Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Afrikan Economic Freedom

Political Instability, Intra-state Conflicts, And Threats To AfCFTA Agreement’s ‘Made In Africa’ Aspirations

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Political Instability, Intra-state Conflicts, And Threats To AfCFTA Agreement’s ‘Made In Africa’ Aspirations

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is arguably the African Union’s (AU) biggest project since the launch of the continent’s Agenda 2063 in January 2015. Launched in March 2018, the AfCFTA agreement connects 55 African economies and is the largest free trade area in the world in terms of country membership.

When the AfCFTA agreement was initially proposed at an AU summit in 2012, it had two goals: to build a Pan-African agenda in trade and cooperation, and secondly, to lift a large percentage of people out of poverty by instituting structural economic changes and cooperative legislation.

AfCFTA is understood to be a groundbreaking opportunity to both create an industrial revolution within and across Africa and opt out of the types of deals like the United State’s Africa Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA) that keep the continent at the bottom of global production, trade, and investments.

But little of this has yet been achieved. The rising number of conflicts, military coups, terrorism, ethnic violence, warlordism, and the presence of mercenaries on the continent is dimming the hopes of the trade renaissance expected to have “Made in Africa” goods dominate world markets.

Hindrances to these aspirations were manifest in 2022. Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), northern Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Cameroon’s north-west and south-west regions were six African conflict hotbeds that year, against expectations that the continent would silence guns by 2020. In other circumstances, democratic backsliding continues, with insurgencies, insecurity, and weak governance leading to military coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger, and Gabon, further restricting the prospects of sustainable trade practices and the successful implementation of the AfCFTA. Alongside dire humanitarian costs, the absence of peace in Africa is disrupting economic activities.

According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, in 2022, the number of Africans who were forcibly displaced by conflict stood at over 40 million people. An additional 3.2 million Africans have been displaced due to conflict over the past year. This is impacting Africa’s intra-trade potential.

Though it aims to provide broader and deeper economic integration across the continent as well as attract investment, boost trade, provide better jobs, reduce poverty, and increase shared prosperity, in 2022, intra-continental trade share in Africa stood at only 12 percent, compared to 47 percent in North America, 53 percent in Asia, and 69 percent in Europe. This makes Africa the only bloc with the least trade among its 55 members.

What others are doing

The EU is considered to be the most advanced model of regional economic integration. In facilitating smooth trade, the bloc identified three categories where barriers needed to be resolved: physical, technical, and fiscal.

In terms of physical barriers, the bloc acknowledges that border posts entail additional costs that pass on unnecessary delays. In the end, the countries streamlined their procedures to abolish border controls within the EU.

For other concerns about technical and fiscal barriers, what is certain for the EU bloc is that the headway made is far more comprehensive and satisfactory to member states. This explains why the EU is very actively pursuing its goal of gradual irreversible progress on a worldwide scale on how it engages other partners in trade initiatives like the EU, Chile, and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). This has helped the group adopt positions in favor of having binding multilateral rules in relation to the facilitation of trade.

Defining trade in African terms

Dr. Levious Chiukira, an expert on trade and lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, thinks Africans need to redefine what they term trade and highlight at what level and capacity trade should be considered as such by African businesses and entrepreneurs. He fears Africa might be defining trade on the basis of blue-chip companies that might benefit alone from the AfCFTA, as it appears to be a platform to anchor white monopoly capital while substituting home industries or backyard start-ups, which contribute more to Africa’s economy.

“We need a new discourse that redefines what we call African trade. We have allowed trade to be defined by some blue-chip companies. African trade has to be redefined because the bigger elements of our trade lie in what has been labelled informal trade, yet that is what constitutes small and medium enterprises (SMEs), cross-border trade, and backyard industries. We need to break the hegemonic definition of cross-border trade as if African trade is illegal. By calling our people informal traders, they are being illegalised and their trade is not being recognised,” said Dr. Chiukira.

Working on upgrading the border management systems
Zimbabwe’s revenue collection authority has invested in modern border equipment to plug loopholes necessitated by the evasion of formal tax collection systems in the movement of goods. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

The World Bank (WB) estimates that small businesses represent 90% of all businesses and that Sub-Saharan Africa alone has 44 million SMEs. While acknowledging their importance, the WB confirms that small businesses, especially those in Africa, are poorly understood due to a lack of or fragmentation of data.

Dr. Chiukira sees infant industries or SMEs promotion in the framework of AfCFTA as only developing not on the basis of free trade policy but of understanding the needs of what facilitates African trade.

“Sustainable African trade has to be done in the precept of understanding what facilitates trade. We have failed to address the needs of the African people, and we have failed to understand the challenges of trading within Africa. Conflicts are hampering trade. In the end, human capital will not be functional as conflicts might trigger movement of refugees,” added Dr. Chiukira.

Deepening regional integration and cooperation

Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are central to the AfCFTA agreement’s implementation. However, in every REC, there are one or two cases of internal or intra-state conflicts. In the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Mozambique and the DR Congo are facing upheavals; in the East African Community (EAC), Kenya and Somalia are fighting Al-Shabaab terrorists; in the Economic Community of West African States and the Sahel, military coups, terrorism, and internal conflicts are key characteristics.

The AU and RECs have a common goal of achieving regional integration. However, little progress has been made, and one of the challenges and criticisms of the institutions’ efforts towards achieving the African integration agenda is poor coordination. Achievement or failure to achieve regional integration for the AfCFTA agenda is highly dependent on these supranational bodies.

Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's President
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa (left) shares a moment with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa (right) after launching a joint Border Management Authority (BMA) at Beitbridge Border Post in October to prevent the illegal movement of goods, a key principle for AfCFTA. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

Mr. John Bosco Kalisa, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the East Africa Business Council in Tanzania, believes that promoting deeper integration through regional economic communities is a starting point to ensure the success of the AfCFTA.

The failure to silence guns is a concern.

“Every region is grappling with conflicts; these conflicts are hindering the ability of individuals and firms to produce goods and services that are required to stimulate economic growth and prosperity that are aspired to under the AfCFTA. Our leaders need to make concerted efforts to silence the guns, as espoused by the AU, the agenda of an Africa we want.

“Our African economies have been for so long depending on global supply chains, especially on essential food stuff such as rice, wheat, barley, fertilisers and others. The current Russia-Ukraine conflict which we are not party to creates negative spillover effects. This serves as a wake-up call for policymakers to design appropriate policies to build resilience within their systems and RECs,” argues Mr. Kalisa.

So near yet so far

Indications enunciated in the Agenda 2063 and AfCFTA policy documents make Africa appear as if it is progressing. To be so close and yet so far implies that in the AfCFTA agenda, policy documents, plans, and coordination may reflect as if the continent is nearing its goals, but realistically, Africa is far apart in attitudes, emotions, understanding, or meaning of the goals it wants.

“We talk of the AfCFTA, but countries that experience unconstitutional changes of government through coups or other means are automatically suspended from participating in the AU bodies, including the AfCFTA. For instance, the AU and ECOWAS closed their airspace and borders to Niger after the July military coup. Conflict resolution and prevention are essential for creating a conducive environment for trade integration and development in Africa.

“The effects of conflict can have lasting consequences on the skills, capabilities, and opportunities of the current and future generations of Africans,” says Mr. Tanatsiwa Dambuza, an intra-African trade knowledge management expert for Development Dispatch and co-founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of African Integration.

The AfCFTA project is showing signs of difficulties for the AU, and soon, without good political commitment by leaders, it will be realised soon that a miss is as good as a mile.

Russia-Africa Relations: Africa’s Entanglement With Politics Of Patronage Without Liberation

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Russia-Africa Relations: Africa’s Entanglement With Politics Of Patronage Without Liberation

There are intense political and intellectual debates unfolding in Africa. Since February 24 last year, when war broke out in Europe following Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the presence of Russia in Africa has been politically extensive through mercenaries from the disbanded Wagner Group (WG) under the pretext of fighting neo-colonialism. Africans have questioned the developments even so, without getting a satisfactory consensus guided by a framework of the continent’s interests.

While abhorred, the occurrence of unconstitutional government changes through military putschs in Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso in the past two years and recently in Niger and Gabon has birthed a new fascination towards Russia among the young and old supporting the military leaders in their countries. Russia has embraced these military governments, mainly in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, providing them with diplomatic backing and security assistance.

The backing of the military governments in Africa by Russia is changing the nature of relations between the two parties and has affected Africa’s relations with its former colonizers. To some, it is a partnership of unequals, a coalition with imbalances, and a patron-client relationship advancing the interests of the dominant party. To others, Africa is moving from one global giant to another to influence the operations of politics at a global level. This remains true with Africa’s relations with the United States, the European Union (EU), or China, where most outcomes are tilted in favor of partners other than Africa.

African leaders attending the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Part of the African leaders who attended the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia this year expressed their solidarity with Russia in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

The advancements of Russian interests in Africa are not following the traditional carrot-and-stick policy of the West, but soft power enticements channeled through scientific and technological transfers, knowledge, and expert skills to be acquired through Russian language at schools to be set in Africa. This was agreed at the Russia-Africa Summit held from July 27 to 28 this year in St. Petersburg, Russia. Some African leaders who agreed to this were charismatic Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traore, Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, and Zimbabwe’s Emmerson Mnangagwa, among others. This was confirmed by the current African Union’s (AU) chairperson, President Azali Assoumani of the Union of Comoros.

Director of Research, Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Maryland, Dr. Joseph Siegle, has noted that “none of Russia’s objectives are about making Africa more prosperous or stable. Rather, the continent is primarily a theater to advance Russia’s geostrategic interests.”

In light of this, public intellectuals and academics remain divided.

Coloniality and Colonization 3.0

The agreement on a cooperation action plan by Russia and Africa for the establishment of institutions in Africa that will use Russian as a medium of instruction has been interpreted as an attempt to colonize the being of Africans, take away their power, and replace their knowledge.

International relations analyst and principal researcher at the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute (ZDI), Mr. Bekezela Gumbo, says Africa needs to assess Russia’s actions and measure them on the yardsticks of “being, power, and knowledge.”

Engaging to exchange and share ideas
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa participated in a business conference at the Russia-Africa Summit in July. African leaders called for more collaboration and cooperation in the fields of scientific research and development, technology transfer, and innovation. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

Mr. Gumbo sees Russia as a country keen on enjoying what Africa’s former colonizers enjoyed, but without using brute force.

“When you look at educational institutions, you see that the coloniality of knowledge comes from education systems. When the Russian language is used as a medium of instruction, it means Russian ethics and standards of education will be used.

“This will reproduce Africans that are better placed to serve Russia’s interests. The Russia-Africa Summit was not neo-colonization but was colonization 3.0, where instead of using brutal force, anticipated force is used to effect colonization 3.0, where Russia is now in charge as a new colonizer who uses covert and not brutal force,” says Mr. Gumbo.

The situation presents Africa as a desperate player who needs Russia to protect her from the former colonial system.

Heads of State at the Russi-Africa Summit
President Mnangagwa was welcomed by his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, before the bilateral meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. Besides donating a helicopter, Russia also donated a consignment of 50,000 tons of maize to Zimbabwe to help ensure food security at national and household levels. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

Mr. Gumbo added that “this is not different from what happened during the colonial era. It is either you join Russia or you face the wrath of your former master or colonizer. The impression being built is that without Russian support, you might not be safe, despite being an all-weather friend. They may sponsor a coup and work with the young generation fascinated by pro-Russian ideology.

“Essential pillars of coloniality are in what Russia wants in Africa, that is power. Russia is now wanting to get to power by accessing the mind and being of the African man.”

Assessments by Mr. Gumbo have been reinforced by Dr. Felistas Zimano, who is convinced that what Russia is doing in Africa equates to “100 percent neo-colonialism.”

“This is 100 percent neo-colonialism. The interest that Russia has in pushing its language to Africa is the issue that should make Africa mostly worried. This defeats any stride towards the unification of Africa.

“A people’s glue is in its culture; a people’s culture is retained in its language. Once that is eroded, then there will not be any Africa to talk about. If anything, this reinforces the notion that all they see of Africa are mere pawns,” she said.

Missing the Point

Senior politics and international studies lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), Dr. Prolific Mataruse, believes there is a protracted effort to smear Russia as having imperial designs in Africa. He emphasizes that by engaging with Russia and other countries like China and learning their languages, Africa is subverting the colonial businesses and thought.

Dr. Mataruse concluded by adding that “in all fairness, talking about Russia having imperial designs is missing the point. The whole point of African relationships with Russia, China, Turkey, India, and other countries and learning their languages is an issue of promoting a multiverse approach away from the monoverse dominance of Anglicized language. Learning other languages besides English is subverting colonial systems of business and thought.”

Namibia Lithium Battle

Vitalio Angula
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Namibia Lithium Battle

On June 27, 2023, a judge of the High Court of Namibia, Ramon Maasdorp, ruled that the Southern African country’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Tom Alweendo, did not have the authority to revoke a twenty-year lithium mining license the ministry had issued to Chinese-owned lithium prospecting, exploration, mining, and processing company Xinfeng Investment.

The company drew international attention when the country’s local daily, the Namibian Newspaper, published an expose revealing underhanded dealings between government officials and the Chinese mining outfit.

The report detailed corruption at the ministry of mines in regard to how the company acquired the mining license, misrepresentation regarding how it conducted its business, and a community push-back against environmental damage and displacement of small-scale miners in the mountainous Erongo region, an area renowned for its rich mineral endowment that includes tin, tantalum, fluorite, and the new kid on the block, lithium.

Lithium as a critical component in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles and solar panels to facilitate the green (clean) energy transition has aroused international interest with Namibia sitting on millions of tons of lithium ore, according to a study conducted by the Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in collaboration with the German Cooperation (GIZ) and Geological Service of Namibia within Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy. GIZ is one of Namibia’s most notable development partners.

At an estimated 9.3 million tons, Chile is said to have the largest lithium deposits in the world. Australia is the globe’s largest supplier.

On the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Mali, Namibia, and Zimbabwe hold the largest lithium deposits, according to the British Geological Survey Report of 2020/2021, with mines producing millions in tons of the mineral output in all five countries.

China is the world’s largest importer of lithium ore, and the Asian giant controls over half of the world’s lithium processing and refining capacity.

Although the country has lithium deposits of its own, it does not have the required deposits to fulfill its industrial needs. This makes countries like Namibia essential to meeting local demand.

Open pit mine in the Dâures constituency of central Namibia.
Open pit mine in the Dâures constituency of the Erongo Region of Namibia. Credit: Andreas Simon, Public Relations Officer at the Ministry of Mines and Energy

Towards the end of 2022, a major political storm erupted in Namibia. Namibian authorities stopped tipper trucks carrying lithium ore that were traveling towards the harbor town of Walvis Bay because they lacked the necessary export or transport permits.

Increased attention to the company’s dealings led to allegations of bribery regarding the way the company acquired mining rights in the first place. A local businessman laid charges of fraud against his business partners, whom he accused of fraudulently stealing his mining claims by forging signatures while he was recuperating from injuries sustained in a car accident. He said his claims were subsequently sold to Xinfeng for USD 2.77 million.

The Minister of Mines and Energy then instituted investigations and found Xinfeng guilty of fraud and misrepresentation in the way it acquired the mining license. He (the minister) subsequently revoked the company’s license, which prompted Xinfeng to approach the High Court to have the license reinstated on an urgent basis.

In his ruling, the judge found that “the first respondent proved prima facie that the applicant committed fraud in the process of applying for the mining license.”
But he also found that “the first respondent did not have the power to revoke the mining license without the express or implied authority to do so under the governing legislation but was required to approach a court for appropriate relief.”

In summary, although the Chinese outfit did break the law and the minister proved it, under Namibian law, the minister does not have the power to revoke a mining license, but he has the power to issue it, a victory for the Chinese.

Environmental Concerns

Among those opposed to Xinfeng’s lithium interests in Namibia are the inhabitants of the local community of Uis, a settlement with an estimated population of 3600 inhabitants. Here, locals eke out a living through the trade in semi-precious stones, which are found in abundance in the area. With chisels and hammers, they pound away in the glaring sun to make a living for themselves and their families.

A kilogram of rocks is sold to polishers for as little as USD 2, sometimes even less.
The tourmaline, topaz, and quartz crystals are handcrafted and sold as jewelry, with pieces selling for as much as USD 41 for a necklace or a ring.

These small-scale miners have since been displaced to make way for Xinfeng.
The heavy machinery, which includes tipper trucks and huge excavators, has incensed community activists like Jimmy Areseb, who accuses the company of disregarding local beneficiation and policies adopted by the state to ensure that local communities benefit from the exploitation of mineral resources in their constituencies.

“There was no consultation that took place with the indigenous inhabitants of this area before these Chinese people were given the green light to start their mining operations; these people do not have the necessary environmental clearance to mine in such an ecologically sensitive area. The area in which Xinfeng is mining lithium is a conservancy, and the community used to benefit from trophy hunting concessions. The area also used to be a breeding ground for hyenas, rhinos, and springbok, and when their activities began, the animals moved away because of the lithium extraction methods such as blasting,” Areseb lamented.

CAG 29 which is the 29th Colloquium of African Geology was hosted in Namibia this year.
Geoscientists paid a visit to Andrada Mine on September 23, 2023, the former Uis Tin Mine, at Uis in the Erongo region of central Namibia. Credit: Andreas Simon, Public Relations Officer at the Ministry of Mines and Energy

Michelle Maletsky and her husband Harold are generational inhabitants of the Uis settlement. They say their parents and grandparents all made a living from the mineral endowment of the area as small-scale miners, and they had just been awarded a mining claim in the Uis area to upscale their activities when they got a shock on December 16, 2022.

They said that on December 16, 2022, when they went to the site where their mining claims were, they were not allowed to enter the site. The road had been barricaded with an entrance, and the security personnel at the gate told them they were not allowed to enter.

“My husband and I, we registered at Mines and Energy, we paid, we did everything like Mines and Energy told us, and then one day, when we checked on the system (online) of the Ministry of Mines, our claims were taken off. Then we went to the site to put up our boards (that show ownership of the mining claims), but the Chinese were fighting us; they told us no, we cannot enter the area because they bought the area for a lot of money and nobody is allowed to go in there,” Maletsky said.

Meletsky says her family has lost their means of making a living as a result of the displacement, and she and other similar miners with mining claims in the area are looking at different avenues to regain their lost claims, but this is proving to be difficult.

Conclusion

The rush for lithium has taken the dynamic of accusations of corruption, bribery, and underhanded dealings by Namibian government officials, but it has also brought hope for its green energy proponents, who believe that electric batteries will assist in reducing the globe’s carbon footprint.

Namibia, Zimbabwe, the DRC, Ghana, and Mali—can they supply the globe’s appetite for lithium? The answer is yes.

But at what cost?

The Tragedy Of Namibia’s Working Poor

Vitalio Angula
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The Tragedy Of Namibia’s Working Poor

At the dawn of independence in 1990, a public servant working in an entry-level position for the state could afford to buy themselves a home, a car, and send his children to school with a lunchbox for break-time. However, the rising cost of living has ushered in a phenomenon referred to as the ‘working poor’ where relatively young people, even those working at supervisory level, cannot afford to buy themselves homes and end up renting apartments in complexes if they are lucky. Many young people, especially in the capital city of Windhoek, have delayed moving out of their parents’ homes because, for them, affording a dwelling of their own is a pipe dream. Houses in Namibia, which are usually financed through a mortgage loan from one of the country’s four commercial banks, are only accessible to the middle class and those with a household income of at least N$35000 (USD 2000) and above.

The average wage in Namibia, according to the Wage Indicator Foundation, is estimated at N$3240 (US$187) per month. Low wages, rising inflation, and high unemployment (which results in black families having the burden of taking care of other family members) are all factors that contribute to the phenomenon of the working poor.

The free-market policies that Namibia’s government assumed at independence can also be seen as a contributing factor to the phenomenon of Namibia’s working poor.

Free Market Fundamentalism

Free market Fundamentalism is a term applied to a strong belief in the ability of unregulated markets to solve most economic and social problems. But what happens in an economy with an oversupply of labor and no industry to absorb that labor?

Well, the principles of supply and demand suggest that labor will be cheap in such a scenario, and employers are spoiled for choice when deciding who to hire and at what cost.

People in Windhoek's Central Business District (CBD) queuing to withdraw money at a local ATM.
People queuing to withdraw money at an ATM in Windhoek’s Post Street Mall. Credit: Vitalio Angula / Ubuntu Times

In the absence of strong labor unions, the ability for workers to get at least a decent, living minimum wage is eroded!

The absence of a minimum wage for Namibia’s working force is one of the main contributors to the phenomenon of the working poor: people who are formally employed but can’t afford the basics in terms of food, clothing, and shelter, let alone school fees for their offspring, transport, water, and electricity bills.

How Did China Do It?

Following the disastrous Cultural Revolution in China, communist party leader Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese government initiated an open-door strategy aimed at achieving economic growth by actively embracing foreign capital and technology, while simultaneously upholding its socialist principles.

On the other hand, Namibia, at the dawn of independence, adopted a free market economy that they labeled ‘mixed’ and allowed capitalism to reign without proper regulation or oversight by the state.

Deng successfully enhanced the economic well-being of the Chinese populace through the implementation of a political framework characterized by a one-party socialist democracy, with the adoption of a market-oriented economic system.

This meant that there was an improvement in the economic status of Chinese people, which translated into a higher quality of life.

Namibian-based economist Robin Sherbourne states that “in spite of moderate real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate averaging 4.3 percent and translating into real GDP per capita growth of about 2.3 per year since 1990, this has not sufficiently translated into substantial reduction in poverty, income inequality, and unemployment”.

This was ten years ago, in 2013, and the status quo prevails.

Why has Namibia managed to have year-on-year economic growth that has not translated into employment opportunities, and in instances where those employment opportunities do not translate into a higher living standard for its working class?

Stalls that trade in arts and craft in Windhoek's CBD.
Small-scale businesses sell arts and crafts in Windhoek’s Central Business District (CBD). Credit: Vitalio Angula / Ubuntu Times

The answer lies in the extractive industries, which are the mainstay of the economy. On the back of a huge mining sector, Namibia exports raw materials to other countries that manufacture them into finished goods.

Uranium, gold, copper, and diamonds are just some of the natural resources that Namibia is endowed with.

The country also has a huge fishing industry that exports jobs to countries such as Spain and Italy.

The lack of labor legislation and strong trade unions also compounds the tragedy of the working poor because there is no basic (minimum) (living) wage, and workers, especially those who are new entrants into the workforce, take the first offer that is put on the table, which is usually not market-related.

Employers take advantage of the plight of those who are desperate for employment and compensate them a pittance for the output and services they provide.

Inequality and wage disparities are man-made, and there is a need for an ethical dialogue on how to protect the most vulnerable of citizens so that they are protected from an unjust capitalist labor system.

Economic Freedom In Our Lifetime

Vitalio Angula
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Economic Freedom In Our Lifetime

A packed FNB stadium with over one hundred thousand supporters demonstrated the mass appeal of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) amongst South African voters at the party’s ten-year anniversary held on July 30, 2023.

The left-leaning party founded ten years ago with Julius Malema as its Commander-in-Chief is described as a radical, pro-poor, pro-black, pro-workers party by its National Spokesperson, Leigh-Ann Mathys, who spoke to Ubuntu Times on the successes, challenges, and future the party holds for its over one million supporters.

She also spoke about how the organization plans to address the issues facing South African youth, such as high unemployment and a lack of access to basic services such as healthcare, quality education, land, and decent housing.

Mathys says the party has seen significant, consistent growth since its inception ten years ago, not only in the number of people attending their rallies but also at the national and provincial level, where the party managed to garner support to grow the number of seats it occupies in the chambers.

The EFF managed to grow its electoral support by seventy percent between the 2014 and 2019 elections. The party increased its seats in the National Assembly from twenty-five in 2014 to 44 in the 2019 elections.

The same upward trend also occurred at the provincial and municipal levels.

“In terms of both membership and in terms of public support, we have seen consistent growth since our inception ten years ago. We have also seen an increase of our seats both in parliament and the provincial legislatures and in the municipalities, which are our local councilors,” Mathys tells Ubuntu Times.

Mathys says the EFF’s party policies and Seven Cardinal Pillars speak to the material conditions of South Africans and how they will be addressed.

“While we may not be in government at provincial and national level, these are the things we have been lobbying for consistently, whether it’s through parliament or whether it’s through the courts, or whether we go on the streets and protest, so that process of us doing that has garnered us support in South Africa, especially amongst the youth. We are speaking their language because we understand where they are coming from, so they want to be part of this movement that is fighting for economic freedom in our lifetime,” Mathys informs Ubuntu Times.

The Seven Cardinal Pillars of the EFF, which the party says are non-negotiable, are:

  1. Expropriation of land without compensation for equitable redistribution
  2. Nationalization of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors of the economy
  3. Building state and government capacity
  4. Free quality education, houses, and sanitation
  5. Massive protected industrial development to create millions of jobs, including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the gap between rich and poor
  6. Massive investment in the development of the African economy
  7. Open, accountable, corrupt-free government and society without fear of victimization by state agencies

EFF leader Julius Malema has faced criticism for his Pan-Afrikanist outlook on the need for open borders on the continent.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) celebrate 10 years at the FNB stadium in Johannesburg.
The National Leadership of the EFF on stage with the Commander in Chief, Julius Malema, at the center when the party celebrated its 10th anniversary since its founding at a packed Johannesburg stadium in the southern African nation. Credit: EFF

The EFF has a policy on “progressive internationalism,” which seeks the ‘ultimate integration of the African continent through the erosion of unnecessary borders.

According to Mathys, those with an agenda to keep Africa divided frequently misrepresent the integration of Africa in the context of removing borders in the media.

“Our founding manifesto makes pertinent the idea that Africans should have free movement on the continent. The open border policy is propaganda and a term that has been phrased by whites, by the West, who do not want us as Africans to unite. They make us hate each other but come here on our continent whenever they want,” Mathys remarks.

“They want to continue dividing us in Africa, and that is why we are so passionate about the Pan-Afrikan agenda,” she says.

Dumisani Baleni, the EFF Media and Communications Officer for the Gauteng Province, echoed Mathy’s sentiments on the need for African integration through the erosion of borders as a prerequisite for economic development on the continent.

“African borders are a creation and result of the Berlin Conference; for South Africa to prosper, we need Lesotho to prosper, Zimbabwe to prosper, and Eswatini to prosper, and this can only happen if there is economic integration that allows us to piggyback on one another’s strengths,” the spokesperson in South Africa’s largest province by population (and smallest in size) says.

According to Baleni, the people who took land from the indigenous blacks during the period of colonialization are still in possession of the land, whereas those who fought for the land still remain land dispossessed.

He highlights that the EFF, through its policy of expropriation of land without compensation for redistribution, seeks to rectify this economic injustice.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) celebrate 10 years at the FNB stadium in Johannesburg.
EFF Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema, in the center, wearing black, flanked by the National Leadership of the party with arms raised, waving at the crowd at the 10th Anniversary Celebration at a packed FNB stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Credit: EFF

“The economy of this country has been surrendered to the private sector, but it is dwindling. The state should be in charge of massive industrialization, and that is what our party articulates through its seven pillars when we talk about the nationalization of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors,” Baleni explains.

Baleni says EFF’s growing popularity is a result of its ability to articulate its political program in a manner that resonates with the majority of South Africans, who still experience racism on a daily basis through the unequal distribution of resources and the economic disparity that expresses itself through race.

He informed Ubuntu Times of an incident involving a black learner at a private school who was assaulted and later expelled for having dreadlocks, which is against the school’s hairstyle policy.

He said the ANC, which is the governing party and in charge of the education department, has failed to address the issue of black learners who are forced to adhere to white standards, white culture, and white activities, even in aesthetic expressions such as hairstyles.

“Our ground forces went to the school to confront its leadership, and we are still consulting, but we should be cognizant of racial discrimination, which has not been criminalized, and the harmful effects it has on our society,” Baleni says.

In 2024, South Africans will be going to the polls to elect a new government. The EFF is currently the third-most popular party in the country, and its popularity has grown over the ten years since its inception.

The party, which emerged from the shadows of the Marikina Tragedy on August 16, 2012, where thirty-four miners were killed by South African police during a protest for better working conditions, regards itself as the First Line of Defense for South Africa’s economically marginalized.

Leaders in the party, like Baleni, joined in response to the Fees Must Fall Movement, where tertiary education students protested against the high cost of education as a barrier to employment and upward mobility.

It would seem like the material condition of black South Africans is a primary motivator for the growing popularity of the EFF.

Baleni says EFF resonates with South Africans because it has a clear position and clear direction and provides ideological clarity, which speaks to the hopes and aspirations of the black South African majority.

EFF Confronts Racism In South African Schools

Vitalio Angula
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EFF Confronts Racism In South African Schools

An incident involving a thirteen-year-old girl child at the Crowthorne Christian Academy in South Africa led to the schools’ closure and the re-sparking of debate on black aesthetics in a racially polarized country that still battles with systemic, systematic, and institutional discrimination against blacks, who make up the majority of the population.

Tynil Gcabashe, a thirteen-year-old student, had her dreadlocks on when the school made the racist decision to dismiss her from class, according to a media release from the Economic Freedom Fighters Provincial Communications Officer for Gauteng province, Dumisani Baleni.

This provoked the EFF to stage a picket at the school.

“The school principal is reported to have said the learner will not be allowed back to school unless her dreadlocks are shaved off, on the 14 August when the learner’s parents sought to resolve the issue with the school, a white racist male alleged to be the principal’s husband, acting on the instruction and permission of the school, violently handled both the mother and the young girl and pushed them out of the school. A video circulating on social media bears evidence to this effect,” the statement reads.

Baleni further said the Crowthorne Christian Academy has a policy that allows only learners with natural hair in the school.

“This policy is predicated on the racist notion that natural hair means relaxed and straightened hair inherent to white people, whereas curly hair and dreadlocks, characteristic of black people’s hair, are considered unnatural and therefore prohibited from the school,” Baleni stated.

Hendrick Makaneta, education activist and deputy chairperson of the Foundation for Education and Social Justice Africa, told Ubuntu Times that black aesthetics are not accepted as a universal standard because of the highly entrenched European culture in private schools. He said blacks are expected to accede to policies that were formulated by whites and that such policies do not acknowledge African hair, such as dreadlocks.

Dumisani Baleni seated in a lecture hall at an EFF Gauteng Provincial Plenum.
Dumisani Baleni in attendance at the EFF Gauteng Provincial Plenum, which was addressed by the President and Commander-in-Chief Julius Malema at the beginning of the year. Credit: EFF Gauteng

“Unfortunately, the thirteen-year-old girl was victimized for expressing her African identity,” Makaneta said.

“The fact that the school was allowed to develop policies that are not in line with the spirit of the constitution of the republic (South Africa) exposed the government’s failure to provide leadership,” he added.

Makaneta highlighted that although the autonomy of educational institutions to develop their own policies should be respected, the government ought to put correct mechanisms in place to monitor and evaluate the various policies adopted by the institutions from time to time.

The events that unfolded led to the closure of the school, which was found not to have the proper licenses to operate.

Spokesperson at the Gauteng Education Department, Steve Mabona, told Ubuntu Times that the incident with the thirteen-year-old is an isolated case of discrimination, and the department hardly hears of or deals with such cases.

“All codes of conduct of our schools were reviewed not to discriminate learners on the basis of hair… What is paramount is discipline of learners at our schools,” Mabona told Ubuntu Times.

Mabona said the school has now been closed down due to non-compliance with registration as an educational institute.

“The school was operating illegally because they decided to relocate and changed their name without following proper procedures,” Mabona stated in email responses to Ubuntu Times.

Education activist Makatena said racism is pervasive in South Africa as a result of the economic disparities between white and black South Africans, with the former still being largely in control of the economy.

Dumisani Baleni, addressing the Vaal University of Technology students ahead of the Student's Representative Council election in 2018.
Dumisani Baleni, addressing the Vaal University of Technology students ahead of the Student’s Representative Council election in 2018. Credit: EFF Gauteng

“The fact that the economy is still controlled largely by the white minority means that acts of racism will continue,” he said.

“Of course not every white person is racist, but all whites in South Africa are beneficiaries of racism,” he further highlighted.

Makatena implored the government of South Africa to take practical steps to end poverty and inequality, which affects mainly black South Africans in a negative way.

“As long as the owners of the means of production remain white, we are likely to see a continuation of racism. Even the schools we are talking about now are owned by whites; hence, black children are expected to comply with European norms and standards,” he said.

“Government must also move swiftly to decolonize education by making history compulsory in all schools; children need to learn more about African history as opposed to European history,” he added.

Gauteng is the economic hub of South Africa and Southern Africa and is home to the richest square mile on the African continent, Sandton.

There are over 2200 public schools in Gauteng and 500 private schools.

Although Ubuntu could not independently verify the figures, Gauteng is estimated to have about 2.6 million learners. Twenty-one percent of South Africa’s total estimated learner population of 15 million.

Africa’s Rebirth At 60: Carrying Noble Ideas That Nobody Is Willing To Implement

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Africa’s Rebirth At 60: Carrying Noble Ideas That Nobody Is Willing To Implement

To most academics, intellectuals, and pragmatists advocating for a genuine Pan-African renaissance six decades after the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, later renamed African Union in 2002) in Addis Ababa in 1963, the continent’s aspirations as highlighted in Agenda 2063 might fail to materialise as overwhelming evidence point to Africa’s lack of creative framing, knowledge and thought leadership in global affairs.

Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020, Western global media corporations have put Africa at the tail end of post-industrial development by formulating narratives that befit Western ideology, markets, history, values, and perspectives at the expense of Africa’s existence. Even so, the outbreak of monkey-pox in Western countries got giant media deflecting the source and linking it to Africa.

When Russia launched its special military operation on Ukraine on February 24 last year, DSTV’s Multichoice shut down Russia Today (Russian television) Channel across Africa in the view that Africans must not listen to anything balanced or sympathetic to Russia, and even so, they decide on what information should be made available to Africans across the continent.

In the face of the hegemonic and dominant Western media organisations’ onslaught, Africa’s political leaders have not reacted with relevant material and content to diffuse narratives against the continent. Theirs has been an unresponsive and less committed call to action while thought leadership is needed.

The effect of the failure to provide African thought leadership has now seen African journalists writing stories about Africa without targeting the African audience but writing for a Western audience. The news framing is the same.

Dealing With A Distorted Image

Internal conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, and the war in Ethiopia that ended last November give hard lessons on the dangers of leaving foreign media corporations with the responsibility to frame Africa’s events.

African media houses have not done much to tell the African story, in most cases, they have allowed the dominant media from the Western countries to lead the narratives, and because Africa has become a ground of military, political and economic contests between the West and East, media companies such as China Global Television Network (CGTN) and Russia Today (RT) have also taken a side in framing Africa.

Instead of using hard power in Africa, both Western and Eastern countries now prefer soft and smart power, a component that infuses foreign values, principles and norms in which they assimilate and graft Africa into the phenomenon of their narratives.

At the 60th anniversary event to commemorate the founding of the OAU on May 25, 2023, at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed restated a position he made last year before African heads of state that “Africa needs to tell her own story”.

PM Ahmed said, “On this same occasion last year, I called on all of us to tackle typically the negative portrayal of Africa by the global media. I stressed the need for Africa to tell her own story and not allow others to tell it in the service of their own interests.

“In this respect, please allow me to reiterate yet again the need to establish an African Union Continental Media House. Until Africa tells her own story, her image remains distorted. And distortions affect not how others view us, but also how we view ourselves. We owe it to ourselves and our children that Africa’s truths need to be told as they are, untainted with external interests and bias.”

Without a doubt, Africa’s leaders are not oblivious to what they need to do to reconstruct the image of the continent through having a devoted African Union Continental Media House.

Ahmed’s Old Suggestion

Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, Admire Mare says the proposal by Ethiopia’s Ahmed is old as African leaders like Ghana’s independence President Kwame Nkrumah and Libya’s Col. Muammar Gaddafi made the same.

“The proposal by the PM of Ethiopia is not new. Similar proposals were made by Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi. It is an attempt to turn the gaze and use technological infrastructures controlled by Africans to speak back and showcase their own stories.

“Similar attempts have been seen with Al Jazeera, CGTN and Russia Today. The role of the media is still seen in instrumental ways, that is, as an enabler to speak back and speak out. On paper, the proposal is appealing but media sustainability and editorial interference are teething problems.”

According to Mare, African governments will face serious challenges in relation to financing models to fund the African Union Continental Media House, at a time when the AU is also failing to fund its operations.

He made reference to the closure of The Southern Times newspaper, an initiative set up by the governments of Namibia and Zimbabwe in 2004 to provide alternative narratives to Western views that targeted Zimbabwe at the height of its land redistribution programme. The Southern Times announced in 2019 that it was closing operations due to “dwindling financial resources”.

Prof. Mare adds, “We have seen the closure of The Southern Times (a Zimbabwe-Namibia) initiative, so there is no guarantee such a proposal by PM Ahmed will not close shop. To make it work, there is need to come up with a solid business model, strong and accountable board of directors and hiring of media professionals from all African countries. The media house should have bureau chiefs or correspondents in all the countries in Africa.”

Media and Journalism senior lecturer at Limkwokwing University in Lesotho, Mr. Tawanda Mukurunge shared similar thoughts with Prof. Mare that PM Ahmed’s proposal is old and documented in the 1980 MacBride Report also known as Many Voices, One World sponsored by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Findings of the MacBride Report were in response to the 1970s New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debate on the non-equitable access to information and media imperialism.

“There is nothing new about this concept. We have the Pan-African News Agency that was formed in 1979, with headquarters in Senegal, to produce content that presents and preserves the voice of Africa. The essence of NWICO was to counter the reports that Global South countries should be in the periphery of information access,” said Mr. Mukurunge.

According to Mr. Mukurunge, the key challenge to the full realisation of this proposal is the lack of unity between African countries.

“Some of the Francophone countries rely too much on their former coloniser, France, to the extent that as African leaders might agree on something, but when it comes to voting and execution they tend to get directives from France, and that is problematic.

“Remember when Zimbabwe was seeking to galvanise African leaders through having support on its land reform programme, it was Senegal’s former leader Abdoulaye Wade who opposed Zimbabwe’s position to please the French. As long as some of our people are controlled by external forces, as a continent we will not go anywhere,” added Mr. Mukurunge.

So Much Work To Do

There is so much work to do. African journalism needs to go beyond the simple problem of news framing to epistemic framing. Epistemic framing is about the locus of enunciation of the story, that is, the body political and geopolitical of the subject that speaks.

When one listens to or reads African print and electronic news, there is no difference to tell whether the news is meant for an African or Western audience. This tends to show that African journalism seems to be preoccupied with lower-order ethics shaped by the social and epistemic location of the storyteller.

Politics and Journalism lecturer at the Africa University in Zimbabwe, Dr. Alexander Rusero says African journalism will never see an authentic framework as long as it remains in the shadows of the West.

“We (Africans) are still hunters and gatherers of information. We have no authentic African journalism or media but rather colonial mimicry,” says Dr. Rusero.

IMF And World Bank: The ‘Bad Samaritans’ And Neoliberals Cheating Africa Into A Cycle Of Pernicious Debt

UbuntuTimes
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IMF And World Bank: The ‘Bad Samaritans’ And Neoliberals Cheating Africa Into A Cycle Of Pernicious Debt

The Western liberal consensus has long been intervening and interfering in Africa. The first form of intervention was through the slave trade from the 16th century, a mechanism that was used to reverse the trajectory of African history, followed by colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries which led to the robbery of the continent’s resources and the displacement of its political and socio-economic organization.

However, for the years towards the end of the twentieth century, these two forms of intervention have been resurrected and today re-appear in the form of debt. The rhetoric of Africa being independent remains a mirage when the is encircled with the debt traps, an enticing formula that capitalism uses to lure Africans through its institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).

The IMF and WB are instruments used by the United States to engage in a modern form of slavery by offering giant loans, especially to Global South nations. On the surface, this appears generous, yet the loans are intentionally too big; failure to repay means the entrapped country begins to abide by the political interests of the United States.

While Africa decries slavery, the U.S. through the IMF and WB, pulling the mechanics of a global empire, enslaves more people today than what the Romans and all other colonial powers did.

From the onset, the Bretton Woods financial institutions were created to capture, first, the post-World War II Europe under the pretext of rebuilding and reconstruction. Secondly, the period of decolonization in Africa from the 1960s, gave way for an independent Africa to support the U.S. in its gesture towards liberation movements that opposed mainly British rule in Africa. African countries were later inclined to support the United States’ financial plans through the IMF and WB, endearing themselves to an all-pervasive culture of aid dependency to which there is little or no real debate on the exit strategy from this debt web and quagmire.

In his magnum corpus, Confessions of An Economic Hitman, U.S. writer John Perkins summed it all saying when dealing with the United States and financial institutions of the neo-liberal consensus, “nations need to avoid debt at all costs if they want to remain free.” 

The Sad Case Of Zimbabwe

In 2000, Zimbabwe embarked on a revolutionary agrarian reform exercise meant to address colonial imbalances, thus repudiating the International Law of Colonialism or the Doctrine of Discovery that European colonizers used to displace indigenous Zimbabweans from their territory on September 12, 1890.

For repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery which gave whites rights to access all land and property belonging to blacks without compensation, in 2001 Zimbabwe was sanctioned by the United States, and the European Union (EU) in 2002. The U.S., using the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), directed the IMF and WB to block any loan meant for Zimbabwe, and that the African country repay the debt it owes its creditors.

The debt now stands at US$17.4 billion! The latest US$3.5 billion debt was assumed in July 2020, meant to compensate the white farmers who lost land during the 2000 agrarian reform, in particular for the developments they put on the agricultural land they had. 

In search of avoiding the pariah state tag, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa has consistently approached the IMF and WB since 2018 as part of his administration’s re-engagement policy with the West with a debt clearance proposal of at least US$8 billion, in the meantime.

Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa appointed the African Development Bank (AfDB) president, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina and former Mozambique’s President Joachim Chissano as conveners of meetings with the IMF and WB.   

Repentance Under Tough, Unforgiving Conditions

The debt debate about Zimbabwe has provoked reactions from African academics, intellectuals and interventions from politicians. Zimbabwe is expressing a willingness to settle the debt, but under tough conditions imposed by the IMF and WB. There are points of convergence, and similarly of divergence, on what has to be done.   

“It is always important to talk about debt. You cannot turn a blind eye to it because it is a pertinent matter. More importantly, talking about debt means Zimbabwe will have clarity from its creditors on their expectations. Zimbabwe has been given conditions by the IMF, WB, and the Western countries, and they are tough and we as history informs, the Zimbabwean government cannot meet them,” Gift Mugano, a professor of economics at Durban University of Technology in South Africa told Ubuntu Times.    

The conditions include that Zimbabwe liberalize its financial markets, institute currency reforms and electoral reforms, respect human rights, hold free, fair and credible elections on August 23 to entrench democracy, stop the harassment of political opponents, and implement the December 2018 Motlanthe Commission of Inquiry into the August 2018 post-election violence in which soldiers shot and killed six people.

“The Zimbabwean government is doing the opposite, meaning the holding of free and fair elections is not on the right footing. Reforms relating to financial markets liberation and the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are going to fail because the government wants to embark on command economics.

“These IMF and WB conditions are just a reprint and duplication of the ZIDERA sanctions as the U.S. government confirmed. Zimbabwe is being reminded that it has to repent, yet the conditions are tough,” notes Prof. Mugano.

On the issue of political rights, Zimbabwe is deemed to be faltering as the deputy chairperson of the main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party, Job Sikhala, has been in pre-trial detention since June last year for inciting violence, while leader of the Transform Zimbabwe party, Jacob Ngarivhume, was sentenced to four years imprisonment in April for inciting violence on social media. Several other opposition members face various charges.

Suicide Is Not Martyrdom

Despite having tough conditions to re-engage with Western financial institutions, Zimbabwe’s pathway to compensate former white farmers in the region of US$3.5 billion is seen as “suicide”.

Some analysts accuse President Mnangagwa of pandering to the interests and agenda of Western neoliberals, unlike his predecessor (the late) President Robert Mugabe who was uncompromisingly strong on Pan-African and nationalist values. 

“Where will Zimbabwe get the US$3.5 billion dollars? On that issue, the country committed suicide. In essence, it is now Zimbabwe saying ‘we are sorry for taking back our land’. 

“Practically Zimbabwe will not win and the IMF, WB, and the West will even not do much. Other multilateral institutions will be given sanctions if they lend Zimbabwe money without America’s approval,” Prof. Mugano said. 

Development economist Dr. Prosper Chitambara thinks the issue of compensation is unavoidable. 

“I do not see a way out. Compensation is necessary to bring closure. Zimbabwe cannot avoid it, or run away from it,” Dr. Chitambara said. 

What Needs To Be Done?

Many scenarios are up for consideration on how to deal with and address debts African countries owe to creditors, and some radical approaches have been thought of.

Speaking about debt, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, at a meeting of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May 1987 before his assassination five months later suggested that “We should even stop paying the debts and in any event, we deserve the reparations for slavery, colonization and if we (Africans) take a joint decision that we are not going to pay the debt, what will they do to us?” 

Kenya’s Pan-African scholar and public intellectual Prof. Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba describes Sankara’s approach as a “positive methodical madness.”

In an interview conducted on May 2023 ahead of the 60th-anniversary celebrations on the founding of the OAU and its transition to African Union (AU) in 2002 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, blamed the IMF and WB for being “economic enslavers whose agenda is to ensure Africa is in a perpetual state of debt because they want to ensure they control our economics, politics and us.”

“When the IMF and WB were created in the United States in New Hampshire in 1944, none of the African countries participated and it was the British and American economists who participated specifically to rebuild Europe, and Africa was only grafted into these organizations,” Prof. Lumumba said.

The Kenyan erudite said the AfDB was going to be an engine fit to determine Africa’s economic freedom, but remains African “only in name” as foreign countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “have seized, captured and paralyzed the AfDB.”

“The AfDB is only African in name. Even on sanctions deployed in Zimbabwe, it cannot help because we do not have Pan-African institutions. One of the things I hope Africa could do is to rethink how as a continent we finance ourselves. The AU is now financed up to 70 percent by foreigners. As long as we are dependent on the IMF and the WB, our economies are simply going to be shadow economies of the Americans, Europeans, Chinese, and Russians. The time is now to wean ourselves from the breasts of the IMF and WB,” Prof. Lumumba added.

According to Dr. Chitambara, Zimbabwe will only deal with its debt after posting good growth results from investments in critical sectors.

He said: “Countries that have been able to deal with debt have been able to do so at the basis of a growth trajectory. To achieve that Zimbabwe needs to address things to do with infrastructure, energy, transport networks, and all critical enablers to unlock the potential of the economy.

“Zimbabwe can also leverage the rent from natural resources, meaning the government should impose revenue rents and that is a viable alternative to collect money that can be used towards debt pay-offs.”

Beware Of The Bad Samaritans

For long, Zimbabwe and other African countries have been kept in a pernicious cycle of poverty as a result of loans that were extended by the IMF and WB in the name of helping in economic transformation. 

However, the conditions tied to these loans and unfortunately accepted by African countries, demand that Global South states reevaluate their positions on what they receive from Western financial institutions. 

The best way to deal with the IMF and the WB is never to deal with them!

Oil Money Heralds Trouble For Uganda’s Indigenous Bagungu Tribe, Environment

Diana Taremwa Karakire
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Oil Money Heralds Trouble For Uganda’s Indigenous Bagungu Tribe, Environment

BULIISA, Uganda — Baboons wander through shrub-lands that line the sides of newly built roads straddling Uganda’s wildlife reserves close to the shores of oil-rich Lake Albert. Across the border in Congo,  magnificent lush green hilly countrysides stand out. If you’re lucky you can catch a glimpse of elephants too. Wildlife is abundant here, but such scenes might be no more in a few years, as oil companies embark on multi-billion projects to pump as much as 6 billion barrels of crude oil from Uganda’s biodiversity-rich Albertine Rift Graben.

Baboons crossing the newly built Hoima-Buliisa road in Buliisa District
Baboons crossing the newly built Hoima-Buliisa road that straddles Bugungu wildlife reserve close to the shores of oil-rich Lake Albert. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire / Ubuntu Times

This territory has also been occupied for generations by the indigenous Bagungu people, who tilled the land to cultivate millet and sorghum and gather medicinal herbs and fish on Lake Albert. The Bagungu have over the years used traditional techniques to conserve the lands. From restricting access to sacred areas to designating wildlife sanctuaries, owing in part to a traditional belief that nature and its resources are guarded by spirits.

But planned development of hundreds of oil wells that dot the shores of lake Albert poses new threats to the pristine environment and has come at the expense of indigenous people’s rights. The Bagungu have been uprooted from ancestral grounds and their once revered cultural sites destroyed—including shrines and grazing lands.

Alex Wakitinti a chief custodian removes his shoes at Wandeko sacred natural site in Kasenyi village Buliisa district
Alex Wakitinti the chief custodian removes his shoes at Wandeko sacred natural site in Kasenyi village Buliisa district. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire / Ubuntu Times

“We have lost our grazing lands. Our people wish oil had not been discovered in this area,” Alex Wakitinti the chief custodian of sacred sites of the Bagungu, says, pointing at a newly built highway. “We no longer have access to medicinal herbs and sacred trees where we worshiped.”

French oil giant TotalEnergies operates the Tilenga oil project in the remote districts of Buliisa, Hoima, Kikuube, and Nwoya near the ecologically fragile Murchison Falls National Park and the Nile Delta in western Uganda. The project consists of six oil fields and is expected to have 400 wells drilled in 31 locations. It will also house an industrial area, support camps, a central processing facility, and feeder pipelines. The project necessitates the acquisition of 2,901 acres of land across the districts, as well as additional land within the national park.

TotalEnergies Tilenga project located near Lake Albert, Western Uganda
A map showing the TotalEnergies Tilenga project located near Lake Albert, Western Uganda. Credit: Petroleum Authority Uganda

According to Petroleum Authority Uganda, the process of acquiring land for the Tilenga project is still underway and has displaced 5,523 families. Residents and local officials, however, say that this process has been marred by inadequate and delayed compensation and resettlement.

Three years ago, TotalEnergies, approached Kaliisa Munange, a peasant farmer in kasenyi village, in Buliisa district, near the shores of lake Albert with a proposal. They would take over his 6-acre piece of land for project developments, in exchange for a bigger chunk of land, complete with a house, in a nearby village. With the promise of a better life, Mr. Munange consented to a relocation that he thought would be life-changing.

“When I arrived, I was so disappointed all the promises were empty, yet the company had already taken over my property,” he said, frowning his forehead with anger. “It was very far, there wasn’t a nearby school that my children would attend and the hospital is ten kilometers away. I decided to take them to court but up to now there is no decision.”

A notice board for Tilenga project-related information updates in Kasenyi Village, Buliisa district
A notice board for Tilenga project-related information updates in Kasenyi Village. Locals say these haven’t been effective due to the language barrier. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire / Ubuntu Times

Kaliisa’s is not the only case. His plight is shared by thousands of peasants in this lakeside village, which will soon house one of the largest oil processing facilities in Africa. Many have been waiting for compensation for several years since they were ordered not to plant any perennial crops and erect permanent structures on their land.

Fishing on Wanseko landing site on the shores of Lake Albert in Buliisa district
Fishermen at Wanseko landing site on the shores of Lake Albert in Buliisa district. Most fishing sites have been cordoned off due to oil developments. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire / Ubuntu Times

locals are nostalgic of the good old days when they had a source of livelihood tilling their land and fishing freely from L. Albert. When the land was communally used for grazing, worship, herbal medicines, and building materials.

“Community involvement and participation in the land acquisition process and environment impact assessment processes has been limited,” says Wakitinti “Our people were not involved in the identification of cultural sites and a number of medicinal herbs and trees were not assessed for compensation.”

Total executives deny the allegations insisting that the company is addressing the complaints of the affected people and has even been providing them with supplies, such as food.

A tamarind tree, one of the sacred trees central to Bagungu worship system, Kasenyi village,Buliisa district
The tamarind tree which is one of the sacred trees central to Bagungu worship system, Kasenyi Village, Buliisa district. Custodians say that a number of these trees were not assessed during the social and environmental impact assessments for Tilenga oil project. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire / Ubuntu Times

Pauline Macronald, head of the environment biodiversity at TotalEnergies Uganda says that the project is taking measures to ensure the socioeconomic stability of project-affected persons.

“TotalEnergies is committed to developing the Tilenga project while observing human rights standards and International Finance Corporation performance standards,” she said, adding that the company has been in close contact with project-affected people to minimize the projects’ impact on locals.

The constitution of Uganda safeguards property rights and land ownership. It affirms that everyone has a right to possess property and offers strict protection against unfair property deprivation. This states that everyone whose private property or land must be acquired for a public project should get prompt, fair, and reasonable compensation.

The International Finance Corporation Performance Standard 7 aims to guarantee that corporate operations minimize adverse effects and promote respect for indigenous peoples’ cultures, rights, and dignity. A fundamental criterion is the free, prior, and informed permission of indigenous peoples, as well as informed consultation and engagement with them throughout the project development process. The Bagungu, however, contend that these rights and standards have been violated by oil project developers.

“The land acquisition processes for oil projects have been shrouded in secrecy, no transparency. The processes have not been participatory and consultative in nature and any project resistance has resulted in costly formal court proceedings to the indigenes,” says Enoch Bigirwa, the former chairperson of the Bagungu Community Association.

The Bagungu Community Association BACA is a local group championing the rights of Bagungu amidst oil developments in their territory. It exists for the sociology-cultural and economic development of Bagungu. BACA is part of the environmental groups that filed a lawsuit against TotalEnergies in France over human rights violations and environmental harm in its Uganda oil project.

Who are the Bagungu

The Bagungu are an indigenous tribe native to Uganda and totaling around 83,986 according to the 2014 population census. They are mainly found in Buliisa, Hoima, and Masindi districts of western Uganda-Albertaine Graben. They belong to the historical Bunyoro Kingdom led by an Omukama, their King.

Bangungu people of Uganda
A map showing the location of the Bangungu people of Uganda. Credit: Bugungu Heritage and Information Centre

They are agricultural and fishing folk. Bagungu are the guardians and custodians of Lake Albert, a large freshwater lake that is the the source of Albert Nile, a branch of the River Nile that flows through Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, and DR Congo.

Oil Developments in Uganda

In 2006, oil and gas reserves were discovered in Uganda’s Albertine Graben.TotalEnergies and China’s CNOOC recently reached a final investment decision to inject $10 billion to kick start oil developments in partnership with the government of Uganda through Uganda National Oil Company which will subsequently lead to production in 2023. Output is expected to peak at 220,000 barrels a day of crude, Uganda consumes around 15,000 barrels a day of crude. Part of the crude oil will be refined to supply the local market while the remainder will be exported through a 1,443km buried East African Crude Oil Pipeline EACOP from Uganda to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania for export to the international market.

Uganda envisions the development of the oil and gas industry will accelerate economic growth, and job creation, improve the general prosperity of Ugandans and catapult the country into middle-income status. Petroleum Authority of Uganda estimates that about 200,000 people will be employed in the oil and gas sector.

However, climate campaigners have been opposing oil developments in the country citing environmental issues, climate change, and community rights violations. As a result, financiers of fossil fuel projects like banks, insurers, and other financial players have been urged to refrain from providing financial support for oil projects.

“Biodiversity is seriously threatened by Total’s oil operations. Government should encourage green economic investments in clean energy. These are inclusive and have the greatest multiplier effects on employment,” said Diana Nabiruma, the communications officer, at Africa Institute for Energy Governance.

This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network’s Indigenous Story Grants

Aiding Poverty By Smuggling A Rare Black Stone For 30 Pieces Of Silver

UbuntuTimes
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Aiding Poverty By Smuggling A Rare Black Stone For 30 Pieces Of Silver

For Claudious Murungweni (not his real name), a 35-year-old bus conductor plying the Zimbabwe-South Africa cross-border route, the corruption and smuggling of a low base mineral has turned around his economic fortunes.

From a paltry equivalent of US$90 dollars as a monthly salary, Murungweni now has a new avenue that is financing his livelihood running into thousands of US dollars.

Since October 2021 when the government relaxed the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that enabled cross-border buses to carry passengers, Murungweni says he has been approached by “good guys with great deals.”

“I carry raw granite stone slabs cut from the main blocks. These black granite slabs are movable by bus so for that job we get ZAR25 000 rand (US$1 600). First transaction is just a fifty percent deposit that I use to pay (bribe) the police and revenue collection officials at the Beitbridge border post.

“When we get to South Africa that is when I am paid the balance,” says Murungweni.

For the trip, Murungweni shares the money with the bus driver, and also bribes Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) officials at the Beitbridge border post and their South African counterparts.

Zimbabwe is a country richly endowed with useful diverse mineral resources. Despite this vast mineral resource base, more attention has been placed on highly valued minerals like gold and diamonds when people talk of smuggling.

The illicit financial flow in the mining sector according to the government through Home Affairs minister Kazembe Kazembe costs the state US$100 million each month in lost revenues, a total of US$1.2 billion annually.

The issue of illicit financial flows affecting Zimbabwe’s struggling economy has moved from highly precious minerals like gold to low minerals like the granite stone, now known as “the black gold.”

From where the granite stone is mined by the Chinese, in Mutoko, a rural area about 140 kilometers east of the capital Harare, villagers have little to show off the mineral mined in their area, except bearing the brunt of environmental damage.

Granite mining damages the environment
The mining of Granite in Mutoko has left a trail of environmental degradation. Mining companies have not come up with initiatives to protect the environment. Credit: Ubuntu Times

A 2019 investigation conducted by ZELA on the financial and social impact of black granite mining in Mutoko revealed that less than ten percent of Zimbabwe’s granite is cut and polished locally with the bulk of it being exported in its raw form as “granite merely cut into blocks.”

Because issues of smuggling are not treated with precision in courts, a close associate to the country’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Ms. Henrietta Rushwaya, was in October 2020 intercepted at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International airport with six kilogrammes of gold worth an estimated US$366,000 in her handbag en-route to the United Arab Emirates.

She was arrested, spent days in prison and later released from custody in January 2021 on ZWL$100 000 bond. However,  her case is now collapsing after anti-corruption advocates hinted that the way her case is progressing has been engineered to collapse because of her close links to the Mnangagwa family.

“If I get arrested I will just know I am a small fish, and those heavily involved in smuggling are walking scot-free. That means our system has broken down and people can just do all they can to earn a living. I do not even ask where the granite stone is going,” adds Murungweni.

According to Shamiso Mtisi, the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association (ZELA), from where the black granite is mined “environmental damage and lack of community benefits for the people of Mutoko” are key characteristics.

“We hear there are issues of the smuggling of the black granite stone from Zimbabwe specifically because of its fineness and being a great quality mineral. Unfortunately, there is a failure to have it benefit the communities from where it is mined.

“What is procedural is to have granite exported through formal procedures by going to the Minerals Marketing Cooperation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ), but the money that these mining companies pay as a mining levy is inadequate. Those levies deny the communities opportunities for development,” said Mtisi.

Export cumulative figures by the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency (Zimstat) revealed that in 2020 Mozambique, Zambia, South Africa, Italy, Switzerland, China, Greece and Spain are among the top export destinations of unbeneficiated granite.

The Black Gold, the new name for Granite stone
A heavy machine seen atop the huge Granite boulders mined in Mutoko. Credit: Ubuntu Times

Mutoko is not an exception regarding general environmental, economic and social challenges resulting from the mining of black granite.

To curb smuggling syndicates and plug illicit financial flows, the Zimra border controls say the upgrading of the Beitbridge Border post into a “world class” center is one that will help break the stranglehold of smuggling syndicates.

Zimra head of corporate communications Francis Chimanda says the authority is working to improve security to reduce instances of smuggling by improving the bus terminal that will see all travellers.

“The new bus terminal (at the border) will provide facilities where all buses will have their goods offloaded and checked before authority to proceed will be granted by revenue officers through scanning of gate passes to activate the opening of boom gates.

“This will go a long way in ensuring that the buses are checked and authority to proceed is granted. The upgrade will also generally improve security and reduce instances of smuggling at the Beitbridge border post as the new measure for traffic control and movement have improved the checks and balances,” Chimanda says.

Chimanda also pointed out that Zimra officials have embarked on random searches of buses to break the smuggling syndicates but they have not intercepted any with black granite stone.

“Currently random searches are being done on exit buses and to date, no interceptions have been made on granite being smuggled. Having said that any instances of possible smuggling will be thoroughly investigated” Chimanda adds.

Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) spokesperson Dosman Mangisi says as long as government and policymakers in Zimbabwe do not come up with a Minerals and Metals Beneficiation policy, the country’s minerals will continue to be smuggled out.

He says the value of beneficiation should be explained to the communities where the minerals are being mined in order to empower locals.

“Basically we are lagging behind as a country because Zimbabwe has no legal and policy instruments that enable value addition of our minerals. We have no metal beneficiation laws.

“Our principals should come with beneficiation policy frameworks that govern this. The ones we have speak of mining on a touch-here-touch-there basis,” Mangisi says.

For example, sample surveys conducted by the ZMF since 2016 have concluded that Zimbabwe is sitting on US$30 billion worth of iron ore but the country is currently importing 70 percent of its iron requirements.

“For this country to unlock value, granite beneficiation should be done at community level through a formulated Minerals and Metals Beneficiation policy. These minerals should therefore be classified so that we know their uses and value.

“As long as we do not have beneficiation policies we will never know the value of what we have,” adds Mangisi.

He also urged the government to start beneficiation awareness campaigns at community level so that locals know what value their minerals have.

Lumumba’s Tooth: A Symbolic Caricature Of Afrika’s Continued Political Toothlessness

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Lumumba’s Tooth: A Symbolic Caricature Of Afrika’s Continued Political Toothlessness

The western media’s campaign in 1960 to discredit the first democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of Congo (modern-day DRC), Patrice Èmery Lumumba, make a sad ending as the burial of his golden tooth last week Thursday, 30th June shows the continued pauperisation of Africa’s heroes in both life and death.

On June 30, 1960, Lumumba’s independence speech after the country untangled the shackles of Belgian colonialism inspired great confidence in the other countries that were fighting for independence.

For him, the Congo’s victory over Belgium was a victory for Africa. His plan for the struggle for political independence and economic emancipation of the Congo was to have a far and wide-reaching impact on the whole of Africa.

“The Congo’s independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent. It was filled with tears, fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle, because it was just and noble and indispensable in putting an end to the humiliating bondage forced upon us.

“That was our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule and our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to be forgotten,” Lumumba said in his independence speech.

While his yearning for African independence was a wholesome commitment to the sprouting movements of freedom in other countries like Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, western media was planning to erase Lumumba’s historical contributions to Africa’s independence renaissance.

With high tensions fostered by the Cold War, many from the western bloc that was led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) described and labelled Lumumba as the “man who has the head of Lenin which has to be crushed.”

Lumumba’s boldness in preaching the socialist ideology in the face of capitalism made those who want to monopolise the world kill him.

In his book, The Assassination of Lumumba, Belgian academic Ludo De Witte highlighted that no person of African extract was expected to speak against Europeans like the way Lumumba did on independence day because they were masters of all humanity.

Lumumba’s Flame Of Consciousness Dying

For Africa, the recorded last words of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary President Thomas Sankara in 1987 when he was facing his assassins that “ideas cannot die”, speak in contradiction of the actions shown by Africans at the arrival of the continent’s hero’s golden tooth that was kept as a trophy in Belgium.

While “ideas cannot die” has been a popularised way to speak for independence and post-colonial freedom by Pan Africanists and nationalists in general, the silence of Africa on Lumumba’s demise on January 17, 1961 poses a loud betrayal and dissipating appetite of continental togetherness.

Lumumba, just like Sankara, had the vision to see Africa independent of all manacles that were impeding its growth. A reality that is difficult to envision today under the new continental leaders who, mostly, have sacrificed principle on the altar of political expediency.

Burying An Incomplete Hero As Atonement

Lumumba fought for the Congo’s independence as a complete man. The burial of his golden tooth, his only remains, on Thursday 30th June at the 62nd independence anniversary of the DRC invokes the colonial prejudices and an unfair post-colonial setting where Africa’s former colonisers show no remorse over their past misdeeds.

In November 2002, Belgian authorities who had deliberately engineered the elimination of Lumumba released a report of his murder, an inquiry that was carried out by a parliamentary commission by examining archival and testimonial evidence.

The accounts examined were porous and evidence also showed that many witnesses were not subjected to rigorous cross-examination. It was a stage-managed inquiry to allow for a “national consensus” over the matter, critics said then.

Even those who participated in Lumumba’s violent death, most have used Cold War rhetoric to their defence and have died a reluctant death. One such man is Gerard Soete, a Belgian police officer who directed Lumumba’s assassination and threw his chopped pieces into acid, later said the Congo’s independence Prime Minister “had beautiful teeth” before his death in June 2000.

Gerard’s daughter, Godelive, reportedly shared images of the tooth with Belgian media following pressure from Lumumba’s family.

Without bringing the matter to justice, DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi, while presiding at the 62nd independence anniversary said the “Congolese people can have the honour of offering a burial to their illustrious prime minister.”

“We are ending mourning we started 61 years ago,” said President Tshisekedi.

In 2011 while speaking to The Gambia’s exiled former president, Yahya Jammeh, Lumumba’s youngest son, Roland, disclosed that his family was trying to follow the good ideals and practices of his late father towards the liberation efforts of Africa.

“We must know exactly who did it, how and why. We have the right to know and it is our duty to pass this knowledge onto the future generation. The answers to these questions should be known by all Africans,” said Roland.

Now that the answers are clear for the Lumumba family, the Congolese and African people, the burial of Lumumba’s remains without a formal apology from the Belgian political and monarchical establishment project a tainted Africa-Europe future relationship.

In a letter read at Lumumba’s funeral by one of his granddaughters, it painted a picture of an Africa that has not been shocked but expressed a silent satisfaction with the burial of Lumumba’s tooth as a historical victory for Africa by the return of his remains.

“With you, today, Africa is writing its own history,” read Lumumba’s granddaughter.

Africa’s Painful Path To Recolonisation?

In his lecture on The Past, Present and Future of Pan Africanism at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa last October, renowned Pan Africanist and public intellectual Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba said Africa is weak hence no one wants to pay attention to its progress, if it has any.

P.L.O. Lumumba on the Past, Present and Future of Pan Africanism
Pan-Afrikanist, P.L.O. Lumumba is one of the vocal figures whose call for Pan-Afrikan political leadership has largely been ignored by neocolonial African political rulers who are merely complacent with being political figureheads in the gross destabilization and maladministration of Afrika. Credit: Office of the Prime Minister – Ethiopia

He said the issue of Pan Africanism and African unity is a basis for the continent to come together and avoid yesteryear pitfalls that came with colonisation.

“If you want to know how weak we are look at how we are treated. When our leaders even if they are saying something, it is something that can be ignored. The world does not listen because we are weak and disunited. So we have a weak continent because the spirit of Pan-Africanism disappeared.

“We are weak. That is the reality of our mother continent. It is because we are politically weak, economically weak and socially we are disorganised, culturally and spiritually we are confused. That is the continent in which we are in today. We unite or we perish.

“We need to use our Africanness as a building block to talk about African unity. Sometimes when we talk about Pan-Africanism and African unity, people think we are being simplistic about it. No, it is not being simplistic. It is recognising that as long as we remain the way we are, then African in the next 25 years will be recolonised. So the question that we can ask is what is the state of Pan Africanism as we speak today?” asked Prof. Lumumba.

He said the weakness of the continental body, the AU, stems from the manner it acts.

“The African Union, which is weak, says the right things and does the wrong things nine out of ten times,” he added.

Ghana’s Quest For A National Cathedral Has An Immoral Foundation

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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Ghana’s Quest For A National Cathedral Has An Immoral Foundation

The burning cross of the Ku Klux Klan registers starkly as I think about Ghana’s National Cathedral project. What was meant to be a symbol of faith and morality may end up a scar on not just the Ghanaian Christian community, but the entire nation.

Recent developments around the project, comprising leaked documents and remarks from government officials, have heightened the fears that the Ghanaian people could ultimately end up bearing the cost of this unholy convergence of church and state in a secular republic.

The project raised some eyebrows when it was first announced in March 2017. Reason dictated that Ghana focus on more pressing deficits in other areas of society. However, this project had significant backers, with figureheads of Ghana’s Christian community coming out in support. At the time, the Akufo-Addo administration was also yet to wade into the pool of scandal and graft.

To keep the cynics in check, we were told the cathedral, which is expected to seat 5,000, have a series of chapels, a baptistery, a music school, an art gallery, and Africa’s first bible museum, would not primarily be funded by taxpayers’ money.

Instead, the government was going to rely on donations to fund the pledge Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo said he made to God ahead of his 2016 election victory. The only thing the state was going to offer towards the project was a 14-acre piece of land — land on which some state institutions, judges, and even a diplomat had to be relocated.

The earliest estimate of the cost of the project that Ghanaians were given was $100 million. At the time, I had zero confidence the project was going to have enough donations for substantial work on the project. And sure enough, in the 2019 budget, the government announced that it was going to provide seed money for the project.

Fast-forward to 2022 and Ghanaians remain unclear on how much in donations the government has raised towards the project. We do know that the cost of the project has shot up to $350 million and that the government has been pumping much more state funds into the project than its earlier utterances suggested.

Some leaked documents and past commitments from the government indicated that it may have so far spent over GHS 250 million on the project. As part of this amount, GHS 36 million ($4.4 million) has gone to the architect of the project, the western-acclaimed British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye (whose name also came up in the questionable attempt by Ghana’s Parliament to build a new chamber). As has been noted by observers, questions have to be asked about why he was paid money for a project at such an early stage.

The money going into the project feels like an even harder slap in the face as Ghanaians contend with the crippling inflation that birthed a cost of living crisis. But the rising fuel costs and food prices are just the things that are easy to spot because they affect all Ghanaians on a daily basis. There are other pressing concerns like the decrepit healthcare system littered with abandoned projects and the unacceptable deficits in education.

Broken furniture in Ghana basic school
Many basic schools in Ghana lack key infrastructure for teaching and learning. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

As a Christian, the relative silence from the prominent pastors and Christian leaders who endorsed this project has been deafening. It is the latest chapter in my frustration with the church in Ghana for not using its influence in Ghana to hold the political class to account.

Nicolas Duncan Williams, one of Ghana’s most influential pastors, even played the card of common partisan foot soldiers, accusing critics of the project of favoring the opposition. “Some of you love your political parties and are more loyal to your political parties than you are to the bible and the cause of Christ,” the charismatic preacher said in 2017.

It is not enough to argue that the cathedral will bring glory to God when we are certain the political class has given up on any sense of morality. Even if the church in Ghana is unconcerned by the government’s misguided priorities, it should be concerned by the half-truths told about the funding of the project and the lack of transparency and accountability.

I wonder if the board of trustees of this project, comprising the who-is-who of Ghanaian Christianity, feel any shame. If we weren’t comfortable saying it before, we can boldly say the hoard of charismatic preachers that the government, including Muslim elements within it, has leaned on for legitimacy are complicit in Ghana’s moral decay and ultimate underdevelopment.

The politics of religion in Ghana stinks. Christianity has seemingly been warped; almost like white supremacists have defiled the cross Christians hold dear in the past. Nana Akufo-Addo can ride on the popular slogan of the “Battle is the Lord’s” to rise to power, but not account for the tens of millions of dollars that he and his cohorts used to fund their campaigns.

Ghanaians seem desensitized to the grave injustice the Cathedral will come to represent. An immoral government is what we have known all our lives and come to expect. We can easily point to scandals, uncompleted hospitals and schools under trees as evidence of its corruption.

If all goes to plan and the national cathedral is ready in 2024, we will unfortunately also have a national edifice to point to when highlighting the corruption of the church.

Despair Has Become The Daily Bread Of Ghanaians Amid Cost Of Living Crisis

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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Despair Has Become The Daily Bread Of Ghanaians Amid Cost Of Living Crisis

Regardless of the circumstance, the average Ghanaian’s favorite platitude is “we are managing.” Be it a rough patch in school, scraping for the rent or struggling with a rickety car, the ordinary Ghanaian is likely to still point to the light at the end of the tunnel. The first months of 2022 have changed that.

You needn’t point to the 13-year high in inflation (23.6%) or other data points to know that. All you require is a quick trip through town, where the hike in fuel prices, transport fares and food prices are pummeling Ghanaians into submission. For example, Ghana’s Statistical Service noted that in April 2022, rising food prices accounted for 50% of inflation.

Ghana’s cost of living crisis isn’t just about rising prices. It also has to do with static incomes and depreciating savings. Everything is going up except salaries. Then there’s the small matter of a government that has not helped ease the misery of Ghanaians with its insincere posturing.

While key factors driving up the cost of living are global, Ghanaians are frankly tired of officials that hold up the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently, the war in Ukraine, as the reason for the prevailing despair.

What would be a change of pace will be for the government to acknowledge failings in critical areas during its six years in power. We are a far cry from the days when Ghana’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo, proclaimed that his administration had “the men” to protect the public purse, secure an economic turnaround and usher in an era of industrialization and prosperity.

Now, all Ghanaians have are slogans like ‘One District, One Factory’ and ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ that elicit scorn instead of hope. For most Ghanaians, we live in a utopia of development and progress – but only on paper, because we are great at identifying problems and formulating inspiring manifestos and development plans. The reality, however, feels like a gyre of curses and misfortune.

The buck always stops with leadership. What Ghanaians see when they look to theirs for empathy and direction is a complete lack of it. Consider the picture of citizens commuting in chunks of tetanus on a daily basis as President Akufo-Addo came under fire for obscene amounts spent on a luxury jet for travel.

The symbol of government insensitivity in recent months has, however, been the new and controversial 1.5 percent tax on all electronic transactions above 100 Ghana cedis ($13). For those already paying income tax, one understands why the levy is considered cruel double taxation. But the government’s commitment to the taxes on fuel is the bigger cruelty for me.

Fuel is viewed as having the most consequential ripple effect on the cost of living. Part of this is because the tax build-up of finished fuel products, sometimes described as nuisance taxes, make up about 29% of what Ghanaians pay. When fuel prices go up, so do transport prices, and then food, and then commerce becomes the wild west.

In one of the more infuriating recent developments, public school feeding caterers, who serve vulnerable and poor kids, have had to protest to demand an increase in the current daily allocation of 0.97 Ghana cedis ($0.13) per child. Unconscionable.

Just when Ghanaians thought things could not get any worse, the utility companies distributing electricity and water popped up like horsemen of the apocalypse, indicating they want a 148% and 334% increase in tariffs, respectively. With a lot of Ghanaians and businesses already stretched thin, this could be a killing blow.

Ghana’s social emergency is all too real, and it is high time the current government acknowledged how false promises have intensified this crisis. Flagship programs that were supposed to address fundamental issues like food security are bearing rotten fruits. Ghana wouldn’t be depending this much on imports and crippling the Ghanaian cedi if a policy like ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ was working.

Because of this, Ghana’s main agricultural worker’s union talks like Ghana an Old Testament famine is about to befall Ghana. Who can blame them? As the weeks go by, I doubt them less.

But as Ghanaians hold the government to the fire and demand accountability, they must also hold a mirror to themselves. Perhaps it is time Ghanaians finally prove Kwame Nkrumah right for saying “Ghanaians are not timid people… They may be slow to anger and may take time to organize and act. But once they are ready, they strike and strike hard.”

Like the distressing scenes in Sri Lanka, we must not swat at this crisis with despair. Instead, our feet should become one with the streets as we voice our anger at the government’s incompetence and demand a leadership that treats its people with dignity.

Military Takeovers A Reminder Of Africa’s Ailing Ballot Democracies

Delali Adogla-Bessa
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Military Takeovers A Reminder Of Africa’s Ailing Ballot Democracies

On February 12, most of Ghana woke up to the news that one Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a figurehead of one of the West African country’s most significant protest movements, had been arrested.

His crime? A scathing post on social media that criticized the government while recklessly proffering support for a coup. It earned him a questionable treason felony charge.

His call for a coup came against the backdrop of rising costs of living in Ghana and the government’s attempts to compound this with unpopular tax measures being opposed by the masses.

Amid the tensile political climate in West Africa, where Mali, Guinea and most recently, Burkina Faso, witnessed the overthrow of governments, Barker-Vormawor’s comments have been described as unwise.

But his sentiment cut to the core of the disease festering across parts of Africa, of which coups are a mere symptom.

Ewald Garr, a governance analyst, bored this down to broken democracies run by a political class that is out of touch with its people.

“When there is unresponsiveness, you see people begin to lose trust in their elected leaders and once people begin to lose trust in the elected leaders, you see frustration and despondency,” he explained.

He noted that the disease we should be looking to cure is the broken perception of good governance across the continent.

“All these things [coups] are arising is because our institutions are not well composed. Our governance system is just weak,” he said.

The simple diagnosis of the problem is matched by the casual air surrounding the recent military takeovers.

Take for instance the Burkina Faso coup, where military officers appeared on state television and announced the military overthrow like it was a weather report.

But for the people, who had been fading in a drought of despair, the announcement of a coup was like a forecast of rain. It brought joy.

This has played out in Mali and Guinea over the last two years, as well as beyond West Africa in Chad and Sudan.

The specific contexts of the coups have differed in each country, with alarming insecurity being cited by coup leaders in Burkina Faso and Mali, amid the threat from jihadists.

But there have been some constants that cut across, foremost among them economic hardships, inequality and a lack of empathy by the ruling class.

Even more worrying is the fact that these constants are ripe in countries that are hailed as beacons of democracy, like Ghana.

For Dr. Afua Yakohene, a research fellow at the Legon Center for International Affairs and Diplomacy, it is clear that “all the conditions that called for coups in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali are right here in Ghana.”

It has also been hard to ignore the fact that these coups were met with overwhelming approval from their mostly-youthful populations.

Consider the situation in Mali, where thousands have rallied in support of the junta after sanctions meted out on the West African country.

Dr. Yakohene observed that these countries have “frustrated masses; a large youth bulge that is unemployed.”

These people are most likely frustrated by the “lack of dividends that they hoped democracy would deliver,” she added.

Settling For Elections

The bar for democracy has been noticeably lowered for African countries. 

It is increasingly being equated to relatively incident-free elections with no scrutiny of what happens in between polls.

A ballot cast in an election
The worth of Africa’s democracies has been reduced to the conduct of elections. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

But Dr. Yakohene stressed that “the holding of periodic elections is just the tip of what democratic states must be.”

“Many west African citizens even have come to not appreciate elections, so there is voter apathy and there is low turnout during elections.”

This could be traced back to the end of the Cold War and the fall of the iron curtain.

With the victory of the West over the Eastern Bloc, the idea of democracy became a necessary benchmark for countries seeking aid and development.

“It gradually pushed many African countries to adopt the policies of democracy,” Dr. Yakohene recalled. “Some leaders realized that if you need loans, and you need aid, and you want to satisfy the expectations of the western leaders, hold elections.”

These elections can be nothing more than ticked boxes because West Africa has witnessed a number of situations where political power has almost become a birthright.

Consider the example of Togo, where Gnassingbé Eyadéma was President from 1967 until his death in 2005, after which he was succeeded by his son, Faure Gnassingbé. Yet, Togo claims to be a democracy.

Dr. Yakohene described this as a form of “autocracy and monarch-cracy” that was cultivated out of the West’s insistence on the adoption of democracy, however superficial.

This very international community is often silent when there is clear evidence that democracy is subtly being undermined, with arbitrary amendments to term limits or voter suppression. But it sounds an alarm when coups occur.

The same could be said about regional bodies like the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which also turns a blind eye to abuses of power and democracy by its own members.

The community’s chair, Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo, has himself faced criticism for attacks on free speech and voter suppression following Ghana’s bloodiest polls in 2020.

Nana Akufo-Addo delivering a speech
Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo has been the Chair of ECOWAS since September 2020. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times

ECOWAS has been instead known to spring to action and propose sanctions when it should rather be in a lab working to find a cure for the disease spawning these coups.

This cure lies simply in committing to the basic tenets of democracy, said Mr. Garr.

“What ECOWAS should be doing is having strong institutions that are able to diagnose the poor governance.”

He doesn’t think the continent has been learning from mistakes that date back to the ‘60s, where there were 26 successful coups on the continent in the wake of independence movements.

Mr. Garr is of the view that some re-orientation and a stronger commitment to engaging citizens in the process of governance is the most important step to finding a cure for the conditions that birth coups.

“It is the lack of transparency and the lack of the basic tenets of democracy in our countries that is steering all these coups we are seeing,” said the analyst.

As simple as the solution sounds, there is a clear lack of accountability and lack of political will across the continent that gives Mr. Garr little cause for hope.

“As a continent, we have a very long way to go because most African countries still can’t see the importance of good governance,” he says. “They only see elections.”

Thomas Sankara Trial Set To Resume

UbuntuTimes
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Thomas Sankara Trial Set To Resume

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso — Thomas Sankara’s trial is set to resume on Wednesday, February 2nd after a military court restored the constitution on Monday, January 31. 

The trial was due to resume on Monday; however, civil representatives voiced their concern, citing the need for “judicial normalization.”

Prosper Farama, the lawyer representing Sankara’s family clarified that the legal team and civil representatives believe that the trial time frame should be reasonable though they leaned toward a trial not marred by “irregularities.”

Sankara was assassinated while attending a National Revolutionary Council meeting alongside twelve officials in an October 15, 1987 coup aged 37. 

After the bloody coup that saw Sankara killed, Blaise Compaoré who is suspected to have instigated Sankara’s assassination came to power, ruling for 27 years before being deposed by a popular revolution in 2014 which led him to flee and has since remained resident in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. 

When Sankara’s trial began in October 2021 before a coup interrupted closing proceedings, twelve out of 14 defendants appeared in court including one of the top leaders of the 1987 coup, General Gilbert Diendéré. The main defendant, Blaise Compaoré, and Hyacinthe Kafando, Compaoré’s former guard commander, were absent. Most of the defendants who were present pleaded not guilty to the murder of Sankara. 

The resumption of Sankara’s trial is another turn of events in Burkina Faso after former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was toppled on January 24, 2022, by mutinous soldiers stemming from his inability to address the people’s outcry concerning violent jihadists threatening lives and properties. 

34 years on since the infamous coup, Burkina Faso is still haunted by Sankara’s ghost. He was an influential soldier and servant-leader. Sankara left an indelible mark in Afrika’s liberation struggle by not only sensitizing Burkinabe people but also raising the collective consciousness of Afrikans against French colonialism and European imperialism. 

He was a revolutionary who won the hearts of Burkinabe and Afrikan people through his strides against corrupt practices, his commitment toward reforestation, food self-sufficiency, women’s rights, rural development, education, health and well-being of his people. To the dismay of the colonial regime, internal detractors and traitors, Sankara even renamed the country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso which means “the land of upright people.”

In a continent where justice is often delayed due to both internal factors and external interference, Sankara’s family and staunch followers will hope for a just verdict that will put an end to Sankara’s protracted trial. 

Karamoja Mining Rush Threatens Livelihoods of Indigenous People

Diana Taremwa Karakire
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Karamoja Mining Rush Threatens Livelihoods of Indigenous People

Billions of investments into mining projects have breathed new life in Uganda’s once-neglected Karamoja region, creating thousands of jobs in mineral-rich heartlands near the Kenyan border but the investment rush has also brought new problems, fueling environmental degradation, rights violations, and land grabbing, threatening livelihoods of millions of indigenous Karamojong people.

Ugandan authorities are investigating the latest deadly clash in the impoverished gold mining sub-county of Rupa Moroto district which happened in late April, that left a 28-year old local defense personnel dead and forced several hundred locals to flee their homes after armed assailants staged a daytime raid and stole gold ores, worth millions of Ugandan shillings. Days earlier, dozens of policemen from Uganda’s mineral protection police who had been deployed to secure the lucrative gold mining village abandoned their positions, due to rising attacks, blamed on assailants, who usually cross from Kenya’s Turkana region.

In a region long inhabited traditionally by cattle-herders, the rush to get the region’s precious minerals gold, limestone, and marble, is uprooting people, damaging key water sources, and stirring social unrest. Locals talk of being displaced from their ancestral farmlands by land grabbers while others are now suffering from many diseases, including skin infections and diarrhea, blamed on consuming water from contaminated water bodies, as some miners use hazardous chemicals including mercury to extract gold.

Impact On The Environment

“We have been invaded by foreigners who don’t care about our livelihoods,” said Anne Napeyo, a 30-year old mother in Rupa. “Many of our people are getting wounds on their skin because the water here is contaminated”

Thousands in Karamoja have taken jobs in the mines while others have become “artisanal diggers” digging their own holes and tunnels, risking cave-ins and other dangers in pursuit of buried treasure, local leaders say. In addition to hazards such as contaminated water bodies, mining activities are leaving behind gaping pits, which now dot vast areas as artisan miners leave these behind in search of new grounds. Small children sometimes drown in these pits, while local farmers have lost livestock.

Sacred grounds known as ‘Akiriket’ are also being destroyed. According to the Karamoja traditional setting, every community is socially organized to have its own Akiriket from where the assemble for social events from initiations to naming happens. Community leaders say the minerals are turning into a curse.

“We want development but it can’t be at the expense of our peoples’ lives and livelihoods,” said Margerate Lomonyang coordinator of Karamoja Women Cultural Group and Karamoja representative on the multi-stakeholder group for the Extractives Industries Transparency initiative EITI. “Investors are taking advantage of desperate people who are trying to make a living in the mines”

Land Grabbing

A total of 17,083 square kilometers of land area in Karamoja is licensed for mineral exploration and extraction activities, according to official data. In 2018, Chinese mining company Sunbelt was given 3.3 square kilometers of land to set up a $13 million marble mining factory in Rupa sub-county. A year later, the company expanded its operations to cover additional 4.1 square kilometers, ostensibly after a deal with local leaders. Hundreds of families have since been pushed out of their ancestral homes, local officials say. Locals accuse Rupa Community development trust, a community trustee group created three years ago, of conniving with investors to steal their land.

“The community leaders came to us with compensation documents saying they were going to help us demand compensation when investors come,” one local known as Lokol, said “They tricked us to sign them without paying anything, now we have nowhere to go.”

While Sunbelt insists that company representatives went through the right channels to acquire the land, including signing a memorandum of understanding with the local leaders, authorities are investigating the transaction, according to the energy and minerals ministry.

“Sunbelt violated the community members’ rights to fair and adequate compensation in the land acquisition process. They didn’t involve the community members who are the real custodians of the land,” said Lomonyang.

Another company DAO Marble Africa Limited, which operates a mining license to mine marble has been accused by Human Rights Watch for rights violations, including allegations that the company connived and paid off a few local chiefs without compensating the local residents.

Land ownership in Karamoja is under customary tenure and communally owned and managed. This means that land is held in trust by one generation for another with the elders as ‘stewards’. This very unclear land ownership model makes fair compensation a difficult issue as few elders negotiate with the companies for the temporary acquisition of land.

Local Miners Association To The Rescue

Karamoja Miners Association unites miners in the region and was formed to sensitize local mining communities about their rights, help locals demand accountability from their leaders, and seek fair compensation from mining companies.

A Woman makes a submission during a meeting organized by Resource Rights Africa and karamoja Miners Association to educate miners about their labor rights
Women engage in mining activities in Karamoja. Poor working conditions and environmental degradation pose health risks for them. Credit: Resource Rights Africa

“We organize miners in groups so that they have a formidable voice and can negotiate for better wages and working conditions from mining companies,” says Simon Nagiro the chairperson of the association. “We have also embarked on interpreting into local languages miners’ rights as enshrined under the mining laws.”

Regions’ Mineral Potential

Karamoja is endowed with a vast array of metallic and industrial minerals that have the potential to be developed commercially. A 2011 survey found that the region contains over 50 minerals including gold, limestone, uranium, marble, graphite, gypsum, iron, wolfram, nickel, copper, cobalt, lithium, and tin. With 61% of Karamoja’s 1.2 million people living in poverty, the region’s mineral potential holds the promise of economic development.

Karamoja Mining At A Glance

The Constitution of Uganda 1995, vests all mineral resources in the hands of government but article 244 provides that minerals shall be exploited taking into account the interests of landowners and local governments and further states that land will not be deprived of a person without prompt payment of fair and adequate compensation. Under articles 39 and 41, every Ugandan has a right to a clean and healthy environment and as such can bring an action for any pollution or improper disposal of wastes.

The Mining Act, 2003 is the principal law that governs mining in Uganda. Under Section 4 of the act, a person may acquire the right to search for and mine any mineral by acquiring a license issued by the commissioner. Section 15 provides for payment of compensation to owners of private land for damage done to the surface of the land or to any crops, trees, buildings, or for livestock injured or killed by the negligence of the holder of the license or an agent. Section 43 provides that a mining license shall not be granted unless the proposed mining program takes into proper account environmental impact assessment and safety factors.

Section 110 further makes it mandatory for every license holder to submit a costed environmental restoration plan which requires approval by the National Environment Management Authority. The Act however does not clearly address the regulation of mining activities by different government agencies and how they can follow up with the investors regarding royalties. This is worsened by the limited role local government plays in the regulation of mining activities due to resource constraints.

Rights Of Indigenous Groups In Uganda

According to Minority rights group international, Karamojong pastoralists, are some of the most marginalized minorities in Uganda, isolated economically and politically. Commonly stereotyped by their compatriots as violent and backward, other Ugandans refer to them as warriors. The African Commission’s International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs also recognizes the Karamojong people as indigenous minority groups in Uganda. However, Uganda does not officially recognize Indigenous minority groups. This lack of formal recognition by the state further disenfranchises Karamojong.

Uganda is a signatory to various international instruments that reiterate the rights of indigenous people. These include; the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People 2007, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. However, the country is still lagging behind in terms of protecting the rights of indigenous people.

An artisan gold miner mines for gold in Rupa sub-county
A Karamojong woman digs a hole as she mines for gold in Rupa-sub-county. Such holes dot the area and have become death traps for both children and livestock. Credit: Diana Taremwa Karakire

“We are empowering communities by educating them about their land and property rights so that they are able to hold mining companies accountable,” says Abaho Herbert a program officer at Resource Rights Africa a local charity organization operating in the region. “We also work with local leaders to put in place by-laws that enable fair wages for miners to avoid being exploited by the mining companies”

Since Belgium-based Africa gold refinery set up a $20 million gold plant in Uganda, the country has become a magnet for gold mining activities, notably in Karamoja. Gold exports fetch $1 billion every year and have overtaken coffee as Uganda’s leading export commodity.

For many local leaders, this rush is the reason for increased insecurity, displacement of locals, and inter-communal clashes. Gold miners are routinely attacked by assailants looking for the highly sought-after metal, bringing back memories of the insecurity that plagued the region at the height of cattle rustling in the 1990s and 2000s. Illegal miners continue to flock to the 7 districts of Karamoja, driving up displacements, clashes over land ownership and shared water bodies.

Food insecurity is also a challenge in the region and reliance on natural resources has rendered livelihoods sensitive to climate change, already a reality manifested inform of recurring droughts, flash floods, and prolonged dry spells.

In June 2021, Uganda’s cabinet approved a draft mining law (Mining and minerals Bill 2019) that imposes steep penalties for violations in the sector, including fines of 1 billion shillings ($278,164.12) and prison terms of up to seven years for those found guilty of environmental degradation, illegal mining among other violations.

The new law will replace the old mining legislation that has been in place since 2003, when the region hadn’t discovered vast minerals, according to Vicent Kedi the commissioner licensing at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development.

“The new law will solve issues of non-compliance by mining companies to social and environmental safeguards, ” he says. “We are working with local leaders in the region to continuously monitor mining company operations.

This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network’s Indigenous Story Grants

Child Prostitution Rampant In Zimbabwe’s Slums

Jeffrey Moyo
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Child Prostitution Rampant In Zimbabwe’s Slums

Harare — Donning mini-skirts, popular for being dress codes for the oldest profession here, girls as young as 12, file past the railway tracks towards Harare-Chinhoyi highway, where one after the other, they are picked by motorists to unknown destinations.

Behind the girls, lies a slum settlement that stretches closer to Westgate, a medium-density residential area in Harare, where the girls brag, they have had a constant customer base for their sex services.

In fact, some of the girls claimed, posh vehicles every day in the evenings, often at sunset, drive up to their settlement to fetch them.

So, to quench the pleasures of the men frequenting their settlement, the girls are every day picked and later after business, dropped, to them a sign of thriving business even as they look underaged to be in the oldest profession.

“We have no choice. You can see the conditions we live under – poverty defines our daily living here and if we don’t sell sex, we can’t have food. As for me, I have no parents and I live with my little nine-year-old sister whom I have to feed because our parents died some three years ago,” 15-year-old Pegina Muzhandi, told Ubuntu Times.

Pegina made no secret about what killed her parents, saying they both died of AIDS, a disease she said neither spared her nor her little sister as they both acquired HIV at birth.

She (Pegina) said condom use is a rarity each time she engages her clients.

“More often, my clients who are much older than me – some men in their forties, just prefer not to use condom protection when they sleep with me. There is nothing I can do about it because at the end of the day what I need is money,” said Pegina.

In the slums where Pegina and her sister live with many other girls of her age, there are apparently scores of other grown women also in the business of sex trade – many in fact like 43-year-old Marian Chihoko who openly said sex workers of her age were facing competition from very young girls.

“Underage girls have put us out of business here because they are often preferred by almost every client who comes here because they look young and more attractive than some of us, but also because these young girls charge very little for their services,” Chihoko told Ubuntu Times.

Zimbabwe teen sex workers
Unidentified two teenage sex workers ready themselves for potential clients by the street in the dark corners of Epworth, a poor township 25 kilometers east of Harare, where poverty has pushed many underage girls into sex work. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo / Ubuntu Times

At Caledonia informal settlement, approximately 30 kilometers east of Harare, child sex workers are not a strange phenomenon.

Here, much-grown women like 63-year-old Memory Mhere, admitted that she was making brisky business hiring out desperate young girls to much-grown sex predators.

“The girls here now know I have a wider customer base and so they (girls) come to me asking me to connect them to the rich men who want sex services and I do that and payment is given to me and then I pay a smaller percentage to the girls,” Mhere told Ubuntu Times.

So, a pimp guru in her own right, Mhere admitted to making a killing trading out underage girls for sex – 50 to 65 dollars on a good day.

She however vehemently denied that she was responsible for fanning underage prostitution in her locality, saying in fact the girls approach her on their own.

“I don’t move around calling the young girls to come and sell their bodies. It’s them who come here knowing I am well connected to well-to-do men who frequent this area searching for young girls to sleep with,” said Mhere.

For development experts like Hebert Ruhaka based in the capital Harare, slums across Zimbabwe’s towns and cities have become fertile grounds for child prostitution.

“Poverty is rampant in slums and more often than not, girls there have no access to life’s basics and in order to get the basics, the girls have had to join the oldest profession whether they are in school or at home,” Ruhaka told Ubuntu Times.

According to Ruhaka, who is a holder of a degree in development studies from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University, ‘slum settlements across the country here are infested with underage sex workers, who are as young as 13 years of age.’

Sadly, Ruhaka said, more often than not, elderly women hire very young girls to engage in sex with grown men, something seasoned pimps like Mhere did not dispute.

“The elderly women who lure young girls into sex work get paid by their clients who sleep with the poor underage girls more often without condom protection, with the girls rewarded with very little money by their pimps. At times they are not paid at all or if lucky they are instead rewarded with food handouts,” said Ruhaka.

According to many experts like Ruhaka, many underage sex workers in this Southern African country have dropped out of school, as their poverty-stricken families cannot pay school fees for them, with many of the girls like 15-year-old Pegina apparently orphaned.

In 2019, about 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s children in primary school were sent home for failing to pay fees, according to the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee.

“We are seeing a spike in social vices like child prostitution and domestic violence,” says Father Martin Nyadewo of St. Peter’s Parish in Mbare, a high-density southern suburb of Harare. “Young girls are increasingly taking to the streets to sell their bodies to be able to feed themselves and their families.” Nyadewo’s remarks appeared in a July 2020 article in America, the Jesuit review magazine.

South Africa’s Violence Shows It Is Just Another African Country

Gibson Nyikadzino
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South Africa’s Violence Shows It Is Just Another African Country

The South African government on July 14 confirmed it was deploying 25,000 troops in its two provinces, KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng, after police failed to quell violence and looting following the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma on July 7.

KwaZulu-Natal is Zuma’s province of origin, home of the Zulu people, South Africa’s largest ethnic group. Protests had erupted after the ex-leader handed himself over to police to serve a 15-month jail term for contempt of court.

Zuma, 79, defied a constitutional court order to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in office until 2018.

When South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on July 11 on new COVID-19 regulations, he condemned the protests as “acts of violence based on ethnic mobilization.”

Zulu nation prime minister prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi slammed President Ramaphosa for his “defamatory remarks about Zulu people.”

“I don’t understand what is meant by ethnic mobilization. It’s not about Zulu people against other people, even in the case where they mobilized support for our former president Zuma. Mr. Ace Magashule is not a Zulu and the leaders of Mpumalanga who came here to support Zuma were not necessarily Zulu. This has nothing to do with Zulus, so I don’t know what is meant by ethnic mobilization in what is happening now,” Buthelezi said.

By July 12, South Africa’s currency (the rand) tumbled against major currencies as the riots sprung up, disrupting public transport services and forcing businesses to close. The currency dropped by as much as 2% against the United States dollar. More than 200 shopping malls had been looted by mid-Monday afternoon and the economy lost an estimated US$3.4 billion dollars, according to the Gauteng Premier. Over 150,000 jobs have been placed at risk by the protests.

On July 16 over 2,100 arrests had been made and the death toll stood at 337 with many people trampled to death during looting at stores, while the police and the military fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to try to halt the unrest.

Black Poverty Is Not An Accident

The protests in South Africa are most likely a result of the deep-seated grievances that have not been resolved since the end of apartheid in 1994 like poverty and inequality. While the incarceration of Jacob Zuma has been cited as the turning point to the protests, the lack of ownership of the means of production among blacks is also an attribute to the chaos.

At the time of the end of apartheid in 1994, more than 80% of the land was in the hands of the white minority. According to the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies,  suggestions are that just under 60,000 white-owned farms accounted for about 70% of the total area of the country in the early 1990s. The country’s land reform program has been slow with some indications that less than 10 percent of the total land has been redistributed from white to black ownership since 1994.

When former president Zuma left office in 2018, unemployment was at 27 percent and he emphasized that his party’s incoming government embark on what he termed “radical economic transformation” to address the economic imbalances created during apartheid. Under President Ramaphosa, the overall unemployment rate has risen to 33 percent, with 46 percent of those unemployed being below the age of 35.

As a result, white people continue to be more skilled than their black counterparts and also they attain higher education levels. Therefore, they are likely to attain higher positions in the job market, and on average, earning higher wages. The crisis in South Africa can therefore be understood as the white population’s extensive control over the country’s economy.

South Africa-based political analyst Rutendo Matinyarare said the anger shown by the protestors is symptomatic of the failure of the political economy in addressing the needs of the black majority.

“The violence goes beyond the Jacob Zuma arrest. The Zuma case was just a spark for the anger of people that includes lack of transformation from apartheid, the maintenance of an apartheid economy that is exclusionary in that it excludes black people from participation. The fact that black people have been left in the very exact position they were during apartheid where they had no factors of production, no land to put their own houses, no land to produce food, and the only way they had to survive was to work for capital,” said Matinyarare.

On July 16 President Ramaphosa visited KwaZulu-Natal province where almost 155 people were killed during the protests and acknowledged that the violence was “planned”.

Matinyarare also indicated that South Africa’s three-year recession and the lockdown imposed accentuated the looting and at the moment is difficult to come up with the total cost of damage incurred during the chaos.

“It is difficult to come up with a total cost of the losses incurred but the cost of violence is that there are deaths that have been reported. It has cost the nations unity. There are now divisions along racial lines. This is now set to create a big rift between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ who are the whites and blacks, respectively. A few blacks have been co-opted into the system, but when you look at it their wealth is not a result of legacy but debt because black people never had the opportunity to create wealth. It is just a bandage being put on a rotten wound,” added Matinyarare.

The South African government needs to do more to address widening inequality, rampant unemployment and deliver on the promises of development for all and not just a few. It needs to prove its detractors wrong – that its pursuit of what it terms “radical economic transformation” fulfills the promise of addressing the country’s skewed economic ownership patterns.

Aid To Africa: A Deceptive Neo-Colonial Tool Enforcing Mental Slavery Without Restraint 

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Aid To Africa: A Deceptive Neo-Colonial Tool Enforcing Mental Slavery Without Restraint 

“The root of the disease was political. The treatment could only be political. Of course, we encourage aid that aids us in doing away with aid. But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to achieve greater well-being.” These were the remarkable words from Burkina Faso’s iconic leader Thomas Sankara.

The issue of aid in Africa, which Sankara was vehemently against, is topical and today used in determining how alliances are built and strengthened between the continent and its former colonizers. From the western world, Africa should get military, humanitarian, emergency and charitable aid to promote growth and security among other issues. In these times of the Coronavirus pandemic, giving alms to Africa has gone a gear up through a new phenomenon called “medical aid.” Global players have also joined the race to aid and rescue Africa. After the 2018 Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China pledged aid worth US$15 billion to Africa between 2019 and 2021.

Aid is a new form of colonialism. it is friendly but vicious. It is the new face the west and other global players are using to subjugate Africa because of its friendliness. Nearly four years after Ghana’s independence and realizing colonial defeat, then United States of America (USA) president John Fitzgerald Kennedy announced a new plan to address Africa’s ‘needs’.

“AID represents a very essential commitment. As important as any work that is being done by anyone for this country,” said President Kennedy in 1961 at the launch of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiative.

Emergency rescue
Food donations by non-governmental organizations create a dependency syndrome that will see citizens expecting more handouts even when they have the land to grow crops for self-sustenance. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

According to a 2019 report by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of wealthy donor nations, the value of international development aid in the world reached a new peak of US$152.8 billion, a slight increase over 2018. Africa has received more and this is not mere generosity.

Giving A Crumb After Taking A Loaf

The amount of aid which the west or east call important for African countries is not commensurate with what the global powers are exploiting and shipping out. Resource exploitation and plunder, slave labor and under-pricing of Africa’s resources have become key characteristics of what multi-national corporations are looting, and later return the crumbs in the form of aid.

Africa’s resources were plundered by the Europeans many years before they agreed to formally colonize Africa at the Berlin Conference in 1885. Slave trade stole the continent’s human resources. According to historians, over 12.5 million Africans were shipped out of the continent due to the slave trade. While it is a complex exercise to calculate the monetary value of what was stolen in Africa, but a decade before the American civil war, in New Orleans, a healthy African male slave was auctioned for $1,200. A girl aged nine or ten was auctioned for $1,400 considering her ability to bear more children for resale.

The value of the resources even after independence continues to bring slave wages in Africa. In Ethiopia, one of Africa’s biggest exporters of coffee, farmers are made to sell the coffee at US$4 per kilogram while large coffee companies sell the same at US$200 per kilogram on the international market. The same goes for cocoa in Ivory Coast. As a result, multi-national corporations continue making profits that run into millions while ‘independent’ Africa remains poor. Africa is strategic to global powers because of their reliance on its natural resources and economic opportunities.

The imposition of colonialism on Africa altered the course of the continent’s history. Its impact is felt entirely. The settler regimes had a poor and worse record for poverty reduction, considering the mineral resources of South Africa and then Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe).

With a continued pouring of aid in Africa in the name of “transforming lives” failing to meet the continent’s demands, economist and author of Dead Aid says the issue of aid in Africa is “one of the greatest myths of our time.”

“The state of postwar development policy in Africa today is one of the greatest myths of our time. That billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth is false. In fact, recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse – much worse,” wrote Dambisa Moyo.

Road To Hell Paved With Good Intentions

Humanitarian or emergency aid through drugs and food, charitable aid through scholarships and non-governmental organization (NGO) work, and other interventions have not been sufficient to transform African societies. In the longer term, these are not going to help Africa develop. Public goods such as healthcare, education, and infrastructure are in many instances being financed in most instances through donor funds. What donors are providing are goods that African governments should provide their citizens.

In 2010, in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakariya, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said the role of aid is to support the socio-economic transformation of people and help people achieve things they want and ultimately wean off aid.

Europe's Top Diplomat
Ambassador Olkkonen says the wealth Zimbabwe has is enough to transform the country’s socio-economic condition and in the long term wean it off dependence on aid. Credit: Gibson Nyikadzino / Ubuntu Times

European Union (EU) head of delegation to Zimbabwe Ambassador Timo Olkkonen acknowledges that Zimbabwe has wealth of resources and that in “the longer term we should move away from dependence on aid.” “Zimbabwe is a wealthy country in terms of natural resources and touristic and agricultural potential. In the longer term, we should move away from dependence on aid. Concurrently with providing development cooperation we are building our trade relations with Zimbabwe based on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) we have. We are in the midst of negotiating an expansion of that agreement to cover other areas than trade in goods,” Ambassador Olkkonen says.

According to a 2019 CSO Sustainability Index for Sub-Saharan Africa prepared by USAID, the US government pledged to give NGO’s financial aid to “empower and transform livelihoods of citizens in all sectors.” Despite reports of mismanagement of donor finances, Ambassador Olkkonnen said his bloc has mechanisms in place “to avoid any un-procedurally benefitting from our funding” adding that “the thousands of beneficiaries of EU support all over Zimbabwe will disagree” that EU aid is “just plain wasteful”.

Decolonize The Mind And Return To Freedom

Africa’s modern leaders have abandoned the self-sustenance philosophies of leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Thomas Sankara. Zimbabwe’s media scholar and academic Dr. Lyton Ncube said aid will never develop the continent, but will only avail short-term benefits.

“That issue is a complex one and we need to understand the political economy of aid from the Washington Consensus and taking it from either the eastern or western blocs. When we look at the role of aid in transforming lives of Africans, perhaps the benefit is short-term sustainability and not for the long term. The main problem is those who fund have their own interests, goals, and ambitions. I would refer you to some of the revolutionaries when you look at the philosophies of Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, and Kwame Nkrumah they managed to embark on what I would call the return to freedom,” said Dr. Ncube.

According to Dr. Ncube, the issue of aid resembles the problem of coloniality in Africa and urged governments to take the lead from Zimbabwe when it embarked on the land redistribution exercise in 2000 that benefitted over 300,000 households. Before 2000, only 4,500 former white commercial Zimbabwean farmers owned an estimated seventy percent of the country’s prime land.

Dr. Ncube adds: “To have long-term development we need to own the means of production and be masters of our destiny by value-adding our products. Zimbabwe’s land reform program is a starting point to self-sufficiency. Are you telling me those donors have no people who need help from their countries? Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o says the problem that we suffer from is the problem of the mind. We need to cleanse our minds from the colonial system.”

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