TMS sits down for a chat with Ory Okolloh to talk about her transformation from young nerd to one of the most effective activists for citizen empowerment to come out of Africa in the past decade.
A new 30-minute documentary calling for the arrest of Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony has gained over 7 million views since being released on March 5. For over 20 years, Kony has led a brutal insurgency against Uganda’s government, and is notorious for his use of child soldiers.
Image via Al Jazeera
As support for the “Kony 2012” campaign grows, its founders have also faced backlash online for their portrayal of the conflict in Central Africa and endorsement of US military involvement.
The push to police the way that women dress continues across Africa on the pretext that it causes sexual harassment and violence against women. What really underlies this censorship of women’s expression? asks Bibi Bakare-Yusuf
Women’s dressing has become the site for pernicious policing and debates about social and moral decay in Africa, with calls for intervention within Nigeria’s higher education institutions, by religious organisations, and the media. Over the past decade, some universities have banned the wearing of trousers and any 'revealing' clothes by young women because they are seen as a distraction to male students and lecturers. The argument is that revealing attire has made sexual violation and harassment a marked feature of university life in Nigeria, and therefore imposing a strict dress code on female students is the only way to stop it...[continue reading]
Upon reviewing the current upheavals in North Africa and elsewhere on the continent, I felt it is necessary for us – African academics, scholars and intellectuals – to take stock and a fresh look at ourselves: What role have we played in advancing the cause of liberty and improving governance in post colonial Africa. Our record is not very good. Sometimes, self-criticism is necessary in order for us to make progress. You do not have to agree with what I am going to say – diversity of opinion is healthy. There have been outstanding individuals among us who risked death to champion the cause of freedom in Africa. However, as a group we have let Africa down badly by not providing intellectual leadership to the democratic struggle.
“He who doesn’t know where he came from doesn’t know where is going,” says an African proverb. We of the intellectual community are lost; we don’t know where we are going. The recent upheavals in Africa caught us completely off guard. We did not see it coming because we were pre-occupied elsewhere. It seems we are way behind the curve, late to the struggle for democracy in Africa and are now only playing “catch-up.”...[continue reading]
More here...one has to consider the cases of many African countries where these institutions were severely compromised during one-party rule.
Image courtesy of LSE
Such countries have had huge political problems with their democratisation since they have no credible institutions to adjudicate even the simplest of squabbles. In Malawi all political actors have respected the courts and sought to redress their grievances through the court system. Malawi had more litigations going on than the entire SADC region. One can point to some of the abusive aspects of these litigations but all in all they are partly evidence of the faith in our court system.
When Bingu came to power he promised to reverse the creeping trend towards the politicisation of these institutions. He specifically promised to strengthen the meritocratic basis of the civil service. What we are witnessing now is the shredding of the legitimacy of these institutions by politicising them and by implying that their daily management of their affairs depend on “orders from above”. The institutions are now being pitted one against another.
Perhaps you failed to see that all of this, this ad hoc revolution, was simply the beginning of a shift of consciousness. It takes a lot, you should know, to transcribe the language of a dream into the spoken word of reality. True, all dreams are translatable, all dreams are reality. But within the terrain of the dream and the terrain of reality lie shadows.More here
What you did was tell the shadows you are beginning to reclaim your reality. Do not feel undermined, betrayed, or normal. There is no such thing as normalcy; there is change lurking everywhere and those mountebanks from the other side know it. They have seen the rise of reality; they have seen, yes. And they know that it is only a matter of time before they are overtaken, overridden, outpoured.
Consider the danger of infinite silence.
They come to us in the name of God, for evil has taken the guise of virtue. They say they are speaking a collective language, premised on restating the religious utopia created by their prophet. Their prophet. Clearly, their God and their prophet are imagined. Evil has taken the guise of virtue.
I realize that, in the final analysis, what Boko Haram wants is to silence our freedom. They want to introduce a regime of creative stagnation. I understand that creativity begins at the threshold of freedom. Let me explain....[more]
More hereDoing away with the ‘wall of fear’
GRAPHIC: KADİR ÖZMEN
For the first time since they were liberated from colonial powers, Arabs have shown a high level of persistence in their revolt. They have relieved themselves from a fear of being imprisoned, persecuted, tortured or even killed if they protest against authoritarian rulers. “The wall of fear is gone,” said a woman participating in a protest march for the “blue bra girl” in Cairo.
It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on September 14, 2011, after he published a column calling for the government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end torture in prisons.Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if convicted could face the death sentence. He’s not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over the past decade than any other country in the world, according to CPJ...[continue reading]
Eskinder Nega (Lennart Kjörling)
The ongoing Nigerian protests against the scrapping of the fuel subsidy have garnered the support of musicians and even invoked the spirits of some dead ones...demonstrators ‘resurrected’ dead afrobeat legend and human rights activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti to join their rally. Protesters have also shown how to ‘occupy’ Nigerian-style as some all but moved their sitting rooms out onto the street...[continue reading]
Whenever I try to apply logic, critical reasoning and scientific temper to issues during public debates, I am often accused of not thinking like an African. I am always told that I think like a white man or that I have a western mentality. As if critical thinking or the scientific outlook is for westerners alone or that critical thinking can only be exercised by people from a particular race or region. No, this is not the case.Surprisingly, nobody has ever stepped forward to tell me how an ‘African’ thinks. For me it is either this ‘African mode of thought’ is one which nobody knows about or is one that does not exist or qualify to be called a thinking pattern. Nobody has tried to let me know if Africans think at all. Because this misguided view that one is unAfrican or western in outlook is often employed to block or suppress critical reasoning or inquiry particularly when it is used to challenge traditions, positions and opinions informed by blind faith or dogma.More here
While holding on to beliefs and outlooks informed by superstition and primordial thinking is often glorified as African. Even in this 21st century, reason and science are still perceived as western, and not African values. I have yet to understand how we came about this mistaken idea. Hence, it is often portrayed as if the African does not reason and dare not reason or that the African does not think or cannot think critically. It seems thinking like an African means suspension of thought, logic or common sense. Thinking like an African means not thinking at all- thoughtlessness or thinking in spiritual, occult or magical ways.For instance, whenever I try to challenge or question the irrational and absurd claims of witchcraft, juju and charms, and other ritualistic and religious nonsense that dominate the mental space of Africans, I am often reminded that my mentality is western. And you know what, whenever in the course of a public debate, somebody alleges that a position is western, it means that it is unacceptable though it may be reasonable or may have a superior argument. Is that not unfortunate?
More hereThe state of Nigeria is facing its largest crisis in over a decade. As the ferocity and popularity of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram rises, the very unity of the state is being challenged. This collection of photos assesses the reasons why the group is becoming increasingly attractive to the disaffected population in the north despite their gruesome tactics.
Image courtesy of Inpec
Oh yes, the Nigerian Senate who have so much time on their hands, decided to pass a bill stating that gays shall not be allowed to get married and if they dare do, they shall get fourteen years in jail. Let us face the truth. There are no gay couples applying for marriage certificates in that country. How would they do that? There are no provisions for such a marriage in our system, therefore, this bill is totally redundant. It is like telling me that I am banned from eating eba in my kitchen when I had none in the first place. If eba was available and waiting for me in my kitchen, then that’s another story. But I don’t even have garri or hot water. In fact, I don’t even have a bowl to make the eba in, so what exactly would be the point of such a ban? It’s as simple as that. I can’t be the only one that sees how unnecessary this bill is. A total waste of time and resources. But hey, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.More here
I am surprised about the excitement this bill has caused in our people. People are almost foaming at the mouths because of this useless bill. I wish our Senate could be equally engaged in other serious matters. For example, Boko Haram. Every month, a new bomb and yet, our senators are laughing over homosexual jokes on TV. I would have expected some kind of crack down by now. Or is it only in the Niger Delta that the military enjoys operating? And what do they plan to do about the religious violence in the north? Or is this show of solidarity against homosexuals going to stop the burning of churches over there? Will this be the very act that will unite Christianity and Islam in the north? And if that is so, will it not be strange that it is only in our hatred we can unite and not in love?
The Democratic Republic of Congo's President, Joseph Kabila, has just perpetrated a massive hoax in order to retain power. Bowing in principle to the Western-driven demands the our famous but nebulous "international community," Kabila has held just held elections, which he would like the world to believe he has won.More here
The overall tally, 49 percent for the "winner," and 32 percent for the first runner up, had a ring to it that at first glance, at least for the uninitiated, sounded both plausible and competitive, which in such matters usually go hand in hand. The results proclaimed the Congo to be the latest African country to have traveled far away from the bad old past of continental elections, which authoritarian rulers once routinely "won" with upwards of 95 percent of the vote.
Mannoubia Bouazizi holds photo of Mohamed Bouazizi photo by Peter Hapak
More hereIt began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match.
Every sub-Saharan African state already allows pregnant women to abort when their lives are in danger, and in recent years Benin, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Swaziland and Togo have been working at expanding their laws to allow abortions in more circumstances.More here
Still, in all of sub-Saharan Africa, abortion is legal only in Cape Verde and South Africa. And the number of unsafe abortions on the continent is staggeringly high: every year, there are over six million unsafe abortions conducted in Africa, and about 30,000 women die from the procedure. Unsafe abortions are among the leading causes of death for women admitted to hospitals around much of the continent.
The Sudanese, who are experienced in leading successful uprisings and civil disobedience movements against dictatorial rule (which they did in 1964 and again in 1985), are certainly able to do it for a third time to finally liberate themselves from the tyranny and totalitarianism of the inherited state and its current and similar regimes. Then, perhaps, there would be a new opportunity for building a new Sudan out of the Sudanese collective order and its emerging good society. By that time, surely, the Sudanese “habits of the heart” that ameliorated and molded the Sudanese character and its deeper sense of civility (not the state or its regimes) would help them examine themselves, create new political communities, produce a new social contract and thus ultimately support and maintain conditions of democracy, freedom, equality and human dignity. Then, the gentler side of the Sudanese life, and the people’s propensity for it, would, should and maybe will, as Alexis de Tocqueville describes, “spontaneously [help create] the bonds of friendship, trust and cooperation that lie at the heart of civil society.” The dominant impulse by that time, I would say, will be that a change for the State of South Sudan will also be a change for the new Sudanese Sudan.More here
...in a dramatic expansion of its mission, the foundation is now incorporating testimonies from mass atrocities other than the Holocaust into its archives. Five survivors of the Rwandan genocide are learning the organization’s archiving methods at the Shoah Foundation Institute here, part of an effort to add at least 1,000 interviews with Rwandans to the foundation’s archives. Ten testimonies from Rwanda have been recorded already, with at least 50 more expected next yearMore here
More here...within such ‘chaos’, or apparent disorganization, the system works. Somehow it does, and nowhere is this more exemplified than in Makoko, Lagos’ water community. Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ works is doing some very interesting work in this community and I am enthusiastic. Not only does the community provide 33% of Lagos’ fish supply and a high proportion of its timber, but it is also the city’s cheapest
Image courtesy of NLE
dwellings...The fact that this community is existent after 100years shows that there must be a way around this. A form of collective intelligence that goes into how the residents co-habit successfully, how they build, how they plan their dwellings. I find it interesting and exciting. Excited to learn more about it, to understand it, and know how this intelligence can be replicated across the city in terms of intelligent and effective urban planning.
This is intelligence.
