Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Predatory Afrikan Elites

Africa’s Coup Governments: When Elections Become An Exhausted Idea Confirming Democratic Fatigue

Gibson Nyikadzino
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Africa’s Coup Governments: When Elections Become An Exhausted Idea Confirming Democratic Fatigue

The trending successful military coups in West Africa today indicate the continuation of political processes and leadership by another method. Their executions have been systematic; citizens protest against the ruling elites’ failure to ensure economic, political, social and security provisions, then the military moves in.

West Africa is regarded as one of the most unstable subregions on the African continent. Between 1991 and 2011, some of the most brutal civil conflicts in the continent’s history wrecked West Africa. Another contributor to instability in West Africa has been the continuing role of the military and the phenomenon of military regimes. Of the fifteen ECOWAS states, only Senegal has not witnessed a military coup.

The first military coup in Africa was staged on the night of January 13, 1963, when Togo’s President Sylvanus Olympio was shot dead by rebels. The scourge of military coups has further infected other parts of Africa. Moreover, military coups are contagious. A successful coup significantly increases the probability of military coups in that country or its neighbors.

The reactions, actions, and inactions of African public intellectuals, activists, academics, and other opinion leaders to these coup developments have not given enough ground for consensus on whether military coups are the needed form of governance in Africa. However, the agreed-upon common position is that democratic gains in Africa are slowly diminishing.

In April 2019, the government of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir was deposed in a military coup that was backed by some of its civilian allies. The civilian-military alliance overthrew the interim structures and effectively ended al-Bashir’s rule, and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan became the head of the transition that incorporated civilians.

Since then, statistics have been going southward. Since August 2020, Africa has experienced eight military coups. These have been in Mali, which witnessed two coups in nine months; Guinea in September 2021; Sudan in October 2021; Burkina Faso had two coups in eight months—in January and September 2022; Niger in July 2023; and Gabon in August.

Such political developments have brought historic turning points. State weakness has played a key role in these incidences. In other jurisdictions, they have occurred in part due to the government’s failure to prevent the development of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State-affiliated groups throughout the Sahel.

Besides the coups being ‘people-driven’, what is striking is that the most complicating scenario that restricts efforts by African countries or the West to reverse these takeovers is that it is young men who rally in support of military coups and their leaders. With such support, coup makers have resisted regional and continental norms against unconstitutional changes in government and, in Niger, have shunned engagements.

The cases of military coups in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Guinea provide key insights on the changing nature of relations between citizens and military men.

Are Africa’s elections an exhausted idea?

Africa is going through “democratic fatigue and coloniality rupture” that is requiring an alternative to the Western liberal lens of looking at issues, says Dr. Alexander Rusero, a scholar on decolonial thought leader and lecturer at the Africa University in Zimbabwe.

Dr. Rusero argues that events in West Africa’s coup belt are indicative of the need to recognise the role of military men in Africa, as democracy through elections is now an exhausted idea.

“Democracy expressed through elections is now an exhausted idea, as there are certain alternative modes of installing governments, and the military heading that government is just but one of those modes. What we are witnessing is also what we can call the coloniality rupture. There is a rupture of the colonial grip by France over erstwhile colonies. So there are certain circumstances where the military becomes the last resort because there are certain powerful men who preside over states but fail to deliver public goods.

“There is therefore a recession to the extended influence of France in these establishments to the extent that all military men are calling the French government off whenever they assume military power to say, France, you no longer have any business in the affairs of our country; please leave. This talks to the coloniality rupture. Coloniality which has been sustained over the years is slowly depleting and depreciating,” argues Dr. Rusero.

The ECOWAS bloc and the African Union (AU) have been at the forefront of condemning military and unconstitutional power changes in the coup belt but have been silent when elected officials use the military to suppress dissent, civic society organizations, and political opponents using the armed forces.

Dr. Rusero further emphasized that “power consolidation in Africa is through the military, which remains the extension of a political appendage of power. As long as the military is the appendage of political power, the military man also wants to be in that seat because they know the dividends that come with that seat.

“It is hypocritical for the African Union to insist that it does not recognize these unconstitutionally placed governments, yet they hardly say anything whenever there are certain internal dynamics that result in repression, precisely by the incumbent using military force. So as long as the peer review mechanism does not call states to order whenever democracy is in recession, there will be no cure to the coups in Africa.”

Second social contract, covenant

The academic contributions by Western political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau see a social contract as the legitimate consent that those elected officials leading government policy require from those they govern.

However, a contradiction now exists where non-elected officials are given the mandate and consent to govern by the people. There is evidence of an urgent need to renegotiate and redefine models of a social contract throughout a continent where vast sections of the population feel estranged from real citizenship when led by elected officials.

Pro-coup Nigeriens
Nigeriens supporting the July military takeover led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani are seen holding Russian and Chinese flags as they gather in Niamey on August 20. Credit: AFP via Getty Images

To endear themselves with the people, the coup leaders in Mali (Col. Assimi Goïta), Guinea (Col. Mamady Doumbouya), Burkina Faso (Capt. Ibrahim Traoré), and Niger (Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani) promised to institute enough fundamental change to lay new social, economic, and political foundations for their societies. In other words, the military leaders are seen as promising social justice.

Thus, there has emerged an implicit agreement, a new social contract, between the people and their military men and armed forces. Under the new social contract, the citizens and the armed forces have committed to recalibrate the foundations of the state, fight corruption, and expunge French influence and neo-colonialism in Africa’s Sahel region.

Pan-Africanism, neo-colonialism, Russian flags

A new Pan-African spirit is being reincarnated in young African opinion leaders and modern activists who share the values of the first generation of the continent’s liberators. 42-year-old French-Beninese Pan-African ideologue and anti-Western activist Kémi Séba has been the leading voice of reason to endorse the military leadership in Niger, at a time when it has not been fashionable to do so.

Pan-African Activist, Kémi Séba
Kémi Séba, one of the leaders of the Pan-Africanist movement, advocates for the collaboration and integration of African states against Western imperialism. In Niger, he urged pro-coup protestors to stop raising Chinese and Russian flags. Credit: Acotonou

In September, he addressed thousands of pro-coup supporters in Niamey, Niger, rallying people to support the military leadership borne out of the July coup.

“We support General (Abdourahamane) Tchiani (as the head of the regime), we support the military who have taken their responsibilities,” he said after meeting General Tchiani. He observed that the military had listened to the people and “decided to stop the mechanism of neo-colonialism,” hammering that France and the West will not stop the ongoing revolutionary process.

“The Nigerien authorities are counting on us to continue this work of deconstruction of Françafrique and the propagation of Pan-Africanism. We will not disappoint them,” claimed Seba.

On his official X handle (formerly Twitter), he reiterated: “No Pan-Africanist can count on the flawed laws of the institutions of Françafrique to destroy the latter. Only a radical rupture, characterized by the mobilization of the people, allied to the army, and to a powerful geopolitical partner opposed to Western imperialism, will be able to do so.”

He urged positive alliances with geopolitical partners and advised Nigeriens against waving Russian flags.

“Every African leader who collaborates with French neocolonialism is politically on borrowed time. We have started work in the Sahel, and we are going to finish it. Military bases, CFA Franc, cooperation agreements, incestuous relationship between corrupt African and French elites—we are your terminal; know this well,” warned Seba.

From Seba’s advocacy, it is desirable to see Africans free from neo-colonialism, but it is also important to realize that the end of neo-colonialism is likely impossible as West African governments and their economies are not only stimulated by foreign aid but also require it for their own survivability. Unity in breaking this bondage is what Africans require.

Western thought, wrong prescriptions

Experiences in the coup belt resemble the demystification of the Western liberal lens that the military man must not be anywhere close to the political menu. This is fast becoming a myth, as the military man is in essence at the center of the scheme of things in as much as the political dynamics and the political balance of forces in a country are concerned.

The success of military coups in Africa indicates one variation. It is now clear that elections alone are not able to deliver an equitable system of governance. Elections, modeled on the Western liberal system, have alone been unable to correct and address post-colonial challenges in Africa.

Without partaking in any democratic contestation, coup leaders in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger made military interventions responding to the deteriorating security situations and poor economic and social governance of their elected officials. Also, citizens need to be politically conscious, as political leaders create false expectations in their bid to win power. They know they cannot deliver on election promises. Part of this explains their rejection and the embrace of the military.

Decolonizing democracy and development

Prof. Last Moyo, a scholar at the British University in China, doubts the sincerity of the coup plotters and urges citizens to be cautious when they try to embrace them. He describes the military leaders as “opportunistic elements being used to depose governments” and desires that Africa develop its own version of democracy that is not supported by the structures of neocolonialism as they are today.

“The problem is that Africa’s politics is in service to the modern commercial empire that is non-territorial but is still there; that is neocolonialism. Africa’s institutions are not delivering. That is why it is easy for Western countries to interfere in Africa because our politics are not serving the people’s interests. There is a need to reconstitute politics in Africa and answer the fundamental question of who our politics should serve.

“The tragedy that Africa has is that these coups are not necessarily the panacea to African problems. Once they (coup leaders) are given the mandate, unfortunately, they begin to degenerate into the corruption they were condemning. So these cases in West Africa need some time to be understood,” submitted Prof. Moyo.

As the military coups are also partly showing, neoliberal models of democracy and development being implemented in Africa only pander to the interests of Western corporations and global capital. They are not people-driven and oriented in their implementation.

Labour Party And The Future Of Radical Politics In Nigeria

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Labour Party And The Future Of Radical Politics In Nigeria

Needless to say, the 2023 elections happened amid overwhelming disillusionment with the system and popular discontent with the major establishment political parties—the ruling All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party.

This mass disillusionment peaked with the resurgence of the secessionist movements, which resonated with a very significant base in the southeast and southwest regions of Nigeria. It also coincided with the RevolutionNow campaign, which swept across 24 states of the federation. Google recorded that on August 5, 2019, no less than 5 million Nigerians searched the internet for the meaning of “revolution.” The endSARS revolt in October 2020, largely staged by young people who subsequently suffered bloody repression, was the last straw that broke the Camel’s back.

The 2023 general elections will later come to manifest these discontentments in the form of increased politicization of young people; a significant portion of these later described themselves as Obidients.

Having been lured into the candidacy of a former Anambra state governor, Peter Obi, by the so-called “more progressive layer” of the elites, what followed was a process of de-radicalization of a radical mood that had great revolutionary potential. This process continued on a rather exponential scale when Peter Obi, a billionaire, adopted the platform of the Labour Party after losing out to the People’s Democratic Party, where he had spent a whopping sum of 140 million naira purchasing the presidential nomination form.

After securing the presidential ticket of the Labour Party after he had paid 30 million naira as the cost of the nomination form, he became the nominal candidate of the trade unions, their allies – layers of the civil society movements, and many change-seeking elements.

Despite contesting on the platform that was established by workers and endorsed by the trade unions, Peter Obi clung to his neoliberal agenda. His campaign heavily emphasized the removal of oil subsidies, complete deregulation of the oil sector, and policies of privatization and commercialization. However, he showed no commitment to ensuring decent wages for workers or ending the neoliberal assault on public education, an issue of great importance to his youthful base, many of whom hail from working-class backgrounds. Unfortunately, the trade unions remained silent, turning a blind eye to his vigorously anti-worker policies as he campaigned.

The silence of the trade unions was so loud that Festus Keyamo, a serving minister under the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, challenged why the unions kept quiet over the campaign rhetoric of Peter Obi, calling for the removal of fuel subsidy, and total deregulation of the oil sector after fighting successive governments that had tried to do the same thing. In light of the foregoing, many have asked if the Labour Party can indeed serve as the vehicle for the liberation of the working people of Nigeria.

Whereas, the fate of the Labour Party was sealed at birth as reactionary at the conference of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) held at Calabar and Lagos in 1989, which founded the party on petite bourgeois ideas and not the core values that had been associated with the Nigeria Labour Congress in the mid-80s: socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-privatization, national sovereignty, and a commitment to a national economy whose commanding heights are under state and popular control. This is largely because by 1989, a different generation of trade union leaders like Pascal Bafyau had dispensed with these values after the Babangida administration moved against the NLC, harassed, intimidated, and subsequently purged out radical elements from the union.

While the Labour Party’s revolutionary potential was greatly undermined at its 1989 founding conference, the conference of the NLC and TUC held in September 2002 did nothing to address the ideological challenges of the party. It was at this conference that the party was renamed and officially registered as the “Party for Social Democracy.”

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the “Party for Social Democracy” and the Trade Unions maintained a detached and quiet stance while radical parties like Gani Fawehinmi’s National Conscience Party, Democratic Alternative, and the People’s Redemption Party battled the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to expand the political space for party registration. Notably, the “Party for Social Democracy” later rebranded itself as the Labour Party at its inaugural Congress in 2004. Since then, however, the Labour Party has failed to support or advocate for the Nigerian people, instead devolving into a purely electoral vehicle that includes elements of the ruling class that the established ruling class parties, such as the PDP and the APC, left out.

It is for this reason that figures like Olusegun Mimiko and Dele Momodu were able to run under the Labour Party. Olusegun Mimiko served as governor under the Labour Party in 2009, overseeing a neoliberal economy for two terms. He later returned to the PDP in the later part of his second term as governor. The party also provided support to President Jonathan in 2015 by endorsing his bid for a second term, and in 2019, it rendered similar services to President Buhari by endorsing his aspiration for a second term in office.

In the early months of 2022, the leadership of the two Labour centers held separate conferences where, in each case, both unions reasserted ownership and membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, these were just words. The leadership of the trade unions did nothing to mobilize their members into the party. Many of them, like the state councils of the NLC and TUC in Lagos, mobilized support for the ruling parties. Sadly, this has been the attitude of the trade unions toward the Labour Party since 2004—abandoning the party to the whims and caprices of establishment politicians. It is no wonder the nomination form of the so-called workers’ party sells for as much as 30 million naira. The implication of this is that only establishment politicians can run under the party, not workers. Moves like this consolidate the hold of establishment politicians on the party, effectively closing off any possibility of revolutionary working-class-based politicking.

Today, the Labour Party has become a political platform that loudly re-echoes neoliberal and IMF policies far above those of established bourgeoisie parties like the ruling All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party. The Labour Party, through Peter Obi and its Obidient base, amplified policies of subsidy removal and many neoliberal reforms that President Tinubu has implemented over the past six months.

The Labour Party today boasts thirty-five members in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. None have spoken in support of the Nigerian people; rather, they simply joined their colleagues in the national assembly, endorsing Tinubu’s wasteful use of taxpayers’ money, plundering public wealth, offering support for the regime’s neoliberal programs, including the removal of fuel subsidy, and renewed attacks on public education.

In addition, the Labour Party and its Obidient base had spent the last year demobilizing every attempt at mobilizing mass resistance against the neoliberal programs of the All Progressives Congress. Near the end of 2022, towards the general elections, it supported the Naira redesign policy, which imposed unfathomable hardship on ordinary people occasioned by the artificial scarcity of cash.

After Bola Tinubu was returned as President of Nigeria through a shabbily conducted (s)election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Labor Party and its Obidient base actively demobilized mass resistance against fuel subsidy removal, wave of fee hikes, and many other neoliberal programs of the government of Tinubu. It embarked on a massive social media campaign targeted at de-radicalizing and demobilizing young people from taking street actions and subsequently encouraged them to focus instead on reclaiming Peter Obi’s mandate at the election tribunal.

As to the immediate and direct question of how to engage with the Labour Party as presently constituted, there are two divergent views within the broad Labour Movement. Some believe the Labour Party can still be rescued from the tight grip of powerful neoliberal and anti-worker interests.

However, their experiences, like those of many revolutionary activists who have made similar efforts over the last 20 years, have been like that of a man trying to flog a dead horse back to life. Many of these people, especially radicals, soon came back with disappointments after they were purged out and isolated when Peter Obi and his Obidient Movement took over the party. Ayo Ademiluyi, a socialist who had been given a House of Representatives ticket to represent the Eti Osa constituency in Lagos, was dispossessed of his ticket, and the ticket was handed over to a different candidate who had not participated in the primaries but had been committed to the neoliberal interests in the party.

The Lagos State Chairperson, who had been sympathetic towards left-leaning elements, was also removed abruptly. It was this coup at the center that made it easy to purge and isolate socialists and radicals within the party, the bulk of whom were organized in Lagos.

Sowore Addressing the people Of Akure in a town hall
Omoyele Sowore addressed supporters at a December 2023 town hall engagement in Akure. Credit: Rock

Since the Benin Declaration in 2002, which finally sealed the fate of the Labour Party and ultimately beheaded its revolutionary potential, various civil society elements of the broader Labour Movement have floated political parties, espousing ideas that were synonymous with the core values of the Nigerian Labour Congress of the mid-80s. These efforts, like the National Conscience Party in 2003 and the Socialist Party of Nigeria floated by the Democratic Socialist Movement, had mimicked past initiatives like those of the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party and the Socialist Working People’s Party. The most recent of these efforts, and perhaps the most impactful, is the establishment of the African Action Congress (AAC) by the Take It Back Movement and leading revolutionary activist Omoyele Sowore, who ran under the platform as President in 2019 and 2023 respectively, campaigning strictly on revolutionary programs. Like the past endeavors, this too was not sufficient to dislodge the hegemony of Nigeria’s rapacious ruling class.

But the fact remains that the Labour Movement, workers, and change-seeking elements should and must be organized under one political party. Such a political party must be unequivocally committed to the core values that the Nigerian workers and the Labour Movement had previously sworn to socialism, anti-imperialism, anti-privatization, national sovereignty, internal democracy, and commitment to a national economy that is under democratic and popular control. The party must be rooted within the rank and file of workers, ordinary Nigerians, communities, workplaces, and campuses. If the oppressed and working people of Nigeria must look up to the trade unions to lead this initiative, then the trade unions must be made to recommit themselves to the values of the Nigerian Labour Congress as they were in the mid-80s.

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.

How The Lagos State Government Demolished Houses Of Low-Income Earners In Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Forced Over Seven Thousand People Into Homelessness

Sanyaolu Juwon
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How The Lagos State Government Demolished Houses Of Low-Income Earners In Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Forced Over Seven Thousand People Into Homelessness

In a sudden turn of events, piles of wreckage became the only remnants of what used to be homes to over 7,000 people, women, and children. Places of worship, churches, mosques, including schools, and businesses were not spared.

After the state government unexpectedly carried out repeated building demolitions in June without prior notice, the residents of Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, a low-income residential community, were forcibly displaced and left to endure immense hardship.

Oworonshoki, located in the Kosofe region of Lagos in southwest Nigeria, predominantly consists of low-income residential properties and is home to over 170,000 people.

Over the past two decades, the Lagos government has torn down various shanties located near the lagoon in order to make space for the rich to construct lavish residences. Low-income communities in Otodogbame, Ilubirin, and Makoko had been earlier victims. However, poor residents of Mosafejo-Oworonshoki became the newest victims of the prevalent forced evictions in Lagos.

Worthy of note is that the affected communities neither received warnings nor prior notice from any government ministry pre-informing them of a possible demolition or that their houses were erected on illegal sites. Many of these people had been residing in these communities for more than four decades.

Since the unfortunate incident occurred, many residents have been forced to live in open shelters and makeshift accommodations, leaving them at the mercy of dangerous animals, harsh weather conditions, and death. No less than five infant deaths have been recorded. Women and girls forced to live under these abject conditions do so at the risk of physical attacks, abuse, and rape.

Picture of demolished site at the Mosafejo-Oworonshoki community
The demolished low-income community in Mosafejo-Oworonshoki, Lagos. Credit: Durotimi Dawodu

Needless to say, the provision of security, welfare, and shelter is integral to the fundamental aims and objectives of government. For many years now, the Lagos State government has failed woefully to meet these objectives.

According to a report by Business Day newspaper, Lagos accounts for about 5 million out of a total of 18 million housing deficits in Nigeria. This implies that the so-called commercial center of the country accounts for more than 31% of the total housing deficit in the country. Rather than increasing the already embarrassing statistics of homelessness in the state through thoughtless demolitions, the state should be massively investing in low-cost housing projects.

Unfortunately, the regime is deliberately throwing more than seven thousand of its citizens to the street at a time the country is grappling with an unprecedented level of hardship occasioned by the astronomical increase in the price of energy, including fuel and gas.

The inflation rate is at over 27%, and the cost of food and commodities has increased astronomically, with a wave of fee hikes hitting our various tertiary institutions, forcing thousands of young people out of school. These challenges in themselves are more than bad, as they have forced millions of Nigerians out of social existence; forcing them out of their houses into the streets should not be the priority of the government.

Notably, the affected communities and civil society organizations have organized campaigns and protest actions, calling on the Babajide Sanwoolu-led government to put an end to the ongoing demolition exercise and award compensations, including resettlement of the thousands that have been unjustly displaced, made homeless, and without property. This sharp reaction from the people is apt and must be widely supported by people of good conscience.

We refuse to be the lamb that is sacrificed on the altar of the insatiable greed of an elite minority.

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?

Operation Dudula

Vitalio Angula
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Operation Dudula

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.

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.

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.

Tinubu’s Inauguration: End Of An Error, The Dawn Of Calamity

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Tinubu’s Inauguration: End Of An Error, The Dawn Of Calamity

“I am confident that I am leaving office with Nigeria better in 2023 than in 2015.” President Buhari ended his farewell speech with this remark on the 28th of May, 2023. Some of us could not help but wonder if perhaps we had been living in an alternate universe for the past eight years. Not surprisingly, the former president supported this fallacious vituperation with a body of argument that attempted to whitewash the disturbing and horrible fact that the Buhari regime is an epic fail; incompetent, despotic, lawless, and very anti-poor.

Many parts of the speech were fraught with boastful remarks, and needless self-adulation that misrepresented many unpalatable facts about the horrible administration. But one of his many lies that particularly stood out was the part that read “to ensure that our democracy remains resilient and our elected representatives remain accountable to the people, I am leaving behind an electoral process which guarantees that votes count, results are credible, elections are fair and transparent and the influence of money in politics reduced to the barest minimum. And Nigerians can elect leaders of their choice.” Former President Buhari better not be speaking about the 2023 elections especially — the same election that was fraught with massive vote buying, voter suppression, violence, result falsification, and mass disenfranchisement. Polling units became transactional centers and a theatre of war. Punch newspaper in fact dismissed the 2023 election as a show of shame, concluding that Buhari and INEC brought nothing other than disgrace and embarrassment to Nigeria with such an unfortunate sham.

How can the former president claim that he left Nigeria better than he met it in 2015 when evidence abound suggest otherwise? According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2015 when Buhari took over was at 14.9 percent, representing a population of 6.1 million people who were without jobs. Sadly in 2023, the unemployment rate peaked at 33.3 percent representing about 23 million people, the highest in thirteen years. This is almost four times higher than what it was before Buhari took over.

In addition to leaving behind a country that now ranks as the poverty capital of the world, the administration left behind a huge population of over 133 million people who statistics show are living in multidimensional poverty.

Whereas in 2015 when Buhari assumed office, the inflation rate was at 9 percent. Fast forward to 2023, the regime is leaving behind a very high inflation rate at 22.22 percent, and a debt profile of 77 trillion naira: a very significant and highly exponential increase from its initial value of 12.22 trillion naira in 2015. It is unfortunate that Nigerians have nothing to show for the borrowing spree the regime embarked upon — no schools, hospitals, or any meaningful infrastructural development that may justify the humongous debt burden.

Needless to say, the problem of insecurity also worsened under the past administration. It is on record that the Buhari campaign in 2015 had been very vocal about ending insecurity and bloodletting that had taken the lives of about 18,260 Nigerians, and also displaced many more. Sadly, the Buhari regime worsened the situation. More than 53,000 Nigerians had been gruesomely murdered by bandits, killer herdsmen, and Boko Haram insurgents between 2015 when Buhari took power, and October 2022. This is in addition to numerous others that have become IDPs. States like Kaduna, Zamfara, Borno, Benue, and Plateau states became killing fields for bandits, killer herdsmen, and numerous insurgents; hunting their victims like games, kidnapping many more.

In addition to the utter lack of respect for the judiciary, and serial violation of court orders, Buhari also presided over a country where the armed forces, police especially act with impunity, lawlessness, and are responsible for many extrajudicial murders. It was indeed an administration that from its first tenure had expunged the concept of human rights from its dictionary of governance.

No doubt, the previous administration was not only incompetent, inefficient, and anti-poor, but also it was a government that left behind a tragic legacy of sorrow, tears, and blood.

As though determined to commit the people of Nigeria to eternal damnation, Buhari, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), superintended over a very shabby and highly fraudulent electoral process that imposed one of the worst political characters in Nigeria’s history — Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Unlike most candidates in the race, Tinubu in the course of his campaign said very few words and made limited promises to electorates. He had relied largely on vote buying, intimidation, voter suppression, hooliganism, violence, and his vast access to state institutions to manipulate electoral outcomes right from the polling units.

Bola Tinubu despite making little or no campaign promises was however very clear and loud about his plans to attack the welfare and livelihood of his electorates once he emerges.

Tinubu’s declaration of war and hardship against the Nigerian people didn’t happen on May 29, 2023, the date of inauguration. He didn’t do anything that he had not said to our faces during the course of his campaign. The man dared us to our faces, and boldly said during campaigns that he would remove fuel subsidy, and that not even our protests will change this. And with a kind of courage that derives unusual confidence from impunity, he declared his victory before the date of the election.

With the above, it is crystal clear that the Bola Tinubu Presidency is coming with planned and premeditated attacks against the Nigerian people. Removing fuel subsidy is only the beginning, the coming days will not be any easier. Tinubu’s inaugural speech was very clear on this. And just like he bullied his way to power, the president’s major strategy will be to bully the entire country into total submission.

Although Buhari may have come off as the worst in Nigeria’s history, Tinubu’s May 29 inaugural speech however gave us an unforgettable omen. The sufferings endured under Buhari’s eight years of horrific rule might be nothing compared to the challenges ahead.

The government of Tinubu has openly declared itself to be a regime of bullies. Less than one hour in office, it has taken decisive action to attack the living conditions of Nigerians majority of whom are living in multidimensional poverty. The regime had by its action declared war on the Nigerian people. Fighting back remains the only decision available to the millions of poor and suffering majority who will be victims of these attacks.

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!

2023 Elections: A Street Robbery

Sanyaolu Juwon
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2023 Elections: A Street Robbery

If you can relate with the kind of mood you’d meet when on a visit to a street that had just experienced a robbery of a very violent dimension, then you may be able to connect with the atmosphere of gloom that descended on the country at the pronouncement of Mr. Bola Tinubu as (s)elected president of the country. The Nigerian people felt cheated, and robbed.

But needless to say, the street was indeed robbed — it was violently dispossessed of its hard-earned democratic right to choose for itself, a leader: votes were stolen at polling units and collation centers, ballot boxes were snatched, voters were intimidated, electorates and electoral officials were bought, the polling units did not only become a theater of war, it was equally drowned in blood: votes generally did not count. The street had been robbed of the right to free and fair elections.

The 2023 elections were no doubt the usual tales of sorrow, tears, and blood: the sad triumph of impunity and money politics over the democratic will of over 200 million people.

Whereas voters turnout at every election cycle since 2003 has decreased progressively, the recent polls had an unprecedented number of first-time voters who are largely very young people — those you will categorize as the children of Democracy aka Gen Zs. It was a generation that had been forged in the furnace of one of the biggest youth rebellions in recent history: the EndSARS rebellion.

Sadly, the EndSARS generation may be the last generation of Nigerians who will hold any manner of confidence in Nigeria’s electoral system due to the inability of the electoral umpire to manage the high expectations ignorantly reposed on it by the millions of this young, and highly enthusiastic voters. Whatsoever illusions anyone may have left in Nigeria’s so-called democracy, the charade conducted in 2023 may have successfully shattered such illusions.

While Bola Tinubu’s party, the ruling APC used money, and all instrumentalities of the state to suppress voters, and steal votes, the so-called front-runners — Atiku Abubakar’s PDP, and Peter Obi’s Labour Party weren’t any different. The duo equally stole votes, and repressed voters at their respective strongholds. Sadly, this is how Nigeria’s ruling class have conducted themselves every election year. This accounts for the steady decline of voter turnout at every election cycle. The loss of confidence in the system continues to increase exponentially.

At the just concluded Presidential polls, only 27% of the over 87 million eligible voters — voters with PVCs, turned out to vote. Also instructive is the fact that the supposed winner of the (s)election, Bola Tinubu, was able to secure only about 8.2 million votes, representing a very small percentage of 10.08% of the total number of eligible voters.

In all, a huge population of over 63.1 million eligible voters completely boycotted the elections. This is in addition to over 100 million Nigerians who did not even register to vote at all. Generally, Bola Tinubu’s government will be presiding over a country where over 170 million people have handed his administration a vote of no confidence even before it began.

And for such infamous administration starting off on a note of illegitimacy, and mass rejection even in the midst of daunting economic crises capable of pitching even a relatively popular Government against its people, he will in the coming period be left with the option of two extreme choices if he must hold onto his Government which by the way may have failed even before it began: an option of granting huge political and economic concession to the already discontented and disillusioned majority, or the use of brute force to suppress dissent and keep his unpopular regime in power. This in fact is the fate that awaits any government that emerges from the 2023 charade. For Bola Tinubu of the APC, which will it be? Your guess is as good as mine.

The coming days will no doubt be challenging and highly tumultuous. As such, we must do away with all manner of needless divisive narratives targeted at dividing us along ethnic lines. It is in the interest of the ruling class of all political divides to keep us isolated from one another through religion and ethnicity. We must not allow for these distractions. Only as a united front can we pose a formidable challenge to the looming danger the Presidency of Bola Tinubu and APC represents to the ordinary and suffering people of Nigeria.

How Greed Is Destroying Afrikan Environments And Ecosystems

UbuntuTimes
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How Greed Is Destroying Afrikan Environments And Ecosystems

A Lesotho environmental law expert says it is alarmingly troubling that the once pristine African land continues to be sacrificed at the altar of profits by multinational companies extracting the continent’s minerals for financial gains. 

Advocate Borenahabokhethe Sekonyela says allowing multinational companies to dirty the African environment and its ecosystems with impunity is a violation of fundamental African customary laws that seek to protect the land. 

“The multinational companies are clearly maximizing profits at the cost of life in Africa,” Advocate Sekonyela said. 

He says fundamental principles of African customary laws dictate that Africans have full rights to their land and all natural resources beneath that land, including copper in Zambia, diamonds in Lesotho, and coal in Malawi. 

“Africans have full land rights protected by customary laws. Customarily, land is an important asset for Africans. In terms of farming, if one does not own a farm but has cattle, there was a butter system arrangement in place to ensure that we all benefit from that land. This was a fundamental economic theory of our African custom. 

“The same principle should apply even in mines because God placed Africans there with all those resources and there should have been an equity share in those resources but that is not the case because African governments have leased out mining areas to multinational companies who are sacrificing our land at the altar of profits,” Advocate Sekonyela said. 

He said the expectation that mining companies must conduct their businesses in such a way that even future African generations will benefit from their resources is slowly becoming an unrealistic dream. 

“Do it in such a way that you do not destroy my land because it is for my benefit and those that will come after me,” he said. 

Zambians Look to South Africa for Justice

A South African high court is expected to pronounce itself on whether or not it has jurisdiction to preside over a landmark class action lawsuit against Anglo American mine in the coming months.  

This was after 14 Zambian women and children alleged in court papers that Anglo American “massively” polluted their land when it operated and managed a mine in Kabwe, Zambia between 1925 and 1974. 

According to Amnesty International and South African Litigation Centre, the 14 Zambian applicants are acting on behalf of “an estimated 100,000 children and women, who report suffering injury from lead exposure as a result of century-long mineral extraction near their homes.”

The applicants want the South African high court to order Anglo American to compensate them for alleged breach of what Zambians have identified as a “duty of care to protect existing and future generations of residents of Kabwe against the risks of lead pollution arising from the Mine’s operations.”

Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, has likened this case to a biblical story of “David vs Goliath case and a significant, long-overdue step towards justice for the people of Kabwe, who have suffered from lead poisoning for years due to the mining activities of multinational corporations in their communities.”

Anglo American has been previously quoted in the media saying “we do intend to defend ourselves because we do not believe that we are responsible for the current situation.”

In an interview with Ubuntu Times this month, Advocate Sekonyela warned that the Zambian case was just a drop in the ocean, saying there were thousands of Africans experiencing serious health complications caused by effects of mining pollution. 

“Mining dirties water and it does not matter if you were an imperialist or not, I have a riparian right to drink clean water and any type of development should not jeopardize my right to access clean water,” Advocate Sekonyela said.

Lesotho Government Investigates Water Pollution 

In March this year, Lesotho’s Ministry of Natural Resources said it is investigating allegations of water pollution by Letseng Diamonds Mine, Storm Mountain Diamonds and Liqhobong Diamond Mine. 

“The Ministry of Natural Resources wishes to acknowledge and notes with concern the various articles that have appeared in the Lesotho and South African press recently concerning the alleged pollution of above-average concentration of nitrates in certain rivers that flow into the Katse Dam,” read a press statement circulated on 1st March 2023. 

“The validity of the allegations are being investigated and in addition to having instructed the Department of Water Affairs to report to the Minister of Natural Resources Honourable Mohlomi Moleko, on the allegations.”

Mine tailings at Letseng Diamonds Mine in Lesotho
Mine tailings form plateaus in rural district of Mokhotlong, Lesotho. Patising and Maloraneng communities suspect that these tailing and water seepages are responsible for blue, toxic water they regularly spot in two streams originating from the mine. The mine was previously a beautiful lake in Mokhotlong, Lesotho. Credit: Retselisitsoe Khabo

Government’s investigations come after MNN Centre for Investigative Journalism published a story that the Lesotho Highlands Development Agency (LHDA), an agency monitoring and managing the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, said mines pollution of critical water sources continues unabated despite the mines’ repeated promises to mitigate contamination during joint meetings chaired by the department of environment.  

According to the LHDA, the three mines polluting rivers critical to the water project that transfers water to South Africa are Letšeng Diamonds Mine, Storm Mountain Diamonds and Liqhobong Diamond Mine. 

Communities downstream Letšeng Diamonds Mine and Storm Mountain Diamonds have accused the two mines of polluting their water courses with impunity, an accusation the two mines hotly deny. Letseng Diamonds Mine is co-owned by Lesotho government (30 percent) and British-based Gem Diamonds (70 percent). 

Since it started operating the mine in 2004, Letšeng states on its website that it has discovered precious stones such as a 910-carat Lesotho Legend (2018); 603-carat Lesotho Promise (2006), 550-carat Letšeng Star (2011), 493-carat Letšeng Legacy (2007) and the 478-carat Light of Letšeng (2008). Collectively, the mine made US$81.2 million (M1.2 billion) from four of those five stones.

Storm Mountain Diamonds’ shareholding is held by the Lesotho government (25 percent) and South Africa’s Namakwa Diamonds (75 percent). Storm Mountain Diamonds’ website states that the mine’s 3.06-carat Kao Purple Princess was sold at US$727, 898. 

Coal, Uranium Mines Leave Trail of Destruction in Malawi

The Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) says communities around coal and uranium mining areas in that country “face a lot of challenges with water pollution”.

The Network’s Program Officer, Bertha Phiri has accused the Malawian government of “…not doing enough in protecting the rights and livelihood of people living in mining communities.”

“The law is clear on issues of Environmental Impact Assessment and all its related issues but the biggest challenge is laxity in the enforcement of the law. People living around coal and uranium mining areas face a lot of challenges with water pollution and their land is also affected in terms of productivity and farming let alone their health is at risk as well,” Phiri told Ubuntu Times last week.

Phiri is positive that Malawi should learn from the Zambian lead poisoning and argues that Malawi could have enacted a far much better, inclusive Mines and Mineral Act, 2018 had it taken suggestions from community representatives on board. 

“The mines and Minerals Act went through a very rigorous process as far as consultations with relevant stakeholders are concerned. However, consultations do remain consultations up until when all the issues, concerns and suggestion that are brought forward are taken on board. 

“Our observation is that Malawi missed an opportunity to address its issues and bring sanity in the mining sector learning from the bad experiences we have had with Kayerekera Uranium Mining. So the enactment of the Mines and Minerals Act would have taken on board lessons learnt which in MEJN’s view did not to the large extent besides stakeholders raising the issues during the consultations,” Phiri said. 

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s Son Eyes 2026 Election Challenge

UbuntuTimes
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Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s Son Eyes 2026 Election Challenge

Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the eldest son of Uganda’s long-serving autocratic leader, is set to contest in the 2026 presidential election in a gambit that could potentially see the military officer take full control of this soon-to-be oil-producing nation that has been under the firm grip of his father for nearly four decades.

His bid for the presidency has shaken structures in the ruling National Resistance Movement party and military. Last month, General Kainerugaba who also serves as the presidential adviser on special operations launched a campaign team comprising notable politicians and other key personalities as part of his campaign efforts. He has also begun appearing at rallies for his supporters.

“I will stay in touch and engaged with you in regards to the next steps of my campaign,” he told a cheering crowd of mainly youthful supporters known as the MK movement, who constantly interrupted his speech with clapping, ululations, and chanting at a rally held in Kapchorwa, northeastern Uganda in January.

But veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye says that what Muhoozi is attempting to do is create a new power base that will attract the attention of young people who have lost interest in the ruling party and its leader.

“He wants to create something that appears new, although it is exactly the same thing,” Besigye told Ubuntu Times.

Mr. Museveni has long been suspected of grooming the 48-year-old general to be his successor in order to establish what opponents call monarchical rule in Uganda. This follows a playbook by other authoritarian dictators in Africa, such as Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Cameroon’s Paul Biya’, who have attempted to anoint their sons as the next presidents.

General Kainerugaba’s rallies are also against Ugandan law, which prohibits serving army officers from participating in politics. The 1995 Constitution and the Uganda People’s Defence Force Act – UPDF 2005 bar or prohibit serving army officers from dabbling in partisan politics.

“He is perpetuating the abuse of the constitution, abuse of the law and this disqualifies him from being considered a leader,” says Besigye. “He is acting against the country and cannot aspire to lead it at the same time.”

General Kainerugaba has also earned himself the name “the tweeting general” with his controversial tweets. Just like former US President Donald Trump, the general uses Twitter to promote his profile. He once tweeted that the Ugandan army might invade Kenya.

“It wouldn’t take us, my army and me, two weeks to capture Nairobi,” he tweeted.

This prompted Mr. Museveni to relieve him of his then duties as commander of the UPDF’s Land Forces and denounce his controversial use of Twitter. However, Museveni still promoted Kainerugaba to a five-star general and retained him as his adviser on military affairs.

Last year, Kainerugaba held a spree of lavish birthday celebrations across the country. The celebrations were attended by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. Political analysts contend that these are all clear signs that Kainerugaba is being maneuvered into place to succeed his father.

General Kainerugaba joined the army in 1999 after graduating from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in England. He rose through the ranks to command the presidential security unit, which has now been expanded into an elite Special Forces Command SFC group. The SFC protects the president, his family, and critical assets including oil fields.

With an estimated 10,000 men, the SFC is Uganda’s most powerful branch of the army. Kainerugaba led the SFC from 2008 to 2017, and later from December 2020 to July 2021, during the tumultuous presidential election season.

In July 2021, he was promoted to lead the Uganda land forces, the army’s main component but later demoted by his father-the commander in chief, following a string of divisive tweets that sparked domestic and international uproar.

Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, Member of Parliament and the spokesperson of the main opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change FDC, says that Museveni is merely seeking to create an uneven playing field for anyone attempting to oppose him come 2026.

“This is again another tactic Mr. Museveni is using to prolong his rule,” said Ssemujju.

Many Ugandans continue to decry the controversial rule of President Museveni who has been in power for 37 years now. In 2021, Mr. Museveni secured for himself five more years as president in a general election that was marred by violence and claims of vote-rigging by his main challenger famous musician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu well known by his stage name Bobi Wine.

Because of the 2017 constitutional reform that removed the age limit, there is nothing in the constitution that prevents Mr.Museveni from standing again and again. Presidential term limits were also removed in 2005. Museveni’s new term ends in 2026 and by then he will have ruled Uganda for 40 years.

On January 24, Museveni launched Uganda’s first drilling rig for the Kingfisher oilfield, operated by China’s CNOOC company and estimated to bring in more than $50 billion. A local NGO organized a public debate on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline at a city hotel on the same day. Opposition leaders Kizza Besigye and Robert Kyagulanyi were among the invited speakers, but a military squad barricaded and sealed up the hotel entrance, denying the public access to the venue and canceling the event.

“I don’t mind Kainerugaba’s intentions to run for president, but I’m concerned about the vulgarization of national institutions like the UPDF army. He should first quit the army,” said Sarah Bireete, the executive director of a local think tank, Center for Constitutional Governance.

Students’ Loan: We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay

Sanyaolu Juwon
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Students’ Loan: We Can’t Pay, We Won’t Pay

On November 22nd, 2022, Nigeria’s 9th National Assembly successfully passed a Students’ Loan Bill, a move that has now incited reactions along varying interests and ideological lines. The bill, sponsored by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila purportedly seeks to ease access to public education by providing tuition loans to students whose family’s annual income is less than five hundred thousand naira – over 133 million Nigerians are in this category.

Students who are eligible for this tuition loan are expected to apply through their respective tertiary institutions, and the tuition will forthwith be paid directly into the account of the applicant’s institution of learning.

Beneficiaries of this student loan are expected to begin repayment two years after National Youth Service Corps.

While the speaker of the house had argued that the bill is in the interest of the students and the people of Nigeria, critical analysis of the loan bill reveals the contrary. Aside from the fact that experiences from other countries have persistently shown how a student loan program has turned out to be synonymous with offering a poisoned chalice to the “beneficiaries” of such a program, we also note that this bill is a deliberate ploy by the irresponsible Nigerian state to distract the public from the real issues of education underfunding.

Against the background of numerous attempt to institutionalize the commercialization of public education in Nigeria, the government in different instances have developed various initiatives targeted at placing the burden of education funding on the shoulders of Nigerian students and their poor parents. One of the most recent of such attempts is a Steve Oransaye Committee inaugurated in 2012 by the administration of former President, Goodluck Jonathan. The committee recommended the introduction of very high tuition to the tune of 450- 525 thousand naira in Nigerian tertiary institutions, starting with the first Generation Universities. The committee argued that tuition of such magnitude is a necessity if our universities must stand a chance to compete minimally with the rest of the world. In short, the committee’s recommendation was that government hands off education funding and allow students to bear the burden of the stupendous resources needed to fund tertiary education.

In 2014, it was reported that the Jonathan administration had issued a white paper on the report of this committee.

Upon emergence in 2015, the Buhari regime continued on these neoliberal foundations of the Jonathan administration by inaugurating a committee of 16 headed by the former University of Lagos Pro-Chancellor, Professor Wale Babalakin. This committee, like Oransaye, proposed an astronomical increment in tuition, this time to the tune of One million naira. In addition to very high tuition, Babalakin also argued for the establishment of an education bank that will grant loans to students for the purpose of paying for this high tuition. Commendably, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) rejected this recommendation, describing it as an attempt to hand over public universities to private interests.

Recall that in 2009, ASUU, again made a case for increased funding of public education starting with the immediate injection of 1.3 trillion naira into public Universities. It proposed in its 2009 agreement with the federal government that this funding should be paid to the universities in three tranches. It took the Union to go into another six months of strike action in 2013 to compel the government to release the first tranche of 220 billion naira in the latter part of 2014. This is close to five years since the agreement was signed.

Meanwhile, just two years before the 2009 agreement, the Nigerian government bailed out their friends in the banking system with a whopping sum of 3 trillion naira. The same government will later find it difficult to bail out public education with 1.3 trillion naira two years after.

No doubt, the Students’ Loan Bill represents the institutionalization of education commercialization with an overall aim to effectively consolidate an ongoing neoliberal siege against public education in Nigeria.

It is on record that in places like the United States of America, where this policy may have been adopted, beneficiaries of such loans spend their entire adult life repaying loans. In fact, President Obama couldn’t complete his repayment until he became America’s President. Millions of American citizens are living in heavy debt accrued from this sort of draconian policy. The implications in Nigeria are bound to be much worse.

In addition to the problem of mass unemployment and massive de-industrialization, Nigeria also struggles with increasing poverty with over 133 million Nigerians living in abject poverty.

Whereas the bill states that beneficiaries of this loan must begin repayment two years after completion of Youth Service, it fails to put into consideration the obvious reality that most Nigerian graduates are unable to find jobs years after leaving school. And those with the initiative to start small businesses aren’t availed with an enabling environment for a thriving business.

It is rather unfortunate that of many western education policies, Nigerian leaders have always opted for the ones that have proven to be a monumental disaster. It remains a wonder that they have chosen to ignore great examples of other Western countries like Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and many Scandinavian countries that have a culture of giving free and qualitative education to its citizens.

The problem we face isn’t the fact that the Nigerian state is incapable of funding free and qualitative education, it is that Nigerian leaders are unwilling to commit to massive investment into education. Monies that should have been committed to funding public education are either looted or committed to white elephant projects. It was in this same country that Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were unable to account for a whopping sum of 1.2 trillion naira. We have seen how the accountant general of the federation stole 150 billion naira. These are just a few of many cases of mindless looting in the country. This is in addition to unremitted taxes from big corporations running to several billions of dollars.

While we continue to commend the education unions, especially the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for rejecting this Greek gift, and insisting that the Nigerian government must abandon this distraction and genuinely commit to funding education, it becomes very imperative to call public attention to the urgency of resisting the cruel attempt to place an unfair burden of eternal debt on the strained shoulders of over 133 million poor Nigerians who already are finding it difficult to even afford to eat.

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.

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.”

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