Vanity Project

It’s in the Dictator Handbook that you must leave behind an extravagantly unaffordable and unnecessary vanity project. Ivory Coast President Félix Houphouët-Boigny has fulfilled that requirement.

In the village-turned-capital of Yamoussoukro, the world’s largest church stands towering above a lush sprawl of grazing cattle and ramshackle buildings. A copper cross gleams atop a massive dome, while underneath, a marble and granite plaza stretches over seven acres and could fit a crowd of 300,000. But despite its $300 million price tag and 18,000-person indoor capacity, the out-of-place classical Greco-Roman structure has remained mostly empty for the past 25 years.

Liberia and the Rice Shortage

Liberians are being asked to call a government hotline if they spot any unfair increases in the price of rice over and above the approved rate of about $13 (£10) per 25kg.

Trade officials have also been out on the streets to ensure there are no artificial shortages, following complaints from consumers who say they've struggled to buy enough rice.

Officials believe importers and retailers could be hoarding the commodity to hike prices.

While consumers appreciate the decision to control prices, the current government, just like previous administrations, is under criticism for doing very little to prioritise local food production.

Liberia relies on foreign businesses to import rice. The food is not just a staple in Liberia but regarded as an essential in the daily diet, and the price and its supply has brought down a government in the past.

Corruption in Zimbabwe

In May, the finance minister wrote to the International Monetary Fund, warning that Zimbabwe faced a health and economic catastrophe. The government of Zimbabwe has spent millions of dollars on luxury cars for senior officials despite a deepening economic collapse that has plunged its people into profound hardship. 

The new cars, including dozens of Range Rovers and Toyota pick-up trucks worth more than $40,000, were distributed to ambassadors and senior civil servants. Dozens of luxury models are also believed to have been distributed to senior army officers, while junior ranks have received more modest vehicles. Analysts say the move constitutes a new effort to shore up support for the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took power after the military coup that ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017.

New vehicles had been delivered to all Zimbabwe’s 50 diplomatic envoys and some other staff. the head of Zimbabwe’s health services board confirmed that commissioners recently took delivery of Range Rover Discoveries worth around $50,000 each. Paulinus Sikosana said the distribution was standard practice for senior bureaucrats. Currently, thousands of nurses and doctors are on strike in protest at working conditions, a lack of protective equipment and low salaries. Zimbabwe’s largest nurses’ union said inflation – now running at 785% year on year – means its members can no longer afford basic items.

Rising transport costs have forced many nurses to walk to work.

“The reality … is that we are incapacitated from attending work even if we wanted to,” the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association (ZINA), which represents around 15,000 state nurses, said.

Enock Dongo, a nurse in Harare and president of ZINA, said he could not afford to feed his family.

“If you look at how things have gone up in the shops, the basic commodities and rentals, surely you can not expect US$30 a month to cater for all that … We don’t have anything. I have subsidised the government for a long time but now I cannot do that anymore.” 

What’s unusual about the expenditure [on luxury cars] is that it comes when the government is under siege financially. It looks like a desperate effort to scaffold their support. The real challenge for Mnangagwa is that the policy of patronage and plunder means significant reform is impossible,” said Piers Pigou, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

 An estimated 4.3 million rural Zimbabweans are currently in need of urgent assistance. Many in towns and cities are also threatened with malnutrition.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/07/zimbabwe-spends-millions-on-officials-luxury-cars-as-country-goes-hungry

Uganda and its Refugees

Uganda has lived up to its reputation as Africa's most hospitable nation by opening its border to 1,500 people fleeing militias. 

"Uganda is an exemplary country. Other countries in the world can learn a lot of Uganda's generous and open door refugee policy," said Duniya Aslam Khan, Uganda's UNHCR spokeswoman.

But the coronavirus lockdown means many more fleeing conflict have been locked out.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) oversaw the transfer of the asylum seekers from the DR Congo via the Guladjo and Mount Zeu crossings in Uganda's Zombo district. Most of the 1,500 people seeking asylum are women, children and the elderly. They are among the first of the estimated 10,000 people who fled in the direction of Uganda but became stranded at the border in May.

In mid-June, President Yoweri Museveni directed his ministers to reopen the border crossings and take them all in. The East African country had suspended the intake of refugees in March as a measure to curb the spread of the coronavirus.  The pandemic and the restrictions on the movement of people in recent months has collided with other crises around Africa — drought, floods, locust plagues, poverty and other diseases, such as malaria and measles.

Uganda has redirected some of its resources to fight COVID-19, but there's not much more this country can do for refugees due to its limited means. The country already hosts 1.4 million refugees, mostly from the DRC, South Sudan and Burundi. The UNHCR funding requirement for 2020 was 357 million Euros, however only 18% of that amount has been raised.

"Now that we are faced with the global COVID-19 crisis, which has forced us to redirect our resources to respond to the health needs of not only refugees, but their local hosts. We are really running short of money."

In Uganda, COVID-19 has put a lot of strain on the available resources — which had already been dwindling, according to UNHCR spokeswoman Kahn.

"I think for Uganda, a country with 40 million of its own people and poverty levels pretty high, aid should not be taken for granted. And if the world community wants to see Uganda continue this responsibility, more global solidarity in terms of financial support is required."

 If we look at East Africa and the Horn and the Great Lakes, in total we now have 4.6 million refugees and 8.1 million internally displaced people.

https://www.dw.com/en/uganda-remains-steadfast-on-refugees-despite-covid-19/a-54041165

The Stress of being South Sudanese

Rebecca uprooted from South Sudan to a north Ugandan refugee settlement, tried to take her own life. “By then I didn’t care about anything – not myself, not even my kids. The pain was too extreme.” 

Her experiences fit into a wider trend of a mental health crisis across these vast displacement sites, where people from South Sudan who fled the trauma and violence of civil war now live in a drawn-out exile of frustration and diminishing support.

“People face a lot of structural adversities,” says Dr Wietse Tol, formerly of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who last year led a psychological study of South Sudanese refugee women in Uganda. “If the situation continues to wear you down, at some point it just breaks you.”

Overwhelming hardships inevitably push the most vulnerable to the edge. Rebecca arrived in Bidibidi in 2017 after fleeing rebel assaults and famine. Abandoned by her husband along the way, she arrived in this crowded, chaotic and unfamiliar settlement with her children.

“I was happy for the first time in a long while,” says Rebecca, “There was no shooting and no soldiers.” But the initial sense of relief faded as the war back home dragged on. She struggled for money and endured stigma for being a single mother. “I felt completely alone,” she says. 

Nationwide, around a fifth of refugee households have at least one relative suffering psychological distress, while fewer than half have access to therapy, according to UNHCR

Since conflict erupted in 2013, hundreds of thousands have crossed into north-east Uganda to escape. The largest refugee settlement, Bidibidi, houses more than 232,000 people across arid scrubland, which the rainy season churns into thick mud. Globally, it is second only in size to the Kutupalong camp for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.  These makeshift camps have transformed into semi-permanent refugee towns. Many doubt that South Sudan’s new power-sharing government will end a conflict that has killed around 400,000 people.

As poverty and protracted violence have prevented their return, data from the UN’s refugee agency indicates that the rates of attempted and actual suicide have increased significantly here over the past three years. This is an indication of a wider mental health emergency that also manifests itself in addiction, depression and trauma-related disorders. The psychological toll of war can provoke a downward spiral of anxiety and trauma, compounded by social dislocation as cultural and family networks fragment. Some face domestic violence; others fear for relatives left behind.

“They have lost the past and don’t have hope for the future,” says Geoffrey Dramani, a protection associate with the UNHCR. “They find themselves in a state of desperation.”

In northern Uganda, dwindling funds have slashed basic services and job opportunities. In April, a shortfall of £109m meant the World Food Programme cut refugees’ rations by 30%.  Just 40% of the almost $927 million (£751 million) needed to help refugees in Uganda was reached last year. The funding prospects for 2020 are dire, with only 21% of the total requirements received so far. Coronavirus brings added pressures. Restrictions impede the refugees’ ability to earn money and put children at risk of abuse as schools shut.

For refugees, despair often comes years after the most turbulent periods of displacement. “We find that people commit more suicides after things have stabilised,” says Keneth Shaka, Bidibidi’s assistant settlement commandant. “It’s in this time that we need more psychosocial support for refugees than during the emergency time.”

During exile, weddings and other festivities that bind communities together “are put on hold”, says Joyce Wahome, a protection officer with UNHCR. “These avenues of happiness are not there.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/02/i-saw-so-much-killing-the-mental-health-crisis-of-south-sudan-refugees

Zimbabwean Misery

With a rapidly devaluing currency and hyperinflation last measured in May at close to 800 percent on an annual basis, most Zimbabweans have haplessly watched their earnings evaporate. Some cannot afford to feed themselves any more  - a loaf of bread currently costs $1.

In 2009, soaring inflation prompted Zimbabwe to ditch its failing sovereign currency in favour of a series of foreign currencies led by the United States dollar. But "dollarising" the economy hit a major bump in 2015 when greenbacks started vanishing from the formal banking system.

In a bid to end the US dollar shortage, Zimbabwe's central bank in 2016 introduced bond notes - a form of surrogate currency - that was backed by a $200m bond facility from the Africa Export-Import Bank. But black market speculation quickly eroded the bond note's value, triggering a shortage that the central bank tried to offset by creating electronic notes.

In February 2019, bond notes - both physical and electronic - were merged into the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollar, also known as the Zimdollar.

In June last year, the government banned transacting in all foreign currencies and eventually introduced a new Zimbabwean dollar in November.

"The crisis has reached tipping point, for sure," said economist Victor Bhoroma, citing the "high levels of inflation, serious wage compression for labour, income and exchange rate losses for businesses, persistent fuel shortages, corruption and high levels of starvation".

Professionals have also been hit by the economic meltdown. The highest-paid teacher in February earned a salary of 4,600 Zimbabwean dollars ($51) at the black market rate of $1:90 Zimbabwean dollars. Last month, the salaries of government workers were raised by 50 percent, but soaring inflation means the increase will make little difference.

And with the local currency losing purchasing power as the US dollar continues to appreciate against it, civil servants have been demanding US dollar-denominated salaries. On Monday, nurses began a new round of industrial action.

"The [Zimbabwean] $3,000 [$33.3] average salary we earn is not sufficient to cover basic needs without even adding the costs required to attend work," the Zimbabwe Nurses' Association (ZINA), which represents about 15,000 state nurses, said in a statement.

Bhoroma, the economist, said bold reforms are required to extricate Zimbabwe out of the crisis.

"Zimbabwe's problems lie in the culture of governance in government, the spirit of cronyism in our leadership, policy inconsistency and decaying institutions. So, in a way, it's the system and structure of governance that needs to change not the faces in leadership that come from the ruling party in government. Zimbabwe critically needs reforms more than anything at the present moment."

https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/tough-misery-crisis-hit-zimbabweans-200702073249927.html

Africa's Suffering

The Western  world view has no room for inconvenient facts like the continuing legacy of the slave trade and colonialism as well as that Africa is actually a net creditor to the rest of the world - a 2014 analysis of 39 African countries found that what had been extracted from them between 1970 and 2010 and parked offshore was more than four times as much as they owed in external debt, and nearly equal to what they had received in foreign direct investment and aid combined.

It also drives what  author Teju Cole called the White Savior Industrial Complex, which prioritises "having a big emotional experience that validates privilege" above justice and addressing the racist systems of oppression and extraction that buttress that privilege at the cost of immiserating a large proportion of the globe. 

According to the Suffering in Silence report produced annually by CARE International, nine of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2019 were happening in Africa, the sole exception being North Korea's malnutrition calamity. It cites the European Commission's definition of forgotten humanitarian crises as those that "receive insufficient international aid and attention, notably in terms of media coverage".

The Billionaire looting the Congo

Israeli billionaire mining investor Dan Gertler has denied that he had tried to evade US sanctions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An investigation by the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and campaign group Global Witness said he had used a global money laundering network to get around US sanctions and extract mineral wealth from DR Congo.

The report by the two rights organisations published on Thursday cited evidence indicating that Gertler had moved millions of dollars through Afriland First Bank’s branch in DR Congo in order to dodge the sanctions.

"Gertler appears to have used a money laundering network stretching from Democratic Republic of Congo to Europe and Israel to evade US sanctions against him, funnel millions of dollars abroad, and acquire new mining assets in DR Congo," the report said.

Its said its findings were "based on documents provided by whistleblowers despite great risks to their personal safety".

The report pointed to leaked bank documents allegedly showing millions of dollars moving in and out of Afriland accounts opened by people with ties to Gertler, Reuters news agency reported.

Gertler denied the allegations: “I have no relationship whatsoever with numerous individuals supposedly identified in this story and the cash deposits referred to are fictitious or have nothing to do with me, or anyone on my behalf."

In 2017 the United States froze all the assets and accounts of Gertler, a close ally of former DR Congo President Joseph Kabila - accusing the billionaire of profiting from massive resource corruption in Africa.

According to the US Treasury Department, DR Congo lost more than $1.36bn (£1bn) between 2010 and 2012 in state revenues from under-priced mining assets sold to offshore companies tied to the billionaire.

Tanzania Becomes a Middle-Income Nation

Tanzania is now officially a middle-income country after the World Bank published a reviewed classification of world economies.

The East African nation enters into that bracket of middle-income countries with a GNI per capita of between $1,006 (£806) and $3,955 - a rough measure of each person's annual national income.

Last year, Tanzania’s economy grew by 6.8% in 2019 and 7% in 2018, one of the fastest growth rates in the world.

According to analysts, this rate of growth has been going for over a decade, and continued after President John Magufuli took office.

The country is the second largest economy in the region and now joins Kenya as the second East Africa Community member state in the middle-income bracket.

Will it make any difference to the poor?

DRC Misery

The news from the DR of the Congo is rarely good. 

Over one million people from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) have been forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries since the beginning of 2020, according to a report by the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR.

 A total of 5 million people have so far been uprooted from DR Congo. According to the report, DR Congo has one of the highest rates of internal displacement in the world.

The UNHCR said that it had recorded several events of killing, mutilation, sexual violence and looting in the country in the last eight weeks. "UNHCR and its partners have recorded multiple attacks by armed groups on displacement sites and villages", said the report.

https://www.dw.com/en/one-million-people-displaced-in-dr-congo-in-6-months/a-54034659

Dirty Diesel in Nigeria

Black market fuel made from stolen oil in rudimentary “bush” refineries hidden deep in the creeks and swamps of the Niger delta is less polluting than the highly toxic diesel and petrol that Europe exports to Nigeria. The extreme toxicity of the “official” fuel exported from Europe surprised researchers who took samples of diesel sold in government-licensed filling stations in Port Harcourt and Lagos. They found that on average the fuel exceeded EU pollution limits by as much as 204 times, and by 43 times the level for gasoline. Laboratory analysis also showed that the black market fuel was highly polluting but of a higher quality than the imported diesel and gasoline. The average “unofficial” diesel tested exceeded the level of EU sulphur standards 152 times, and 40 times the level for gasoline. 

Shell, Exxon, Chevron and other major oil companies extract and export up to 2m barrels a day of high quality, low sulphur “Bonny Light” crude from the Niger delta. But very little of this oil is refined in the country because its four state-owned refineries are dysfunctional or have closed. 80% of Nigeria’s petroleum products come from the Netherlands and Belgium. The two countries have some of Europe’s largest refineries.

International dealers export to Nigeria around 900,000 tonnes a year of low-grade, “dirty” fuel, made in Dutch, Belgian and other European refineries, and hundreds of small-scale artisanal refineries produce large quantities of illegal fuel from oil stolen from the network of oil pipelines that criss-cross the Niger delta. Illegal artisanal refineries are said by SDN to be growing fast in number and scale, now producing 5-20% of all the gasoline and diesel consumed in Nigeria from the estimated 175,000 barrels of crude oil stolen each year. The bush refineries are highly dangerous and frequently explode, adding to air, water and soil pollution in the mangrove swamps. But they are an important source of income for communities.

The net result, says international resource watchdog group Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) in a new report, is that Nigeria has some of the worst air pollution in the world, with dense clouds of choking soot hanging over gridlocked cities leading to a rise in serious health conditions as well as damaged vehicles. Nigeria ranks fourth in the world for deaths caused by air pollution. The air quality in cities like Port Harcourt, Aba, Onitsha and Kaduna has reached crisis levels of pollution in recent years, and there is mounting evidence of rising asthma, lung, heart and respiratory diseases. The SDN report calculates that around half the air pollution in Port Harcourt, a city of more than 3 million people, comes from the burning of official and unofficial fuel. The rest comes from nearby gas flaring, other industries, and the burning of rubbish.

Levels of particulate matter in Port Harcourt and Lagos, says SDN, are 20% worse than Delhi in India, the most polluted capital city in the world, where emergency levels of photochemical smogs are common. In 2016, the River Niger port city of Onitsha was said by the World Health Organization to be the world’s most polluted city, the concentration of PM10s – soot particles – was recorded at 594 micrograms per cubic metre; compared with the WHO safe limit of 66.

“Our research suggests that Nigeria is having dirty fuel dumped on it that cannot be sold to other countries with higher and better implemented standards. The situation is so bad that the average diesels sampled are of an even lower quality that that produced by artisanal refining camps in the creeks of the Niger delta,” said Florence Kayemba, SDN programme manager.

More than half of developing countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, still use high-sulphur fuels which have long been illegal to burn in western countries. In Nigeria the practice is encouraged by an opaque fuel subsidy system that keeps prices relatively low at the pumps, but is widely thought to fuel corruption. Refineries in Europe are allowed to make the fuel if countries agree to accept it.

“The Niger delta already suffers environmental, health and livelihood impacts from decades of oil spill pollution, gas flaring and artisanal refining. This research indicates that it not only experiences the repercussions of producing crude oil, but also in the consumption of dirty official and unofficial fuels,” said the report.

A Dutch government report in 2018, that European refineries and commodity brokers were blending crude oil with benzene and other carcinogenic chemicals to create fuels hundreds of times over European pollution limits for the weakly-regulated African market. This was said to be causing significant particulate pollution, damage to vehicles, and adverse health impacts for local populations.

Nigeria, along with Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin promised in 2017 to stop the imports of “Africa quality” oil products as part of a UN environment programme initiative. But while Ghana has acted, reducing sulphur from 3,000 to 50 parts per million, Nigeria has argued that it needs more time to adapt.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/01/petrol-sold-to-nigeria-from-europe-dirtier-than-black-market-bush-fuel

South Africa's Police Brutality

 As the killing of George Floyd sparked protests worldwide, South Africans joined calls for action against police brutality following the deaths of at least 10 black people at the hands of law enforcement under a coronavirus lockdown. Thousands have attended Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg to protest violence by security forces implementing the lockdown - and prior to the pandemic - directed mainly at poor, black communities.

"This brutality and violence is not at all new. What is new is that during this lockdown, a harsher spotlight has been shone on these abuses," said Thato Masiangoako, a researcher for the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa.

More than 42,000 complaints were made about the police between 2012 and 2019, including rape, killings and torture, according to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), the police watchdog.

https://news.trust.org/item/20200609173743-w41ef/

South Africa - History

Letters to the Editors from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editor,

P. Lawrence, in his article on South Africa, asserts that “tribal differences also divided the African peoples who in the seventeenth century had migrated south from East Africa (Socialist Standard, April 1990). This claim is also to be found in the more dated official literature such as the South African Department of Information publication Progress through Separate Development (1973) and anyone familiar with Apartheid historiography will readily appreciate its purpose as one of a battery of “myths of origin" that Apartheid ideologists have deployed over the years to legitimate the contemporary distribution of land between "White South Africa" (87 percent) and the "Black Homelands" (13 percent). According to the above publication, "the story of modern South Africa dates back more than 300 years when the forefathers of the various Bantu or black nations of South Africa and the white South African nation, all foreigners to southern Africa, converged in relatively small numbers and from different directions on what was, at the time, a practically empty country except for small roving bands of primitive nomadic Bushmen and Hottentots" (p.12). The present distribution of land between whites and blacks, it is argued, reflects the original pattern of settlement of these two groups and involved "neither colonialism nor conquest".

This bears no relation to the historical reality. For some time now it has been known that the interior of South Africa was populated by iron age Bantu-speaking farmers long before the 17th century (when the Dutch arrived at the Cape) and was continuously occupied since, notwithstanding the Mfecane, or inter-tribal wars in the early 19th century, which supposedly depopulated the interior prior to the Great Trek. According to Shula Marks, there is substantial evidence to suggest that the first wave of Bantu migration arrived south of the Limpopo River “early in the first millenium AD, and not, as had been previously assumed, relatively late in the second" (History Today January 1980). There are, for example, numerous traces of ancient African settlements and mine workings throughout much of so-called White South Africa. Indeed, the archaeological evidence against the thesis of "simultaneous occupation” is now so overwhelming that not even the official propaganda of the South Africa Government bothers any longer to peddle this nonsense (cf. Official Yearbook of South Africa 1983). It is therefore all the more surprising that one should find it being perpetuated in, of all places, the Socialist Standard

Robin Cox, 

Haslemere, Surrey

Reply:

Although we never expressed the view our correspondent has read into the article (we merely stated that there was a migration of Bantu-speaking tribes, in the 17th century, into what is now South Africa, which is true), we naturally defer to the archeological evidence, not that it has any contemporary political relevance. The fact the Bantu-speakers were there first does not justify the claim that the ruling class in South Africa should be drawn from their ranks any more than the Afrikaner nationalist distortion of history justifies their claim that the ruling class should be white. Socialist are not interested in such arguments. We say there should be no ruling class, no states with their frontiers and nationalist mythologies, and no monopoly ownership of land

Editors