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.
More here“THE gele is my trademark,” says the Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, describing the colourful head wrap she puts over her short, greying hair before she allows pictures to be taken. “I am very Nigerian from dress to everything.” Some of her critics disagree. During anti-reform protests in January, demonstrators focused their anger on the finance minister. They called her an unwelcome outsider because she spent long periods abroad. She was a managing director at the World Bank before coming home last year.
Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Sitting in her half-moon-shaped office overlooking Nigeria’s dusty capital, Abuja, Ms Okonjo-Iweala faces an unenviable task. President Goodluck Jonathan has given her just three years to overhaul sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy, one riven with corruption and inefficiencies, carved up by political bosses and vulnerable to bursts of communal violence.
Yet Rwanda has one huge advantage: the rule of law. No African country has done more to curb corruption. Ministers have been jailed for it. Transparency International, a watchdog, reckons Rwanda is less graft-ridden than Greece or Italy (though companies owned by the ruling party play an outsized role in the economy). “I have never paid a bribe and I don’t know anyone who has had to pay a bribe,” says Josh Ruxin, one of the owners of Heaven, a restaurant in Kigali, the capital.
The country is blessedly free of red tape, too. It ranks 45th in the World Bank’s index of the ease of doing business, above any African nation bar South Africa and Mauritius. Registering a firm takes three days and is dirt cheap. Property rights are strengthening, as well—the government is giving peasants formal title to their land.
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.
Nigeria’s followership is loud and ineffective because all that it does is talk. Loud, boisterous, garrulous and banal talk – that is all we do. In Newspaper editorials, internet chat rooms, on twitter, facebook, in beer parlors, market squares and bus stop libraries, our voices loudly bemoan the state of the country. We blame everything under the sun for our problems - from a colonial experience that ended over 50 years ago, to the poverty of leadership & ideas that currently afflicts us and our ethnic & religious differences.More here
We are blessed with a marvelous ability to convince ourselves that we are the victims of circumstances that we conjured into existence. We talk as if these leaders that we denounce at every turn were dropped on us from outer space, forced on us by malevolent beings intent on seeing our national tragedy extended. We conveniently forget that we voted them in ourselves, with our very own hands. We seem to forget also that national growth has roles not just for those who lead, but for those who follow as well.
More hereThe political structure of the Yoruba Kingdom in the 18th century when it was in its heyday, resembled that of the Asante and Zande Kingdoms. Its development also bore a close resemblance to that of the Zulu kingdom as well, suggesting strong similarities in the constitution of African kingdoms.
Image via wikipedia
According to Yoruba traditions, the original founder of the kingdom, Oduduwa, settled in IleIfe at some time in the 14th century. Before his arrival, about 13 semiautonomous settlements had organized themselves into a loose confederacy. Oduduwa settled among them and subsequently subjugated them, imposing his authority over them. The preexisting groups organized themselves into a resistance group known as the Igbo and harassed Oduduwa and the new settlement until accommodation was reached around the middle of the 14th century.
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.
More hereThe following is the first of a series of excerpts that Al Jazeera will be publishing from The Invisible Arab: The promise and peril of the Arab revolutions by Marwan Bishara.
In much of the world's media, the narrative goes like this: An oppressed people who have suffered passively suddenly decide that enough is enough and, thanks to Western technology and inspiration, spontaneously rise up to reclaim their freedom, inspiring what is called the Arab Spring.
Like most revolutions, however, this one was a long time coming. The historic takeover of Tunis's November 7 Square, Cairo's Tahrir Square, and Manama's Pearl Square, among others, were the culmination of a long social and political struggle - countless sit-ins, strikes, pickets, and demonstrations by people who risked and suffered intimidation, torture, and imprisonment.
What started as a desperate act of self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, soon became a viral event on the internet, one that led angry Tunisians to pour into the streets by the thousands. Demonstrations turned into national upheaval and culminated in a full-fledged revolution that toppled the Tunisian dictatorship and spread east to other countries to kindle the greatest Arab transformation in memory. Never had the region witnessed such collective vigour and yearning for change.
Read more of our Tunisia coverage Within a few weeks, millions of Arabs filled their streets and squares, giving new meaning to Mark Twain's claim that there's power in numbers. The silent majority finally spoke, breaking the psychological barrier of fear erected by regimes through decades of oppression, and discovering in record time that, as the fairy tale foretold, the emperor had no clothes.
The Big Man in Burundi is a former rebel leader, Pierre Nkurunziza. He is another contradictory figure. An election cheat and tormentor of his opponents, Nkurunziza has managed to bring a modicum of stability to Burundi. In a move you can’t begrudge him, he shamed many bigger, richer, and stable African countries when he sent troops from his poor nation to the African Union’s Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), at a time when only Uganda had the stomach (or was mad enough) to do so.More here
As the US diplomatic cables leaked to the whistleblower website Wikileaks revealed, Nkurunziza calculated that plunging into Somalia fray would give his little ignored country huge diplomatic oomph. He has reaped benefits beyond his wildest dreams. Nkurunziza is a complex bloke. He is obsessed with the avocado fruit. He spends a lot of time in the village digging with peasants and growing avocado. He waxes grand about how Burundi can become an important world player in making avocado oil. Diplomats who go to see him in the capital Bujumbura (and a lot of them do these days that he is a kingmaker in Somalia) often find themselves driven to the bushes where he is digging. And to get his attention, they have to roll up their shirtsleeves, pick a hoe, and join him in tilling the land.
They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.More here
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
On the 28th of January, 2012 African countries will collectively descend to a new low on the global index of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and actual independence of nations. On that day, Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to commission the new $124 Million African Union Headquarters built and donated to the continent by China. Termed “China’s gift to Africa”, the edifice was constructed by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation with over 90% Chinese labor.
The New AU Building Courtesy of Chinadaily.com.cn
According to Zeng Huacheng, a special councilor to the AU headquarters project from China’s Ministry of Commerce, “The panoramic view of the conference center is like two hands holding each other, signifying the strengthening friendship between China and Africa.”
It is to the discredit of the African Union and therefore, every individual and country within that regional body that in 2012, a building as symbolic as the African Union Headquarters is designed, built and maintained by a foreign country, it does not matter which country...[continue reading]
Protesters in Senegal have clashed with police after a court approved President Abdoulaye Wade to seek a highly disputed third term, but barred music icon Youssou Ndour from running.
Senegal's constitutional court approved late on Friday a list of 14 candidates who had met the requirements to run for president in the February 26 election, and among them was the 85-year-old Wade...[more]
More hereNigerian political analyst and writer Ike Okonta examines the failure of democratic and civic institutions in Nigeria four decades after the end of the bloody civil war in Biafra. As an Open Society Fellow, Okonta, an expert in ethnic identity and resource conflict in West Africa, is looking at the lingering effects of the war and the increase in oil revenues on the formation of the post-war Nigerian state.
© Jeff Hutchens for the Open Society Institute
More hereWhen the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold's Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
Image of Patrice Lumumba via Wikipedia
With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals , and hired killers.
In Congo, Lumumba's assassination is rightly viewed as the country's original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.
Economic arguments are useful, but so are human arguments, which seem alarmingly lost on the Nigerian government. Prices have gone up but salaries remain the same. A driver in Lagos who earns 25,000 naira, about $152 a month, would have had to spend almost three-quarters of his salary on transportation to and from work, and this is before he would have to pay for food and, if he has children, for school fees. In Nigeria we like to say that we can “manage,” but it is almost impossible to see how many people could manage that.More here
We are an oil-producing nation and it is not unreasonable for Nigerians to expect affordable petrol, nor is it unreasonable for Nigerians to expect more from a democratic government. A friend of mine, after calculating how much she would now spend getting to work in Lagos, said, with her eyes alive with rage, “Our senators make $100,000 a month if you count their salaries and allowances. A month! In dollars! They live in government houses and have government cars. And none of them pay for their own petrol.”
Gene Sharp believes that non-violent struggle has a greater chance of success than violent resistance, because violence is typically the most powerful weapon used tyrannical regimes and they will always have the upper hand. His booklet From Dictatorship to Democracy (which you can download as a PDF) provide a list of 198 "non-violent weapons", including mock awards, alternative communication system, wearing of symbols, pray-in, boycott of elections, withdrawal of bank deposits, consumers' boycott, renouncing honours, etc.More here
The book was first published in 1993 to support the opposition movement in Burma and was circulated among dissidents. Anyone seen carrying the book around was sentenced to seven-year prison terms by the regime. This kind of manual for toppling dictators has since inspired opponents of oppression in places as far apart as Thailand, Ukraine, Serbia, Estonia, Iran, China, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and more recently in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.
By gambling that public anger would dissipate after a few days, Mr Jonathan placed and lost the biggest bet of his presidency. He has now opened talks with labour leaders that will resume on Saturday. If no solution is found, the main oil union says that, from Sunday, it will start shutting down crude production, which provides four-fifths or more of government revenues.More here
Accountability cuts across all aspects of governance: it forces leaders to articulate a vision, puts a premium on sound planning, strengthens implementation, and holds those who steal to account. Accountability can be achieved in many ways: through effective elections, tax payers demanding services for their money, greater transparency about results planned for and achieved, citizens monitoring results and reporting on them, and… ending impunity for those who steal. All of these together would start making a system that works; a system that can transform a country like Nigeria.More here
