested by the South African Bureau of Standards, which is responsible for ensuring they meet the standards of the World Health Organization. Bureau spokeswoman Verna Schutte confirmed that they were investigating the condoms.

The AIDS activist, Mokhalipi, said the recall was limited to department workers going to the hotels, guesthouses and bars where they had deposited the condoms and reclaiming any that remained.

He complained that the health department had not issued countrywide warnings to alert people not to use condoms distributed during the celebrations in Bloemfontein. "People came from all over and probably took many away with them, so those condoms are now all over the country," he said.

Those who had used condoms that allegedly had burst should be told to get post-exposure tests and treatment, he said.

"We want the department to go out and tell people about these faulty condoms," Mokhalipi said. "How can they say people should not panic if there are still clearly people out there in possession of these condoms."

South Africa's government sources its condoms from several companies and rebrands them with its colorful CHOICE packaging, in bright blue, red, yellow and green. The government distributed more than 400 million free condoms in 2010.

ZIMBABWE PRESIDENT SLAMS AFRICAN LEADERS ON LIBYA

2012-02-01T21:22:00.000+03:00

By ANGUS SHAW Associated Press

HARARE, Zimbabwe February 1, 2012 (AP)

Zimbabwe's president has condemned the continentwide Africa Union for recognizing Libya's National Transitional Council at a recent summit, state radio reported Wednesday.

President Robert Mugabe returned to Harare late Tuesday from the gathering of African nations in Ethiopia.

At the airport, he accused unnamed African countries of being "fronts" for Western powers whose "criminal" NATO bombardment of Libya helped lead to the killing of Col. Moammar Gadhafi, a former Mugabe ally, state radio said.

The continental body didn't even protest the NATO action, Mugabe said. He also said it was "unprocedural" for the AU's Peace and Security Council to make the decision to recognize the NTC instead of the whole summit of leaders.

Zimbabwe itself has not officially recognized Libya's NTC and expelled the Libyan ambassador when he defected to the rebel cause during the uprising against Gadhafi.

State media said Wednesday that Mugabe complained the African Union should have taken more action to protest NATO bombings: "We said absolutely nothing. Even if we could not raise a force, at least we could have protested. How did we fail to say even no" to killings that included civilians in the NATO bombings?

Gadhafi became the first chairman of the African Union when it was founded in 1999 at a summit in the Libyan city of Sirte to succeed the Organization of African Unity that campaigned against colonialism for nearly four decades.

Mugabe said the continent had long fought oppression but the AU council appeared to have "felt intimidated" to recognize Libya's transitional authority, the state broadcaster reported.

Other independent accounts from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said Mugabe told fellow African leaders there Western countries now saw their organization as "a toothless bulldog."

He said Gadhafi was killed "in broad daylight" and his children were hunted like animals, the independent NewZimbabwe media agency reported.

"Then we rush to recognize the NTC" without demanding an investigation in Gadhafi's murder, Mugabe said

He cautioned that Western powers suffering the effects of recession could target other African countries for their mineral wealth and resources.

"Who is next?" he said, repeating warnings he gave his to own party at its national convention in Zimbabwe in December that Western powers were not to be trusted.

LESBIAN KILLERS IN SOUTH AFRICA GET 18 YEAR JAIL TERMS

2012-02-01T21:14:00.000+03:00

BBC

The four men were convicted of Zoliswa Nkonyana's killing in October last year

Four South African men have been sentenced to 18 years in jail for stabbing and stoning to death 19-year-old lesbian Zoliswa Nkonyana in 2006.

The court found that the men killed Ms Nkonyana because she was living openly as a lesbian.

A crowd outside the court in Khayelitsha, a Cape Town township, cheered and danced at the sentencing.

The constitution protects people on the grounds of sexual orientation - but homophobia is widespread.

The BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says the sentence handed out in the Nkonyana case is highly significant - both because of its length and the fact that the magistrate concluded that Ms Nkonyana was killed for being a lesbian.

For years activists have been calling on the state to be tougher on people who kill or attack people because of their sexual orientation - and they want the state to recognise hate crimes against lesbians, she says.

Family relief

“Start Quote

The magistrate has named hate and intolerance on the basis of sexual orientation as an aggravating factor in sentencing, and that is the first time that has happened in a criminal trial in South Africa”

Jill HendersonTriangle Project

Lubabalo Ntlabathi, Sicelo Mase, Luyanda Londzi and Mbulelo Damba - who were convicted in October - were each given 18 years.

Five other people were acquitted.

The family of Ms Nkonyana welcomed the sentence.

"They did not accept responsibility for what they did and we are happy that when we asked for a lengthy jail term, the magistrate agreed to that," stepfather Mr Mandini told South Africa's Sowetan newspaper.

Ms Nkonyana was stoned and stabbed nine times in February 2006, just metres from her home in Khayelitsha.

The magistrate said it was clear the motive for the killing was hatred and homophobia - and Wednesday's sentence was meant to send out a signal that violence based on sexual orientation will not be tolerated, the South African Press Association reports.

Jill Henderson from the Triangle Project - a non-governmental organisation that fights for the rights of gay and lesbian people in Khayelitsha - said this was a good move.

"The magistrate has named hate and intolerance on the basis of sexual hate and intolerance on the basis of sexual orientation as an aggravating factor in sentencing- that is the first time that has happened in a criminal trial in South Africa. It has therefore set a precedent," she told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

'Corrective rape'

In December, the global rights group Human Rights Watch said in a report that South Africa is "desperately failing lesbian and transgender people" - despite the country's liberal laws.

South Africa is the only African country where same-sex marriage is allowed.

But violence against gay and lesbian people is common, particularly in black communities, our correspondent says.

Lesbians are often subjected to "corrective rape" by men who think this will "cure" them of their homosexuality.

Three years ago, a man was sentenced to life in prison and another to 32 years for the gang rape, robbery and murder of Eudy Simelane, a lesbian activist who had been a midfielder on the national football team.

Last year, a man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the rape and murder of Nqobile Khumalo, a lesbian in Durban.

VOTE FOR AFRICAN UNION'S LEADER HITS STALEMATE!

2012-01-31T07:33:00.000+03:00

By LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: January 30, 2012

JOHANNESBURG — A high-profile and bitterly fought race for the top post in the African Union ended inconclusively on Monday, with neither the incumbent, Jean Ping of Gabon, nor his main challenger, South Africa’s home minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, securing enough votes to win.

The vote, which took place in the new glass-and-steel headquarters of theAfrican Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, underscored deep divisions in an organization created a decade ago to help Africa overcome its old colonial divisions and increase the continent’s power on the global stage.

The narrowly contested secret ballot vote pitted Mr. Ping, who has served as chairman of the African Union Commission since 2008, against Ms. Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa, the country with sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest economy and a diplomatic heavyweight.

South Africa’s government had hoped that Ms. Dlamini-Zuma would help give the African Union a more effective international voice. But other major African nations, like Nigeria and Kenya, had reservations about giving so much power to South Africa, and smaller nations fretted that their interests would be neglected.

“There is considerable fear and resentment about South Africa’s role,” said Steven Friedman, a political analyst and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, a research institution here. “There are very serious fears about being dwarfed.”

South Africa had pulled out all the stops to lobby for the candidacy of Ms. Dlamini-Zuma, a highly respected government official who is also the former wife of South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma.

But neither she nor Mr. Ping, a senior diplomat and government official from the former French colony of Gabon, secured a two-thirds majority required to win. So the organization will hold a new election at its next meeting, in June in Malawi. Under African Union rules, neither Mr. Ping nor Ms. Dlamini-Zuma will be eligible to run for election then.

The African Union was created a decade ago out of the ashes of the Organization of African Unity, a continental body that was often derided as a dictator’s club defending the prerogatives and excesses of Africa’s cold war-era strongmen. Thabo Mbeki, who was then South Africa’s president, hoped to revive the organization as part of what he called an “African Renaissance.”

But the African Union has struggled to find a meaningful role, taking muddled stances on issues large and small. The organization has struggled to mount peacekeeping operations in Sudan — though it has made some headway with its operations in Somalia — and it has been inconsistent in responding to other crises on the continent.

Mr. Ping faced harsh criticism last year for being slow to respond to the crisis in Libya. Until his ousting and death last year, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s dictator, had been one of the African Union’s chief financial backers, a role now taken up by China, which built the organization’s $200 million headquarters
.

A version of this article appe

CHINA PLEDGES MORE SUPPORT FOR AFRICA DESPITE ITS 29 WORKERS MISSING IN SUDAN

2012-01-30T12:03:00.000+03:00

Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, delivers a speech during the African Union Summit. (Peter Delarue / January 29, 2012)

By David Pierson

January 30, 2012, 12:22 a.m.

Reporting from Beijing—

In a sign of its growing dependency on Africa for resources, China pledged to provide nearly $100 million in aid for the continent only a day after 29 of its overseas workers were kidnapped by Sudanese rebels.

Jia Qinglin, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, met with leaders of the African Union in Addis Ababa Sunday in a pre-scheduled summit aimed at strengthening ties with a region increasingly vital to China’s energy needs.

The meeting took place as Chinese officials were also working to free its hostages abducted Saturday in the war-torn state of South Kordofan. The Chinese workers were reportedly building a road for Sinohydro Corp., the world’s largest hydropower plant builder.

Fourteen of the workers were said to have been rescued Monday, though the whereabouts of the remaining Chinese are unknown, the Sudan News Agency reported.

Citing competition for and restrictions of buying oil from more developed parts of the world, China has increasingly turned to Africa in the past decade to help fuel its booming economy at home.

“We have always regarded assistance and support between China and Africa as mutual and have never attached political strings to our assistance to Africa,” state-run media quoted Jia saying Sunday in Ethiopia.

In return, China has provided financial aid and manpower to build infrastructure in the largely underdeveloped continent. Beijing’s hands-off approach dealing with pariah states such as Sudan has drawn sharp international criticism.

China, the world’s second largest consumer of oil, has often refused to go along with international community if resources are at stake. Beijing has shunned calls to boycott Iranian oil and remains one of the country’s last remaining customers.

China is now the top buyer of Sudanese oil and is also a major investor in Libya where it prizes the country’s “light sweet” or low-sulfur crude to make gasoline.

The foray into Africa has been dangerous. China had to evacuate 36,000 workers from Libya last year after its civil war lead to the overthrow and eventual slaying of strongman Moammar Kadafi.

A report Monday in Canada’s Globe and Mail said the 54-nation African Union (which includes Sudan) would will likely forge closer ties to China since the death of Kadafi, who had been a major source of financial support.

The $95 million China pledged in aid was more than a third of the group’s $270 million annual budget, the paper reported.

Even the union’s $200 million grand headquarters, furniture and all, was financed and built by China.

STOP BLAMING OTHERS FOR YOUR ICC CHARGES, UHURU, RUTO TOLD

2012-01-30T10:46:00.000+03:00

Deputy Prime Minster Uhuru Kenyatta (left) with Eldoret North MP William Ruto being anointed during prayers at Ruiru Municipal Stadium on January 28, 2012. Photo/STEPHEN MUDIARI

By NATION TEAM newsdesk@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Sunday, January 29 2012 at 20:39

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP William Ruto have been told to carry their cross and stop blaming others for the confirmation of charges against them by the International Criminal Court.

Speaking to Nation, Kasipul Kabondo MP Oyugi Magwanga took issue with claims that the two are blaming their woes on Prime Minister Raila Odinga yet they thrice mobilised MPs to reject a bill seeking to set up a local tribunal by Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara.

“Ruto and Uhuru took personal initiative to defeat the Imanyara Bill thinking the ICC wheels of Justice will drag on for years and have now changed tune when what they dearly pushed for using their financial might has turned against them”, he said.

Mr Magwanga, challenged Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto to put the matter to rest by publishing a documentation of how MPs voted for the Imanyara bill instead of hoodwinking Kenyans and using criminal cases against them to settle political scores at the expense of thousands of victims of their alleged activities of violence.

Veteran politician Akech Chieng asked Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka to stop shedding crocodile tears for the ordeal facing Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, yet his interest is fixed elsewhere. (READ: Uhuru, Ruto and Kalonzo vow to stay united)

Sympathy votes

Mr Chieng told Mr Musyoka to stop engaging Kenyans in intellectual dishonesty saying as a lawyer it is quite disheartening for a person of his stature (Musyoka) to be carried with euphoria and join in the bandwagon of those whose personal ambitions come first before the law.

“If Musyoka is not strategising to benefit from sympathy in Uhuru, Ruto block votes, why can’t he tell them the truth the way minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Mutula Kilonzo has been doing?” he posed. “It is all about selfish sense of greed and opportunism,” he added.

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A PORTRAIT OF A JIHADIST BORN AND BRED IN NAIROBI

2012-01-30T10:36:00.000+03:00

Photo/FILE Sheikh Ahmed Iman Ali during a past interview.

By NYAMBEGA GISESA engisesa@yahoo.com
Posted Monday, January 30 2012 at 00:00

On a hot afternoon sometimes in 2007, an executive meeting at one of Nairobi’s oldest mosques, Masjid Pumwani Riyadha, was violently cut short by hundreds of youth who threw out five executive officials, accusing them of corruption and mismanagement of the mosque’s development programmes.

The leader of those rowdy youths was a slightly built man by the name Sheikh Ahmed Iman Ali, and terror organisation Al-Shabaab took note of his religious fundamentalism and appointed him the de facto leader of its Kenyan cell.

That appointment, however, was not published to the world and only became apparent recently when Ahmed called for a jihad against Kenya over the country’s incursion into Somalia.

So how did a relatively quiet boy who grew up under the watchful eyes of Imams end up in the rank and file of a global terror network?

How could a man who was accorded the best education opportunities his parents could afford (he studied at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology) turn so radically?

It is not clear when he graduated from JKUAT. His associates, however, cite 1997 or 1998 as the probable years. The university declined to divulge any information about him, saying it was under instructions not to deal with the press.

“This is a matter of national security,” an official told us. “We have orders from the anti-terrorism police unit not to share out any information about him.”

After university, Sheikh Iman worked for Shell and Mobil as an engineer, but it was his exemplary performance as a community mobiliser that attracted the attention of many in Pumwani.

The man had, in the blink of an eye, access to big money, but his followers say he never cared much about money.“All of a sudden, he was offering bursaries, waiving and subsidising fees for the sick at our clinic and taking responsibility for burying the dead,” Amina Hussein, whose son followed Sheikh Iman to Somalia, said.

He lived in a rented flat in Pumwani’s Highrise section with his wife and two children, and in the modest sitting room lay large pillows arranged against the walls in place of couches.

Whenever he had the time, he would join the local youth for a football match at a nearby dusty pitch. “He was a decidedly unimpressive striker,” recalls an official with Maratib Islamic Centre in Pumwani.

Such was his down-to-earth mien that he begged for lunch three days after he received Sh70,000 from a friend in Europe.

Instead of using the money for his upkeep, the official recalls, Sheikh Iman made a long list of those who wanted financial assistance and distributed the money to them.

A man (name withheld at his request) who was at Masjid Riyadha when Sheikh Iman overthrew the mosque’s committee says he had never seen such a violent ouster.

“We are here to build, not to destroy,” the man recalls an eloquent Sheikh Iman telling hundreds of worshippers outside the mosque after the incident.

At first glance, it seemed implausible that this athletic young preacher in those flimsily framed glasses popular with intellectuals could stage such a coup against the mosque’s respected old guard.

The mosque owns several properties in Gikomba Market, including a number of the storage facilities where market people keep their wares.

And it was the properties that ignited the violent ouster because, according to Sheikh Iman, a few corrupt officials within the management committee were pocketing the proceeds.

“Kicking out the corrupt officials was an unthinkable act,” Ustadh Muriuki Aizudin told DN2 shortly after leading prayers a week ago at Masjid Sunna Centre, popularly known as Masjid Chelsea after a nearby popular eatery. “During their tenure, they said the property raised Sh350,000 monthly in revenue, but the new team records figures of over Sh1.2 million monthly.”

‘The Revolution’, as the 2007 ouster is referred to in Pumwani, also gave rise to Sheikh Iman, who from that day assumed the title Amir, Arabic for commander.

On January 10 this year, the radical Pumwani Islamist Muslim Youth Centre (MYC) reported its blog www.mycnjiawaukweli.blogspot.com that Al-Shabaab had raised Sheikh Iman’s status to “Supreme Amir.”

They said that he was following in the footsteps of Fazul Mohammed, the former leader of Al-Qaeda’s operations in East Africa who also served as a senior leader in Al-Shabaab.

Sheikh Iman Ali founded the MYC in 2006, running under the slogan “preference for others”. Its constitution identified the group as one that provided the youth with religious counselling.

He worked towards ensuring that the community-based organisation had extensive funding, recruited and trained networks within Kenya and established connections with jihadist groups, claims a frequent worshipper at Masjid Sunna Centre.

Responding to our questions at the Chelsea eatery, some MYC members said they used to have a small office in Pumwani which was closed when Sheikh Iman went to Somalia and after frequent visits by police.

“We meet in small groups in local hotels and operate using laptops or from cybercafés, where we communicate to each other and organise our social welfare activities,” Ibn Ahmed, a member, said.

However, a UN Monitoring Group report says “in practice, members of the group openly engage in recruiting for Al-Shabaab in Kenya”, and Ahmed Iman’s success in recruiting fighters and mobilising funds for the cause appear to have earned him steady ascendancy within Al-Shabaab, the report says.

“What the UN is saying is not a claim, but a fact,” a member of the MYC said last week. Their twitter account, MYC_Press, offered an even more interesting detail. It reported: “The UN views MYC as a new alarming trend in East Africa inspired and mentored by Al-Shabaab. We also represent the next generation of terrorist threats too. True!”

One of Sheikh Iman’s friends, who thought of travelling to Somalia but was deterred when the Kenya-Somalia border was closed and soldiers deployed to prevent cross-border movement last year, agrees.

“It’s true that hundreds of youth from this area joined the Al-Shabaab. But I never heard him ask them to join (the terror group). He never recruited. He only preached, and through his moving summons, a lot of them chose to go and fight for Al-Shabaab.” Nevertheless, the man says that, although Sheikh Iman “did not recruit”, he facilitated their safe passage into Somalia and communication back home.

“It was a very secretive process. Not many people knew about it. After you agreed to join, you travelled in a group of between two and three by road to the border and then crossed into Somalia. Two weeks later, they would relay a message to Pumwani that the journey was successful.

“Amir is leading us. We call him Mujahideen. He is fighting in the way of Allah. Those killed will go straight to heaven and get rewarded with virgins,” he concluded before ushering us out of his office, located at a mosque in the Pumwani neighbourhood. It is not clear when Sheikh Ahmed was born, but many put the year at either 1973 or 1974.

His parents, a Meru man and his Kamba wife who lived near Nairobi’s California housing estate, brought him up the Muslim way, with the lad attending madrassa as is the norm in the community.

But, somehow, and despite all the preaching and mentoring he went through, the chap still managed to grow into a security headache for the republic.

His ability to attract financial support and followers from the US and Europe has baffled many. Among the terror suspects he is alleged to have recruited are Britons Natalia Faye Webb and Jermaine Grant, who were arrested in Kenya over claims of links to terrorism.

One of Sheikh Iman’s responsibilities was to oversee the construction of Pumwani Riyadha Mosque as the secretary to the planning committee.

Months after he left for Somalia, a storm ensued at the mosque over allegations that the committee had been channelling funds to terror cells.

Tourism Minister Najib Balala and Nominated MP Amina Abdallah were some of those who donated funds for construction of the mosque, and they had to come forward and explain that theirs were bona fide donations, and that there was no way they would have known that the monies would be diverted to other uses.

When the claims surfaced, the committee’s vice chairman Ali Abdulmajid and treasurer Iddi Abdallah denied links with Al-Shabaab and threatened to sue their bank, which they accused of breaching client confidentiality by exposing banking details to a third party.

The UN report says Sheikh Iman channelled funds from the mosque and MYC to Al-Shabaab. But mosque officials insist that Sheikh Iman stuck to the policies and decisions of the committee, which did not authorise funding Al-Shabaab.

REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA COMING TO AFRICA!

2012-01-30T10:16:00.000+03:00

Posted on 01/29/2012 by Michael in The Real Housewives

By Mike Bandy

It's time for the Real Housewives of Atlanta to take off for Africa! Aren't you excited?! I won't waste any time - here's how part one of the three part Africa spectacular went down:

First, we got to watch the women flying for 16 hours on a plane to Africa, filmed entirely on the ladies' cell phones. Is Bravo out of money or something? Most of what we saw on the plane was pretty typical stuff. Remember all those flights you've taken with friends, and the dumb things you talked about? Just picture that, and you're there.

Once they landed in Cape Town (which is GORGEOUS, by the way), we spent roughly ten minutes watching a process that I have no doubt took several hours - getting out of the airport with the 42,967 bags all the ladies brought between each other. NeNe was having trouble keeping her luggage on the cart, some of the ladies had problems going up the escalator, Kandi had a problem being stuck in an elevator with NeNe and Marlo, and I had a problem with having to watch the whole sad thing. Why did they waste so much time covering this? And why am I??

The women finally made it out of the airport and into the shuttle bus, and Marlo decided she was going to school the ladies on etiquette, namely, how to pass salt at a dinner table. Marlo announced that she'd be giving the ladies a tip every day, and Sheree wasn't interested in that at all ("I don't think Emily Post has a chapter in her book about aggravated assault!" YES!). You could just tell that Marlo was gonna make things interesting on this trip, for sure.

At their luxury apartment, Marlo didn't disappoint us, telling the ladies that she wanted the first bedroom, that she wanted her own bathroom, and torturing the poor concierge by saying she wanted to be contacted every time housekeeping came and left. Mind you, they were only going to be in the apartment for 36 hours. I'm surprised Marlo didn't have them install cameras in her bedroom like she's got at home. What's wrong with this woman? Meanwhile, Sheree, who was totally on her game tonight, made a joke that she, NeNe, and Phaedra would all be rooming together, and that got everybody laughing. Sheree: Every once in a while, I actually like you.

The next day, the women all gathered out on the balcony for breakfast, and that's where the groundwork was laid for the blowout between Sheree and Marlo that would come later. Here's how it started - Phaedra gave all the women (except Marlo) a lovely compact mirror with an inscription on it (something about a journey being amazing). Marlo was fake upset about not receiving one, and Phaedra said that she didn't know she'd be coming, but would be sure to get her one. Hmm...

Then Sheree announced that a male friend of hers (who happens to like boys, and this will become relevant later) was in Cape Town and had invited her to a dinner party. She invited Phaedra and Kandi and announced this to the table, before explaining that she didn't know Marlo was going to be there, OBVIOUSLY she wasn't going to invite NeNe, and she didn't want to invite Cynthia because she felt that Cynthia wouldn't leave NeNe. All valid reasons, but was it necessary for Sheree to bring this up AT THE TABLE in front of everyone?! Marlo made a face, and when she and NeNe and Cynthia headed inside to get ready for the day's activities, the conversation was all about how Sheree had thrown shade at Cynthia. But make no mistake - this was definitely not over.

Then we actually got to see Kim, which was something I wasn't sure would happen since she didn't go to Africa. Kim's basically all on her own now, with Kroy in training camp and all the ladies away, and Sweetie is apparently being no help at all, which is pissing Kim off. I have a feeling that she won't be working for Kim for much longer. Here were the main highlights of Kim's section of the episode: Ariana said that Kroy told her he's going to get Kim a diamond, and Kim's dad told her that he was happy she's with Kroy because he's the right guy for her. Some other highlights worth mentioning are the orange, Tony the Tiger highlights that Kim's dad was sporting this episode. Did he always have those?! Why?! Not a good look, Papa Kim!

Back to Africa! The ladies all went out on a yacht to see the city, and while there, a conversation was had about how everybody was going to get along with each other, initiated by none other than Marlo. Of course, she initiated it by saying that she didn't think Kandi was going to be as nice as she is, because she threw shade at her when she saw her at the mall recently. Chick, please. I didn't believe that for a minute. Then NeNe and Phaedra talked about the alleged issues they have, and Cynthia told Phaedra that she wasn't sure how to talk to her after what had happened between their husbands, but she was glad things were okay now. Oh, and Sheree and NeNe are making progress, but only kind of. Booooring!

When everyone decided to be nice to each other, Kandi had a look on her face like she didn't believe it was possible, and NeNe said that she hoped it would last. Oh, if only it were that easy, ladies.

Kandi, Phaedra and Sheree were getting ready for the dinner party that started a mess, and in the middle of Phaedra talking about how glad she was that things were out in the open, Cynthia walked in. Sheree invited her to the dinner party, and Cynthia asked if NeNe and Marlo were invited, and Sheree said no. Cynthia said she'd think about it, turned on her eight-inch heels (seriously, how high was she towering over everybody there?), and left.

Where did she go, you ask? Of course - RIGHT BACK TO NENE to tell her everything! Now, Cynthia claimed that if she knew what was about to take place after that, she never would have said anything, but I don't believe it for a minute. We all know that Marlo has a criminal past related to her temper, so telling her that she STILL wasn't invited to a party was definitely going to set her off. Boy did it ever...

Marlo marched into Sheree's room and demanded to know why she wasn't invited, and the argument that ensued was punctuated by Marlo saying to Sheree, "That's why you don't have a man, go ahead and mess with those f******!" You know what word I'm talking about, but if you don't, Kandi explained it best, "The F word that rhymes with maggots". I audibly gasped when she said that, and I couldn't believe that she went there! I don't blame Sheree for going in on her after that, but the fight ended up getting a little ridiculous.

It was hard to understand with all the yelling, but Marlo and Sheree went back and forth about how Marlo is a gold digger and Sheree can't get her money right, and NeNe stepped in the middle to play the role of peacemaker. Yes, you read that correctly. NeNe. Stepped in. To play peacemaker. It didn't work out too well, when the screen faded to black, Marlo and Sheree were still screaming at each other in weird singsong voices that sounded like a bad Disney movie being played backwards.

What did you guys think of the episode?!? Do you think Marlo and Sheree will ever make up? Will this bring NeNe and Sheree closer together? How does Cynthia look with braids? And most importantly, will Kroy EVER pop the question on Kim this season (duh, they ended up getting married, but I want to see a proposal this season)? Tell me in the comments!

SOUTH AFRICA FACES STIFF OPPOSITION IN ITS BID FOR AU POST

2012-01-30T10:11:00.000+03:00

January 30 2012 at 05:00am

South Africa’s attempt to flex its foreign policy muscle by capturing the AU’s top post may be thwarted by nations resentful of its already dominant role on the continent.

South Africa initially failed to back the 54-nation body’s demand last year that Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo cede power to Alassane Ouattara after a disputed election. It also clashed with Gabon, Nigeria and Ethiopia, which recognised Libya’s National Transitional Council even as President Jacob Zuma was persuading the AU to delay recognition.

“South Africa’s handling of the Libya fallout has hurt it badly on the continent,” University of Johannesburg politics professor Chris Landsberg said last week.

Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma sought to depose incumbent AU Commission chairman Jean Ping of Gabon at this weekend’s summit in Addis Ababa. Ping had the support of west Africa and north Africa, said an Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Ministry official. Gabon and Kenya also indicated they supported Ping.

International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said South Africa wanted the post to ensure the union played a more forceful role in world politics and was run more effectively.

She said heads of state from the 15-nation Southern African Development Community had declared their support for Dlamini Zuma. Still, Malawi, a member of the group, said it had not taken a position.

Voting for the position was due to take place in a secret ballot this morning.

The AU has refused to confront the leaders of member states accused of flouting democracy and human rights violations, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Last year it elected as its ceremonial head Equatorial Guinea leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1972 and whom Human Rights Watch accuses of plundering his nation’s oil riches.

AU mediation efforts during last year’s Arab Spring uprisings that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt came too late to have any effect, while its attempts to restore calm in Libya were overtaken by the Nato bombings that helped topple Gaddafi.

On March 10 last year, the AU’s Peace and Security Council said it rejected any foreign military intervention and urged the international community to support its negotiating team. A week later, South Africa backed UN Security Council resolution 1973, which authorised the use of “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. Zuma later said the bombing campaign constituted an abuse of the UN resolution.

Dlamini Zuma would be the first woman to head the AU since it was founded as the Organisation of African Unity in 1963.

Her nomination challenged a tradition that the top AU post go to a smaller state to offset the dominance of South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, Institute for Global Dialogue director Siphamandla Zondi said. “South Africa could cause resentment and feelings that it is throwing its weight around and looking after its own interests.”

The commission runs the AU’s day-to-day affairs, while a largely ceremonial chairmanship of the union rotates annually among the leaders of its members.

While Dlamini Zuma might be able to address the AU’s administrative difficulties, she would have little scope to deal with its other shortcomings, SA Institute for International Affairs analyst Nomfundo Ngwenya said. – Bloomberg

CHINA-AFRICA FRIENDSHIP ENHANCED BY DIVERSE GROWING COOPERATION

2012-01-30T10:01:00.000+03:00

English.news.cn 2012-01-29 14:02:07

by Wang Chenxi, Wei Jianhua

ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The friendship between the world's largest developing country and the continent home to mostly developing countries has lasted for over 60 years and touched the lives of over 2.3 billion people.

As a new monument of the long-standing friendship between China and Africa, the 20-story African Union (AU) Conference Center and Office Complex constructed with the aid of the Chinese government, was just inaugurated in Addis Ababa before the 18th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly Saturday.

At the inauguration ceremony, Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said the new AU headquarters is a gift from the Chinese government and people and also a symbol of the growing China-Africa relationship.

"The Chinese government has attached great importance to economic and trade cooperation with Africa, and promoted all-round cooperation in fields such as trade, investment, infrastructure, agriculture, human resources, clean energy and environmental protection," Jia said.

ECONOMIC, TRADE COOPERATION ON FAST TRACK

The booming China-Africa economic and trade cooperation serves as a major driving force for overall cooperation between the two countries and is becoming increasingly important to both, especially when the developed countries, the main export destinations for both China and Africa, are suffering from global economic woes and the eurozone debt crisis.

The establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000 put their economic and trade ties on the fast track. Bilateral trade grew from 10.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2000 to 160 billion dollars in 2011, and Chinese investment in Africa rose from tens of millions of dollars to over 10 billion dollars.

China has become Africa's largest trading partner, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

At the same time, Africa has become one of China's top investment destinations. More than 2,000 Chinese enterprises are investing in the continent. Accumulated investment from China has surpassed 40 billion dollars.

In addition, China has further facilitated the entry of African commodities into its market. During the G20 summit held in Cannes in November 2011, Chinese President Hu Jintao said that China will give zero-tariff treatment to 97 percent of the tariffed exports from the least developed countries (LDCs) with diplomatic ties to China.

The LDCs -- 33 from Africa, 14 from Asia plus Haiti -- are defined by the United Nations as those with a per capita income of less than 745 dollars a year.

China has imported African products worth 1.32 billion dollars under the zero-tariff terms from 2005 to June 2010, according to a government white paper on China-Africa economic and trade cooperation released in 2010.

Moreover, China is building economic and trade cooperation zones in Zambia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia, involving 250 million dollars in infrastructure construction.

Once completed, the cooperation zones will work as business incubators that help host countries attract foreign investment, create jobs, and improve local infrastructure and investment environment.

EDUCATIONAL, AGRICULTURAL, ENVIRONMENTAL EXCHANGES PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY

China is not only Africa's trade partner, but also a dedicated participant in strengthening Africa's development sustainability by helping countries on the continent improve their education, agriculture and environment sectors.

According to China's Foreign Ministry, during the academic years of 2010 and 2011, China has provided 5,710 government scholarships to African countries, fulfilling the pledge of 5,500 scholarships announced by China at the 2009 FOCAC ministerial conference two years ahead of schedule.

To speed up science and technology cooperation between China and Africa, and facilitate technology capacity-building in African countries, China also launched the China-Africa Science and Technology Partnership Program (CASTEP) in November 2009.

Under the Program, 100 joint projects on scientific and technological research will be carried out in the forms of equipment donation, technique training courses and workshops, popularization of technology, and joint research. Besides that, 100 African postdoctoral fellows will conduct scientific research in China with financial assistance.

Agriculture is one of the main fields that have witnessed growing China-Africa cooperation. From 2007 to 2009, China has dispatched 104 senior agricultural experts to 33 African countries, established agricultural technology centers in 14 African countries and has decided to build 10 more, said Lu Shaye, director-general of the Department of African Affairs at the Foreign Ministry.

Since 2009, China has sent 16 groups of agricultural experts to Africa and trained 874 Africans as agricultural experts, Lu said.

In the multilateral field, China actively participated in the Special Program for Food Security of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It has sent more than 700 agronomists to eight African nations. Besides sending professors to do research in African universities and institutions, China has also built demonstration centers and dispatched field experts to the countryside.

In Zimbabwe, construction of such a center began in October 2009 at Gwebi Agricultural College outside Harare. The center is expected to become a hub of high-tech agricultural experimental study and demonstration, technical training and sustainable development in the country.

In Malawi, Chinese companies and the China-Africa Development Fund jointly invested in a cotton cultivation program. Once completed, the program will help more than 50,000 local farmers increase their cotton production and processing capacity.

In Nigeria, much progress has been achieved by Chinese experts working with local farmers in the country's 36 states. The cooperation involves fisheries, animal husbandry, crop production and processing.

Alhaji Gidado Bello, coordinator of the China-Nigeria South-South Cooperation Program, said the Chinese experts and their agricultural service stations across Nigeria have boosted technological advancement and led to improved production and income generation.

Environmental protection is another sector that shows strong ties between China and African countries, which all face the challenge of environmental degradation.

In a village in Nigeria's Kano state, Chinese scientists have joined their Nigerian counterparts in setting up a research base for desertification control.

They will carry out forestation experiments and desertification control cooperation, hoping to nurture shelter-belts and foster sand-related industries to restore local ecology and boost economic growth.

The same project is also being conducted in several other desert countries including Kenya, Egypt, Algeria and Niger.

Meanwhile, in order to improve African countries' abilities to adapt to climate change, China has been launching 100 clean energy projects including solar power, biogas and small hydropower projects in Africa, Lu said at the China-Africa Think Tanks Forum (CATTF) in October 2011.

Lu said China has worked out country-specific plans and signed an exchange of notes on setting up projects with 11 countries, including Ethiopia and Mozambique. Relevant projects will start in the near future.

TIMELY AID

The all-round cooperation and friendship between China and African countries proved to be solid when the Horn of Africa and its neighboring regions were hit by severe drought and famine in 2011. Millions of lives were threatened.

By the end of October 2011, China delivered food donations worth 443.2 million yuan (69.58 million dollars) to the Horn of Africa and its neighboring regions, according to China's Foreign Ministry.

In late July 2011, China had already announced plans to provide 90 million yuan (14 million dollars) worth of emergency food aid to the drought-hit African countries.

On Aug. 15, 2011, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China will provide an additional 353.2 million yuan (55.28 million dollars) in food aid to Ethiopia and other drought-hit African countries.

This is the single largest grain donation to foreign countries ever delivered by the Chinese government since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Also, this tremendous donation is just the latest evidence of China's continuous aid to Africa. Since 1956, China began to help African countries in various forms ranging from infrastructure construction to medical support.

During the past few years, China has not only helped African nations to build schools, hospitals, bridges and other important projects, but has sent many agricultural experts, medical professionals and volunteers to train nearly 30,000 personnel.

According to the white paper on China's foreign aid activities issued by the Chinese government, China provided 256.29 billion yuan (38.54 billion dollars) in aid to foreign countries, including 106.2 billion yuan in grants, 76.54 billion yuan in interest-free loans and 73.55 billion yuan in concessional loans, with Asia and Africa accounting for 80 percent of the total amount.

"In order to help African countries achieve independence and development, the Chinese government has unswervingly supported Africa with all it can provide, which has promoted the socio-economic development of Africa and benefited African people," Jia said.

With the good will and joint efforts of both China and Africa, the unique relationship between the two sides has an even brighter future ahead.

AFRICAN UNION DISCUSSES INTRA TRADE AND INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE CONTINENT

2012-01-30T09:52:00.001+03:00

UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon with African Union heads of state and government at the AU summit in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The Summit ends Monday.

By Peter Clottey

VOA

An official with the African Union (AU) says heads of state and government will make a decision today (Monday) on expediting an agreement to enhance commerce and trade among African countries.

“[Leaders] are going to make specific decisions on the specific areas that will hasten intra-African trade,” said AU adviser Keizire Boaz. “It looks very likely that they will really want to unblock some of the binding constraints in each of the countries. [They want] each member state …to allow it’s very strong roads and rail infrastructure to connect to the other [in order] to have a bigger connection.”

The two-day African Union summit of heads of state and government officially ends Monday in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

Boaz says the African leaders are committed to the objective of this year’s summit, which is finding ways to promote intra-African trade on a continental level.

He says the leaders discussed using sub-regional blocs as a catalyst to promoting trade and commerce in Africa.

“Another very key decision they will be making today is to ensure that they fast track the East Africa [Community], the COMESA [The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa] and the SADC [Southern African Development Community] tripartite agreement,” continued Boaz. “[It’s] a combination of three regional economic communities to demonstrate …that you can open a free trade agreement within that particular community to be able to move on a bigger picture of the continent.”

The African leaders expressed concerns about making trading among African countries as easy as trading with Europe or China. The leaders agree measures must be put in place to remove challenges to trade between and among African states.

“They were almost coming to the same agreement that they need to unblock those constraints at the regional level. They have re-affirmed their efforts to strengthen their regional economic communities to be able to have a bigger trading partner,” said Boaz.

Some observers say they expected to hear more about the extent to which the leaders will go to implement measures and institutional mechanisms to surmount the constraints to greater trade. Boaz expressed hope the commitment shows by the heads of state will translate into putting in measures to enhance trade on the continent.

“They realized that to have a much stronger trading community they would need to create a heads of state committee of around six heads of state to agree towards leading to a bigger decision to transform the continent into a trading bloc. So, it’s a big commitment and we expect them to abide by this commitment,” said Boaz.

An official with the African Union (AU) says heads of state and government will make a decision today (Monday) on expediting an agreement to enhance commerce and trade among African countries.

The two-day African Union summit of heads of state and government officially ends Monday in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

Boaz says the African leaders are committed to the objective of this year’s summit, which is finding ways to promote intra-African trade on a continental level.

He says the leaders discussed using sub-regional blocs as a catalyst to promoting trade and commerce in Africa.

JOURNALISTS SHOULD ASK TASKING QUESTIONS

2012-01-28T19:01:00.000+03:00

Amon Mbekiza

President M7 has repeated it countless times: Africa must resist recolonisation. The latest is during the state visit of the current AU Chairman, Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, whose term at the AU Museveni has hailed as exemplary, citing Nguema's 'stand' on the Libyan and Ivory Coast issues. The AU had a 'stand' which constituted disparate hurried 'summits' here and there, and that was just about it. The same on the Ivory Coast issue. and the media reports it as said, and we continue.

I am not a journalist, so I am not versed with the 'protocol and etiquette' of presidential press conferences. Is it against best practices and good journalism during presidential press conferences, to pose questions such as :

1. Your Excellency, the AU took a stand, but NATO went ahead and had their way in Libya, even to the extent of preventing African presidents from flying into Tripoli. Doesnt this mean that the AU is toothless against foreign powers?

2. It was Africa's two strong nations, South Africa and Nigeria that voted to allow NATO strikes and infiltration into Libya. Wasn't this a sign of cooperation with the 'aggressors'?

3. In the case of Ivory Coast, it was the French troops that were in charge of the whole process. Where was the AU?

4. We need only 10,000 troops to pacify Somalia....Why has the AU failed to raise the troops, leaving the financing of the few Ugandans and Barundi to the EU and US?

5. A substantial budget of the AU, and the national budgets of individual governments are funded by the same powers we regard as coming to colonise us. Doesn't this blur the line between imperialists and development partners?

6. Most African leaders do have hidden wealth in European and American capitals and dominions. Aren't we partners in our own exploitation and oppression?

These and related questions are what should put presidents to task during presidential press conferences. The nearest to this was in a 'wrong' forum to the wrong person:

Andrew Mwenda's question to Thabo Mbeki during the Makerere Symposium. Everything in Africa, from war crimes to learning how to drink milk is foreign determined, funded and managed: so is Africa worth anything?

And talking of symposia and the intelligentsia takes us to the other angle of Africa's derailment: the role of the intelligentsia, which has been interpreted as stopping only at 'analysing and synthesisng issues', which exactly is what was the case at the MISR symposium that hosted Mbeki: a coffee-break, most invariably foreign funded, with theories expounded, pleasantries exchanged, jokes cracked, a few pent-up emotions released, et voila... Katanga transforms Makerere instead of the reverse!!

Africa can resist recolonisation. Only one key precondition: taming and resisting our greed. In the biggest sense of the word. And it applies to us all, with the intelligentsia and 'politicians' taking the lead. Else, we keep quiet and each one pays allegiance to the highest paymaster. Check out the source and purpose of the much-publicised bursaries and sponsorships in Kampala!!!

PRESSURE MOUNTS ON UHURU TO QUIT AS DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

2012-01-28T11:09:00.000+03:00

Pressure continued to mount on Gatundu South MP Uhuru Kenyatta to step down as Deputy Prime Minister. Two State agencies held a press conference in Nairobi Friday urging Uhuru to vacate the office, which they said was higher than that of the Minister for Finance and therefore attracted a higher threshold of integrity. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Commission on Administrative Justice said the same reasons that prevailed against Kenyatta to step down as Minister for Finance apply equally.By Standard Team

The organisations, however, faulted President Kibaki for replacing Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura with the Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia in an acting capacity. They said Kimemia’s appointment and that of Njeru Githae as acting Minister for Finance were unconstitutional.

In a joint statement issued in Nairobi the agencies noted that since the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was higher than that of the Ministry of Finance, it attracts a higher threshold of the requisite leadership, integrity and ethical standards. The statement read by Otiende Amollo, the chairman of the Commission on Administrative Justice, said the resignation of Kenyatta and Muthaura should be a precedent.

Drawn criticism

On the two appointments, Mr Otiende said they have keenly perused the Constitution and found no provisions that grant the President the powers to appoint the two positions in acting capacity. Last Thursday, the President appointed Kimemia to act as Head of the Civil Service Chief, and Githae as acting Minister for Finance. Muthaura and Uhuru quit following ICC ruling that confirmed they be tried for crime against humanity.

The continued stay of Muthaura and Kenyatta in Government had drawn criticism from the Civil Society and members of the Orange Democratic Movement. They demanded that the two vacate their offices, as the ICC case goes to trial.

"Kenya has reached a point of no return in the fight against impunity. If Uhuru respects the rule of law, he knows you cannot be DPM and an accused at the same time under the new Constitution," Odoyo Owidi, an aspirant for the Kasipul parliamentary seat, told The Standard On Saturday. "By keeping one leg in, Uhuru is showing that even if he became president, he would not respect the rule of law," he said.

Efforts by Attorney General Githu Muigai to calm the situation through the appointment of a penal of top lawyers to advice the Government on ICC ruling fanned the fire.

Prof Muigai’s advice that the two stay in office until their appeals are heard and determined caused uproar over how the Government was handling the ruling. Yesterday, Otiende who was accompanied by Dr Samuel Tororei and three commissioners from the KNCR also applauded the President for appointing a tribunal to investigate Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza.

THE PUZZLING MUNGIKI LINK IN POST ELECTION CHAOS

2012-01-28T10:44:00.000+03:00

Can all these well documented detailed accounts be a fabrication?

The dreaded Mungiki sect is grabbing headlines again just when Kenyans thought the gang had been vanquished.By The Standard on Saturday Reporter

Former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga. Njenga is said to have received over Sh20m to facilitate attacks. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

During the announcement of the verdict on the six suspected masterminds of the 2007/2008 post-election violence, it emerged that International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is relying on evidence from some witnesses who are former Mungiki members to argue his case.

The witnesses, whose accounts have been accepted by Pre-Trial Chamber II judges, made sensational claims that President Kibaki at State House, Nairobi, in the presence of Uhuru Kenyatta and Francis Muthaura, twice hosted them. State House has, however, rebutted the claims.

Uhuru and Muthaura are fighting the crimes against humanity charges alongside Eldoret North MP William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua arap Sang.

Cruel methods

Mungiki, known to kill using cruel methods, has for years instilled fear among ordinary Kenyans, especially in central Kenya and parts of Eastlands area in Nairobi.

Kenyatta and Muthaura have stepped aside from their offices. And the former is facing growing calls to resign as Deputy Prime Minister.

In a popular TV talk show, lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi argued recently that Kibaki should also be concerned with the ruling, which insinuates he was at the State House meeting said to have also been attended by Mungiki sect members.

The Government, through the police, has in the past attempted to crush the sect, which has led to human rights watchers even accusing the Government of extrajudicial killings.

A number of Mungiki leaders have been killed in mysterious circumstances, while two top Mungiki leaders, Maina Njenga and Ndura Waruinge have converted to Christianity and renounced the group.

When Njenga was released from prison in 2009 and said he had turned to Christ, many Kenyans breathed a sigh of relief, believing that that was the final nail on the coffin of the sect.

But evidence adduced before the ICC, which judges took into consideration when ruling on the cases, indicates that Mungiki was alive and kicking in the period preceding and even 2007 General Election, with top politicians said to have used it to advance their motives.

Ocampo’s Case Two, which has Uhuru and Muthaura as the suspects, is centered on illegal acts committed by Mungiki and how the duo used the gang to campaign for Kibaki’s re-election as well as for retaliatory attacks in Naivasha and Nakuru in 2008.

The ruling paints a picture of Mungiki as a gang for hire, always prepared to perform dirty jobs, but which is highly opportunistic.

The ruling details how the proscribed sect arm-twisted Kibaki in 2007 into giving in to outrageous demands by sect leaders

The ruling contains a detailed account of all the meetings at State House Nairobi and the exchanges between gang leaders and Kibaki and his aides, which were aimed at securing Mungiki’s support for his re-election.

Sensational submissions

The judges upheld Ocampo’s sensational submissions last year that State House hosted the gang.

However, during the confirmation the charges hearings, defence teams of Muthaura and Kenyatta argued that the idea of Mungiki members entering State House was "inconceivable".

The judges, however, found that the first meeting held in a tent at State House took place on November 26, 2007 "between Muthaura, Kenyatta, Mungiki representatives, President Mwai Kibaki, and others".

The judges said they believed witness OTP-4, who was present at the meeting as a Mungiki representative.

State House meeting

The witness stated that, among others, a number of named individuals, both on the side of the Mungiki and on the side of the PNU Coalition (Muthaura, Kenyatta, Kibaki, Hyslop Ipu, Isaiya Kabira and Stanley Murage) attended.

Muthaura is said to have introduced the Mungiki members to the President – referring to them, throughout the entire meeting, as "the youth". He is said to have encouraged them to present their demands to President Kibaki in exchange for their support for his campaign.

One of the Mungiki representatives, the judges ruled, presented on behalf of Maina Njenga, a number of demands.

The demands included cessation of extrajudicial killings of Mungiki members, the release from prison of Njenga, and the recruitment of Kikuyu youth the security and armed forces.

The witness, whose testimony the judges upheld, stated that, after hearing the Mungiki demands, the President addressed Muthaura telling him, "Something to the effect, ‘You have heard what the youth want, so now it is upon you’".

Njenga was released in late October 2009 after the State withdrew murder charges for lack of evidence. Njenga had originally been jailed in 2007 over his alleged possession drugs and a firearm.

He was acquitted of those charges in April 2009 and immediately rearrested and charged in connection with the murders of 29 people in the central Kenyan town of Karatina.

Before proclaiming salvation, Njenga had demanded State protection to give evidence against Government officials allegedly involved in sect activities.

At the State House meeting, the judges said Kenyatta spoke as well, and told Mungiki to fully support "the President", invoking their allegiance to the same community.

Witness OTP-4 said at the end of the meeting, Muthaura gave money to the Mungiki representatives. The statements of Witness OTP-11 and Witness OTP-12 independently corroborated his testimony, the judges ruled.

Witness OTP-11 said "Operation Kibaki Again" was a lobby group created by the Mungiki to campaign for Kibaki re-election, while concealing their identity.

Witness OTP-12, also said as part of ‘Operation Kibaki Again’, a number of named Mungiki members went to State House.

The judges further ruled that Mungiki involvement in 2007 campaigns is corroborated by a NSIS Situation Report for 28 November 2007, which stated: "Some Mungiki national officials [...] have resolved to campaign for the President through a lobby group called ‘Operation Kibaki Again’ (OKA), but on conditions that its members would be recruited into the Military/Police, restitution of the group’s vehicles impounded by police, and being allowed to re-open their offices and operation bases."

The judges further ruled that the evidence placed before the chamber provided substantial grounds to believe that, on December 30, 2007, there was a second meeting at State House with Mungiki members and a number of MPs, where Kenyatta was also present.

December 30, 2007, is the day Kibaki was declared president and sworn-in amid protests by ODM that the elections had been rigged.

"This is established to the requisite threshold by the testimony provided by Witness OTP- 11, corroborated by Witness OTP-12 and Witness OTP-6," they said in the verdict.

Witness OTP-11 refers to the occasion as an "urgent" meeting in which Mr Kenyatta said that he had the capability of organising ‘his people’ and mobilising them for any eventuality.

According to the witness, during this meeting, Kenyatta also gave some MPs and Mungiki co-ordinators Sh3.3 million each.

In particular, the witness states that an individual (whose name was redacted) was among the recipients of money to co-ordinate the Mungiki attack in Naivasha. He said money distributed at this meeting was later spent in part, to buy the guns that were used in the attack in Nakuru.

Evidence corroborated

Witness OTP-12 corroborated the account provided by OTP-11, stating that there was a meeting at State House, where the logistics of the attack in Naivasha were planned. The witness further indicated that the provision of Sh3.3 million by Kenyatta to local politicians to mobilise the people from the ground occurred during the State House meeting.

The third meeting, the judges said, was held at the Nairobi Club on January 3, 2008, where "Muthaura and Kenyatta met with Mungiki members and directed them to commit the crimes charged."

According to a witness, whose accounts have been upheld, at the beginning of the meeting, Muthaura told the Mungiki, addressing them in Kikuyu, that since "our community" was being targeted in the Rift Valley, they needed to "revenge or retaliate".

Thereafter, Kenyatta took the floor and asked one Maina Diambo whether the Mungiki "had plans".

Maina Diambo replied confirming that "the ‘youth’ were ready" and that everything depended on "Government officials" and asked whether the police would interfere with the Mungiki operation in the Rift Valley.

At this point, according to the witness, Muthaura called Mr Hussein Ali (whose charges have been dropped), telling him in Kiswahili, "Our youth will be going to the Rift Valley and we don’t want them to be disturbed."

Concessions

The Chamber concluded that the evidence demonstrates that Njenga was approached with, and eventually agreed to the common plan with Muthaura and Kenyatta in exchange for a number of concessions.

In particular, the judges said, the evidence showed Njenga received a significant amount of money on at least two occasions to make available the services of the Mungiki to the PNU Coalition for the commission of the crimes.

Witness OTP-11 stated that around mid-December 2007, Njenga was given Sh8 million from "State House". The witness further clarified that, out of this money, Sh2 million was supposed to be shared by the Mungiki leaders who were directly in contact with the PNU Coalition.

According to Witness OTP-12, in late January 2008, before the commission of the crimes in Naivasha, Maina Njenga was given another Sh20 million, brought to him in prison again by Maina Diambo.

IDA ODINGA CALLS FOR LOCAL TRIAL OF ICC SUSPECTS

2012-01-27T19:13:00.000+03:00

The wife of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Mrs Ida Odinga. PHOTO / FILE

By NATION REPORTER
Posted Friday, January 27 2012 at 17:22

Ida Odinga has called for the establishment of a local judicial mechanism to try four Kenyan suspects charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

ICC Pre-trial judges on Monday confirmed charges against Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, Eldoret North MP William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang.

Mrs Odinga was quick to clarify that she had yet to consult her husband , Prime Minister Raila Odinga, on the matter and was only expressing her opinion as a mother and a wife to a former political prisoner.

“ These are people we have lived with and are like my brothers. These are people known to me personally…. Its better this case be handled in Kenya,” said Ida.

Mrs Odinga said she shares the anguish that the families and the children of the four accused are currently going through.

"Having been a wife of a former prisoner I understand how Rachel (Ruto’s wife), Mama Ngina (Uhuru’s mother) and radio presenter Sang’s wife and children and Mrs Muthaura’s are feeling.

“ My own mother in-law succumbed to depression when his son who is now my husband Raila Odinga was in prison. I understand how the families are feeling. I can tell you its not a good feeling,” said Ida.

She said there was need for a quick closure for all prosecutions related to the 2007 - 2008 post-election violence.

She also called for a speedy resettlement of all IDPs.Mrs Odinga noted that the problems facing the country at this moment can be surmounted by Kenyans themselves.

AFRICAN DICTATORS, KLEPTOCRATS AND THEIR LOVE FOR FOOTBALL

2012-01-27T13:43:00.000+03:00

Photo/FILE As Africa enjoys the soccer fest in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, critics are questioning the rationale of impoverished countries spending billions of shillings on fleeting fiestas.

By KAMAU MUTUNGA kamau@creative-asylum.net
Posted Friday, January 27 2012 at 00:00

The Africa Cup of Nations kicked off last week in Equatorial Guinea, one of the smallest countries in a continent that’s never short of surprises. Teodorin Obiang, the playboy son of the country’s president, promised the national team Sh87 million for a win against Libya — in the opening match alone — in a soccer fanfare that belies deeper problems that ought to be red-carded.

Equatorial Guinea is co-hosting the tournament’s 28th edition with Gabon, which has forked $500, 000 million towards the biennial soccer fiesta.

Located in the western coast of Africa, Equatorial Guinea borders Cameroon and Gabon. It is the least ranked country in the Nations Cup at position 151 worldwide, and sits calmly behind war-torn Yemen and Samoa in the January 2012 Fifa rankings.

Obiang, the Minister for Agriculture and Forestry, is famous for all the wrong reasons. He acquired a mansion in Malibu, a Gulfstream jet and Michael Jackson’s white, crystal-covered glove last year.

That didn’t have him turning his pockets inside out. Instead, he promised a further $20,000 (Sh1.7 million) for every goal scored by the Nzalang Nacional (National Lightening), as the national team is christened.

And Spanish-born Equato-Guinean midfielder Javier-Angel Balboa did not disappoint home fans when he slotted an 87th minute shot into the top corner of the goalpost, past Libyan goalie Samir Abboud, inside the 35,000-seater Bata Stadium in Bata, the former capital city.

The National Lightening won its debut match against Libya with the solo goal and pocketed the $1,020,000.

“They use money, I use mentality,” Libya’s Brazilian coach Marcos Paqueta sneered before the game. A memorable quote this one. One, for its refreshing grammar. Two, for its echo of Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saadi, who in a way was the face of Italian football when money was not a problem.

Anti-poverty activists have protested Obiang’s Sh87 million offer in a country which, for eons, was a malaria-infested backwater teeming with gorillas (the mascot of the tournament), giant frogs, green mamba snakes and a population that lived on less than a dollar a day.

That was before massive oil reserves were discovered off its Atlantic shores in 1995, whereupon the former Spanish colony ceased being the “armpit of Africa”.

Petrodollars from the production of 181,400 barrels a day, natural gas and other hydrocarbons account for more than 81 per cent of the government’s $6.74 billion budget, according to the CIA World Fact Book.

That windfall has pushed the average annual economic growth rate to 41 per cent, which, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is one of the fastest anywhere in the world.

Adjusted for purchasing power, Equatorial Guinea has Africa’s — and one of the world’s — highest per capita incomes, which rose from $590 (Sh50,000) in 1998 to $50,240 (Sh4 million) by 2005.

But, unfortunately, notes the IMF country report, “this wealth has not even led to a measurable improvement in living conditions”. Human Rights Watch says “the dictatorship of President Teondoro Obiang Nguema has used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country’s people”, and that the country is “locked in a harsh reality of repression and grinding poverty”.

Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s third largest producer of oil after Nigerian and Angola, is ranked at the tail end of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI), which, in its assessment, notes that less than half of the population has access to clean drinking water, and that 20 per cent of children die before the age of five.

Unicef lists life expectancy here at 51 years.

While unemployment in the country of 676,000 people, according to 2009 estimates, stands at 22 per cent, the oil industry only employs slightly over 10,000 people, mostly expatriates, and only a mere 1.23 per cent of the GDP is spent on health services, notes Brendan McSherry in The Political Economy of Oil in Equatorial Guinea.

The “resource curse” is such that oil money is spent on misguided projects. Like the construction of a new capital city, Malabo 2, instead of roads connecting villages, new schools or new hospitals.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International slots the country, where oil revenues are a “state secret”, in the top 10 list of most corrupt states in its 2010 Index starring Somalia, Burma and Afghanistan as the medal champs.

Carmelo Modu, the marketing director for the 2012 Cup of Nations, told Associated Press that Equatorial Guinea is “a whole country under construction”, and that the Cup of Nations will “show the word what we are trying to do”.

Teodorin Obiang’s father, the gaunt 68-year-old President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, was in the stadium during the opening ceremony. The Chairman of the African Union is one of Africa’s longest serving heads of state, having ascended to the presidency in a bloody ‘Coup of Freedom’ in 1979 against President Francisco Macias Nguema, his uncle.

‘Papa Macias’, a bhang smoker, had led the country since it gained independence in 1968. But his autocratic rule was punctuated by megalomaniacal sideshows: He had the governor of the central bank killed before he carted what was left in the public coffers to his pad in his rural village, and almost a third of the country was exiled and 65,000 people murdered, according to the Time magazine issue of August, 1979.

But brutality was never going to thwart the dictator’s appointment with destiny. A coup led by Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who was a lieutenant colonel and director of the Black Beach Prison, was imminent.

President Macias, Leader of Steel, The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea, The Grand Master of Education, Science and Culture and President for Life was abandoned by the army, captured in a forest, imprisoned, tried in a military tribunal and executed.

But President Obiang Nguema, the “liberator”, did not bring democracy and freedom to Equato-Guineans. Today, he has one of the world’s worst human rights records, according to Human Rights Watch.

Petrodollars have helped him consolidate his criminal regime, he condones toxic waste dumping, drug trafficking, pirate fishing, arms and aircraft smuggling and forced child labour, writes Robert Klitgaard in Tropical Gangsters.

Klitgaard worked for the World Bank in Equatorial Guinea, where opposition politicians are exiled and dissenters jailed at the torture hellhole that is the notorious Black Beach Prison in Malabo, the current capital city of 150,000 people, according to 2009 estimates.

President Nguema’s government teems with blood relations: the head honcho of the oil business is Gabrial, Nguema’s brother; the inspector general of the Armed forces is his cousin; while his Esangui clan chokes various posts in the civil service.

In 2004, Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former British Premier Margaret Thatcher, wired $285,000 — according to South African police — to mercenaries to help topple and replace President Nguema with opposition leader Severo Moto, who is exiled in Spain.

The coup was thwarted by soldiers loyal to President Nguema. South African Mercenary leader Nick du Toit, who had been promised millions of oil money and concessions if the coup succeeded, is serving 34 years in Black Beach Prison.

Thatcher pleaded guilty and was handed a five-year suspended sentence and fined $560,000 by a South African court in exchange for his confession that saw him escape extradition to Equatorial Guinea.

So why are such countries allowed to spend millions of public money to host the Nations Cup?

Well, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has, in its pitch-hardened wisdom, a policy of encouraging “new” countries to host the Africa Cup of Nations as a way of forcing their governments to build sports infrastructure whose budgets “could otherwise not have been found”.

CAF uses the tournament as an investment tool, hoping new roads, hotels, airports and media exposure will drive tourism and business, long after the final whistle.

And with each new edition, the Cup of Nations has become an important economic glove in the hand of infrastructure development in host nations.

But EG Justice, an independent voice of reform in Equatorial Guinea, has warned that “the government hopes the recently completed luxury hotels, golf resorts and shiny monuments will disguise the grinding poverty that dominates the lives of most people in the oil-rich nation. They must not be allowed to get away with this deception”.

And as Equatorial Guinea shows off its oil wealth amidst festering poverty, Gabon, the co-host, fares slightly better.

Oil was discovered there in the early 1970s, relegating dependency on timber and manganese. Oil accounts for 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product that sees Gabon enjoy a per capita income that is four times that of most sub-Saharan countries, according to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

But 70 per cent of the citizens remain dirt-poor due to high-income inequalities and financial mismanagement that has seen the richest 20 per cent receive over 90 per cent of the income, says UNDP.

That stain aside, and since gaining independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had two presidents, a pointer to its political stability, besides boasting some of the best medical facilities in West Africa: About 90 per cent of the 1.5 million people — the lowest population density in Sub-Saharan Africa — had access to healthcare (an estimated 29 doctors per 100,000) by 2004, says UNDP.

Gabon, slotted 77th in the Fifa ranking, is parading The Panthers, the national team that thrashed Niger 2-0 in their opener at the new 40,000-seater d’Angondje Stadium, which was built with the help of the Chinese government and will host the finals.

AFRICA'S CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS WRITE TO THE AU HEADS OF STATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS ATROCITIES IN AFRICA

2012-01-27T13:08:00.000+03:00

January 26, 2012

African States Parties to the ICC

Dear African Heads of State and Foreign Ministers,

On the occasion of the 18th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU)–
which will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on January 29-30, 2012–we, the undersigned
African civil society organizations and international organizations with a presence in Africa,
write to share some important developments affecting international criminal justice in Africa
and to encourage African states parties to reaffirm their strong support for the International
Criminal Court (ICC) and its goal of ending impunity for grave international crimes.

Our organizations note that the ICC is not on the formal agenda of the AU Assembly at the
upcoming summit. The summit is however an opportunity for gathered African states parties
to informally exchange observations about recent developments and discuss concrete steps
that they and the AU can take to advance justice for the victims of crimes under international
law, in accordance with Article 4 of the African Union Constitutive Act.

Significant moment in the evolution of the ICC and need for renewed support from Africa

2011 was marked by a number of important developments for justice for crimes under
international law, such as a higher number of ratifications of the ICC Statute than in previous
years, strong popular calls for justice in North Africa, and important elections to top positions
at the ICC that will result in a change of leadership at the institution in 2012.

Six new states ratified the ICC Statute in 2011, thus affirming their support to the values of
justice and accountability it embodies. Among these six states, two are African (Tunisia and
Cape Verde), thus bringing the total number of African states that are parties to the court’s
treaty to 33–still the largest geographical group in the membership of the court. The court
now enjoys support from 120 nations around the world, with ongoing consideration of
possible additional ratifications, including African countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and Egypt.
Mali has also become the first African state party to enter into an enforcement of sentences
agreement with the ICC.

The popular uprisings in North Africa have brought to light the strong desire for justice of
populations that had been subjected to repressive rule for several decades. Because of these
clear aspirations, ratification of the ICC Statute as well as national prosecutions of grave
human rights violations are on the agenda of some of the new governments in that region.
Government changes in North Africa have the potential to bring a positive shift in the way
these countries approach the ICC and accountability for grave crimes. This, in turn, could
lead to a more positive atmosphere on these issues at the AU in the future.

In December 2011, members of the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) elected two
Africans, Fatou Bensouda and Chile Eboe Osuji, for the positions of the chief prosecutor and
judge of the ICC respectively. The two candidates supported by the AU were elected to these
2 positions based on their merit, strong qualifications and experience in international law.
Currently, 5 of the 18 ICC judges are from Africa.

The appointment of African officials to senior offices at the ICC reflects the important role
that individual Africans are playing in contributing to the success of the court and is of great
significance to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening cooperation between the
ICC and the AU. Our organizations hope that African states and the AU will lend their
support to the newly elected ICC prosecutor, while fully respecting her independence.

The new prosecutor and the ICC face important challenges at this juncture. With the addition
of three new situations (Kenya, Libya and Côte d’Ivoire), the ICC has almost doubled its
work-load in not even two years. However, despite this increase in activities, in December
2011, the ASP imposed budgetary cuts on the ICC for 2012 beyond those suggested by the
ASP’s expert financial body. It is clear that the coming year will be challenging for the ICC
to implement its mandate within the resources approved by its member countries.

Another major challenge to the court’s authority and ability to deliver justice is of course the
fact that several suspects against whom the court has issued arrest warrants have still not been
arrested and surrendered for trial, in relation to situations in Uganda, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, the Darfur region of Sudan, and Libya. A further challenge is that
numerous victims in the 8 countries under preliminary examinations in 4 different continents
are still waiting the ICC to advance justice.

In the face of these challenges, and because all situations currently under investigation at the
ICC are in Africa, renewed support from African states and the AU are of particular
importance. The ICC and the AU indeed share a commitment to end impunity for the
perpetrators of the worst crimes around the world.

In this regard, we would like to highlight three areas of action for your consideration:

1. Renew and strengthen dialogue between the AU and the ICC: Despite past
differences of opinion between the ICC and AU, the two institutions have made
efforts to strengthen their ties and collaborate with each other as illustrated by the
joint seminar between the ICC and the AU which took place at the AU headquarters,
in Addis Ababa, on July 18-19, 2011. This type of exercise should be renewed, and
complemented by other regular meetings and exchange of views between the ICC,
African states, and AU officials.

2. Reconsider the creation of an ICC liaison office in Addis Ababa: our organizations
continue to believe that such an office would greatly contribute to consolidating the
understanding and relationship between the ICC and the AU. African states parties
should propose that its establishment be reconsidered and make efforts to reach out to
African states non-parties to the ICC to explain its proposed purpose and functions.

3. Uphold cooperation obligations under the ICC Statute: Full cooperation with the
ICC and respect for the court’s decisions are of paramount importance to preserve the
court’s effectiveness and ability to deliver justice. In this light, we renew our
appreciation to African states parties which have publicly affirmed that they will
abide by their obligations under the ICC Statute, notably with regards to the execution
of pending arrest warrants. These include Botswana and South Africa (in relation to the situation in Darfur), the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda (in relation to the situation in Uganda), and Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger (in relation to the situation in Libya).

The undersigned organizations also congratulate African states parties for adopting, along
with other ICC member countries, important ASP procedures to deal with occurrences of
non-cooperation with the court. This non-cooperation protocol foresees two steps: 1) an early
warning mechanism through which the President of the ASP will use his good offices, with
the assistance of regional focal points, to approach the state party which may find itself in
breach of its ICC obligations with a view to promoting full cooperation; 2) once the court has
referred an issue of non-cooperation, the bureau of the ASP will take some steps to have a
dialogue with the concerned state party and report to the full ASP. These procedures are
crucial to encourage full cooperation with the court.

To be effective, the procedures will require the full support of African states.

Promoting justice before national courts

In light of the ICC’s limited resources, the court cannot be the sole actor in pursuing the fight
against impunity. Under the ICC Statute, states retain the primary responsibility to bring to
justice those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Recalling
the centrality of the principle of “complementary” jurisdiction in the Rome Statute system,
the undersigned organizations encourage African states parties to the ICC to remain fully
committed to complementarity and national prosecutions of grave international crimes. To
that effect, our organizations call on African states parties to enact effective implementing
legislation of the ICC Statute where such legislation is lacking and to support work towards
strengthening of domestic systems to handle international crimes.

Concerns over the expansion of the African Court’s jurisdiction

In advance of the AU summit of June 18, 2011, many of the undersigned organizations wrote
to African states parties regarding the intention of the AU to expand the jurisdiction of the
African Court of Justice and Human Rights (African Court) to include prosecution of
individuals for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Increased avenues for accountability are positive in principle. However, we are concerned
about the proposed expansion of the court for a number of reasons. Notably, the African
Court already faces serious challenges implementing its current mandate and giving it
jurisdiction over a distinct type of offenses (crimes under international law committed by
individuals, as opposed to human rights violations by states) would require significant time to
establish new expertise and a vast overhaul in the way the court is currently set-up.

Consequently, our organizations encourage African states parties to insist on a number of
conditions to ensure that the expansion of the African court’s jurisdiction will advance the
cause of justice for crimes under international law, including the following:

Wider consultation with civil society and officials of the existing African Court and
African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights regarding expansion of the
African Court’s jurisdiction;

Adherence by the African Court to international standards and best practices
regarding any prosecutions of serious crimes in violation of international law;

Recognition that AU member states have the primary obligation to investigate and, if
there is sufficient evidence, prosecute persons suspected of crimes under international
law before their national courts;

Matching political commitment to expand the African Court’s jurisdiction and
personnel, financial and material resources to enable operations in accordance with
international standards and best practices; including effective protection and support
for victims and witnesses, outreach to victims and affected communities, pre-trial
detention, investigations and prosecutions, trials and imprisonment;

Clarity regarding the relationship between an expanded African Court and the ICC.
We hope this information is useful and wish you fruitful consultations at the upcoming
summit.

Yours Sincerely,

1. Action of Christian Activists for Human Rights in Shabunda (ACADHOSHA), DRC
2. African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights (RADDHO), Senegal
3. African Association for Human Rights (ASADHO), DRC
4. Amnesty International, Ghana
5. Amnesty International, Senegal
6. Amnesty International, Togo
7. Association of Human and Prisoner Rights (ADHUC), Brazzaville, R of Congo
8. Benin Coalition for the ICC, Benin
9. Burundi Coalition for the ICC, Burundi
10. Cameroon Coalition for the ICC, Cameroon
11. Central African Republic Coalition for the ICC, CAR
12. Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law, Sierra Leone
13. Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), Malawi
14. Children Education Society(CHESO), Tanzania
15. Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre (CIRDDOC), Nigeria
16. Club of Friends of Congolese Law, Democratic Republic of Congo
17. Coalition of Eastern NGOs (CENGOS), Nigeria
18. Coalition for the International Criminal Court, with offices in Benin and the DRC
19. Congolese Coalition for Transitional Justice (CCJT), DRC
20. Congolese Initiative for Justice and Peace (ICJP), DRC
21. Human Rights Network-Uganda (HURINET), Uganda
22. Human Rights Watch, with offices in the DRC, Kenya,Rwanda and SA
23. International Commission of Jurists, Kenya
24. International Crime in Africa Programme (ICAP), Institute for Security Studies (ISS), SA
25. Ivorian Coalition for the ICC, Côte d’Ivoire
26. League for Peace, Human Rights and Justice (LIPADHOJ), DRC
27. National Coalition on Affirmative Action (NCAA), Nigeria
28. Network of Human Rights Associations from Sud Kivu (RADHOSKI), DRC
29. Nigeria Coalition on the ICC (NCICC), Nigeria
30. Speak Human Rights & Environmental Initiative, Mauritius
31. Southern Africa Litigation Centre, South Africa
32. Synergy of Congolese NGOs for Victims (SYCOVI), DRC
33. Uganda Coalition on the International Criminal Court, Uganda
34. West African Bar Association (WABA), Nigeria