Filed under ..., Afrique by T. Miles on 17 June 2010 at 4:29 pm
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One of the many menacing street parties of South Africa, from soccerphile.com. Chilling.
As I’ll be spending most of this month tied to a TV or radio, I’ve so far noted one shocking fact: The South African World Cup is not riven by crime, corruption, shoddy workmanship, or terrorism. In fact, things are going swimmingly, the stadiums operations and infrastructure are beautiful, and the only deaths among the 450,000 visitors have been from road accident and falling off a mountain while admiring the scenery.
There’s more realistic complaints about the football itself, especially after the South African side’s almost suicidally poor performances (not to mention a drought of goals, dashed expectations for most African sides, and disastrous English, Spanish, and French performances). But even if rose gardens have not been delivered on the field or in terms of secondary development, so much of the press run up was so negative — even years of rumors that FIFA would move the cup at the last moment — that it may come as a shock how happy foreign fans are with what they’ve found in South Africa.
One report quotes a puzzled German fan. Puzzled because, despite the foreign press hysterics, he can go to a local bar and discover “I’m the only white guy in the room but I feel very safe.”.
South African sports reporter Peter Davies has a wonderful piece entitled An Open letter to our Foreign Media friends, marveling at the gloom of foreign media outlets who quake in terror of “machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.” But surprise! There’s no fear in walking the streets provided you don’t hang a wad of cash out your back pocket. There are also a surprising shortage of wild animal attacks and collapsing stadia. “For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.”
Andrew Harding, the BBC’s Africa correspondent, writes about tourists having “had some preconceptions overturned” as England fans descended on Phokeng. While local worried about hooligans (there were none), visitors realized they may have been misled about the dangers of “black Africa”. “We stayed at Sun City, said a couple from Leeds, sitting at [a black African run] bar. We were worried about the crime. But now we just wish we’d come and stayed here.”
Football, eh?
That said…
There are real complaints about South Africa — suffering from gross inequality and rampant poverty — throwing this much money at a World Cup party. I do agree. But that’s all of capitalism, not just football. And it’s not like they were really going to spend this money on poor folks. At best this can be an opportunity to cross borders in solidarity, to share these struggles, both in Africa and abroad. But I for one love sport, and the joy it brings. While those who look after the rich alone will always screw the poor, football can be our weapon as well as ours. Here are some links to the Poor People’s Movement and The Shack Dwellers Movement in South Africa, and social struggles around the World Cup, including the brilliant “Poor People’s Alternative World Cup.”
Other Related articles
Filed under ..., Blog by T. Miles on 27 May 2010 at 7:23 pm
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A herd, starved to death, in North Mali. These animals represent many years of saved wealth and future investment for Malian pastoralists.
Hopefully by now everyone knows that parts of West Africa, especially pockets of Chad and Niger, are struggling with the worst food shortages since 2005. Alex Thurston reports that international humanitarian agencies, as well as increasingly concerned governments, are now worried that this crisis is more generalized than first reported (last September), striking areas of Mauritania and Mali.
In Mali, there is a crisis in the north (mostly Kidal Region) right now, with press reports of huge numbers of animals lost to the mostly pastoralist residents. As in Niger, prices for forage have skyrocketed, prices for animals have plummeted, so that recent reports have talked of Malians trading female goats – the future of their herds – for a single bag of rice in Algerian border markets. Malian press reports talk of traveling through rural Kidal last week, counting corpse after corpse of starved livestock, the very source of pastoralist livelihoods. Those that can have moved south, increasing the pressure on pasture and farm land, surely also risking more communal tension. Kidal Region is already rife with armed unemployed men, competing smuggling rings, and simmering tribal vendettas. The overflow from this must add sparks to the already smoldering Tombuctu and Gao Regions, not to mention the areas south of the Niger where pastoralists head during the dry season. The tragic destruction of Gao market, north Mali’s largest commercial center, by fire last week has got to be a final nail in the coffin for some people, even if the rains have now started there.
The April-June 2010 food security conditions across West Africa, according to FEWS net.
There are also reports that Bamako is hoarding food aid, sending only the old supplies stashed at Mopti north and keeping the rest in the south, where the crops were good last year. True or not, people report it as such in Kidal. On the other side, some southerners accuse Kidal politicians of profiting from the misery of their own people. Other reports again, more neutral, document intense efforts on all sides, facing nearly insurmountable shortages and logistic impossibilities.
So things in Mali, if they receive the international focus or not, are as bad as in areas of Niger.
In Niger many more farming communities were stricken by the start-stop rains of June 2009, and the pockets of Tillaberi, Tahoua, and Maradi Regions (mostly) have long reverted to crisis mode. Men are on extended “exode”, the dry season trips abroad for wage labor. Other communities have picked up en masse, fleeing to towns, other regions, or even to Hausa northern Nigeria, where some have trade or family contacts. Others still remain, depleting the last of their food stocks, and somehow making it on less and less each day.
"We are experiencing, like all the countries in the Sahel, a food crisis due to the poor harvest and the locust attacks of 2004," Mr Tandja said in 2005. "The people of Niger look well-fed, as you can see."
It’s important to differentiate between drought and famine (one may cause the other, or may not), and recognize that some places like parts of central Niger have suffered chronic seasonal malnutrition since the 1990s, and recurring drought caused famines since 1968. The causes are debated, and while climate change no doubt is happening, one should not discount the structural changes we have seen over the last 30 years. The IMF’s austerity policies which did such obvious damage to urban West Africa in the 1980s, and triggered much of the 1990-2 democratization wave thereafter, also had pernicious effects on rural areas. The “free trade” treaties of the 1990s — as Bill Clinton recently admitted in the case of Haitian farming — drove world commodity market forces into even the most protected rural communities. Subsidized western industrial agriculture can produce food and cash crops cheaper than most smallholders in the Sahel, but can also cause basic food prices to swing wildly on the back of market speculation, as we saw in 2008. As Marx famously said, in the face of commodification, structures, forms of productions, and traditions have no recourse. “All that is solid melts into air…”, and much of the rural economic structure of the developing worlds has so disintegrated in the last decades. Some areas might survive, sending farmers flooding into urban export driven production. For whatever reasons, Niger, like Haiti, never saw enough of this to absorb the mass of small farming which supports %80 of its people. They continue to literally scratch a living out of dusty millet fields, with less and less ability to turn to either community or markets when things go wrong.
FEWS net's projected food security situation (July-September 2010), Niger. We expect a normal harvest to come in September.
Some pastoralists in North Mali and Niger never really recovered from the loss of herds in the early 1970s. They starved in 1984 because of this, and (arguably) supported armed struggle in the 1990s in part because of this. [It's more complicated that this, with longstanding communities of grievance, and militants trained abroad, but the 72-74 drought can't be discounted]. These are as much political and economic/structural problems as environmental, and they need to be treated once this hungry season passes in September.
In Niger, as grim as this is, some things have improved. Then President Tandja (and current opposition leader Hama Amadou, as well as some “progressive” westerners, for the record) purposefully denied the food shortages and deaths in 2005 were “famine”. They were seeing severe seasonal malnutrition in limited areas, and most children were dying of malnutrition related disease rather than starvation. This is how people die in famines, but the “f” word has political connotations which were painful, and so it is better to try and trivialize the suffering of the rural poor, apparently. I hope there is a special ring of hell for such people. We are not hearing that this time, in part thanks to the Nigerien Junta. Salou Djibo can play on an oft repeated trope in Niger (1974 being the model) of military rule justified by food emergencies mishandled by corrupt civilians. I would hope those in Niamey recognizing this as famine would do the same if they had been in power last year. I also hope they target the structural causes that allow this to happen, after they face the monumentally complicated distribution of food aid.
Aid Agencies (links to give, and learn more)
Filed under ..., Featured by T. Miles on 20 December 2009 at 12:11 am
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The Saharan Al Qaeda – Cocaine tieup has finally hit the North American domestic news with the much trumpeted arrest by United States agents of three Malians who they allege “the direct link between dangerous terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and international drug trafficking that fuels their violent activities”.
I have a feeling we’ll be repeatedly discussing these arrests in the future. But at first blush these men are likely not involved in the large scale West African drug trade that has recently been in the papers, nor are they any part of any recognized AQIM groups connected to Algerian militants scattered in the Malian Sahara.
Admittedly we have very little to go on at the moment. Three Malian men, said to be in their mid 30s, were arrested by the US in Ghana, and flown to New York. Here they were disposed before a judge on drug smuggling and terrorism charges. We have the New York Times and wire articles, based entirely on the press release and a copy of the actual deposition provided by the US government. I await the reaction of the Malian press especially.
The three men are Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. Oumar Issa was contacted by a Lebanese who worked for the US in Ghana. The US informant pretended to be a criminal with Hezbollah connections, seeking to ship drugs, and looking for contacts with the “Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb”. Issa said he represents a “big boss”, Harouna Touré, from somewhere in north Mali, who “has connections in government” and who while not running a smuggling operation “collects taxes for Al Qaeda from Malian politicians.” Sounds like a big deal. But Touré’s not a current holder of any local political office (according to the last election results) and hasn’t been in the news.
One identification claims that Harouna Touré is a well known Songhai smuggler from the small village of Bamba (in Bourem on the Niger River). This “Harouna Bamba” is known primarily for people smuggling into Morocco, as well as hashish and other common smuggled goods. He, like the now famed Baba Ould Sheik — Mayor and mediator between the Malian government and the AQIM hostage takers — is reputed to be a member of the local “Mouvement Citoyen” of Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré.
It is likely not accidental that Bamba is one of the historic endpoints of the Taoudenni salt trade. From here there is a well trodden route to northern Mauritania or north to Algeria and Morocco, one that people in the area have been making for at least a thousand years. It was ancient when Ibn Battuta made the caravan trek from Morocco through Taoudenni and south to the Niger in the 1350s. The Berabiche Arabs in particular have long been responsible for this salt route, and it would be little surprise that a Bamba merchant would have a business relationship with some of these semi-nomadic Arabs.
The area around Bamba in particular has a bad reputation for petty crime, smuggling, and ethnic violence. In 1994, at the height of the ethnic murders of Tuaregs, Arabs, and Songhai by Army, rebels, and Ghanda Koy militias, FIAA rebels opened fire on locals in Bamba, killing almost 50 civilians. The local Kounta Arabs, whose historic identity is linked to a tradition of Qadiriyya Sufi scholarship have long been based in Bamba. In 2004 their feuds with some Berabiche saw an attack on a Kunta religious leader and spilled over at a well near the town, leaving 13 dead.
Abelrahman (perhaps a variant of the more common Malian Arab family name “Abderrahmane”) is identified in the complaint as an AQIM leader, claims to command a group of 11 men and calls himself “King of the desert”. He claims to have been “a general” in some unidentified previous insurgency, something which is as entirely unverifiable as it is grandiloquent. Touré, claimed to be the “big man”, has been involved in the drug trade via Brasil if the US reporting of his boasts ( and his passport stamps) is to be believed. Their plan was to take cocaine via Togo to Mali or Niger, then Algeria, Morocco, the coast, and by boat to the Canary Islands. The last phase of this is described by Touré as handled by Brazilian contacts. Another description, fed by the US planners, seems to suggest an inland trip to Spain via Melilla. He also claims to have previously arranged shipments of hashish into Tunisia and South Asian migrants to Spanish territory.
I would be VERY surprised if this Idriss Abelrahman is anything more than a Arab/Maure smuggler and caravan driver, resident somewhere between Bamba and Taoudenni in the desert north of Mali. He probably knows some people who are related to members of some AQIM cells who move through the area, and so can probably pass by them on friendly terms. But is he Al Qaeda? Not bloody likely.
Further, if the US agents can pose as Lebanese Hezbollah and FARC, then logically, these men can not have had contacts with these organizations prior to this. Maybe these groups are involved with smuggling in West Africa, but the US didn’t arrest anyone they do business with.
We can say with some likelihood that these men are businessmen/smugglers, from somewhere in Gao ( from the context of routes), and Oumar Issa is probably someone’s family member working in the south (he’s the contact made in Lome). But their flight from Mali via Lome and on to Ghana is arranged for and paid by the US. Toure, the reputed “big man” claims he’s going back home from Bamako at one point to “the north” where he doesn’t have email or phone. Toure is given money in Ghana to buy a truck, but buys a car instead, and the agent has to give them more cash and explain they really do need a bigger vehicle. Toure says he needs to be paid 3000 Euro a kilo for transport with %10 up front. Then says he needs US$10000 a kilo, and %50 down. And he needs it in Euros.
Pardon me, but these business deals don’t seem designed to make money. These “drug dealers” are giving three Malians 500 kilos of cocaine, and then paying the Malians a pile of cash. Won’t the Malians then go sell the drugs for even more cash.
And the complaint is littered with attempts to illicit anti-American sentiments from the marks, who rarely return with anything more damning than a “God Willing” or two. Clearly the US government expects that everyone who hates America is on the same page, plotting across ideological lines, continents, and religions to hurt us. By selling drugs. To Europeans.
The counterpoint of blind nationalism here is blind paranoia, the thought that everyone must be scheming about you behind your back, that all “evil doers” are doing evil as part of a grand conspiracy to bring you down. If you wave several million dollars in front of three people from one of the poorest countries in the world, do you think when you say “You love Al-Qaeda, right?” they’ll launch into a subtle discussion of international terror? Or will they say “Oh yeah, you’re my brother cause we hate America too! And I’ll take that %50 up front in Euros.”
But this is par for the US government anti-terrorism law enforcement. The policing enforcement of US terrorism policy is as hamfisted as the military “war on terror”, except that the policing war is usually motivated by the desire for good domestic press. They tend to create their own terrorist plots, convince criminal idiots to accede to the plans invented by the US, and then arrest the patsies. The example of the recent Bronx terror plot in which the FBI informant took several not very bright young men recently released from jail, created a plot, bought gifts for them until they agreed to help, gave them the supplies, and then arrested them as “dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists.” Of course there are real terrorists out there, but it’s much easier to disrupt plots you invent yourself.
My concern will be that this West African variant of US anti-terrorism enforcement, while attempting to win US plaudits will forget that in trying to impress Americans, they may end up alienating West Africans. If this is seen as an entrapment operation, it will eventually do more to turn Malians — who are today very positively disposed to people from the United States — against the US than it will actually disrupt real smuggling, let alone terrorism.
Meanwhile, two Italian citizens and their Mauritanian driver were kidnapped yesterday in the Mauritanian desert, near a crossing into Mali, as the returned to their home in Burkina Faso. The Mauritanian government says they are being held by the AQIM.
Filed under ... by T. Miles on 6 March 2009 at 8:48 pm
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Today marks 52 years since the first sub-Saharan African nations claimed their independence from colonialism: It’s a national holiday in Ghana, the first of two “refusniks” who grabbed the option of immediate independence without looking back, Guinee being the other. Both gained new governments this year. Ghana by elections and Guinee by coup. Both were steps in the right direction (in my opinion), but the two make quite a contrast. The Accra city centre is vibrant and modern, with leafy suburbs, while Conakry last year had power for only a few hours a day, with their traffic lights and street lamps off most nights. Leaving aside the reasons why, they both deserve better from their former colonial powers, the international economic system, and their own ruling classes.
In the eyes of too many otherwise educated Westerners, Africa is still the “Dark Continent” of colonialism, filled with famine, war, and poverty. Horrible things happen in Africa like anywhere else, and Africans face an unfair share of many of today’s hardships, but the fly covered faces of the 1980s Ethiopian famine are the exception. It’s sad to have to say this, but Africans live perfectly “normal” lives. They watch TV soap operas, read the newspapers, go to work, take the bus, and can’t decide if those onions in the back of the pantry are still good. Like you. Sure, the likelihood they will live in rural farming communities is greater than most Westerners, and that makes the lives of those communities much different, but Africa is full of cities and cars and satellite dishes as well.
And while the attempt to “report good news stories” usually activates my gag reflex, Westerners need to read a greater balance on the news from Africa. A current blog project by two women from Nigeria, CelebrateAfrica.net, documents their travel across the continent documenting the day to day triumph and success of African societies. While they are aiming their writing at other African readers, it gives us a good chance to look over their shoulders at a more realistic Africa.
So on Ghana Independece day, I thought I might quote from Oluchi Ogwuegbu’s blog. Her reaction when a non African tourist scolds her for complaining about the mud huts offered as “Authentic” accommodations, at pretty steep prices, to foreign tourists in one part of rural Ghana.
“Heaven forbid, that I should complain about those lodgings because that would mean that I’m not truly African. To be truly African, I need to live in a mud-hut with a pit-latrine and if I choose properly planned sewer systems that give people a modicum of dignity – that would be inauthentic , almost …European… and we can’t have that happen.”
“I reject anything that makes it acceptable for anybody to live a helpless, filthy, poverty-stricken life all in the name of being authentic. Those same villagers who perform on demand have shea butter, cotton and pottery as a source of income. Why aren’t they being engaged in an equitable way to make money from these things and change their status?”
“To make an experience really African does not mean having to battle flies from the pit-latrine. I know many people who live in villages whose houses are very clean, not paid for by any aid agency. Are they not Africans?” – Celebrating Ghana
Filed under ... by T. Miles on 10 November 2008 at 7:45 pm
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Stokley the cat in his Staten Island home, c. 2004. And yes, that is who I named him after, and it was supposed to be respectful, though it is hard when I have to get him off the kitchen counter. Apart from that I remain as big a fan of the late Kwame Toure as a pasty white man could be.
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As I noted on the 10th of March, the CSRD junta in Niger has replaced all the civilian Region Governors with military men to administer local affairs during the transition. We now have the full list, and while I for one hate to see any military governing, a careful look at the men (all men) coming and going in Niger's Regions gives us an opportunity to examine what's going on behind the scenes, and what it augurs for the future.
More ...
Nigeriens were - are - undoubtedly pleased that the army stepped in to end a newly installed dictatorship. But criticisms of this so called "good coup" are beginning to appear even amongst its strongest supporters. With many months of transitional rule ahead, these whispers give us some idea of the problems the junta will soon face. 
One doesn't see much film, let alone color film, of colonial era African football. So you can imagine my delight when I stumbled across clips of a French colonial propaganda newsreel featuring the my favorite African club side wining a colonial cup final from 1956. 
The new military Junta in Niger has released their first real vision of their promised return to democracy. Niger's expectations, a redux of recent history, are being played to by the soldiers.
After a day of confusion, President Tandja and his supporters are under arrest by the military. I have maintained the live updates from the 18th, and added an in depth analysis of the new CSRD junta.
"Poets are feared by those in power that use violence, who are prosperous at the expense of the collective suffering." - Adamou Idé 
a dinosaur comic about about potable water conservation in sub-Saharan Africa?
The US government will make much of the arrests of three Malians who they say were part of a West African criminal network, devoted to drug smuggling and Osama Bin Laden. So far all we have is hype and what looks like the entrapment of low level criminals. 
The December 18th anniversary of the Nigerien Republic begins a series of dates which may bring the political crisis to a boil, just as mediators think they've made a breakthrough.
A brief look, if one is possible, at the simmering crisis in the northeast Central African Republic. As commentators try to come to grips with this often ignored nation, here is some recommended reading for Anglophones interested in the République centrafricaine.
Niger's rulers would have expected this to be wrapped up by now, with the previous legal deadline for a new president to pass on the 22nd with a shrug. But fears (or hopes) remain that some of those most loyal to the project are looking to abandon their President
Join the second march on the UN by Guineans and their allies in New York City, Thursday December 8th. If you can't make it, there are ways to get involved, so please do!
"If you watch it frame by frame you can pinpoint the exact moment his heart rips in half..."
Anti-fascist activist Ivan "Bonecrusher" Khutorskoy was murdered in Moscow this Monday. 
As the "Abuja I" talks begin with ECOWAS, President Tandja of Niger is increasingly backed into a political and financial corner. Will his "6th Republic" be sacrificed as a way out?
The local elections are odd enough. But "Claude Levi-Strauss" is the 4th most popular search on Yahoo? Right between "Dancing With The Stars" and "H1N1 Symptoms". 
I know all the debates about voting not changing anything, and while I tend to agree, I'm not asking you to overthrow capitalism with a vote. It won't do that. But it is a splendid soapbox.... So Vote Reverend Billy for NYC Mayor, Greg Pason for NJ Governor, and Debbie Rose for City Council. 
Popular sound systems blend traditional sounds with DJ beats, and keep people across Bamako on their feet. But will Mali's capitol ban the "Balani Show" dance parties?
A recent seizure of US arms in Nigeria highlights the profit and loss of small arms supplied to West Africa.
Blood on the streets of Conakry is a price the Junta is willing to pay for power.