R. E. Ekosso's Blog

Bolivia: the lithium battle

I hear Cameroon has a new prime minister. I also hear hat there is a law to legalise homosexuality and abortion in Cameroon. The first bit of news is largely insignificant in that nothing will change. The second bit is more important and I want to register my support for that initiative, whatever the motives a number of commentators have ascribed to those who tabled the bill (one hears of the homosexual lobby in the corridors of Cameroonian power). Na dem mbanga, na dem oya. In English, none of my business.

What I really want to talk about is lithium. Lithium as in the element on the periodic table. Lithium as in the drug that is given to manic depressives.

But most of all, lithium as in batteries. Lithium as in Bolivia has got lots of it and a lot of biggies want it because lithium ion batteries may power cars in the future.

Poor Bolivia. Enter the jackals.

We all know, from examples like the columbite/tantalite tragedy in the DRC, what happens when a country has zero governance, zero capital for investment, stupid leaders and/or warlords, and great mineral wealth.

Bolivia does have governance with Evo Morales, the “ native” with a vision who became president. He is not much liked in some circles because he nationalises things for the benefit of Bolivians whereas other people think they should come in and “ develop” the product for their own benefit. Some commentators have been apoplectic about this,as you’ll see later if you click on the link to comments on an article about Bolivia’s lithium. 

The Guardian spins it as a lost opportunity if Evo Morales and union leaders continue to be stubborn in refusing foreign domination and profiteering in lithium exploitation: “their politics could stymie yet another opportunity for Bolivia to improve the lives of its citizens.” Like the Lithium is going to get up and walk if big multinationals are not immediately allowed in to do as they please.

In the same vein, someone is worried, or claims to be worried, that if Bolivia does not sell the Lithium now, no one will want it later:
Juan Carlos Zuleta, an economist in La Paz, said: “We have the most magnificent lithium reserves on the planet, but if we don’t step into the race now, we will lose this chance. The market will find other solutions for the world’s battery needs.”

In Cameroon, when you offer a landlord or landlady rent that is insulting low compared to what s/he invested in the house, s/he tells you that houses do not need to be fed. So too with Bolivia’s lithium.

 Nationalism is bad if practiced by other people, you see. Never mind that idiots round the world buy t-shirts with “ western”, especially American, national flags on them. Or is that commercialism rather than nationalism? Maybe. But what do you call it when a Dubai-based company tries to muscle in on  American ports management and is blocked? Why is it that it is okay to refuse to cede control of sensitive (from a security perspective) or potentially highly lucrative national industries to foreigners when one is rich but not so when one is poor? I will be told that some developed countries have sold water supply companies to foreign owners. True. But if a French owned company tries to mess with Britain because it controls basic British utilities, how far do you think that will go? It's all about power.

Anyway, let’s return to lithium and Bolivia. Bolivia has about 50% of the world’s lithium supply. Lithium is being touted as the future fuel for electric cars. We’re running out of oil. We still want to buy and drive our cars. The carmakers want to stay in business. So guess who’s very interested in Bolivian lithium?
As I said, enter the jackals.
“For example, French manufacturer Bolloré has presented a proposal to Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, aimed at the massive exploitation and commercialization of the Uyuni mineral deposits. The race for Bolivian lithium has also been joined by Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors, followed closely by General Motors, which was engaged in talks with the Bolivian government before GM declared bankruptcy this year.”

But (the article concludes):
“As this issue was going to press, however, the Bolivian daily La Razon and in the regional publication America Economia reported that at present, the government of President Evo Morales intends to carry out exploitation of the lithium deposits at Salar de Uyuni all by itself, without any partners. This is because none of the offers made by multinational companies has yet to satisfy the government’s principal goal of moving away from the simple production of raw materials, and turning Bolivia into an industrialized country. To achieve that goal, the government plans to obtain financial assistance from a bank or from another institution, according to the reports.”

Says Bolivia’s mining minister:

"We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."

Just in case you think this is a small story, you should visit this site to see how lively the discussion is becoming

The best post on the site, which summarises the point of view of most thinking third-worlders, is this rather entertaining one:

How dare they refuse to be exploited! Do they not know who WE are? We are the US of F'ing A and we will pay them pennies for our lithium inconveniently located in their country and they will like it.
Oh, alright, we'll be charitable and double thier daily wages to $2, now gives us the Lithium before we invade and take it.
In spite of my hopes for Lithium battery technologies helping the evolution to plug-in hybrids, I'm happy to hear of a countries leader NOT selling out it's people. Morales is well know for his populism (similar to Chavez for sure and good friends as well).
If I were Morales I'd restrict raw exports to a trivial amount and force all the battery makers to build mines AND factories in Bolivia.

Of course, when the Bolivians say
"We are building every¬thing from scratch. This is a historic moment. We are working for ourselves." Rich countries would no longer plunder Bolivia's resources. "There is a new dialectic."

Others call it “delirium”

There is even an article entitled “ Lithium could be Bolivia’s future if politics don’t get in the way”,  politics being, of course, poor people having opinions about their resources that are at odds with what rich people think.

But the Lithium story has another facet:
Another key point that the buzz about lithium batteries doesn't address is that LiIon batteries can only store energy; they cannot create it.

So in chasing after Bolivian lithium we’re not try to reduce energy dependence or consumption. We just want to go and get it from someone else now oil is running out and people like Chavez are being naughty.

I would have thought the issue at stake here would be not getting at Bolivia’s lithium, but reducing our consumption of energy. But I am mistaken. Who wants to wash clothes by hand or walk to work?

Anyway, I hope Morales lives long and stands firm. He’s got the right idea.

Review - From Colonization to Globalization: Difference or Repetition?

Paper by Martial Frindethie

Note: the full text of the paper is available at the link provided at the end of this posting, which is only a review of the paper.

This paper is quite possibly one of the most startling I have read in a while. That so much information is available, and that people may not be privy to it, is one of the tragedies of humanity. We have the wherewithal to save ourselves and yet we do not.

Frindethie’s paper is largely about his reading of the recent history of Côte d’Ivoire. The tone is one of someone in a towering rage at the French government and French interest groups. For this reason, it will be of particular interest to Francophone Africa. And although Frindethie comes across as a very, very angry man, his tone shifting from sardonic to downright bitter, this is a well-researched philippic.
In my view, almost none of the people mentioned in the paper come out smelling of roses, to say the least. Certainly not the French government or French business interests in Africa. Not Kofi Anan. And most certainly not Alassane Ouattara, nor his wife the Frenchwoman Dominique Nouvian Folleroux, described as a “femme fatale” by Frindethie. On the strength of the evidence, one is inclined to agree.

If you are one of those who harbour a vague distrust of what powerful foreign governments might intend for your country, but have not progressed further than a few careless, half-baked conspiracy theories, this kind of paper is for you. It gives us a historical over view of French colonialism, with interesting sideswipes detailing the fact that France does not win wars. I was interested to learn, for instance, that after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, France had to pay $1 billion in addition to losing Alsace-Lorraine. It paid up pretty quickly. But earlier, in 1815, when Algeria asked France to repay a loan of 18 million francs it had contracted to alleviate an impending family and keep Napoleon’s soldiers happy, the French replied first with insolence and the with 600 ships and 37000 troops which “raided mosques and transformed them [in]to cathedrals…destroyed private property…raped women, and executed hundreds of Algerians."

With such interesting detail, the author discusses the Scramble for Africa, France’s history on the continent, its classification of its colonies, and its heavy-handed paternalism. This information is easily available to anyone. But what is new and highly interesting is the incisive analysis of these events.

Then we move into the modern era. I offer you a quote from the English text of the paper (I have edited the text very slightly for clarity):

The World Bank and the IMF’s insistence that developing countries open their economies to Foreign Direct Investment has enable the re-occupation of the countries that had resolved, half a century ago, to determine the course of their particular development away from the imperial ambitions of Europe. In most cases, globalisation has succeeded in reinstating European – and American – imperialism by allowing First World capitalists quasi-ownership of Third World countries through purchases of strategic government-owned enterprises, such as power, water and communication companies.

Moving on to politics, particularly Ivorian politics, the author delves into an area which, much as it arouses my curiosity, fills me with unease. I am referring to the accusations of xenophobia hurled at the Ivorian government some years back, particular Henri Konan Bedié. A surfeit of nationalism, or jingoism of some sort, seems to taint this part of Ivorian history. Frindethie attempts to explain that this impression was gained from biased media reports (meaning French media outlets – bear in mind that a French reporter, Jean Hélène, was shot and killed in Côte d’Ivoire at about that time, as I blogged here. That I can readily believe. But I’m, still a tad uneasy when people say things about immigrants. Perhaps I am over sensitized.

Perhaps Frindethie is right to ask: “Why Francité but not Ivoirité?” I think the question is highly relevant in that it raises the right issue. When the author refers to the  lack of “moral reciprocity” in France’s attitude to Africa, I am immediately reminded of the highly telegenic Monsieur Dominique de Villepin nobly playing the French David to a warmongering American Goliath in the run-up to the Iraq war, while the reality in many former French colonies is very much a situation of African Davids facing a French Goliath, who is no less of a bloodthirsty monstrosity than what the French wanted us to think the Americans were.

But I digress. As I have said before, the author’s emotions are fairly obvious. I do not know that the article might not have benefitted from a more measured tone, but I suppose there are many ways to skin a cat. It might also have helped if he had written in French and been translated or if he had asked someone to look over the text for him. There’s more than a whiff of French in the English of this paper. But I am a translator, and therefore totally paranoid about keeping languages separate.

I readily admit that those are small potatoes. Frindethie’s paper is riveting to read and I fear I have not done it justice in this review. It has given voice to questions that I have not the knowledge or expertise to ask or answer. It would be interesting to see whether other writers on the wrong side of the Francafrique tracks are moved to conduct similar studies.

Somehow I think the reason there not a greater outcry about French activities in Africa is that we cannot see the wood for the trees. We need to have an overview, as it were, and the only way we can do that is to create a repository of information. There has been some attempt, such as on Jimbimedia’s Francewatcher site http://www.francewatcher.org/ , but we could do with more comprehensive work.

The full text of the article is available here:
  

Taxing Bananas

In the first few years of my life, I was surrounded by bananas. Their smell permeated everything. I grew to hate them. I eat them these days, and each time I eat one, I am reminded of the plantation workers who grew the bananas. The first playing balls we had were made from the tubular blue plastic covers that were used to protect the bunches of bananas as they grew larger.

Recently, I came across an article on the Tax Justice Network site detailing how those poor plantation workers are cheated of a decent living by multinationals. It’s all in the taxation, you see.

The Tax Justice Network refers to an article in The Guardian  which details how this is done. How? By tax weighting. How does this work?

Somali pirates: The Whole Truth

We have all been overwhelmed with images of the heroic rescue of an American ship’s captain from Somali pirates. The BCC report I saw this morning on TV referred to him as “the latest American hero”. Tsk, tsk, Senor BBC! You can be so snide!

We have heard of the threat to international shipping. We have heard of warships and destroyers being deployed to the area.

It all sounds very straightforward. These people are unscrupulous robbers who will stop at nothing to get what they want – filthy lucre – and they even barter human lives in their greed. And the brave and well-armed Americans are going to teach them a lesson.

These pirates appear to be pretty unsavoury characters, don’t they?

The G20: Seizing the wheel and crashing the car

Hello from Phnom Penh, or Lexus Nexus (the mind boggles at the concentration of 4WDs in this city). I'll say more about it later, but for now I'm on the G20's case.

Someone I respect has written about the draft communique of the G20, leaked, I am sure, by a  rather cynical soul. I am providing the full text of the comment here for your delectation. Yo can also find it online here.

Anyway, here we go:

The man with 86 wives

On 21 August, the BBC carried a story of an 84 year old man who had been sentenced to death for refusing to divorce all but four of his wives.
On 31 August, the BBC said that he had finally divorced 82 of them.
I read the story only last week and discussed it with some people. Our initial response was amusement. It is interesting to consider how conjugal rights of the more physical kind would be organised in such a household
The man also has “at least” 170 children. In order to have 170 children, you would have to be prepared to plan your nights with close attention to your wives’ cycles. I suggested, to some amusement, that he would need a special kind of software to organise how his wives would come to his bed.
After the amusement and the slightly off-colour jokes, however, the anger and disgust set in.

An Interview with Rosemary E. Ekosso Author of "House of Falling Women"

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

House of Falling Women. Cameroon, Langaa Publishers, May 2008. 328 pages. Available on Amazon.com, African Books Collective and Michigan State University Press.

A conversation with Cameroonian writer, Rosemary Ekosso, about her first novel, House of Falling Women.

Should Africans Celebrate Obama’s Progress?

If they wish. In fact, I do not see why they should not. I myself am quite chuffed that he has made it this far.

However, in so doing, they should consider the following:

Obama is an American. I hear people referring to him as African-American. Let me digress a little. This is an appellation I find illogical. When a person is referred to as Africa-American, Italian American, Asian-American or any of those other Something-Americans, it implies two things: (a) this person is not the real article when it comes to Americanism – he or she is a hybrid; (b) there are other pure, unalloyed American-Americans and those are the real article. All others are fakes and wannabes. Since we all know that the only people with any real claim to that land are the people who were wiped out to make space for other people, we also know that apart from the few real Americans, everyone in that country is an immigrant, whether they were dragged there in chains or whether they came as conquering non-heroes, fortune-hunters, dishonest land-grabbers, indentured labour, or students.

Now, to return to Obama’s American-ness. Coloured (I use the term here only to take issue with it: what are the others, then? Colourless and therefore superior? Since when did human colourlessness become a virtue?) people all over the world have been celebrating as Mr Obama leaps from strength to strength. I concede that there is something to celebrate. Even fifty years ago, having a black man within hailing distance of the white house (except as a servant, of course) would have had the white supremacist terrorists out in force. And now millions of white people are voting for a black man. So, yes, there is something to celebrate.

Now Available on Amazon.com: House of Falling Women by Rosemary Ekosso

Rosemary E. Ekosso. House of Falling Women. Cameroon. Langaa Publishers, May 2008. 328 pages. Available on Amazon.com, African Books Collective and Michigan State University Press.

House of Falling Women is the story of a young woman with quixotic ideas about improving the lot of women who finds out that that the crusader’s cloak is an uncomfortable one.

Martha Elive, armed with a university education and a substantial legacy from a Dutchwoman she meets while studying abroad on a scholarship, decides to create an institute for the empowerment of women, only to find that the contradictions to be resolved are more firmly anchored in her psyche than elsewhere. In addition to her unexorcised ghosts and the legacies of a chequered love life, she has to contend with recalcitrant public opinion and moral inertia, the opposition of old-guard reactionaries, and the incomprehension of her small-town parents.

House of Falling Women is a poignant, often hilarious story of the search by a group of women for a new place in society in a world where women are dissatisfied with the old values and bewildered by the new.

"At once shrewd and compassionate, funny and inspiring, Rosemary Ekosso's first novel is both a devastating critique of prevailing attitudes to women in her native Cameroon, and a recognition of the universal sexual interdependency that makes the struggle for equality so complex. Sympathetic characters and an intriguing plot make this an essential read for those concerned with women's aspirations both within and outside Africa."

Susana Mitchell

"House of Falling Women is a powerful story about the oppressive weight and irrationality of tradition, gender and class inequality, a desperate yearning for freedom and dignity, and a journey of self discovery, empowerment, and redemption."

Dibussi Tande

Rosemary Ekosso is a Cameroonian translator and court interpreter. She lives and works in the Netherlands.

ALICE WALKER'S OPEN LETTER ON RACE AND OBAMA

I apologize to my more faithful readers for not posting much of late. I am a little busy. However, while I get my act together, here is something from Alice Walker. It is a topical letter in that it addresses issues that people prefer to ignore as they watch the US polls.

At least in the eyes of some, Obama's pastor erred not because he said what he said, but because he dared to mention something that America prefers to ignore. Alice Walker makes many a point in her letter. It is well worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton ( I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man."  One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact.  How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.  I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.  I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

Wish we had many like her. The full letter follows.

OF IDOLS AND CLAY FEET: WAS GHANDI RACIST?

Early in 2000, Nelson Mandela wrote an article about Ghandi in TIME magazine. It was highly laudatory. Said Mr. Mandela: “He dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self.”

The Wikipedia article on Ghandi says Nelson Mandela was inspired by him.

Martin Luther King was also influenced by Ghandi’s when he espoused non-violence.

These people are saints to many people, black and white. So is Ghandi.

Until fairly recently, I had no reason to question this. However, a few years ago, I read something about Ghandi’s racism towards black people in South Africa that I found deeply distressing. But I decided that it was just cyber-muckraking and ignored it.

The Disillusioned African, by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Francis B. Nyamnjoh. The Disillusioned African. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers, 2007. 264 pages. Available on Amazon.com & Michigan State University Press

The relatively few people who read books published and/or written by Africans (when they can find them) might find that some of these works are famous for little other than their typesetting errors. I once got into trouble for telling a rather self-regarding young reporter that while I thought it was a good thing for a country to have a vibrant private press, its effect was somewhat marred by the fact that half the words in his newspaper were spelled backwards.

Needless to say, we did not part on friendly terms. However, the reason I mentioned this is that Langaa, which last year published the book I am attempting to review (it was first published in 1995 by Nooremac press) seems to have escaped this. It is true that a meal is much more that the plate on which it is served, but one does rather like clean plates in these matters.

Why can’t the English be more like the French?

An Englishwoman, Sarah Long, had an excerpt of a book published in the online version of the Sunday times, a British newspaper, in November last year. The excerpt from the book is hilarious in itself, and for personal reasons, I intend to buy the book.

But what has been even more revealing is the comments on the article which, at last count, had reached 247. The article is purportedly written by a French woman of some means who moves to England with her husband. It is less than flattering about the English. But the catch is that it is written by an Englishwoman (Sarah Long), not a Frenchwoman, as many of the commenters failed to realise. This means that, feeling themselves to be under fire from the French, a number of English people have abandoned their “traditional” tact and said some very rude things about French people.

It makes you wonder…

One of the kindest comments about British food I saw was this:

“ It doesn't have to look good to taste good.”

I don’t agree, actually, as I have had some very good British food, but as one of the comments says, it’s the cook, not the food.

Anyway, here’s a selection from the comments:

The angry ones:

“I would strongly suggest that the author packs her bags, heads back to Paris and hands her passport in to the French authorities with all possible haste!”

“…an obnoxious article from a woman from a country that is completely irrelevant in today's world.”

“I think we have declared war over less!”

“Yet the suicide rate in France is 2.5 times higher than the UK ((Source WHO International))”

“Well, we may all have huge bottoms but at least we use proper toilets here in England, unlike the French, who insist on going by the side of the road. Leave Paris and not ten miles out of the city you start to see country lanes strewn with toilet paper. Disgusting. I went to France once and never want to see the place again.”

“Dressing well has never been a big thing here in the UK. You'll get used to it…Pretentious, sanctimonious, arrogant, small-minded, boring, chauvinistic. Very French indeed.”

Here’s one of the(sad-but)-true ones from a Brit who thinks his country has gone to the dogs:

“…The country is increasingly anti elitist, ferociously aggressively and smugly working class and anti intellectual. There are little of the old glories remaining. The BBC, for whom I used to work, is imploding, The cost of housing!, the revolting health system…”

And here’s a balanced one:

“Hortense is an alter ego, a vehicle for Long to simultaneously expose the vanity and chauvinism of the French, and the slobbishness and insularity of the English.”

I find the whole thing, apart from being absolutely hilarious, also revealing in the extent to which tribal affiliations come to the fore, especially in the comfortable anonymity of the Internet. I remember thinking the same thing when the unspeakable Dr. Watson said black people are inferior. There were hundreds of comments saying, in essence: you know it’s true; I worked with a black person for a while and believe me, they’re ALL this or that or the other really bad thing.  We should stop being politically correct and call a spade a spade.

Yes, but it’s terribly hard when it’s your spade, eh? Especially when you know that it’s not a spade but a highly polished silver spoon.

One of the comments said:

“Hahaha this article is a blast. And the reaction by some English people is priceless! Hand out criticism but take none! So English!”

I think it is a bit of a generalisation. However, part of me is hoping that at least one of those people who insulted me and my kind in response to the Watson story was furious at being insulted by the generalisations of a “Frenchwoman” about the English.

Poetic justice, I call it.

Click here to read the article and the comments. I think it is a different way of looking at our "former" masters.

Letter from Judy, Kenya

The following is from an e-mail from the friend of a friend, who is in Kenya as post election turmoil rocks that country.

In reading it, it has come to me that this is eerily like a blueprint for what I fear will be Cameroon’s descent into hell when the time comes. The time will come.

It will come because people eventually become restive when power is kept in one sphere for what they consider to be too long, especially if such power is not perceived to be used wisely, and they become very angry when they think that the power has been retained by fraudulent means. This is what, as the posting below shows, has happened in Kenya.

It is a riveting story, told by a trained and balanced observer with a good eye for telling examples.

Article in the Proletarian : Africans need true independence not imperialist 'charity'

I found a 2005 article that reflects much of what I have been saying on this blog about Africa's relationship with the West.

As I have said before, what galls me is the hypocrisy that permeates everything the Western world, or at least its governments, would like us to believe about ourselves. The article that follows is reproduced with the kind permission of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). It  reflects the socio-economic and political views of its author, and while I do not consider myself to be a  socialist or communist, I was struck by the careful research that produced it. It shows what people can do when they start thinknig for themselves. I was particularly interested in the following statement, which is attributed to John Pilger:

"At present, for every $1 of 'aid' to Africa, $3 are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments - and that does not account for the repatriated profit of transnational corporations."

I have seen equally damning analyses elsewhere, particularly in a paper written by John Christensen and first presented at the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January 2007. We shall return to Christensen's paper in another blog post.

In order to appreciate the full measure of the brainwashing and contempt with which we are bombarded each day as Africans, we have to know what it is that is being done to us, and what "they" are getting out of it. This will help us understand why it is important for Africans to stop believing everything they read and hear about themselves on the mainstream media. I cannot comprehend how we can bankroll the lavish lifestyle of these people and still manage to be portrayed as the poor cousins to whom they have to give "aid".

Anyway, I shall leave you with this paragraph from the article itself:

The point to grasp about debt is not simply its size, but the fact that it reflects underlying property relations. The wealth of a society is appropriated by the capitalists and, in the case of Africa, Asia and Latin America, very often by a foreign superpower making superprofits by exploiting cheap labour resulting from derisory wages and terrible living conditions. Without a fundamental change in property relations, dropping the debt of the oppressed nations today (were financiers to accede to such demands) would simply result in re-accumulation of the debt tomorrow, since, while their wealth continues being sucked out by multinational corporations, these countries have no other way to pay for what basic services and infrastructure they have other than by borrowing.

The complete CPGB article follows below.

No Turning Back by Dibussi Tande

Published by Langaa, 2007, 59 pages.
Available at Michigan State University Press and on Amazon

This review will not deal with matters of style. I am concerned with the ideas that I perceive through this work, and their implications in a broader context. I am reminded, as I tap this out, that yesterday I saw press reports of alleged killings by the police in Bamenda, Cameroon.

These are the poems of a young man. However, they are not marred by the blind anger and naivete by which young men of literary bent draw attention to themselves, often to the embarrassment of their friends. The collection of poems is, considering the writer’s age when he wrote this, a candid and mature look at Cameroonian society with its head-in-the-sand approach to the politics of oppression.

The work is reminiscent of the liberation poetry that has sustained the soul of Latin America through decades of torture and human rights abuse. Such poetry, while not shying away from grief and pain, brings with it the freshness of hope for humanity in the face of the ancient and universal crime of not loving one’s neighbour as one loves oneself. It is the tenacity of this hope, I think, that will make this work resonate with victims the world over.

In using the word victim, I do not refer solely to those who have suffered the depredations of the brutal and unfair appendages of a system that has no regard for how its actions can shape the future, or to those whose lives have been lashed to shreds by the poisoned tentacles of its bureaucracy. I also refer to those who suffer but survive. For hope is life. A feature of that hope is the impulse, as expressed in these poems, to explore the full depth of emotion that our experience arouses. Those whose hope for the future is adulterated or destroyed by a combination of their action and failure to act, and who are incapable of introspection, are those who feel that this hope is directed against them.

But unlikely as it may seem to some, they too are victims. Consider the many quislings on the African continent.  As Dibussi puts it in False Prophet:

…another deceitful son
Aiming for a place in the sun

None of these quislings are anything but the lavatory down which common human decency is flushed by their Western masters. As such, I feel they deserve nothing but the pity and contempt I read in these lines.

What I have said so far might give the impression that this is a collection of hopeful jeremiads (if you’ll forgive the contradiction in terms). This is not so. Dibussi Tande is by turns impish (as in I Know why the Frog Croaks so Loud), stern as a judge (Boomerang), and even imperious (Freedom Now!!!).

I grappled (fairly unsuccessfully, it now seems to me) with French literature in my undergraduate years. We were taught for some time by a dreadful Frenchwoman who made us feel like dirt. But I have been surprised, in later years, to find that I remember something of what I read:

You! Hypocrite lecteur! Mon semblable! Mon frère!

That is Charles Baudelaire at his strident and posturing best. This line attracts our attention. It is designed to do so. But the reason it holds and keeps our attention is that it speaks to something in us. I would call it our shared humanity if I did not feel, on the strength of what I see on the news, that many human beings are really not terribly human at all. But it is the same feeling I get when I read Dibussi’s poems. For those who have the receptors for it, I think they will come as a jolt to the system. Perhaps it is our common memory that is triggered. I do not know.

But I think you should find out for yourselves what it is.

Now, just the briefest of words about other things. I have always found that rhyme can stunt an otherwise natural flow of poetry. I am not sure that one or two of these poems would have suffered from its absence.

Mugabe's Speech to the UN General Assembly

Mr. Mugabe is not the most popular man in the world at present. I have previously written on his land reforms and was as a result erroneously considered to be his supporter. In so far as Mr. Mugabe's actions mirror those of other African leaders in terms of his attitude to real democracy, I do not agree with him.

But his vilification, though couched in terms calculated to appeal to all lovers of freedom and democracy (or those who imagine themselves to be so), was and is based on the fact that he took land from white people and gave it to black people. The redistribution may have its problems, but it had to happen. For that alone, I consider him a hero. Shortcomings similar to those he is projected as suffering from are evinced by many other leaders, and yet they are not the victims of the degree of opprobrium that has been visited upon him.

Mr. Mugabe knows how to fight back, and so he has at the UN. The BBC websites reports it, but I would have thought that the story would be given more coverage instead of the cleverly selected quotations the write-up contains. But inscrutable are the ways of large media corporations in countries which are, at least in part, responsible for Zimbabwe's current situation.

The full text of Mr. Mugabe's speech follows.

Larry D. Crawford: Racism, Colorism and Power

One of most self-abasing thing a black person can do is to try to lighten his/her skin. This is brought home to me on a daily basis, because when I look at the white people around me and how much lighter their skin is than mine, I cannot imagine a day when I should pass for one of them.

This means that when people lighten their skin, it is in pursuit not of a certain goal, but, but of a marginally higher (or lower, depending on where you stand) rung of a ladder whose end they will never see. You can never bleach yourself enough to pass for white. Even if you do, your nose and lips will give you away.

I think this skin lightening business is the clearest sign of our identity crisis. If you are black, why would you want to be white when you know the history of the interaction between black and white people? I understand trying to learn from him. The white man knows many things – not nearly as many as he thinks he does, perhaps, and his knowledge is not always honestly or honourably acquired. But he knows many things. But however much I admire his knowledge, I do not want to be him. I do not want to look like him. What is the point of it?

I have just discovered an essay about this by Larry D. Crawford. I do not know to what extent I agree with it, but I thought it was worth passing on. You tell me what you think.

Here's an except that will take you to the article:

The social ranking of people by skin tone within the Afrikan community requires serious, open and ongoing discussion as to its roots, manifestations and tenacity because it continuously feeds divisive political relations, particularly along class and gender lines. Colorism intensifies the intragroup antagonisms already aggravated by infighting over a limited number of discarded political and economic crumbs. The proverbial divide and conquer strategy endures because it is nursed, not because we have nothing in common.

Enjoy.

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The Cotton Wars: How Many Lives did your Shirt Cost?

When I need to buy bed sheets and table cloths, I source them from back home in Cameroon. This is expensive, of course, but I shall go on doing it. Over and above stylistic considerations, the grave injustice suffered by African cotton farmers helps to sustain my resolve never to buy anything made of cotton over here if I can manage it.

There are many websites which discuss the injustices of the cotton trade. I shall not dwell on the causes. I just want to pinpoint one aspect of it: the hypocrisy and misinformation.

Addax article: Cigarettes for Nigerian Children

I once read somewhere that at the height of the BSE (mad cow disease) crisis, British exports of beef to Nigeria increased by 300 per cent. I have searched high and low for the source of that statistic, but I cannot find it.

But I visited this ste a while ago, and bookmarked it for my blogging purposes. I have now remebered the story, and so I offer you another tale of amoral greed  to join the all-too-many similar tales.

Read on...the English article is below the French.

A Squalid End to Empire: British Retreat from Africa

Colonial history, seen from the side of the colonists, can be summarised as follows:

I came, I saw, I conquered. Then I lied about it.

The BBC radio 4 website has a story called Rigging Nigeria. I have not actually listened to the documentary, but I was intrigued, as you might imagine, by the title. The website claims that the British rigged the elections in Nigeria in 1960 to counter the threat of communism. You will have heard the recent outcry about the Nigerian elections and how deeply flawed they allegedly were. I decided to do a bit of digging, and came up with a mother lode of corroboration of this tale of British duplicity in dealing with its colony. All things are revealed in the fullness of time, in spite of official secret acts, hundred-year gagging orders and that sort of thing.

I have been struck, in writing this, about just how little I really know about what went on in colonial times. I think this is dangerous ignorance on my part, and I have resolved to do something about it…starting with force-feeding you the results of my peregrinations in the ether.

The Chagos islands: the British government’s recipe for dehumanisation

Ingredients
Warmongering
An innate sense of racial superiority
Landgrabbing
A god complex.
Method
Start in 17th and 18th century
First, uproot people from their homeland
Enslave them or otherwise press them into demeaning service
Then ignore them until a rich and powerful country wants their land
Next, turn your beady eye on this land, viewing the human inhabitants as an inconvenient weed on potentially lucrative real estate
Weed the natives out, referring to them as “Tarzan and Man Friday” , thus playing up racist stereotypes of savages who should be divested of their land because you are better at exploiting it.
Then lease the island to the rich and powerful nation in exchange for an 11 million pound discount on Polaris missiles.
Then lie about it all.
These are the bare bones. Now, let’s flesh it out.

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE BREAST-LOVING TORTOISE

There used to be a blogger in Arusha, Tanzania called Tunduzi who sometimes wrote human interest stories. The blogger remained anonymous, but admitted to working for the international tribunal based there. He  has unfortunately gone off the ether, but I was able to obtain one of his stories, written in 2006, I believe, which I reproduce here for your amusement.

There was a meeting held recently about a tortoise. Yes, you read right. A tortoise. There has been some sort of urban legend circulating about a tribunal employee who picks (or at least used to pick) up local girls in the street, take them to his house and ask them to let their mammary glands be interfered with by a tortoise. After that, the girls generally died, it was said.

It so happened, the story goes, that on one occasion, a girl who was picked up and taken to the man’s house managed to end up in hospital after her breast-feeding episode. With her dying breath, she told the medics the story of how a man had picked her up in the street, taken her to his home and made her indulge the tortoise. Before she could reveal the name or other identifying particulars of this strange pervert, she died, thus conveniently preventing anyone from finding out if the story really is true.

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Robert Zoellick and the World Bank: Putting the Fox in Charge of the Hen-House

In Cameroonian Pidgin English, when a person refuses to give up on something, he is said to “hold grass”. This image is drawn from small animals clinging desperately to grass to avoid being washed away by water.

We all saw how Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, (now, thankfully, former) head of the World Bank, held grass for weeks after it was brought to public notice that he was embroiled in a sordid scandal involving a female companion. Well, Mr. Wolfowitz was swept away by the flood of public opinion. And now the US government is offering to replace him with someone who is, as evidenced by the article below, even worse, especially for the Third World.

The grass-holding of the US government, which in the past few years has squandered whatever moral currency it ever garnered as the leader of the “free world”, should be a cause for great concern for those of us who cannot hold grass when faced with an unprincipled giant.

Third-worlders and Bank borrowers, take out your hankies and sniffle after me…

The article follows.

SO WE'RE CANNIBALS, ARE WE? PART II

I promised to examine two aspects of cannibalism in my previous posting. The first one was the claim that some medicine men use children’s body parts in their medicines. I shall examine this in the next article. This one’s just too long. The second thing I promised to examine is the historical accounts of cannibalism. How did this thing start and how had it come to be accepted as a fact that it did occur on the scale on which it is described? In my next and hopefully last posting on cannibalism, I will examine in some detail the case of reports of cannibalism in Africa.

In this article, I will start with the historical accounts of the practice. There is such a plethora of “evidence” that I shall have to limit my rant to two cases. Let us start with this quotation from J. Q. Jacobs , who wrote a really interesting study of portrayals of cannibalism. You can read the entire article here:

SO WE'RE CANNIBALS, ARE WE?

Sometime in 1992, I was talking to the nursemaid who lived with one of my sisters. Her name was Emilia, and she was an Ibibio girl from Nigeria. We were expounding on the relative merits of our countries. Then Emilia said a startling thing:

“I don’t like Cameroonians because they eat people.”

I had been doing quite well in the argument, but this gave me pause. I had grown up “knowing” that though not all Nigerians ate people, some of them did. Obviously, Emilia had been brought up to believe the same thing of Cameroonians.

Time passed.

A few months ago, I was talking to a European friend in the office, and we got on to this cannibalism business. I said many of those stories were made by Europeans who wanted to find an excuse to steal from people with impunity. But she mentioned that there had been cultures where this thing was accepted practice, like those people in the New Guinea who got a strange disease, kuru, from eating people. I blustered a little after that, but I was stumped. This is what I also “knew”. I decided to find out more about cannibalism.

Chinua Achebe's Famous Essay, Part II

Now that I have rid myself of the jumble of thoughts that filled my head when I read the Achebe essay again, I shall allow you to read it for yourselves without further comment. I did think of writing a sort of commentary, but it would spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?

Enjoy the master!

On reading a great man: Chinua Achebe's famous Conrad essay

I studied Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, as an undergraduate. The Norton edition of the novel I used at the time included several critical articles. One of them was Chinua Achebe’s essay, An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Never have I, on reading something, agreed with someone so strongly that it brought the tears to my eyes. Never have I admired a writer more.

That was fifteen or so years ago. I have just reread the article again, and it has lost none of his power. It has caused me to start thinking of two main aspects of my relationship with the people on this continent. I am referring how much the people I rub shoulders with know about the world I come from. I am also referring to the things that make me different from them.

In this post, I shall rant and rave a little about what the article brings to mind, but I shall publish another post, possibly next week, which deals with the essay in greater detail.

Achebe is an excellent writer. But though his style makes the article delightful to read, it is the content that is gripping. I can hardly describe the exhilaration that his words inspire. For African lovers of football, imagine if your country were to win the world cup. Then think of this from an intellectual viewpoint. Think of it in terms of cogent, beautiful argument that allows no intelligent or honest riposte.

Mr. Blair and Africa: first, do no harm

I love this blogger’s satire:

Tony Blair is to launch a range of cosmetics upon leaving office, DeadBrain can reveal. The first of those, Blair Foundation, has already been developed and was discovered by our intrepid reporter during a bored afternoon searching the internet.

It’s alright to send Mr. Blair up, I suppose. If you cannot get rid of a leader you do not like, you might as well laugh at him.

But I’m picking another bone here.

Foreign aid: This kind of 'help' is just no help at all

By Michael Holman, The Africa Report
October 2006

From Kubatana.net

The multi-billion dollar aid industry has largely failed in Africa. Not only have they failed along with others in the aid industry, most nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become part of the problem. Not that they will admit their failure. They refuse to share the blame for the grim record. Instead they have closed ranks - along with UN development agencies and bilateral agencies - and all sing from the same hymn sheet: 'Aid works', they claim. 'Give us even more money and we will complete the job…'

They would say that, wouldn't they? The alternative is far too uncomfortable. The rapid growth of NGOs dealing with Africa has given them enormous power, but they have been slow to adapt to their responsibilities.

Increasingly, NGOs are becoming the spending agents of government development agencies, and are losing their independence. One consequence of their increasing role in Africa has been the atrophy of the muscles of the State in Africa, which in turn erodes loyalty to the State - and I think this goes to the heart of the problems that beset Africa, from corruption to low domestic savings.

The BAE scandal: big business, government and the lack of morality

BAE says the following in its bit on corporate responsibility on its website:

We must fully understand and comply with laws and controls governing defence exports everywhere we operate, and ensure we meet the highest standards of conduct in our work.

I don’t want to sound prejudiced, but a company that sells weapons that are then used in wars to facilitate the killing and maiming of countless human beings really shouldn’t say things like that in public. When you sell things like tanks and fighter jets, what do you think they’ll be used for? Playing tennis? But then BAE is not the only weapons systems company in the phonebook. There are many others.

The reason BAE has been in the news of late, however, is not because it sells weapons systems. It is because of a corruption scandal.

OF TOMMY HILFIGER AND OTHER URBAN LEGENDS

How many of you have heard that Tommy Hilfiger said if he had known that black people would like his clothes, he would never have made them? How many of you believed that it was an actual racist comment by the designer, made on the Oprah Winfrey show?

And how did you hear of it? Someone forwarded you an e-mail, right?

Well, according to this article on about.com, this information is wrong.

Are we Failed States?

In a 16 November 2006 New York Times article by one Howard French, Africa is described as follows: “home to the greatest collection of failed states and underdeveloped nations anywhere”.

I take issue, with this. I take issue really bad.

Mr. French is by no means the first person to use this term, and he may be guilty of nothing more than subscribing to received wisdom. Lord knows there are enough people out there writing about failed states, and even, in the case of this website and this one, publishing a failed state index. I do not really quibble with the failed states indices as such, although one might say that such indices should examine the underlying causes of what they describe as state failure rather than dwelling on the results.

But how long does a state exist before it can be described as having failed?

Dr George Ayittey on China (France) and Africa

SOURCE

The write-up below was posted on an online forum in response to a discussion about what China wants in Africa and how Africans should view this new pragmatic "friendship". Dr. Ayittey, the author, is a professor at Howard University and a respected academic and published author. His works includes Africa Unchained, Africa Betrayed, and other books and articles.

I have Dr. Ayittey's permission to post the article. I have taken the liberty of editing out direct references to the participants in the argument. Other than that, the article is almost unchanged.

Read on...I promise you will not be bored.

STARBUCKS AND ETHIOPIAN COFFEE: THE BITTER TASTE OF EXPLOITATION

If you go to the website of Starbucks, the international coffee chain, this is what you will read:

Starbucks strongly believes in the importance of building mutually-beneficial relationships with coffee farmers and coffee communities with which we work. The success of the farmers with whom we do business is a critical component of our own success. We are taking an integrated approach to building relationships with coffee communities.

So why is Oxfam accusing Starbucks of preventing Ethiopia from seeking to gain more control over its coffee trade by opposing that government’s application to have some of its most famous coffee beans trademarked?

AFRICANS AND VICTIMHOOD

There is a kind of woman who relishes describing the physical and other wounds her partner or spouse has inflicted on her. “He beat me so badly, I had to have six stitches in my cheek”, she says, buying things for her man's dinner. However atrocious the treatment she receives, she goes back.

I think many of the women who stay in abusive relationships enjoy it.

They like being victims.

But they are not the only ones. Have you not met the kind of African who likes to detail the things that are wrong with our continent, how we have been raped and plundered over centuries, the sort of African who has all the details (real and imagined) of what the White man did and did not do, and who enjoys the telling? Have you not met them?

They also like being victims.

Comment Response: The Troubling Question of Land Reform, by Linda E. Edwards

Sometime ago, I posted a rant about the land reforms in Zimbabwe on this blog. I have had a fair number of responses, both public and private, and at least one accusing me of racism.

One of the more interesting ones was from Linda Edwards, whose article I am posting here. Linda Edwards is from Trinidad and Tobago and the author of two novels: The Sun, The Snow, The Sea and  Coin of Gold,(2001) Xlibris.  She has also written a fair number of thought-provoking articles on various subjects.

The article I am reposting here, with her express permission, was written six years ago. I was not aware of its existence when I wrote mine. While I focussed on the issue of Zimbabwe, Linda Edwards gives a bird’s-eye view of the whole vexed issue of land reform, and raises some very interesting questions.

There are now land reform rumblings in Kenya, as some of you will have heard. I am beginning to think that a time will come when all former colonies will have to decide what to do about the land that the colonisers and the settlers took over.

But I delay. Here is Linda Edwards.

JEAN HELENE: ANATOMY OF A DEATH

Important note: all quotations are my translations.

On 23 October 2002, I had my car radio on as I drove to work. I used to like listening to RFI, the French international radio service, because I thought they spoke good French and they had a different take on the news from the English-speaking media. That morning, it was all about the shooting the evening before by a policeman in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire of Jean Helene, one of RFI’s reporters.

Apparently, Jean Helene, or Christian Baldensberger by his real name, had gone to meet a source outside police headquarters, when he had an altercation with a policeman. The policeman, Dago Sery, went into the station, came out with an AK-47, and shot Jean Helene. You can find this version of the altercation here.

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IMPERIAL PERSPECTIVES by EDWARD SAID

I belong to a Yahoo forum where divergent opinions have been expressed about the issue of terrorism and suicide bombers. The beautiful thing about debate is that it presents us with a wealth of knowledge and information, or disinformation, depending on where you stand, about what we think is going on around us.

One of the debaters on the forum (thanks, Mufor) posted this article by Edward Said about how the Western world chooses to view and present Arabs and their problems. I have never seen it expressed so well, and I would like you to think about it.

I got the article from  the Palestinian Monitor website, which credits the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram with publishing the article. I am glad that opinions from people who know or love the Arab world are finally being heard, at least in some quarters. It is our duty as human beings to view the Middle East Read conflict from alternate perspectives. Read on...

IS THERE REALLY A MATERNAL INSTINCT?

When I as a teenager, my mother returned home one day and told me that a girl had just been arrested by the gendarmes for throwing her new-born baby in a pit latrine. "We women went there and booed her”, my mother said, a look of determined satisfaction on her face. I was going through my teenage shocker phase at the time, and I told her that many of those women were hypocrites because they had daughters who had had abortions on the quiet, and that the girl who had thrown her child in a pit latrine was no worse than the ones who could afford an early abortion performed by a doctor. Abortion is illegal in Cameroon, but there are myriad ways of getting around the law. In fact, the major considerations among women who want to have abortions, or people who push them to do so, seem to be discretion and the possible effect on the women’s health.

I am not, by the way, making any case for or aganst abortion. It is too complex a topic for me to attempt to circumscribe in a brief rant on a blog.

The girl arrested by the gendarmes is not alone. Many of us have heard of women who killed their new-born children. Many of us have had girlfriends or wives who have had one or more abortions. Many of us have, in fact, been the girlfriends or wives who had the abortions. Others have urged pregnant women to have abortions.

Why do we do it?

In your opinion is there any such thing as maternal instinct?

Yes No I dont know

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