Afrikan Underdevelopment

Operation Dudula

Vitalio Angula

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September 28, 2023

There is no direct translation for the word Dudula in the English language, but the president of the organization that started off as a ‘clean-up campaign’ to directly confront the scourge of crime and drugs by ‘illegal immigrants’ in South Africa says it means ‘push-out’ or ‘more force’.

Zandile Dabula is the President of Dudula, a movement that came into the mainstream of South African politics for its unorthodox stance against ‘illegal immigrants’ in South Africa.

During the 2021 July uprisings, Dudula was led by Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, a 37-year-old activist who has since distanced himself from the group.

Speaking to Ubuntu Times, President of Operation Dudula, Zandile Dabula, said the civic organization resolved at a consultative conference held on May 17, 2022, to transform itself into a political party and contest the country’s presidential and national assembly elections slated for next year.

She accuses the mainstream media of portraying the party in a negative light following a story by the BBC that has garnered thousands of views since it aired on September 19, 2023.

“We know mainstream media is biased; they do not cover everything we do. We placed South African citizens back into RDP houses; we have placed South Africans in jobs. We have our in-house media; we have people in Africa who want to have operation Dudula’s,” Dabula informed Ubuntu Times.

Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was a South African socio-economic framework implemented by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to deal with the country’s most pressing challenges just after the 1994 elections.

The program built houses for citizens (referred to as RDP houses) in the low-income strata; however, these citizens are said to have sold the houses to foreigners (at give-away prices), and Dudula is helping to get them back. However, the group is known more for its “anti-foreigners stance” and “vigilante” antics. Dabula says those who label the party as anti-foreigner vigilantes are not looking at the party’s activities in their entirety.

Zandile Dabula, President of Operation Dudula in South Africa. — Zandile Dabula is the President of Operation Dudula, which is a grassroots movement that morphed into a political party when it became prominent with its anti-immigration rhetoric and citizen arrests. Credit: Zandile Dabula

“South Africa is a welcoming country, but I need to have a passport or a visa to enter, and because our home affairs ministry officials are bribed at the borders, anybody can come in, and this has led to all sorts of crimes which we’re not used to seeing before,” she told Ubuntu Times.

“Nigerians specialize in drugs and body parts; Zimbabweans are robbers and steal jobs. They will kill you! Malawians, they are human traffickers, and they are also being trafficked, being used as slaves by the Pakistanis. They also kill; to be honest, we always see them coming without documents,” Dabula said.

Nhlanhla ‘Lux’ Dlamini came to prominence in the international media landscape as a leader of Operation Dudula during a period of looting and violence that was sparked by the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma on a contempt of court conviction. These protests were similar in veracity and magnitude to the George Floyd protests in the United States of America a year earlier.

“When South Africa went through the July unrest, I was the leading commander that stopped the looting when the police failed. I was engaged to say, you must come, and we protected the malls,” Dlamini explained.

Unbeknownst to many, Dlamini has been the President of the Soweto Parliament for the past ten years and has dedicated his early adulthood to civic engagement in the township, which has an estimated population of 1.8 million inhabitants.

The Soweto Parliament is a community leadership structure that seeks to address issues affecting Soweto residents, such as unemployment, crime, and lack of access to basic services such as electricity.

Dlamini told Ubuntu Times that he has distanced himself from the activities of Operation Dudula due to ideological differences and the organization’s way of doing things. He said he has dissociated himself from Operation Dudula because the movement had deviated from its objective of addressing the issue of undocumented workers who were competing for economic spaces with South Africans in areas deemed not to be needing skills, such as the restaurant business.

“The law states that only foreigners with special skills should be absorbed in the economy where we need them, and the low-entry jobs on the lower part of the economy that do not require special skills should be reserved for the citizens that need jobs… We are talking about the country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and so we were addressing that, and I was happy to associate myself with that cause, but when it started to be out of control…, I had to leave,” Dlamini explained.

“When they (Dudula) publicly came out and said all foreigners, I said nonsense. I can never fight all foreigners; I am fighting the foreigners who are undermining the laws of the country. I had to leave them when they began fighting all foreigners,” Dlamini elaborated.

On the issue of the role South Africa can play on the continent to address the issues that push migrants from their home countries to South Africa Ndlamini said the problems of South Africa’s neighbors are the problems of South Africa and urged the South African government to play a greater role in addressing peace and security on the continent.

“The problem is that governments might be on a certain level of communication, but the average person in the country does not understand or comprehend that level of communication.” The former leader of Operation Dudula before it transformed into a political party noted to Ubuntu Times that governments should be able to communicate and work together with other countries to follow the laws of migration to South Africa.

Regarding the negative stereotypes Zandile Dabula, the President of Operation Dudula, attributed to nationals from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, Ndlamini said he does not agree with such stereotypes because crime cannot be generalized.

“Crime is crime; you must deal with crime. Once you start generalizing crime and making it a nationality, that means you do not understand policing and you do not understand crime because most Nigerians don’t sell drugs; you’ve got a minority of Nigerians that sell drugs,” Ndlamini warned.

“We fight when white people say black people are thieves. We want to fight! We want to fight, but when black people in South Africa say Africans are WHAT! WHAT! Then it’s not a problem. We can’t be two-faced; we must be fair all the time. We can’t say Nigerians sell drugs because not all Nigerians sell drugs. That is why I cannot agree with Zandi, Dudula, or anyone when they say that Mozambiquens do this and Zimbabweans do that. Criminal do 1, 2, 3, you can’t say entire nationals like that, you can’t,” Dlamini vehemently cautioned.

South Africa is Africa’s second-largest economy, with an estimated GDP of US$399 billion, based on a 2023 World Bank report.

According to the 2022 South Africa Department of Statistics census report, the country has an estimated population of 55.7 million people.

However, the country also has a significant number of illegal migrants, which then places the number of immigrants higher, and this is a concern for activists and politicians like Dabula and Dlamini.

Zandile Dabula, the President of Operation Dudula, with members of the police during one of their many operations in Johannesburg, South Africa. — Operation Dudula movement has registered as a political party and will be contesting the 2024 South African elections. Credit: Zandile Dabula

A South African journalist who chose to be anonymous informed Ubuntu Times that many people migrate to South Africa looking for the ‘dream’ but the reality is that resources are few and migrants are sometimes forced into a life of crime in order to be able to fend for themselves.

“Everybody is fighting for space, a slice of the pie. If the economy can grow and the pie can become larger, there will be more for everyone to share,” the journalist stated to Ubuntu Times.

The journalist further informed Ubuntu that some of the solutions to South Africa’s problem of illegal immigrants include tighter border control and South Africa playing a greater role on the continent in exercising its power to facilitate peace and security on the continent.

“South Africa’s policy is peace through negotiation, and like our President Cyril Ramaphosa said, the billions spent on wars can be used on development, but I also think South Africa has to focus more inwards when it comes to making lives better for South Africans,” the journalist emphasized.

Although they differ ideologically, Zandile Dabula and Nhlanla ‘Lux’ Dlamini seem to hold similar views on mainstream media, which they accuse of being biased and misrepresenting Operation Dudula in a negative light to fit the narrative they are trying to sell to their audiences.

“We know mainstream media is biased, and they do not cover everything we do,” Dabula lamented. Dlamini mentioned that the media does not uphold the ethics it should and has intentionally distorted his image in public by portraying him as a xenophobic vigilante when that is not who he is.

“I am well-traveled and have worked with Africans from all over the continent. I once asked a journalist what the word vigilante means, and they could not explain the meaning of the word, but that same time, the journalist was referring to me as a vigilante.

“Everything I did during my time with Operation Dudula has been within the confines of the law. The South African constitution allows citizens’ arrest, and that is what we were doing: arresting people for crimes and bringing them to the police so they can be dealt with. I am no longer with Operation Dudula, so I cannot speak on their behalf, but I do not agree with some of the things they are currently doing,” Nhlanla Dlamini concluded.

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

Delali Adogla-Bessa

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June 17, 2022

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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.

Military Takeovers A Reminder Of Africa’s Ailing Ballot Democracies

Delali Adogla-Bessa

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February 18, 2022

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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.”

Uganda Oil Companies Shrug Off Environmental Concerns To Advance $10 Billion Oil Project

Diana Taremwa Karakire

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February 11, 2022

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Uganda Oil Companies Shrug Off Environmental Concerns To Advance $10 Billion Oil Project

KAMPALA, Uganda — The Ugandan government, backed by French and Chinese investors recently announced a final investment decision to kick start the long-delayed development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves, opening the way for the East African nation to become an oil exporter. But the planned development of the $10 billion projects, along the shores of Lake Albert, poses new threats in the ecologically sensitive area.

French oil giant TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation say they will start pumping as much as 230,000 barrels-a-day of crude from the region by 2025, which will be shipped for export through a $3.5 billion heated pipeline linking the oil fields along Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania. The 900-mile pipeline will pass through Uganda’s lush green hilly farmlands, vast areas of marshlands, before snaking around Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake.

Fanfare and military parades marked the event to sign the agreements, a firm commitment that the country’s 6.5 billion barrels of crude, discovered more than a decade ago will be commercialized. President Yoweri Museveni and the Vice President of Tanzania Phillip Mpago were among the key figures that witnessed the event.

“It is a masterpiece of a project and will be achieved at low cost and with a low carbon footprint,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné, adding that the Ugandan project comes at a time when the world is facing increased demand for fossil fuel.

Patrick Pouyanné the CEO of TotalEnergies makes remarks at the event to mark the signing of the final investment decision that will kick start the development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves — Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of TotalEnergies makes remarks at the event to mark the signing of the final investment decision where he said that Total was committed to developing the crude reserves in a sustainable manner. Credit: Petroleum Authority of Uganda

But local and international campaigners remain concerned about the environmental impact of the new fossil fuel projects and their carbon footprint. In particular, activists are concerned about the pipeline’s potential impact on water resources for millions of people in Tanzania and Uganda, vulnerable ecosystems, and the climate crisis.

Days after the signing, an oil production ship exploded off the Nigerian coast of Escravos, Delta State in what is considered to be the nation’s second major environmental disaster in three months. It’s yet another oil disaster that has resulted in huge amounts of toxic oil being released into the ocean, a stark reminder of the reality of risks involved in fossil fuels production.

Major funders for the pipeline project have also continued to pull out. Four out of five of South Africa’s largest lenders recently confirmed that they will not be involved in the financing of the pipeline project.

According to data from the World Bank, Uganda accounts for only 0.01% of the total global carbon emissions while its per capita CO₂ emissions are also low at 0.13 tonnes. But, that is expected to change when oil production starts. Experts say, oil transported by the pipeline will emit at least 33 million tonnes of CO₂ every year.

But Ugandan officials sought to allay the fears, pleading to safeguard the environment and social protection in the development of the projects.

“This project comes with a very big responsibility on the work of all stakeholders involved in the management and development of the country’s oil and gas sector,” said Jane N.Mulemwa, Board Chairperson of the state energy regulator Petroleum Authority of Uganda.

Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of TotalEnergies leads the other joint venture partners -CNOOCUgandaLtd, TPDCTZ, and UNOC in announcing the final investment decision — Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu claps after the announcement of the final investment decision that will unlock the development of Uganda’s vast crude oil reserves. Credit: Petroleum Authority of Uganda

Local civil society actors have also expressed concern about the gross rights violations meted on local oil projects host communities that oil companies and government have failed to address. Locals complain of being intimidated and threatened by local authorities to accept the inadequate compensation for their land. In 2019 a group of NGOs filed a lawsuit against Total in France over human rights violations and environmental harm in relation to planned oil exploitation in the heart of a protected natural area in Uganda. The organizations accuse Total of failure to adhere to its duty of vigilance “Total’s social responsibility.” The case is still in court.

“Oil Companies should walk the talk and comply with social and environmental safeguards, and international best practices on the path to first oil in 2025,” said James Muhindo, the coordinator of the civil society coalition on oil and gas.

The preliminary work to set the stage for the construction of these projects has progressed. The environment and social impact assessments, as well as the front-end engineering design studies for the Kingfisher, Tilenga projects, and the pipeline, were successfully concluded. All the land required for these projects has been identified and surveyed. The processes of compensation and relocation of the project-affected persons are ongoing. These had stalled for years, amid a litany of disagreements such as tax disputes, funding challenges, and opposition from climate activists.

“This milestone puts us on the path to first oil in 2025,” Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu said in a speech adding that close to 160,000 jobs are expected to be created during the project’s development.

Afrikan Underdevelopment

Operation Dudula

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

Military Takeovers A Reminder Of Africa’s Ailing Ballot Democracies

Settling For Elections

Uganda Oil Companies Shrug Off Environmental Concerns To Advance $10 Billion Oil Project

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