Universal Education

By Frank T. Scruggs The Afro News International

Many times African-blooded people around the world seek self-determination, to acquire political power and improve their socio-economic status. The first step in achieving these goals is to embrace education and knowledge. Far too many African people around the world have ignored the importance of formal education. Education has long been the road to enlightenment and freedom. Education awakens one to exploitation, oppression and the subtleties of racism and white privilege.

Oftentimes there is a sense of comfort and bliss within certain levels of ignorance and often those whom elevate their minds cannot all of a sudden reveal the depth of knowledge they possess due to the backlash from others. In the centuries old book, Plato’s Republic, the philosopher described an imaginary situation of people bound underground in a dark cavern. In this cavern their only view of the world was one of the shadows puppets and carved figures that flickered from a fire. One of the bound people freed himself from this bondage and climbed out the cavern into the world outside the cavern. He then saw the real world and went back to tell his bound comrades what he saw of the real world. They thought him mad, attacked him and placed him back into bondage. When some of us have freed our minds and leave others bound an intolerable situation is created and much conflict is created. Education and enlightenment therefore must be available to all.

We cannot expect to lead and seek to control our own destinies without education and knowledge. We must understand technology, industry, science and our own history to move forward. Obtaining a degree is more than reading a thousand books or parroting some instructor’s lecture; it is more about critical thinking, raising one’s skill level and advancing within the arts and sciences. Education is the foundation of nation-building and enhancing one’s culture. Education provides the freedom and social imagination necessary to create a lasting, endurable people and collective spirit. Education provides the mechanism needed to create leaders and informed followers.

Education becomes a first step in the creation an international, cross-cultural agenda designed to bring unity throughout the African Diaspora. Reaching one’s full potential becomes a true possibility when people can learn about their own identity and are allowed to acquire technical and philosophical skills that are consistent with their own aptitudes. Education is not just a want but is a necessity that African people everywhere need to demand and aggressively seek.

President Mamadou Tandja,

Commentary/Niger/Africa

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong The Afro News International

The February 18 overthrow of Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja, 71, reveals whether African leaders think deeply about their societies, especially if their thinking is solidly informed by their histories and the values that wheel them. You don’t need to be a guru or part of the breathless African commentary talks to observe that Tandja was heading Niger towards self-destruction.

Stop me if you’ve heard this in the last couple of days: Tandja held a referendum to abolish limits on presidential terms of office, disregarded the Supreme Court’s decision against extension of the two term presidential limits, abolished parliament, and concentrated immense powers on himself, in a near-totalitarian streak.

In all the rush to install himself as the monarch of all that survey, Tandja cleverly used Niger’s democratic tenets, as Kwame Nkrumah, Samuel Doe, among others, had done, putting Niger on perpetual edge. That Tandja has been suffering from the much dreaded African Big Man syndrome that made him blinded from the Nigerien and African reality is incontestable. What is instructive is that in Tandja, despite his advanced age, African leaders have not learned from their histories and cultures, and the emerging democratic order that pins progress on democracy, freedoms, human rights and the rule of law.

No doubt, while Africans, who have suffered under totalitarian rulers of the likes of Idi Amin and Jean-Bedel Bokassa, abhor military and one-party regimes, the new Niger military junta’s name of Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy and their initial promise to turn Niger into an example of “democracy and good governance” and save its people from “poverty, deception and corruption,” reveals how democracy as solution to Africa’s development challenges is gradually sinking in as a progress vehicle, thus making the Indian welfare economist Amartya Kumar Sen’s “development in freedom” an African mantra.

Against this background, Tandja’s muddled thinking reveals that contemporary African progress challenges isn’t one of the ills of the often beat-up European colonialism but African elites’ lack of comprehension of themselves and Africa’s progress challenges.

By nature prone to autocracy, Tandja couldn’t coherently evaluate Niger’s history as yardstick to enrich Niger’s progress informed by the growing African democracy and freedoms trends. Tandja was mired in the African traditional superstitious belief that he is the only one chosen by God to rule Niger in a country of immense poverty where 61 percent live on less than US$1 a day and stuck in disturbing record of coups, assassinations and on-and-off rebellion by its nomadic Tuareg group.

How does Africans fathom the fact that Tandja believes that he is the only one, out of the 14 million Nigeriens, that can “complete major investment projects” in Niger? His silly believes, floated by juju-marabout spiritual mediums who buzz around him, come from the African traditional superstitious belief that he is God sent. It is such ridiculous believes that make the African Big Man looks down on their citizenry no matter their material concerns that saw the likes of dictatorial Idi Amin blow their countries into pieces.

Prof. A.K.P. Kludze, former Justice of Ghana’s Supreme Court, talks of how though President Kwame Nkrumah was a freedom fighter and a committed Pan-Africanist, he later allowed the unrestrained Big Man syndrome to turn Ghana into a one-party state at his time, becoming the live chairman of his ruling Conventions People’s Party and the general secretary of the party’s Central Committee. “Nobody dared challenge him because it was considered treasonous to challenge him. He made a law that said that nobody could stand as a candidate unless his candidature was approved by the General Secretary of the party, that is he himself.”

Tandja was an example of Big Man syndrome, scheming to rule for life against the multi-ethnic make-up of Niger that will be enriched better with healthy democracy and freedoms. But Tandja can’t let go the Big Man syndrome. Tandja believes he is the only man destined by God to rule Niger. Tandja is a throwback to Africa’s period of paranoid one-party systems and military juntas that darkened most part of post-independent Africa.

Tandja had his first taste of power after a 1974 coup. As a symptom of the Big Man syndrome, Tandja’s geocentricisms became oblivious to criticism from Africa and the international community. Tandja overturned the country’s infant democracy (since 1999) by cleverly appropriating its democratic tenets to create a domineering President-for-Life system a la Kwame Nkrumah. The psychology informing Tandja’s thinking is a page from the unelected Jerry Rawlings telling Ghanaians “To whom,” when asked to hand over power in the 1980s and give way to democracy.

In Sierra Leone, President Siaka Stevens told Sierra Leoneans, “Pass I die” (Till I die I remain President no matter what) when asked to democratize against the realities on the ground. Stevens prepared the grounds for Sierra Leone’s eventual explosion. In Liberia, as Samuel Doe messed-up the democratic system in an atmosphere of extreme autocracy, he and his cronies shouted, “No Doe, No Liberia.” Doe ended up blowing Liberia into pieces. Generally, Africa’s long gone “President-for-Life” culture reveals that the Big Man looks down on the citizenry, believing they are God chosen against the democratic and development aspirations of the masses, damning the consequences.

But Tandja wasn’t positively tapping into current African development thinking. “No Tandja, No Niger,” Tandja indirectly tells Nigeriens and Africans. What is the antidote to Niger’s development challenges, the Big Man syndrome and in dealing with the likes of Tandja? Not military coups but education, the rule of law, human rights, freedoms, democracy and “teachable moments” of African current events. And what lawyers call an admission against interest: the best way to understand Niger is to get to the bottom of its painful events and that’s to start reading its history.

"Students at Salt Spring's Central School, 1929, courtesy of Salt Spring Archives."

Evelyn C. White The Afro News Salt Spring Island

With the blockbuster success of his book Roots (1976) and the subsequent television miniseries, author Alex Haley tapped into a deep longing among the descendants of enslaved blacks to claim ties with our African forebears. It was my understanding of this history that prompted me to burst into tears when I recently accessed my e-mail and found an image of a beaming man in Lesotho holding a copy of my book, Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring Island (EGAG).

The book was opened to a page featuring a photo of the man’s daughter Tankiso, age 5, shortly after she’d arrived on Salt Spring last May to begin a new life with her adoptive family. I’m not privy to the circumstances that led to the separation of birth parent and child. But it was clear from the father’s radiant smile that his bond with his daughter now in Canada would endure.

For me, the arrival of the photo from Lesotho marked the culmination of a three-year journey I’d spent documenting the historical and contemporary presence of blacks on Salt Spring. Having toiled a decade on a biography of Alice Walker (best known for her novel The Color Purple), I had not intended to begin another major writing project when I moved to Salt Spring from the San Francisco Bay area. But one day, in 2006, I was standing in my living room when a cosmic voice exhorted me to write a book about the black heritage on Salt Spring.

Over the years, I’ve learned to honour the spiritual guidance that I believe is available to all who heed its call. And so, working with local photographer Joanne Bealy, I began the task of producing the first book to focus exclusively on Salt Spring’s 150-year black heritage and to examine its unique racial history through a 21st century lens. See www.dancingcrowpress.com

The ancestral home of the Coast Salish people, Salt Spring welcomed its first black settlers in 1859. Literate and highly accomplished, the free blacks had fled Northern California after the enactment of a series of racially repressive laws that threatened their hard-won freedom. Interestingly, the disaffected blacks in California were seeking refuge at the same time that B.C. provincial governor James Douglas (himself the son of a black woman born in Barbados) was in need of skilled labourers to support the boom town frenzy after gold was discovered along the Fraser River. A core group of the blacks that had first landed in Victoria later migrated to Salt Spring.

The early blacks on Salt Spring included the community’s first teacher, John Craven Jones. A college graduate trained in Greek and Latin, Jones taught the youth on Salt Spring (without pay) for several years. As one who was educated (K-9) by a coterie of dedicated black teachers, my research on Jones was especially uplifting. And who could look at a 1929 class photo from Salt Spring and not marvel at the ethnic diversity of the students?

The force behind Salt Spring’s first public recreation site, Jim Anderson was another early black pioneer. An archival photo finds him in the company of a black youth in a canoe. Here’s a reflection I was thrilled to include in EGAG: “Most people find it tiresome to have to sweep their back porch but Jim Anderson made a hobby of keeping his beach clean and he was down there every morning [with a broom]. This was [Anderson’s] little park and he delighted in having people … come down for picnics.”

The boy in the photo was a member of the Whims family, also among the black pioneers. Born on Salt Spring, octogenarian Bobby Wood is related, on his maternal side, to the Whims clan. A dapper gentleman with a quiet demeanor, Wood enjoys fishing and the Calgary Stampede.

Long attractive to retirees, Salt Spring is also awash with children. The youthful ranks include many children of African descent such as Calla Ann Amma Adubofour-Poko whose father is Ghanaian. Like Tankiso, Ethiopia-born Selamu and Dexter Patterson were adopted by white families on Salt Spring. “The story of the early African American settlers is deeply moving for us,” said Shauna Klem, who is pictured in EGAG with her sons. “ Everyone has embraced the boys so enthusiastically.”

Given Salt Spring’s status as one of the top artist colonies in North America, it was especially rewarding for me, as an author, to profile black artists on the island. Born in Kenya, Sav Boro is an acclaimed muralist and painter of wildlife and landscapes. The daughter of a Moroccan musician father and a teacher mother of French, Egyptian and Tunisian heritage, Yasmine Amal is a skilled potter who sells her wares at Salt Spring’s renowned Saturday Market.

As the world turns to B.C. because of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I’m elated to have “answered the call” to create a book that celebrates the compelling black history of Canada. Photographer Joanne Bealy and I will sign and discuss Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 5 at the Rhizome Café, 317 East Broadway in Vancouver. We’ll also do a presentation at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 24 at the central Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street. Both events are free and open to the public.

African Cultural Winter Celebration, hosted by REACH Multicultural Family Center (MFC)

By Jenny Francis The Afro News Burnaby

An important community event took place at Eastburn Community Centre in Burnaby on 12 December 2009. The 3rd annual African Cultural Winter Celebration, hosted by REACH Multicultural Family Center (MFC) brought together approximately two hundred people from all over the world. Following prayers in Arabic and English, guests enjoyed a delicious halal meal prepared by Iraqi and African women, musical entertainment by the Togolese Ensemble and Zion’s Children of God (from Congo), and inspired storytelling by Jean-Pierre Makosso. Welcoming speeches were offered by guests of honour including NDP MP Peter Julian; Burnaby City Counsellors Sav Dhaliwal and Paul McDonell; Ros Salvador, a lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre; and Lina Fabiano, interim Executive Director of REACH Community Health Centre. After the performances, a crowd of adults and children hit the dance floor, shaking it to the sound of DJ beats. At the end of the night, laundry baskets filled with donated gifts were distributed to sixty-five families and individuals. Guests and organisers expressed their appreciation for the generosity of the donors (local businesses and individuals) who contributed items to the baskets.

Read the full story

SPECIAL INTERVIEW (Part 3)   Development/Africa

Prof. George Ayittey

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong continues his discussions with Prof. George Ayittey on his argument that US President Barack Obama’s Accra proclamation that Africa’s future is in Africans hands is an “intellectual vindication” for the “Internalist School” of African development

Q. Did the “Internalist School” demonstrate that African intellectuals have finally come out with an African-centred development paradigm, filling a long-running vacuum in this regard?

The internalist orthodoxy and the Africa-centered development paradigm are two separate animals, although they are somewhat related. The development paradigm refers more to development that benefits Africa and not metropolitan Europe. Recall that under colonialism, the colonies were expected to be purveyors of raw materials and labor for Europe’s industrial machines. That was a Euro-centric development model. The internalist orthodoxy, by contrast, deals with the causes of Africa’s crises. Now, it is possible to expand the internalist orthodoxy into development modeling by insisting that the model should not only be Africa-centered but also draw its inputs from Africa, which I tried to do when I coined the express “African solution for Africa’s problems” in 1994. For far too long, African leaders sought external solutions – from the World Bank, Western donors and the international community – for their development problems. They also copied too many foreign models – for example, the “Asian model.” They should be developing their own “African model.” Such a model can be found on the African continent itself —in Botswana.

Q. “I listened to Obama’s speech with a bemused sense of vindication. To many of us, what he was saying was not new. We have known of these “self-evident truths” for decades – just that we were afraid to say so openly or publicly.” You wrote this at www.ghanaweb.com (2009-07-20). Why were African elites, civil societies and the Western world afraid to campaign this aloud as it confirms your “African solution for African problems” paradigm?In the West, political correctness or racial over-sensitivity has shielded African leaders. Whites are reluctant to criticize black African leaders for fear of being labeled racist. Black Americans, for reasons of racial solidarity, won’t criticize black Africans leaders either. Those Africans like me who publicly criticize African leaders have been pilloried, reviled and denounced as “traitors,” “Uncle Toms,” House niggers” and accused of “washing Africa’s dirty linen in public” and providing “ammunition to racists.” This atmosphere of intimidation and vilification has prevented many Africans in the West from speaking out publicly against atrocities committed by African leaders against their own people. This sort of gives African despots a free pass as they are shielded from criticism from the West, even when muted.

The intellectual environment is even more pernicious in Africa where repression still prevails. Freedom of expression is not tolerated in many African countries. Write something an African government doesn’t like and “poof!” you are either dead or in jail. Take corruption for example. To fight it, it must first be exposed. “He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured,” says an Ethiopian proverb. Yet, for much of the postcolonial period, exposing a problem in Africa has almost always been impossible because of censorship, brutal suppression of dissent, and state ownership or control of the media. Corrupt and incompetent governments deny or conceal their embarrassing failings (abuse of power, looting and atrocities) until the problems blow up in their faces. But by then it was too late to solve them. As Adam Feinstein, editor of the monthly publication of the International Press Institute put it: “The press is always a first scapegoat of governments. They can’t blame themselves, so they have to blame somebody else” (The Washington Post, April 6, 1995, A15). Examples abound in Africa:

• On April 22, 2003, Mozambique’s Supreme Court president, Mario Mangaze sued the weekly newspaper, Zambeze, for libel after it alleged that he had tried to intervene in the decision of a lower court in return for gifts of land in Maputo province. Mangaze’s lawyer accused the paper of failing to check its sources. But the newspaper director, “Salomao Moyana said officials had told his reporters that ‘affairs of a state institution are not discussed in the press’” (Index on Censorship, July 2003; p.154).

• On May 5, 2003, the weekly Le Temps in Gabon was suspended for three months after publishing an article about state mismanagement of funds (Index on Censorship, July 2003; p.146).

African governments always want to hide the truth and keep their people in the dark. Teeming with barbarous dictators, Africa is now a continent where freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the free flow of information are most restricted. In its Freedom of the Press Report, 2007, Freedom House noted that free news media exist in only 8 African countries: Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Ghana, Mali, Mauritius, Sao Tome & Principe, and South Africa. In Equatorial Guinea, the people “can choose among two TV and two radio stations — in both cases the government operates one and Teodoro Obiang (the president) the other. There are no daily newspapers, and the few publications that do circulate offer fawning praise of the regime” (The Nation, April 22, 2002; p.18).

Due to the explosion in the number of satellite dishes, electronic communications (fax machines, the internet, e-mail, etc.), much more information is now available in Africa. The new technology has severely crippled the ability of African dictators to control the flow of information and keep their people in the dark. In their desperate attempts to retain control, corrupt African despots resorted to defamation or libel suits, heavy fines and assassinations. The new tactic is that private newspapers are allowed to operate — hence, there is a “free press.” But publish an offending article and a newspaper can be slapped with a huge fine that makes it impossible to continue operation. Private newspapers that are courageous enough to expose problems of corruption are often shut down and their editors either jailed or murdered. Perhaps a quick tour of Africa would be instructive about the fate of journalists who attempted to expose corruption:

• Angola: BBC reporter Gustavo Costa was slapped with a defamation suit in June 1994 by oil minister Albna Affis after filing stories about government corruption. On 18 January 1995 Ricardo de Melo, the editor of the Luanda-based Impartial Fax, was killed for writing stories about official corruption. On April 13, 2000, Angolan news editor Graca Campos and editor Americo Goncalves were sentenced to 4 months and 3 months in prison respectively and ordered to pay $40,000 compensation for a series of articles published in 1998 and 1999 in their paper, Angolense, which described Kwanza-Norte governor Manuel Pedro Pakavita as “incompetent” (Index On Censorship, 3/2000; p.86).

• Burkina Faso: The Independent Commission of Inquiry investigating the death of journalist Norbert Zongo on Dec 13, 1998 concluded on May 7, 1999 that Zongo was “assassinated for purely political motives because he practiced investigative journalism.” He was investigating allegations of corruption among the ruling elite. The Commission’s 35-page report released a list of “likely culprits,” including six soldiers from the President’s security regiment (Index on Censorship, July/August 1999; p.130).

• Cameroon: Emmanuel Noubissie Ngankam, director of the independent Dikalo was given a one-year suspended sentence, fined CFA 5 million ($8,800), and ordered to pay CFA 15 million in damages after publishing an article alleging that the former minister of public works and transportation had expropriated property in the capital Yaounde. Also in Cameroon, staff at two other newspapers, La Nouvelle Expression and Galaxie, were sued for defamation by Augustin Frederick Kodock, state planning and regional development minister, over newspaper articles alleging that the minister’s private secretary had embezzled large sums of money. Then “the Cameroonian newspaper which reported President Biya’s marriage to a 24-year-old has been suspended by the government. When Perspectives-Hebdo ran the story on March 17, 1994, police quickly seized all available copies. Joseph-Marie Besseri, the publisher, said the official reason for the ban was failure to show the edition to censors before distribution, as the law requires. He denies the charge (African News Weekly, 8 April 1994, 5).

• Kenya: Abraham Kipsang Kiptanui, former controller of State House, was awarded over $250,000 in damages on March 31, 1998, for libel caused by an article published in Target magazine. Kiptanui sued over an article entitled, “Three Billion Shilling Deal Off” (Index On Censorship, May/June, 1998, 113). On March 28, 1996, Kipruto arap Kirwa held a press conference at Kenya’s Parliament Building to complain about the stifling of alternative views with the ruling KANU party: “I had hoped President Moi would, on the basis of his wealth of experience and shrewdness as a political operator and a democrat, albeit reluctant one, find some accommodation [with] those of us with dissenting views. But I have now come to the conclusion that the President is not a democrat of any shade” (The African Observer, 25 April – 8 May 1996, 13). Since he delivered that broadside, Kirwa has not been seen, fueling speculation that he might have paid the penalty reserved for overly outspoken critics of Moi. As mentioned earlier, in 1990 former Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was murdered after threatening to expose corruption in the government.

• Mozambique: Carlos Cardoso, an investigative journalist, was murdered in November 2000 for uncovering a bank scandal in which about $14 million was looted from Mozambique’s largest bank, BCM on the eve of its privatization. The official in charge of banking supervision, Antonio Siba Siba, was also murdered investigating the banking scandals. Cardoso’s six alleged killers were finally put on trial in November 2002. One of them, Manuel dos Anjos, admitted taking part in the killing but claimed to have acted on orders from Nyimpine Chissano, the son of the president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano (The Economist, Nov 23, 2002; p.45). Nyimpine Chissano has a strange way of warding off inquisitive journalists. In October, 2002, three journalists probing the president’s son were sent dozens of live chickens, allegedly by the president’s wife, Marcelina. “They saw this as a threat (Nyimpine Chissano is known as the `son of the cockerel’)” (The Economist, Nov 23, 2002; p.45).

• Namibia: President Sam Nujoma and Home Affairs Minister Jerry Ekandjo have served separate summonses on the weekly, Windhoek Observer, for defamation and are demanding a total of up to $200,000 in damages. President Nujoma served his summons against editor Hannes Smith on 7 August 1998 and is demanding NR 1 million for a series of articles that accused him of abuse of office, nepotism, criminal conduct and corruption. Ekandjo’s complaint arose from an article which implied that he had abused his position to subvert the rule of law and that he was engaged in corrupt practices (Index On Censorship, November/December 1998, 102).

• Zimbabwe: Although the country is on paper a multi-party democracy, open debate — let alone outright political dissent — has been increasingly discouraged. At the University of Zimbabwe, students and staff have been swatted by riot police with teargas and clubs for complaining about corruption, a growing scourge. [And] three senior journalists at the weekly Financial Gazette, the country’s leading free voice, have been charged with “criminal defamation.” [And] a new law enables Mugabe to sack outspoken board members of any independent charitable organization and replace them with government-blessed appointees” (The Economist, 19 August 1995, 38).

President Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe has launched an all-out war against independent media, using weapons of mass intimidation that range from lawsuits to physical violence. Since January 1999, two local journalists have been tortured and two foreign correspondents expelled, while the secret service screens e-mail and Internet communications to preserve “national security.” Bomb attacks twice damaged the premises of the independent Daily News; the second bombing followed close on the heels of a call from Mugabe’s information minister to silence that paper “once and for all.” Meanwhile, Mugabe makes liberal use of his courts to prosecute independent journalists for criminal defamation (From the web site of Committee to Protect Journalists, www.cpj.org). On April 28, 2000, state-owned media editors were instructed by the Information Minister, Chenhamo Chimutengwende, that “they had an obligation to support and amplify government policy and views without question and to write positive stories about the ruling party and to attack the opposition” (“Zimbabwe Alert: Government Tells state-owned editors to Conform,” www.misanet.org, April 28, 2000).

On January 20, 2003, the office of President Robert Mugabe took control of the country’s forecasting service after learning that the drought-affected country was facing two more years of low rainfall. “The government does not want any information on the weather to be leaked,” an official from the Meteorological Office said. “All our forecasts are to be sent to the president’s office, and only then can they be released” (The Washington Times, January 26, 2003; p. A7). The president’s office was expected to 4 most negative aspects before authorizing their release, the official said. Informed sources said Mr. Mugabe feared that the revelation that no early end to the drought was in sight would heighten discontent at a time when nearly half the country’s 13 million people were starving. Food riots had already erupted in the capital, Harare, and the southwestern city of Bulawayo.

Even the internet is coming under increasing attack by repressive governments. Many governments in Africa (Liberia, Sudan and Zimbabwe) restrict Internet access on the pretext of protecting the public from pornography, subversive material, or violations of national security. To restrict Internet access, governments may require special licensing and regulation of internet use, limit Internet traffic to filtered government servers, remove controversial pages from web sites, and even apply existing press laws to Internet content.

To be sure, the picture is not entirely bleak. Some progress has haltingly been made. In 1985, there were only 10 community broadcasters in the whole of Africa; in 2000 there were more than 300″ (The Economist, May 11, 2002; p.43). But persecution of journalists, harsh press laws and resistance to press freedoms remain. In the beginning of the 21st Century, however, there was a subtle shift from the brutal tactics favored in the past. Africa’s “Big Men” began using new media laws to introduce a subtler form of censorship. “Instead of the heavy-handed ways they used in the past, dictators are using the laws of the country,” said Yves Sorokobi, Africa Programme Coordinator with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “They have a lot to hide, they have skeletons in the closet, but they can’t get away with murder” (The Financial Gazette, May 3, 2002).

Recall that in Ghana in the 1990s, human waste was dumped in the offices of the Ghanaian Chronicle, Free Press, and Crusading Guide for publishing articles that displeased the Rawlings regime. It is this kind of intellectual barbarism that prevented Africans from speaking out and also held the internalist orthodoxy in check to the detriment of Africa’s progress. Today, most Africans point to the catastrophic failure of leadership – not external factors — as the primary obstacle holding Africa back.

To be continued

Elizabeth Adisah Iddi African Mother

By Jack Toronto The Afro News Vancouver

Sign on the wall of the clinic where my blood samples are taken: “I plan on living forever. So far, so good.”

North Americans live in a “death-denying society…we search for immortality – in diets, exercise programs, plastic surgery to keep us looking youthful, treatments to cure incurable diseases,” writes Dr. David Kuhl in What Dying People Want. But to deny death is to deny life. Death makes life precious, driving courageous people to find meaning in their lives. Such courage is in short supply in Canada where most of us follow the assumptions of mainstream culture until the reality of death comes calling in the form of a diagnosis of terminal illness that plunges us into loneliness, guilt, shame and despair. In his work as a palliative care physician Dr. Kuhl devoted himself to helping his patients to experience hope, joy and intimacy at the end of life, treasures discovered only if the dying face death and do the hard work of discovering their true selves and mending broken relationships to live as honestly and fully as possible in the time that is left.

“In Africa, life is cheap.” My father was a doctor and I was about 12 years old when he reported this comment made by a colleague who had worked in a small African hospital. Not true. In northern Ghana in the 1960s life was precious but death was such a stark reality that people had no illusions of invincibility. Half of the children died before age 5, most from malaria and dysentery. In Tamale and throughout Ghana babies were not named and “outdoored” until they had lived long enough after birth to show that there was some hope of their surviving the many dangers they faced. For the first and only time in my life I saw a dead body lying by the road near the Yeji ferry wharf on Lake Volta. There were no emergency response vehicles, no yellow tape to hold back a crowd while paramedics attempted a high tech resuscitation. The person had died, was covered with a sheet and life went on around the corpse.

Read the full story

Reforming Leadership Across Africa

Reforming Leadership Across Africa ,Author: J. William Addai

Publisher: Publishers Graphics Indiana, USA, 2009 Price: US$24.99 plus shipping

Reviewer: Kofi Akosah-Sarpong The Afro News International

Increasingly, leadership has emerged as a key factor in Africa’s progress. Bewildered leadership schemes have seen a good part of post-independent Africa sinking, some leading to horrible civil wars and state paralysis. Africa’s leadership jam reveals that African elites have not understood their environment in relation to Africa’s progress, especially how to draw leadership materials from within their raw cultural values. Nigerians, Kenyans, Guineans and Central Africans will tell you they have everything but leadership. This acknowledgement was revived when I read Reforming Leadership in Africa, a contribution to the on-going discussions continent-wide for the need to appropriate Africa’s cultural values and institutions into Africa’s progress, as a matter of psychology, confidence, dignity and logic. Such appropriation will help the continent’s progress by fostering the required self-assurance considered necessary for progress. The schism in Africa’s leadership organization has come about because the ex-colonial structures have not been harmonized skillfully enough with Africa’s indigenous ones, especially in the on-going decentralization exercises and the talk of developing new leaders for tomorrow’s Africa.

Read the full story

For African Immigrants, Bronx Culture Clash Turns Violent

By SAM DOLNICK

The New York Times, Published: October 19, 2009

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Nabi Niambele, gesturing, organized a meeting with police officials at Al Tawba mosque in Claremont to discuss hate crimes in the neighborhood

The storefronts on a stretch of Webster Avenue in the South Bronx tell the story of local shifts as well as any census: a Senegalese-run 99-cent store, an African video store, an African-run fast-food spot, a mosque, several African restaurants. The owner of Café de C.E.D.E.A.O., named for the coalition of West African nations, envisioned it as a community hub in the Bronx neighborhood of Claremont, where Americans would try his wife’s cassava soup and realize it’s not so foreign after all. But a year in, the owner, Mohammed M. Barrie, said he could count the number of American patrons on one hand. Meanwhile, he and his customers have been taunted, he said, and his restaurant’s window urinated on. Someone tried to break into a diner’s car. Then there is the bullet hole in the front window, a mark from a gunshot through the window late one night last summer.

“Those people, they don’t respect African people,” said Mr. Barrie, a Sierra Leone native who settled in the United States in 1998. “I pay my bills, I pay my taxes, they still …” He trailed off. Down the block, Muhammed Sillah sat in a folding chair in front of the tiny Al Tawba mosque, eyeing the jungle gym across the street and remembering when he used to let his children play outside. “Spanish kids, American kids – but no African kids,” said Mr. Sillah, a Gambian mechanic raising five children in Claremont. “We’re scared.” Their fear and frustration are shared by many local West African immigrants, whose fast-growing presence in the neighborhood – and in the city over all – has been accompanied by increasing tensions with the local black American residents. “They think they’re better than black people,” James Carroll, a retired Army specialist standing in front of a busy convenience store, said of the West African immigrants. “We’re supposed to be one community – we’re supposed to be able to get along – but they don’t give it a chance.” Some of the tension can be attributed to cultural differences that all immigrants face, though the West Africans in Claremont, as conservative Muslims, have the added challenge of adjusting to a post-9/11 New York. But resentment and mistrust has escalated to actual violence, and, they say, left them feeling under siege. After reports of nearly two dozen attacks on West African immigrants in the last two years, community leaders reached out to the police, who interviewed 17 Africans in the neighborhood and filed 11 criminal complaints. Two of those were deemed hate crimes, including an attack in June that left a Gambian immigrant hospitalized for eight days. They have made no arrest in either bias case, but a police mobile truck with a video camera now stands outside the mosque. Claremont straddles the 44th and 42nd Precincts, two of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. So far this year, there have been 319 robberies in the 44th Precinct and 237 assaults in the 42nd. At the Butler Houses, part of a complex of housing projects that loom over the neighborhood, police sirens are a background soundtrack, and residents of all colors and nationalities warn against walking around at night. But the West Africans say the attacks on them are calculated. “It’s prejudice,” said Dembo Fofana, who said a beating in June by a group of 10 to 15 men left him with broken ribs and internal bleeding. “It’s because we’re African, and we’re Muslim.” Mr. Fofana, who came to this country 21 years ago, has not returned to his job at a bakery since the assault. He stays home, recovering, receiving disability checks and caring for his five children. “There’s a lot of tension,” he said. “Just yesterday, someone said, ‘What would you think if I came to Africa and tried to take your property?’ I told him, ‘Brother, I’m not taking anything from you. I’m just trying to live my life.’ ” The African population in the Bronx has grown considerably in recent years: the census reported 12,063 sub-Saharan Africans in 1990, while the most recent census estimate was 61,487. In the community district that includes Claremont, black Americans made up 44 percent of the population, according to 2000 census figures, with 52.9 percent of the area Hispanic. African immigrants were nearly 10 percent of the population, a number likely to be much higher in the 2010 census. The Africans in Claremont hail mainly from poor, French-speaking countries: Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Senegal. Like immigrants across New York, many are here illegally, working long hours for little pay. Many work as taxi drivers, convenience store clerks, fast-food cashiers – jobs that keep them on the street late at night, when few others are around But some say the Muslims deliberately hold themselves apart. A 37-year-old American man who gave his name as Dre pointed to the pavement in front of the mosque where the African men, easily identifiable in their beards and skullcaps, gather each afternoon. “If you don’t give praise to Allah, don’t go there,” he said. “It’s just like Afghanistan.” Kantara Baragi, the imam of the Al Tawba mosque, acknowledges that insularity is part of the problem. “We don’t hang around,” said Mr. Baragi, whose delicate frame nearly disappears inside his long, flowing robes. “We just go to work. We don’t have a relationship with people here. They don’t know us.” So community leaders organized two meetings this summer with police officials, politicians, community board members and housing association leaders. The goal, Mr. Baragi said, was “to let them know us so they don’t look at us like strangers.” Zain Abdullah, an assistant professor of religion, race and ethnicity at Temple University in Philadelphia, says it is common for African immigrants to suffer harassment when they settle in traditionally black neighborhoods in big cities, like Detroit, New York and Philadelphia. “Many African-Americans feel that the influx of Africans coming in represents a kind of invasion,” he said. “Culturally, African-Americans have always imagined themselves as Africans, or at least of African descent, but they might have never encountered Africans from the continent. The actual encounter is shocking.” Mr. Baragi, the imam, says he tries to accommodate his neighbors. For instance, his mosque, which blends in with the other storefronts, does not sound the call to prayer through speakers because “we don’t need to force everyone to hear what we’re doing.” Instead, five times a day, from the sidewalk or, when it is cold, from behind the front door, a man from Al Tawba sings the call in a voice drowned out by the rumbling traffic. Down the block at Café de C.E.D.E.A.O., a young man walked in last week wearing a Yankees hat tilted askew, an oversize military-style jacket and baggy pants. He looked like any member of the crowd hanging out in front of the Butler Houses, but Fofana Alhusane’s outfit was calculated, a camouflage to hide his Gambian roots. African clothes are dangerous,” he said. “I used to wear them, but I saw a few people get beat up, so now I wear New York clothes.”

source: NY Times.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 21, 2009

An article on Tuesday about tensions between West African immigrants and black Americans in the Claremont neighborhood of the Bronx misidentified, in some copies, the primary language spoken in Gambia, one of the immigrants’ home countries. It is English, not French.

Special to The Afro News – Vancouver

Aug 30 La Palabre radio show in studio panelists John Nuraney, MLA Burnaby-Willingdon Patience Nzamakunda Deidre Heim Honore Gbedze (DJ KMG) Jenipher Wasike, REACH Multicultural Family Services Jenny Francis MA student at UBC Bitisho Bembeleza

On August 30, 2008, a public radio forum sponsored by The Afro News and La Palabre Radio Program aired live on the topic of “Settlement Issues of African Immigrants & Refugees. The panel discussion and call in segment explored the theme of “How can we make Vancouver a better place to live?” The show was hosted and sponsored by La Palabre’s director and Afro News Publisher, Honore Gbedze. The show runs weekly on Saturdays in the 11:00 a.m to noon time slot on 96.1 FM in Vancouver. It offers local and international listeners news, interviews, special features and music of interest to Afric peoples, their co-workers and friends round the globe. The special call in show featured guest panelists: Dr. Charles Quist-Adade, Professor of Sociology and Geography at Kwantlen and UBC (phone in), John Nuraney, MLA Burnaby-Willingdon, Jenipher Wasike, REACH Multicultural Family Services, Patience Nzamakunda, a Vancouver refugee claimant, Bitisho Bembeleza, a government assisted refugee and Jenny Francis, MA student at UBC, author of forthcoming HRSDC report: African Immigrants/Refugees’ Experiences of Housing & Homelessness in Greater Vancouver.

Read the full story

CANADA DELIVERS ON ITS COMMITMENT TO STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Canada PM Steven Harper & USA President B.OBAMA ,Photo by Deb Ransom

PITTSBURGH – Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that Canada will provide the African Development Bank more lending room to respond to the pressures of the global economic crisis. This action to temporarily triple callable capital for the Bank reinforces Canada’s London G20 commitment to strengthen and support international financial institutions.

“Canada is the first country to have responded to a critical need of regional banks in this innovative way,” said Prime Minister Harper. “Our support recognizes efforts by the African Development Bank to ensure it has sufficient resources to respond quickly to the demands of its borrowing members while it continues its poverty reduction efforts.”

Read the full story