By: Philip Ochieng
By the “man-bite-dog” criterion of news taught in our schools of journalism, what happened at the African Union summit the other day should have been but a snippet tucked far away in the rear pages of our newspapers. For there was absolutely nothing new in it.

It was nothing but a run-of-the-mill “dog-bite-man” story. It is what African and other Third World leaders routinely do.

They commit tyranny and robbery and murder all the time and then, when accosted either at home or in international councils — try to depict one another as archangels.

If it had been known in advance that the human rights issue would come before Their Excellencies, even a child would have predicted that they would vote to a man ? not to mention the woman from Monrovia — to defend to the hilt the Man-on-Horseback in Khartoum.

No, it was not because they all love the Sudanese strongman.

It was only because none of the other heads of state and government may be innocent of the actions for which Omar al Bashir is wanted by Mr Ocampo in the historic Dutch city of international “justice.”

If Mr Bashir is arrested and taken to The Hague — if the International Criminal Court (ICC) finds him guilty of gross violations of human rights in Darfur — he will have opened a hideous can of worms for all the present and many former African and other Third World rulers.

Indeed, that precedent may prove extremely dangerous even for First World leaders.

The ICC itself has been accused of selective thirst for the blood of former and present tyrants.

It seems to go after Third World despots with much more gusto than it does after developed world leaders.

The Third World’s intelligentsia — including Africa’s — may be waking up slowly.

If Mr Bashir and certain former African leaders are found guilty and punished, the intelligentsia may begin to demand from Mr Ocampo a good explanation why America’s Gang of Five is at large.

Our civil society movements may want to know why George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin and Condoleeza Rice have not yet been mooted even for arrest for having ordered the murder of millions and millions of Iraqi and Afghan children and their parents.

The Spanish Daniel in The Hague may have to explain to humanity why Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw are still gallivanting all over the world as champions of freedom, democracy and human rights when they were central to the holocaust in the Middle East.

London, Washington, Paris, Rome and a city near The Hague may have to answer human rights questions about Latin America, Algeria, Korea, Kenya (during Mau Mau), Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Southern Africa and East Timor and other Portuguese colonies.

And the respondents may include John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Harold Wilson, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, there is just no Ararat from which African heads of state can defend anyone among them.

All of them are guilty of one crime or another — including mal-government, looting, corruption, complete neglect of mass suffering, nepotism and tribalism.

How many have not trampled underfoot all the tenets and institutions of good governance? How many have not rigged elections?

How many have not tried to tamper with the constitution to make themselves presidents-for-life? How many have not colluded to assassinate their rivals?

How many have not tried to impose their sons as heirs? And — most germane to our topic — how many have not organised armed clashes and ethnic cleansing?

Darfur, then, is merely the most spectacular, most tragic, example of this heartless playing around with human life.

Otherwise, which one of Africa’s leaders has the moral or political or juridical authority to declare that Mr Bashir does not deserve to face justice in the Hague? Which? Bongo? Bouteflika? Guebuza? Mubarak? Mugabe? Museveni? Sirleaf-Johnson? Wade? Zenawi?

But, of course, our own sense of justice — the tenet that you are innocent until proved guilty — constrains us to give Mr Bashir the benefit of the doubt. It is within the realm of possibility that the Tartar is not guilty.

But the fact remains that, under his regime, millions of human beings have been slaughtered in Darfur and that the culprit-victim line appears to coincide with the race line. The culprit appears to belong to the same race as those in charge in Khartoum.

That is why it has been claimed — rightly or wrong — that the blood-thirsty Janjaweed militia has vital links with official Khartoum.

It is why the leaders of a country like Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania should have an active subjective interest in that matter — if, for one thing only, because blood is thicker than water.

But, much more important than that, it is imperative for the world to be quite clear in its mind who the culprit is.

Yes, Mr Bashir is innocent till proved guilty. But, because he is among the prime suspects, some internationally sanctioned judicial authority must be the one to give him the certificate of innocence.

That is why it is upon the ICC that it devolves to investigate Mr Bashir.

Nobody has the right or the knowledge to declare him guilty or innocent except an authority like the ICC, after it has gone thorough Mr Bashir’s secret cabinets with a toothcomb.

As for the other African leaders, as nearly as we can see, all of them defend Mr Bashir against Mr Ocampo merely so as to pre-empt the probability of judicial “radioactivity” catching up with them — the usual dog-bite-man story.

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Writes: Kap Kirwok

It’s only tyrants who live in mortal fear of people power

Every time I see images of brutality by a government — any — against its people, I am reminded of this quote.

Fear is a little word whose power and consequences is right up there with gravity and love. Like gravity and love, fear is indispensable for survival. And I don’t just mean human survival — I include specifically the survival of oppressive governments.

Oppressive governments live in mortal fear of fearless citizens. Consequently, they will try to instil maximum fear into the people. They do this through threats of deprivation or violence, and occasionally, use of deadly force. When such tactics fail, governments are thrown into panic. They then resort to increasingly desperate measures.

But if fearless citizens give oppressive governments sleepless nights, it is when such citizens unite and acquire arms that terrify them. Fearless, united and armed citizens are the stuff which political nightmares are made of. It is why governments will go to great lengths, in the name of law and order, to deny citizens the right to freely organise or own guns.

I do not think Kenya has reached the level of tension and paranoia that is the norm in repressive regimes. We are still a relatively free society. But there are times when it appears we are determined to tempt fate. There are those who say that, after our dalliance with chaos and death early this year, we are unlikely to go there again. We walked to the gates of hell, saw the horror of it, and turned back — in fear. We learned our lesson. Or did we, really?

Part of the reason it was easy to mobilise communities against each other during last year’s season of infamy was that the perceived ‘enemy camp‘ was easily identifiable — those seen, rightly or wrongly, as monopolising power and resources. In a coalition arrangement such as we now have, where almost every community is represented in Government, the ‘enemy camp‘ is not another tribe.

In the absence of discernible ideological fault-lines between the coalition partners, and the lack of a true opposition, the obvious differentiator becomes the glaring socio-economic dichotomy: the haves and have-nots; the rich and the poor; the privileged and the marginalised; the smooth fat cats versus the scrawny, skinny rats. It is a fault line just as dangerous as ethnic rivalry and enmity.

   The death toll in the disturbances in Kenya (December 2007) — numbered
   in the thousands    | More Pictures |

To reiterate: the thing that terrifies governments is the deadly combination of fearlessness, unity and arms in the hands of oppressed citizens. It is what puts many oppressive governments out of business.

Territorial supremacy

But what should really scare the daylights out of any oppressive government is something else: geography.

Consider just two places, Waziristan, Pakistan and Juarez, Mexico.

Waziristan is part of what is called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or Fata. Since Pakistan’s independence, Fata has virtually operated outside the control of Islamabad’s central authority. Fata has become a euphemism for the lost territories. Here, tribal warlords, Al Qaeda and the Taliban call the shots despite a sustained campaign by more than 80,000 regular and paramilitary forces of the Pakistani army. And yet this is an area of just 11,585 square kilometres ? seven times smaller than Kenya’s coast province. The reason: fearless, united and armed fighters aided by a friendly geography ? a rugged terrain with a porous border (with Afghanistan) through which arms freely flow.

The case of Juarez is even more interesting. This is a bustling Mexican city across the border from the Unites States city of El Paso, Texas. By some accounts, it is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, animated by a lucrative cross-border drug trade. Despite waves of massive crackdowns, often coordinated with US authorities, and sophisticated border surveillance, drug trafficking, murders and kidnappings continue unabated.

The Kenyan Election Violence (Dec. 2007) in Video

Juarez and Waziristan may appear remote from Kenya but their geographical situations are not. Kenya has long, porous borders with lawless Somalia and an insecure border with Ethiopia, on account of the Oromo Liberation Front and other bandits. The unpatrolled border with Uganda and Sudan means weapons can easily be smuggled into the country.

Geography.

It is the reason the so-called Sabaot Land Defence Force continues to defy extinction despite serious blows inflicted on it by the Kenya Army. Geography is the reason Mugabe’s regime has been lucky so far: no rugged borders with unstable countries where arms could easily flow in.

Beware of geography. Happy New Year!.

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About The Author: Kap Kirwok — Mr. Kirwok is based in the USA.
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By: Chris Agbiti

November 4th, 2008 will, undoubtedly go down in world history as epoch making.

It was a day that signposted the final internment of the age-long divisive philosophy that held one race superior to another (apology to the legend, Bob Marley); it was a day the entire world came together, irrespective of creed and religion, to recite Dune Dimitis (however, not with long faces) for the monster of racial discrimination that had for long defined the political climate of America but now chased away; it was the day Barack Hussein Obama won in landslide, the U.S Presidential election.

The U.S. Presidential Election has come and gone but the echoes of it continue to reverberate in every nook and cranny of Africa especially in Kenya where Obama traces his patrilineal descent from. The euphoria of Obama’s victory will for long continue its ripples in the Negroid race of Africa.

However, the point is worth making that for the Americans, the euphoria of joy sweeping through its entire nation is understandable: That, at last, someone who has a clear vision and a good grasp of the issues that need to be addressed to restore U.S. lost glory, consequent upon the lacklustre performance of the out-going president, was not held back from realizing that ambition by prejudices. But for Africans, what other reason beside the sentimental consideration that a fellow brother African now becomes President of U.S., can we adduce to bedrocks our own euphoria at the election of Obama?

If one may ask, what business do African countries, together with their stinking leaders, have in rejoicing over Obama’s victory at the U.S. poll when we know in our hearts of hearts that we will never allow the kind of system that has produced Obama in U.S. election to be replicated in our own land?

Or, are we under a delusion that, with Obama’s presidency, African countries shall wake up one morning, like the fabled Alice in Wonderland, and find all the good things of life in sufficiency for all as obtain in the western world, even while our leaders and people continue in their culture of greed, corruption, ethnic hostilities and all such practices antithetical to the dictate of modern civilization?

It bears repeating to state here that it borders on crass hypocrisy for African countries such as Zambia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, et al, to rejoice at Obama’s victory even when they are all still involved in various acts of prejudices, this time around, not even against a coloured person but against their own black brothers.

We have witnessed instances in Zambia where the first post independent Kenneth Kaunda had his citizenship withdrawn on the allegation that his ancestry is somewhere in another African country! Similar acts have played out in Ivory Coast and Nigeria (Shugaba’s case). The xenophobic hostilities in South Africa and Zimbabwe are all still fresh in our memories. Africans must be reminded not to expect too much from the presidency of Obama any more than they expected from the presidency of Bill Clinton.

Our only obvious claim to Obama is his blood ties to his Kenyan father. But we must call to memory that, for all the time the elder Obama lived, his conduct in juxtaposition to what Obama Jr. is and stands for today shows, in very lucid details, those sad commentaries of a pure bred African man. The elder Obama came to America and deceitfully led Obama’s mother into marriage, even while he was already married to another Kenya woman back home.

He was to later abandon Obama’s mother and returned to Kenya, leaving young Obama in the care of his maternal grandparents in America. It was recorded that he died drunk-driving. Should Obama’s father were to be alive, one imagines that he too may be rejoicing just like the other African leaders are hypocritically doing.

We must stop deceiving ourselves. It is high time we told ourselves a few home truths. Whatever Obama is today or stands for, he owes it all to the American society.

If he were to be brought up in Kenya, his fatherland, with all his seeming immeasurable grace of intelligence, he would have ended up, at best, as a very brilliant but frustrated university don holed up somewhere in one of our glorified secondary schools, called university, like many other frustrated Obamas in our African society today. The American society that shaped Obama to become what he is to day places a higher premium of kinship of ideas over and above that of blood.

That explains the acceptance of Obama’s candidature across the racial divides. If Obama were not of the rare breed of mankind (who recreates themselves independent of genetic force), he would not even be identifying his African root. It is only for Obama’s high sense of humility and decency that he does so and I commend him for it. Africans must be reminded that as we cheer Obama’s victory, we must cast away that extra baggage of hypocrisy and begin to reflect on the need for us to home-grow a system similar to what sustains in the U.S. that has made possible the Obama phenomenon.

The world today is ruled by ideas. It is not enough for us bank on blood kinship to Obama and think that alone will be the open sesame to our El Dorado.

In today’s modern world, kinship of ideas, as aforesaid, rather than of blood or ethnicity is one of the driving force of attraction. In doing so, we must remind ourselves that until we jettison that negative attitude that encourages subjugation of fellow man rather than our environment which is what the white man has effectively achieved, we shall continue in our collective grope.

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Chris Agbiti wrote from Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
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By CELIA W. DUGGER

   Robert Mugabe [Enlarge]
NZVERE, Zimbabwe — Along a road in Matabeleland, barefoot children stuff their pockets with corn kernels that have blown off a truck as if the brownish bits, good only for animal feed in normal times, were gold coins.

In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.

And on the tiny farms here in the region of Mashonaland, once a breadbasket for all of southern Africa, destitute villagers pull the shells off wriggling crickets and beetles, then toss what is left in a hot pan. “If you get that, you have a meal,” said Standford Nhira, a spectrally thin farmer whose rib cage is etched on his chest and whose socks have collapsed around his sticklike ankles.

The half-starved haunt the once bountiful landscape of Zimbabwe, where a recent United Nations survey found that 7 in 10 people had eaten either nothing or only a single meal the day before.

Still dominated after nearly three decades by their authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabweans are now enduring their seventh straight year of hunger. This largely man-made crisis, occasionally worsened by drought and erratic rains, has been brought on by catastrophic agricultural policies, sweeping economic collapse and a ruling party that has used farmland and food as weapons in its ruthless — and so far successful — quest to hang on to power.

But this year is different. This year, the hunger is much worse. — [READ MORE]

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   President Mugabe greets delegates at the ZANU-PF conference in Bindura, Zimbabwe

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[WATCH VIDEO]
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References::

1. Mugabe: “Zimbabwe is mine, I will never surrender.” — President Robert Mugabe has said that “Zimbabwe is mine” and rejected calls from some African leaders to step down.
2. “Zimbabwe is mine” insists Mugabe in defiant speech

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HARARE (Reuters) – President Robert Mugabe returns to Zimbabwe on Wednesday under pressure from fellow African leaders to form a national unity government in the wake of his re-election in a violent poll ruled unfair by monitors.

   ENLARGE IMAGE

An African Union summit in Egypt, attended by Mugabe, approved a resolution calling for him to negotiate with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from the run-off election because of violence against his supporters.

The resolution fell short of the tougher statement wanted by some African countries, but it was an unprecedented rebuff to Mugabe, previously feted as a liberation hero. …[ MORE >> ]

Mugabe Loses His Cool In Cairo

….meanwhile, US President George W. Bush, on June 26, 2008 at the White House in Washington, DC, said he had directed that sanctions be drawn up against the “illegitimate” government of Zimbabwe after a run-off vote boycotted by the opposition.

What?

George Bush has No Business sanctioning Mugabe….for he is as illegitimate, and a worse criminal than the man he condemning.

Both have stolen elections and have “killed” their own people. For Bush — add another 600, 000 innocent Iraqi’s at the behest of 500LB bombs and sadistic U.S soldiers.

Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom was a mission of Murder, Rape and Torture, featuring “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses,” by the U.S Military personnel.

So, G.W. Bush please shut up!

You too belong in JAIL!

REFERENCE: The Criminal “High Cabal” — The American “High Cabal” adopted criminality as their primary strategy when they seized control of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century.