Just Africa

Oil Above Humanity in Africa

            The United States’ support for Saudi Arabian has been largely (though unjustly) forgiven because the amount of oil coming our way from that regime is astronomical. Human rights abuses are glossed over because we can’t imagine living without their oil. Would this be the case if the oil being pumped were just a drop in the barrel?

            Sadly, it seems even the smallest amount of oil for the US is the cause for the greatest blindness towards human rights abuses. The US, eager to diversify its sources of oil, is looking towards Africa as its next major source of oil. Countries like Sudan and Nigeria are getting a free pass from the US government; they are becoming major sources of potential oil for the US. But even the smaller sources of oil in places like Equatorial Guinea are proving enough to stifle any objection to human rights abuses that run rampant.

            Equatorial Guinea is a country smaller than Maryland, with a population of less than a million people. President Obiang has been in power since 1979, exerting almost complete control over the political system. He has proclaimed himself a god, with the power to kill with impunity.

            Sixty percent of the population lives on a dollar a day. More than half of the population has no access to clean drinking water. Twenty percent of children die before the age of five. It is a destination country for children and women trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation. Forced evictions, disappearances and inhumane prisons are the norm. Since petroleum was discovered there, the GDP has increased more than 5000 percent; at the same time, infant and child mortality has increased as the money flows in.

            This oil has made the country the third largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. American oil firms, including Exxon Mobil, have invested $10 billion in extracting the oil. All of this money has clearly not made it to the people. In fact, Equatorial Guinea is one of the top ten most corrupt countries in the world. Obiang even has two mansions in Washington DC, courtesy of the oil wealth flowing in from the US.

            Clearly, a corrupt, human rights violating, repressive government…whose president enjoyed a meeting with former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and was called a friend of the US a few years ago. The abuses are well documented, the mansions are a stone’s throw from the White House and the destructive cycle of profits over humanity continues. Is the US so desperate for any last drop of oil that will systematically ignore the humans who live about it? Where is the change?

Civil Society in South Africa

Academics, advocates and students gathered together for the Radical Philsophy Association's conference in South Africa.  See a brief photo set below:

  

Above: Some of the participants in the RPA conference having lunch together at the University of the Western Cape.

 

I attended the conference and presented a paper entitled "Africa Policy Outlook 2009". 

 

Students from several universities in the Western Cape, refugees from all over Africa, philosophers from North America to Africa, and representatives from civil society organizations all attended this conference...

 

In addition to the conference, which lasted about 4 days, we visited and/or spoke with several grassroots NGO's including the People's Health Movement, SHADE, Sonke Gender Justice Network, Social Justice Coalition, Treatment Action Campaign, Surplus People Project, and others.  Above is a photo from Nyanga, a township outside Cape Town.  Many of the townships in South Africa still lack electricity, water, proper sanitation, education and infrastructure.  I learned quickly that post-apartheid land reform is still one of South Africa's most pressing (and complicated) economic and social justice issues.

 

While I was in South Africa it was winter.  During this time of the year it rains frequently, however, there was an unusually large amount of rainful and many areas suffered from flooding.  This also raises health concerns in some of the poorer areas of the Western Cape.

 

I participated in the Treatment Action Campaign's march.  This was kicking off the International AIDS Society 2009 - Cape Town - conference.  The march had the most unbelievable amount of energy, dancing, singing, chanting and more.  I have LOTS of pictures from the march.

 

Finally, while I was in South Africa over 70,000 workers went on strike.  I spoke with some of the workers during a huge protest through the Cape Town city center.  Everyone had stories to tell about the poor working conditions and low wages they were paid.  Their strike halted the construction on stadiums, such as the one pictures above, that are being built for the 2010 World Cup. They ended up agreeing to a 12% increase in wages.

Ist Africa HOT?

The scene is set, but the dialogue is not. Bruno sits at the front of a Texas talk show with his new African baby, describing himself as a single parent who thought it would be ‘a cool idea.’ The predominantly African-American crowd is outraged and, when asked why he adopted the child, he attributes the idea to people like Brangelina and Madonna: “And now Bruno has one.” The scene was, undoubtedly, absolutely hysterical - but by satirizing this well-known issue, the film also takes a courageous step in attacking such famous celebrities, a major departure from the usual reporters and journalists (the apparent intellectuals) who simply hail them for doing so many “great things to save Africa.”

 

Last week, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen released his new mockumentary film Brüno, in which he portrays an Austrian fashionista who will stop at nothing to become famous (not entirely unlike many of the interviewed characters in the movie). Cohen is known for his outlandish characters that satirize societal issues by filming ordinary people who are unaware they are in a major motion picture. In this particular case, Africa gets airtime “because it’s gotten popular." Bruno displays this idea more explicitly when he meets with two ditzy blondes from an L.A. PR firm who pronounce Darfur as “Da-four” (followed by a “Da-five” joke), and confirm that Africa is a ‘hot topic’ right now. 

Looking past the obscenities and absolute craziness of the entire film, Baron Cohen makes an interesting – and important - point about Africa in the sense that this continent, made up of approximately 1 billion people from several thousand ethnic groups, has somehow managed to become a ‘fad.’ Charities for Darfur are strongly endorsed by George Clooney; Oprah Winfrey has a fund in South Africa for educating children; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had their child, Shiloh, in Namibia and, in turn, donated $300,000 for a hospital. And the list goes on. While all these efforts sound admirable, why is it that no celebrities are rushing to endorse poor or homeless Americans? Well now, that would just be condescending, right? So why is it we can do this with Africans?  

I find it to be utterly demeaning that we, as fellow human beings, can allow this many people and this many cultures of such a huge continent to be reduced to a charitable effort because of such a strong disconnect.

On the other hand, the issues many African countries are facing do require publicity and it cannot be argued that certain celebrities (whether it should be the case or not) have a lot of pull with the general population, more so than most politicians. But does it have to be done by ‘charitizing’ cultures? By making Africa simply a hot new trend, people often seek to follow in the footsteps of celebrities without fully understanding the issues. In addition, these do-good celebs are only furthering stereotypes about Africa  (like constant war and lack of education), perpetuating an ‘us and them’ divide. Then again, are politicians any better or more knowledgeable about African issues? Nancy Pelosi can pick up the phone and call African experts just as easily as Bono can.

But what's even worse, the celebrity culture that infuses the desire to “give back” to Africa reinforces the idea that Africans don’t have a wealth of knowledge and perspectives about how to solve problems on their own, without the gracious philanthropists of the West. Where is the investment in African knowledge and better yet, what can we learn from them? Rather than blindly following a cause as a result of George Clooney’s good looks or sending malaria-preventing bed nets because it’s ‘the cool thing’, what would be so difficult about taking a second to read about the issues, where you may find that investment in say local production of bed nets would simultaneously prevent the disease as well as contribute to building infrastructure. Why swoop in and adopt children from all over the continent when hundreds of thousands are left behind and in conditions that need to be addressed? Never mind how African adoptions are reminiscent of imperial and colonial eras, when Africa was considered a place extremely different from other “civilized” places on Earth, and whose people needed to be collected and studied in order to figure out how best to “advance” them. These are the sentiments that seem to not only be subconsciously perpetuated, but are being widely and enthusiastically praised.

Cambridge-educated Baron Cohen once stated, “I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it is not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.” Perhaps this could be said about Africa as well.  It is not that people are against helping Africa; they just turn the other cheek. So I suppose it is true that maybe it doesn’t matter who it is that makes people look twice, just as long as they do. But has all this celebrity attention really made people any more educated about the actual issues, or is it just that "Africa 'ist hot?'"

Bruno’s attempt at fame through Africa did not work in the film, but however outrageous, the film is provocative when it comes to commentary on Africa and is a push in the right direction for getting truly informed – and having a good laugh while you do it.

By Laura Martin, Executive Office Intern, Africa Action

Seeing it Firsthand - Former Africa Action Intern Nick Carl Sounds Off on Inhalant Abuse in Nairobi

I finally got a chance to look at the Africa Action blog after months of a nearly unbelievable lack of internet access. As I was reading the recent posts, the piece about the kids sniffing glue in Kenya was heart wrenching…especially after seeing children just like them firsthand. At the time, I had no idea what could possibly be done about it, but I felt very inspired to write something of my own. Here goes:

I recently visited Kenya for the first time and, as someone originally from the United States, it was quite a different situation from my usual experiences. In some cases, the subtle cultural differences were so profound and complex that even now, almost three months after leaving the country, I am still wrestling with the little things – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

One of the hardest things I had and still have trouble processing is an issue that’s really no small thing at all – kids inhaling glue in Kenya. It’s still difficult for me to find the right language to describe how it makes me feel – how depressing and sickening it is to me. First of all, coming from the U.S., I had never seen street kids before. Then, while in a matatu [a form of public transportation in Kenya] in Nairobi, we passed some kids lying flat out on the sidewalk. The first child I saw was wearing black pants that were completely torn up, and a shirt so ragged and filthy that his looks went far beyond what I considered poverty to be like. It was his shoes that really struck me though. I just remember the one, because his other foot was under his leg, as he lay corpselike, completely passed out. Where the sole meets the part of the shoe that usually covers and protects the toes, about one-third of his foot was totally exposed – like someone had put a firecracker right there and just blasted out the end it. My first reaction was that he must be a homeless orphan, and his state was so rough that I was beyond speechless – I could barely comprehend what I was seeing. And then I saw the other kids who were with him:

They were on the sidewalk too. One was sitting up, bottom and legs on the ground, propping himself up with his arms just behind his back, almost like he was lounging. His clothes were in a little bit better shape than the boy I saw first, but not by much. He wore a sweater or something like it, which was filthy and gray. His signature feature, though, was the small, empty liquor bottle that hung down from just below the tip of his nose and upper lip, so the bottle’s opening would rest just millimeters from his nostrils. It just hung there…emitting a constant flow of glue fumes so he didn’t even have to force himself to huff it. The intoxicants just flowed into his lungs with each breath he took.

It’s strange, because the only reason I even knew it was glue was because, a day or two earlier, while sitting outside an internet café in Kiserian, I was approached by an adult who had been sniffing the same substance. The man who came toward me staggered heavily, as though each step he took was a struggle to keep from crashing to the uneven dirt and rock between the shops and the street. And he had one of those small bottles in his hand, and between each lunging, staggering step, he brought the bottle to his nose for a sniff, as if he were taking drags from a cigarette. He said angrily, “Give me ten bob!” [like asked for ten “bucks” in the U.S.; bob is slang for the Kenyan shilling, and the amount he asked for was worth about 12 U.S. cents at the time] Not knowing if he might attack me because he was so high, I said “NO!” stood up, and quickly retreated deep into the internet café.

When I finally went back outside, a guy was sitting nearby and said that the man who had been accosting me was  “really a great guy when he’s not on that glue. He’s a really great guy. You’ll see him in the market and talk to him like any normal person. But once he starts on that glue, it changes him completely.”

I believe this glue abuse is a symptom of deeper problems in the country, but it’s so difficult to figure out such complex and dynamic issues when you’re an outsider, who lived there for only three months. At first glance, I thought those kids were orphans, but some of them have parents at home who would take care of them, but they get in with the wrong crowd and go down the wrong path. At least, that’s what I was told. A solution I often heard was that more people needed to pray to God – I even heard that Kibaki got the police to round up a lot of those kids and put them in school. I don’t really know what happened. I was in Kenya to volunteer in a small, primary school on Maasai land - just passing through. 

Now that I’m back in U.S., I am amazed sometimes by the order and calmness with which everyone proceeds about their day and work. When I saw homeless people in D.C. my first reaction was to stay away – what if they tried to rob me? – but then I realized that they probably had some access to food. And then I remembered those kids on the streets of Nairobi who were starving – desperate; I had even heard of instances where they would threaten to throw human feces at passerby, if they were not given money. It’s such a terrible situation but I know that it’s impossible to focus only on the negativity. I just keep reminding myself of the words of an old Sowetan Tswana man I met named Daru, his eyes getting milky and blind, whose son died in Tanzania in exile during the war against the apartheid regime in South Africa…He said, “Khotso (a name given to me in Lesotho meaning peace)…Khotso, you must go home and write about this. Educate the children…We want food man, not guns.” And it’s all true.

I hope that in writing down my experiences, more people will seek to understand and try to help not only the children who are abusing glue, but also look to address the conditions that make sniffing glue an attractive escape.

Those street kids in Kenya need so much more than the glue they have – and they deserve more too. 

For more information on what can be done, check out The Advocacy Project’s webpage on the Undugu Society of Kenya, an organization that seeks to influence legislature to address such issues as the sale and use of inhalant drugs.

African street children: Inhalant Abuse in Kenya

The glue bottles and the children holding them up to their faces are a common sight in big Kenyan cities. Walking in a high fog, these children hold on to their bottles with their teeth, keeping the poisonous fumes close at all times. The thick orange glue stains the rims of filthy bottles, cans, mouths and noses.

Glue is a drug of choice; cheap and easy to get, it quells hunger pangs and keeps the cold at bay. One child reported that it gave him the courage to eat garbage. The fumes are highly addictive and the effect almost instantaneous. On the other hand, the glue carries with it a high risk of brain damage, respiratory infections and other diseases that will almost certainly remain untreated on the streets. The children get hallucinations and delusions, lose their appetite, lose weight and can even die. Instances of paralysis have been reported in children who have used the glue either for a long period of time or in large quantities. This paralysis can be reversible if the children immediately stop sniffing; otherwise the paralysis will travel to the respiratory tract, causing death. In Kenya, children as young as five have been reported using glue. Street children scavenge, beg, steal and prostitute themselves for the ten cents it takes to buy a hit from the women who sell it from large barrels.

A Kenyan group that rehabilitates street children estimates that 52-90% of Kenyan street children are addicted to their glue inhalation habit. According to a government estimate, there are 50,000 street children in Nairobi and 300,000 living around the country; the number of children addicted to glue has the potential to be astronomically high.

This is just another example of what crushing poverty will do to the priorities of a family, a government and a society. While Kenya is not the poorest African countries, there are too many in these countries who live in garbage dumps, slums with open sewers running outside their doors, huddle in doorways or out on the muddy sidewalks. In light of this, abandoning children to their fate on the streets of the city may seem like a necessary option for families stretched too thin; but how can this option by tolerated by society at large? How is an 11-year old girl prostituting herself for the glue it will take to forget her hunger and cold not considered a priority for any government?

It is easy to forget children; they won’t raise a militia, they won’t vote you out of office, they won’t affect general productivity if they die their small deaths in their filthy slums. This is what happens when families cannot cope and governments cannot or will not react; society accepts that children and their potential are allowed to wither away, drugged, abused, uneducated, unloved and forgotten.

It is uncomfortable to see these children. They are dirty, high, with little of that charming innocence that softens our shallow hearts. But these children will not grow out of this phase; adulthood will not automatically bring with it sobriety and responsibility. These children will be forever damaged physically and emotionally by their experiences on the street and their addiction. They will not, for the most part, be able to contribute to their society even when they are older. They may not make the perfect poster children for a campaign that will appeal to American suburbia, but that does not make them any less of an important and tragic aspect of the poverty that ails some African countries.

 

African street children: Kinshasa, DRC

The Invisible Children campaign did a brilliant job of stimulating outrage among young people in the West about Ugandan children forced to walk for miles every night to sleep in doorways and on the ground in a town or city where they would be protecting from marauding groups that abducted children to make them soldiers or sex slaves. In the morning, these children would walk to the miles back to their vulnerable villages, only to return to the relative safety of the city the next night. The documentaries were heartbreaking, the movement was strong among high school and university students, awareness, activism and compassion were sparked.

These children were innocent victims of the war raging around them, with poignant stories and sweet faces; they are the easy subjects of a strong advocacy and popular support campaign.

It seems that this campaign for the Ugandan children could be the foundation for future movements to attract attention to the plights of other groups of children around the world. Sadly, successful campaigns cannot be waged for everyone, especially for children whose plight is effectively overshadowed by massive amounts of violence and astonishing poverty.

Case in point: the street children of Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  The United Nations estimates that there are about 15,000 children trying to make a living in the city.  The official government estimate is that there are 40,000 street children in the country, with about half of these living in Kinshasa. They have been abandoned by their families, orphaned, have physical or mental disabilities or are ex-child soldiers who are associated with the war. The average age of these children is about 14 years old.

Some of these kids have been living on the streets for over a decade, even getting “married” and having their own second-generation street children. Gangs have been formed and prostitution and drug use is rampant.

Police brutality is rampant; the children are often beaten, arrested and imprisoned. Efforts have been made in the past to round up these children and relocate them to remote parts of the country, ostensibly to give them a comprehensive education on a farm and therefore make them functioning parts of society. The problem with this is that the children do not consent to this move, are not guaranteed decent living conditions on these farms, and it is unsure whether they are even paid or fed.

The children are sometimes accused of being sorcerers; a convenient way for a family or society to make these children and their responsibility towards them the feared “other” that must be ignored and feared.

And why isn’t anything happening to save these children? Children are supposed to be the bright hope for the future, the generation that will recreate their societies and improve upon their parents’ standards. With other major problems to consider, what with a death toll of 5 million from the protracted conflict in the eastern regions, the struggle over conflict minerals causing mass displacement and instability, a corrupt government, military and police force and an economy that simply cannot sustain its people, the children in the streets are simply not at the top of the priority list.

While there may be some well-meaning Congolese or international organizations that want to help, the phenomenon of street children does not happen in a vacuum. They are just another group of victims of violence, greed, indifference, marginalization and most especially, poverty. But for all of that, they are still children; damaged, traumatized and troubled, but children. What better reason is there to become involved in a movement and effort to end the cycle of violence in the DRC, support a sustainable economy and heal the wounds of society that has been destroyed to the point of pushing its children to the dangerous fringes?

Check out these links for more information about Invisible Children and the Raise Hope for Congo campaign that deals with how individuals can affect change in the war for conflict minerals. 

Spotlight on Swaziland

When was the last time you looked at a map of Africa? I mean, really looked and took in the features – its size, the contours, the coastlines…the countries? Lets be honest, we all know at least one person (and it could even be yourself) who wonders whether its even possible to know all the countries in Africa (you know, the way we all memorized the fifty states….right?) The sad reality is that oftentimes the vast diversity of the African continent isn’t remembered – and, as this satirical skit points out, this neglect can have important consequences:   



While it may be a bit far-fetched (we should, after all, hope that our elected officials are using a correct map of the continent!) the clip does point to a larger problem: the dearth of even general knowledge about African countries, to the point that even those people who should probably know the most about issues in Africa (good – yes, there are successes – and bad) have gaps in their information.

Yet education is power in the struggle to place African issues on an even playing field with more, well-known regions of the world. To that end, this post will introduce the first of several spotlights on African countries, which will provide brief background and recent developments in countries whose stories are not necessarily in major newspapers, or on television, and whose images you may not be familiar with. Nevertheless, the people of these countries are a part of the approximately 1 billion Africans living across 53 countries on the continent – and learning about them can help bring you one country closer to knowing all about Africa!



With a population of about 1.1 million people, The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small, land-locked country – bordered in the north, west, and south by South Africa, and in the east by Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies. Despite Swaziland’s size (about that of New Jersey), it is divided into four regions – Hhohho, Lubombo, Manzini, and Shiselweni - each with administrators appointed by the King, and further governed by traditional chiefs.

With a long history of inhabitation pre-dating the colonial period, the Swazil Nation came under British rule of southern Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Following the Second Boer War, the country was named a British protectorate remained so until it achieved its independence in 1968. A delicate –and at times tenuous – balance between the monarchy and parliament currently governs the country, while activists who seek more democratic change in Swazi politics, continually call for improvements. However, King Mswati III has served as the nation’s king since 1986, and is noted to uphold the traditions of his father, including retaining firm control of power in the country. While student and labor activists in the 1990s, were able to exert pressure on the monarch to introduce political reforms, the long anticipated, new constitution – introduced in 2006 – left the status of political parties, previously banned, at best unclear.



Swaziland’s economy is fairly diversified, though it is primarily composed of services industry, manufacturing (particularly textiles and sugar), agriculture, and subsistence farming. While the government is seeking to improve the economic atmosphere in the country for foreign investment, as the country has ties to Taiwan, its economy remains closely linked to the South African economy, which imports about 70% of its products. Other key trading partners include the U.S. and the EU. As a member of the southern African Customs Union (SACU), Swaziland has also benefited from increased revenues and its external debt has declined significantly in the last 20 years.

Unfortunately, overgrazing, soil depletion, drought, and occasional floods pose problems for Swazi agriculture programs. At the same time, growth has been stymied by the effects of HIV/AIDS, as Swaziland is the country with the highest prevalence in the world of approximately 26.1%. Average life expectancy is just 31 years of age, according to the AVERT AIDS charity. Since the declaration of AIDS as a “national disaster” by the King in 1999, campaigns have been initiated through media, schools, and workplaces, and targeting vulnerable groups, such as orphans. Overall trends in 2009 indicated that HIV prevalence in the country is stabilizing; however, there is still much to be done – including more open debate on HIV issues and increased funding for prevention programs – to tackle the challenges of the disease.    

The majority of Swazi people live in rural areas and continue to engage in a variety of traditional practices. Traditional Foods include sishwala, a thick porridge normally served with meat or vegetables, sitfubi, fresh milk cooked and mixed with cornmeal, and siphuphe setindlubu, a thick porridge made of mashed groundnuts. Christian and indigenous beliefs are the major religions in the nation and the official languages of the country are English and SiSwati. One of most well-known Swazi customs is the annual Reed Dance



an 8-day ceremony held in late August or early September, where girls cut reeds which are then presented to the queen mother, and then perform a dance. Traditionally, only unmarried women without children may take part. The ceremony signifies the importance of preserving girls’ chastity, pays tribute to the Queen Mother, and encourages solidarity by working together.

Swaziland is a fascinating, if little known, country in Africa, whose stability is inevitably entwined with that of other, southern African countries. Keep reading Just Africa for more spotlights in the coming weeks. For additional information on HIV/AIDS in the region, check out resources on Africa Action’s website, including our latest press releases and talking points!