Nearly 100 years after the first International Women’s Day, the lot of women has improved, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem in his weekly column. But there’s still much to be done before equality between the sexes becomes a reality. In the meantime, the world cannot be a better place if women's conditions are not better in it.

International Women's Day on March 8 has been marked for almost a century, the first being March 8, 1911. The day is meant to honour women, celebrate their achievements and focus attention on the continuing challenges facing the realisation of the fullest potential of women as equal citizens with equal rights to men. It is a day to recommit everyone to the motto: women's rights are human rights.

It is not just a 'women's day,' even if that is how it is popularly celebrated. It is about gender awareness and democratic struggle to make the world a better place for all its inhabitants, both men and women.

There is no denying the fact that women have made tremendous advances globally and in Africa in the past few years. There are many visible pointers to the growing numbers of women in top political positions. Last year, Mrs Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, of Liberia, finally broke through the ceiling by becoming the first popularly elected female head of state in Africa. That victory means that women no longer have to rely on the good will of men in order to hold or aspire to political offices.

The truth is that most of the women who have been vice presidents in Africa have largely been 'appointed' by the 'kind' male president. An unwritten convention in such patronage is to go for women 'who will not cause trouble' and who will be 'forever grateful' to the 'appointing authority'. Mama Ellen has now put an end to that. No longer will an African woman's political ambition be limited to the second position, as a kind of political accessory for Presidents and political parties seeking political correctness and looking for votes.

It is not just in politics that African women are making giant strides. Just look around at other fields, such as the economy, community, civil society groups and NGOs, education, academia, and the professions. These achievements are not due to magnanimity on the part of the men, who are still very much in charge of the largely patriarchal power structures in society. They are the outcome of wider struggles, sometimes provoking incremental reforms and sometimes the result of prolonged conflicts. Women as women and as part of the democratic struggle, together with men, have won and continue to struggle for more victories in new frontiers. No doubt a changing consciousness and awareness is improving men's attitudes and creating men who may not be as hostile to the advancement of women as their fathers or grandfathers. But the fact that we can still point to women in top places means that it is not yet commonplace.

There are many challenges ahead. One, in some countries where women have made giant strides in formal political institutions, like Uganda or Rwanda for instance, there is a tendency to see the progress as a 'gift' of the president, thereby inculcating a kind of political gratitude that promotes political cronyism to the detriment of the wider interests of women's struggles. In Uganda, Museveni and his party talk as if they own Ugandan women and the peasantry. Even in countries like South Africa, where the gender gains are part of a wider progressive movement, there is a tendency to make women feel perpetually grateful to the party.

Two, as with all oppressed peoples, women may be oppressed not because they are women, but because they are of a different class, colour or creed. Thus, they suffer the oppression differently. Some women may become economically and politically liberated and acquire more choices at the expense of fellow women. For instance, some middle class women are able to make the choices that they make because other women subsidise their existence.

Three, a high number of women in public offices may be important symbolically and certainly necessary, but this may not translate into gender-aware policies and politics. For instance, Mrs Ngonzi Iweala is Nigeria's Minister for Finance. Mrs Sirleaf-Johnson has appointed another woman as her finance minister, but they are both committed to the neo-liberal policies of their IMF/World Bank bosses. Therefore their policies will not benefit most women, who make up the majority of the poor.

Four, while principles like 'positive discrimination' in favour of disadvantaged peoples, including women and other groups of marginalised peoples, must be defended, there must also be vigilance in order to ensure that this does not lead to a permanent quota ghetto for a few, while the power structures remain the same. The limited quota approach is mainly incorporating women into the exploitative and oppressive system - not tearing the system down.

The relative progress in many areas should not close our eyes to the enormous tasks ahead to change the iniquities of the world. We must ask ourselves how just and how fair it is that only 1% of all titles to land in the world are owned by women. And it is not only in land ownership that women are so unfairly treated. The Independent of London, in its special edition for Women's Day displayed other shameful statistics about the condition of women, not just in Africa but around the whole world. These figures should make everyone wake up and stop being complacent about the fate of more than 50% of the population of the world.

Just imagine: 70% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty are women and children; 85 million girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared to 45 million boys; 67% of all illiterate adults are women; out of 191 heads of state/government who are members of the UN, only 12 are women.

While we quote these figures and raise questions about them on the occasion of International Women’s Day we should spend the rest of the 364 days of every year taking action locally while thinking globally on how to right these wrongs. It is impossible to create a better world without bettering the lot of women. The opposite is also true: the world cannot be a better place if women's conditions are not better in it. Everyday should be a Woman's Day.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers the life of Kwame Nkrumah, ousted from power in a coup 40 years ago on February 24. Vilified in life, in death Nkrumah has been vindicated and many of his ideas are only now coming to fruition.

Last Friday, February 24, marked the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of the government of Kwame Nkrumah in a military coup that was inspired, orchestrated and sponsored by the combined forces of local reactionaries and external neo-colonialist powers, especially Britain and America for whom Nkrumah's militant Pan Africanism was abhorrent. It was a day of infamy that signalled the retreat of radical nationalism in Africa and delayed any hopes of uniting Africa and defending it against imperialist predators and their local agents.

But the overthrow of Nkrumah did not diminish the dream. In his exile years in Conakry, until his death in 1972, Nkrumah continued to write, speak and mobilise for a radical socio-economic and political transformation of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo.

His writings became more rigorous and programmatic because he had the benefit of having being in power before and therefore was able to critique his own experience and suggest ways of moving forward. Unlike many people who become 'pragmatic' with loss of power and advancing age, Nkrumah became even more revolutionary.

One of the reasons given for the coup was that Nkrumah was 'communist'. Another one popular among enemies of Pan Africanism at home and abroad was that Nkrumah allegedly wasted Ghana's resources on African liberation. It did not matter to his critics that this 'communist' programme was never hidden from the people of Ghana who successively voted for Nkrumah's party and their allies despite tremendous opposition from political rivals representing business and Ghana's largest nationality group, The Ashanti, and their junior partners. The 'wasted' resources they talked about included full and open support for liberation movements across Africa to free Africa from colonial rule and apartheid racism in southern Africa.

Today everybody, including our former colonisers who also kept apartheid alive for four decades, have all become 'our partners in development' and profess good will towards Africa. Yet they opposed our liberation and did not forgive Nkrumah for daring to challenge their racist prejudice and boldly doing something about it, not only in Ghana but across Africa. For this he was derided, caricatured, ridiculed and attacked even out of power and after death. After several failed attempts to assassinate him failed they got their agents within the armed forces of Ghana and the police to launch a coup while Nkrumah was out of the country.

Ghana became orphaned and did not recover its confidence as a country again for many decades. It is a testimony to Nkrumah's success that 40 years after he was overthrown Ghanaian governments and leaders will still be judged (and judged poorly) against him. Even his enemies are forced to acknowledge him as a true national leader and statesman who was genuinely committed to the welfare of the people of Ghana and Africa.

Was Nkrumah perfect? Definitely not. He did make many mistakes. As Cabral famously remarked in his tribute to Nkrumah at a state funeral in Conakry, April 1972, if Nkrumah died of cancer it was 'cancer of betrayal'. But he did not just stop at blaming those who betrayed Nkrumah he also used the African idiom, 'Food only cooks in the pot' to ask why it was possible for him to be toppled. Many people still supported Nkrumah but the party that was the organic link between him and the masses had been hijacked by cliques.

Is there any difference today? How many of our previously radical leaders are still popular with the masses? The longer they stay in power the more distanced and distancing from the people they become. They begin to consume the propaganda that 'without you the country will collapse'.

Time they say is a final arbiter. The ideas that Nkrumnah lived and died for continue to reverberate across the continent. It is clear to everybody today that Pan-Africanism is not a dream anymore but a precondition for the survival of Africa and Africans in the face of new rampaging and rapacious exploitation, packaged as globalisation. Those who had accused Nkrumah of being too impatient had the honesty to admit in public that they were wrong and regretted that they were not as radical as Nkrumah had been. Africa could have been saved the wasted decades.

History has absolved Nkrumah in many ways. At the dawn of the new Millennium the BBC ran a campaign for the African of the Millennium. There were so many nominations and it was obvious that many interests were routing for Nelson Mandela, but in the end Kwame Nkrumah was the clear choice of the majority of the listeners.

It is not only at the symbolic level that Nkrumah has been rehabilitated. Some of the important institutions created by the African Union were issues on which Nkrumah was vilified in the 60s. Examples include his call for an African High Command. Now we have a Peace and Security Council, working on a Common Defence Pact and the AU has plans for a Standby Force.

Nkrumah campaigned for one Union Government and they said it was impossible, but today we have elements in place like the Pan African Parliament and the African Court of Human Rights. There are discussions at senior levels on actualising a Central Bank for Africa. There is a standing committee of heads of state that is working on ways of accelerating the process for the creation of a Union of African States by 2009 as proposed by Libya. We may not get there that soon but that we are seriously re-engaging these issues means that Kwame Nkrumah has not died in vain.

We cannot call for his soul to rest in peace. Instead we ask that his spirit continues to haunt us so that we can realise for this generation and safeguard for the future, the United Africa for which he lived and died.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem compares the crisis over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed with the Fatwa issued against the author Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhoolai Khomeini. Neither the West nor Islam has a monopoly on good or evil, he writes, concluding that “…freedom will be meaningless if it is completely unlimited, but living in a society also means that we have to share it with people whose ways and values may clash with ours”.

I was a student in England when the Salman Rushdie affair broke out. Let's refresh our memories. Mr. Rush to Die, a celebrated British writer of Indian Muslim origins, had written a novel called Satanic Versus. In it he repeated one of many insinuations about Prophet Muhammad, sexuality and women.

Apart from the literary types and their allied industry promoters, not many people would have heard of the book, even less would have bought it and fewer still would have read it. Somehow some Muslim clerics got to hear about this book and before you could say Salam Alaikum Muslim Clerics in Bradford (predominantly Asian) were up in arms, calling for a ban on the book and declaring it a blasphemy against Islam.

Then Iran's Ayatollah Ruhoolai Khomeini, (briefly in the 1980s the Spiritual Leader not just of Shiite Muslims but notionally for all Muslims and admired by many anti imperialists for cutting the US to size) waded in by declaring a FATWA (basically capital punishment for an apostate Muslim). From a local affair in Bradford the anti Satanic Verses popular protests spread across the United Kingdom and became a global bonfire in many Muslim countries. A spate of bannings followed, including by many African states that feared that the book was a threat to public peace and safety.

The protests about the book had less to do with the offence than the context. This was England in the 1980s, painfully adjusting to the conservative counter revolution of Margaret Thatcher in which poor people in general but ethnic and racial minorities in particular felt marginalized and vulnerable. British Muslims, especially second or more generation Asians locked in their ethno-religious laagers in places like Bradford and Leicester, felt more vulnerable than others. A community under attack from socio-economic and political changes finally found its religious faith also not considered sacred! The matter was made worse by the fact that the author who gave this public expression was, or was supposed to be, one of them even if he claimed to have become a lapsed Muslim! Do we see any parallels with the current protests because of a set of cartoons published in some Danish newspaper four months ago?

Like Rushdie's case the matter began locally but it became global because of technology but also because of the current tensions about the role of the West in global matters, particularly in the Middle East. Like British Muslims their brethren and sisters in Denmark, despite pretensions to the contrary of liberalism in countries like Denmark, feel left out and in recent years under right wing attack due to the rightward shift in politics in the Nordic and Scandinavian countries. Xenophobia is on the rise (formalising itself in parliament and government) as in many other European countries.

While Rushdie’s case was regarded as a stab in the back, the cartoons are considered a frontal blow. The international environment has meant that the tiny Muslim populations in a very tiny country called Denmark are not alone. Their frustrations can feed into all kinds of frustrations by Muslims and non-Muslims alike about the West.

The disagreement is presented as a simplistic one between freedom of expression and its enemies. Or even more directly as yet another clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, with the former standing for democracy and the latter lack of it. But it is not about religion essentially, but about politics and power locally and internationally. Freedom is not absolute anywhere in the world, least of all in the West. Would the same newspapers that have gleefully published the cartoons in over 25 Western countries (including the apartheid State of Israel) have published them if they had been about Jews? What would be the reaction of the same newspapers if the cartoons were about Jesus Christ, insinuating that he was a pedophile, since so many priests in Europe and the US have in recent years been exposed as systematically abusive of children in their flock? How many of these freedom lovers will take up the challenge thrown by an Iranian newspaper which had commissioned a similarly offensive set of cartoons about Christianity and Judaism and dare publish them in their papers?

On the other hand how many of those militant protesters burning down embassies and brandishing all kinds of violent posters and placards will be tolerated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or any other so called Muslim state if their protest was about the un-Islamic practices of their rulers whose rule is any thing but Islamic?

How many of those protesting have actually seen these cartoons? My guess is that like the Satanic verses, which many liberals bought to show solidarity but never read beyond the 'satanic' page, many of those protesting the cartoons have not and will not even see them.

Does that mean there are no issues at stake apart from cynical politics and transferable anger? No, there are serious issues and discussions that need to be heard but which can only be meaningful after the current pontification from the West and victimhood emotionalism from Muslims has settled down.

Neither has a monopoly on good and evil. Freedom will be meaningless if it is completely unlimited but living in a society also means that we have to share it with people whose ways and values may clash with ours. Finding a peaceful formulae for mutual coexistence within boundaries of tolerance in equal dignity is what democracy is about. The tragedy is that the West behaves as though it has a monopoly on democracy to the extent that many non Westerners or non westernised people now instinctively reject democracy as a western subterfuge.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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Travelling through Nigeria recently, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem remembers how he was stopped by a crowd of people warning him that bandits has set up an ‘operation’ and were looting passing motorists. Abdul-Raheem assesses the state of lawlessness in Nigeria and the rule of Olusegun Obasanjo, who is moving ever closer to a third term bid and the possibility of becoming a “lame duck president with everything imploding around him”.

These days I have been spending more time in Nigeria. ‘Home', as they say, is indeed the best, but for most Nigerians it must be tough love. It is often difficult for one to say if things are getting better or if one is just getting used to it and lowering one's standards - while increasing one's tolerance levels of unfair situations and injustices on the many fronts of the multiple obstacle race that the country has become. Just when you think things are never going to get worse, Nigeria and Nigerians combine their unique capacity to find ways of digging deeper and sinking further.

The general insecurity across the country has proven so insurmountable that Nigerians seemed to have resigned themselves to it and put themselves on a permanent state of alert, hoping that lady luck, miracle prayers, or some voodoo or witchcraft or a combination of all these will see them through.

In addition to these, those who are rich buy themselves militias. Armed robbery, hired killers, political killings, and other forms of gratuitous violence are perpetrated both privately and officially by the police and other security agencies charged with public safety. The Inspector General of Police recently publicly apologised and promised to take action about a number of serving police men accused of 'hiring' their guns to gangs of armed robbers. And the Police write boldly on their vehicles ‘to protect with integrity and honesty’, either as a sick joke or as a mockery of Nigerians.

Not long ago I had a personal experience of the lawlessness. I was travelling home to Funtua, which is about 75 kilometres north of the University town of Samaru Zaria, at around 8pm. At a small town called Giwa we saw huge crowds of people lined up on the road and a row of different vehicles parked by the roadside. Everybody was shouting that we should stop. We did and we were told that 'there was an operation' ahead of us. This operation was not a security sweep or road check: armed robbers had mounted a road bloc and were taking whatever they could find from their victims. Confidently we were told the 'operation' was going to be over in about an hour. We were advised that once there were cars coming from the opposite direction it meant the road was clear. And within an hour, as we were advised, 'the road opened' and we drove home safely.

You will be forgiven for asking a number of obvious questions: Where were the police? If everybody knew where they operated and even the time and also the days (usually market days in surrounding trading towns) why were the police not doing anything about it?

Very legitimate questions but only a stranger will ask these kinds of questions in Nigeria. Everybody knows that the police and the army, if they are not doing the 'operations' themselves, are aiding and abetting the crimes because they share in the booty. It is not only their guns that they rent out - they also regularly parcel out sections of the federal highways so that these nefarious 'operations' can take place with impunity. Once they are done you will see siren blaring police vehicles rushing in at break-neck speed to the scene after their comrades in crime have bolted with the loot!

Yet this is a country in which Obasanjo and his acolytes delude themselves into believing the people have never had it so good. That is why they are orchestrating a constitutional reform that will make it possible for Obasanjo to stand for a third term like his good friend and ex-Comrade, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, in Uganda.

Obasanjo does not seem to have learnt anything from his previous experience as a military head of state, his stint in civil society as founder of Africa Leadership Forum and his horrible prison term under Abacha.

A friend who was present at a meeting between General Ibrahim Badmasi Babangida when he was head of state and General Obasanjo as a coup-plotter-turned NGO-activist narrated an interesting exchange to me that is relevant to this matter. Obasanjo had fallen into an armed robbery ambush on his way to a scheduled meeting with the smiling dictator, Babangida. Being the cautious general that he was he did not play any hero with armed robbers. He knew he was outgunned and saw no rationality in resisting so he surrendered the money he had and they let him go. They did not know and could not have cared who he was. If they had known it was Obasanjo they probably would have even killed him anyway. He became a victim like any other innocent Nigerian whose only crime was driving on the road. In narrating this experience to Babangida, citizen Obasanjo told him that he had no doubt that there was no political motivation to the crime. But if it had leaked out to the public immediately many would have jumped to the conclusion that - because Obasanjo had been openly very critical of Babangida’s policies - the government had a hand in it. Therefore he asked Babangida to take the issues of public safety and security seriously, otherwise the government was going to be held responsible for everything and anything.

It is a shame that the same Obasanjo cannot allow himself similar wisdom since he became President seven years ago.

As the tussles for power intensify at all levels of government, a spate of killings and fear of more violence has gripped the country.

By no means would all of the violence be politically motivated, but so bad are things now and so polarised has the country become that everything is blamed on Obasanjo and his government. The recent brutal murder of the wife of the 'former radical' governor of Kano State, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi, was immediately suspected to be politically motivated because Rimi is one of the most vocal critics of Obasanjo’s third term bid. The available evidence so far from the investigations suggest that to the extent that politics was involved in the murder it had local dynamics rather than anything to do with Aso Rock. But who cares for such empirical details in a leader-centric system where the President is God?

It is not only killings that are blamed on Aso Rock. Many of those being investigated for corruption now claim that it is because they are opposed to Obasanjo's third term bid or because they are supporters of Obasanjo's estranged Deputy, Atiku Abubakar. The whole governance system is grinding to a halt so that even the good things that Obasanjo's regime has done and is doing are lost in the controversies. He is losing control of the machinery of the state and on his way to becoming a rogue President.

Yet he can retreat from the abyss and leave a more positive legacy by making a broadcast to the Nation renouncing any intention of amending the constitution to facilitate his self-succession in 2007. This will immediately drastically bring down the overheated political atmosphere of the country. It will also destabilise his many enemies who have built a coalition of convenience around anti-third term campaigns. More than that it will give him the opportunity to regain credibility for a lasting legacy in the areas of public safety, economic reform, the war against corruption and even more leverage in deciding who succeeds him. Failing this he will remain a lame duck president with everything imploding around him but travelling all over the world to fix everybody's problems without a clue on what to do about those he was allegedly elected to solve.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in this week as President of Liberia. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem wishes her well in what promises to be a stormy voyage, and raises questions about some of the problems that might crop up over the next four years. Will her reign mean better times for all women or only for ruling women? Will she be able to unlearn all her IMF/World Bank doctrines and put social change at the forefront of her agenda?

On Monday 15 January 2006, Mrs Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in as President of the Republic of Liberia, Africa's oldest modern republican state, founded by freed slaves largely from the USA in 1847. The search for liberty took them to Liberia, but the reality for the majority of the peoples of the country for most of the 160 years of its existence has been anything but freedom.

The Americo-Liberians, newly arrived from slave plantations in America, over the years established similar exploitative systems over the indigenous peoples of Liberia. The last three decades of Liberia is more widely known for its gruesome rulers, but the previous periods should not be excused their own gruesomeness that created the basis for the post 1980 dictatorships that we are so grimly aware of.

Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf's election and assumption of office is rightly celebrated both for its historical significance and symbolic resonance for the continuing struggle for democracy and fullest participation of African women in the affairs of this continent. Her election has lifted the spirits of all those who believe in gender equality and full recognition for Africa's majority, who are women. It is also another slap in the face of all those Afro pessimists, both African and non Africans who profit from bad mouthing Africa and seeing only doomsday scenarios and catastrophies coming out of Africa.

As we enjoy these positive feelings we should also sober up to the enormous challenges that Johnson-Sirleaf is going to face. How many of those heads of state, prominent politicians, assorted state officials from across the world who were there to shine in the glow of celebrations will still be there for her in a few months time? Would those regional and international leaders who obviously preferred her candidature now be willing to travel the long journey ahead? She will sooner rather than later discover that she needs more than election war chest pledges to realize the hopes and ambitions of millions of war ravaged and traumatised Liberians who will be expecting her to be the "mama fix it' of their misruled and abused country.

Her inauguration speech was uplifting, understandably emotional but also highly measured in a way as not to raise too many hopes. She is too much of a seasoned politician and has a long and varied experience as a banker, donor dispenser and NGO activist at national and international levels to be that extravagant with her promises.

But her cautious disposition will not stop millions of Liberian women and men from looking up to “Mama Ellen” to fix all the various challenges that have confronted them. She is also not coming in with a clean pair of hands, having been part of a previous regime and collaborated with other regimes - including that of the pariah of the moment, disgraced and indicted former dictator, Charles Taylor.

While many may see her as a saviour, others will be suspicious and say “wait and see”. In a continent that has seen too many false prophets before it is not an unreasonable attitude. Many of the sit tight leaders we are moaning about today were once promised messiahs and heroes!

Some of the issues that were raised during the campaigns that may have contributed to her winning the run off against “The Footballer”, George Weah, may actually come back to haunt her. One, the fact of being a woman was an empowering position to be in an election in which women really mattered, not as victims of the wars but also as agents of change through the transformations that sometimes come with dislocations brought about by prolonged conflicts. Old barriers break down and sometimes oppressed groups break out and kick up the ceiling. But would Mama Ellen be able to deliver to the Women of Liberia?

She has been approvingly called “The Iron Lady” comparing her to Britain's former hardline right wing Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. I am not sure if many British women and men who were victims of Thatcher's “greed is good” politics will welcome her African reincarnation. If she is past tense in London why should she be a new currency in Monrovia? Would this mean prosperity for poor women beyond gender symbolism? Or is it more likely to be better times for ruling women?

Two, her Harvard University education versus the “Street University” background of her main challenger portrayed the battle as one between the educated against the so called illiterate. It is a battle that resonates across Africa. When it comes to the right to vote we do not have any qualifications but when it comes to being voted for we demand “minimum” qualifications. Does that mean that so called illiterates have no other right than to be voting for those who are educated? In the case of Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf and her generation of politicians share the responsibility for the mass illiteracy in the country. How can they turn around and condemn the generations they denied the right to education to and look down on them as unworthy? It is very strange that George Weah was cleared to contest the election despite being an illiterate. If he was cleared to stand surely he must have passed some “education threshold”. Or was he cleared with the hope that he would not win? If we do not have a policy of free and compulsory education up to a certain level for all our citizens it is very discriminatory and a violation of their rights to insist that they must possess certain qualifications in order to be voted for.

Another undemocratic side of this illiteracy debate is the shameful fact that the business of government is conducted in many of our countries in languages that the majority of the people do not understand, thereby mystifying the process of governance. When we say someone is an illiterate, in what language are we stating this? I wonder how many of our so-called educated elite will pass an elementary test in their mother tongues?

Three, a lot was made of her experience as a World Bank staffer and UN bureaucrat. This is very odd given the fact that many countries on this continent were destroyed by following the prescriptions of the Washington twin vultures of the IMF/WB through successive failed experiments with the lives of our peoples through SAPs and the current Neo-liberal policies. In Johnson-Sirleaf we are being asked to trust the judgment of a former employee of these same institutions. She cannot solve the problems of Liberia by acting like some bank clerk or repeating the neo-liberal mantra of her former employers or the globalisation fantasies of her friend, George Soros.

Liberia needs an effective, responsible and responsive state that will protect and defend its peoples, create jobs and empower people to transform their lives. It does not need a state that hands off social and economic development, trusting the ghosts of an unfree market. She has to unlearn all her IMF/World Bank doctrines if she wants to succeed as a change agent rather merely acting as an agent of the Bank and the Fund. As for her UN background I have only one question: Is Africa now effectively a UN mandate territory that previous experience of the UN is now required for aspirations of public office? Well, she needs to look no further than her friend next door, Alhaji Tejan Kabah of Sierra-Leone, to ask if working in the UN and acting as UN mandate governor guarantees development or even a free flow of foreign investment and donor funds. No amount of foreign support can be a substituted for the efforts of your own people.

Four, Johnson-Sirleaf has promised to wage war against corruption. She needs to tread carefully here and be serious. She should learn from the credibility gap surrounding similar efforts by her biggest regional patron, Olushegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. One way she can make a difference is not by insisting asset declaration but also liability declaration. Politicians should declare how much they owe those who funded their campaigns and how they propose to pay them back.

Finally, Johnson-Sirleaf has also made one of those rash promises that many Africans have become disdainfully familiar with. She has reportedly promised to serve only one term. I hope she will break the mould by actually honoring that pledge, whether it was made verbally, in public or in private. Out of the many heads of state she will be meeting at her first AU summit in Khartoum there is no high level of redemption of past similar promises.

Congratulations Mama Ellen, it is not going to be easy, but if you do not abandon the people they won’t abandon you too. I wish you well.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem begins the year with no resolutions and no predictions for 2006. But he does say goodbye to one aspect of 2005 that he found particularly irksome – the missionary focus on Africa by the likes of Tony Blair and Bob Geldof and the way in which leading NGOs were shamelessly co-opted by power. “I hope that in the New Year these NGOs will start looking more to Africa and Africans rather than false prophets, saviours and messiahs from outside,” he writes.

It is the end of one year and the beginning of another. It is customary to look back on the outgoing year, recalling the high and low points while looking forward to the New Year with hope and expectation - and sometimes trepidation about things foretold or just expected. Many people also engage in ritual New Year resolutions that habitually do not survive the New Year celebrations!

This column will not review the whole year. I am also engaging the good sense gear not to make any predictions for 2006 so as to save myself the trouble of verbose explanation why they did not happen, this time next year. And as for New Year resolutions, I save myself both embarrassment and disappointment in one go by not making any. This makes everything that may happen, whether welcome or unwelcome, a surprise all the same.

Instead of a review of the whole of 2005 I will just look at one issue that became almost an obsession for me throughout the year.

The year 2005 will go down as one in which so much was promised to Africa and in which so little was achieved. But the subterfuge helped clear any lingering scales on our eyes that foreign-do-gooders will help fix Africa.

We were told several times by all kinds of do-gooders that 2005 was Africa's year. These expectations were based on a dubious coincidence outside of Africa. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, assumed both the Presidency of the European Union and Chairmanship of the G8 Rich Vultures' Club and promised to make Africa his priority. Prophet Blair, who did not officially visit Africa throughout his first term (except for an obligatory photo call on Nelson Mandela), decided that, to cleanse himself of the blood of innocent Iraqis that he helped his buddy, barmy Bush, to exterminate, Africa would be his salvation.

Leading British NGOs led by OXFAM, who even had one of their former top ranking officials in Downing Street as an adviser, saw Blair's missionary view of Africa as a wonderful opportunity for funding and willingly went to bed with Blair.

Their shameless embrace of Blair is only comparable to the grotesque scandal of Western journalists becoming embedded with the Anglo-American imperialists in their illegal occupation of Iraq. These NGOs now have to search their souls during 2006 and ask if their collusion with power was worth it. But since they are not accountable to the people they serve they continue to talk up their treachery as success. What kind of success is this for debt relief that sees Nigeria paying back over three billion dollars to Britain alone, a figure more than the total aid budget of Britain in the same year?

What kind of opportunity for Africa is 2005 when pressures have to be dissipated on making the USA through its UN ambassador, the UN-hating Bolton, to accept not to eliminate the acronym, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set five years before? If it took so much effort to defend the acronym alone how much will it take to achieve the goals? If you are still in doubt about how bad things are, the recent WTO meetings in Hong Kong should put paid to any illusions. There was no movement on the big issues and decisions are delayed for yet another round of negotiations between the cats and the mice of the global economy. The cats will not give up their right to eat the mice while the mice have to do everything to escape being gobbled up.

It's a clear frontier but many Western NGOs confuse their domestic audience and their conniving Southern activists in facilitating the illusion that some cats are less greedy than others. Many Southern activists know this not to be true but carry on with their northern patrons because their jobs and careers depend on it. The campaigns offer individual poverty alleviation mechanisms without making a dent on the global and national structure of power that impoverishes the masses of their peoples. Whatever Bob Geldof, Bono and other busy-body new missionaries in the west may do, poverty can neither be danced out of town nor be talked out of existence with prime ministers and presidents. It is a poverty of history to think and act as though a few rock concerts will change the situation. No matter how many billions watch the concerts.

So grim are things that Bob Geldof has now become an adviser to the new Conservative leader, newly cloned Blairite, David Cameron, on global poverty. Having tried Blair and New Labour the patron saint of Western NGOs has gone for the Conservatives! I guess after trying the fake Tory why not go for the real thing? Are Oxfam and their assorted fellow travelers in Africa now going to persuade us that Cameron is the new face of the war on poverty?

It is clear that the British and other Western NGOs make adjustments to their own political environment and find relevance whoever is in power, but because our own NGOs are donor-driven, lacking a social base in our own societies, they have proven themselves incapable of doing the same. Therefore they declare themselves only independent of African governments and are not accountable to African people but dance to the tunes of their funders. I hope that in the New Year these NGOs will start looking more to Africa and Africans rather than false prophets, saviours and messiahs from outside. The fact that the majority of our peoples survived to see the dawn breaking on 2006 has nothing to do with what Blair, Brown, Bob and Bono (I often wonder why their names are all 'B'?) did for them or to them but the direct result of our will to live and overcome. In saying bye-bye to 2005 lets say bye bye to the B stars in the global pornography of poverty that dominated the multimedia during the year.

Happy New Year to you all.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to [email]editor@pambazuka.

The clock is ticking when it comes to current peace talks on Darfur currently taking place in Abuja, writes Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. But this time its not the Government of Sudan who is the spoiler at the talks, but rather the rebel forces, most of whom do not represent their people and are using their time in Abuja to snuggle up to Western donors and have a holiday at the expense of the international community.

This week is very crucial for the now-on-now-off African Union sponsored peace negotiations on Darfur in Abuja. The agreement on security is supposed to be signed failing which these round of talks could be declared dead and all the negotiators, peace envoys, rebels, government representatives and the assortment of various 'international' (meaning non African and predominantly European and American) supporters of the peace negotiations should do their tax payers a big favour and pack their bags and go home.

It is a big irony that the main culprits for this failure will not be the usual first suspect of everyone: the Government of Sudan. There is no doubt that the government is a bad government that is decapitating its opponents and aiding and abetting atrocities in Darfur and also implicated in the imploding civil war in Chad. While the government of Sudan may deserve most of the criticisms against it the obstacles to peace in Abuja are sadly fully manned by the Darfur rebel groups: JEM (Justice for Equality Movement) and SLA (Sudan Liberation Army) and the way in which their international backers continue to treat them with kid gloves and thereby encourage their belligerence.

So fixed are many on the vile nature of the Khartoum government that by definition anybody opposed to it, for whatever reasons, must be good. So desperate have various sponsors of the negotiations become that they seem prepared to get an agreement at all cost. The obsession with delegitimising the Sudan government even while negotiating with it has produced a mixed signal of inertia. At what stage does the illegitimacy of the NIF/CP government become delegitimation of the Sudan state?

These factors have prevented a more objective appreciation of the situation. The painful truth that must be faced is that neither JEM nor SLA (as presently constituted) and the various factions within and between them with their fluid alliances and struggles for personal power and prestige, are in a position to make any deals that will hold for long. How can one justify the enormous expense of having over a hundred rebels in Abuja for weeks and months with only a few of them able to engage in any serious talks and the majority just playing spoilers or peace vultures? They are becoming to Abuja what, for many years, Burundi rebels or Somali factions became to both Arusha and Nairobi respectively: Permanent tourists sponsored by the international community as a kind of direct aid to the local hospitality and leisure industry.

The rebels' attitude makes it much easier for the Sudan government to do nothing other than just watch its ill-prepared bunch and bands of armed rebels. Consequently Khartoum's representatives and commitment remain untested by the mediators and the rebels on many issues because the rebels are too absorbed in their own self-importance to concentrate or focus on the larger picture. While the Sudan government has in Abuja obviously experienced, informed and well connected security and political figures, the rebel groups have chosen to send largely ineffectual, faction-ridden elements. Give or take half a dozen on both sides, all the rebels could be sent back without any impact on the talks.

After all the months of talks one had expected that these rebels would be gaining in experience and acquiring needed skills in engaging in negotiations, but they are rather stagnating and playing reactionary politics with the lives, blood, sweat and suffering of their peoples.

There is no doubt that the cause of Darfur is just but these rebels claiming to represent the suffering masses of Darfur are not doing so justly. Like the Khartoum government they are not legitimate leaders of the people. They are their self-appointed liberators. But unlike many liberation movements in Africa, which had to depend on the people to build and plan with them, these rebels have too many willing regional and international actors indulging their delusions of grandeur.

There are many weaknesses with the AU force in Darfur and also with the mediation framework but clamouring for its replacement with a UN one instead of helping to strengthen it, is a recipe for prolonged dithering on the part of the rebels and the government. A situation in which the rebels seem to have no faith in the AU and implicit confidence in non-African governments and institutions is playing into the hands of the government. The belief by the rebels that the AU will be replaced by a different force and mediators is actually encouraging the rebels to consider their role in Abuja as mere “walk on parts”, since there will be other forums for them outside of Africa for negotiations. By default they are conceding the diplomatic and political terrain in Africa to Khartoum while putting their faith in non-Africans. They obviously have not learnt anything from the crisis of the opposition in Zimbabwe.

While they are not talking with the AU mediators they are flattered to be the darling of many Westerners in the talks. Like the true colonial-minded leaders they are, they feel gratified to be seen with one western diplomat or the other, no matter how lowly placed. It boosts their sense of self-importance. It also gives the diplomats, security operatives and intelligence gatherers masquerading as supporters of negotiations a ringside seat in playing God with African lives. I honestly think the ritual presence of outsiders (especially so called Donor-countries) in these negotiations is, on the whole, negative. They are not putting pressure on the rebels to engage positively and instead seem to be encouraging their belligerence.

The priority should be to make the ceasefire effective, stop the massacres and protect the civilians. These can only be achieved through making the African Union troops more effective and expanding their mandate if possible through the UN Security Council. If this is not possible, the AU should do so by itself and seek the necessary international support to carry out the mandate. This also means that the loopholes in the original ceasefire that are being exploited by the government and its killer groups and the rebels too, need to be plugged. It means putting all pressure on Khartoum and the rebels to sign off the security agreement and be held accountable for it. In the worse case scenario, the AU needs to show political courage and call the bluff of the rebels by calling off the talks and advising them to call back when they are ready for serious talks and agreement. Meanwhile the threat of not giving Khartoum the diplomatic and political honour of hosting the next summit, due in Khartoum in January, should be made clear if the government continues to kill its own people. A government and opposition force whose power depends on mass suffering and death of their own peoples should be denied the company of other Africans and all decent peoples the world over.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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This weekend is World Human Rights Day, a day set aside to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). When the Declaration was made in 1948 most of Africa (with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia), were subject nations lorded over by European colonialists. These imperialists did not see any contradiction in making the declaration while having their jackboots on our backs and pillaging our human and material resources. Many will still ask what has changed in almost 60 years?

In his weekly column, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem tackles three African presidents who appear to have ambitions to rule until they drop dead. Omar Bongo of Gabon, Yoweri Musevini of Uganda and Olushegun Obasanjo of Nigeria are either firmly entrenched as leaders for life or are busy manipulating electoral laws so they can serve beyond their given time. Abdul-Raheem asks why these leaders see it as their god-given right to rule and rule and rule...

The more Africa changes the more it remains the same at the level of leadership. While it is no longer an issue for debate that we should choose our own leaders in a democratic election there are many challenges in the processes that may make cynics proclaim that we are only making a distinction without any fundamental difference.

Our dictators have learnt how to repackage themselves with a veneer of electoral democracy that ensues that we 'vote without choosing' since the outcome often remains the same. In the past few years constitutionalism has also made a come back across Africa but - unwilling democrats that many of the leaders are - they have found ways of constitutionalising their illegitimacy by following a constitutional route to deny their peoples the democratic right to genuine changes and alternatives in public policy.

Take the cases of three presidents from different regions of Africa who have become the symbols of this constitutional gerymandering. The first one holds the dubious title of being Africa's longest –serving (I am not sure what services any more), President, El Hadj Omar Bongo of the oil-rich Central African state of Gabon. He has been in power since 1967 and has just secured for himself another seven-year term at the presidential palace, which will ensure that he remains in power till he is 75 years old (officially). After that term, if both nature and the ancestors have not called him home, we can be sure that there will be no shortage of footloose opportunists to orchestrate 'one more term'. Bongo has ensured that he runs and runs till he drops dead. This is where his presidential run and re-run interfaces with that of the second president, retired general Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda, whose onward march to another term was the subject of this column last week.

I got many responses from both the Museveni camp and even more from the anti-Museveni group on that article. The president's men and women typically become legalistic on the issue, arguing that now that Ugandans have spoken through a referendum and there has been appropriate change to the constitution, the President is not doing anything unconstitutional.

They overstate their democratic credentials by stating the seemingly obvious: Ugandan voters are supreme they say and whatever they decide is sacrosanct. It is a very beguiling democratic case even if democracy is the last thing on the minds of those pushing it. It is always amusing to me why Ugandans are supreme over the issue of Museveni running again but have neither been supreme on the key economic decisions of the government or the various wars the country has been involved in for the past two decades. Not even elected members of Parliament have any influence on the government's neo-liberal policies yet the people are supreme!

On the other side of the debate the anti 'sad term' camp think I have become too complacent about Museveni's self-succession. I had concluded my article last week matter-of-factly that five years will soon come to pass. But the fear of many in the opposition is that it is not just the next five years that Museveni and his cronies want but the next one, and the one after that and probably another one after that until the president gives up the ghost. In a sense self-succession in perpetuity - like Bongo's.

I must confess that I have no answer to that speculation because there is something that happens to our presidents once they enter office that they find ways and means of perpetuating themselves. People often blame opportunists around them but I think that is a lazy approach. There is no adviser that will compel an unwilling president to remain in office for a minute longer if he is not that inclined.

Unfortunately Museveni is not alone in the struggle for presidency in perpetuity. And that leads us to the third president, another retired general, Chief Mathew Aremu Olushegun Obasanjo. I have been in Nigeria for the past three weeks and the big political issue is about the quest for another term by President Obasanjo.

Like Museveni's supporters when his campaign first started to change the constitution, Obasanjo's people are saying the president has not decided either way. Like President Museveni, Obasanjo rarely addresses the issue directly and when he does he says defensively that the constitution does not allow him to go beyond two consecutive terms and he has pledged to uphold the constitution. However, as it happened in Uganda his agents and political contractors are busy pushing for constitutional amendments that will allow him to stand for another term and thereby constitutionalising his self-succession as has happened in Uganda.

It is obvious that the three compare notes on how to deceive their peoples. It is sad that, in spite of the new African Peer Review Mechanism, they do not compare notes on how to improve the lot of their peoples.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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At a meeting of African heads of state in Nigeria recently, the thorny issue of African unity was debated. While the leaders busied themselves with discussing a union of states, Tajudeen Abdul Raheem writes that what unity should really be about is a unity of people. Pan Africanism, he writes, needs to leave the conferences and executive mansions and become a part of the lives of ordinary people.

On November 12th and 13th at the Banquet Hall of Nigeria's State House (more popularly known as Aso Rock), President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his capacity as the chair of the African Union, hosted a conference on ‘Africa and the Challenges of the Global Order: Desirability of the Union Government’.

Five heads of state and government including President Thabo Mbeki (South Africa), John Kufour (Ghana), Abdulaye Wade (Senegal), Prime minister Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia) and President Boutefleka (Algeria) - represented by his prime minister - along with several foreign ministers and ambassadors were present.

A number of civil society activists, academics, international policy makers including Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia University), Adebayo Olukoshi (CODESRIA), Wangari Mathai (President of ECOSOCC), Gertrude Mongela (speaker of the Pan African Parliament), Ezra Mbogori (Mwengo) and others were also present to dialogue with the leaders on the best means of proceeding with the agenda of unity.

The meeting was a direct result of the directive given by the Shirte Summit in July based on the resolution put forward by the Libyan leader, Muammar Al Gaddafi demanding that a Union of African states be formed as a further step in advancing the Pan-Africanist idea. Libya is anxious that in spite of recent progress in the Union the demands and pressures of globalization are such that only a faster march to Unity will prevent Africa from being re-colonised.

As in 1999 not many African leaders were too enthusiastic about Libya 's proposals in July. However, as has become the practice, whatever Libya pushes it has enough material and diplomatic clout in the Union for it not to be ignored. The strategy of other powerhouses in the AU - especially Nigeria and South Africa - has always been how to contain Libya’s militancy. The matter was thrown at a High Level Panel headed by President Obasanjo along with Zenawi, Mbeki, Wade, Boutefleka, Museveni and Kufour. This Panel is due to submit its report to the next summit in Khartoum in January 2006.

In Abuja the Libyans - represented by their minister for Africa Ali Treiki (called by many "The Tricky man' for his long term survival of many sharp knives in the corridors of power) - put more flesh to their proposals in terms of a time table beginning in 2006 with the removal of tariffs and visas, the establishment of a central bank, and the formation of one army all of which would lead to the creation of a Union of African States in 2009.

Libya obviously wants a United Africa as a present for the 40th anniversary of the Al Fatah revolution! These are no doubt very revolutionary proposals given the slow take off of all the institutions of the new Union. Caution will dictate that we work on making existing structures work before taking another leap forward.

In a rare display of executive candor and public engagement the leaders present did not hide their disagreement with Libya's proposals. Thabo Mbeki led the charge, raising doubts about his ability to persuade reluctant South Africans to surrender sovereignty to an entity outside the country that they did not vote for. He expressed pessimism about common tariffs, drawing his conclusion from the slow progress of common tariffs and the customs union of SADC countries.

Zenawi argued that the proposals were full of old rhetoric without adequate research and analysis. He asked if Africa's underdevelopment is the result of lacking a union government or if a union government will make Africa develop. Obasanjo drew attention to the ECOWAS region which made great progress in the area of free movement but had not proceeded to other levels of integration.

Wade suggested that the integration of Africa is impeded by dependence on aid and the collective loses that Africa suffers from the export of its precious raw materials and mineral resources like oil, gold, diamond, etc. He caused some exchange of executive banter between him and his host when he asked for the right to share in Nigeria's fuel resources. Obasanjo retorted that he could not be giving Senegal cheap oil while it uses foreign exchange to buy imported rice which he is trying to dissuade Nigerians from eating.

The concerns raised by the leaders and others are genuine but I believe they are agonising instead of organising. I do not believe that Africans anywhere on this continent or in the Diaspora will not vote overwhelmingly for visa-free freedom of movement across Africa. The scandalous situation that degrades and humiliates us at the moment needs to be addressed immediately. How can an American, Canadian or Australian and virtually all Europeans have easier access to our countries while we treat fellow African as 'aliens'? Despite all the sensitivities and reactionary politics surrounding citizenship across Africa would it not be easier to recognise all Africans as Africans with full citizenship rights, wherever they may be in Africa? Mamdani, combining both personal experience and professional interest did not allow Wade's executive fiat to stop him from completing his presentation on this issue. Drawing from his book, ‘Citizens and Subjects’ Mamdani showed how the citizenship laws of today are a carry over of colonial divide and rule and a pluralism of legal regimes that made Africans into tribes subjected to native or customary laws. That pluralism has made it difficult for many African countries to create political communities with a sense of shared future.

Olukoshi took on the argument of ECOWAS not making progress since it introduced freedom of moment. Freedom of movement alone would not lead to integration if it was not accompanied by integrative infrastructure through transport, communication, education, commerce and trade, etc.

It is clear that we are back to the debates of the 1960s about how far and fast we should proceed to unity. The answer that our painful history teaches us is that slow progress has lead us to the slaughter house of neo-colonialism and impoverishment in the midst of abundant human and material resources. We have no choice but to move faster because the rest of the world will not wait for us.

It is now widely recognised that Pan Africanism needs to leave the confines of conferences and executive mansions of our leaders and become part and parcel of all our lives building from the down-up. A number of issues are clear. One, the heads of state want a union of states while what we need is a union of peoples. If people are at the centre of the agenda many of the contradictions and anxieties the leaders are obsessed with can be confronted together instead of dealing with them individually. Two, some states are more willing than others. And it may be necessary that instead of constantly waiting for everyone to come on board those who are ready should go ahead. Three, the Libyans have to learn how to be thorough and strategic in mobilising both leaders and civil society instead of wasting enormous resources as sweeteners to reluctant heads of state. The biggest obstacle to their good proposals is the way they do things rather than what they are putting forward. The crucial stage we are now at requires a broader alliance owned and led by our peoples to bring the frontiers down and release our energies for creative union that serves the people.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to